#you did NOT see me label this as 2023 XD

[putschki1969]

2024/01/05 Blog post by Wakana 2024年〜あなたの今の想いを聴かせてください〜

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2024〜Please Let Me Hear Your Current Thoughts〜

Hello everyone, the old year has ended and a new year has begun. I am looking forward to your continued support in 2024.

First of all, I would like use the opportunity to express my deepest condolences to those affected by the Noto Peninsula earthquake that occurred shortly after the start of the year. I think everyone in the disaster-affected areas continues to live in a state of anxiety as the future remains uncertain. I hope you are all staying safe and staying warm. With new information being broadcast on TV every day and so many sad news, I am sure that everyone's heart is aching. However, please never give up, let's all try to look ahead and do our best.

If there are people out there who are all alone, please know that I am always by your side with my music. You are not alone! For those who feel lonely, I will always try my best to convey my feelings through singing and writing.

Please share your current thoughts in the comment section of this blog. I am planning to discuss some of the comments written by Jan 7th in my podcast on the 10th. (Of course, I will also read the messages of those who submitted something for the talk theme! And as always, the people whose messages I read out will receive little presents so please look forward to that♪) If you have anything you would like me to talk about on the podcast on the 10th, please let me know! Anything is fine. Your current thoughts, questions, anything! Whatever your request is, I will respond to it as soon as possible to the best of my abilities. Let's not give in to our fears and anxious thoughts! Let's share our sorrow to get some sense of relief.

Of course, I will also be reading the comments left after the 7th, so please write as many as you want! I just want us all to have a little bit fun in these trying times.

Right now, what I want to convey most to you is my music. However, there are various restrictions and it is difficult to do so. I am so sorry. But in the next podcast, I have some good news to share with you that incorporate all of my current thoughts. Please look forward to it! [Note: Huh...I wonder what "restrictions" Wakana is talking about here? Is her agency keeping her from doing certain things? Are these restrictions related to the current situation with the earthquake? Is she maybe involved in a project and just can't talk about it yet? So curious! Also wonder what those good news are going to be]

We all share the same time and space. we are not alone. I am here and so are you. Even when we feel lonely, our hearts will always stay connected. I'm forever by your side. And thank you for always being by my side as well 😊

My Schefflera has been slow to grow lately but new buds are always being born🌱 My Queen of the Night has been celebrating a super bud festival ever since the end of the year🌼🌼(Currently there are 20 bbud!!!!! With 5 more on the way!😂)

I hope this year will be a year in which many beautiful flowers will bloom.

＊＊＊Wakana＊＊＊

[sparkles-oflight]

Okay, I'm sorry for going on a rant, but I'm going to talk why the line "Are you straight, Are you LGBTQ or none of the above?" Is actually important.

First of all, let me clarify something: YOU DON'T HAVE TO LIKE SSOL! You are free to enjoy whatever you like (maybe I wasn't clear enough, because sometimes I can sound very pushy and rude and I'm sorry for that), it's just that it shocked me to see a lot of people who don't like while I thought the opposite was going to happen 😶

The line, from what have seen, has either being called cringe, or cool, or lazy or too direct to the point (or even too political). Now, I'm not going to say "it's 2023, everything is political" because that notion is simply stupid. Everything has been "political" since long ago (I really hate to call human right causes "political", but alas) - a good example of a song that did the same as Joker Out YEARS AGO is "Born this way" by our queen Lady Gaga 👑.

I actually want to talk about queer culture and even the social context.

The first one is the one we all know about: Queer people have for centuries had to hide their feelings and identities through metaphors, rhymes, and tragedy in the media they produced for their own safety. I'm not saying I don't enjoy it! I LOVE SUBLIMINAL QUEER MESSAGES AND CHARACTERS WHOSE LABELS ARE UNKNOWN! But, if cishet people are allowed to express themselves explicitly, why shouldn't the queer or ally people do the same?

