#i shall not refuse any concept artist or illustrator sharing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thecrookedgavel · 4 years

Text

The Black Box Readings - Ep 2 Transcript

Here’s the transcript for episode 2 of The Black Box Readings, the podcast where I read to you the backup of queer blogs that have gone down.

See Other Episodes

An: Hey, all! And welcome back to The Black Box Readings, the podcast where I read to you the backup of queer blogs that have gone down! I’m your host, An Capuano. I want to start off by thanking you for coming back for episode 2. It means a great deal to me. Last time we were introduced to Emmy and started getting into her story. But also, we got into some personal anecdotes from me… Some very personal anecdotes, actually. So a little peek behind the curtain, I’m recording this before the release of episode 1, but I showed an unmastered version to some of my friends and they all thought my little stories really added something to the episode. Which is good, because I felt really empowered by it, even if I didn’t really plan on sharing so much about me.

If you haven’t heard episode 1 yet, I would really recommend taking the time to do so before continuing, but here’s a brief summary of what was covered:

Let’s see, we met our hero Emmy, and we learned that she’s a visual artist, and learned a bit about her being bi-polar and deaf. We also saw some hints of her being a trans lesbian. We come back into the swing of things with a frequently asked questions post as a response to the messages she received after her last post, titled:

“(Unfortunately) FAQ

Thank you for your attempts at cheering me up. I appreciate it, even though some things that were said were not helpful at all. Rather than replying to each of you individually, I decided to make a FAQ. Let’s get into them, shall we?

-You’re deaf? Why don’t you wear hearing aids?

Sorry, it’s not that simple. With the amount of deaf I am, I still can’t understand speech, even with hearing aids. So they’re basically pointless.

-Why don’t you get cochlear implants? Isn’t that the cure for being deaf?

There’s no easy fix for being deaf. Even with cochlear implants, you “hear” in a totally different way, and it’s taxing and torture from what I hear. Plus, my dad says we can’t afford them. I don’t know if I would want to have them if we could tbh. It all seems pretty scary if you ask me.

-Do you have a deaf accent when you talk? I know what you mean, but please don’t call it that. I’m not from the country of “Deaf”, so I wouldn’t call it an accent. But yeah, I talk funny, if that’s what you’re asking

-Are you able to lip read?

Yeah, I can. I’m ok at it, but I can really only follow one on one conversations. Any more than that, and I get lost easily. I understand the most when someone articulates and talks slowly for me.

-Wow, you’re really brave! I would kill myself if I couldn’t listen to music.

Gee, thanks. I’m glad you think my life isn’t worth living. There’s nothing brave about it, I just do what I can, and try not to beat myself up too badly.

-Why not take medication for being bi-polar?

Honestly, it’s complicated. Being on tumblr is what made me realize that I’m bi-polar, not a doctor or anything. So there’s no one I can get meds from. Legally, at least, lol. My dad refuses to accept what I’m going through is a mental illness, he just thinks that I have behavioral problems. That I’m just doing all this to spite him or something. So I’m sort of stuck without meds for the time being. “

She can be very sassy, can’t she? There’s a bit of cleverness to her responses. No swearing or name calling, those things are just implied. It’s nice that she calls out the ableist rhetoric that disabled people are better off dead. It was heartwarming to see, when I originally read this post, that she does believe she has value as a person, even if it is sort of buried at the moment under the doom and gloom of her previous post.

She also talks about how her Dad can’t pay, or maybe even won’t pay for cochlear implants, and refuses to get her psychiatric medication. I’m not the biggest fan of her Dad, to be honest, and why will become clearer as we progress through Emmy’s blog. In fact, our next post is about an interaction between the two of them.

“Got mad at my Dad today

God, I’m so PISSED OFF, you don’t even know. My Dad is being his usual tyrannical self again. He never lets me do anything! Ok, so I just wanted to go to the corner store and pick up a few things we were missing around the house, nothing major, right? I wanted to be helpful, you know? But as I walk out the door, he grabs my shoulder and pulls me back into the house. He YELLS at me, even though he KNOWS I can’t understand him when he does that. After a while of telling him to stop yelling, he finally starts talking slowly for me. He told me that it’s not safe for me to leave the house on my own. That I might get hurt, kidnapped, or worse. I told him that I’d be fine, and that he needs to stop being so controlling all the time. Then he started quoting the Bible at me, I hate it when he does that. Something about the 10 commandments and how I’m supposed to honor him, idk. I know I’m supposed to believe it all, being I’m the son of a pastor, and all that. But I’m seriously an atheist, ok? I just don’t believe in God, fate, or any of it. Anyway, I hate to admit it, but he’s probably right. Not being able to hear a car coming does scare me a lot. Thanks for reading, rant over. “

