I have been thinking about this essay for a while because I realized that the question of having children is never as simple as people make it sound. Sometimes someone asks, “Do you want kids?” as if the answer is supposed to come from instinct, as if there is already a correct response waiting somewhere inside every person. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my answer was never about children, but the kind of world we are asking them to enter.

I wrote this because I kept noticing how many things women inherit before they even have the chance to choose. We inherit expectations, fears, responsibilities, and the idea of what a “good” woman is supposed to look like. Somewhere between being a good daughter, a good wife, and a good mother, I started wondering where women are allowed to simply exists as themselves.

This is not an essay about hating children or believing that family cannot be beautiful. I know there are families built from love, tenderness, and genuine partnership. I know there are parents who spend their entire lives trying to make the world softer for their children. Maybe that is exactly why I wanted to write this : because loving someone means taking seriously the world they will have to live in.

I am only eighteen, and I do not have a perfect answer about what my future look like. Maybe my thoughts will change. Maybe they will not. But I think there is something important about questioning the things we are often told to accept without thinking : marriage, motherhood, gender roles, and the idea that everyone must follow the same path to have a meaningful life.

This piece came from that uncomfortable space between fear and responsibility, between wanting to believe in the future and wondering if we are doing enough to deserve one.

Sometimes I think people ask whether I want children because they assume the answer lives somewhere inside biology, tucked neaty beneath instinct like a seed already knowing which direction sunlight is, when for me the question has never belonged to the body at all. It belongs to history. It belongs to the long, exhausting archive of everything women have been expected to inherit before they were asked what they wanted. Every generation seems to hand the next one a script with only a few names changed, and somewhere between be a good daughter and be a good wife and be a good mother, the possibility of simply becoming a person begins to shrink until it feels almost impolite to imagine another ending.

I do not imagine children because I cannot stop imagining the world they would inherit, and that feels like a more honest place to begin than pretending love alone has ever been enough to protect someone from history. If I had a son, I know I would spend every day wondering which version of masculinity the world would eventually place into his hands after I let go of them, because no parent raises a child inside a vacuum, and every classroom, every algorithm, locker room, careless joke exchanged between boys carries its own curriculum long before anyone calls it education. I could teach kindness until my voice disappeared into the wallpaper, yet I could never guarantee that the world would not mistake cruelty for confidence or dominance for strength. There is something terrifying about realizing that love is not absolute protection, only the most fragie form of resistance.

And if I had a daughter, the fear changes shape instead of disappearing. It becomes smaller, more ordinary, which somehow makes it even harder to escape. I would wonder whether she remembered to text me before walking home. Whether someone followed her after dark. Whether she learned to hold her keys between her fingers because another woman taught her that survival looks embarrassingly practical. Whether she alrady understood that girls are introduced to danger so early they often mistake vigilance for personality. There is no percentage of risk that feels acceptable when the consequence belongs to someone you created yourself. One percent safety is still someone else’s entire life.

People often tell me this is simply what being a parent means, as though fear is another milestone folded between first words and first birthdays, but I cannot convince myself that bringing another person into existence is automatically hopeful simply because people have always done it. Tradition has never been sufficient evidence that something is just. History is full of traditions that survived centuries longer than they deserved.

The same discomfort follows me whenever people speak about marriage as though it were the inevitable punctuation mark at the end of every woman’s sentence, because I cannot separate the institution from the history that shaped it, even I now history is never the whole story. Of course people fall in love. Of course many marriages become places of tenderness, partnership, and extraordinary care. But love does not erase architecture. A house can be renovated while still remembering the blueprint it was built from, and marriage, for much of its history, was never designed as an equal exchange between two liberated people. It organized property, inheritance, and women’s labor so efficiently that generations learned to call unpaid sacrifice devotion until the language itself forgot there had once been another word.

Maybe that is why I have always been suspicious of expectations disguised as dreams. Somewhere along the way, women become so accustomed to carrying invisible labor that invisibility itself started looking romantic. The happiest woman, we were told, was the one who gave endlessly and somehow never noticed the arithmetic. She remembered birthdays, raised children, softened arguments, anticipated everyone’s hunger before her own, and if exhaustion appeared, it was renamed selfishness quickly enough that nobody had to ask why she looked so tired.

Sometimes I think the safest place I have ever existed was before I was born, and I know that sounds unbearably hilarious until I remember the headlines waiting outside every morning like weather reports that never improve. There are days when the world feels less like a place preparing itself for future generations than a machine endlessly manufacturing reasons to apologize to them. Climate collapse. War. Genocide. Fascism dressed in newer focabulary. Women still negotiating for safety that should never have been conditional. Entire communities surviving systems that mistake suffering for inevitability. It feels impossible to look honestly at all of this without wondering whether hope should also require accountability.

Maybe that is the thought I return to more than any other : what does it mean to love someone who does not yet exist? For me, the answer has become unexpectedly simple. Sometimes love looks like refusal. Sometimes the gentlest thing I can imagine is declining to volunteer another consciousness for a history that has not yet learned how to stop repeating itself. That is not despair. It is not cynicism. It is certainly not hatred toward children, because I love children enough to believe they deserve more than inherited survival manuals disguised as bedtime stories.

Maybe one day the world will surprise me. Maybe it will become softer than the one that raised me. I hope it does. I hope someone else’s daughter grows up unable to understand why women once carried pepper spray, why mothers once tracked their children’s location every hour, why girls once rehearsed escape routes before they learned multiplication. I hope history eventually embarrassed itself.

Until then, I remain unconvinced that reproduction is the only language hope knows how to speak. There are other ways to leave something behind. A sentence can outlive a surname. An idea can travel farther than blood. Sometimes refusing inheritance is its own inheritance. Sometimes ending a bloodline is simply another way of saying, I wanted the future to become gentler before I invited someone into it.

Paola Lee is a writer based in the Philippines

In this interview, Lauro (founder of Onestardust) talks with Aetherium Literary about his journey in building the brand, the challenges he faces in running the business, and what it’s like being a creative in the big 2026.

Onestardust can be found on their Instagram @one.stardust and on their website.

Q: Could you briefly introduce yourself as the creator of Onestardust and explain the origin behind your brand name?

Hello! I’m Lauro, and I’m the owner behind ‘onestardust.’ For me, the approach to naming things is that I don’t want to spend too much time on it, or else I’m never going to choose one. So I was basically listening to music, and there’s this song by the K-pop group ‘Astro’ called Stardust. I was just listening to it while I was working on the brand, and I was like, you know what, I like ‘Stardust.’

Q: That’s so cool. I like that idea of not overthinking things, and the fact that you got your origins from K-pop is awesome. When was the first time that you realized that you wanted to pursue graphic design? And then what led you into product design?

Really good question. So I actually have been doing graphic design even before realising that it was graphic design. Growing up, I used to download music, and I hated listening to music with no album cover. So back then, I would just also pick my favourite photos and use the weirdest fonts that you could find. And I was just making album covers for Ariana Grande—pop music like that.

Q: From my perspective, I would describe your graphic style as nostalgic, cybercore, and Y2K. What inspired your creative direction?

For me, it’s a lot about the nostalgia part of it. If there was something that I loved growing up and I still love to this day, I want to bring that into my work—something that you can find again in the future and be like, “Oh, I remember that.”

Q: I can see that you have a lot of early 2000s elements in your design. Talk to me about your design process step-by-step. Do you have a Onestardust production team?

No, I wish! As of right now, everything is me, like designing, packing, and shipping. I feel like for design steps, it really depends on the product or the media that I want to do. For example, my Apple PC (photo card) holder. Last year, I went to the American tour of ‘Yves’, and I was eyeing something to put a photo card in. I’ve done PVC PC holders and acrylic PC holders, and I was like, “What can I bring that can be used as a PC holder for me?” And then, I thought of fabric; I was doing ideas with apples and testing them. I’m a beginner sewer sort of, so not having the results I want, I was like, “Ok, how can I find someone who can help me make it come true?”