Now comes the second part: social context. Joker Out comes from a Balkan country. Now, I'm not a Balkan person, but there are some reasons the internet meme about my country being the long lost sibling of the Balkans 💀. Portugal is one of THE SAFEST countries for queer people!! On paper.... We are called slurs, we are made fun of, we are hurt on the streets, we are told to "suck it up" because not only is our country still heavily religious (specially the north, where I come from) but also misogynistic and young to the concept of democracy and freedom (we were in a dictatorship until 1974 and then we had to deal with colonial wars until the early 2000s). I literally told my bestie yesterday (before the song came out) that it would be easier to just say "I'm a lesbian" to my parents than bisexual and NB because they don't believe in those concepts. If we are one of the safest countries on the whole fucking world, I CAN ONLY IMAGINE what happens to queer people on the Balkans - with all of their diversity and wars.

Sometimes, having a big celebrity just saying the worlds LGBTQ is already such a revolutionary thing as much as you all say "it's cringe, it's lazy, it's political...", to us...it means the whole world.

Now, I don't know JO members sexualities, neither do I care or should care, but knowing that they are - at least - allies, makes my fucking heart melt, even if we aren't from the same country.

And I like silly funny songs too XD I'm biased yes yes

Edit: I forgot to add this: FEEL FREE TO ADD TO THE DISCUSSION ANY TIME

[w0lp3rtinger]

Alternative Form

Day six of ShadAmy Week 2023! Big shout out to @shadowsfascination and @killingthecringe . They have been patient enough to beta for me, and to them, I am eternally grateful 💜 Especially as, once again, I was fucking around with writing styles for this one.

(It’s not... REALLY that much of a shadamy piece, but it’s there enough so XD )

Our favorite critter is not having a great time with alien hybrid puberty.

WARNING: Body Horror / Eyes / Medical Horror

ALSO! I AM BACK ON A03! If you would like to read the story there, please click this link!

---

It started with a headache. 

That was in the beginning. Right in the middle of Shadow’s forehead, just above his eyes, it would come and go for weeks before settling into a dull but constant ache. A few painkillers and it would vanish, but then, the very next day, he would swear it would feel worse. 

Rouge told him to take a nap. Omega suggested he ‘get a better meatbag.’ 

Amy worried, and he wished she wouldn’t.

“You can go to the doctor, you know,” she’d say with her brow furrowed and her hands on her hips. “It wouldn’t kill you.” 

He’d shaken his head, choosing to ignore the memory of white sterility as he instead focused on the way the sunlight caught her eyes. “It will pass. I am not concerned.” 

His sleep suffered, as did his work, as did his patience. Even his gardening fell victim. No matter how he tried, there was a tremble in his hands now. Not a lot, just a little, and always when he was trying to be the most delicate. After one too many a stem snapped in his hands, a pair of garden shears was the next thing he grabbed, and they stuck out of the brickwork of the next-door apartment complex for weeks. 

He could see them from his bedroom window, gathering bird shit and rust, and he’d growl at the pain.

Rouge laughed and said he was finally hitting puberty. Omega suggested sparring if he wanted to throw around sharp objects so badly. 

Amy worried, and he wished she wouldn’t. 

She placed her hands on either side of his face, and he had to work very hard not to melt on the spot as she leaned in. 

“It doesn’t look any different… Well, maybe a little swollen? It’s hard to tell. Did you maybe get hit and didn’t realize how bad it was? What’s it feel like?” 

“Tunneling.” That was the only word he could pick for it. It felt like something was tunneling into his head.  

That was the wrong choice. Shadow knew it as soon as it left his mouth and Amy’s face pinched as she pulled away. 

The next time she called to hang out, he did not answer. 

He didn’t answer any of her calls the next day either, or the next, or the twenty-seven that came after. Each one served as a reminder of how he was failing, her smiling face on the caller id looking up at him buried itself into his brain. He saw it everywhere, heard his ringer when there was no call. Even without her present, she hovered at his shoulder.

His stomach would turn when he denied the call.  

And then she got Rouge and Omega involved. 

Shadow should have known it would come to that. The moment he walked into the kitchen and Rouge rushed to hang up the phone, he knew what it was about. 

