#even though the name in question is *so tame* and *so common* in brazil

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Sorry weird personal post but.

(putting it under the cut, I always feel a little bit weird and like... not legitimate? but like, why, anyway)

As I thought about the gerudos and also after a conversation I had about worldwide repression of brazilian soft power and its impact on western culture during the 90s, I'm just... I realized one of the reasons why I latched onto the gerudos so hard when I was young, even though it's kiiiind of a stretch culturally speaking and they look nothing like me, is because there was basically *nothing else* in terms of non-western representation in American/European pop culture at the time (especially not featuring cool girls). If you loved fantasy and videogames and wanted to see any non-western representation to spark your imagination, there was literally so little choice. And honestly, as far as Brazil goes (and a lot of South American cultures overall I'd say), there's still almost nothing that holds in the West.

It kind of sucks to realize it was something I really craved growing up and uhhh kind of never got.

#thoughts #personal #bicultural shit #gerudos #brazilian culture #just been thinking a lot about this recently #like my parents were shocked when I told them I didn't have good role models given I was too weak physically to ever be into football #and brazilian music was like an old people thing at the time that french people found at best exotic and at worse cringe #or that people still routinely change my first name to a “french” version without even realizing it and I just.... like accept that #even though the name in question is *so tame* and *so common* in brazil #I'm kind of that point of my life where I redigest a lot of that bicultural stuff as.... hmmm that was more fucked up than I realized #but not having anyone else to really talk about that kind of stuff made me really a late bloomer to these reflexions and how they affect me #but bitch no wonder alienation is like a Core Feature in all of your art (I mean not only that but definitively that as well also)

[lethalneuroses]

femslash february day 8

@nexstrik requested Symmbra, and here are some vaguely Symmbra-ish words!

The first messages are not unusual. She does not like to draw attention to herself, but Vishkar likes to flaunt their talent, and she is nothing if not talented. She appears at conferences and gives demonstrations and, of course, works on the ground. Vishkar’s networks utilize state-of-the-art security, but those smart and determined enough will always find a way.

Disturbing and lustful, most of the messages are. She forwards all of them to the appropriate channels to be blocked or dealt with and then deletes them from her own devices, but she can’t forget them. No matter how many there are, each one privately horrifies her. She does not understand how people can think and say such things to others, even with the comfortable medium of faceless communication over networks and distance. What has she done to warrant this?

During the company’s operations in Brazil, death threats become common, almost as common as the other kind. Anonymous people call her a monster, though of course they never use such a delicate word as that. She reads them all and feels like something inside herself is twisting and dying. She does not tell Sanjay how it makes her feel, because the response is obviously to just feel less. To harden herself. To become like the hard light she manipulates with such ease.

So when she receives the quick succession of messages, she thinks little of them.

dyk what Vishkar’s really up to?

s korpal has skeletons in his closet

keep it up and you will too.

xoxo साया

She forwards them to Security, and she deletes them, and she forgets them. They are tame compared to the others, and that is the only thing that sets them aside.

But they don’t stop coming, no matter how many times she forwards them to Security and Security assures her the problem is resolved. The messages reach her account again and again, always signed the same. They are never threatening, never outwardly aggressive in the way the others are. That almost makes them more concerning. Someone wants very badly to reach her, and for what? They echo the rhetoric she heard in Brazil and from critics around the world. They don’t understand what she or Vishkar is doing.

But it has been almost a year now, and she is very very curious, and she wants an answer. So she ventures to a café where the internet’s traffic is not scrutinized by her employers, and she drafts a response to the latest disposable email account.

You do not understand me or my work. Your allegations are unfounded and unwanted. I know what I am doing, and I know that it is helping the world.

S. Vaswani.

It is not even an hour later that she receives a response.

damn, you really are a true believer, aren’t you

you’re smart. you deserve better

start asking questions

xoxo साया

She needs to wait a few days before she can respond again; going off-campus is unlike her, and she does not want to attract attention. She is not obeying protocol. She should not be talking to this person, whoever they are and whatever they want.

Who are you? Why do you keep trying to contact me?

…

not asking me questions, vaswani

It morphs. Slowly, but it happens. She knows it is her own fault, knows that she is simply happy to have found someone to talk to. Someone outside Vishkar. Even if that someone is an amorphous and disconnected presence conveyed only by bits and electricity, about whom Satya knows sparingly little.

But she collects pearls of information and holds them close. She knows that they could be lies, knows that everything the mysterious Shadow tells her could, and perhaps is, utter fantasy. Yet she thinks it isn’t. She thinks it is sincere.

More accurately, she knows, she needs to believe it is sincere. Perhaps she is still simply too gullible. Trusting, like Sanjay says.

You need to start asking questions.

Shadow is a woman. She apparently possesses prodigious skill with computer systems, specifically infiltrating and manipulating those systems. Soon enough she creates an email for Satya to use and tells her that it can be used on Vishkar’s network without being compromised.

Quite possibly a lie. Perhaps this is an internal HR operation to test her own loyalty. Satya wonders if she’ll be fired, and suddenly her life seems like a blank void without the one thing to which she has devoted her entire life.

Mostly she collects details of little consequence. Shadow likes sweet rolls, or sweet anythings. She’s an avid listener of Lúcio Correia dos Santos and seems to find Satya’s personal dislike of the musician very amusing. She doesn’t have a job, or at least not one she will talk much about. She doesn’t know Hindi, despite the signoff name she uses.

She grew up without parents.

And she’s not a good person. She tells Satya that frequently enough that she should listen. Frequently enough, perhaps, that she should take it to heart.

But she doesn’t.

“Okay,” the voice rasps over her headphones. “Satisfied?”

It is not a computerized tone. It is not an omnic’s voice. It is warm and pleasant and very real against her eardrums.

You know what I look like, Satya said. You won’t even tell me your name. Please?

After some time, she’d gotten a response. Shadow wouldn’t send a picture, and she wouldn’t share her name. But she would talk to Satya, talk to her properly, and Satya could type instead of talking back if it made her more comfortable, which it very much did.

So now she types, I thought you might be an omnic.

Shadow laughs, and even if she is the butt of the joke, Satya finds the sound entrancing. It is a warm laugh to match the warmth of her voice. She thinks she could listen to that sound for a long time.

“Why? Because I’m good with computers? Nah, this is all acquired talent. Like you and building cities.”

Satya tries to place her accent, but it is difficult when she is focused on taking in each word, hearing each caress her ears.

I’m glad you’re not, she types.

“Why?”

She hesitates. It is a foolish thing to think, and more foolish still to admit. But she types out the words, and then she sends them, and they are out of her reach.

I like your voice.

She gets to hear Shadow’s little intake of breath, and then another laugh, quieter, different.

Shadow does not respond at once, and in the intervening time Satya knows it was a mistake to say it. It was a mistake to begin this correspondence at all. She should have blocked her and moved on. She should have told someone. But now it is too late, and she is in too deep, and she will never forget the voice on the other end of the line.

“I’m sure I’d like yours too, Satya,” Shadow says quietly, and somehow that response, the presence of her words again filling Satya’s ears, makes her panic recede.

It is still a mistake. This will still end badly.

But in the moment, just that moment, it doesn’t feel as if it will.

#symbra #symmbra #femslash february #natalie writes fanfic #original