Q: I find it insane that it is all self-run, so you must do all the packing yourself, right?

Yes, it takes days.

Q: Now, in terms of asking about your brand mascot. ‘Sori’ and ‘Byeolbi’ are your brand mascots, and I see them in your marketing quite a bit. Would you say they represent the brand aesthetic solely, or are they parts that you perhaps think reflect you as the artist?

Such a good question. For me, I go with the moment. For ‘Byeolbi,’ I feel like I’ve been really inspired by K-pop, especially ‘NewJeans’ at the time, with the bunny. I loved it, but I wanted my own version of it, and starting with that, I was experimenting—that’s when the final form of ‘Byeolbi’ came. With ‘Sori,’ I feel like they both represent a part of me, but I have this story in my head that I haven’t been able to tell that much yet with my characters. I don’t really show my face on my page, so I was thinking that having a person or a mascot would be an image for the brand, other than the products.

Q: Speaking on K-pop, like we’ve been discussing, I can see that a lot of your products cater toward the K-pop fandom. What made you design for this market?

I feel like it’s mainly because I am part of the market. Especially around the time when I started, I don’t know if you know this, but I started with T-shirt designs. So it sort of started with wanting to make merch that I couldn’t find elsewhere or that would suit my taste. And then after that, it was more like, how do I grow from this? That then led to the accessories part of it, and still loving K-pop to this day, I’ve always felt attached to the K-pop community. The cupsleeve events, and I just love the idea of a community, having fans as my main audience.

Q: For sure, and it’s so much easier when you’re a part of the fandom. I can also see that you have a monthly mail club where you design sticker sheets. We obviously live in a world where everything is online, but why do you think it’s important to support artists who keep physical media alive?

I feel like it’s so important because everything is so scary right now with AI coming into the world. You want to support artists where you can tell there’s a person behind it. That’s why I wanted to start a monthly mail because it also allows me to show a bit more of myself in my letters. Also, it’s a connection with people, and the mail club has always been something that I wanted to do. Now that I do it, it gives me a feeling of fulfillment that just posting online doesn’t give.

Q: Yeah, I think anyone would appreciate getting something in their mailbox. That in itself is so rare to see, so I’m really glad you are keeping it alive, because it really is a lost art these days. People can often mistake creative careers like yours as just hobbies, so how do you personally feel about this in relation to your own work?

To me, it’s become a bit more old school. I feel like it’s more common now, especially with social media. You see so many creators and influencers as artists; that’s their whole career, like they do that full-time. But there are also other artists who have their own job but also a full-time career on the side. I feel like it really depends on the person and also where you live.

Q: That makes a lot of sense; people have different levels at which they engage with their creative careers. What advice would you give to other creatives who are trying to establish their own personal style?

For me, the biggest piece of advice that changed everything is to do it. Going back to deciding a name, if you think of it too much or you wait for it to be “perfect,” you’re never going to start, you’re never going to put it out there. So if I had to give advice, it would be: if you don’t know your own style yet, just do what feels right at the moment and not see the reception of it. If you make something that you love and it makes you happy when you share it, no matter what the response is, to me, that’s like a style worth fighting for.

Q: Yeah, that’s really inspiring. I think this idea of doing work for yourself is inspiring because people often feel the need to get engagement. Finally, if you were to recommend one of your products to Aetherium Literary readers, what would you pick?

Not really a product, but I would say, right now, what I’m putting most of my heart into is my mail club. So if you want monthly mail, right now I’m shipping in Canada and the U.S., but I want to expand to Australia and other parts of the world as well.

Closing Thoughts

K-pop fandoms have a bad reputation for being toxic spaces, but as Lauro touches on in this conversation, they can also be vibrant communities that foster amazing creativity and innovation. Brands and designers like Onestardust are an extremely valuable part of the community, allowing fans everywhere to shine a little bit brighter.

If you are a K-pop fan looking for merchandise made out of a little bit of stardust, you can find Onestardust on their Instagram @one.stardust and on their website.

Thank you so much for reading Aetherium Literary’s blog! If you enjoyed this piece, please consider subscribing for free to support our work!

Subscribe now

In this interview, Parker reflects on her journey as a writer, the inspirations behind her work, the origins of June Gloom, and the advice she would offer aspiring authors.

ABOUT KATIE PARKER

Q: Can you tell us about your journey as a writer and some of the influences that have shaped your work?

I can’t remember the exact moment I started writing, it was just something that I’ve always done my entire life. I grew up surrounded by books in a big home library, and my mom prioritized reading and making art from the minute I could hold a crayon, and I fell in love with writing fiction before I even went to kindergarten. Of course, back then, it was short, few sentence long stories about dinosaurs or retelling a day that I had. Then, in elementary and middle school it shifted to graphic novels about my own original superheroes, where I would draw the pictures and come up with the plotlines. In high school, I wrote fanfiction about all of my favorite media, and posted my work online and fell in love with putting my writing out there and interacting with readers. And now, I’m about to publish my debut novel, which feels a bit like it combines all of the things I’ve loved over the years: fangirling over bands and music, writing about groups of friends and found families, and the extra world building of writing songs for my fictional band like I used to illustrate my graphic novels.

Q: Where are you from, and how has that influenced your writing?

I’m from rural Ohio, and it’s definitely not my preferred scene. I’m a beach girl through and through. Being near water, especially the ocean, just makes me feel so at peace and centered. I definitely think where I live affects what I write, because I’m always daydreaming of living near the ocean, and I love all shows and books that have a coastal or beach setting. I live vicariously through my characters in their cozy, coastal, small town. They’re living my dream.

Q: Who are some of your biggest artistic influences?

I really love how Jenny Han writes Young Adult stories, her books and shows feel so magical but at the same time relatable. I love how her stories are always angsty, dramatic, and sometimes the characters annoy you, but you always end up feeling comforted in the end. I am also a huge Taylor Jenkins Reid fan, and I love how she writes her books’ endings, and how they’re always very bittersweet and leave you staring at a wall after, but at the same time are realistic, heartwarming, and make you think about life.

Q: What motivates you to keep creating?

I actually think I would wither away if I ever stopped writing. Creating characters and worlds is just so embedded into who I am and how I process life, I don’t think I could ever stop even if I wanted to. But I don’t think I would ever want to. It’s my favorite thing in the world.

Q: How do you personally define success as a writer?

This is such a tricky question and thing to navigate in my opinion, because it’s so easy to get wrapped up in money or social media success, but I try to remember that I love writing so much, down to my core, and I love being able to share my writing, and as long as I have people reading my books and enjoying them, as long as I have the resources and audience to keep publishing, then I’m happy. There are trivial things that I would like too, like to see my book in a bookstore or see someone reading my book in public, or to go on book tours to meet readers in person, but at the end of the day, it boils down to a really simple thing: success is a feeling, and as long as I’m feeling fulfilled and grateful and excited to write everyday, then I am successful.

ABOUT JUNE GLOOM

Before discussing the writing process, Parker share the story behind June Gloom and how the novel first came to life.

Q: What was the first spark behind June Gloom? Did the story begin with the characters, the summer setting, or the band?

It’s actually a pretty fun origin story. It was spring 2023, and I had just watched the newest season of Outer Banks, and was obsessing over the summer, beach, and friend group vibes. So, I wrote down in my book ideas folder: “Write a book about a friend group in a summer beach town.” And I couldn’t think of any good plots right away so I forgot about it. Then, a few weeks later, I read and watched Daisy Jones & The Six, and absolutely fell in love with it. When I was in middle school, I was obsessed with One Direction, of course, and I had created an original girl group in my head and written some lore about them but never wrote a full story. But I’ve been really into bands for years and Daisy Jones reminded me of that. So, I wrote in my notes, “Write a book about a band.” And also put that in the back of my mind for another time. I was in the shower a few days later, where I do all my best thinking, and it just clicked when I was shampooing my hair. I had to write a book about a group of friends who start a band in their beach town!

