Bangtan Devotee

(or, the one where yoongi gets what yoongi wants, even when what he wants is taehyung. especially when it's taehyung.)

✤ pairing: yoongi x reader; taehyung x reader; yoongi x taehyung ✤ genre: est. relationship (yoongi x reader), pwp ✤ rating: explicit; minors dni ✤ warnings: a lot of swearing, drinking but no one's drunk, a friend group in which everyone is queer and has fucked at least once probably, taehyung is a messy hoe but yoongi's an entire disaster, pining, open relationships, polyamory that is discussed briefly, i have been told there are some feelings involved. the most important: there is gay stuff in here!!! i repeat, some of this is VERY GAY! please do not read if that isn't your thing! ✤ smut warnings: girls making out, a threesome, dudes kissing, oral sex (m. receiving), anal fingering, vaginal fingering, taegi get pegged, dirty talk, dudes touching themselves a lot, come as lube (but there's also real lube dw), come eating, voyeurism, a lil slapping (thighs/clit), the dom/sub dynamics shift throughout the fic but mainly dom!reader, very mild degradation, a lil begging, taehyung cries, fingers always seem to wind up in mouths, hair pulling, frottage, yoongi accidentally gets edged, praise, protected sex, dp (fingers & piv at the same time). i think that's it :') but let me know if i forgot anything. ✤ word count: 8.3k ✤ credits: thank you to @effortandmore / @the-boy-meets-evil / & @here2bbtstrash for beta'ing this for me. my personal porny fairy godparents. i appreciate you all a whole lot. ✤ author's note: can you believe my degenerate brain dreamed this up and then i wrote all of it in two days in a delirious haze, opened the doc this morning to make final edits, and added almost 2k more. idk who i am anymore. if i missed anything it's bc i finished & edited this during jk's live and i was distracted, to say the least. anyway this is embarrassing i feel like a prude so i'm gonna go hide. pls come scream in my inbox with me unless it's to yell tired shit at me abt writing mxm/pegging/whatever else i warned you this is gay.

You hadn’t been surprised the first time, and you’re not surprised now, countless times later.

A girl slides into Taehyung’s lap—long hair, bubblegum pink, almost certainly a wig—and his hands immediately go to the small of her back. Large, nearly swallow her up, and they move to rest possessively at her hips, his grip tight as he pulls her closer. Her top is cropped latex and leaves very little to the imagination, which isn’t an issue for you or Yoongi because she’s not what Yoongi’s looking at. His eyes are locked on Taehyung’s hands; locked on the way the tendons flex as he manhandles the faceless girl in his lap, hikes her over one thick thigh.

Ten more seconds of this and all of you will be looking for a new club.

While every encounter has nuances, here are some general principles that inspire a captivating, confident, and alluring presence without making you appear closed off when interacting with the opposite sex. Hope you enjoy these tips x

Decide On Your Intention: Determine your desired outcome from the interaction. Are you looking to get a man to sit by the bar for a drink, ask for your phone number, plan a date in the near future, build tension for a potential fling, or is the interaction more superficial – to practice your flirtation skills or go home with someone (no judgment – everyone needs those nights in their lives)? Knowing your goal and expectations going into the conversation allows you to relax and have a general action plan of how you want to approach the conversation.  

Go In With Confidence: While remaining humble, it’s important to enter into the conversation with the feeling like you’re the hottest woman in the room. Dress to impress – whatever is well-fitting and makes you feel your best. Do your hair and makeup – add a seductive perfume. Wear anything to make you feel like a million bucks. Remember: You can take or leave any offer. It’s a man’s privilege to be in your presence and have your attention. You're in control of the outcome and dynamic of the conversation. Claim your power at every stage of the interaction. 

Learn How To Hold Your Own: Stay unbothered by men’s opinions of you. Decide whether you like him before second-guessing what he thinks of you. Embrace a quiet confidence. Own your opinions. Walk away at any signs of disrespect. Finish your sentences if he’s about to cut you off while you’re still speaking. Control your range of emotions while still having a sense of humor, smiling, and maintaining good posture/open body language. Command presence. Display confidence. Make it clear that you know what you want. 

Remain Interested To Become Interesting: Listen more than you speak – it’s the secret to being mysterious, charming, and alluring. Don’t reveal too many personal details about your life. Ask follow-up questions to his anecdotes. Paraphrase his talking points and respond with an insightful connection that one can take away from his series of thoughts. This type of response makes you captivating and allows him to feel heard without your needing to disclose anything. Let him be more emotionally vulnerable. Nod, smile, and maintain eye contact to show you’re listening and to make him feel safe in your presence. 

“I didn’t like the look of Rory’s drummer myself. He looked the nasty one, with his little grey streak of hair. But the nastier one turned out to be Ringo, the nicest of them all. Playing without Ringo is like driving a car on three wheels.” 

“Rory Storm + the Hurricanes came out here the other week, and they are crumby. He does a bit of dancing around but it still doesn’t make up for his phoney group. The only person who is any good in the group is the drummer.” (1960)

GEORGE: I like Ringo’s song [Octopus’s Garden].

