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k-llama-llama · 4 years

Text

Blueming

Stray Kids AU: 9th member

Tori x Stray Kids

Tori’s debut is here!

A/N: A couple of notes: one, this is pretending that her debut was right after Back Door promotions ended. Second, there will be a post later with outfits, some videos, etc. Stay tuned. Please check out my PATREON (patreon.com/kllamallama) for exclusive posts you can’t get anywhere else, as well as lots of other cool benefits!

Requests are OPEN and your feedback is still greatly appreciated!

Masterlist and other Follow Me links in bio!

Tori was having the best day of her life.

She’d been so terrified for her solo debut, scared of what her boys would think and of what the fans would say, that she’d worried herself sick almost every night that week.

But now that she was standing on the stage, with the knowledge that her song was charting, she was able to relax and enjoy herself.

It wasn’t really a showcase – it was more of a livestream that fans had to preregister for. She’d already performed her song, and then she had a short Q&A before she performed her final song of the evening, which was an acoustic version of an unreleased Stray Kids song. Chan had gifted it to her in order to celebrate her debut, and she knew a lot of fans had been excited to see it.

It had been really weird performing in front of just cameras and a crew but getting to interact with the fans over live stream had made it seem a bit more normal.

Their manager signaled for her to give the ending statement.

“Thank you everyone so much for tuning in!” Tori waved at the camera. “I am so proud to have shown you all of my skills in my first single, Blueming. I hope I’ll be able to continue to show you all a Tori that you can love and support! I’ll see you all soon.” She waved and blew kisses until the cameras were off.

The staff all applauded as soon as they were given the all clear.

“Thank you so much everyone!” Tori exclaimed. “I think it went really well!”

“You did really well.” The stage director said. “I think our final number was almost four hundred-“

“AHHHH!” Someone tackled Tori, lifting her off of the ground and spinning her around.

She screamed, hitting back at the arms. “HYUNJIN! STOP IT!”

He set her down, laughing as she tried to catch her balance. “What?”

“I almost had a heart attack.” She gasped. “What are you doing here? What are all of you doing here?”

The rest of the group walked up on the stage, Felix holding a massive bouquet of blue roses.

“We had to come celebrate with you.” Chan said. “We’ve been watching from backstage the entire time.”

“You have?” Tori grinned, taking the bouquet from Felix. It was as big as her entire torso, but she kind of loved it. “What did you think?”

“Well, we heard the song this morning.” Jisung said. “So generally disappointing.”

“Ignore him.” Minho shook his head. “The choreography was really nice. It was cool to see all of it.”

“It was super cute.” Seungmin did a little imitation of her dance. “Really going to fit well in Stray Kids concerts.”

“Yah, you guys aren’t being very supportive.” Tori crossed her arms.

“Noona, you did so good.” Jeongin wrapped an arm around her waist, careful not to squish her flowers. “The song is beautiful and the dance is awesome and you look-“

“Would you stop sucking up to her.” Changbin complained. “We get it, she liked you the best.”

“I do like him the best.” Tori hugged the maknae. He just smiled and leaned into her side. He was way too tall now, but the difference was slightly made up by her heels.

“I just can’t believe you actually wore that outfit on stage.” Felix looked her up and down. “I kinda thought it was just a one-off for the music video.”

Tori looked down at her outfit. “You thought I was given a baby blue mini dress covered in fluffy pompoms and I wasn’t going to wear it on stage? Do you even know me?”

“Can you even dance in that thing?” Hyunjin poked it. “You only wore it for the acoustic stage.”

“I’m wearing it to Music Bank tomorrow.” Tori gave a little spin. “Why? Do you not like it?”

“You look really nice.” Changbin said.

“I mean…we can’t really see you behind that monstrosity of a dress.” Jisung noted.

Tori shook her head with a smile. “You guys are just upset that you couldn’t pull this off.”

“I don’t know how we lived without wearing pompom dresses.” Felix deadpanned.

Minho checked his imaginary watch. “As cool as the dress is, do you want to go get changed so we can take you out for dinner?”

“What, I can’t wear this to the restaurant?” She passed her flowers to Jeongin.

“It’s a fire hazard.” Seungmin told her.

“Urgh, fine.” Tori groaned. “I’ll go.”

“Great, we’ll go get our stuff.” Felix said. “Meet you at the car.”

They all started to walk off, Tori lagging behind to hand her mic pack to the stage director. When she reached the stairs to leave the stage, Chan was the only one standing there.

“Don’t you have to go get your stuff?” She asked.

He held up a hand. “I figured I’d make sure you made it down the stairs safely.”

Tori smiled, taking his hand and navigating the six steps on her heels.

“You did really good today.” Chan said as soon as she was down, starting to walk with her.

“Thank you.” She grinned. “And I’m so glad you guys came. I know you’re all tired too.”

“We weren’t going to miss it.” Chan promised.

“And…I know I already said thank you, but I can’t thank you enough for lending me the song. I think the fans really liked it. It’ll probably get a lot of attention on our next album.”

“Lending you the song?” Chan looked at her quizzically. “What are you talking about? It’s yours.”

“It’s a Stray Kids song.” Tori protested. “I was just using the preview. You can’t let the fans down and just waste it on me.”

“I’m not wasting it on you.” He shook his head. “It suits you. And since your first song is so darn good, I know that your full album will be even better.”

“My full album!” She exclaimed. “Are you kidding? It took me forever to produce one song.”

“So? However long it takes, I have a feeling this song is going to be better for you than it ever could have been for us.”