June Gloom came to me really quickly, as I find most of my favorite ideas do. I’m pretty sure I plotted the entire thing in two days like a madwoman. The plot has stayed pretty much the same since I first thought of it. The characters also came really fast, because when I had originally written down the Outer Banks inspired idea, I had toyed around with a mystery/adventure story featuring a portal to a secret realm that a group of friends discovers in their summer beach town, but it never went anywhere and I don’t really write adventure stories. But the friend group in that book? Maisie, Virginia, Walker, and Owen. All with their same backstories and personalities and dynamics as they have in June Gloom. They transferred over with no hiccups. I think those characters were meant to be friends, no matter the universe. I love writing them so much. Then, I just filled in the rest of the side characters I would need, and June Gloom was officially born.

Q: Were you ever interested in being in a band yourself? How did music influence the novel?

I mentioned it briefly earlier, but I loved bands in middle and high school, and had toyed around with writing about them before, so it was always an interest of mine floating around in my head. I think I wanted to be in a band but only in my imagination. I would not do well preforming in front of a crowd. And I can’t sing or play any instruments that well. I’ve done karaoke like twice in my life and I always try to hide in the back. So, I just live through my characters.

Music always shapes my stories a lot. I use it for building up the feeling that I want to capture in a book, if that makes sense? I listen to songs and imagine scenes, plan dialogue out, and think of character backstories. Music is pretty much infused into everything I write, even when it’s not obvious.

Q: The summer before college can be an emotionally intense time. Did you draw from your own experiences while writing the book?

I think I drew from my general nostalgia for my childhood and summers as a kid. Some of my favorite memories are from days at my neighborhood pool, at summer writing camps, and cozy summer sleepovers. I was, and still am, nostalgic for pretty much everything haha, but there’s something about summer that feels like nostalgia bottled up. Turned up to a ten. I was 18 turning 19 when I came up with June Gloom, so growing up, adulthood, my friends getting distant to no fault of their own, people moving away, just life in general changing all around me was heavy on my mind. I tried to incorporate those complicated feelings into the story in a light-hearted, relatable to read kind of way.

Q: What was the most challenging part of writing June Gloom?

June Gloom was actually pretty easy to write for me, it really just flowed out in its entirety. But, I really struggled with writing consistently, and I used to procrastinate a lot. So actually commiting to myself and the story was an active choice, something that I had to push myself towards every day. That was definitely challenging, but it gets easier and easier as I build up that consistency and that writing muscle.

Q: What advice would you give to young writers who are trying to write their first novel?

I’ve been making writing advice videos on YouTube for years now, and I still feel like the best writing advice is to just do it. Start writing. It sounds like bad advice, but it’s not. There’s no way to get better, to find your voice or style, to figure out what works for you and doesn’t, to apply any writing advice you might’ve consume except to actually write. You have to be okay with writing badly sometimes, you have to be disciplined to regular writing practice, you have to be okay with some book ideas not working out. You have to be okay with failing. Terrifying, I know. But even though June Gloom is my debut, I’ve written countless stories and full length books before this, plenty that have failed, plenty that I’m embarrassed to even look at now. You have to write anything and everything that your heart wants to in order to become the best writer you can be. You have to start.

Q: If June Gloom had an official soundtrack, what would it be?

I feel like Lover by Taylor Swift, the whole album, always reminds me of June Gloom. It’s a controversial album, I know, people either love it or hate it, but the album’s themes of love, friendship, and happiness with an undercurrent of anxiety and a little sadness really resonates with the story I think. June Gloom seems like a glitter gel pen book until you look closer, just like Lover. Plus, there’s several songs in the tracklist that directly correlate to scenes and characters in my head. Whenever that album comes on, I think about June Gloom. Especially Cruel Summer, of course.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Whether discussing childhood influences, favorite albums, or the challenges of maintaining a consistent writing practice, Parker’s passion for storytelling is evident throughout the conversation. As June Gloom prepares to make its way into readers’ hands, her advice remains both simple and encouraging: start writing, keep writing, and do not be afraid to fail.

For readers who love stories about friendship, music, growing up, and the nostalgia of summer, June Gloom promises a heartfelt and memorable debut.

About Katie Parker

Katie Parker is a writer and content creator whose work focuses on young adult fiction, creativity, and storytelling. She shares writing advice and publishing content online and is the autor of the upcoming debut novel June Gloom.

I’ve noticed that in recent years there’s been a noticeable shift in public consciousness away from the very things that make life livable: joy, sincerity, enthusiasm, and uncomplicated affection. Also known as: the cringe, the trivial, the juvenile. Held in contrast with the horrors of the world today (political violence, climate catastrophe, late capitalism, the list goes on), the beauty of the mundane is often treated as irrelevant or even immoral. Positivity, under this logic, is a sign of ignorance, and hope one of naïveté. To care too openly is to reveal a failure to grasp how bad things really are; the open expression of LOVE is framed as embarrassing at best and intellectually unserious at worst.

So society has committed to a hater mentality as a defence mechanism, rewarding detachment and mockery. We learned that the safest emotional position is to stand at arm’s length from everything, just in case it disappoints us—or, more realistically, just in case we look foolish.

Me personally, I can’t accept that reflex.

Since I was a kid I’ve been teased for over-romanticizing the idea of living in the city. I grew up in SuburbiaTM, in a manufactured town about an hour away from Toronto. The fastest- growing municipality in the GTA! I guess the nothingness and artificiality are part of the charm. To me, going downtown was an adventure. For my parents, it was pest-ridden, dirty, dangerous, gridlocked, riddled with construction... there were reasons why they moved away. I think that to them my affection for the city was out of ignorance. They thought I watched too many movies. But my LOVE of Toronto was never in spite of all that. To some degree it was because of it. Pigeons aren’t nuisances, but remarkably adaptive, intelligent animals navigating the same hostile infrastructure we do. Construction sites, despite their disruption, are the culmination of extraordinary coordination of artistic, scientific, and human labour. Even the discomforts of cold weather, overcrowding, noise, etc., expose the sheer capacity of our bodies to endure and adapt. What a privilege it is, to be alive alongside 7 million others! To live here is to learn what it means to be human, an opportunity to witness the human condition; enterprise, failure, ingenuity, persistence. To dismiss that as naïveté is to misunderstand it entirely.

I am by no means arguing that one should live in ignorant bliss, a state of forced euphoria to the point of numbness. Laying down and accepting a doomed fate, resignation to fascism and violence and exploitation. Escapism. Turning off one’s brain. Drinking the Kool-Aid. Because the world fucking sucks. I’ll be the first to say it. But while I agree that righteous anger is a powerful motivator, I don’t think it’s the most effective. Nor do I think it’s particularly fulfilling. What I am arguing for is LOVE— radical, unfaltering LOVE of people, places, ideas, art, animals, cities. Because it makes your life better. It makes those things better. Because here’s the thing: people who want to make the world a better place usually do so because they care about it. You need something to live for, don’t you? And care, at its core, is LOVE.

When you LOVE wholeheartedly you start to notice beauty everywhere. In routines. In small kindnesses. In pigeons! In the deeply annoying, deeply human bullshit we are all forced to endure. Seeing beauty doesn’t make that bullshit disappear, but it does make it survivable. It gives you a reason to keep going when anger alone runs out of fuel. The fact that we get to experience any of it is a one-in-a-million chance, beautiful in and of itself: an honour and a privilege. A horrible, crushing, painful responsibility, yes. But if you’re to live it anyway... why not take advantage? Why deny yourself what happiness you are able to find— what beauty, what LOVE?