This is one of many rants that made their way onto Emmy’s blog. I think she was able to use it to feel better about the negative things in her life. You can see at the end that she’s much calmer than she was at the beginning of the post, even going so far as to actually agree with her Dad. Though I get not wanting your child to get hurt, I don’t think he should have pulled her back into the house physically like that. And yelling on top of that? It all rubs me the wrong way. Though they’re not the reasons I truly dislike him. Unfortunately, those will come by in full force later on.

Oh, I realize I haven’t given an anecdote yet, sorry about that. Let’s see… umm… I guess I can really relate with the struggle of wanting to be independent. I’ve been really sick for more than 10 years now, and we had a lot of trouble getting a diagnosis. It’s looking like it’s all due to a concussion I had in my teens. I’m getting treated now, and things are looking up, actually! There’s a lot of hope with me.

But before that, I actually had the opposite dynamic as Emmy. My parents would really push me to be independent, but I had sort of accepted where I was with my level of dependency. I couldn’t do things like exercise, laundry, or even make my own food, even on my best days, without feeling absolutely terrible afterwards. Certain movements would basically knock me out for the rest of the day. This lead to terrible sleep cycles, and my parents would get really upset with me for not appearing “normal.” I think it looked to them like I wasn’t making an effort, when in truth, I wasn’t normal and I was doing exactly what I could every day. It sort of came to a boiling point with them not understanding, and I sort of had to move out and get my own place to stop it from getting truly awful, honestly. It was hard, for a lot of reasons, including money reasons, but that’s a story for another time, I think.

But back to Emmy herself, I guess we really haven’t talked about her religious views yet. She went into a bit of detail in an earlier post, but in the end, I decided to omit it from the podcast. Mostly because the core of it is present here. She doesn’t believe in God or predeterminism, and she has a real disdain for The Bible. It’s probably from oversaturation, to be honest? Like, grow up with a super religious parent, and you’re bound to want to rebel as a teen. Though I find it kind of funny that she says she doesn’t believe in fate, it’s not strictly a religious concept, and bit of a spoiler, but she ends up changing her mind on that front later on.

Next up is a post where Emmy talks about her aspirations and future goals. She wants to be a full time artist, and take the steps necessary to get there. She wants something more out of life, which is pretty natural for a teen. It’s why the “princess wanting more” story is told time and time again. Anyways, the post is titled:

“I Want To Do Art

I’ve been thinking a lot about the future recently, and I’ve been feeling pretty bored just sitting around doing whatever lately. I want to work for a living, but I know I can’t really do that without leaving the house. I want to be an artist. Like an animator or an illustrator. Something like that. It’s something I’m perfectly capable of doing, even if I can’t hear. I know my art needs work before I can make a job out of it, but I think that’s what I want out of life.

I passed high school last year, even if I was homeschooled, it still counts! I don’t know what kind of art school would take me, and I understand that I’m disabled, but my Dad won’t even let me look for an art school. He just won’t fucking listen to me! He thinks I’m just going to sit at home and do nothing for the rest of my life, like some sort of fucking pet! I’m so sick of him! He’s so goddamn controlling and I fucking hate him for it! I don’t know what to live for if I can’t be an artist, tbh…”

Honestly, this is an upsetting post to me, for a number of reasons. It sort of gives me a flashback to high school, which never sounds good, but bear with me. I was told by someone I really looked up to, my acting teacher, that I’d never make it as an actor because of my hearing loss. He encouraged me that I could still work in theater, like being a stage manager, but the damage was kind of done. I always thought that he believed in me, he would give me opportunities like assistant director on several projects. I got a good amount of experience working with him. Maybe he believed I was better suited to being a director, which is something I have been doing, directing my own projects, like The Crooked Gavel. But I also have been voice acting, which is acting, right? Actually, talking through this has made me realize that he would be proud of me. I think he would be happy to have been proven wrong. I actually feel a lot better now. Interesting.

Anyways, where were we? *light chuckle* Right, so I think Emmy has the right to resent her Dad in this case. It sounds like he’s not trying to meet her halfway, not even trying to look into an art school for the disabled. To me, it seems like he just doesn’t want to let go of the idea of Emmy as his child. She’s growing up, and he’s kind of refusing to see it. There’s also the aspect that he might be embarrassed of her, which… *sigh* more on that later.

---

Moving on, here’s another post accompanied by a piece of art. It’s… well it’s part of the reason why her previous post upsets me. Because I remember this post along side of it. If I had a copy of the picture, I’d probably have to warn you first. It was really dark. So, onto the post, titled:

“Here’s how I feel

I feel so trapped and small”

*Sigh* And I’ll try my best to give you a description from memory. I stared at it for a long time, I recall. I remember a figure wrapped in chains. The art style had a very dream-like quality to it, the colours all dark and texture sort of… messy? *Sigh* Anyway, the person in chains had tears streaming from her eyes, and no mouth. The chains lead upwards into puppet strings to those marionette-style crosses. It was good art, but knowing who was behind it, it really scared me. Especially since she hinted in her previous post that she might not see anything to live for. She felt so trapped and like she didn’t have a voice. So I thought it over, and I decided to message her words of encouragement. This was our first interaction.

I told her that I loved looking at her art, and that it brought me a lot of joy when she came up on my dashboard. That I was half deaf, and although I couldn’t get the full picture, I got some of her struggle. I encouraged her that her art was already good enough for commissions without art school.

I’m sure she got a lot of messages like mine, because she never responded directly. Instead, she posted this message on her blog the next day.

“Got a lot of messages

A ton of people messaged me to give me words of encouragement after my post yesterday. I’m sorry I worried everyone, I just needed an outlet to express myself, you know? But people also messaged me to tell me that I’m good enough already to do commissions without art school. I don’t think you’re right, but I’ll think about setting something up. My Dad probably won’t let me make a paypal, but maybe you can pay me in Steam games or something, idk?”

A little later, she reblogged the post and said: “Everyone sending me messages and words of encouragement, thank you! It really means a lot”

I was really happy that I reached out to her, and due to what she posted, It felt more or less like she was thanking me directly. By this point, I was invested in her struggle, and I made sure I’d always message her again if she needed me to.

Alright, we’ve made it to the last post of the episode. It’s kind of exciting, because it’s the mark of a really good thing happening in Emmy’s life. It’s well deserved, and I remember being very happy for her whenever a post of this type came up. I don’t want to spoil it, but I guess the title kind of does that for me, *chuckle* It’s titled:

“I Think I Met Someone

I was playing a lot of Overwatch today, what else is new? LOL. It was the first comp game of the day, and we got Anubis. So I instalocked Mercy like I always do. Anyway, me and the Dva player, her name was EmeraldSkies, were wrecking face together. It was pretty great, actually! Obviously I wasn’t in voice chat, as that would be a whole lot of useless. People usually get mad at me for it, and try and force me to join, but she was chill about it. After the game ended (in a win for us, of course) I got a friend request from her, so I accepted. We ended up chatting for a bit, and then we ended up duoing for a while. I really liked playing with her, and she didn’t pressure me at all to join chat, even if my excuse for why I couldn’t was half assed.

I had to go eat lunch after a while, I gave her my discord and she actually accepted! After I got back online, we talked for a bit, and it was really fun! Idk, she’s just so upbeat and seems so deep. Plus she’s totally not at all judgemental. I really really like her already, is that weird?”

See, I told you it would be exciting! I’m personally a big fan of instant connections. *Sigh* I’ve had a few really intense ones in my life, and they’re always something else. I choose to think of this interaction between her and EmeraldSkies as one of those instant connections, rather than Emmy jumping the gun about developing feelings. There’s just so many people in Overwatch at any given time that running into any given person is pretty rare. She doesn’t talk about it yet, but this may be the point where she starts to question whether or not she believes in fate. Though, I’m sure that’ll be something we talk about later on.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Black Box Readings! Again, I have no idea what sort of reception the first episode received, since I’m recording this before it releases. I tried to match the energy of the first episode today, and I hope my personal rants mix well with the readings. Follow me on Twitter at TheCrookedGavel to stay up to date on this and other queer podcasts. Feel free to contact me there as well. This is An Capuano, signing off!

0 notes