WIGG: Yes, great song.

GEORGE: Because – I mean, most people say, “Oh well, it’s Ringo,” or you know, “Haha,” or something. But it’s great that Ringo should do it. You know, why shouldn’t he do it? And it’s just like a country and western tune anyway, and it’s a happy tune, and it’s all that. And I like what he’s saying about “rest our head on the sea bed” and all that. “We could be warm beneath the storm…” (1969)

“Ringo’s got the best back beat I’ve ever heard and he can play great 24-hours a day.“ (1974)

“George presented [Ringo] recently with a special leather bound volume which on the cover said, ‘Ringo Starr: greatest drummer on earth.’” (1985)

“It’s always hard for a drummer. It’s hard for Ringo to just knock out an album. It’s difficult enough for me and Paul. It’s not easy having been enormously famous, and, you know, having to try to…I don’t mind, personally. I don’t mind being obscure. I remember years ago Ringo saying to me he’d love to have a Number 1. And I said, what for? You are the Number 1. It doesn’t matter about the record.” (1988)

Korean Slang/Common Expressions:

This is a list of all the slang that I know and have used when speaking Korean. But this isn’t a full list of all slang in Korean. There are tons that I don’t know, but I will guarantee, that if you use these to a Korean person, they will most likely be surprised that a foreigner knows Korean slang. Without further adieu, let’s go! 

Food: ♡ 일차 - first round ♡ 이차 - second round ♡ 삼차 - third round ♡ 맛점 - delicious lunch ♡ 아점 - brunch (아침 + 점심) ♡ 맥날 - mcdonalds ♡ 스벅 - starbucks ♡ 먹방 - mukbang (aka eating show)

People: ♡ 남사친 - friend who’s a guy (남자 + 사람 + 친구) ♡ 여사친 - friend who’s a girl ♡ 남친 - boyfriend (남자친구) ♡ 여친 - girlfriend ♡ 붕어빵 - two people who look alike (kind of like doppelgänger) ♡ 변태 - pervert (usually used for older men) ♡ 몸짱 - great body (direc. body best) ♡ 얼짱 - great face (direc. face best) ♡ 금사빠 - someone who falls easily ♡ 바람둥이 - player

Expressions: ♡ 짱! - amazing! ♡ 아싸! - yay! ♡ 헐 - oh my god… ♡ 대박 - awesome! ♡ 우와 / 와 - wow! ♡ 아! - ouch! ♡ 어머 - oh my

Feelings: ♡ 꿀잼 - really funny (재밌어요) ♡ 노잼 - not funny ♡ 웃프다 - funny but sad ♡ 근자감 - a lot of self confidence ♡ 멘붕 - mental breakdown ♡ 케미 - chemistry (for lovebirds)

Do you know what this is? This is The Heart from Auschwitz.

An act of defiance. A statement of hope. A crime punishable by death.

On December 12, 1944, locked inside Auschwitz, Polish teenager Fania turned twenty. After spending a year in a concentration camp, Fania didn’t expect her birthday to even be remembered - but her best friend, Zlatka, risked everything to make her a birthday present, a paper heart. 

Simply making the heart - or carrying it - could get either of them killed.

The heart was signed by many of their friends, bearing notes in Polish, German, French, and Hebrew that announced "When you get old, put your glasses on your nose, take this album in your hand and read my signature again,“ and “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” It was an act of great sacrifice and love for a friend.

Less than 40 days later, they began the Death March from Auschwitz to Ravensbruck, and from Ravensbruck to freedom. Fania carried the heart under her arm the whole time. And survived.

And the safety briefing included the question “So if you’re pregnant, do you want to know or not?”

Turns out there had been a bit of an awkward situation once where the keepers had casually mentioned a woman’s pregnancy in a group, and she herself didn’t even know yet. Turns out the wolves are excellent at telling if you’re pregnant and the keepers can tell based on their body language.  They get all odd and careful around pregnancy. (Even wolves knows that you have to take care of pregnant people.)

So they definitely knew she was pregnant.

And if I remember my BBC documentaries right, a wolf will leave the pack to give birth and introduce the cubs to the pack once she feels ready for it. And maternity leave is flexible but often around 6 months so they’re going “YOU WERE GONE FOREVER! WE WERE SO WORRIED! WHERE ARE THE CUBS?? WE HAVE TO GREET THE CUBS!!“ 

I got an ask about my opinion on torture in 1984, the best way to address it seemed to be starting off the media analysis Masterposts. Possibly the most famous dystopian novel in the world, 1984 is set in a fictional ‘future’ where the citizen’s every word and moment is recorded and scrutinised by a brutal totalitarian state.

Orwell’s story about the ordinary Winston Smith’s desperate struggle for some sort of emotional freedom has informed the Western world’s view of totalitarian states and torture since it was published.

I first read this as a kid and I remember it feeling incredibly profound at the time. Reading it again knowing what I do now instead of taking Orwell’s word for it…..it doesn’t add up.