“Really?” Tori looked down at her dress, playing with one of the pompoms. “I appreciate that.”

“I really mean it.” Chan nodded. “Besides, I….uh…I wrote it for you anyways.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. A while ago.” He sighed. “So I figure you should have it. But now you have to work hard and make sure it has an amazing album to go on.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Tori shook her head. “I still have to survive solo promotions.”

“You can do it.” Chan encouraged. “I know you can.”

“Thanks.” She said, for what felt like the hundredth time that day. “So…where are you guys taking me for dinner? Chicken? Barbeque?”

“I think a salad bar.” Chan winked. “We don’t want you to get sick for your show tomorrow.”

“Yah! I worked hard, I deserve chicken!”

#stray kids #stray kids au #stray kids imagines #stray kids 9th member #female kpop #female member kpop #female!kpop #female member kpop #requests open #au #kpop #imagines #imagine #kpop au #kpop imagines #kpop imagine

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incarnateirony · 6 years

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So I kind of just need a place to let it all out.

If you don’t want to hear me ranting about my truest encounter with the embodiment of male privilege, the stereotype of millennials, and even bad stereotypes about queerfolk - that I’ve ever encountered in a single being - please keep scrolling and /ignore. But it’s better to rant about it here in this contained area than have it wank up in an SM area that is adjacent to a growing business profile. If someone finds it, okay, I have nothing to hide, but still, better to keep clear air over there rather than kick up in main venues.

But holy shit.

Like.

Beware: Much cussing afoot. Minding through this journey this guy is trying to demolish weeks of my work and tried to use my credit card and busting up people’s hubs and turning friends on each other and all kinds of stuff. This is my personal blog and at this point, I’m furious.

Okay so I’m going to start with CultFans. Some of you saw some of the work done. Let me tell you a little bit about how CF started. (and before making any judgments about CF because of this dude as described below, read the whole thing and understand how it’s changed now.)

There was a little podcast called Order of the Outpost. The Outpost is a small CW summer show with a tiny fandom, but I watch it because... well, it’s honestly an indie studio getting its first real shot and struggling through a lack of budget to swing with the big dogs and fuck yes I am trash for that kind of content. But anyway, OotO was started by a girl named Kira, who formerly ran The Lit Round Table for the Librarians fandom, and producer Dean Devlin showed up on it at one point. She got to go to set with the others. It was cool! Dean also signed on to support Outpost next to Arrowstorm, so heyyyyy it was just sort of a neat idea, maybe he’ll show back up one day and if not, we can nerd meta talk.

Several people pile in. One is this dude who happened to make semi-friends with a young actress getting a role in the show, who referred a few people to the stream. The problem is, when people got there, the streams went a few hours, it wasn’t structured - but I mean, that’s understandable. It’s a young fan stream in a young fandom, there’s not gonna be a lot of structure. And we don’t want to take over her podcast with a RuEL oF lAW but we see that the last guest got visibly exhausted. In fact, it was bad enough Shea and I left the call because it had run for 2 1/2 hours and that was just ridiculous. But it left Kira and... dude with the one semifriend actress (Tim/TJ). So the call went into eternity.

I felt bad for Josh (the set guy that was there) and thought - okay, I mean, I have the experience to help this keep rolling, but things have to change. You don’t want to change up her podcast but... if you want guests to stay engaged something has to change. So I propose making like, a second feature. This proposal was originally a second piece of content/second show on the same channel, but Dude With The SemiFriendish Actress ran off and, while I was checking my funds to consider investing in a website, registered a separate social media account, already started spamming tags out and alerting people about a change... okay, weird and unnecessary but whatever, roll with it.

He says he likes the idea of a more professional environment so that’s why he ran off and made the separate channel. I ask if he can invest in it at all. He says no. Okay, well, we need better than what we have, if we want any agents to take us seriously, so I drop the hard cash for website, domain, etc etc up front. I let him know it’s gonna be a hard road if he wants to do that kind of thing, he says he gets it and will listen.Totally open to feedback since I know what I’m doing and I’m totally an owner because I’m investing. Cool. So we do our first independent podcast which ends up being like... an hour and a half of him interrupting everything and talking at the guest. Flashbacks to the call with Josh, which dude COMPLETELY blamed Kira for. Even though he was one of two participants.

I pull him aside, say that’s not okay, that’s still way too long. We’re gonna start scripting it. Nobody’s here to see you talk, dude, or hear your opinion. If you want an opinion stream, go to OotO, you’re supposed to be supporting guests. That’s why they show up - publicity for a small studio. Says he gets it... give him a script. I start working on videos. He visits OotO one more time and drops a GIANT PR BOMB I DARE NOT REPEAT BUT IT COULD HAVE COST SOMEBODY THEIR JOB. (for the record, it’s something it turns out he completely hyperbolically inflated to make himself look good and turned up completely false but this isn’t shit you play around with son, these are careers.) We lock down the OotO stream and scrub it. He does a thousand frowny faces and apologizes and says he gets it. Okay! He’s new to this... will give another chance.

Now, let me insert, I love Sonalii Castillo to death. She’s talented in every way imaginable and a sweetheart. But she is not a big name. She deserves to be a big name, but she isn’t there yet. Her star meter floats at about the same level as TAW, if that gives you any idea, only she’s not a complete shitlord like TAW - she just hasn’t gotten a lucky break yet. But due to huffing crack from talking to her, dude sets up a patreon. We’re so new we have like 6 subscribers but he makes tiers like “$200/month TJ will add you to PS4 and play games with you.” Who the fuck are you dude??? Who is going to do that??? What the fuck? I tell him to take that shit down.

