NEWS

This Woman Live-Tweeted Being Stranded On That Cruise Ship, And We Cannot Stan Enough

When the Viking Sky Cruiseline got caught in the middle of a storm off the coast of Norway, Alexus Sheppard was the only passenger on board live-tweeting the disaster.

Several of Sheppard’s videos went viral Saturday afternoon. In them, pieces of furniture (and a grand piano) are seen cascading across a room, hitting passengers and walls, as the cruise ship pitches violently from side to side.

In the most dramatic video, a piece of ceiling falls and hits a woman sitting in a chair.

As rescue teams got to work evacuating the ship, Sheppard continued to live-tweet updates.

As day turned into night, Sheppard posted photos of passengers in life jackets laid out on floors, stairways, and hallways. She was in contact with CBS13’s Steve Large, texting him, “people sleeping everywhere they can. Evacuation is going very slow. About one person every two minutes.”

She also responded to a DM from a stranger asking how rescue teams decide who gets off when (“no idea,” Sheppard wrote.)

Several Twitter users pointed out how Sheppard had taken a break from tweeting about her experience on a literal sinking ship in order to tweet her support for gay rights in Tennessee.

The “Viking Sky” eventually pulled into port in Molde, Norway, on Sunday morning after three of the ship’s four engines were working again. Of the 1,373 people on board, 436 guests and 458 crew members made it to dry land, 479 passengers were airlifted, and 20 suffered injuries for which they were treated.

…But not before Sheppard tweeted about Mayor Pete:

A look at Sheppard’s published book “From Both Sides Now: One Woman’s Journey to Love and Living Life to Its Fullest“—reveals her to be more of an LGBTQ ally than previously suspected.

Just peep the Amazon description if you don’t believe me:

“What do you do when you realize at middle age that your entire life has been a lie? What do you do when you have everything you thought you ever wanted – a beautiful wife, two wonderful children, a fairy-tale house, a successful business, even a luxury automobile – and yet, there is a deep internal void. Where do you go from there? Allen struggled deeply with these questions, but what he did not realize was that the answers were already inside him. The answers dwelled in his feminine self that had been repressed since childhood, waiting to be expressed through the woman he would become. She was not to be denied. She was destined to be released. She was the answer to all his questions and the answer to all his dreams. She was his truth. She was Alexus Sheppard. And this is her story.”

In conclusion:

h/t BuzzFeed