Capitalist and hegemonic systems of power thrive on dissatisfaction, convincing individuals that worth and happiness are always elsewhere: better products, better lives, better selves. To take genuine pleasure in ordinary moments refutes this logic; it refuses to let injustice monopolize the emotional landscape. Similarly, cringe culture thrives on the idea that sincerity is embarrassing and that genuine joy is unserious. But without goodness, without affection and appreciation and pleasure, hope becomes impossible, and without hope, critique loses its direction. You can list everything that is wrong with the world and still have no idea what you are fighting for. You need to see goodness to keep yourself going, and you won’t see goodness if youdon’t look for it. It takes time and effort to learn to be led by LOVE, but it is necessary.

What a piece of work is a man! I mean it in earnest. People— complicated, talented, flawed people— persist. Doesn’t that deserve recognition? Faith? Lenience? At the very least, a refusal to meet their existence with automatic contempt? All 7.1 million people in my beloved Toronto, and all 8.3 billion people on my beloved Earth, have stories. Every animal, plant, landscape has a story. Everything means something to someone. To LOVE the world is to LOVE on behalf of all those someones; I LOVE you because you are LOVED by others; LOVED by the ones I LOVE, and those like them. LOVE is the connective tissue of humanity.

So no, this is not an argument against anger. Anger has its place. But anger without LOVE curdles into despair, and a politics of despair is no politics at all. Pessimism that leads only to apathy or performative scorn does little to confront structural injustice. A culture that teaches young people to be embarrassed by their own care risks producing not sharper thinkers, but alienated ones. And if cynicism is the default response to suffering, then despair becomes indistinguishable from intelligence. I refuse that equation.

In defence of LOVE, then, I offer not a denial of reality, but a refusal to define it by its worst elements. I offer the claim that joy, sincerity, and affection are not distractions from the work of change, but often the reason that work feels worth doing at all. Be silly! Be kind! Dance, fuck, laugh, make art! Try and try and keep trying! If LOVE is embarrassing, then embarrassment may simply be the price.

Rey Santiago is an undergraduate student based in Toronto who writes prose, poetry, and occasionally draws when the words stop working. They’re interested in overthinking and the general impossibility of defining anything cleanly. When they’re not writing, they’re usually finding increasingly creative ways to avoid it. Rey recently joined Luxury Literature Magazine as an editor.

BILLBOARDS ON CLIMATE CHANGE. WHAT A HYPOCRISY!

I’m not coughing, yet I’m sick.

Not from infection—but from existing in a world where wellness is a performance and collapse is disguised as routine. We are breathing garbage, we are eating garbage and we are living a garbage life. I was a business analyst by profession. In simple words, I used to help businesses strive for success. Each day unfolds like clockwork: deadlines chased like prey, emails devoured whole, late-night meetings masked as ambition, and receipts from cocktail bars double-checked more out of guilt than tax necessity.

It’s been two weeks since I last left my job and a high-rise in Glasgow. I left everything behind - my home, my cat, my Ex boyfriend and his lovely family, my job and my life basically. I’m sinking into a quiet grief—loneliness, heartbreak, and a churning stomach stirred by the subject line of a termination letter that still stares from my inbox.

Now, I am just a mere writer and a poet.

Today, I find myself scrolling through old photos from undergrad, 2014—searching for a time when the world felt less poisoned. Outside my window, a glowing billboard blinks in sterile confidence over the photograph of six-dead giraffes took by the renowned photographer Ed Ram:

“Save green, and you’ll be saved.”

The sign is printed on pollutant vinyl, bolted into steel bones—a beacon of sustainability that screams hypocrisy. How many trees were felled to build this illusion?

Streetlights flicker. A stray cat hisses at a passing dog. I crawl into bed. And no—I’m not thinking about saving the planet. Afterall, I am just a poet who works as a freelancer - Business Analyst to pay her bills. I’m thinking about how it might already be too late. I used to ignore the signs. I wasn’t good at thinking for myself. But now it’s not just about me. My friends—scattered across continents—are living proof that the consequences of our negligence are no longer looming. They’ve arrived.

A SUMMER REUNION, 2025 – GLASGOW

Two weeks ago, we reunited—the class of 2014. Over a few drinks and awkward laughter, we tried to stitch nostalgia back together. But these weren’t just college stories anymore. These were confessions of survival.

It felt like a ravenous lion had crept into our lives, shredding the peace we worked so hard to build. And just when it was finally our turn to enjoy a well-settled life—the world began to end.

Alina, 31, Romania – Data Analyst

Alina—my best friend and secret-keeper of all my crushes. We once split bottles of wine and dreams about the future. Now she’s a new mother.

Her crimson lipstick smudged the rim of her Espresso Martini as she whispered, “The Danube swallowed my daughter’s first steps.”

Her voice chilled the air.
Her garden has turned into a swamp. Even the well water tastes like decay. “Being Romanian once meant being rooted,” she said. “Now, even the earth feels unstable.”

I watched her beautiful life unravel, thread by thread, into a tapestry of loss.

Mary, 30, Nigeria – Neonatal Nurse

Looking for someone familiar, I bumped into Mary in a grand club washroom—the old “women supporting women” moment. That meeting evolved into something more: from clubbing to coffee dates to babysitting her three adorable kids.
“Wahala dey o! Look who’s here—my ride-or-die, the original jollof queen!”
Classic Mary. First thing she did? Grabbed my hand and checked my ring finger. The chilly Glaswegian breeze wrapped around us like a nosy aunt.
Then her voice faltered.
“I left crying newborns for flooded streets where my car used to be.”

Her home in Manchester is now a flood zone.

Power cuts have replaced lullabies. She doesn’t read fairy tales to her kids anymore—she teaches them how to escape rising water.

Ryosuke, 27, Japan – Medical Trainee

“Konbanwa,” Ryosuke corrected me gently. Mary introduced me to Ryosuke near the bar not far from our university.

“Kyoto’s summers once sang in haikus,” he said, “Now they suffocate.”

He had hand-pumped oxygen into a newborn while a typhoon screamed outside. “Nature was once our temple,” he added, “now it’s our executioner.”

I listened, helpless, as friend after friend described lives ravaged by a force we once romanticized.

Mehmet Akif, 32, Istanbul – PhD in Neurology

Mehmet Akif—my philosophical pen pal, Rumi-quoting and Freud-debating across flaky WhatsApp texts. We met again at the open bar. He looked unchanged—but his soul had aged.

“How’s the thesis coming?” I asked playfully.

“Gone,” he replied.

A heatwave crashed the lab servers. His research vanished. Lab rats died. Olive trees on his ancestral land bore nothing this year—only scorched silence.

“I study the brain,” he said, “but it’s the climate that’s dissecting us now.”

He wasn’t just mourning data. He was mourning hope.

Sally, 34, Syria – PhD in Management

Sally—the rebel, the policy queen. Her hug felt like Damascus dust pressed into cloth.

“War taught us how to dodge bombs,” she said, adjusting her worn linen sleeves, “but climate… it taught us how to survive silence.”

Water is scarce. Dignity, even more so.

“I still lecture on crisis strategy,” she smiled dryly, “just with sweat rolling down my spine and students fanning themselves with broken dreams.”

The music roared as the reunion wound down, but my heart was a hollow drum echoing with grief.

Before leaving, I asked a classmate about Samuel—the one I silently adored behind glowing screens. Her eyes welled.

“You didn’t know?” she whispered.

“He moved to Phoenix, Arizona… died of heat exhaustion. The funeral was just weeks ago.”