And... another. Dude, who all are you emailing? Wait, why do we have a new email? Wait, you registered an email on top of my domain? That we don’t have access to? Wait - what? Make a fucking spreadsheet, what the fuck is going on.

“Make a spreadsheet” - he comes back with this eye bleeding hot mess:

Just... pages of that. (Contacts blacked out for obvious reasons) O-...okay... he’s... he’s trying, I guess? Need contact to the email to see what you’ve said so we can follow up. Wait, you have THREE emails? Okay - he - he let us in one. Good enough for fucking now I guess, despite bitching him out to not do things in private.

Find him sending two page bricks about his aspergers and hopes and dreams to agents when they ask for more details. Uh- that’s... that’s not what they meant dude? “I didn’t realize-” dude there’s aspergers and then there’s just being completely- like- ridiculous. Dude, I have aspergers. And boy did he pitch that as an excuse every chance he got. Either you’re cut out for this kind of work or you’re not.

So I’m going behind, scrubbing on audio and video PR bombs, busted agent rep, vats of what turns out to be HUNDREDS of emails, writing scripts, making videos and even running the live broadcast because nobody else can handle it - oh, and paid for the site, because, you know, it was me saying we needed a better environment to begin with that kicked this off, but I never meant to completely break away but WHATEVER it is what it is. I made a point to keep attending OotO while, unsurprisingly, he dropped them cold.

He convinces a comic shop owner to give him swag for a light sponsorship deal for advertisement-vs-giveaway - cool, that’s cool. Inventory it. But he wants to keep this super rare rogue poster! Did he give it to you as a gift or as a sponsorship? ...For a giveaway. Okay, then you don’t keep that, that’s fraud. [pouty face]

Keep in mind this dude is 25.

He keeps turning up going “look at the stuff I got from the comic shop for giveaways!” and we’re like, dude, stop spending money, we don’t have money, you’re on welfare, knock it off until we get some sort of income. DONT TELL ME WHAT TO DO WITH MY MONEY okay but if that’s your money that’s on you, I’m not taking that as an investment I’m going to have to pay back when we keep saying to stop buying shit. INVENTORY it so we can BUNDLE it and make GIVEAWAYS. Took like a month of me telling him this for him to inventory a grand total of like 12 items.

So I got him to close his utterly failed patreon and opened one of my own, that stayed in MY management, and he starts bitching for the login. Dude, you didn’t give me yours? You literally won’t give me anything that has a card on it so why am I going to give it to you? We’re not the ones blowing random money left and right? If there’s an expense to pay back, minding of course I’m the one that’s invested triple digits in this and he’s... spastically bought random swag at a comic book store and registered a redundant email on top of my domain that clogs up my ability to use *MY* free email in my package, while paying a few cents a day on it - I’ll fucking paypal you the money dude. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow Shea lives in the same house and can handle it. You don’t need my login creds.

I mean by now, there’s already huge red flags. Add in calling us each and rambling at us three hours a day about jack schitt all nothing while we say we’re trying to do work and mostly just talking about himself, kinda like he does on live air. Serious major narcissism shows, increasing creepiness with female guests, his weird obsession with anything money based, impulse spending, oh and he takes this “I’m the creator” attitude. ???? I... bought everything? And... Shea and I make... literally all of the resulting product? ???? You... ran off early and registered an SM account???? What did you create? Oh, it was “his idea”... right... okay. Yeah, no it wasn’t. Cue arguments and shitfits about it starting up.

But hey, I’m going to stay on point because we have a good thing going.

Again, HUNDREDS of emails. Try to navigate that hellhole of a spreadsheet and eventually just go “Fuck it, I’ll reformat, and make him fill in the other parts,”

Tada, a spreadsheet you can actually like, find shit. Suddenly the other team members could understand what the fuck was going on. I put in a date of contact, and email of contact field (now it’s all uniform now that we’ve cleaned up, but there were FOUR emails bouncing in there that he was doubletapping people from, once I made him type it out). Made him go find his own bullshit and put in dates/emails while haranguing him into giving us access to all but one email, and he pitched a fit saying his personal payment details were on it (because he chose to register the gsuite ON TOP OF MY DOMAIN just because he had limited delegated access to my godaddy I guess. IDK how Gsuite gets signed up for but I’ll just guess randos can’t do it without SOME kind of access)

Well, keep in mind, I’d been spending bare minimum 6, often 18 hours a week resorting emails, ELI5ing basic business or even basic human engagement, on top of my scripting and video work and everything else, because I bought into the “nobody ever gives me a chance” whining. And I’m all about giving people chances to do things they have fire to do. Literally all we’re asking for is to like, spellcheck his work (he was posting things through the blog like “Exlcusive”), not be a PR bomb, and sort out his shit (spreadsheets, emails) so I didn’t always have to clean up over him. Not exactly exorbitant work standards. Also stay relatively on script because, well, nobody wants to attend a stream for 2 1/2 hours, 2 hours of which is him talking at everyone instead of pulling information from the guests or engaging on behalf of an audience. But he’s trying, I tell myself! Against my better judgment. And, well, at least he contributes to paying imdbpro?

Well, I thought he did. Until I found out he was on a free trial and that expired. Sooo guess who had to register for the next trial? [this guy thumbs] Guess who started demanding access despite not allowing access before because of payment creds?