But that isn’t for lack of effort on Orwell’s part. I can see to much larger extent reading this now how Orwell’s journalism fed into the way he wrote this story.

Unfortunately without anything beyond interviews to go on, without analysis, without statistics, Orwell fell for one of the oldest tricks in the book: he believed the torturers’ hype.

I’m rating the depiction and use of torture, not the book itself. I’m trying to take into account realism (regardless of fantasy or sci fi elements), presence of any apologist arguments, stereotypes and the narrative treatment of victims and torturers.

I’m giving it a 3/10

The Good

1)      Winston, despite his mental posturing, is neither political activist nor lover. He is not a true believer. He is, in all important respects, an innocent. He hasn’t done anything. He doesn’t know anything. And that makes the ease with which he ‘confesses’ and the information he spouts realistic. Winston has nothing to protect and every reason to believe that making things up will help his case.

2)      Orwell’s depiction of sleep deprivation, relay interrogation (the Party men shouting at Winston or questioning him for hours at a time until he breaks down in tears), beatings and electrical torture is on point. This especially is where Orwell’s work as a journalist shines through. The descriptions of humiliation during relay interrogation, phantom pain from stress between torture sessions, the searing pain of electricity and losing track of time in a windowless cell. These all read like they could have come from interviews. And on these points, things that were actually happening in Russia while Orwell was reporting, the book is incredibly, shockingly accurate.

3)      The way Winston loses track of time is completely true to life. And it ties in with the tortures he’s shown to go through early on. His disorientation makes his account difficult to decipher in places. It makes it difficult to tell what happened when, which tortures he was subjected to when and what was real versus what was in his head. And that is true to life. Winston’s disorientation, confusion and memory problems are exactly the sort of thing that makes prosecuting torture difficult: victims rarely know how long they were held or what they went through when.

4)      The rats, according to Rejali, were based on an actual method of execution by torture. Which is a level of research I appreciate.

The Bad

The fundamental problem is that Orwell seems to have taken what torturers say as fact. The book shows torture working and it shows torture achieving things that it is incapable of doing. I don’t think this is exactly Orwell’s fault, the statistical studies and research on pain I’m drawing from weren’t done until decades after he died.

But he believes the hype; he shows it as if it’s fact. Particularly-

1)      Torture does not change hearts and minds.

2)      Personalities can not be rebuilt using torture

3)      Torture does not ‘break’ people in the way torturers seem to imagine it does. It does not have predictable results and it does not have the same effect on everyone. The systematic way the Ministry of Love ‘breaks’ everyone who comes through their doors is fundamentally impossible

4)      The extent to which the torturers know about Winston’s life is impossible and absurd. Even if they somehow had the manpower to watch and listen to every second of his life and intently scrutinise every moment they would not be able to judge his thoughts at any given moment with the accuracy that they do.

5)      Winston’s torturers are supremely good at detecting when he lies. And human beings are terrible at detecting lies. The degree to which the torturers seem to be able to read Winston’s mind is really more at home in an X-men comic than anywhere else. Because without telepathy what the book shows is impossible.

6)      A lot of the torture that goes on in the Ministry of Love appears to be high tech, drugs, complicated machinery and the like. Doctors usually seem to be on hand and assisting. This rarely happens in real life. If something is complicated enough that it requires a specialist to operate than it generally isn’t used in torture.

7)      The ordering of Winston’s torture doesn’t match the general pattern I see in accounts and analysis. Torturers don’t tend to wait around. They generally use as many of the worst things they can think of in the first 24-48 hours. They may keep torturing beyond that point but they generally repeat themselves after that point and after a while lose interest. In contrast Winston is left alone, possibly for days, before he’s even beaten. Then he progresses from beatings to relay interrogation to drugs to electricity to ‘Room 101’, going to progressively worse and worse tortures.

8)      Torture destroys Winston’s affection for his lover. I’m not convinced by the narrative that the affection was all that deep to begin with but- that isn’t something torture can do. The idea that wounded people are somehow incapable of affection seems particularly horrible to me: it’s something torturers tell victims but it is not true. And it seems to perpetuate stereotypes about the mentally ill.

Overall

It’s difficult to blame Orwell for the glaring mistakes in this book when he was working with the best information he had at the time.

But looking back over this book I can’t help wondering how much this has fed into the stereotypes about torture we see in fiction today. Because most of the usual suspects are here:

The idea that everyone ‘breaks’. The idea that torture is high tech. The idea that it’s scientific. The idea that torture can fundamentally change a person’s beliefs, thoughts and feelings. The idea that torturers can recognise lies easily. The idea that victims are forever defined by their torture.

I don’t think these all started with Orwell, but he seems to have codified them and popularised them.

They’re made to look more plausible by being interspersed with descriptions that are accurate. They’re woven together so seamlessly that the two are difficult to pick apart. It’s jarring to see such vivid, accurate portrayals of Soviet torture techniques next to things that are flat out impossible.