The floor beneath me vanished.

Now I understood why I hadn’t left my apartment in days. Why I didn’t read that termination letter. Why grief had rooted itself in my lungs.

I finally found the photo—just one. Samuel and I in a photo booth, discreetly taken on our undergrad excursion. I taped it into my journal. Below it, I wrote my goodbye:

“We’re not victims of change—we’re casualties of denial.
This is no longer a matter of ‘if’ or ‘when.’
This is now.
Let the billboard blink all it wants.
Let it shout about salvation in toxic ink.
But those of us still breathing fine?
We know better.
Because we’re breathing in grief.”

Ruchi Acharya—poet, dreamer, and literary firecracker from Mumbai—is here to remind the world that human emotions aren’t for sale. As the founder of Wingless Dreamer, a global hub for writers and artists, Ruchi’s mission is to ensure every creative soul gets the spotlight they deserve.

On her path to becoming a world-class writer, she’s wielding her words like magic wands, advocating for love, feelings, and all the messy beauty of being human in this overly commercialized world.

Her mantra? “All worries are less with wine.” Cheers to that!

Website: ruchiacharya.com

In 1920, soon after the end of World War I, Ali M. Kassem explains in his article “Colonialism and Imperialism: The Case of Lebanon” that the French deliberately built Lebanon’s political structure to maintain their power in the country. He declares that: “The French crafted the Lebanese system on the basis of French paternalism and hegemony. Feeding corruption, dysfunctional apparatuses and fragmentation with brute force, conceit with racism, the French sought to build a new state which would be in perpetual need of their support.” France’s principal motive for colonizing Lebanon was to expand its influence throughout the Levant and promote Christianity in what was viewed as the ‘Muslim East,’ following the precedent set by the creation of Israel in Palestine. While the Lebanese population resisted French control and achieved independence in 1943, the legacy of colonial rule continues to shape the country today, rooted in the very system the French established during their occupation. Kassem refers to this ongoing presence as the “culprit is back,” highlighting that, in 2018, France declared a renewed “mission to help [Lebanon] once again” amid the country’s debts stemming from the “geopolitical intervention” and the effects of Western settlement.

Beyond political and economic intervention, cultural consequences of colonialism still resonate today, particularly through Western comparisons between Lebanon and Europe. Apart from its professed efforts to ‘help’ Lebanon, one of the most prevailing effects of France’s settlements is the comparison of Beirut, a former hub of French influence, to Paris. This idea is reinforced by Michael J. Tonetty, who wrote in “Can Beirut be Paris again?” that: “Before it became the poster child for urban disaster areas in the mid 1970’s, Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East. With its French Mandate architecture, its world-class cuisine, its fashionable and liberated women, its multitude of Churches on the Christian side of town, and its thousand-year-old ties to France, it fit the part.” When Michael writes about Beirut’s liberated women, an element only thought to be found in the West, he exemplifies Edward Said’s example of the occidental man’s view of the oriental woman. For instance, he states in his book Orientalism: “she never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions, presence, or history” (Said 6). This quote critiques the power dynamics in Orientalist discourse by using the example of an Egyptian woman described by a European man. Said argues that Orientalism did not rely on consentful representation, rather on dominance and imposed narratives. Flaubert, described as a typical wealthy European man, took the liberty of speaking on behalf of the Eastern woman. Similarly, Michael, as an American writer, is dividing Beirut into its own “East and West” when he talks about the Christian side as more European and inherently superior, while regarding the Muslim side as less fitting to Western values.

In the Journal, Michael continues to affirm the previous statement when he compares Beirut’s “European” beauty to Dahiye, a city one hour away from Beirut and lacking in French culture. He states: “Once known as the ‘belt of misery,’ the area is still a slum. Most of the buildings are 12-story apartment towers built without permits or attention to aesthetics of any kind–especially the French kind” (Totten 2013). He continues to say that in Beirut it is more believable to think you are in France, while in Dahiye it would be unimaginable (Totten 2013). His comments about buildings built in French style disregard the fact that Lebanon is not a European country and does not need to meet European standards. Michael’s description is characterized in Edward Said’s book, where he portrays how the West accepts the Orient only when it adheres to his terms. He states that: “Orientalism, [is] a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience” (Said 1). To the American writer, Beirut was charming only when it reflected his Western standards. After the city was ravaged by war and required reconstruction, he no longer saw it as the Paris of the Middle East; instead, it appeared lifeless and inauthentic to him.

Furthermore, the belief that Lebanon is more Western than other Arab countries is not only prevalent in the West but also within Lebanon. Many Lebanese people take pride in referring to their country as the “Switzerland of the East,” often overlooking its deeply rooted orientalist identity and equating Westernization with modernity. In The Middle East Journal, Raphael Patai examines the concept of modernization that emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: “the acquisition of Western cultural trappings became a symbol of identification with the foreign ruling group for the native upper class, and of social advancement for all other classes” (5). The wealthy individuals at the time had the opportunity to form close relationships with Westerners because they had the financial means to access the new developments the West offered. Therefore, the rich were the first to assimilate into Western culture, creating a noticeable gap in social structures. Due to this gap, people from lower-class backgrounds believed that if they acquired Western behaviour and appearance, they would advance in social status. Correspondingly, today’s generation believes that speaking English or French allows them to fit into Western expectations, making them, in turn, more modern. Many people take pride in their ability to speak three languages in a single sentence, a practice particularly prevalent in Lebanon. However, they do not realize that this ability is the result of French colonization and its system. As Michael Totten noted when comparing the Christian half of Beirut to the Muslims, they are “more French-looking of the two today. Its culture is also more French, since many Lebanese Christians feel a political, cultural, and religious kinship with France and the French language, the Lebanese Muslims do not” (Tonetti 2013). Lebanon’s colonizers stripped the country of its identity as Middle Eastern. Colonization deprived Lebanese people of their culture and language, where they will forever have the Western culture embedded in theirs, eliminating any chance of healing from past disruptions, especially when they take pride in it.

Comparisons of Beirut to Paris and Lebanon to Switzerland may be used with good intentions to highlight the country’s beauty, but they ultimately reinforce an orientalist perspective. This leads to the question: what happens to Lebanon’s identity when external validation overshadows its authentic qualities? These compliments imply that Lebanon’s value is measured by its resemblance to Western ideals. When an American writer first describes Beirut as the Orient and then withdraws even that title because of war, he fails to acknowledge the city’s unique identity, rooted in its rich history and enduring resilience. Once Beirut, devastated by war, loses its European representation, the West turns away, forgetting that the city is not merely a destination for tourism or Western validation. Instead, Beirut is also a home for its people. In her song “To Beirut,” Feiruz describes the city as “[our] flag, the stone of tomorrow, the wave of [our] journey. [It is] the wounds of [our] people [that] have blossomed. The tears of mothers [that] have blossomed.” Yet, as the West’s gaze persists, many in the Middle East internalize their idolization towards the West, seeking validation and belonging in foreign ideals. This longing can lead to a detachment from their own language and culture, as Western influences supplant local traditions. Ultimately, in the pursuit of Western approval, Beirut’s true spirit risks being forgotten even by those who call it home.

Works Cited

McGinn, Jack. “Colonialism and Imperialism: The Case of Lebanon - Middle East Centre.”Middle East Centre -, 8 Oct. 2021,blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2018/04/05/colonialism-and-imperialism-the-case-of-lebanon/.

Patai, Raphael. “The Dynamics of Westernization in the Middle East.” Middle East Journal, vol. 9, no. 1, 1955, pp. 1–16. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4322661.

Totten, Michael J. “Can Beirut Be Paris Again?” City Journal, summer 2013,www.city-journal.org/article/can-beirut-be-paris-again.