Because I’ve worked in stuff before, I run this by an old art director that’s worked on some pretty big shit. She doesn’t know anyone on the stream from Adam but HONES in on TJ. Her “protect the model” instinct kicked in immediately with how he was engaging female guests. “Mouth breathing basement dwelling perv” was the vibe she got off of him, without any prompting, and she immediately skeeved out. “He’s a problem, he’s a huge problem.” And I legit hadn’t said SHIT to her. She apparently saw the look on my face and was like “What?” so, storytime kicked in. But I did still make excuses for him. He’s an aspie, sometimes we’re weird about how we communicate, our tones are off, it may just be a quirk outside of his control - etc etc. But all this other shit has built up despite my thousand excuses I’ve run for him (and some I’ve completely brushed over in this novel) She also noted he choked on the McNally interview - that we were all nervous but he was squeaky. I said that was my fault, I rode his ass too hard about staying on script, poor baby was trying, that was a my bad.

And there’s parts I haven’t even touched on, TBH.

But let’s review where we’re at

Original OotO stream

I still attend, he drops Kira cold

He’s bitching in private quarters that he can’t stand her

I still try to refer guests we get to her

He starts dragging her when off air to blockade her getting guests

I now lose my shit on him

More frowny faces

after PR bombs

after unsorted emails

after the eyebleeding spreadsheet

After wrecking connections to a few agencies

After many long talks

after him running off script for weeks

After an art director spots him as a problem immediately

After I do all scripting, videos, and broadcasting

After Shea does all the graphics

After we made all of the triple digit investment

Dude randomly thinks he owns it because he bolted off to register an SM first

Seriously

But wait, there’s MORE!

Dude starts pitching bitches that I put out deadlines. Because he’s done things like try to bait guests on live air to make commitments to him and all kinds of shit, and I’m hard scripting it now to PREVENT that. But if the artists are gonna get the script in a time they can yay/nay we need to get it to them BEFORE THE FINAL HOUR. So he misses deadlines and then expects everyone to hand him their questions and work so he can be on the whole stream after he fucked off for a week and failed to even SUBMIT A QUESTION TO BE SCRIPTED? Um, NO? Guess who loses his shit about “his baby.” Oh boy, the entire team has a comeapart on him at this point.

He comes forward with telling the story of how the australian version of welfare (I forget what it’s called? Centerpoint? Some shit like that?) is up his ass to get a job but they’re getting “off his ass” because he’s “trying to make a business” and he’s happy about that, so he “might get a part time job, if he has to" but he wants to finally move out, get a two bedroom apartment. Dude, I point out, if there’s ANY money in this at ALL it is a LONG way away so get the fucking job.

He apologizes, says he gets it... whatever. But boy, an older, not-classically-attractive and not-big-name male guest? He suddenly doesn’t give a shit. Like, no questions, outright says he doesn’t care if he’s on it. But - but Jennifer is the week after!! He absolutely has to be there!!! Uh, why? Do you know anything about what a producer even DOES? Well, no. But he’s bouncing on Charan so he should be in the front THERE. Okay, so what are you going to ask her. Oh, he has no idea. But there’s going to be a GIRL on the stream to talk at, so hey!

But here we are right after I say it was my fault he was choking on McNally’s interview and he runs 15 minutes off script on the next one AND tries to talk over me for a SOLID MINUTE during our scripted wrap. I manage to end the broadcast, I drop mention of OotO to the guest and he goes OFF about it being an unbearable stream; like yes I will be honest literally everybody jokes about her laugh but saying “just letting you know it’s unstructured-” isn’t an invite to go off calling her stream a hot mess and yes, once you go off about her laugh everybody’s gonna laugh a bit and chuckle it off and roll long enough to not go off on you in front of an actor but everybody else knew to shut it down with “but Kira’s sweet” and end it. And nothing about her having any kind of laugh is worth HARDBALL BLOCKADING her getting guests. It’s fair to warn them that it isn’t structured like an interview, because, you know - well, let’s not blindside them, but that still WORKS for some personalities. That DOESNT mean you go off calling it a hot mess and all kinds of other shit. And people lightly rolling with it long enough to not make you look like a TREMENDOUS THUNDERCUNT and make a scene in front of an actor they KNOW you will blow up on us in front of does not WARRANT that behavior, catch a clue when everybody’s cutting it off with “But she’s a sweet girl” dude. Or the fact that SOME OF US STILL GO TO HER STREAM. You’re the one that hard dropped her.

But after the last time he dragged Kira I went off on him. I even deadass told him the feedback from the art director finally. I try to sort his vat of emails to cool off, and wake up in the morning to an ENTIRE INBOX full of him shittily forwarding things from his private email we said he shouldn’t even HAVE, full of attitude about me doubletapping a few clients, after HE put the wrong contact date/email in the sheet BY HIS OWN HAND. Like, I’m supposed to psychically know what’s in his fucking private email he won’t cough up when he put the wrong data down.

So here I am, cup of coffee still untouched, put my butt down in the chair, see an inbox FULL of him being a wumbo sized shitlord and he starts calling me on Hangouts, like he must have seen my indicator turn green. Again, keep in mind him being notorious for three hour phonecalls about nothing, and/or arguing. So I decline. He calls again. I decline. He calls again. I answer. “What.”

Long silence.

“I’m not creepy.”

“Come again?”

Long silence. “I listened to the stream. I don’t sound creepy.”

“Dude, a creepy sounding dude isn’t going to think you sound creepy. And it’s not just the art director. I’ve gotten that from a few other viewers.”

Long silence. He starts trying to argue and I cut him off. Like, no dude. After all of this shit, after ALL of this, after we have literally built and invested in ALL of this when you don’t have a single goddamn skill sufficient for the job and we spend full work weeks trying to mentor you while trying to do other shit, you had the audacity to talk over me during our wrap THEN DRAG KIRA.