In the end I think it’s a shame. 1984 is a book that gets a fair amount really, really right but it’s outweighed by the sheer scale of the things it gets so wrong.

“In my life” recording session.

I was looking at new music on iTunes today (yes, iTunes is still thing) and I saw that Paul McCartney had released a new album today. It’s called “Pure McCartney (Deluxe Edition)”, and at first I was already annoyed. I personally think Deluxe Edition albums are stupid. Yeah sure you might get an extra song or two and maybe some Digital booklet that does nothing but take up megabytes in your music library (come on, who actually looks at that shit?), and they’re probably priced the same as the regular album, but if you already have the regular album what’s the point? It’s just a cash grab for the distributor (in this case Concord), but I’m getting off point. Now back to the rant: so this album apparently is a compilation album of McCartney’s work from 1970 to 2015, and I looked at the track list and it has 68 songs. Most them are just filler in my opinion with a few titles that actually popped out to me ( Maybe I’m Amazed, Ebony and Ivory, Band on the Run, Live and Let Die, etc.), and includes songs from his solo career, duets, Wings, hell even the Fireman are there. Anyway I went to read the reviews and as you would expect overwhelmingly positive with a few outlying 1 stars here and there, but one three star review really stuck out to me. This review read something along the line of “all good songs, but if you already have the music than theres no need in buying this album, you can pretty much piece it together with what you already have, but if you’re a new fan go ahead and buy this.” That got me thinking; this album, while full of good music, is more a fan service to existing fans than an attempt to make new music. So my mind started wandering again like it normally does when I got to thinking about the Beatles, and I wondered would a band like the Beatles make it in today’s world of pop music? Now this is what led me to today’s topic; are the Beatles still relevant today?

I feel as though it’s impossible to discuss this topic without offending someone somewhere, so I’m going to go ahead and clarify some things; the Beatles are one of my all time favorite bands, hell I have a box full of their vinyl (yes kids those still exist too) sitting in front of me while I type this out, including one of my most prized possessions, an original 1969 UK released copy of Abbey Road. I think the Beatles made amazing music that really defined an era in not only the history of pop music but just history itself. If you told somebody to list somethings that describe the 1960s, most of them would probably put the Beatles in one of their top five spots. The Beatles have influenced so many artists that it would be impossible to list them all, but it’s important to know that fact. I’m going to try and look at this sacred cow as objectively as possible, and if I offend anyone in the process, there’s nothing I can do about that. I’m going to try and discuss the band as a whole, and then focus on the individual members. 

So the Beatles, what made them the gods of music we know them as today? Well it all started in a little town known as Liverpool England. I’m not going to go into the whole history of the band but more hit the high points, and at Liverpool the Beatles really started the road to success when the encountered local record store owner Brian Epstein, whom they would eventually make their manager. The Beatles had been playing mostly around Liverpool and Hamburg Germany and building a sizable following in these two cities, but it would be Epstein who really helped them branch out into mainstream success. Epstein helped negotiate early ends to their prior label agreements which were holding the band back, but in mid 1962, he was able to convince George Martin to sign the band to EMI. George Martin would play a much more important role later in the story, but right now it was the band’s time to shine. Epstein also played an important role in convincing the band to replace drummer Pete Best with Ringo Starr. With Martin’s help, the band released their first album “Please Please Me”, which was moderately successful when compared to other Beatle albums. When asking someone what the first Beatle song to reach number 1 was, most people wold probably say “Love Me Do” or “Please Please Me”, but it was actually “From Me to You”. That first number one would start a record of 20 number one singles, the most for any artist ever,  and a record that still stands today. 

This was the start of Beatlemania in Britain, but once you make it in America that’s when you really go global. This is where Epstein’s genius really shined, as he helped create a marketing campaign never before seen in the states. He secured deals with radio DJ’s all over the country to play Beatle’s music, sponsored free merchandize give aways, started up fan clubs, etc. But surely this can’t be the only reason the Beatles made it in America right? Well you are correct. The Beatles were simply in the right place at the right time. Rock and Rock was dying in America. Jerry Lee Lewis was a disgraced, incestuous pervert, Elvis had joined the army, Little Richard had become a preacher, and Buddy Holly, Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens had all died in a plane crash, not a good time for American music. But behold, these savvy, wise cracking, good looking, long haired, exotic Brits had come to save American youth from the wretches of the man. Ironically the British invasion probably saved American music more than any Americans ever did. The Brits had been taken aback by the raw passion of American rock and roll and had turned it into something uniquely British in the process, and the Beatles were undoubtedly the leaders of this movement. In 1964 the Beatles had invaded America, and later that year they would appear on the Ed Sullivan show before over 70 million TV viewers, the largest audience for anything ever up to that point. The day after the critics actually railed against the Beatles, but it was too late, the Beatles were here to stay. They toured America, seeing all we had to offer, even inspiring some change along the the way (they refused to play at any places in the south that weren’t integrated). After that the Beatles just met success after success, with the hit film Hard Day’s night, and albums “Beatles for Sale”, “Help”, and “Rubber Soul”. 