Of course Amy would call her. The fact that they too now were concerned at all should have been an indicator that this was more serious than he was willing to accept, but the fact of the matter was that Omega’s overprotectiveness and Rouge’s sideways glances left him avoiding them both rather than gritting his teeth through their inquiries. 

He did accept Rouge’s meds though. She always did have the stronger stuff on hand, all of her old prescriptions kept in their neatly labeled bottles at the far back of the refrigerator. 

But then, one day, Shadow heard two low voices in the kitchen. He stayed frozen in the hall, his breath stuck in his chest as Rouge whispered to Amy that he wasn’t okay, telling her he was getting worse, telling her that she was going to see if someone on the medical team could fit him in for an appointment. 

Shadow didn’t have to see Amy’s face to know what she thought. He could hear it in her voice, the way the pitch rose and rose, the hitching of her breath snatching her words from her. There was the familiar, heavy thud of her placing a container of foodstuffs onto the counter as she started to cry. 

The altercation between the roommates afterward ended with him throwing the pills back into the refrigerator and choosing to sleep atop the apartment complex roof. 

Shadow’s gaze burned two more stars into the hot city sky that night. Teeth and fists clenched, he tried to keep his breathing even to quell the fear taking root in his heart. 

Amy worried, and he wished she wouldn’t.

But he’d make this right. He’d get better. Amy wouldn’t need to worry about him anymore. 

About three months later, after another botched mission, Shadow stood in the GUN headquarters basement bathroom. His hands pressed into the wall, sweat beading on his brow as he took measured breaths through his teeth. 

When he tried to look into the mirror again, all he saw was a sickly image swimming before him.

Shadow dropped his gaze back to the sink, letting the world go fuzzy as his eyes started to burn and drift out of focus.

He couldn’t see. 

Why couldn’t he see? 

Bile burned at the back of Shadow’s throat, and as he swallowed, he bowed his head to wash his face in the sink. The fridged, tinny water only made the shaking worse, made his stomach churn more, and he gagged as he shut the water off and ran a hand across his eyes. 

This wasn’t right. 

He started to scrub his face. 

Nothing was right. He was sick. He couldn’t take care of anyone, let alone himself. This just kept getting worse, and as it did, it took him with it, the pain growing and growing, pulling him apart. He was failing at his life’s mission. He was failing at everything. 

And Amy was still worried.

He could still hear her crying from that day at the apartment, could still see her face when she had leaned in to see if she could spot anything. He remembered her breath on his skin and the taunt knot of her brow as she asked, again, for him to take care of himself. 

He couldn’t see clearly anymore, but he didn’t need his eyes to see in order to be haunted by hers. 

The little bell tone that he had picked specifically and only for her rang and echoed against the tile. 

Shadow scrubbed harder, nails raking across his flesh, leaving it red and raw. 

Amy worried, and he wished she wouldn’t. 

He wasn’t worth the energy.

He wasn’t worth-

There is pain, unlike anything else. It’s white and brilliantly blinding, showering sparks through his brain. The ground is gone. He cannot breathe. His lungs are burning and he feels like he might collapse in on himself like a dying star, sucked in and down and becoming nothing. 

And then, he was nothing. 

A vast blackness thick with the ringing silence. 

Weightless, effortless.

Until there was a hand in his. 

There was a hand in his, and he knew this hand. He knew the texture of these gloves, the shape of these fingers, the weight of this palm. He knew the strength it held him with and the ferocity it would continue to hold on with. 

He knew this hand, and when it squeezed, he squeezed back. 

And Shadow was himself again

All at once, there is too much texture, too much beeping. He could smell the disinfectant all around him, a deadly fog encroaching, and the itching of the adhesive for the electrodes on his chest feeling like the tiny teeth of worms. 

And he could not see at all. 

His eyes were crusted shut, cotton gauze adhering to the gunk and laying heavy on his brow. 

It needed to come off. All of it. 

“Shadow?”