“Well I didn’t realize I was doing it.”

“Okay?”

“What do you mean okay?”

“I mean, okay? What do you want me to say to that? If you have something going on in your head that somehow makes you unable to process you’re trying to talk over someone for a solid minute, during a point that has literally been part of a routine for a month and a half, what do you want me to say?”

Long awkward pause. “So how do we fix it?”

“I don’t know, dude. I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried scripting, teaching you metronome, I’ve tried moving your position around in the stream to see if you sync somewhere better, I’ve tried having you watch other interviews, I’ve tried giving you templates. I’ve tried being gentle, being firm, I’ve tried outright bitching you out. And if you don’t even realize you’re doing these things, I don’t know how to make you fix them. I’m a production coordinator, not a psychologist.”

“But... how do we fix it?”

“I... just said I don’t know.”

“Yeah but I mean, how do we fix it.”

“I mean you can keep asking me that over and over but I just told you, I’ve done everything I can even think of at this point to make this work and to give you chances that I am in no way obligated to give you. And you know, through all of this, I haven’t even gotten a single thank you from you? For even giving you a chance to be part of this?”

Awkward silence. “But it’s m-”

“Don’t start that it’s mine shit. There is no universe in which this is yours. And if you want to play that, I can walk with the site, the domain you registered your emails on, my videos, broadcasting software, Shea’s design and my general understanding on how any of this works, like I could have done a month ago from your bullshit, and you can try to do it with a google hangouts and a wix site and see how that works.”

Awkward silence. “Well how do -”

“I swear to god if you ask me how to fix it one more time I’m hanging up. [Brief silence] Okay, so how about you tell me how to fix it, instead?”

He’s quiet a minute. “I don’t know.”

“Okay well if I’ve reached the limit of my ability to think on how to fix it, and you don’t know how to fix it, I’m going to need you to try harder.”

He loops this cycle several times. In hindsight, I’m aware now, he was trying to make me be the wicked witch that kicked him out. But I wasn’t. He came up on his own, “Maybe I should take a step back.”

“Is that what you think will fix it?”

“Yeah. I mean. Maybe. But... if I step back... what do I get out of it?”

“...Come again?”

“I mean, if I step back, what kind of money do I get.”

...????

??????

“Okay, look dude, what money? There IS no money. There’s like 5 bucks in a patreon when I paid out well over 100 bucks in startup costs. These problems, all of these problems, these explosions in the team all have one source. It’s that simple. If you think you stepping back fixes it, I’m not going to stop you, but there IS no money.”

“But what about if you start MAKING money?”

“...what?”

“Like in a few years, this gets big. I mean, I created it and all - I get money, right?”

“What did you create?”

Crickets. Finally, “It was my idea.”

“No, dude, it was everyone’s idea. And even if it was your idea, which it wasn’t, an idea is just an idea. I have an idea that I’d love to genetically splice a lizard back into being a T-Rex but if I have no idea how to fucking do it and someone else does all the work for that, they’re the creator of the goddamn new T-Rex, so you can put that down right now.”

Awkward silence. Says he has to think. Hangs up.

Okay well, I have an interview to prerecord, so we just get to rolling.

He comes back in the NEXT MORNING bitching about money again. And not even just about money.

So here’s the deal. Yet again, like many a morning recently, I approach with an untouched cup of coffee, sit down... and there is a WALL OF BRICKS in our team chat. Why? Because Shea fucking triggered on him like two hours ago and they haven’t stopped. Shea, a woman with more than 10 years management experience, who was supposed to handle any money we DID get coming in, was out working her 55 hour a week shitty retail job (for the record, due to being physically broken beyond function I am on disability, but I worked until I couldn’t do it anymore, literally, and at least it’s SOME income), when he came in saying, I shit you not, that he needed “that money” because he never wants to have to work retail, sales, or food and he shouldn’t have to get a part time job at Samsung.

What the fuck? Who the fuck are you dude? Needless to say, Shea went postal in righteous anger. And we ALL had righteous anger of our own. Our work, our history in regular work force, our input in this, and asking him what he thinks any of us should get paid for our work or how much he thinks this is going to pull for him to move into a two bedroom apartment. Does only he get paid if we somehow start pulling a few thousand dollars? And is he going to give anything back to Arrowstorm? To Sonalii? How much does he think this digital business is going to be paying in the first year? 10K? 20? or does only him getting a few thousand dollars count? Arrowstorm is indie, don’t just ride their shit to fame as your goal dude, that’s not how this fucking works. Even Stacy, sweetest pea in the pod that hates confrontation, bricked him about the need to respect Arrowstorm and how hard this all is. And what do you even do to justify making all the money? He fills out the imdb spreadsheet, he says. That original hot mess that I had to reformat. And sends emails, that I have to clean up after him. That takes TIME. I bundled it up and did the math like I did and said he was running an average of 1-2 hours a week of work. But he’s super busy. That’s his excuse. We just dont KNOW what his life is like.

Meanwhile we get wind he’s going back to Kira, after ALL THE SHIT DRAGGING HE DID OF HER, and abandoning her stream which I was STILL going to every week. Why? Because everybody’s sick of his shit here, so he’ll go there for convenience, I guess, since he burned everybody up here. And when we confront him about how shitty and gross that is, he tries to justify it but gets reamed. Tries to blame it on how busy he’s been too. Super busy. A wall of busy. And it’s a fantastic busy wall.

Dude goes dead silent on everybody. Kay, well, we have final prep for a live feature with THE ARROWSTORM PRODUCER the next day so we get back to our shit, because we’re sick of him derailing everything. Wake up in the morning to him trying to ultimatum US about the emails we said he shouldn’t have and leaving. So, you know. That was a thing. And we get a notice that he tried to set the FB to delete. Now it becomes a mad dash to password change EVERYTHING. And change all of the recovery options. Luckily my godaddy account was already delegated and restricted access but I go to doublecheck and THIS motherfucker has a domain registration package IN MY CHECKOUT CART. What. The FUCK. Luckily he can’t see or use my payment details but I screenshot that shit. I still have to be live with the producer in a few hours and put on a good face. Like the last interview, it went great without him (barring a tech difficulty that slammed us because of my shitty tech). She said she had a great time. Said she was gonna text the leads in the show (which IS a CW show) to get in contact with us. We smile and wave and thank her and off she goes.

I look back in hangouts and he’s bitching about the emails, I tell him just delete the shit dude, I can register them again, I’m not an idiot and already backed everything up to a zip folder and if there’s downtime it’s the weekend and agents won’t be answering anyway while I put it back up, I don’t give a shit but HEY, while we’re at it, I’m super curious about why I spotted this in my checkout cart and why you pitched a bitch about your access levels suddenly. You know, right before I password locked you out. So are you going from passive fraud of accidentally keeping things from the comic store to active fraud using my card to buy shit? Luckily I’m smarter than you, son.

Oh, the excuses flowed. It was an accident. He didn’t realize, he was just checking how much it would cost (like they don’t show that before you select), IDK, they never found the bodies was probably next.

So I dig in google history to make sure other weird shit wasn’t going on and make sure he was locked out of everything and find that this dumb motherfucker set the group email to be his microsoft account so both microsoft AND google were tracking him and this fuckface was playing more than 60+ hours of random games and bullshit a *week.* And I don’t mean like “might have left it running when he left the house” games, I mean rotating titles every 30-45 minutes was common. You could literally see when he’d try to initiate his three hour google calls, then hang up and go play Marvel, then pick a fight and when people got pissed, turned around and played asphalt, then came back to complain about money, and then when people bitched at him went on grindr or looked up a mix of ageplay and/or pedo porn. Like it’s RIGHT THERE in the tracking history and it’s hard to miss because *he’s the only fucker in australia in the team* and you can track the logins. Mine are all like searching for the acting reels i need or whatever to build their video features then his is like Hungry Sharks > Asphalt 8 > FIFA > Grindr > Some PotC game and so on. The occasional single googling of an article. And you can track this shit going on every day for WEEKS. So I bold ass call that out.

Like, you’re too busy to put in more work or to talk to Kira until it’s convenient to you but you can do [list of 20 apps] for 9 hours a day? On TOP of calling each of us for hours? What the FUCK?

He starts typing to argue back and I’m like, no motherfucker, don’t start. You are literally in here, hoping to work on the actual product being created by people with the work skills making this happen, claiming it’s your creation just because you ran off half cocked and made an SM account you tagged us into and it would look weird to break off AGAIN from OotO, so we ran with it but have literally put in every penny and working hour and bit of product to this and you expect us to wire you any and all cash out of it because what? You LITERALLY have said you just don’t want to work, you LITERALLY have done NOTHING but eat up our time while we give you endless chances, and you’re on here doing [list of 20 more apps] and googling a site once a day as your labor into this expecting cash to just pour into your pockets? Are you on crack?

Typing again,

No dude, we’re not here to pave your way.

Delete... typing again.

No, dude, you’re looking to make a quick buck on everybody else’s work and that’s not gonna fly.

Delete... typing again.

Dude, don’t even, it’s RIGHT THERE in the google history.

...[Tim has left this group]

Okay. Whatever. Ding dong the bitch is dead, we have more work to do. I onboard a few friends to help out with my video/transcripting load - not that TIm ever did any of that anyway - and get to work. I just leave it out of public. Keep rolling. In 2 days we get more work done than I usually did in 2 weeks because, guess what, I’m not cleaning up a manchild’s messes and getting called hours on end and having to argue about basic common sense. And I mean tangible work. Like, now we’re literally a month ahead on prep for our content that we were always running to the last minute on, off of a few DAYS of work. The rest is all time to grow and settle in now.

Turn around... find out his ass is subtweeting us. And not just subtweeting, he’s claiming it was discrimination because he was gay.

I shit you not.

He’s out there saying that Grindr was used to “throw his sexuality in his face” despite being on a list of like 20394203942039420394203942039420394 apps he was fucking around with all fucking day while pitching this attitude. *And* claiming someone was “creepy” for “checking out his browsing history.�� not that I checked out *our group account history* because he was *trying to spend money on my card and tried to delete our facebook*, but hey. Spin it how you want, I guess?

My friend, who joined the hangout, and by proxy it loaded the chat history, called him on his shit. Who, by the way, is queer. Like no, motherfucker, this is just your own lazy spoiled entitled ass making its own bed, if it was a straight chat site you’d be getting bitched out for doing Fuck All just the same, what the fuck. I don’t care if it was eHarmony listed in there amidst all the games. Deal with your shit. He blocks her. Blocks everyone. Starts messaging people that are liking said friend’s comments on the thread going “I see you noticed the thread-” and trying his bullshit schpiel on them. Sorry dude. These are people I’ve built rapport with for years and know my work ethic, better luck next fucking time.

And the proof is in the pudding. I’ve gone from being entirely MIA and unreachable for weeks at a time drowning in this shit to being a month ahead on work, with said-friend only having to put in like 3-4 hours of useful additions (rather than basically working against us 16~ hours a week) and boom, we’re way ahead of the curve now! I’m talking to people again! Shit called. Mischief managed.

But if you ever want the image of a thousand stereotypes in one ball

a 25 year old white dude that is creepy as fuck with female guests to the point almost everybody picks up on it, lives with his mother, has never worked a job in his life, thinks breathing in his vicinity or playing games with him is reason to throw money at him, thinks he owns anything he looks in the direction of and thinks he should get all the money; and, on the other hand, falls into the (GENERALLY FAKE) stereotype that calls of discrimination against LGBT folk are just excuses (WHICH IS SHIT THAT MAKES IT HARDER WHEN ACTUAL DISCRIMINATION HITS). *AND* having the audacity to go public about it *AFTER* we tried to quietly let him walk. The literal embodiment of the worst of every fucking stereotype rolled into one, from lazy young generation to men taking credit over the work women do and feeling superior to even attitudes that make honest hard-working LGBT folk have a hell of a time in the world when real discrimination hits.

AND HE WONDERS WHY HE’S UNEMPLOYABLE.

HOLY. SHIT.

...[flips tables]

For the record, here is said friend calling his shit. Some of you may know her, too.

So there, my rant of the day.

Men. Are fucking. Exhausting. Oh. My god.

But now, we’re ahead. We’re pulling ahead. We’re going to be stable and strong and we’re now poised to even increase our number of guests on the week, especially if those emails from the leads come in. We can take the punches, and everybody’s comfortable on interviews without him being weird on them now, and things are going places.

But christ on a coconut. This is literally *WHY* it’s so hard to get given a chance in the world. Because people like this are given a chance and they just... KSJFKSJDFksjfskdjf

I hate people.

#wank for ts

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xavierfiles-blog · 7 years

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Entry 088 - Bishop

Name: Lucas Bishop

Code Names: Bishop

First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #282 (Nov ‘91)

Powers: Energy absorption and redirection

Teams Affiliation: XSE, X-Men, X-Force

About

When I was young I had a weird idea that I was just fixated on. I wanted the next Metal Gear Solid game to give Solid Snake a teen sidekick who could be his best friend and also do all the cool spy stuff. In retrospect, I can see why this was a worse idea than tricking your audience into playing an anticipated squeal staring a totally secret new bishōnen character instead of a gruff, Nick Fury looking dude they expected. The idea stuck with me because kids don’t always want to be their heroes, they want to hang out with them. They want to be Robin, not Batman. It’s a strange but understandable tic in fandom but it is why things like self-insert fan fiction is so big. More than anything else, Lucas Bishop was a fanboy who got to live the dream of being best friends with his heroes, and you know what? It kinda worked.

Portrayed by Omar Sy

Lucas Bishop was born of Australian Aboriginal parents in the late 21st century. Years ago a red-haired girl known as the mutant messiah had restored the X-Gene after the events of M-Day but lost control of her powers and accidentally killed over one million baseline humans. The world’s response was to round up all mutants, brand them with an “M”, and place them in relocation camps. These were the camps Bishop and his sister Shard grew up in. These were the camps where they watched their parents die. Raised by their grandmother, Lucas and Shard were raised on the stories of X-Men, mutant freedom fighters of the past. It was these stories that would drive him for the rest of his life.

Larry Stroman, Mark Farmer, and Matt Milla

Mutant freedom fighters known as “The Summers Rebellion” broke down the walls of the camps and freed those inside. In the chaos, Bishop was separated from his family and raised by a thief known as The Witness. He claimed to have been an X-Man in his past and told Bishop of the betrayer that destroyed the rest of the X-Men and the Son of Askani who protected the red-haired girl. Bishop found his way back to his sister and they were both recruited by a new mutant police squad known as the XSE, Xavier’s Security Enforcers. They trained hard and became the youngest officers in the program’s history. Bishop was consumed by his dedication to the job and chased the time traveling mutant Trevor Fitzroy back decades to the late 20th century where he finally came face to face with his heroes, the X-Men.

Whilce Portacio, Art Thibert, and Joe Rosas

The X-Men were displeased by Bishop’s militaristic attitude and willingness to kill but Bishop was simply in shock. These were the X-Men, his X-Men, and he would fall in line to learn from them. Bishop struggled to understand the customs of the time but desperately wanted to learn. He and Storm grew close and he quickly became a strong field commander. He was constantly on the lookout for a way to prevent his future and often battled with Gambit, who he believed to be the traitor to cause the fall of the X-Men.

Jim Lee, Art Thibert, and Joe Rosas

Bishop was among the X-Men to travel into the past and try to stop Legion from killing Magneto. Legion went to kill Magneto but his father, Charles Xavier, took the blow in his stead. This caused the world to rip into an apocalyptic splinter timeline and Bishop was the only one to remember the world as it was. He sought out the X-Men of that world and convinced them to make the world right again. Through great struggle and sacrifice, the X-Men of the Age of Apocalypse sent Bishop back to the moment Charles was killed. Bishop absorbed Legion’s blow and redirect it back at him, killing the young mutant and fixing the time stream.

Bishop returned to the X-Men, always on the lookout for the traitor. That traitor was revealed to be Charles Xavier himself as Onslaught. Bishop was key in his defeat but felt aimless when Xavier was gone. He traveled to Shi’ar space with the other X-Men but was separated from the team and paled around with Deathbird saving alternate realities. He was captured as one of The Twelve and returned to the X-Men after that event finished, looking for a new purpose in the past.