Then things took a downturn in 1966 when John Lennon decided he just couldn’t keep his mouth shut about Jesus (more on that later), and they decided to stop touring after they realized that their fans were just in it for the hype and not the music. The Beatles then decided to show people that it was the music that mattered, and through this effort we got Sgt. Pepper’s. Ringo Starr once said “Sgt. Pepper’s for me, it’s a fine album, but I did learn to play chess on it”, which I think pretty much sums up where the band was at this time in history. They weren’t really like a band anymore, things got complicated and you didn’t have to record together anymore. It was a time they tried to experiment, and they succeeded, but at the cost of unity. Shortly after Epstein died unexpectedly of a drug overdose which the members took very hard. Epstein was the last real tangible aspect that was truly holding the band together and after his death the band quite honestly didn’t have much to do with each other. Sure in 1968 they made the stupid (yeah I said it, stupid) decision to go to India to try and be enlightened or whatever, but it simply didn’t work. They came back, recorded the white album, “Let it Be” and then “Yellow Submarine” and things fell apart. Despite all this George Martin helped them through it, and was really able to show them what each was capable of creatively. Martin really took the limits of of what the band could do, and I believe the quality of their later work really shows for this. The last album they recorded (not released) was Abbey Road, and it was really here that the Beatles showed their sense of duty to the music and put their differences aside for one last time, and it was beautiful. But it didn’t last, the group broke up in 1970, and released their last album almost a month later, leaving a void of disillusionment that would last really for the next twenty years. 

So yeah that cool, but what about the individuals? Well let’s start with the larger than life figure John. John is a compelling figure in the history of pop culture to me personally, doing as what I see a complete 180 in terms of personality. He started out a charming, witty British youth with eyes of world fame in his grasp. Yes the John of the early years was a force to be reckoned with. Although we see Lennon today as this tolerant peace loving individual, it wasn’t always this way. Brian Epstein was both gay and Jewish, two things Lennon often loved to tease about, often referring to him as that “queer Jew” or that “fag Jew”. Lennon was also a fighter in his early days, often resulting to violence after a few drinks. In fact once after someone made a remark about his and Epstein’s relationship, John beat the man senseless saying “He called me a queer, so I battered his bloody his ribs in”. Don’t get me wrong, Epstein and Lennon were marvelous friends, but I’m trying to illustrate that sensitivity and rationale were never quite that much of importance to John. Then John becomes famous, and here is where we really see something peculiar. Fame made John both more stable in his behavior, and more erratic in his personality. It made him more stable in that he finally started to see that other people (foreigners, gays, women, his kids) did matter, and that it wasn’t just about him, but it made him more erratic in that he increasing took positions on issues or made statements that weren’t widely accepted at the time, which I guess you can say made him ahead of his time. This can be first with the whole bigger than Jesus controversy. I get that John probably didn’t mean it in the way people took it, but come on, how big of an ego do you have to have to compare yourself to fucking Jesus in any context other than ironic? Do I personally take offense to this comment? No, because I’m not a religious person, but even so I can see where people would be offended. I could see this being more true in the years following the 60s, as religion is starting to more and more take that back seat in most peoples lives (hence that ahead of his time thing). John’s identity took its biggest curveball the day he met Yoko Ono. 

Yeah yeah, Yoko is awful, and I completely agree. One thing that always bothered me about Yoko is that seemed to take away that British charm that John had. You can really see a change is him pre and post Yoko. He becomes more serious, his banter less witty, and just overall more cynical. She took John and made him political, which is what would ultimately would happen to all the Beatles, but that’s how it happened to John. I can take someone being political, but the problem with John and Yoko is that they almost never made sense to me. They were way too vague and overly philosophical in their protests (which were almost always for general peace, yes very concrete there), and they just came off as though they were doing them just to do them with no real goals in mind. John’s attempts to justify Yoko’s “art” was what always turned me off of him. I know it’s probably unfair to do that to him, but I don’t care, I just can’t stand Yoko that much. I think Bill Burr explains it pretty well. 

Anyway, the thing that really saves John from obscurity, sadly, is his death. He really died at a pretty high point in his life. He wasn’t quite at the top, but he hadn’t fallen down yet. However, this also hinders him as it means he personally probably has the least effect on young people of today, simply because he died before most 35 year olds of today were even born.

Now what about Paul? Unlike John, Paul really stayed course and never really let fame change him personally in my opinion. To use an old political cliche, I’m pretty sure I’d rather have a beer with Paul than John, just seems to be more of a people kinda guy. Like John however, Paul got political, which was his downfall. I say downfall in not in the sense of being less popular, but in that when he talks to you, you go “what’s he going to preach about this time”. So you still like him, but you expect less of him. Nobody likes to be preached to, you’re probably mad at me right now and I don’t blame you. Paul is definitely the most active of the Beatles, simply because he’s the more famous of the only two remaining (sorry Ringo). You have to admire Paul’s longevity with the success of both his solo career and say Wings over the years, but other than that theres not much to say about him to be honest. 