Said, Edward. Vintage Books. Vintage Books, 1970.

Hamnet, based on the book by Maggie O’Farrell who also co-adapted the screenplay, imagines the events that potentially inspired Shakespeare’s renowned tragedy, Hamlet. Upon immediately entering its world, Agnes Shakespeare – William Shakespeare’s lover – lies in a red gown on the floor, surrounded by greenery. It’s a beautiful shot that frames Agnes, and informs the viewer of her connection to the environment around her, which proves significant as the film progresses. Throughout the film, similar idyllic shots of Shottery, England, are displayed, and contribute in building the serene but busied tone of the film’s first act. The film’s cinematographer, Łukasz Żal, uses high angles and broad frames to visually express the breadth of Agnes’ world, which consists of the highly-prioritized family life of the 16th century, paired with the vastness of the forest. Żal portrays the film’s setting in a way that almost alludes to it as a character itself, accompanying Agnes in all of her pivotal scenes. Contrasted with wide, high angles, insert shots and close-ups are also used to express intimacy and emotion, whether seen by the touch of a hand from Agnes and William, or the fear shown on – their son – Hamnet’s face. The camerawork and framing of Hamnet are beautiful on the eyes to observe, but also contribute subtle details that build the film’s emotional weight.

Camerawork and framing often affect a film’s atmosphere, and with each carefully crafted frame from Żal and Zhao, Hamnet’s atmosphere is close enough to touch. The quiet ease at which Agnes and William love each other, especially at the beginning of the film, translates through the screen. Their gentleness resounds, their unconditional love an undercurrent throughout the whole movie. As their family grows, Agnes’ determination and perseverance to protect them to the best of her abilities is felt with unwavering strength and resilience. The tension of the film’s defining transformative event resonates with a soul-crushing despair, and the heaviness in the air that follows is palpable, as if the viewer is right there with the Shakespeares. The film’s memorable closing sequence rises taller, an overcoming sensation felt with the audience as the ensemble watches the first performance of Hamlet, with Agnes front row. Hamnet’s atmosphere exists alongside its viewer, growing with all varying emotions so heavily felt, leaving an impression so impactful as if one’s experienced the events of the film themselves.

Arguably, a film’s most important component is how convincingly their material is portrayed, found in the performances of the cast. Jessie Buckley is the driving force of Hamnet, with Agnes being the central perspective of the film. Buckley does an incredible job of bringing Agnes alive, from paper to screen. Her resigned loneliness at the exposition is shown with every hesitant facial expression of Buckley’s, every time she physically turns away from William, only to look back. In two separate scenes, Agnes gives birth, and the pain she undergoes seems entirely raw, realistic, and believable. The excruciating chaos of her giving birth is expressed with Buckley’s stream of tears, cries of pain, and screams of agony. With every choice she makes to add something to Agnes, especially as her life starts to revolve around something new, she creates layers of character and increases sincerity. In Hamnet’s pivotal scene, Buckley’s emotion is harrowing, her desperation growing until it feels glowing and unstoppable. Her performance in this particularly moment is completely heavy, devastating, and human. Agnes’ emptiness that follows is visible, defined by Buckley’s change in expression, tone, and action. Similarly, the film’s climax is breathtaking, due to its build-up of emotional weight, heavily contributed by Buckley. Agnes goes from irritated, to speechless and captivated – a switch clearly defined by Buckley – and the emotional release radiates through the fictional world, into real life. She brings indescribable emotion to Agnes’ every waking moment, moving with intention, ensuring that there is never a dull moment of hers that could remove the viewer from the scene. Her attention to detail emphasizes her performance, ensuring that all of Agnes’ emotions are felt with the viewer, not just “oh, she’s sad,” but “oh, her breath is ragged, and she is utterly destroyed.” Jessie Buckley is entirely captivating, giving a career-defining performance that steers Hamnet’s soul. Agnes’ opposite, William Shakespeare, is played by Paul Mescal, a performance so-far considered his magnum opus. While Mescal finds himself in a supporting role, his chemistry with Buckley is electric, and their on-screen dynamic is only so memorable because of the steady, quiet love they infuse. Shakespeare’s high standards for himself are conveyed through Mescal’s erratic movements and expressions, every detail showing-not-telling his inner turmoil. He clearly but implicitly outlines William’s main struggle, his lack of balance between work and family life. As the film progresses, and Buckley’s emotional weight rises with each scene, Mescal follows, in the subtle, natural way he portrays the nuanced emotions that accompany grief. Agnes and William express their grief differently, and Buckley and Mescal are completely convincing with their differing, individualized experiences. Shakespeare’s tentative confidence in the final scene at the first performance of Hamlet is heard with his shaky voice, and seen with hesitance knitted between his eyebrows. Mescal brings depth and struggle to William Shakespeare, as he attempts to navigate his collapsing world. As the titular character, Jacobi Jupe delivers an unforgettable performance as Hamnet Shakespeare, the only son of Agnes and William. Hamnet’s curious, gentle nature is conveyed with the lilt of his voice and the smile he wears. His unstoppable determination to protect his family, like his mother, is felt with Jupe’s line delivery, which cuts to the bone in the film’s defining scene. Hamnet’s thoughts are outlined on his face, his character nearly communicating with the audience, in Jupe’s every word spoken or every action taken. His range of emotion, from intense bravery to concealed fear in dire circumstances, propels greatness and memorability of his performance. He is incredibly moving, and provokes deep feeling in the little screen time he has. Jacobi Jupe works alongside Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in building the emotional weight of Hamnet, shaping its delicate, well-crafted world.

While all of these components stand out on their own, they also work to emphasize Hamnet’s central theme – what I think is summarized by the expression, “grief is love with nowhere to go.” Hamnet explores a world of love and loss: the insurmountable joys of being with the people we hold close in our hearts, contrasted by the impossible defeat of losing them, when they are seemingly infinite. Hamnet focuses on the latter, and exemplifies that what drives the heavy, incomparable feeling of loss, is the amount of love trying to be compensated. Love, strong and steady, only becomes stronger when the impossible happens, until it eventually explodes. This unconditional love, translated into grief, appears in different ways, shapes and forms. Hamnet reminds us that, not only is grief merely love without a home, but that this love can be concentrated in honor of remembering those we’ve lost, fixing a makeshift place for our love to stay. William Shakespeare pours his grief into creating Hamlet, redirecting his displaced love, forming someplace his love can go. They say death never truly comes until one is forgotten, and in creating Hamlet, Shakespeare guarantees immortality to who he’s lost, a way for them to live on forever. With this theme of humanity integral to the story, Hamnet touches the depths of the human soul. Laced with impressive technicalities and stunning performances, Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet serves as a reminder of the importance of love, and how that importance only grows with loss.

One of the recent obsessions of the online literary community, which is already dominated by young women and girls, seems to be cannibalism, or more specifically, “Cannibalism as a Metaphor for Love”

This online trend is commonly credited to Ethel Cain’s 2022 album Preacher’s Daughter and its final track “Stranger” which describes a cannibalistic love. As a cultural phenomenon, it is a refreshing refusal of the post-irony era of relationships and dating culture. Cannibalism may be the perfect response to the current societal expectations put on young people; it is gross, weird, and ultimately centers the breaking of boundaries.

If one extends the metaphor, however, the consumption aspect reveals a different side to desire. To start with, it must be understood that our relationship to food is not entirely, or even primarily, about survival in contemporary food-related culture. Cooking itself is an art form in its own right and carries on its back multiple massive industries worth billions of dollars. Take the meat industry as an example: every body-part of an animal is put in categories and sold in bulk, separated by different “cuts” A cow is reduced to beef; a pig, pork; and further, all animals, especially chicken, are broken down into pieces: wings, thighs, and breasts to fill buckets. How many chickens are in a bowl of 10 wings? Five? Ten different ones? Or none at all? Are wings not chicken, the animal, once they have become chicken, the meat?

Coming from the generation which was largely exposed to unrestricted internet access way too young, my now-adult brain understands more fully the similarities between the grotesque nature of the porn and fetish industries consumed in the secret of night; and the inhumane and alienated consumption of meat in broad daylight within civil society.

If one is unfortunate or curious enough to be exposed to fetish content, there is a clear market of categories for women and minorities, too. Different races, body types, and gender identities are all sold as content, with language meant to dehumanize, demean, and often humiliate. On top of this, every body part of a person is fetishized within the industry, removing their wholeness to consume only the parts of them that interest the audience, that get them off.

When I see depictions of the so-called sophisticated Cannibals in the media, such as Hannibal Lecter from the Hannibal series, I can’t help but think back to this similarity. To break down and consume parts of a whole person, preparing with precision the cut and seasonings, is a perfect merging of the grotesque pornographic consumption of humans and the inhumane consumption of animals. After all, we are all made of the same thing: meat.

As such, I suggest that depictions of cannibalism typically reflect degrading and dehumanizing values within society due to its butchering and wasteful aspects. However, I believe there is one element which can completely transform the dynamic, as evidenced best by Vampire media:

Therein the dynamic of predator and prey, perhaps the appeal lies in the image of the predator. In a sense, to be desired by a powerful and elevated predator elevates the prey’s value. It is perhaps easier to understand the appeal of aristocratic and immortal vampires than it would be to feel elevated by the desires of a jobless stalker. (Ie. Twilight vs. Perfect Blue)

In fact, this is especially apparent within the Vampire genre specifically. The Vampire, in hunting its prey, also elevates the status of the prey into predator, granting it immortality, youth, and the thirst for blood. This is also a type of cannibalism that somehow avoids the butchering aspect of most depictions, thereby avoiding the removal of the wholeness and dignity of the prey. Further, Vampirism still possesses the breakdown of boundaries as a quality, satisfying the thirst for closeness through the mixing of blood and the transformation of life.

Why, then, if one simply desires the breakdown of boundaries and the elevation of self, is the specific dynamic which inherently puts the prey below the predator still so iconic in literature? In a way, the reader sympathises with the degradation first before they are rewarded with elevation. All this to remember that the recent cannibalism craze has been particularly popular among young women and teenage girls, may suggest a connection. Namely, the veil of submission as a protection from the shame of desire. There is such a taboo around female sexuality and sexual desire, both in its queer and heterosexual forms, that to simply submit to the desires of someone else with more power spares women the burden of taking ownership of their desire, which is somehow deemed non-existent by society. Yet, through the transformation of the elevated predator, they are given permission to explore their own hunger. In Vampire media, this is the literal transformation of the bite, though other forms of predation can work similarly to give the prey permission to take ownership of their power through both learning from and fighting against the predator.

Cannibalistic media as a depiction of desire reflects society’s attitude towards human values of power, shame, and (dis)honor uniquely through the breakdown of boundaries between ourselves and the media, images, and literal things we consume. Perhaps, in criticizing its different aspects, readers can learn to be conscious of that which we consume, not just in our bodies, but in our minds. What are we made of, and what do we become through desire: a butchered piece of easily digested body part, or a continuation of the hunting tradition of carnal hunger?

Pilate is a writer based in Maryland.

I was raised inside a version of the world where God was not an abstract philosophical question but a daily presence, something invoked in prayers before meals, sermons on weekends, and quiet reminders from adults who spoke about divine love with the calm certainty of people describing gravity rather than belief, and for many years I accepted this framework without argument because childhood is essentially an apprenticeship in trust, a period when you assume that the adults explaining the universe to you must already understand it. I learned early that God was supposed to be perfect— infinitely loving, infinitely wise, infinitely attentive— and that every event in life somehow fit inside a divine plan whose complexity exceeded human understanding, which sounded comforting until I began noticing small contradictions accumulating around me like footnotes nobody intended to read carefully. The contradictions were rarely dramatic at first. They appeared in ordinary places: news reports about families losing homes to disasters, stories about children working jobs instead of attending school, quiet conversations about relatives who spent entire lives working yet never seemed to escape financial instability. Adults explained these things as part of God’s mysterious design, and for a while that explanation functioned as a kind of emotional scaffolding, holding together questions that felt too large for a child to analyze directly. But even then a quieter suspicion began forming— a thin crack in the architecture of certainty— because the world described in sermons did not resemble the world visible through everyday observation. If a perfect being governed the universe, the distribution of suffering appeared strangely uneven. Some people experienced safety as a default condition. Others seemed to inherit struggle as their permanent environment. And although religion encouraged gratitude for life itself, it rarely explained why the starting conditions of that life were distributed with such dramatic randomness.

ii.

The first time I began examining that randomness seriously, I realized how much of human existence depends on variables assigned before a person even develops consciousness, a realization that feels almost obvious once articulated yet remains strangely absent from most moral narratives about success and failure. A child does not choose the economic stability of their parents, the emotional maturity of their household, or the political stability of the country into which they are born, and yet those factors quietly shape everything that follows: education, health, opportunity, even the psychological sense of what futures appear possible. When I looked around carefully, I began seeing the same pattern repeating everywhere— an invisible lottery disguised as destiny. Some children inherit bookshelves and quiet bedrooms. Others inherit responsibility for supporting their families long before adulthood officially begins. Religion often attempts to soften this reality by promising that suffering will be balanced somewhere beyond the physical world, a kind of cosmic accounting system in which injustice experienced on Earth eventually transforms into spiritual reward. But that explanation started feeling less like an answer and more like a postponement, a way of relocating the problem to a dimension that cannot be empirically examined. I had been taught that faith required trusting God even when circumstances seemed confusing, yet the longer I observed the world the more I wondered whether what we called faith might sometimes be something else entirely: a cultural inheritance repeated so often that questioning it feels like betrayal. The moment that possibility appears, belief changes character. It stops functioning as certainty and becomes a hypothesis.

iii.

There were other observations that complicated the idea of perfect design, particularly when thinking about the human body and the expectations societies attach to it, because biological reality rarely resembles the elegant symmetry one might expect from a flawless creator. Half the human population experiences menstruation—a monthly cycle capable of producing pain, exhaustion, and medical complications— yet historically this reality has been treated less as a legitimate physiological condition and more as a private inconvenience that individuals are expected to manage quietly while continuing with ordinary responsibilities. Pregnancy intensifies that imbalance further. The process that allows humanity to continue existing also involves profound physical risk, hormonal upheaval, and the possibility of long-term health consequences, a reality that becomes especially unsettling when paired with cultural traditions that frame motherhood as an unquestioned duty rather than a complex biological and social commitment. If the world was intentionally designed, the design contains some puzzling decisions. Evolutionary science provides a more straightforward explanation: bodies developed through incremental adaptation rather than careful planning, meaning efficiency for survival often outweighed comfort for individuals. That interpretation removes the reassuring narrative of divine intention, but it replaces it with something arguably more honest—the quiet indifference of natural processes. Once that perspective enters the conversation, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the assumption that every form of suffering must contain hidden moral significance.

iv.

History reinforces that suspicion. When I began reading about earlier civilizations, I noticed that many of the same contradictions existed centuries ago, even in societies famous for philosophical sophistication and intellectual achievement. The thinkers of Athens debated ethics and justice with remarkable intensity, yet their society still depended on hierarchical structures that excluded large segments of the population from political participation. The administrative brilliance of Rome produced legal systems that influenced governance across continents, yet those same institutions operated alongside conquest, inequality, and economic systems that enriched elites while exhausting laborers. Realizing this created an uncomfortable sense of continuity between ancient and modern worlds. Humanity has always been capable of diagnosing injustice. We have written philosophies condemning cruelty, economic theories describing inequality, and religious teachings encouraging compassion. Yet the structural patterns themselves remain surprisingly resilient. Observing this repetition produces a strange mixture of admiration and frustration— admiration for the intellectual brilliance of the species, frustration at our apparent inability to transform that brilliance into stable systems of fairness. It begins to feel as though civilization itself operates according to a paradox: we are extraordinarily skilled at imagining justice and surprisingly poor at implementing it consistently.

v.

These reflections eventually led me back to the question that first emerged during childhood prayers: whether the suffering embedded in human life originates from divine intention, evolutionary accident, or social systems that have become too complex to redesign easily. I do not claim to possess a final answer. What I do know is that the certainty I inherited during childhood gradually transformed into curiosity, and curiosity into skepticism, and skepticism into the realization that belief systems often function less as descriptions of reality and more as strategies for coping with it. Growing up religious gave me a language for hope, but questioning that religion forced me to examine the structures of the world more carefully than I might have otherwise. When people describe humanity as a rational species, I think about how frequently we construct narratives that help us endure circumstances we do not yet know how to change. Perhaps that is our most distinctive characteristic— not cruelty, not intelligence, but the persistent attempt to extract meaning from conditions that often appear indifferent to our well-being. Whether or not gods exist, the responsibility for improving the world clearly belongs to us. And if humanity eventually fails at that responsibility, the end of the species may not arrive as a dramatic catastrophe. It may arrive quietly, as the final consequence of a civilization that spent thousands of years debating morality while continuing to operate systems that distributed suffering with remarkable efficiency.

Paola Lee (she/her), 18, is a bilingual writer from the Philippines

“Sometimes” she said, dusting her hands together, “a country needs fear to function.”

No one gasped. No one protested. Pens kept moving.

I didn’t react immediately. That’s the part people misunderstand. I don’t explode. I calculate. I let the sentence settle in the room. I watch who nods. I watch who avoids eye contact. I measure whether what I’m hearing is exaggeration or conviction.

It was conviction.

She began discussing Martial Law not as a period of documenting abuse but as a disciplined era. She mentioned infrastructure. She mentioned order. She did not mention torture. She did not mention disappearances. When Duterte’s war on drugs surfaced in the conversation, it was framed as decisive action - necessary cleansing. The language was neat. Sanitized. As if bodies were theoretical.

That was the first moment I felt my reaction move physically. Not anger like heat. Something sharper. A tightening under my ribs, like my body refusing to digest what my ears were processing.

I raised my hand.

“Ma’am, how does that align with due process under the Constitution?”

The room changed temperature. It wasn’t loud, but it shifted. A few heads turned toward me. Someone behind me exhaled sharply, almost amused.

She smiled. The kind of smile adults use when they want to appear patient.

“You’re still young,” she said. “You’ll understand the complexity when you’re older.”

That was the reaction.

Not engagement. Repositioning.

I wasn’t being answered. I was being categorized.

After school, I went home and reread Article lll on my phone while sitting on the edge of my bed. The fan above me made a small, repetitive clicking sound - irregular, strained. No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The sentence didn’t bend. It didn’t add qualifiers like “unless discipline requires it.” It didn’t soften itself for political convenience.

I realized then that my reaction wasn’t impulsive. It was structural. If a claim contradicts a foundational principle, something has to respond. Silence would mean accepting incoherence.

That night, I scrolled through the COMSEC of a news post about another drug-related killing. The comments were casual.

“At least the streets are safer.”

“If you’re innocent, you have nothing to fear.”

“Collateral damage happens.”

The tone disturbed me more than the content. It was relaxed. As if human life were an economic trade-off. Many of the profiles had professional photos - graduates, degree holders, people who quoted philosophers in their bios. Education did not seem to interfere with tone-deafness. In some cases, it refined it.

That’s when I understood something unsettling: knowledge does not automatically produce moral reaction. Sometimes it produces better justifications.

Sophomore year of high school was when I began noticing how disagreement is curated inside institutions. We were encouraged to debate, to think critically, to consider multiple perspectives. I believed in that deeply. I still do. But I started to see the boundary lines. Disagree about literature? Healthy. Disagree about tax reform? Productive. Disagree about whether extrajudicial killings violate human dignity? Suddenly you are “too emotional.”

I tested this.

In one class discussion, a classmate argued that fear-based governance was effective because “crime rated dropped.” The numbers were presented without context, without questioning methodology, without examining unreported casualties. I asked whether effectiveness justifies violation. Whether ends can ethically erase means.

Someone laughed lightly and said, “Why are you taking it so personally?”

That question bothered me for days.

Because what they meant was: why your reaction not neutral?

Neutrality, I realized, is often a luxury of those who are not threatened by the outcome.

Human rights are not theoretical to me. The are the thin line between protection and vulnerability. Between being heard and being erased. When adults in authority blur that line, my reaction is not about winning an argument. It is about maintaining coherence between what is taught and what is true.

I also start studying my own responses the way I study debate recordings. Was I harsh? Was I dismissive? Was I arrogant?

No.

I was precise.

Precision unsettles people who are comfortable with blur.

There is a particular discomfort adults experience when a teenage girl refuses to cushion her logic. Not because she is disrespectful, but because she is unafraid of the implications. I did not shout. I did not insult. I asked for alignment between praise for authoritarian figures and the constitutional principles we were required to memorize for exams.

The reaction to that was never intellectual rebuttal.

It was tone correction.

“Be respectful.”

“Lower your voice.”

“Don’t sound angry.”

I wasn’t angry in the cinematic sense. I wasn’t slamming desks. My voice rarely rises above measured cadence. But I was unwilling to treat state violence as a polite disagreement topic.

And that, apparently, was disruptive.

What I began to resent most was tone-deaf certainty delivered with academic authority. Teachers who could dissect political theory but reduce lived suffering to necessary sacrifice. Adults who insisted that discipline justified fear. People who framed critique as immaturity while romanticizing eras of repression.

The irony was unbearable: we were being trained to think critically, yet punished socially for applying that training too literally.

Reaction became my quiet rebellion.

A refusal to let contradictions pass without acknowledgement. Refusal to pretend that “strong leadership” and “extrajudicial killings” can coexist without tension.

I learned that disagreement is not inherently virtuous. It depends on the subject. You can disagree about strategy. You cannot ethically disagree about whether human beings deserve due process.

When disagreement crosses into dehumanization, reaction is not overreaction.

It is responsibility.

Weeks later, the fan in our house finally stopped spinning. It had been clicking for days. No one reacted strongly when it failed. We adjusted. We replaced it eventually.

But I kept thinking about that sound - the early warning, the subtle strain everyone ignored because air was still moving.

In that classroom at 8:19 a.m., I heard the same clicking. Historical revisionism presented as patriotism. Violence reframed as order. Silence rewarded as maturity.

My reaction wasn’t a breakdown.

It was maintenance.

If something is spinning unevenly, someone has to say so before the blades detach.

I don’t react because I enjoy friction. I react because incoherence bothers me at a level that feels physical. Because I refuse to let language sanitize harm in front of me. Because I would rather be labeled intense than become fluent in indifference.

At 8:19 a.m., in the second row from the windows, I learned that reaction is not the opposite of discipline.

Sometimes it is the only evidence that discipline still exists.

Paola Lee (she/her), 18, lives in the Philippines. Her work can be found in Hyperbolic Review, Moss Puppy Magazine (Math Poetry Collaboration), The Chartium, Asterlit, among others.

She currently takes care of six dogs and one cat, runs on five to ten cups of coffee a day, can sleep for an alarming twenty hours when given the chance, and spends most of her waking life wondering about everything (sometimes all at once).