Kevin Lau

Bishop joined Storm’s X-Treme X-Men on the hunt for the Destiny Diaries and was essential in getting the squad legitimized as mutant law enforcement officers known as the XSE. He began working as a detective in a Manhattan neighborhood called Mutant Town on the Middle East Side. He investigated a mutant gang war and got to the bottom of a new, dangerous street drug called “Toad Juice” alongside his partner Izzy Ortega. It felt good to be a cop again but it all came crashing down when the Scarlet Witch depowered all but 198 of the world’s mutants.

Phil Jimenez

Bishop remembered the stories from his childhood, this is how it started. Soon the red-haired girl would be born and that could only lead to the camps. He kept this knowledge to himself, how could he tell his friends that their only hope would lead to the enslavement of the mutant race? Bishop was at the mansion when he heard of the first mutant born after M-Day, and he knew it was time to act. He chased down Cable, he remembered the stories of the Son of Askani fathering the girl and knew that is where she would be. He succeeded in incapacitating Cable and drawing his gun on the newborn, but he is attacked by a mutant hunting monster known as Predator X who bit off his right arm. He saw Cable and the child begin to teleport into the future and fired wildly at them. This was his last best chance before they escaped to the time stream and he intended to take it. The shots missed their target but one caught Charles Xavier. Bishop had spent his entire life idolizing the X-Men but now he had killed their leader and became their enemy.

Chris Bachalo, Tim Townsend, and Brian Reber

He made his way to Forge’s workshop in Dallas, stole a cool new robot arm, and began blanketing the future on the search for Cable. After an unsuccessful ambush in 2043, Bishop realized that he had to fight this war smarter. Cable could be anywhere on the planet at any time in the future and Bishop had to restrict that. He became a destroyer of worlds, killing billions to make continents inhospitable over hundreds of years. He didn’t care about the lives he destroyed. If he could prevent his future from happening, if he could kill the baby Hope, all of this would go away, right? These weren’t real people he was killing, they were just some mistake of a reality. That’s what he told himself at least. As Bishop tried and failed to destroy her, Hope grew into a young woman and she defeated Bishop with her father’s help. They were not content to leave this shallow husk of a man somewhere he could find them again. They destroyed his time travel device and sent him to the shallow husk of the Earth of 6700 AD, he was forced to live and die on the world he had razed.

Denys Cowan, Sandu Florea, and Pete Pantazis

His entire life, Lucas Bishop was a fighter, and this was no different. He wandered the wasteland until he was found by the Brothers of the Order. They were a group dedicated to protecting humanity from their dark shadows known as Revenants, beings the Shi’ar called Mummundrai. Bishop became a hunter in their order, seeking penance for what he had done to hope. The Revenant Queen known as the Great White Owl learned of Bishop and enacted a plan to travel back to the 21st century and establish world domination. She succeeded in coming to the modern era with Bishop but was eventually defeated by the X-Men. Bishop experienced deep sorrow for what he had done in the future and his one-time friend Storm decided she would help him make amends.

Adrian Alphona and Christiana Strain

Hope Summer’s was not so quick to forgive the man who had tried to kill her since the day she was born. The villain Stryfe orchestrated a situation to place Hope in a locked room with a bound Bishop and a sharp Psimitar as some elaborate revenge plot against Cable. Bishop begged for forgiveness but he understood that he deserved to die. Hope chose not to kill him in cold blood and the two reluctantly worked together to stop Stryfe. Since that day, Bishop dedicated his time to understanding the present to see if he could prevent any horrible futures. When Psylocke sent out a psychic distress call, Bishop was one of the X-Men who received it, and he worked with her to prevent the Shadow King from taking over the world.

Must Read

I am just going to tell you that my favorite Bishop based property is incredibly self-serving. It is Bish & Jubez by my Battle of the Atom co-host Adam Reck. It is a delightful adventure about a tough soldier and a spunky teen looking for a piece of junk food. It is so worth your time so check it out. The first volume is complete (you can read the whole thing here) and the second titled Bish & Jubez: The Age of Stryfe is just about to wrap up.

Ranking

I think Bishop can be a fun character if a little stiff. His villainous turn was fantastic and understandable; however, it did serious damage to the long-term health of the character. His redemption in Uncanny X-Force wasn’t convincing and current writers seem content with acting as if he didn’t commit global genocide. Another character that was ranked based on uneven writing was Warlock, and I frankly like that little robot dude better. Under him is Domino, another character I like, but don’t love. I do think Bishop is more flexible in stories than Dom so he can slide in as the new number 44 in the Xavier Files.

Magneto was requested by Max Dweck on Patreon among others. Thank you for the request. If you have a request for how about you send it below? If you want to cut to the front of the two-year long line, we have a Patreon you can support Xavier Files for just $1 to get a line cutting reward.

Make sure you check out my brand new podcast BATTLE OF THE ATOM. It’s where Bish & Jubez creator Adam Reck and I talk about every single X-Men story that ever existed and rank them from best to worst. Episode 6 is up and talk about that time George RR Martin and Stephen King wrote an X-Men book together. Make sure you subscribe on any of the following platforms (or others, I’m not picky) Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS.

Click here if you want to see the full ranked list, with links to every entry in the Xavier Files so far.

If you liked what you read be sure to follow Xavier Files on twitter, Tumblr, Facebook!

Next week we got ourselves some Bishop! See you then!

#Bishop #cable #Days of Future Past #Hope #X-Men #xmen

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