So now we move on to George. Ah poor George, the unsung and underused hero of the band. George to me is actually to the most talented of the four musically, probably not lyrically since Paul and John pretty much had that locked down, but but in terms of actually playing beautiful music, theres no comparison. Hell, he’s number eleven on the Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 greatest guitarist ever. He also wrote one of my personal top 5 Beatle songs, “Something”. I think the best thing that happened to George creatively was the Beatles breaking up. Paul and John were never going to let him be a major song writer, and his experiments with indian music I think would never have been fully accepted as part of the Beatles discography. Solo though, it works for him perfectly, because that’s just who George is. George also really was the only one to reach out beyond music. He had a hand in filmmaking, personally producing over twenty films and even helping finance the Monty Python classic “Life of Brian”. George also doesn’t suffer from the lack of authenticity that I think plagues the other Beatles. When he did something, you really felt as though you were getting the full effort of his being. George however suffered where John didn’t, he died in relative obscurity later in life after a long slouch in his career. He also died about a month after 9/11, so the world wasn’t really focused on musicians of the past at the time. So to me, the legacy of George Harrison is like that of a star; it gets brighter and bright until it eventually burns out, while the the rest of the universe moves on around it, but hey while it was at it’s brightest it was an amazing sight. 

Finally, we make it to Ringo. Ringo often earns the moniker of “nobody’s favorite Beatle”, which is an unfortunate one to say the least. Ringo is seen as that goofy funny drummer who was just riding that wave as long as he could and didn’t want it end. This couldn’t be farther from the truth though. Yes, Ringo was probably the least used of the four, but it’s not like he took that lying down. He hated always having his input not taken seriously by the others and often got frustrated with them. It’s generally believed Lennon was first to quit the Beatles, but actually it was Ringo in 1968 who quit after finally reaching his breaking point in not being taken seriously. Granted, it was only for two weeks, but it that act of defiance the other band members realized that in order to be a band, they needed each other. Still though, after the band’s breakup, Ringo’s solo career was… let’s say lackluster. He actually usually only regained that old success when he worked with another Beatle, but it never lasted long. Despite my defense of Ringo I have to say, I don’t think any Beatle sold out harder than him. Just watch this Sketchers commercial.

So, now that we know all this, do the Beatles still matter? Well, what do I think…? No.

Now now, before you kill me, hear me out. The Beatles defined an era like I said, and they influenced many artists throughout the years, but as to actually contributing anything currently to the zeitgeist? They simply just aren’t. Sure their influence can be felt today, but the top experimental genres of today (i.e. rap, EDM, new R&B, Heavy Metal) borrow very little from the Beatles. I do think their value of experimentation is still quite relevant, but I don’t think we can give the Beatles all the credit there. Also there’s simply only two of the Beatles left, and they just can’t be in everything. The Beatles didn’t suffer when they broke up, they suffered as soon as they decided to try and be political and artsy, which don’t get me wrong is perfectly fine, but it alienates a good bit of your audience and I think this is what led to them being downplayed over the years. 

It’s all over the media—the news, books, comics, TV shows, movies, and even memes. This issue is so prevalent that it’s just an eye-rolling cliché at this point. These tropes are harmful and boring. More so, these tropes just scream lazy writing and the inability to simply Google something basic.

What tropes am I talking about specifically? Why, the “dangerous mentally ill person” trope, the “vaguely mentally ill character” trope, and let’s not forget the “just kill off the mentally ill person (sometimes off-screen)” trope. Examples, just off the top of my head (as in, there are several more):

Nathan Prescott, from a game called Life is Strange. He was literally psychotic (as in he had psychosis), was used as a Red Herring, and then killed off-screen. His death was mentioned by his murderer: “Where’s Nathan?” “Dead and buried!” And then that was the end of that. It was never discussed ever again by anyone.

Josh Washington is from a game called Until Dawn, and was also literally psychotic. But, of course, only as a side effect of his heavy medication for another vague mental illness he had. You know what happened to him? He either gets his head crushed on screen, or he gets possessed and turns into a cannibal. Thanks.

Dexter Morgan is from a show called Dexter. He is a man with Antisocial Personality Disorder. So, of course he’s a literal serial killer! He also uses his wits and such to not get caught. Oh, but he’s also a detective! He’s supposed to be solving his own murders! What a hoot, huh?

Orin is the tall man in the back holding a wine glass. He’s from Parks and Rec. Orin is always used as a joke, called “weird,” the main characters are all kind of afraid of him, and it’s supposed to be funny. Parks and Rec is a comedy. If you observe him, Orin shows a lot of schizotypal tendencies.

Others just to name off: Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn uses auditory hallucinations as an edgy joke, Deadpool’s Ajax/Francis is a horrible representation for individuals with ASPD (as he tortures people and takes pleasure from it), and Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader from the Star Wars Series has Borderline Personality Disorder (and he’s a literal genocidal dictator).