He felt her hands cradle his face. Her voice sounded so fragile, brittle and exhausted to the point of snapping. 

Shadow’s heart clenched, breath caught in his throat. 

He did this to her. 

Unacceptable.

Shadow sat up and tore the electrodes out. 

Every machine in the room began to wail, and Amy’s own shriek went off with them. She screamed at him to lay back down, to stop, to just be still, and he would not. Shadow ripped the iv from his wrist in a fever all while her hands scrabbled at his own. 

The hands grabbing at him did not have the strength they knew they should have been carrying. Her voice, loud and commanding, was gone, almost entirely.  How long had he kept her up? How much had she cried, that her throat was so raw she could barely speak? How long had he left her like this, sitting here, watching a body? 

He did this to her. 

Useless. He was useless. He had hurt her, made her worry. 

Shadow scratched at his face. He had to get this damn thing off. He had to see her. He had to apologize now, right now. This was unacceptable. She was never supposed to worry. The feeling of tape ripping from his flesh, taking his quills with it, caused him to flinch, pull back, and-

And suddenly, there was light. 

Everything was bright, too crisp, the depth unnerving to the point where he feared he may slip from the bed. Amy’s arms came to catch him as he fell, eyes rolling back, stomach clenching. She is the one who pulled him back to center. She is the one who repeated over and over that he would be alright, gentle nothings tumbling from trembling lips.

But he looked at her, her face so close to his, and she stalled. 

Amy took his hands, the bloody gauze clutched tight in his grasp, and laid them to rest in his lap. 

Her face, a mass of tears, eyes red and bloodshot, lips worried to shreds. She ran a hand along his quills and he shivered both from the touch and from the pain. 

“Oh, Shadow…” Her wide eyes darted across his face. “I promise you’re safe. You’re gonna be alright.” 

He tried to blink away the spots, tried to give himself a moment to adjust, but for some reason, he couldn’t. He shut his eyes, could feel them close, could feel the way the lashes bristle and the flesh wrinkle, but he still looked straight ahead at her livid green eyes. 

The sound Amy made was soft, like that of something dying. 

That was when he spotted it. 

Just above her, looming over the bed, a magnifying lens encircled by a light, and there, in the faint reflection, he could see himself. 

A low sound, pathetic, like weeping. Grotesque. He burned with it, and the longer it went, the worse the burning got. His jaw, his eyes, his skin, they ached, and the sound only grew louder. It was not until he watched the tears dripping onto his hands that he realized it was him. 

It was him. He was crying. 

Making this worse. 

He could feel them then, trickling down from his forehead, down his nose, along his face with the rest of them. 

Salt in the wound. 

It burned. It burned. 

Shadow sat there, shaking in her hands, forced to watch as she stared, as she ran her hands through his quills and cupped his cheek.

That horrid unblinking eye, now right in the middle of his forehead, forced him to watch her face contort in fear. 

Amy, sweet Amy, was so, so afraid. 

And, Chaos, he wishes she wasn’t.

[aeternallis]

KM Discord Server

As a POC (SE Asian) who was also dogpiled on a much a smaller scale in another discord server, and as one who'd witnessed in real time the events that unfolded in December 2023 in the KM discord server, I think the one thing that's been lost in all this chaos and drama is the human decency of giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Feel free to skip this section!

And for a little background, here's my experience: I reblogged a post on my blog and ranted about a few headcanons that I don't agree with in the tags. Some people read my tags, and concluded from that one post that I'm an outright ableist. Mind you, it was one day, and one post when I had absolutely no filter. Yet still, in which case, the conclusion drawn about me was fair, since in retrospect, I see where I went wrong. Again, I was frustrated for one day in that post and did not think of my tone whatsoever. I face the repercussions of that misjudgment today. For the record, just because I'm a POC, it doesn't mean that I'm immune to hurting other people, no matter the fact that that was never my intention. I did hurt certain individuals with that one damn post and the tags I wrote, and I'll be apologetic and remorseful about it for a long time. But having said that, I'd honestly expected certain people in this fandom to be mature enough to reach out in private first and ask for some clarifications, not to be immediately gossiped about in the discord server we were a part of. On top of that, besides that one incident, I hadn't even realized there was already growing resentment towards the metas I've written for KP/Kimchay, besides one of the few times I brought up personal frustrations I experienced as a POC. Lol

From what I've noticed with this incident in the KM server as well as the small discord server I was a part of, when POC share their own cultural context and understanding of something, not just the piece of media for which is the reason why we were all there in the first place, the knee-jerk reaction for most westerners are almost always to think of those things as "fandom policing."

In fact, in a separate conversation from my experience, one of them even said, "it's not so much about culture!" LOLOL To have that sentiment hurled towards me, while I was speaking of my frustrations of when culture erasure takes place in conversations of certain topics, while the conversation took place in a discord server meant to celebrate an Asian piece of queer media…was quite an experience. XD Goodness, I can only wonder what it's like to be able to have the privilege to say that so easily. That's all I'll say. Ha~

Yet still, from my own point of view, do I call the people who hurt me “individuals with a colonizer mindset” and that other word that’s hanging around right now and unsaid, just because of these few incidents? My knee-jerk reaction is to say yes, considering I wasn't even given a chance to explain myself, but I'll clamp that knee-jerk reaction down as much as I can, because despite everything, I still personally think the KM discord server and that other discord server still did more good than bad (not by much though), in the grand scheme of things. Those servers allowed for some instances of astounding cross-cultural communication (even if it also allowed rampant western ignorance to thrive), and for what it's worth, there are still good people in this community, despite everything.

And at the end of the day, who am I to hurl hurtful labels towards those who'd hurt me, when I hardly even knew them in the first place (two of them I never even talked to, LOL), and I know to myself that they meant no harm at the end of the day. Even if they certainly didn’t hesitate to throw the label “ableist” at me without a second thought.

It's a serious thing to throw a label like that at someone, even if my own experience as a POC who was dogpiled on by a number of westerners...hmm, let's stop that train of thought.

Getting back on track. Even still, these opinions I hold won't erase the experiences of other POC members in this fandom and in the KM discord server, the hurt they've experienced, nor can I speak for any one of them.

I think the bad habit of knee-jerk reactions—specifically the knee-jerk reaction of those wanting to protect the KM discord server in the way that's perceived to result in the least amount of drama, the gut instinct to not want to be caught in the crossfire, the conscious choice to tolerate such things, for the sake of preserving the safe space that one has left—is pretty much what's dominating the behaviors of people responsible right now.

The mods who run such servers like the KM server and others like it—they're not perfect, but I would have at least expected from them to be more open and proactive to the concerns of its POC members. Perhaps it's too much to expect that they would be equipped to handle very sensitive issues as the ones its POC members experienced, but damn...the bar is quite low, even just to meet the minimum.

And that's the most frustrating thing, to be honest. All this time, in all these various situations for those who’ve spoken out, it's the POC members of the community who are ALWAYS the ones who are pressured to having to give people the benefit of the doubt, to have to be careful of what they say, but NOWHERE in these situations is that sentiment even remotely returned to POC.

It was the POC members affected by the incident in December who had to remain patient with the mods, it was the POC members who had to face the backlash of negativity that happened, it’s the POC members of the community who’ve had to face the accusations of fandom policing, it’s the POC members of the community who have to face daily micro aggressions in this fandom, when all we’ve done is express opinions and our viewpoints.

At the end of the day, it’s POC members of the community who face the repercussions of having spoken out, yet the rest of the westerners in this community have the damn luxury to walk away, unscathed, to think to themselves that they did nothing wrong.

So I’ll be blunt this one time: yes, for the most part, there are good people in this fandom, there are. But even so, not a single one of us here is perfect, we’re all human.

And if I do say so myself, there is indeed quite a desperate need for fandom spaces, not just the KP fandom, to decolonize their ways of operating, starting with: giving POC the benefit of the doubt and actually trying to handle our concerns with some effort.