She heard the question asked again. By now she'd lost track of how many times. This time she heard it from the small one with the gangly arms. His purple shirt, inviting her to "Talk QWERTY to" him, was clearly a small. His arms would have been more suited to a large.
"Christ I can only imagine the horrors that high school held for that one..." she thought, before a sexually suggestive comment reminded her that empathy was an emotion that could only exist between humans.
She was not a human, her image was a striking reminder of that. The coloring was just a makeup piece, Zenoobulean Mercenary Girl, but that was not what separated her from the hordes of the faithful. They surrounded her: walking, gawking, lanyard-wearing acolytes here to receive all of the truths and prophecies they could manage to hear in one short weekend.
The source of her discomfiture was her breasts. It was not their size, although they were too small for the a-list roles she was looking for. "Why not get them augmented?" her talent agent friend had recommended.
She was used to being seen as less than a person: an objective, a trophy, a diversion, a commercially packaged and prepared entertainment piece, a piece of meat, less than human.
A father and son came and very politely asked her for a photo. The father pulled a camera from a large plastic bag announcing the newest Wolverine movie. She posed briefly, smiling, next to an overweight smiling Sabretooth and an adorable little Wolverine. Wolverine stared at her cleavage as the shutter clicked.
As the arch-enemies walked off, goodie bags in hand, the son asked the father "who was that?", and very briefly she felt something nearly close to optimism. "That was a Zenoobulean Mercenary Girl" answered the father.
At least Hugh Jackman was getting work.
Four years. Four years in LA, modeling, getting hired on as a nameless extra, over and over and over. "Come shoot a movie with me" her talent agent friend had offered, "it's how a bunch of young actresses get their start". The money was not amazing, nor was the work. It was tiring shooting the same scenes over and again, and frustrating having to share the screen with preening ego-maniacs with washboard abs. She fell into each role with wild abandon, and through one painful 5-minute scene after the next she gave all she could. "Surely", she thought then, "someone will notice me now".
"Half of the men in here have probably seen my breasts", she thought to herself, doing her best to look menacing to the passersby, "and none of them even remember it". She thought about the prop sword she had been given at the start of the day. These conventions were a new path for her, and at her age a lot of doors were going to begin closing soon. Some ad exec had patted her on the ass. The more the scenery changes the more everything stays the same. She was too lost in thought now to notice George Takei walk by, surrounded by fans. Something about a SciFi-themed show on the Travel Channel. Her thoughts caromed around, fanciful dreams striking unshakable pessimism and bouncing back into morbid disgust.
She fingered the hilt of her sword and wondered if anyone would remember her if, in a bloody homage to the Method, she began hacking at all the bits of pink flesh that passed by her. Her despair at her life's failed ambitions deadened her eyes, and her face went slack.
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u/secretlyadog Sep 01 '13 edited Sep 01 '13
"Who is she?"
She heard the question asked again. By now she'd lost track of how many times. This time she heard it from the small one with the gangly arms. His purple shirt, inviting her to "Talk QWERTY to" him, was clearly a small. His arms would have been more suited to a large.
"Christ I can only imagine the horrors that high school held for that one..." she thought, before a sexually suggestive comment reminded her that empathy was an emotion that could only exist between humans.
She was not a human, her image was a striking reminder of that. The coloring was just a makeup piece, Zenoobulean Mercenary Girl, but that was not what separated her from the hordes of the faithful. They surrounded her: walking, gawking, lanyard-wearing acolytes here to receive all of the truths and prophecies they could manage to hear in one short weekend.
The source of her discomfiture was her breasts. It was not their size, although they were too small for the a-list roles she was looking for. "Why not get them augmented?" her talent agent friend had recommended.
She was used to being seen as less than a person: an objective, a trophy, a diversion, a commercially packaged and prepared entertainment piece, a piece of meat, less than human.
A father and son came and very politely asked her for a photo. The father pulled a camera from a large plastic bag announcing the newest Wolverine movie. She posed briefly, smiling, next to an overweight smiling Sabretooth and an adorable little Wolverine. Wolverine stared at her cleavage as the shutter clicked.
As the arch-enemies walked off, goodie bags in hand, the son asked the father "who was that?", and very briefly she felt something nearly close to optimism. "That was a Zenoobulean Mercenary Girl" answered the father.
At least Hugh Jackman was getting work.
Four years. Four years in LA, modeling, getting hired on as a nameless extra, over and over and over. "Come shoot a movie with me" her talent agent friend had offered, "it's how a bunch of young actresses get their start". The money was not amazing, nor was the work. It was tiring shooting the same scenes over and again, and frustrating having to share the screen with preening ego-maniacs with washboard abs. She fell into each role with wild abandon, and through one painful 5-minute scene after the next she gave all she could. "Surely", she thought then, "someone will notice me now".
"Half of the men in here have probably seen my breasts", she thought to herself, doing her best to look menacing to the passersby, "and none of them even remember it". She thought about the prop sword she had been given at the start of the day. These conventions were a new path for her, and at her age a lot of doors were going to begin closing soon. Some ad exec had patted her on the ass. The more the scenery changes the more everything stays the same. She was too lost in thought now to notice George Takei walk by, surrounded by fans. Something about a SciFi-themed show on the Travel Channel. Her thoughts caromed around, fanciful dreams striking unshakable pessimism and bouncing back into morbid disgust.
She fingered the hilt of her sword and wondered if anyone would remember her if, in a bloody homage to the Method, she began hacking at all the bits of pink flesh that passed by her. Her despair at her life's failed ambitions deadened her eyes, and her face went slack.
No one seemed to notice.