Writing a mentally ill character is not a problem—representation and normalization is a good thing. However, bad representation is worse than no representation. It’s kind of like, if the only experiences you’ve had with dogs are all bad experiences, you may be afraid of or dislike dogs. Same thing applies to here: If people only see bad representation of mentally ill characters, then they may dislike or fear people just because they have a mental illness.

Whenever you write a mentally ill character incorrectly (as in, inaccurately to what their mental illness is, you rely on stereotypes, or you simply don’t know what their mental illness is—just that they probably have one), it fills the general public with misconceptions. When you write a mentally ill character and then paint them to “be the bad guy,” you add onto the stigma that is wrongfully attached to being mentally ill (especially if their bad deeds are blamed on them being mentally ill).

The best way for you to not write a mentally ill character poorly is to educate yourself. As you can probably already know, it’s practically embedded in us to demonize those with mental illness. It’s been done since we thought that the reason for everything bad was demons. But let’s also keep in mind that those people also thought they’d get sick if they showered too often.

In comparison, we’re doing much better. But then again, we said this when we decided that there’s a possibility that mental illness isn’t caused by supernatural forces, didn’t we? Better doesn’t mean we can stop. All “better” means is “not the same, and not worse.” It doesn’t mean finished, perfect, etc. Better means that there’s room for improvement.

We should all be taking small steps to make the world better. Fixing society and social views is a long process. That’s why you can only do better, rather than to just do it. You can only walk up a hill, not just suddenly be on top of it. It takes work to achieve better. A good way to make things better is to start with the biggest form of publicity to spread awareness and acceptance: media.

“The media doesn’t matter! You have to start with laws and institutions!” Well, this is a “power to the people” moment. Yes, laws and institutions have to change, but they aren’t going to change without the people wanting it. If the people want it enough, usually, laws and rules will be changed. But the people will only want it if they know that it’s wrong. The media is so powerful and influential. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have commercials.

Let’s look at how powerful media can be. Let’s look at the narratives surrounding beauty standards. The “You *have* to look just like this” Narrative, and the “This isn’t true and is causing a lot of harm for a lot of people” Narrative. The last one exists because the first one is blown up so much by media that it’s helping contribute to lowered self-esteem, eating disorders, etc. I mean, there’s a phenomenon of Human Barbie Girls for god’s sake. You can’t deny that media has a strong impact on the masses, and the masses have a strong impact on the media. This brings us back to a very important thing:

Representation matters. If people saw everyday people of all shapes, races, sizes, etc., they probably wouldn’t have so much self-hate, self-esteem problems, and stress trying to achieve this unrealistic (and sometimes unhealthy, depending on the person) standards.

So, let’s apply this to mental illness. If all the exposure (or a majority of it) to individuals with mental illness(es) is inaccurate, demonized, tossed aside, stereotyped, etc., then they could think somethings like “Every person with OCD just cleans a lot (aka misinformation),” “People with mental illnesses are scary/harmful/good shock value/not as important as those without mental illness.” The general public isn’t very familiar with mental illness. So, as people naturally do, when they see something, they take it for face value.

When the masses see the “Psychotic Murderer” trope (or the “Homicidal Maniac,” or the “escaped mental patient”), do you know what it does? It demonizes people with psychosis—no, all mental illness.

I say it affects all mentally ill people because of how language is today: when people generally describe someone as “psychotic,” they don’t mean this person literally experiences psychosis. They mean “this person is dangerous,” “this person isn’t right in the head,” etc.

The same goes for writers—what they mean is, “this character has some vague mental illness, and, therefore, is a dangerous person.” When I say “vague mental illness,” I mean that often times, the writer isn’t even one hundred percent certain as of to what their mental illness is. If they were to know, then perhaps they wouldn’t describe their character as “psychotic” when they mean “dangerous.”

This brings us to my next point: Accuracy of mental illness for your character. When I see characters that are written with a mental illness that was discussed in the media, rather than some vague sense of mental illness, I often see that the writers aren’t even sticking to facts about that mental illness. This makes it evident that the writers have no clue how that particular mental illness works.

Yes, I understand that everyone’s mental illness is different for everyone, but there are some things that are just fact. Such as, if someone has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, they have obsessive thoughts that make them compulsively act on these thoughts and it gets in the way of their day-to-day life.

When you write a character with a mental illness, do some research on the mental illness. This shows that you did the research, are a good writer, care about and have respect for the mentally ill, and chances are, you’ll learn or teach someone else something about that mental illness. Remember: learning about something is a good way to stop fearing it.

When producing something, you really need to think about the message it gives and how it will affect people. This brings us to our next topic: how microaggressions lead to much, much bigger things. Or, as some call it, institutionalized/systematic oppression.

This pyramid basically states that it all starts somewhere. The people that are on the bottom of the pyramid have lives, homes, jobs, loved ones, etc. They can have powers of position, from a manager at McDonald’s to being the President of the United States. These people consume media; the news, television shows, books, etc., just like the majority of the people on the planet. This could allow them to deny someone a job or fair treatment of any sort based off of their mental illness.

Example:

The news is discussing a mass shooting. They bring up mental illness. “The shooter is so violent; they’re clearly mentally ill. I mean, what else could be going on with them? You’d have to be mentally ill to want to kill people!” “Well, this wouldn’t have happened if we had better mental health care systems (again, using their mental illness as the thing to blame for mass murder)” Like most instances in the media, this is one of the few times mental health/mental illness is touched upon—when tragedy and violence are involved.

Mr. Robertson was watching this news bit. He goes to work the next day as a manager of a retail store. He’s looking to hire new cashiers. He’s going through applications and he and sees Lucy Garnbach’s application. According to her credentials, she’s qualified for the job and has good recommendations. Now he’s going over the legal stuff.

The application has a section discussing if the potential employee has a disability. When Mr. Robertson sees that she’s listed that she has a disability, he gets scared. “Schizophrenia? That guy who shot up that grocery store had schizophrenia too! Oh, this Lucy woman is probably dangerous. She could be a liability! What if she hurts coworkers, customers, or herself?” Needless to say, she won’t get the job.

You may say to just not list something like that on your applications, but there are at least two problems with that. The first problem is: No one should be denied the ability to pay their rent or eat based off of prejudicial views. The second problem is this: If Lucy hadn’t listed her mental illness, then her boss would be under no legal obligations to give her any sort of accommodations. Plus, she could get in trouble for not listing it, what with legality being involved.

So, her options are: list it and don’t get hired. Don’t list it, get hired (for a short time, probably), get denied any accommodations, having to explain why she needs them, and then possibly get fired lying/not taken seriously/etc.

This is what systematic oppression looks like, and it happens all the time. It all starts somewhere. A good starter point is the media, where everything is blown up out of proportion and lied about for a good story, but is also the thing people believe in so truly.

This is why you have to write your mentally ill characters with the same care and effort as you would with any other character, accurately, and without demonizing them. Don’t contribute to this kind of behavior and to this oppressive system.

Lucy needed that job to help pay her bills and feed her children. Not only is it harmful to the individual (and in the long run, society), it’s harmful to your ratings. This survey backs up this statement.

The data proves that others are sick of this kind of narrative as well. If you’re willing to ignore numbers, then that’s just bad business at this point. Now, I know you probably have some words to say, so let me go ahead and answer the things that I’ve heard most people ask me when I’ve presented them with this problem/solution.

“But is this [stigmatizing mentally ill people] really a problem?” The answer is yes. As I’ve discussed how this is a problem that is institutionalized and ingrained within our society. Also, just because this doesn’t directly affect you, it doesn’t mean that it’s not a real problem.

“Writing a mentally ill character the way you ask is too much effort.” I understand that this could be a lot of effort, especially if you’re not a mentally ill person. But your viewers will thank you. Also, if you’re not willing to do the work to properly portray a character, then maybe you shouldn’t be writing.

“Okay, fine. I’ll make an effort to write a better mentally ill character. But how should I do this?” A good way to start is to look up symptoms, forms of treatment, and to find medications for treatment and their side-effects. Another more in-detail way is to figure out how people who live with this mental illness feel about it. You could even find websites full of communities of individuals with certain disorders discussing their experiences with it.

“But this narrative is working for us/is a classic.” As the data has shown, it’s starting to not work anymore. I know that it’s a classic. You know what else used to be a classic? Bear-baiting.  As we all know now, that’s wrong to do, so we don’t do it anymore. It’s okay to change with the world. I know that change can be hard, and sometimes even scary, but it’s also necessary at times. This is one of those times.

“But I want to talk about how their mental illness affects them.”  You can talk about their mental illness and show some difficulties they have because of their mental illness without demonizing them. Example: “Josh’s psychosis makes him see things. Sometimes he thinks there’s a woman in red following him everywhere. It scares him.” not “Josh’s psychosis makes him want to hurt people!” If you can’t figure out how to write about a mentally ill person’s experiences as a mentally ill person without demonizing them, then maybe you shouldn’t be writing a mentally ill character.

Writing a mentally ill character accurately, without demonizing them does more than you think it does. As the pyramid has shown, this all starts somewhere.

A good way to stop something is to start at the base. If you spill a cup off a counter, you don’t just keep cleaning up the floor. You fix the cup and clean off the counter first. Otherwise, the floor will just keep getting messy. Someone could slip and get hurt.

When writing a mentally ill character, it’s easy to tell if the writers don’t know how mental illness (or perhaps just that mental illness in particular) works. Once your viewer has assessed this, it’s easy to discredit the author, be upset, move onto the next thing, and tell others not to consume the media. My survey has proven this point.

The Incredible Illustrations of Flame.

Take a look at the astounding illustrations by Japanese artist “Flame.”  These works honorably show their respect to early 20th Century illustrator Harry Clarke but Flame’s own personal influence of Manga and other contemporary inventions completely brings forth a new sense of wonderment as well as visceral landscapes to explore for any viewer.

Please continue below to see many more works by Flame: