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fusonzai · 3 years

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I think I'm talking about confidence, I'm not too sure.

I was fifteen when I first saw Great Teacher Onizuka. My friend had lent me the DVD set (as you did when it was 2008) and I was about to spend the day watching it, feigning some illness to get out of school for the day. I needed some time alone, to process everything that had been going on around me.

For context, my parents were in the middle of a divorce. My mum, the most amazing person in the world to me, was not having a good time and I was not at all possessed with the skills to help her cope. Processing the concept of divorce, while trying to mediate the two adults going through it, wasn’t something I could handle. I didn’t know what I was doing. I needed a whole day away from friends and away from parents. While everyone was at their day job, I could think about everything and nothing, uninterrupted.

My attempt at getting out of school worked, however it came with a caveat. Mum had decided she’d take the day off with me. Feeling defeated but still stubborn, I insisted that if she was going to stay home too that we were watching GTO. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

GTO begins with our protagonist, Eikuchi Onizuka, squatting down by a payphone, trying to stare up the skirts of some high school girls coming down the nearby escalator. That’s a bold open. Two delinquents notice this and attempt to then extort him for cash. He promptly beats them up, forcing them to use all the money they have to buy him some food from the nearby convenience store. This scene establishes a few things straight off the bat: Onizuka is, first and foremost, a pervert and he’s physically strong but not to the point of unfairly asserting dominance over others. Onizuka dreams of being a teacher of all things. He wants to be the teacher he never had, being there for students outside the classroom as well as in. The series showcases Onizuka using his ex-biker gang leader skills and sheer determination to change the attitude of the antagonist students in his class. Each week he solves the reason behind their resistance toward him and they join his team until eventually he really is the Great Teacher, Onizuka.

The first delinquent problem Onizuka solves is that of Mizuki Nanako. Her parents aren’t divorced but they’re not exactly doing well. Ever since her father’s company started doing well and they moved into a mansion, she feels as though her parents just aren’t seeing eye to eye anymore. She blames it on a simple wall separating her parents’ private rooms. Before it got put up, her parents would talk and laugh together, sharing in their joys but also their defeats. Then before she knew it, they put a wall up and stopped sharing anything at all.

So, Onizuka arrives at her house. He’s got a bandana tied around his head, his abs gleaming as he’s smoking a cigarette. More importantly, he’s holding a sledgehammer, ready to demolish that wall. With her parents yelling at him threatening to call the police, Onizuka ascends the staircase and begins to take down that wall. Every powerful swing, shaking the wall and cracking the foundation.

(What a man what a man what a man what a might good man)

It felt cruel watching this scene with my mum. Here we were, two people still trying to process a big life event, opting to spend the day away from the problem. Here Onizuka was, just smashing through the problem with nothing but conviction, stupidity and sheer confidence. I couldn’t quite conceptualise the thought just yet but I think I envied that confidence. I wanted to be able to take a sledgehammer to this invisible problem and fix it. I didn’t know what an actual sledgehammer would solve nor was I even able to figure out what my situational sledgehammer would be, I just knew I wanted to be more like that. I wanted that confidence; I just didn’t know what it was yet.

Confidence. A complete assuredness in your actions. You may not have any idea of the outcome of said actions but you’re certain in the choice you made taking them. Maybe that’s just one definition. I struggle to this day with how to define confidence, I’ve been confident at different times in my life for different reasons. Mainly it’s been something I’ve found as I’ve gotten older though.

I struggled a lot with it when I was younger. I’d struggle to find it and when I did there was someone there trying to take it from me almost immediately. Pink polos were gay, skinny jeans were gay, being interested in anything outside the norm was gay as well. I wasn’t bullied by any means but there was always somebody around to tell you what they thought. I’d fold under that kind of pressure. I remember when I was 10 and we were in music class, I sang a little too loud and the popular girls behind me started pointing and laughing, clipping me before I got too sure of myself.

I got older and I thought I’d found confidence through weight training, but it was just arrogance. I genuinely thought I was better than other people in my creative writing class because I picked heavy things up and put them down. Of course, this had a drawback, whenever I’d meet someone bigger than me, I’d feel pathetic, jealous and inferior. I thought I’d rid myself of this arrogance when I started studying Japanese. My initial study was diligent and excessive. I’d have two Japanese classes a week and spend the rest of my time after work revising. Looking back now it was necessarily efficient studying, but in terms of time put in the hours were there. I believed I was working hard, which led to this arrogance in my abilities. An arrogance that was swiftly cut down whenever I met somebody better than me.

So, I always arrived at this juncture where I’d learn a new skill or hobby and wonder how to be confident in myself without comparing myself to others. I didn’t quite know how to praise myself for doing well at the gym or learning something new in Japanese without immediately comparing myself to others. It meant that I’d occasionally have these emotional highs when I achieved something only to be brought down to earth when I saw that somebody could do it better. I didn’t know how to make my achievements my own. The confidence I had was too fickle, it didn’t come from within and it often led to feeling superior to others based off of a single quantifier.

I was still uncomfortable with myself. I wanted outside validation which led to comparison, boasting and arrogance. I didn’t realise that I couldn’t get any of that from anyone else, it all had to come from within.

It’s taken me 14 years, but Onizuka finally made sense to me. I was watching the incredibly famous (in Japan) live action version of GTO one night, which turned into a nostalgia trip as all the episodes were almost identical to their anime equivalent. As I was watching I was wondering why I still hold this fictional character in such high regard, of all the powerful charismatic anime protagonists I watched in my teenage years, why does Onizuka persevere?

It’s because he’s kind of a dork.

(Get you a man that can do both)

Along with the confidence and strength that being a protagonist in a medium geared towards young boys affords you, Onizuka also has some very human flaws and vulnerabilities. The intense scenes like surprise renovating Nanako’s house or rescuing a whole bunch of kids from a gang are always juxtaposed with him being absolutely wayward in so many other aspects of life. He lives at the school because he can’t afford rent, he’s 26 and never had a girlfriend and his only friends are his students. We are always shown that his confidence isn’t intrinsically linked to how well his life is going, it’s just his feeling and determination in the moment. For all that bravado we see, we’re also shown the more human, relatable aspects. He’s amazing, brave and confident, but at the same time he’s still vulnerable and human.

Yet here’s the thing, I thought confidence meant a lack of vulnerability. I thought one couldn’t be both confident and vulnerable. This isn’t some segue into Boys Don’t Cry or a delve into masculinity. I didn’t believe that vulnerability wasn’t masculine, I just thought that vulnerability meant you had a long way to go before you were allowed to be confident.

(These lines go from bravado to insecurity in an instant, but I still think Tyler is confident as fuck)

I show what I feel to be the pretty vulnerable content on this blog. I write about my doubts and insecurities, the events that shaped me and the times in my life where I really felt at my lowest. I document the struggle I find myself in now, trying to carve something for myself and come to terms with the changes that keep happening around me. I don’t think anybody reading this would have an image of me as an outgoing, confident person. There’s rays of positivity sprinkled in occasionally but it’s generally content that I struggle to tell people in person.

Before starting this blog, I would have imagined that if I wanted to become this confident idealised version of myself, I’d need to erase any form of vulnerability. Delete the Instagram posts with moody lyrics, delete the couple shots and stop caring. I’d need to kill part of myself to become someone different. I couldn’t consciously accept that they were two signs of the same coin, even if I knew it in the back of my mind. The more I’ve been writing the better I’ve been feeling. These fears and insecurities being out in the open don’t make me any weaker, they actually feel like progress. My weaknesses will exist regardless of whether or not I tell people about them, my insecurities won’t disappear overnight. I’ll never be someone I’m not. What I can do is take these things that used to terrify me and put them out in the open. In my last piece I waxed on about making my words my own, by verbalising and bringing these thoughts into the open I feel like they become my own. They’re not completely stripped of power but they don’t hold the same sway over me that they once did.

So that leaves me with confidence. I can air my vulnerabilities and doubts but then where does my confidence come from? How do I then stop it from becoming arrogance?

Let me tell you about Charisma Man.

You know how when Superman goes back to Krypton he’s just a regular person, but on Earth he’s basically a God? Charisma Man is a joke (turned comic) about how Western Men often believe themselves to be Superman on Earth when they move to Japan. Why? You’re basically bombarded with compliments from the get-go. You get told your Japanese is amazing (when it’s not), that you’re so tall (when you’re short back home) and that you’re such a handsome man (when all experiences up until now have led you to believe the opposite). Thus, you create a kind of false confidence for yourself. Or do the people around you do it for you? You yourself haven’t changed but the people around you have, and they’re whispering sweet nothings in your ear.

(Honestly didn't know it was a comic, initially heard of it on a subreddit making fun of other expats in Japan)

Hell, maybe I am good looking? I studied Japanese for a year back home, maybe I am just really good at it? Maybe those people around me back home were just obnoxiously tall and mean. Maybe I am the shit. You begin to formulate this new identity for yourself. You are Charisma Man now. You’ll be making heaps of money, have girls on standby and be loved by everybody in no time.

Except that never happens.

The reality of Charisma Man isn’t so bright. You’re probably an English teacher living somewhere far away from the big city. Your apartment is probably small and old and your salary is half as much as you were making back home. Despite being told about how good your Japanese is, you still can’t turn on the TV and watch a program. You still can’t go to the bank and open an account with your bilingual Japanese friend. You’re still single and you’re probably getting fatter off convenience store fried chicken, if anything.

It’s fake confidence with no merit, built on nothing. You haven’t put yourself out there or done anything to earn that confidence so it always feels foreign to you. There isn’t some feat you perform or some hurdle you cross to get that kind of confidence. You’re not smashing walls with your sledgehammer or confronting your fears and growing. You just get fed compliments until your confidence balloon bursts.

I felt like I was Charisma Man for a hot minute. Separated from everyone I knew, out drinking every night, being complimented left right and centre. I kept trying and failing to keep my feet on the ground. Back then I thought it was new-found confidence, but I wasn’t really coming out of my shell; I was just being obnoxious. After long the facade faded and I realised I was the exact same Elliot I was back in Australia, just with less money and a nicer haircut.

I began to think about my experience. Why was I so confident? Why did it dissipate so quickly? Why was I not the only one that experienced this little phenomenon?

I came to the conclusion that confidence can come from many places. It can come from other people, but then it’s reliant on the praise of others. It’s shallow, fickle and bound to dissipate sooner rather than later. You’re constantly reliant on the praise of others to affirm who you are as a person, you can fool people into giving you praise but that goes away before you know it as well.

It’s a big enough of a struggle to understand yourself, it’s near impossible to understand strangers. Relying on such an unstable form of validation is essentially just inviting mental trauma in the long run.

On the other hand, confidence can also come from within.

After I distanced myself from all that charisma, I began to realise that I felt my best and my most confident when I actually put the work in. I started properly studying, eating well, and writing down my thoughts. It didn’t matter as much if people didn’t say anything, because I went to bed every night knowing that I put in enough work. Nobody said anything about the change, but I felt like I was becoming my own biggest supporter.

It’s both rewarding and daunting when you switch dopamine suppliers. I used past tense in those last few sentences because that particular fountain hasn’t been flowing so well lately. The flip side of not letting other people’s compliments fuel you anymore is that when you’re not doing right by yourself, that confidence tend to dry up pretty quickly.

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dreamingsnowflake2013 · 5 years

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The Autumn Watchlist

1. Melting Me Softly (starts September 28) | teaser

My feelings about this drama kept constantly changing in the past months. At first, I had been excited about the collab between Ji Chang Wook (HEALER FOREVER!), the SWDBS writer and the Secret Garden PD. Then, they announced Won Jin Ah to be the female lead and my excitement dropped by a notch because I belonged to those who weren’t impressed by her performance in Just Between Lovers and even the first teasers left me with mixed feelings. However, a few days ago the long trailer dropped and I’m fully on board and halfway in love with the show. It has the trademark writing of Baek Mi Young, JCW is epic as ever and WJA seems to hold her own against him and furthermore, they both share amazing chemistry and have a huge potential as the two people who get together stuck/frozen together in time while the whole world passes them by, only to wake up and realize that 20 years have gone by. They have not only to face the same challenges of dealing with the consequences but also their own physical condition as they must maintain a core body temperature of 31.5 degrees Celsius which in the era of global warming might not be the easiest thing to do, plus I can think of several physical activities when...

2. The Tale of Nokdu (starts September 30) | teaser 01, teaser 02, teaser 03

There is nothing new about a crossdressing kdrama, not even a sageuk one, but a man, and one of the best swordmen in Joseon to boot, doing the undercover crossdressing is something completely special. Moreover, he even poses as a widow and has all the men swooning over him and wooing him. With Joseon Marriage Agency being such a huge letdown for me, I have high hopes for this one. One of the writers is responsible for Love in the Moonlight and I think The Tale of Nokdu might maintain the magic which LitM lost the moment it got lost in the political mess. I like KSH very much and Jang Dong Yoon looks like he is having the time of his life playing the crossdressing nobleman.

3. Extraordinary You (starts October 2) | teaser

A high-school student from a wealthy family who suffers from a lifelong heart condition that inevitably means she will not live past her teenage years suddenly realizes that she is a character in a Korean webtoon and all of her actions are predetermined by the artist who draws her. If her luck weren’t bad enough she also discovers she is only a supporting character so she decides to change her own plotline. This might end up being either slapstick awesome with all the possibility for kdrama references and making fun of all the clichés or utter mess. I hope for the first.

4. My Country (starts October 4) | teaser

What can I say? It looks like my dream sageuk - gritty, complex, dark and absolutely visually stunning plus it boasts some stellar cast. Also I don’t know how but for some reasons the drama is giving me Slave Hunter vibes - maybe because of the slave element, overall grittiness and JH being all intense and the main lead’s look reminding me a little bit of JH’s character in Slave Hunters.

5. TharnType The Series (starts October 7) | teaser 01, teaser 02

I can’t even describe how much I’m excited for this one. Type, the dark, tall and handsome freshman is homophobic because he was molested by a man as a child. His life turns up side down when the new year of college brings along a very interesting person in his life, a gay roommate, Tharn. Tharn, is a very handsome music major with fair skin and mixed features who is openly gay. Type is a minor character who had a minor role in another favourite Thai BL drama of mine, Love by Chance. At first, I was disappointed they didn’t cast the original actor; however, I have to say I have never been more happy to be proven wrong because the actors playing Type and Tharn have without a doubt the most awesome chemistry between all the couples in the upcoming BL Thai shows, only comparable with Pete and Kao.

6. Dark Blue Kiss (starts October 12) | teaser

PETE AND KAO!!! I’ve been waiting for this drama for a year now! To be honest, I don’t really care for the secondary couple I just want to watch Pete and Kao being utterly perfect for each other.

7. Ore no Hanashi wa Nagai (starts October 12) | teaser

It’s been ages since I enjoyed a jdrama and I hope Ikuta Toma changes it as the failed 31 year-old NEET living with his mother.

8. HIStory3: Make Our Days Count (starts October 16) | teaser

Another installment of the successful HIStory franchise. Crossing Boundary is with Together With Me my favourite BL drama of all time and I can’t wait for the movie. On the other hand, Trapped was a mild disappointment for me because somewhere in the middle the writer gave up any pretense that there was actually any plot and the only reason I kept watching until the end was the OTP. Make Our Days Count is a BL high school love story between two polar opposites - the bookish Yu Xi Gu who prefers to keep a low profile and focus on his schoolwork and the outgoing, hot-headed extravert and some-time bully Xiang Hao Ting. I’m not even ashamed to admit I love these kind of stories.

9. Motokare Mania (starts October 17)

If it’s been ages since I enjoyed a jdrama, it’s been an eternity since I liked a jdrama rom-com - not since Suki na Hito ga Iru Koto and From Nine to Five. I don’t really expect Motokare Mania to change that but a girl can still hope.

10. Emergency Lands of Love (starts November 23 December 7 14)

Hyun Bin + Son Ye Jin + a romance between a stranded SK heiress and NK military officer + the YWCFAS writer = I’m on board.

11. Until We Meet Again The Series (starts November 9) | teaser

A reincarnation BL love story between two lovers with tragic past who end up being reborn and get the chance to be together.

#dark blue kiss #melting me softly #my country #ji chang wook #the tale of nokdu #tharntype #tharntype the series #ore no hanashi wa nagai #history3: make our days count #motokare mania #emergency lands of love #until we meet again #until we meet again the series #preview

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andysnorwayaffairs · 5 years

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Final Project

Pt 1; a perfect ending. feeling a rush of shared excitement - finally! just like me!

warmth, embraced, a queer kind of friendship. we sat in the grass and talked about how our lives were growing up, how our queerness was realized and how it affected the way we walk in the world. our stories are so similar yet so, so different. miles and miles of time away, you announce to your friends that you’re probably maybe gay. you start a spark in their minds, and soon after you’re deemed the trail blazer of coming out. you are brave, do you know it? you were the person who i wished for. so desperate for approval from others, and not meeting anyone like you, i took it upon myself to starve my queerness, the differentness, the part of me that i knew i could definitely be hated for. and i can’t stand the thought of being hated. and a part of me hated myself for who i was. i was taught that i couldn’t love like that, that it wasn’t *real*, that anything other than normal is impossible, wrong, destructive. so i listened, and i believed them. not completely, that is also true. that’s why i never stopped immersing myself in online queer culture, why i desperately searched for any sign of queerness in the online personas i followed and in the fiction that i read. we talked about this too, how we’d entrench ourselves in media and later realize that we were part of the group we were so obsessed with. finally... just like me

you opened your heart so quickly - your friends, they tell me that they’re so happy that you’ve met me. you open a window into your life and lend a hand to help me hop in. i see how you love others, and how they love you. we run through the lawn of a backyard riddled with ripe fruit and laugh like children at how sweet the juice is. we share a meal and spend hours talking about nothing and everything. i sometimes stop and listen to the chatter, and i feel complete warmth even when i cannot understand what is being said. we read the cards i brought and i learn how each of you sees love. i see the way you interact with your loved ones, the way you so deeply care to spend time with them. letting go, giggling in giddy joy, acting like absolute fools. finally, just like me

cried a farewell last night

thank you for offering me a bizarre, unfair amount of kindness

thank you for showing me a glimpse of your life, your entire world

thank you for extending a hand in friendship, in solidarity

thank you for being my friend

I feel like my time here, my glimpse into another person’s life, feels like a glimpse into an alternate timeline. A timeline in which I accepted myself from the beginning. A timeline in which I told a friend about my crush on Jen from Buzzfeed. A timeline when I refused to normalize myself, refused to uphold the boundaries that were unfairly placed on me. A timeline when I was brave. A timeline when I stopped being so damn scared. A timeline when I realized that my friends would still stay friends with me, and those who didn’t want to, I should let go of anyways. There will always be people who don’t match up with your values, your energies, your being. I won’t lie to myself and say that it wouldn’t hurt like a bitch, but it’s a hard fact of life that homophobes, transphobes, racists, xenophobes, ie bigots exist and there will be always be bullies and people who don’t care about you, who WANT to put you down, who want to hurt you. In a world of power, there will be those with some and those without. I was given a small window into my friend’s life and saw a life pathway built around friendships who learn and grow right alongside you. I’ve always thought about that – what if? What if I let go earlier? In my timeline, the forces around me were not as kind to me. I was told queerness was ugly, so utterly upside down. I didn’t have anyone to tell me otherwise. Perhaps if I had a positive role model to tell me that it WAS okay, that it was beautiful and wonderful. Perhaps if I had a friend like them in my life who was the first to come out and encouraged others by simply living their life the way THEY want to, perhaps I would have had the courage to do so earlier. I can’t change the past.

But I can think about how the events of my past shaped my present, and how my present shapes my future. Thank God - I DID let go! There’s no race to live your truth, but oh god it feels so good to do it NOW. I’m so thankful that I found the bravery these people I know now have embraced so many years ago. I feel like my own person, like an entire human soul. I don’t feel the need to please anyone. This queer experience, of finding yourself and maybe even fearing yourself, but, ultimately, coming to love yourself despite dominant society failing you, that is a queer experience. Regardless of any experience, something we all share is having to live in a world that ultimately does not accept us, does not want us.

An ode to knowing that although things are different here, and that there’s no possible way that I could have had a similar timeline just simply because of how different our spheres and worlds are... despite this, despite the fear and self hate and internal violence I was forced into because of the life I was born into, despite all of this, I was still able to find myself and love myself and find others who love me for my whole humanness.

There’s a lot of work to be done in the world, for our lives and our safety and our happiness. I think the friends I’ve met here are doing that work. Through their love for each other and thus their refusal to conform, to stay quiet, to accept the norms in place.

Meeting this special friend may have been completely chance, but I believe fate had a little bit to do with it too. To give me this window, to let me see what beauty it is to allow a person to be themselves. The sooner, the better.

____ DISCUSSION

Pt 3:

It’s funny to see how these ppl’s reflections of their lives fit in line with exactly what we discussed through our readings and class discussions. Norway may be progressive in law, but not necessarily in practice. Each of the queer people I asked this about, or asked them to speak about their queer experience, expressed frustration at there not being much of a strong queer community here, and how they still experienced everyday oppression (you may call these micro aggressions).

Nordic model of inclusion + welfare, making this a space where it is looked down upon to discriminate for someone’s sexuality

A different relationship to Christianity

In the U.S., I grew up in a heavily queerphobic, heavily strict and monitored environment where I was even monitoring myself, reprimanding myself for all of the gay content I was consuming but allowing myself to keep doing it because I was “outside” of the community and thus could not be associated with it or have to think of the consequences.

In middle school I was fully aware that I had strong crushes on gay female celebrities but was petrified of sharing that information with anyone.

I shut myself down immediately, but continued to consume gay, lgbt, and trans media for years and years after, allowing myself to do this because I could convince myself that I was just “a straight girl” who was a big fan of the community.

After coming to college and experiencing true freedom from the expectations and values placed on me, it took me less than three days to come to the realization that I was in fact, extremely not straight. It took me 6 more months to fully feel comfortable admitting to myself and claiming the label that I was gay. It took me another year to “come out” to all of my friends and folx I really cared about.

-talk about how this is a divide between my experience and the experiences of the friends I made here. L & their friends came out when they were extremely young, in middle school actually. Our timelines diverge here.

Only recently, I began to make friends on the shared experience of our queerness. Meeting my close friends now, sharing intimate + tender moments. Loving each other and supporting one another the way family might do. A queer kind of love shared in these emotional bonds. A kind of love I had not experienced before my full acceptance and life as a queer person. Tender, radical love.

Meeting L, sharing on our experience of being queer and trans. And not to say that their life in Norway is so much better. The Nordic model may allow for some general acceptance, but queerphobia still has its roots in other malicious ways. Many of L’s friends still don’t use their pronouns. A is called the slur version of the word lesbian, and she recognizes that being a lesbian is not favorable to society. She wants to be a prof of gender studies at her uni but told me that since there is already one queer person on staff, she’ll never be hired on.

M telling me about how even tho queer ppl are accepted on the outside, and in the law, in practice, not so much.

-A telling me that people hate lesbians

-in Norwegian, the word for lesbian is also really similar to the slur, “fucking lesbian”

CONNECTION TO THE FIRST ARTICLE WE READ

Norway’s state feminism and inclusion of queerness is heteronormative, only assimilating those that fit into the family, hetero model (thinking to naked sculpture park, extremely family oriented)

Same sex has to still be straight – family, private, culturally straight.

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thesuesyndicate · 5 years

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A Treatise on the Finer Points of Riku Gay

I thought I would write a little fic about a common issue I see in fandom elitists: internalized homophobia and how that translates into how they behave in fandom. Also, me, Antares, Orion and a currently unnamed agent have been playing Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance lately, switching off at every drop, so that’s been on our minds.

It was a fine day in the Debate Void. The sky and ground were as pure white as ever, and the ornate table with its matching set of chairs was, as well, with that pleasant dusting of soft, light grey-blue defining their edges. Despite the lack of any sun or moon to speak of, the Debate Void maintained a comfortably chilly temperature, warmed by some unknown aura. It was certainly sun-adjacent, that’s likely how one would describe it to someone who had never set foot in the Void.

And there sat the lovely Meridiana, head of The Sue Syndicate, her black legs crossed where she sat, pouring a cold glass of water for her guest, a comparatively modestly-dressed girl in a black t-shirt and jeans. A simple, clean look.

If the girl wasn’t an agent of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, Meri had to assume she was at least the sort of person who supported the PPC’s endeavors.

You see, they had been in the middle of a rather long, rambling, disjointed conversation - as most conversations with Meridiana tend to be - jumping from topic to topic, and their latest topic was this.

The girl took a sip, then a gulp of water, and said, “Look - that’s the thing about these fangirls. If they’re not out here sexually harassing every fictional guy they can get their hands on, their assuming every guy who exchanges eye contact with another is gay or something.”

“I think that’s an unfair stereotype,” Meri said, rolling her eyes affectionately, “It’s a talking point someone came up with, but never bothered to delve into the reasons why such a thing, if it happens at all, would be happening.”

“Oh, no— I mean it literally happens. All the time. Like- any two guys in anything, I guarantee the fangirls ship them. Like... Ed and Roy in FMA.”

“I certainly hope not,” said Meri, eyes closed as she took a drink of water, knowing full well that EdxRoy was real, “That would make Colonel Mustang a disgusting monster of a man. Poor Edward, only 16...”

“Right?! And like, Frodo and Sam in Lord of the Rings,” said the girl, chuckling. “Like, have these people ever heard of friends?”

“I once wrote a paper on their relationship from a queer theory perspective in college,” Meri hummed, “I got an A - clearly a professor of fiction analysis thought my argument was sound.”

“What?” The girl snorted, rolling her eyes, “That’s fake, you totally just made that up. College professors don’t support yaoi fangirls, they would shut that shit down right away. They’re professionals - they’re respectable, they’ve gone to school for this stuff themselves.”

“Nope, it happened. I just can’t show you, the submission was electronic and the online space for that class isn’t on my Canvas page anymore - but, rest assured, I even spoke to her beforehand about it and she said she felt there was strong merit to a gay interpretation of the, ah... Friendship between Frodo and Sam. That’s why I did it in the first place, because she encouraged that sort of analysis.”

“I mean... Alright, I guess that makes sense, but you can’t really think Tolkien intended for us to read it that way, do you?”

Meri nearly choked on her water, and said, holding back laughter, “Tolkien has been dead for over 40 years, love.”

At this, the girl frowned. “So... What, that means he doesn’t have any say over how people interpret the work he poured his heart and soul into?”

“That’s precisely what it means.” Meri tilted her neck to one side, cracking it, and then the other. “If you put something out there into the world, it’s inevitable that people will read whatever they want to read into it.”

“Well... I don’t think that’s fair,” said the girl, looking away. “I think you’re disrespecting his memory and violating his canon.”

Meri seemed offended by this wording. Wincing, she retorted, “It’s a series of books, not a human being. It’s a wonderful series of books I enjoyed very much, that very much changed me as a writer and a reader, don’t get me wrong - but it is ink printed onto paper. Be careful of assigning too much personhood - and your preferred kind of personhood, at that, your preferred opinions, and morals, and boundaries - to ink on paper. I don’t think page 42 of The Two Towers feels particularly violated by anything, especially not someone thinking the love between Frodo and Sam is romantic rather than platonic.”

“Well...” It seemed that the girl was at least somewhat convinced. “I guess? But what about stories where the creators are still alive to see all the weird stuff people make? How do you think, like... Hashimoto and Nomura feel, with all the work they’ve put into developing the friendship between Sora and Riku, seeing a bunch of fangirls act like that makes Sora and Riku gay?”

“I would have simply asked why they made Sora and Riku so gay,” Meri said, chuckling before taking a sip of water.

“What?! Oh— pfft, come on, they are not gay! They’re just friends! What is with you people and friendship?! Why can’t two guys just be friends anymore, why do they always have to be gay, all the time?”

“Again, I think you’re using a common talking point to avoid asking why, if that even happens at all, it happens. Why do you suppose ‘fangirls’ read gayer themes into male friendships?”

“Like... I dunno, I always just assumed it was because they think two boys kissing is ‘hawt’.” The girl shrugged.

“That’s sometimes part of it,” Meri muttered, resting her cheek in her hand, “But do you think maybe... The way straight romances are written may have something to do with it? What sort of bonding do you see Sora and Kairi go through? What tension do they ever have to work through? What adventures have they shared? What deep, cerebral conversations about their bond do they ever have?”

The girl was silent, so Meri went on. “Or do they just grin at each other, hug and become separated again, only for Sora to mention her once or twice during his adventure, the narrative telling us rather than showing us that he’s pining for her? I think Kingdom Hearts 2 wasn’t so bad about this, it actually managed to sell me on the idea that Sora really does love Kairi, but after that, it’s sort of all flown out the window. Do you think that’s what romantic love is? Hugs and then separation, with lukewarm pining?”

“Now that you make it sound like that, I hope there’s more to love than that,” the girl said with a grimace.

“You can’t tell me that ‘fangirls’ are so wrong and twisted to read romance into Sora’s bond with Riku, then. Not when their dynamic is so much more... Well, dynamic.” Meri smiled. “They’re not yaoi-obsessed, I think they’re just smarter regarding romance than Hashimoto and Nomura give their audiences credit for being!”

“Alright, alright, I guess that makes sense,” said the girl, before stopping for a second. “... Or... Would make sense, if most of their fics weren’t so god-awful. Are you gonna defend bad grammar, characterization and plot at me too?”

Her smile growing slightly strained, Meri said, “Now you’re talking about a very specific genre of fandom. You’ll have to be patient with middle schoolers, my friend. You were one once, i was too - and I don’t think either of us would look kindly on our writing ability at that age.”

The girl lightened up a bit, feeling some common ground with Meri, “See, that’s what my side is trying to help with, though. We critique fics constructively so the authors will improve.”

“Tell me again about how lampooning the fanfiction of tweens, insulting their headcanons, portraying their original characters as dangerous sexual harassers violating their fictional crushes and turning them into the joke of the week helps them improve as authors. Come on, do it. Right here, to my face.” Meri’s smile was unwavering.

... Well, it was tough to argue with that, now that it was worded like that.

“Good,” said Meri. “I didn’t want to smack you, you’ve been so civil so far. What I’ve learned as an artist and writer is that the difference between critique and bullying is consent. When someone asks to be critiqued, they are an artist or writer wanting to improve their craft. When you take a tween daring to post her OCxLegolas fanfiction as inherent request for ‘critique’, and then ‘critique’ her like this, well...”

“... I guess that’s. Kinda assholish,” the girl conceded.

“Oh, it’s very assholish,” Meri snapped. “Very, very fucking assholish. It’s things like that I have no tolerance at all for, so don’t act like you’re some innocent helper if all you’re doing is bullying people.”

There was a moment of silence, as the two drank their water.

Deciding to break the ice that Meri had re-frozen over, the girl said, a little awkwardly, “Well... How do you think Riku himself feels?”

“... What, about SoraxRiku fanfiction?”

“Well - yeah. I’ve run into canon Riku now and again in my work, and I don’t think he would feel comfortable with all these ship fics.”

“... You’re asking how I think a fictional character feels about a fictional ship?”

The girl sighed and said, “Come on - you know they feel and think just like we do! And I can prove to you, that he’s super freaked out by all the yaoi, and that should be reason enough to shut down all the fangirl nonsense.”

With that, the girl simply reached out to her side, a dark hole materializing, from which she rather roughly pulled out a wrist, an arm - an entire person, looking very confused in his pajamas.

Meri blinked, wide-eyed. She didn’t think her guest was going to start yanking canon characters out here, and yet here he was - Riku Kingdom Hearts, in the flesh.

“Uh— hey,” said Meri, waving gently. Awkwardly. “You—you sleep alright, champ?”

“No,” said Riku, who was too tired to come up with a lie or joke.

“Yeah, that’s fair, I wouldn’t— either— uh—“ Meri simply glanced over at the girl, curious what she was about to do.

“Riku,” the girl started, brows furrowing a bit. “How does it make you feel that people think you and Sora are gay?”

... Riku just seemed confused, blinking the way he was, to which Meri said, “Well, for goodness’ fucking sake, give him a second to wake up before drilling him on his sexuality.” She, ever the polite host, was already pouring a glass of water for the young man standing in front of her table, and, with a snap, there was a third chair for him. “He seems confused enough about that canonically to begin with.”

“Aw, come on, no he doesn’t, you know Hashimoto and Nomura didn’t make him like, for-real gay,” said the girl, which only confused Riku even further.

“I didn’t say they intentionally made him gay, I’m saying there’s a reason every gay person I know and their lesbian grandma, including myself, identifies with him on the level of being a confused, angry kid.”

“Okay, okay- what is going on?” Asked Riku in a raspy voice, rubbing his eyes and seeming altogether too sleepy for this bullshit.

The girl looked to Riku and rephrased her initial question, “Riku, are you gay?”

“Huh-? Wha— no, I’m not anything like that,” Riku replied, suddenly a bit uncomfortable, “Why are you asking me all that?”

Meri rolled her eyes and said, “No closeted kid I knew would ever say ‘yes’ to a question like that. Just, ‘are you gay’, totally point-blank.”

“Okay, then how do you suggest I ask him?” Asked the girl, crossing her arms.

“What matters isn’t how gay is canonically is or isn’t, what matters is this - Riku, what do you think of the fact that people think you and Sora are gay?”

“... Uh... But it’s not... We’re just friends?” Riku and Meri were in a similar boat, not 100% liking the idea of two adult women asking a teenager such pointed questions, but Meri took a deep breath through her nose and resolved to be as non-creepy as possible.

“I believe you, that’s your call to make. But we have people like this one over here, bashing gay teens over the head for identifying with your struggle to accept your - platonic, even - feelings for Sora, and thinking your relationship with him is human and relatable.”

“I— I’m not bashing gay teens!” Cried out the girl, “It’s fangirls who are the problem!”

“At that age, you wouldn’t have known the difference in someone like me or my friends,” said Meri slyly. “Believe me, most of these ‘shallow fangirls’ are people working out some inner truths of their own.”

... Something about that phrasing - a struggle to accept his own feelings for Sora... Made Riku’s stomach turn in a way he didn’t understand, didn’t want to understand, but knew better by now than to turn away from.

Very meekly, Riku looked down and asked, “I mean. Am I gay? It’s not weird for two guys to care about each other like that.”

“Of course it’s not weird,” said Meri. “Your relationships are what they are, and they don’t have to follow any rules that hurt or restrict you. But being gay isn’t weird - and I think this is a question your canon hasn’t allowed you to ask yourself.”

“Hasn’t... Allowed?” Riku glanced over at the girl, who simply shrugged, just as lost as he was.

“That’s right. Can a story lacking in gay themes altogether accurately allow its characters to explore their sexualities?”

“Of course it can,” said the girl, scrunching up her nose a bit, “It just means no one in it is gay.”

“No one in it is gay?” Meri asked, squinting. “Not the main character? No one the main character knows? None of the side characters? None of the shopkeepers? None of the random people the characters talk to? Absolutely everyone is 100% heterosexual?”

“... Alright, I guess that’s. Improbable. But not every story has to be all about gay stuff!” Replied the girl, rolling her eyes.

“Not every? Or not any?” Meri frowned, furrowing her brows. “That’s not fair of you, to paint gay and bisexual people like me, as greedy little gremlins who demand the world, when all they’re asking for is to exist in fiction and be depicted as human beings.”

Glancing back over at Riku, she went on, “That’s what I’m saying. A theme your story doesn’t cover isn’t a theme you can claim to fully understand, when you haven’t even delved into it. I’m not saying you are — required to be gay, for my benefit - I gain nothing from your canon changing other than a sense of gladness that people like me exist and kids can grow up seeing positive gay figures in their favorite stories. I am saying you, Riku, deserve space to question and explore your identity even if canon doesn’t allow it. That sort of thing is what many of these fic authors are depicting... Sure, it’s not always perfectly graceful works of literary genius, but that’s the spirit of transformative fandom as opposed to curatorial fandom. Expanding canon and making it better.”

The girl gasped. “You think you can do Kingdom Hearts better?!

“I think I could do Kingdom Hearts better in my sleep, given the inherently restrictive nature of canon, and I would love to see what a good, healthy fandom would do with any story I write given all this,” said Meri, grinning. “Don’t get your panties in a twist over it. Transformative fans do it better, it’s the whole idea of what we are, and it’s the basis of the conflict between my Sue Syndicate and groups like the PPC.”

Riku, though a bit confused, felt a bit more at peace with himself.

“While canon can never give you the space you deserve, I’m afraid,” Meri went on, “That’s what fanfics about you and Sora kissing are often for. That make sense?”

He paused for a moment, but Riku eventually said, “That’s... Fine by me, then.” He stood, stretching his back, turning away from the women and said, “I gotta get up early tomorrow. Me and Sora have our Mark of Mastery exams - I’m gonna head back to my world now and get some sleep.”

It was a strange way of thanking the women for their perspectives, but it was essentially what he was trying to get across, and Meri understood that. The girl just thought he was being a bit rude, as he stepped out through the portal he was pulled in through.

Once he was gone, Meri leaned across the table, grinning at the girl.

“That all make sense?”

And, much to the girl’s chagrin, it almost did.

#the sue syndicate #cringe culture is dead #fics #meridiana t

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lightsandlostbells · 6 years

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Skam season 3, episode 6 reaction

In terms of length, this is a short episode, but watching it in real time, every day highlighting Isak’s misery, felt like an eternity. Luckily Isak and Jonas’ friendship intervened to give us one of the most heartwarming scenes of the series.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 6 - “Escobar season”

Clip 1 - YOU CAN HATE ME NOW

It was a loooooong 10 days between the last clip of episode 5 and this one. Like, Trump got elected in that time, guys. I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “Goddamn, I wish Skam wasn’t on hiatus so I could have something positive to take my mind off this shit.” Which might seem frivolous, but sometimes you need a little escapism from your impending national nightmare, instead of following the news in despair for 10 hours a day and stress-eating whole bags of discount Halloween candy (which is what I actually ended up doing).

The mid-season hiatus is set up so if you’re watching in real time, you can imagine that Isak legit took a week off school, but if you’re watching after the season ended, you can buy that maybe Isak just took a weekend off from the world, and either possibility still works. That shows some forethought on Julie’s part, since she knew this season would also be viewed post-real time experience.

So the music is by Nas, not N.W.A., but Isak’s intro here definitely reminds me of what he said to Even in episode 2 , about “music that you listen to when you want to walk around feeling tough.” This is totally a moment where Isak wants to toughen up, since he’s frankly pretty fragile at the moment. I love this scene because it is so deeply real. Most of us have done this, blasted the appropriate soundtrack to psych ourselves up for something we didn’t want to do, or attempted to alter our mood with a song. The fact that this is clearly a diegetic music moment, with Isak actually wearing his earbuds, makes him seem even more vulnerable to me, ironically. Like he needs that confidence boost.

Also, the fact that this is Nas just underscores Even’s influence on Isak, and that while Isak may be trying to deal with his heartbreak, Even’s presence is still there, weighing on him.

“Escobar season has returned … it’s been a long time.” Obviously it hasn’t been that long, but it is a cheeky little nod to the hiatus, as well as the official clip title - “Returned.”

By the way, if people are wondering exactly what “Escobar season” means, here’s a little information about it. The summary is that it’s a persona Nas took on that’s like a Scarface personality, “Escobar” taken from famous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar - who interestingly was the subject of one of Isak’s oft-mentioned TV shows, Narcos.

The Escobar facade was fully formed and ubiquitous on Nas’ 1996 album It Was Written—he endorsed the now-defunct Willie Esco clothing line around the same time. 1998’s “Hate Me Now” famously begins with the phrase, “Escobar Season has returned,” and the Esco name is retired on the hook of 1999’s “Nastradamus.” Nas says Pablo Escobar represents his first awareness of a larger-than-life crime boss who wasn’t a fictional character.

This scene is framed nicely, with Even and his friends on one side of the screen, Emma and her friends on the other (the two “love interests” of this season opposite each other as they represent different sides of Isak) and with Isak stepping in the middle of the frame, not fitting into either group.

Man, I know Isak has fucked up, but like …. this song comes on, and I see him look nervously from Emma to Even, and my heart swells for this kid. I feel so bad for him. This feels so relatable for anyone who’s ever had a problem at school - a fight with a friend, a break-up - and had to go back where they knew they’d see the person again. Or embarrassed themselves, or been bullied, and had to face the judgment of your peers. It does feel like simply showing your face again requires an incredible amount of bravery from a teenager. (See also: Eva in S1, Sana in S4). And in Isak’s case, he has to face two people who know he is gay: Emma, who is angry and could use it against him, and Even, who he wants and seemingly doesn’t want him anymore.

The lyrics might sound over the top for this situation, but of course teenage problems are always the end of the world, and Isak actually does have some real shit to deal with. When Nas says, “Looks like the death of me now,” it probably does feel like that for Isak. I’d also say this is perhaps how he felt prior to coming out at the end of the episode - it could be the end of everything as he knew it, but there’s no turning back now. This is who Isak is.

“There’s no turning back now” - the lyrics that pop up when Isak first looks at Even, happen to be similar to what Isak and Even said to each other in episode 2, on their first “date” of sorts making those cheese toasties. “We can’t turn back now” - the words that made Isak cancel his plans with the boys and Emma so he could be with Even, and also the path that’s made him so currently miserable.

Let’s just note that Isak looks tired and worn and has his hood pulled up, keeps his head down as he walks across the courtyard, and Even looks to be in terrific shape, talking with people. Which has to rub salt in the wound. Even is doing just fine, seemingly, while Isak is suffering. You know Isak is questioning whether he meant anything to Even at all.

“This is what makes me … This is who I am.” Awwww, Isak. Baby.

Isak keeps his eyes ahead of him as he walks through the yard. Not on Emma or Even, though they notice him. Like the only way he’s going to get through this is if he pretends they’re not there.

Emma notices Isak and you have to wonder what’s on her mind, because really, she kind of falls away in the second half of the season? We hear about her but after this clip she doesn’t appear until the last episode. Has she already told people Isak is gay and set the rumor mill in motion, or is that yet to come?

I am always, always going to laugh at how the lyrics “DIE MOTHERFUCKER DIE” sync with Even on screen, lol. You know Isak is internally kinda like FUCK YOU EVEN!!!! but also why even … why?

But also, Even probably did not expect Isak to be this downcast about their breakup. In real time, Isak has been gone for a week, and Even almost certainly noticed. You can practically see his heart stop when he notices Isak here. And it likely hurts that Isak is pointedly not looking at Even.

Oh my God, the kid crashing into Isak and interrupting his power walk is so funny, but you feel so bad for Isak! He just wanted to pump himself up before entering the school where all these people are mad at him or don’t want to talk to him, and some rando ruins the effect. Talk about adding insult to injury. A cherry on top of the shit sundae. Again, I love it because it’s such a realistic moment, and of course Isak’s woes aren’t going to be solved by the right soundtrack. Reality intervenes.

It’s like the little girl interrupting the movie moment of the pool kiss - the music just cuts off when the illusion is destroyed. Weirdly that warms my heart a little, because the pool was Even’s attempt to recreate a movie moment, this was Isak’s attempt to create a tough guy scene, and both of them got cut short by reality. Lmao, boys.

Emma looks like she’s too engrossed with her friends to notice Isak’s collision, but Even likely saw the dude crash into Isak. Just to embarrass Isak further.

Poor Isak goes into the school and the first thing he sees is Jonas. Jonas isn’t hostile, but he’s a little distant. Reserved.

On the saga of Isak’s locker of character development, he takes a lesson from Even and bangs it open. Isak isn’t all the way there with coming out, but between the last time we’ve seen him and the locker, he’s kissed a boy for the first time and almost gotten himself a boyfriend. Even showed him how to open his locker and Isak took him up on it. Soooo… progress? He also bangs it open when Jonas is present.

Isak wants to know if Mahdi is still mad at him and Jonas says they’re not mad at him. He then takes a long pause before saying that they’re worried, like you know Isak’s weird behavior has been pressing on him and he’s finally just going to say it.

Isak tries to play it off and blames “family stuff” again and you can tell Jonas is disappointed and concerned that Isak is resorting to the same old lie.

“And I can’t sleep either.” Well, this part is actually true. It’s just you need to explain why you can’t sleep, Isak.

Jonas, a good bro, knows Isak is talking shit and not telling the whole truth, but he doesn’t argue. Just lets him know that he’s there to talk. Which is really all Jonas can do at that point. You can see Isak weighing it over as Jonas leaves, too, like … maybe Isak should talk to him. Or maybe he shouldn’t because that’s frightening. But Jonas had made it clear that he’s open to hearing the truth when Isak’s ready to share, and that’s what Isak needs to remember when Skrulle starts talking about people being islands.

Clip 2 - Noorhelm and Evak parallels

Isak really cannot sleep with all this anxiety and misery in his head. We don’t get late-night clips that often in Skam, but they were employed very well in S3 to illustrate Isak’s insomnia. That’s one of the coolest things about the real-time format, that we can get canon delivered at unconventional times to reflect the character’s reality and put us deep in their emotional state.

And of course Noora’s conversation is like … the worst thing that Isak could be hearing at that moment, since what she’s saying about her relationship with William also happens to apply to his relationship with Even.

“When you are in love, you believe that love will be like in the movies. But that’s not how it works.” This would be a solid point to make regardless of context, but it especially has to hit home for Isak, with his Romeo + Juliet watching and recreating in the pool. There was an element of fantasy with Even, of being in a love story like in the movies with a guy who views life like a film. But now the fantasy is gone.

What did Noorhelm shippers think at this point? S2 was all about Noora and William and gave them a happy ending, but now in S3, the way Noora describes what’s happened to them, it’s almost like a deconstruction of the tropes from S2. Noora is talking about how she thought she’d be with William forever, but no one lives happily ever after. Honestly, it would be a pretty interesting subversion to do a story like that on Skam, the fairy tale romance that ends up falling apart … but I wouldn’t want to spend a whole season building up to their happy ending, and then having it crumble in the background of someone else’s story. I think it’d be better if they got together by the halfway point (before the hiatus) and then showed the fall of the relationship through the rest of the season.

I mean, this is all because Thomas Hayes left the show, though, and was probably not part of Julie’s original plan. Makes you wonder how this scene was planned, though. Did Julie ever think Thomas would come back? Because this scene has somewhat different context with the Noorhelm reunion in S4, and in a scenario where Thomas didn’t return.

“There’s nobody who is willing to make any sacrifices for love in 2016.” I don’t know why, but that part of Noora’s dialogue hurts the most? It does for Isak, too, since it’s the breaking point from when he goes from trying to bury his head in his pillow to getting up and telling her to stop. Maybe because to Isak, it seems like he was willing to sacrifice for Even by lying to his friends and making them angry with him, abandoning this heterosexual farce he was performing, potentially coming out, getting into a relationship with a boy despite all the problems that may come with that … but Even just couldn’t sacrifice his relationship with Sonja. For a brief moment, it seemed like he would choose Isak, but he didn’t.

Maybe also because “nobody is willing to make sacrifices for love” is pretty disheartening to hear when you’re young and going through heartache. It makes you think this is how it’s going to be the rest of your life, it’ll never get easier. Especially painful for a closeted gay kid to hear since he’ll have additional complications in finding love.

I think Noora’s words are obviously the main reason behind what’s making Isak stressed out right now, but it can’t help to hear that Eskild’s brought a guy home. Eskild has someone and Isak is sleeping alone.

Yeah, Isak could be less of an asshole in his delivery, but he’s not wrong. Take your conversations elsewhere at 2 am. Not to sound old but it’s a school night, Noora!

Noora is pretty shocked by Isak’s attitude, though. You can see the smile drop off her face. I don’t think Noora is obsessing over Isak’s personal life or anything, especially since she’s caught up in her own drama, but I think she picks up here that Isak is going through something that’s bigger than her just talking on the phone at night.

While I don’t know if Noora and Isak would ever be best friends, I do enjoy some of the moments they have together. I like to think that Noora taking care of Even when Isak couldn’t be there, and Isak demonstrating how much love there was in that grumpy teenage boy body of his, gained some lasting respect on both ends. And on the flip side, Noora ribbing Isak about his nightstand toilet paper and Isak taking it in stride in S4 is endearing.

Isak really is a good kid. He knows he lashed out and calms down after his outburst. He even says, “Say hi to Eva,” lmao? Like RARRRRRGH STOP TALKING ON THE PHONE NOORA … okay, sorry, say hi to our mutual friend.

The fact that he pauses to tell her that William is an idiot if he gives up on her is genuinely sweet. Of course there’s some projection behind it (trying to convince himself that Even is an idiot and not worth staying up all night stressing if Even gave up on him) but it’s also just a kind, courteous thing to say, since he recognizes someone else struggling over being in love, and Noora accepts his words as such.

Obviously everyone is free to like or dislike characters for whatever reasons, but moments like this are why I don’t get why some people repeatedly bring up Isak’s shitty S1 behavior as a reason why he’s the Worst (especially in the context of “How can you like Isak but not this other character when Isak has also done bad things?”). Isak repeatedly course-corrects from his mistakes and shows consideration toward other people’s feelings, listens to their advice and perspectives, and is kind to them despite his grumpy exterior. He’s not a selfish person. I’m fine with characters who make mistakes if they apologize, show empathy to others, and try to be better people.

Clip 3 - The cheese toastie of sadness

This scene is pretty short, but the first time I watched it, I spent like a minute and a half wondering “Where is this going?” only to freak out with Even’s appearance. Oh. That’s where it was going. It lulls you into a sense of mundane drudgery only to throw a curveball, which is what Isak must be feeling. Going about his boring day, feeling like shit, only for a surprise Even encounter to throw everything off-balance.

That random guy’s voice really does sound like Henrik’s, to the point where I’m wondering if Henrik said the line and they dubbed it over (since we don’t see the dude actually say anything but “Sweet”). If not, damn, that’s a close match.

It really throws Isak, it’s like a jolt of potential Even. But it’s just a false alarm. Of course, Julie gives us a false alarm to throw us off the real appearance of Even that’s going to happen in a minute.

Plot twist - this guy is Julian Dahl and he was hoping to make a move on Isak, except Even showed up.

Here’s where Skam’s ability to not rush things really helps, because this is a small scene where the majority is focused on an everyday boring task, but it establishes Isak’s mood, give a sense of how empty and dull his life feels at the moment, isolated from his social connections and love interest. The long pauses of nothing but agonizing silence feel like forever. Just waiting in line for a cheese toastie is an ordeal.

We also see just how out of it Isak is, how that reminder of Even throws him off balance - not responding to the cafeteria worker right away, dropping his money, giving her the wrong amount.

I swear my heart jumped when Even appeared, just like Isak’s must have.

Do you think Even meant to walk up to Isak or he just happened to run into him? The former makes more sense as to why he’d be right there at the front of the cafeteria line, but Even also looks so startled and caught off guard. Or maybe he just wasn’t quite prepared to be so close to Isak again, face to face.

It really does not help that Even again looks very healthy and well put together, and Isak just looks devastated. His demeanor is so muted and physically he looks drained, like he hasn’t been sleeping. Even is feigning some energy but Isak can barely summon it.

It does wrench my heart that Isak isn’t even angry at Even here, or pretending to be fine, or anything other than depressed. He doesn’t have the strength for anything else.

Yeah, that is the saddest looking cheese toastie ever. I’d eat it if I had no other options but it’s like the food equivalent of tears.

Even tries to reestablish some friendly contact with that kardemomme reference, which is especially relevant because hey, it’s not just any old small talk, it’s their inside joke, which Even remembers. It’s a personal connection.

Oh God, and it makes me so sad that Isak gives a half-hearted laugh of recognition and tries to recreate the “kardemomme!” line but his voice is broken and not energetic.

True story: when I watched this the first time, I actually yelled, “No!!!” at my computer screen when Isak says “Kardemomme!” in that weak voice. Like, way to cause a pang in my heart, Skam. That was their beautiful bonding moment!!! It made us smile, and now it’s just a shell of its former self. You took something good and used it for evil, Skam.

Even’s smile at Isak’s attempt is genuine but falls as he realizes how messed up Isak is and how this just isn’t the same as before.

What do you think Even wanted to say before Isak ran off? I honestly have no idea. I feel like he wanted to connect with Isak on a more substantial level, IDK, maybe ask how he’s been, but who knows? There are many possibilities. Go for another joke, go for a neutral topic. Try to communicate that he still wants Isak, try to avoid that territory. But Isak couldn’t let him get another word out.

The fact that Isak can’t take anymore and runs off without waiting makes my soul turn to dust. And Even looks back at him before leaving.

I think Even really was rattled by this encounter. Like ... Isak was rough. Even broke up with him as a means of protecting them both, but clearly it didn’t work as well as he hoped since Isak is suffering. You know he’s thinking to himself, You did this. You made him hurt like this. And I think this is when Even starts to reconsider whether it was the right move to break up with him. Maybe even for himself, because he misses Isak so much and having Isak not want to talk to him, barely able to look at him, is too much to handle.

Clip 4 - The queen of Skam returns

Time for the Norwegian goddess of wisdom to make another appearance!

Lmao, the opening conversation is about someone pissing her pants while exercising. The women blame it on a lack of Kegel exercises. This is all openly discussed in the waiting room within earshot of Isak. Somehow I think Dr Skrulle is in her element. Nissen’s medical staff must just attract ladies prone to TMI and bizarre anecdotes.

The “eye exam” poster in the office says YOU SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, by the way.

Oh man, this was the point when fans thought Isak was going to steal Linn’s sleeping pills, or get sleeping pills and OD on them! Such a tense week. Isak is so miserable that it felt like something drastic could happen. We were all yelling for something good to happen this week.

I feel like when you step into this doctor’s office, time and space are slightly altered.

Truly there is nothing like Isak taking a seat and immediately within his line of vision is the good doctor and a dildo. He must feel like the presence of an artificial penis is the world is taunting him again.

This scene’s funny because Isak gets to play the straight man (ha ha) to the doctor. She exists in her own world and Isak is just this befuddled teenager trying to make sense of her.

Isak can barely look at Skrulle when he’s telling her about his problems. I guess you could read this scene as Isak badly wanting those pills and playing up his distress so she’ll give them to him, but I think he really is that miserable, as evidenced by everything we’ve seen of him this week, and he has trouble opening up to anyone about his problems so this is probably a last resort for him.

“I don’t drive a car, though.” AS WE WILL LEARN IN S4.

I remember that one interview Tarjei gave where he was going over his traffic problems, and lol, I feel you, kid.

Legit nothing like a Skrulle story to put your problems in perspective. Also, A+ segue from the story of someone getting into an accident and ending up in a wheelchair to asking Isak more about his sleep problems. And by A+ segue I mean there is no segue at all.

Isak’s sleep has gotten worse over the past few weeks, for reasons that are quite obvious to the viewers. Even’s presence will do that to you.

The doctor wants to refer Isak to a mental health clinic, and he doesn’t want that. In fact, Isak is really, really against this, like … more than just not wanting to, he’s vehemently saying no over and over. This absolutely has to do with his ableist beliefs and his stigma against the mentally ill. Isak definitely isn’t going to be like one of those people. Isak can’t be mentally ill. He can’t talk to a therapist. Just like he didn’t want to be scene as one of those ultra-gay people, he can’t lump himself in with people who need help with their mental health. Those people are crazy.

I remember right after this scene I wondered if Isak would actually go to the mental health clinic where he would run into Even, and that’s how we would learn that Even also has mental health issues. I was going to say that it would have been an awkward moment for them ... but then I realized, it can’t be any worse than how Isak did learn about Even’s mental illness.

Note that in S1, the girls went together to provide support for Vilde, but here in S3, Isak has to do this on his own. Makes sense that Skrulle’s advice ends up being about him not isolating himself and reaching out to others.

You know, I think of the locker room scene as a turning point in the season, but this scene is quietly a turning point as well. Skrulle gives Isak advice that will help him throughout the rest of the season. He can’t keep isolating himself. It’s advice that will not only help Isak, but allow him to extend that help to Even, and even to Sana in the next season. Even though the good doc expresses it in a quirky way, it’s solid advice.

“Don’t you have someone you can talk to?” “TALK TO JONAS,” screamed everyone watching.

Clip 5 - Jonas is king of the bros

Watching this week in real time was so stressful, Isak was so melancholic and alone, and this scene was such. a. relief. It would’ve been wonderful in any context, but it felt like a godsend after seeing Isak go through hell clip after clip.

One of the most observant details about the clip is Isak’s hesitation. He’s about to do something big and it’s not easy to just launch into it. He stands and watches Jonas for a little bit because, you know, it’s Jonas and Jonas is his best bro, but that doesn’t crush all the doubts in his head about what Jonas’ reaction could be. Not to mention he and Jonas haven’t had the best relationship lately.

But Jonas is still friendly when Isak approaches him. Perhaps he realizes that this is when Isak is going to tell him about whatever’s on his mind. Plus, you know, I’m sure he missed Isak! They’re best friends, it can’t have been great from Jonas’ POV to feel shut out from him.

I don’t know if there was any strategy involved in getting kebab other than teenage boys needing kebab to live, but it works as an icebreaker/apology of sorts (since Isak is paying) and I think, a buffer? It helps if there’s an activity like eating happening when Isak comes out, and that he’s not just telling a personal secret with nothing else to occupy Jonas’ attention.

Also, that they’re sitting on a bench side by side in this scene reminds me of all those Tumblr posts about how common it is for LGBT people to come out in cars, and how it’s easier to do when you’re not face to face. Isak and Jonas are looking at each other and making eye contact, but I do think it helps to have your bodies facing forward rather than toward each other. It gives a little distance, makes it less intimidating for Isak.

I just want to shout out that poster in the kebab shop window, which says, “EVERYDAY IT’S KEBAB TIME.” You’re damn right it is.

I feel like Jonas is telling this random puke story to Isak so Isak can work up to whatever he’s going to say. You can tell Isak’s listening but he’s not 100% there.

By the way, this puke story sounds like it could be about Magnus, except Isak says, “It’s never the ones that you expect that throw up,” and Magnus is absolutely someone I would expect to ruin his chances with a girl by throwing up all over her feet. Maybe this story was about the mysterious Julian Dahl!

Continuing on the point above about Isak’s hesitation, the pacing of this scene is a huge part of what makes it so great. Because Isak doesn’t sit down and start coming out right away, he doesn’t have a speech prepared (not that that it’s wrong or unrealistic to prepare a speech, but with Isak, he’s not a preparedspeech kind of guy). He has to work up his courage piece by piece over this conversation. He lets Jonas bullshit a bit, there’s a long silence where Isak keeps glancing over at Jonas as they eat, and you know he’s working out his nerves, wondering about Jonas’ reaction, getting himself to the point where he can just say it. Tarjei’s acting in this scene is so subtle and spectacular.

Jonas is such a dear, though. Marlon does this scene really really well because Jonas isn’t like … overcompensating or overly enthusiastic, he’s not pressing Isak too much. He’s very casual, but you can also see, for instance, when Isak brings up that he’s been acting weird lately, that Jonas looks at him attentively, ready to listen, because finally Isak is going to open up.

Just saying “there’s a person that I like” is a big thing for Isak to get out. He doles the information out little by little, he makes Jonas work for it. I think that what Isak is aiming for is similar to what many viewers suspect he wanted from Eva in S1. In the kitchen scene where Eva confronts Isak about ratting her out to Iben, Isak asks her to guess why he did it. You can make a case that he wants her to guess the real reason, that he has feelings for Jonas and is jealous - that maybe a part of him wants her to know and to take it off his mind. But of course she doesn’t guess and he runs with a lie instead. Here, I wouldn’t be surprised if Isak wants Jonas to say it before he has to - that he can come out without needing to say the words.

This is a pretty heartwarming scene, but Isak actually breaks my heart a little when he asks Jonas to guess. There’s so much fragility wrapped up in that moment and in Tarjei’s performance! This poor kid is so nervous.

Although bless Jonas for guessing Vilde, because it probably did give Isak a little moment to be like WTF, no, and make him laugh.

After that, Jonas says, “Can’t you just tell me?” But of course no, Isak can’t just tell him, because that’s very hard.

I mentioned it in my episode 5 review but again, Isak doesn’t come out by saying he is gay and then going into his relationship with Even. Instead, he phrases everything in terms of actions, in some roundabout ways. he coming out is a step by step process. First, it’s that Isak is acting weird because he likes someone. Then “It’s not a girl.” He doesn’t even say, “It’s a guy,” he says it’s not a girl because that’s the less direct way of saying it, of course.

Isak gets so alert and on edge after he says it’s not a girl. Waiting and watching for Jonas’ reaction. Nervous as to what’s it going to be. Meanwhile Jonas just keeps eating that fucking kebab. Like Isak could have said, “The reason I’ve been acting so strange lately is that I found out Donald Trump is my uncle,” and Jonas would have been like munch munch munch.

I think the fact that Jonas reacts so nonchalantly when he says, “Is it me?” helps Isak quite a bit. Not only is it a funny comment, but like … if Jonas is so casual about Isak potentially liking him, then surely he can’t be that bothered by Isak liking another boy? And Jonas is just like, “What, am I completely unattractive?” Which again, is a joke but also lets Isak know that Jonas is chill, he’s not worried about Isak the predatory gay guy perving on Jonas or any of those homophobic stereotypes.

And obviously, this scene is hilarious if you’ve seen S1 and are calling bullshit on Isak not liking Jonas. No, Jonas, I don’t like you! WTF! Bruh, you set fire to Eva’s social standing and her relationship because you had a crush on her boyfriend.

But man, you can see Isak lighten up sooooo much after this exchange. He got the words out there and Jonas didn’t react badly, they managed to joke about it, so far everything is the same between them. The happiness in his eyes is observable.

I don’t think Jonas had completely guessed Isak was gay, or dating a boy, until this moment. I feel like there were a number of things that seemed odd to him, including that random guy who brought Isak his hat and was at the lockers with him, that Jonas filed away as “huh” moments and that are starting to slot into place with Isak’s admission here. We know that Jonas recognized the “left your hat in the cafeteria” story as bullshit (clarified in the script), so he’s been picking up here and there on things that seem unusual or out of place.

You can see Jonas mouth “Even” to himself after Isak says the name, and it’s such a small gesture but it’s the sweetest thing? Like he’s making sure to absorb this detail, or that he’s finally putting a name to a face, and to the cause of all Isak’s weirdness lately. There’s a warmth to it.

Lmao, Jonas saying Even is a good-looking guy and Isak reacting with laughter and bafflement. It’s a silly moment but Jonas is kind of complimenting Isak here, like hey, good taste, or hey, congrats on bagging such a hottie. Not to mention he’s showing how chill he is with talking about guys’ attractiveness, something Isak himself struggles with. Of course there are higher stakes for Isak to admit a guy is hot when he’s actually gay and Jonas is a straight dude, meaning it’s not as loaded of a statement, but still, it’s positive for Isak to be around guys who can just say other guys look good and have it not be the end of the world.

Also, this is probably how Jonas would react if Isak was telling him he liked a girl. You like Emma? She’s hot. Letting Isak in on all these bro bonding moments, not excluding him from this social exchange just because he’s not straight.

And I’m really fond of Jonas being like “What am I supposed to say?” and Isak saying, “I don’t know myself.” To them, they’re not a PSA. They don’t know the “right” words for when someone comes out. They’re just two friends eating kebab on a bench together. Because yeah, there are obvious wrong ways to react to someone coming out, but there’s also no approved script for what to say. Each person is going to be different. I mean, if Jonas made a big deal of it, like, “You are my friend no matter what and I support you,” it would have been a nice gesture, certainly, but that’s not really the relationship he and Isak have, so this would make it artificial and maybe a little awkward. In fact, not having a pre-approved coming out script is a good thing, because Jonas not knowing what to say means he draws on his normal banter and conversation with Isak, which makes it better! That way he’s just treating it like a typical conversation. By reacting casually and not making it a big deal at all, Jonas gives Isak what he needs - nothing is going to change between them, not really. Considering that one of Isak’s greatest fears is that people will think of him differently and judge him a certain way if they know he’s gay, this must be a massive relief to him.

Additionally, imagine what a relief it is for Isak to be able to give Jonas a rundown of what’s happening with Even. To get off his chest the problems with him and Even; Isak don’t know what’s going on with Even, who has a girlfriend. This is the benefit of him coming out and being honest with Jonas. Suddenly all this shit he’s been bottling up, unable to talk to anyone about, can go through another set of ears. Jonas doesn’t even need to give him great advice or anything. Isak just needs someone to talk to.

Can Isak take some of his father’s guilt money and buy a phone case? Please???

Isak swallows when he realizes what the note in his pocket is. In-universe, it’s really a coincidence that he found the note right after talking to Jonas, but thematically, I don’t think it’s irrelevant that Isak’s bleak week ends after he opens up to someone.

THIS DRAWING. Gosh, it punches me right in the heart? First of all, adorable, and I love that Even always draws Isak with the snapback, and cartoon Even’s hair, and how cartoon Isak is slightly smaller than cartoon Even. But this is actually quite creative and clever of Even, too. I mean, he could have left him a more straightforward note or drawing, but he takes an original concept that’s so them to create something very memorable.

Even has taken several things that are relevant and specific to Isak-and-Even - the inside joke of the cheese toast with cardamom - and a weightier concept that was important to Isak - the parallel universes. Remember, Even wasn’t a fan of the parallel universes when Isak first mentioned them! However, here he’s using them in a way that’s more positive, he’s seeing the benefit of Isak’s worldview.

But what gets me about this sketch is the longing behind it. We have the reality, Isak eating his plain cheese toast alone. And we have the potential other reality, Isak and Even eating their far superior cardamom cheese toast together. It’s something of a kindness to Isak, telling him that somewhere they are together, but also expressing Even’s own desire to be with him. He does want to be with Isak. It’s just that they can’t be together, for mysterious reasons. It’s so bittersweet! They’re together, just not this Isak and this Even.

Even drew this for Isak after seeing him broken and depressed in the cafeteria. I think he really did not know how badly Isak was going to take the breakup and wanted to give him some comfort. This drawing is evidence of Even’s second thoughts.

Lol, and Jonas can’t know the full significance of this sketch, but it doesn’t take a genius to recognize that Even’s giving him handmade drawings of him and Isak together, and to see that for what it is.

“He needs to break up with his girlfriend.” Awww. What a sweet, encouraging thing, to say, and Isak smiles to himself. Things are coming up Valtersen.

This clip is when the hearts on the website turned into rainbow colors, and that alone makes me want to weep. I believe this was one of the most liked clips ever, and logically I do think it was because people were like, “Oooo, pretty!” and hitting that like button to see the rainbow, but I mean. This clip also deserves it.

The fact that this scene is based off a real story also makes me want to cry.

This week was so bleak and hard to get through, Isak just was in a terrible place, and I cannot express the release that the audience felt watching this scene.

The music over the credits is “Express Yourself” by N.W.A. Excellent both because, yeah, express yourself and you’ll be happier, Isak! Be true to who you are! And because Isak had previously mentioned N.W.A. as an example of “music you want to listen to when you want to feel tough.” This is Isak feeling pretty damn confident after things went right.

General Comments

There was very little social media this week, which makes total sense considering the state Isak is in. He’s cut off from all of his social connections.

One of Isak’s most redeeming qualities is his ability to learn from his mistakes. In an example from this week’s social media, he’s apologetic to Eskild in a text message. Eskild ribs him about what Isak said, saying that Eskild is busy working on a mascara collection with Kylie Jenner, before saying that they’re cool, basically. I think Eskild did take Isak’s comments pretty hard but realizes that Isak is young and insecure and not unable to learn.

There is an IG photo from Jonas with Mahdi and Magnus - boy squad minus Isak, just to rub it in (though I doubt that’s why Jonas posted it, to hurt Isak, but it does show how disconnected Isak is).

One of the other few text convos is between Kollektivet, where Isak only supplies one line but Linn mentions taking sleeping pills. For like a day or two, the fan theories were all about Isak stealing her sleeping pills in order to get some rest and accidentally ODing and needing to go to the hospital or something similar.

Isak’s mom sends him a religious text at almost 2 in the morning on Friday, hours before he comes out to Jonas. On the one hand, her texts are another source of stress to Isak. On the other, this text is … actually pretty positive? It’s a Bible verse, Joshua 1:9, which is:

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

A lot of Isak’s mom’s texts are about sin, they’re negative and judgmental in nature. This one, by contrast, is affirming. So I think that, even with Mama Valtersen’s texts being a cause for alarm, it’s possible that this text helped Isak before he came out to Jonas. Even with Isak not being a religious person, a general message of being strong and courageous can be an inspiring thing. If that’s the case, then I like that his mom could end up being a source of comfort to her son even prior to episode 9.

#skam reactions #skam season 3 #skam #isak valtersen #evak

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whoaimhellatrash · 5 years

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I don't really know where to put this except here but I need to get everything out. I'm putting it under a cut, no one needs to read it, but I just need to yell into the void for a while and on the off chance someone else is in this deserted Denny's parking lot at 4 am then cool beans you do you.

I have spent the last 4-5 years of my life doing nothing but self exploration. Honestly I’m sure a lot of people can relate, mid-late middle school to late high school is when people actually stop for a minute and think “who am i?”

So many of these thoughts are influenced by the world around you, which in our society is so goddamn dangerous honestly. With so many influences like toxic masculinity, the disrespect of women, the racism the phobia the models and photoshop, it’s all so toxic for people just trying to discover who we really are. I think my identity was so fucking out of left field and so new and so wrong for others that it put me so harshly through the wringer that I earned self awareness. Through the immense pain and pressure, I was forced to stop and think, to consider, how much of this is me and how much of this is my parents, my society, how much of myself has been put here by others instead of molded by myself. Like a piece of coal turning to a diamond by sheer pressure, my perspective of myself and the world drastically changed.

It’s honestly still changing, and i doubt it’ll stop, I don’t want it to stop. I want to keep changing my views with the times, I want to keep discovering new things about myself and others, but this desire came with a price, as did my self awareness.

Back in mid to late middle school, my memory is muddled I wont lie, I had discovered sexuality and the fluidity of it, or at least a small piece of it. It was so mind boggling to me that at 7 in the morning, on the bus ride to school, I told a senior from my neighborhood about it with just this sparkling delight of curiosity and excitement in my eyes. I remember reading, on that dark, quiet bus, the definitions of bisexual, homosexual, demi, and pan which i ended up identifying with the latter for a long time.

This moment, these precious few moments on a bus, was the first push of a snowball down a long hill of self discovery. I remember coming out as pan in my school and watching, one by one, several more of my friends come out as Bi and gay. It was something i reveled in, knowing that I helped that cascade. I was lucky, not being faced with bullying for my sexuality in particular, but I hadn’t come out to anyone truly important and I wouldn’t for a while.

When I met my best friend (going on 6-7 years now) they introduced me to the idea of trans. I had never put thought into it before but I decided that maybe I wanted to try it out. Deep down in the pit of my gut, i knew i hated who i was. I wasn’t comfortable, i wasn’t..right. I always pulled my hair up in a pony tail, i couldn’t stand it being down, i never wore dresses or skirts unless i was forced to do so for a dance, i just couldnt stand the femininity of it. I liked the power and confidence of looking good but it just..wasnt the right kind. It never felt like it was right. I constantly wore baggy hoodies to hide my body. I thought maybe it was my weight, I starved myself, as in only eating a few cheerios and an apple maybe for an entire 30 hours. I fainted in class from low glucose levels. Nothing I tried helped and in fact made everything so much worse.

I was finally ready to try something else. I was genderfluid at first, i tried they/them and i found I liked it, but when i tried he/him I thrived on it. It felt comfortable and right and I never wanted to give it up. I never came out to my middle school friends.

My freshman year of high school I had decided that I was going to live out all four years as Dave. As myself, as someone who i was comfortable with, then once those four years were up, I would go back into the closet and live my life as the perfect little girl, the sweet, precious golden child like I had been forced to be for all of my life. It was at this time that my depression was at it’s worst point.

8-9 grade became a dead blur. It was around this time that my sister was diagnosed with depression. My mom knew nothing, she genuinely believed some fast food would make my sister not sad anymore. My sister began going to therapy. After a long battle with myself and my deeply ingrained desire to be the perfect kid who never is a bother or a pest, I asked my mom for therapy too. My therapist was not good for me, i didn’t realize what my problems actually were, she was treating surface issues, not the source. I realize that now and I’ve expressed this fact to my current therapist, but at the time I wasn’t aware and I had no way to ask for a different therapist because apparently it was “So hard finding a therapist to treat me oh and so much harder to find a psychiatrist.” I understand that my mom doesn’t want to feel as though she’s failed, that her child is suffering, though I don’t believe she understood or understands that although I’m suffering, the best remedy is to let me have help. But, on the other hand, being so put down, so ostracized, so passive aggressively hated for wanting help stood to do nothing but encourage me to isolate myself and develop destructively dependent relationships on my friends.

I got medication at some point, according to others it turned me into a flat zombie, I remember nothing around this time. It stabilized my mood but it stabilized it at the lowest possible point. It was somewhere in this time that I attempted suicide, I self harmed, I was destructive and even more so than I had been in middle school with my starving. I fought day in and day out about my gender. I fought with teachers who used it against me, students who didn’t believe me, and for a long time I was all alone except for the few friends I had who were all over the country.

I felt like I was living a double life, i still feel like it. I’m Dave with everyone else, and a perfect daughter to my family. In sophomore and junior year I picked myself up. I found more friends, more of them began to question their gender identity too. Whether I started this self discovery early or if I was the one that sparked theirs, the world was gaining color and clarity. Part of it may be caused by the fact that I had quit my meds cold turkey (in hindsight not a good idea, dont ever do that kids, it’s dangerous), I came out to my mom then my dad as Pan (didn’t go over well but I was out) and I had begun to surround myself with people I really enjoyed and who were a much more positive influence on me.

I have so many positive memories of my friends, going to concerts, being idiots and smoking weed, hanging out every morning and just talking. As hard as everything was, I can say that I had times where I was genuinely happy. But every day, every single day, I had internal battles going on. Fighting tooth and nail not to relapse and start self harming or starving myself, fighting to get out of bed in the morning and go through my routine. Every morning I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at my binder, the thing that was helping me survive yet destroying me too. I sat and stared and wondered “how long am I going to have to put this on? Will I ever be comfortable enough to stop?”

A lot of things changed. My mood increased bit by bit, I found my own coping mechanisms, I learned how to be marginally healthier, my grades picked up, I became an unstoppable force, fueled by determination and pride and spite, I was going to succeed because I wanted to. Because I wanted to speak my mind, to not be a doormat, I wanted to be strong and powerful and to have a grip on my own life.

Yet, even with my newfound confidence, I was still struggling so deeply. Mid sophomore year my sister started to transition. It hurt. It hurt so deeply and profoundly. This woman, who had been nothing less than a destructive hurricane in my life, who had done nothing but destroy because that’s the only side of me she ever showed, was somehow being given the gift of transitioning.

I had fought with myself, tried to convince myself that if my sister was being given support, i would too. Besides, my mom had already found out because I was being called Dave by all my teachers and friends.

I didn’t get the reception I was hoping for.

“You know if you pick this lifestyle your entire life is going to be harder. Everything is going to be worse, you’re going to have to struggle so much more through life. You might never reach the success that you want to reach.” I was devastated. I basically crawled back into the closet, my gender coming up sparingly.

Everything leading up to this time in my life, everything i’ve shared, everything I haven’t, all of it has led up to this and now I’m at a crossroads. It’s the later end of my senior year. College is right around the corner, so are jobs and careers and life, and now I have a choice. Maybe I don’t.

When I started high school, when I decided I would come out to my teachers and my friends, when I decided to live this life, I also decided I would box myself up by the end of it all, to move forwards in life as a good little girl after this, to get it all out of my system now. Now I see, now I’ve decided that that’s not an option, it never was an option. I’ve been growing so much, and I don’t intend to stop, I’ve learned ways to help myself, how not to be so self destructive, how to be kinder and gentler to myself and others. I want to be someone who is compassionate and caring but still strong and not a pushover. I think i’ve begun to achieve that, I still have lots more to do and a long way to go but I’m getting myself help, I’m actively trying in therapy, I’m being more self aware in my relationships, I’m building bonds and trust between the people I care about and I’m trying to make my life better, but I can’t go through building this new life while denying myself such a massive aspect of who I am?

Who am I going to be?

How long can I live this lie of who I am on one hand while trying to define myself on the other?

The world says I have time but my heart says it’s ticking away.

#tw suicide #tw // negative #gender #trans #trans story #tw depression #pupper barks #ignore me in my sorry sap corner

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thedesperatehousehusband · 3 years

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Little Things Mean a Lot

Recently, Christon, a friend and classmate (elementary, middle, high, all the dang schools) posted a picture on Facebook. It was a picture of someone from our hometown. A guy named Jason who was in the Class of 1991, like Christon. I was in the Class of 1992 but there’s overlap and people intersect, which I’m sure is the case most places. The picture was from her 10-year class reunion.

The point is I have not thought about Jason in many years. I was aware that Jason passed away. I’m not sure how or any specifics surrounding his death but I did at least know he was no longer with us. But seeing this picture took me down a road of reflection. I reminisced with myself about Jason and was reminded of a couple of instances where he either very purposefully or inadvertently, I don’t know which, created refuge for me from bullying and shitty behavior.

Jason and I met and got to know each other when I was in 6th grade and he was in 7th grade. Our intersection was orchestra. I played the viola (adequately). He played the cello (quite well). Orchestra and band brought 6th and 7th graders together in one class unlike math, science, etc. But that tended to mean it mucked up your schedule a bit in other areas so you probably had another fucked up period when you were with 7th graders. For me, it meant I had to take PE with primarily 7th graders as a 6th grader.

PE at this stage of schooling was anxiety inducing regardless of the makeup of the class. It’s when PE went from being a fun co-ed special a couple of times a week to a daily gender-specific nightmare that involved showering, a PE uniform and a lot of locker room shenanigans.

Being a year younger than a bunch of other boys at that point in life is sort of a big deal. Some people are growing a beard. Some people look like babies. Some people have armpits that look like an untamed yeti. Some people have zero hair anywhere other than their head. What a fucking clusterfuck to ask all these boys to shower together. Jesus.

This is not a major reveal so you don’t need to buckle up but let me just say that I was not great at sports. As much as I enjoy being a spectator, the actual act of playing sports is not where I excel. I’ll fuck around with kickball and softball but I’m still not good. So no one wanted me on their team and I got taunted and teased a lot. Again, be it knowing or unknowing, Jason extended an olive branch and took me into his group of other boys who were also not particularly athletic in nature. Scrawny kids. Nerdy kids. The gay one (ones? I don’t know. Maybe. It doesn’t matter). It was a safe space and we just did our thing and tried to stay together.

The locker room was a different story and you sort of had to go your own way. Shower quicky, change and collect yourself. I don’t share this to elicit pity but thinking back on the awful things that people said to me in the locker room is challenging to reflect upon. It’s draining to think about all I was covering up and hiding and kept hidden as a result of name calling, giggling, pointing, teasing. Ooof.

But Jason was helpful and saved me from going to dark places. A safe haven in a sea of hateful, junevile bullshit. Was it blatantly hateful? Probably not (for the most part). The ignorance of youth is a real thing and I want to believe that as most of these people aged into adulthood they became less jerky. But who knows and it’s water under the bridge at this point.

It’s really powerful what stays with you upwards of 35 years later. To my face and knowingly, I have been called a f%g 3 times. I cannot tell you how much I hate that word. God only know how many times behind my back but that has no impact on me because I didn’t hear it. I remember the exact people and exact places where this happened. Once when I was in 7th grade. Twice when I was a junior in high school. Sadly all in Kankakee school district buildings but, again, kids say stupid things. The incidents in high school are particularly vivid memories. Thankfully one-on-one interactions as opposed to big audiences but nevertheless powerful moments that remain and linger regardless of the passing of time. I do not wish those boys (now 48-year old men) ill will but I do hope they are better men than they were boys. I also hope that if they have an LGBTQ child they treat them with nothing but love and respect.

Thinking about Jason has reminded me of how little I truly knew about him. I guess I would say we were friends but I never went to his house. He never came to mine. I don’t know if he had siblings. People come into our lives and leave them very haphazardly. I’m thankful for knowing Jason then and for what he did to help me through awkward times. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t look back on middle school and high school with hatred. I truly enjoyed that period of time. Most people in my personal class were very kind to me. Oddly, it was certain people a year older and a year younger who sometimes acted like assholes. We all have scars and wounds but I don’t think of myself as being scarred or wounded.

My point is this: don’t underestimate the power of a little gesture. That time in 6th grade when some guy named Jason who played the cello asked if I wanted to join him for PE warm-ups and to play HORSE has stayed with me a long ass time.

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standlikeastarfish · 7 years

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Reintegrating My Body and My Mind

A personal essay about violation and healing.

[Read more]

Trigger warnings: panic attacks, anxiety, sexual assault, violence

My therapist recently pointed out that I talk about my body as if it’s a separate entity from my concept of my self. I often feel like it’s separate—especially during panic attacks when it feels like my body is attacking me. When my body shakes, when my hands go numb, when i feel nauseous, when it feels like my throat is closing up, I ask myself: why is this body doing this to me? Why is it trapping me? While writing this, I’m currently in a state of calm reflection, and can now see that maybe my body is trying to tell me something when it does this. Maybe I should listen. And furthermore, at the core of this panic response is really the brain pulling the strings—and the brain is absolutely me. So really, I’M trying to tell myself something.

I’ve had panic attacks for as long as I can remember, but they became more frequent when I was 12 years old. The first years I spent learning how to cope with them, the next few years I spent learning how panic attacks worked and why I had them, and this past year I’ve been working on having more control over the anxiety and my body. This process includes digging deep into why I feel like I don’t have control, and frequently this sort of thinking has resurfaced several moments that I’ve felt violated and sexually assaulted where I’ve given up my body to others. For the record, I don’t think my panic attacks and the moments of violation are unrelated.

We are currently on the edge of a potential cultural shift, led by the wave of survivors of sexual assault speaking out against powerful and famous men. They are doing heavy-lifting to help reframe the way our society views violence and assault. They are saying no to any discomfort or harm, and they are taking back control of their bodies and their futures by speaking out. They have empowered me to want to take back control of my body. I want to revisit moments that I had previously written off as “weird” or “just something that happened to me” as acts of violence. Even though I felt awful during these moments, I would tell myself that it wasn’t a big deal and to stop feeling so hurt. By invalidating my emotions during these moments, I taught myself to disconnect how my body felt and what my mind was telling me—a body/mind divide.

The next few paragraphs are these moments. I write this down on this platform for a few reasons: I believe writing this down is a step in the direction of reintegrating my mind and my body by acknowledging and validating the moments of discordance and therefore addressing the potential source of my panic attacks. I also believe that to write it down is to confront it, and to write it down in a (pseudo)public space is to have witnesses who offer a secondary acknowledgement I can’t give myself.

Again- trigger warning.

When I was 3 or 4, I had an inguinal hernia operation. I had no idea what a hernia was. I had no idea what surgery was. All I knew was that I had to go to the doctor a lot and he’d pull my pants down and touch me there. My parents tried explaining it to me and comforting me but I remember not understanding exactly what they were saying. I honestly believed they were going to let doctors remove my penis and I didn’t know why. The day of the surgery they drove me to the hospital very very early in the morning. I remember feeling terrified and my parents were rushing me because we had to be on time. We got to the hospital and the nurses brought me to a room full of other children in hospital beds. Several adults standing over me told me to strip and go into one of the beds. I didn’t want to get naked. I remember standing there crying and a nurse started taking my clothes off for me. I remember feeling helpless. I finally got into the bed and the next thing I know I was tired and falling asleep. When I woke up I was attached to a machine and my parents were there and I was getting gifts. I didn’t know why i deserved gifts—it wasn’t my birthday and I didn’t do anything to deserve them. It was even weirder because in the past anytime I got gifts, my twin also got gifts because we share the same birthday, but this time my brother wasn’t getting anything. This was the first time I felt like my body was not just mine.

I think about this sometimes when I pass a hospital.

When I was around 10, i was at a museum with my mom. It might've been the Whitney or the Guggenheim. I had wandered off for a minute and a museum guard found me. Instead of asking where my parents were, he grabbed me and got down on a knee and held me close. Then he started kissing my cheek, saying I was a very cute boy. I don't remember if he was trying to move from my cheek to my lips. Suddenly my mom found me and screamed at him "what the hell are you doing to my son", she pulled me away from him harshly and fast walked me out of the area. I don't remember what happened after that. But I do remember for months I would scrub my cheek in the shower, trying to scrub off the stranger. I was so ashamed that this man did that so I didn't tell anyone. I don't even know if I talked to my mom about it ever.

I think about this sometimes when I go to a museum.

A few years later, I started searching for answers for why I was attracted to guys my age online. A decade and a half ago, when you tried typing in “gay” into google, you either got porn, “Am I Gay” online quizzes, or chatrooms. I started checking out the chatrooms, and there I talked to people both my age and older about what it meant to be gay. I was too eager for validation and acceptance that I ignored the warning signs, and was swept up into talking to much older predators. They complimented me and allowed me to talk openly about this otherwise shameful attraction to guys. Gradually these men asked more and more questions and at the same time I set up a fake email account with a fake name to make a fake Skype account to talk to them on webcam. Soon there were a few men who I’d be talking to late at night, and they asked me to do things for them on camera. At school I was constantly bullied at even the slightest feminine or queer action/comment, so I repressed any feelings until the nighttime when I could stop pretending. By doing what these men wanted, I felt like this part of me was being cared for and seen, but I also felt intense panic and disgust with myself—which are severely different feelings to feel at the same time. I realized much later that they were using me and exploiting my need to be accepted, and that giving up my body digitally like that has significantly affected my relationship to others and myself. Sometimes I google usernames of the men and see that they’re still active on forums, probably preying on young boys like me. One time when I was older I even went into a chatroom and tried warning boys about the men, telling them to leave the chatrooms because it’s not worth it. I don’t know if they went back to it.

I think about this sometimes when I log onto Skype.

In college I dated a girl who loved me. At this time I identified as bi, but she wanted me to be “just straight”. When she wanted to have sex and I didn’t (which happened quite often), she questioned if I loved her or not and got upset. So I ended up having sex with her a lot when I didn’t want to in order to show her that I did love her. I was afraid if I said no she would get angry. I would get into a blank state of mind and lend her my body. One night I was upset and I was crying hard but she still went for it. I said no a number of times, but we still had sex that night. Eventually, it was a messy, emotional, and scary break up.

I think about this sometimes when I talk to her.

During my last week of college I was invited to a party at a friends place. I was upset that night for various reasons and went alone. When I was there I ran into a guy who had been hitting on me for the past two years but I had voiced my discomfort previously. He saw that I was upset and asked if I was drinking. I said no because I didn’t like the hard liquor in the kitchen. He said he had a bottle of rosé in his car that I could have if I wanted. I said sure why not. We got in his car and I started drinking it. He told me I could drink as much as I want. He put on music and I thought that was nice. It tasted so good, I hadn’t realized I drank half the bottle. I’m usually drunk off one cider or one glass of wine, so by this point I was started to get really drunk. He started driving and I freaked out telling him not to drive because he was drunk and i was asking where we were going. He said he didn’t drink that much and said to his apartment. By the time we got there I couldn’t walk straight. We went into his room and he started kissing me. I said no sex. He kept pushing for it. I said no. That’s about when I blacked out. I remember waking up in the middle of sex and freaking out wondering where the hell I was and what I was doing. I pushed him off me, put on my clothes and ran outside to a pond nearby and cried my eyes out.

I think about this sometimes when I see rosé wine.

I am a survivor of sexual assault. It will probably take me a long time to be comfortable in my body, but I know I will be. And I know my anxiety is my mind sending signals to my body trying to protect me. I know it’s me. I have come to appreciate my panic attacks as a defense mechanism created by my mind. Instead of trying to cope with the panic attack, I now ask myself why I’m having it. What triggered it? What was I thinking about? With this information I can then test hypotheses about what is bothering me and attempt to process those specific events and emotions. My panic attacks are pressure points that help me see where the problems are. Without them, I would be punching in the dark. I’m grateful for my family and friends who are endlessly supportive of me. Without them, it would be even darker. I hope that people continue to speak out against their abusers and the culture of sexual assault in general, even though it’s so difficult and courageous. This feels like a critical moment in our mass understanding of violence and harm, and I look forward to the day when everyone feels like they have control over their bodies.

#me too

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fipindustries · 7 years

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All the novels i (tried) to write in my life.

abecause why not?

K-404 (unfinished): written at 15.

a sci-fi thriller mainly inspired by me watching an out of context scene from alien 3. Set in a larger shared universe that i had been building out of short stories back then. The story is about a space prison where they would sent people who couldnt be sent to regular prison because their crimes were too ambiguous. The main idea was that this was a prison of intellectuals, rather than of violent criminals, and through the characters i would wax about my philosophical and political views, views that i had gotten as a teenager who read existentialism for begginers and watchmen and v from vendetta, you can imagine the quality of the text. At one point a nanite container would go haywire inside the prison and then a grey goo event would start consuming the station so the four main characters would have to find the way to escape the prison before it was consumed by the nanomachines. The main characters would be a robot who pretended to kill his creator so everyone would be afraid of him , a female serial killer with aids who killed by sleeping around with people, a guy who tried to kill himself by jumping off a building and just so happened to fall on the guy who bullied him in high school, and just some random douchebag with nothing interesting to him besides being the POV character.

Kratae (unfinished): written at 16.

imagine X-men mixed with avatar the last airbender. An ancient fantasy world where some people are born with superpowers and chased away because of it, the people with superpowers get together and fund their own nation, called Kratae. Hilariously this story was inspired by me reading eclipse, from the twilight saga. In this world if someone with powers uses their power on you then you also get powers, so there is this couple and the guy gets powers and then the girl rejects him so he decides to get revenge by using his teleportation power on her and she develops her own powers and becomes a pariah and looses her entire life. The story starts with her trying to find the guy so she can kill him but when she does find him it turns out someone already killed him before her and then the story turns into this crime mystery where she will try to find the person that killed the guy she wanted to kill. It had this huge ensemble cast that included a lesbian time traveling history teacher and her street urchin aprentice (AKA the next season of doctor who) , two gay war veterans who met each other fighting in opposite sides of the same war, a creep with a crush on the protagonist and many others. There was also on top of all this a giant conspiracy trying to stifle research into free energy, the history of the world and the political dynamics between the faction of the people with powers and the people without.

The Demiurge (semi-unfinished): written at age 17.

basically a huge rip off of sandman.

imagine if god was one of us. If god instead of living above us in a cloud decided to live as a human and to grow old and die as one and the get reincarnated and then start all over again all throughout history, and jesus christ was the one time he tried to tell the truth to anyone. And THEN in modern times something goes wrong with the reincarnation process and he only realizes he is god once he becomes 16, and he is a white, straight, cisgender male, and he just happens to share all of my opinions on life and the universe and religion?????

a lot of this book is just me having fun while creating a whole cosmology that fits my view of the world out of pop-christianity, there are things like yawhe being imprisioned in hell in a cage made out of logic next to calvin, there is a part when adam and eve turn out to be also death and mother earth, and also Time and Space AND ALSO cain and abel are lucifer and Yaweh, there is a part where we see the antropomorphic representation of the fine arts giving birth to a ninth brother: comics. At some point the story makes a 180 and changes focus from god, who dissapeared for mysteryous reasons, to his best friend, some teenage girl who dies in the middle of the story and then we see her ghost searching across the universe to find him and bring her back to life.

i say its semi unfinished because at the last moment i got bored of it and simply slapped together a sudden ending for it out of nowhere.

Eigen (finished): written at age 19.

Eigen is one of my proudest achivements in a way. Written right after gorging myself on Portal and QUBE and the cube, and particularly inspired by the bathroom in the cyber at the corner of my street, i decided to write my own story about a guy trapped inside a grid-like onthological maze with a robot voice as a companion and a weird old guy chasing him trying to kill him.

thing is, i was studying advanced algebra back then, you know, matrices, subspaces, eigenvalues, etc. and it was the second time i was doing that class because i had failed at it the year before. So in order for me to learn the subject better i would take everything i learned in class and use it as inspiration for the story i was writting, ortogonalization, matix multiplication, transposition, etc.

i actually passed the course at the end of the year and i was fucking stoked about that.

at the end of the story there is a bunch of epic twists where it turns out the maze had been built by the main character who suffers amnesia, the old man was the main character from the future and the robot voice was actually the MC’s partner who also suffered from amnesia and was convinced she was a robot, and was trapped in the surveillance room for the maze. they never escape the maze.

Bigender (unfinished): written at age 21.

now this i think was my shortest attempt at wrtting a novel which i was really dissapointed about at the time since i had spent most of 2013 working the story in my head but when it came the time to actually put it all on paper i could barely get to the end of the second chapter.

the story is about a young girl who one day wakes up and discovers she turned into a boy. She is ovbiously distraught about this but it quickly reverts. Afterwards she decides to investigate if she’s the only one who can do this and it turns out not, there is a documentary about a person that also had the ability to genderbend, so she seeks this person and ask their advice as to how to manage a life with this condition. The teacher turns out to be some antisocial jerk who’d rather not have any kind of human interaction with anyone so it’s up to our spunky protagonist to break this ol’ scrooge out of their shell.

thing is i had no real plot here, it was going to be mostly a slow burn character study about the relationship between these two people and how they deal with their genderbending each in their own ways. this didnt work out because back then i felt really inadequate when it came to writing the life of other people with different experiences from my own, the teacher was supposed to have a boyfriend, the girl was supposed to have a bunch of lady friends, etc. so that’s why i never went to far with it.

F.I.P. Industries (finished): written at age 21.

ah, my magnum opus. the first novel i ever wrote. my crowning achivement.

and all it took was for me to abandon my career and read the entirety of wildbow’s ouvre for me to complete it. and this is not a joke. I doubt that i would have ever written this had i not lifted wildbow’s style and structure wholesale. The basic premise of, ok, we have this largely inadequate MC, let’s drop them in an impossible situation and see how they manage, was what fueled the writting of this book.

The story is about a college student who cant finish his thesis and is desperatly looking for a job (fucking prophetic, goddamn) and so he unwittingly gets hired by a company that works as a front for a cabal of mad scientist who are using the power of synergy and networking to take over the world, working on a dozen different projects at the same time and trying to see what happenes when you combine them into bigger more complex projects.

what is so important to me about this story is that i came up with it when i was 11 years old and i promised my self that some day i would make that story real. You guys have no idea how many false starts i had with this story. there was a time this was supposed to be a webcomic but it never went beyond a couple of strips. again, very much like wildbow with worm.

Multiple story arcs, a sprawling ensemble cast, a bittersweet ending, this story has it all and is one of my proudest works.

The empire of tomorrow (finished): written at age 22.

oh shit, we’re leaving behind the one word titles, i must be finally growing up as a writer!

The empire of tomorrow was a source of guilt and anxiety for me on some level because i remember reading fun home and are you my mommy from allison bechdel and afterwards finiding a lot of “incredibly problematic” themes in the story and being really upset at this.

the story is about a dystopian world where there was some sort of apocalypse and there is this feudal lord that controls one of the last remaining cities with an iron fist, so ofcourse the plucky rebellion comes up with the following plan:

to steal some of his super advanced technology and hack together a device very similar to the one in eternal sunshine of a spotless mind and use it on the feudal lord to project themselves into the lord’s mind when he was a teen and try and guide him into becoming a better person. Throughout the story is made ambiguous if they are rewritting his memories or actually going into the past, there is a lot of wild speculation about how the time travel works in this universe.

the main focus of the story is the relationship between the woman sent to do the mission and the feudal lord, which is the classical “she is a tough, no nonsense, paladin/ he is the snarky, slimy douchebag with a heart of gold/ will they, wont they” dynamic (spoiler alert: they kind of do).

thing is, mid-way through the story i throw this weird tangent towards reproductive rights and abortion and transexuality and i get the distinct feeling that the conclussions to where the story goes on these topics are not exactly kosher, but im not sure, i’ve never really shown this story to anyone besides my grandma who aparently loved it.

fun fact, for those who read disregarding reality, this story was the first time i used the character of erik, i reworked him fro the comic of course but not as much as you’d think.

Fan.Tastic (unfinished): written at age 22.

this was the point where i started to actually write my works entirely in english and upload them to the internet.

the story is set inside the internet, where the internet would be a physical place, following the rise and fall of a blogger who recently became tumblr famous.

again, im sure if someone who really cares about social justice issues took a look at this work they’d probably find a lot of things to be upset about, suffice to say in arc two of this story i show my own take on gamer gate and end up the story with the main character using every single slur i could think of towards her once friend and fucking off to 4chan.

the story was supposed to have 4 arcs, each one based on a website or piece of internet culture that i was involved in. The first arc was Deviant art, the second arc was Tumblr, the third arc was going to be 4chan and the fourth arc was going to be LessWrong.

thing is i found i only had things to say about the first two, the third one i had already said all i had to say on my /co/nrad comic and the fourth one i was still experiencing and thus i couldnt properly make a retrospective about.

it kind of boggles the mind how much work i put into this, i wanted to make it a true multimedia experience so i would invent all of this fandoms about things that dont actually exists and photshop tumblr posts and fanart and rotten tomato scores about these things to make it feel all a little more real. i dont think i ever went that far for any other story i made.

WE ARE MAKING A GAME (unfinished): written at age 23.

this, more than an actual novel is more like a series of scripts about this hypothetical webseries i’d like to do some day filmed in the style of the fourth panel from penny arcade, or the office, or the thick of it, or nirvanna the band the show, or, you know what? i think enough people have done that style now i dont feel like doing it so much.

Any way the story is about this popular girl in high school who one day decides she wants to make a videogame and thus she teams up with the nerd kid to do it, as time goes on we find out there is actually a lot more behind the popular girls than we thought at first.

the whole plot is just the dialogs between these two (and evetually three) as they come up with the game, right there, in real time, in front of your very eyes. What’s fun about this is that the game (called Maxplosive) actually shows up in the story of Fan.Tastic, except there it is this cult classic children’s movie.

i managed to finish what would basically be “season 1″ of the story but then i just lost interest since i was busy making my own actual game for college and i hadnt progressed much beyond what the characters in the story had and so i felt i couldnt properly write from experience.

i wrote the first chapter from season 2 recently in what was an extravagant moment of nostalgia from my part. I swear i NEVER go back to work on a story that i abandoned and i truly dont know how that happened.

The harpsichord crew (unfinished): written at age 23.

a new first, first time i actually have my main character be black women, yes, i know, im the wokest, now bring all the pussy towards me please.

but joking aside, the harpsichord crew was supposed to be the sequel to F.I.P. industries and the logic was sound, i would grab all these disparate ideas that i had been acumulating for years and mesh them all together. My main inspiration behind it was Gurren Lagann, where we would have these people with no power come across this incredible device which would slowly allow them to grow bigger and stronger with time until they became the greatest super villains the world had ever seen.

The story is focused on patricia, an overworkd lawyer and Lilly, a pole dancer. one day lilly decides to become a supervillain after being inspired by the fallout that came from FIP industries technology going public and ends up draggin patricia long for the ride. As the went, in true anime fashion, the would acumulate this quirky supporting cast, each one with a fun and weird origin story.

i think the biggest downfall of this story is that, much like all of the unfinished stories on this list, it didnt have a particularly strong ending that i felt i HAD to get to and so i managed to get 3 chapters in and then i forgot about it.

There is a crack in the world (finished): written at age 24.

i think i wrote more than enough about this story.

suffice to say that a lot of horrible things happened to me during 2016 and it took me until may of 2017 to finally feel like i could process all of that and work through it in my art. There is a crack in the world is a miseable story filled with horror and despair and the feelings in the words are raw and bared straight from my heart.

this is something a never do by the way, to really use my emotions as direct fuel for the art that i make. ususally i use my art as a form of escapism but in here, well, i guess there were things that i was trying to escape from too, like the horrible reality of being unenployed in a city you just moved to, a different, more mundane kind of horror when compared to the one i went through the last year but a horror i wanted to escape from all the same.

point being, there is a crack in the world is weird in a lot of ways when compared to the other stories in this list and curiously the only one that resembles it in any way i’d say is Fan.Tastic for the cynicism and bitterness that fueled both stories inceptions.

Final conclussion.

well, there it is, i of course didnt include the myriad of short stories and comics that i made or tried to make, these stories hold a special place because i put some extra bit of effort in them, because every single one was a universe that i dedicated several weeks or months to craft and i’d like to think they say something about me. My therapist once said that the common thread between all of them is that on some level or another, they are all about someone feeling trapped and trying to escape from a situation. this was before WE ARE MAKING A GAME.

i wonder if the theme changed or evolved in some way.

#writing #me

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wiremagazine · 5 years

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OUTSHINE FILM FESTIVAL: FRED ROSSER TO RECEIVE THE VANGUARD AWARD

By Michael Bustamante & Rafa Carvajal | Photos provided by Fred Rosser III

Fred Rosser, also known as WWE professional wrestler Darren Young, will receive the Vanguard Award at the OUTshine Film Festival Closing Awards Ceremony on Sunday, April 28 at 8 p.m. Every year, a celebrity that has "demonstrated outstanding leadership and support of community equality, representation, and education" is chosen as the recipient of the honorary award. Fred came out in 2013, making him the first openly gay active WWE professional wrestler in history. He then founded the #BlocktheHate movement. According to Fred, "Being the first openly gay wrestler (in WWE), I've been able to encourage and inspire wrestling fans all over the world to chase their dreams. I've been able to show other LGBTQ athletes that they have a duty to instill confidence in the youth and lead by example."

Wire Magazine sat down with Fred Rosser to find out more about his career, and the mission of the #BlocktheHate movement.

Rafa Carvajal: Tell our readers about your career as a WWE professional wrestler. Fred Rosser: I started training to become a professional wrestler right out of high school and college in the fall of 2002. I researched a number of wrestling schools before deciding on Camp IWF in West Paterson, New Jersey. I used $2,000 of my own personal scholarship money to enroll in the wrestling school and didn't I tell my parents until about a year into my training. They had no idea. I was always the first one at wrestling school, and the last one to leave training four days a week. I caught on very quickly to the whole wrestling game. By the end of 2002, I made my professional debut and spent several years on the independent circuit grinding it out from 2003-2009 by traveling and making a name for myself in the Northeast area. I sometimes worked in front of 25 people just to get the experience. I did a plethora of tryouts for WWE during that time, having the door shut in my face so many times until my last tryout in Tampa, Florida. There, I paid to try out and out of 75 guys and girls from all over the world on May 4, 2009, I beat them all and earned my contract with WWE.

RC: Why did you decide to become a professional wrestler? FR: I saw my dad watching wrestling on television one day, and from then on I was hooked. My dad would always take me to wrestling shows at the once called Meadowlands arena in NJ, or smaller little high school gymnasium shows to watch the “WWF” wrestlers perform. It wasn’t like anything I’d seen before and just amazed me. I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a professional wrestler. I was so excited about it. Watching wrestling with my dad are memories I will never forget. Those were the days.

RC: What motivated you to come out as the first openly gay active WWE professional wrestler? FR: There's a number of reasons why I made the decision to come out publicly to the world. One being love, but also that I simply wanted to bring my boyfriend at the time to red carpet events. I wanted to bring him to WWE functions and be proud to bring him and show him off to the world. I wanted him to be able to experience what it's like traveling and being on the road five days a week, 300 days a year. Living together, I was tired of being affectionate behind closed doors, and then in public, all of that affection is suppressed and hidden like it never even existed.

RC: How did your personal and professional life change after you came out publicly? FR: Before I came out to the world, I had already come out to my mom and my best friend Nicholas (who I call Trouble) two years prior to my announcement. They were important to me. They were my support system and soundboard.

One moment, in particular, stands out to me when I came out professionally in WWE, which was when CM Punk came up to me in front of everyone, while iced up from head to toe, and told me to stand up, gave me a hug and said, "I heard your story and I'm very proud of you for being so courageous to make that move to come out. If anyone has a problem with it in the locker room, you let me know, and I'll take care of it." The same thing with Randy Orton, who gave me a big hug and much love, still to this day. I became even closer to the giants of our business like Big Show and Mark Henry. Just the love from those guys made it much easier to walk in a locker room without the fear and knowing that those particular guys have my back meant the world to me. I'll never forget how much love those guys showed me. Drew McIntyre, who wrestled Roman Reigns in this year's Wrestlemania 35, said this when I came out publicly: "History in our business will remember Darren Young (Fred Rosser) as a pioneer with the courage to say proudly, 'this is who I am,' and he's one hell of a talent and a man."

RC: What would you say to a young gay athlete interested in pursuing a career as a WWE professional wrestler? FR: This isn't easy! The one thing I will caution young hopefuls about is that if you really want to become a WWE superstar, you better love this. Breaking into the wrestling business is the toughest part. Watching it live is fun, but to actually get in the ring and train is a different animal. You have to invest a serious chunk of time into this industry. Actually, you have to invest every spare second that you have into this industry if you want to be the best. The time that it takes to get trained will eat up most of your free time. Then, once you're trained, you have to figure out a way to get better and how to get repetitions in front of a crowd. Since coming out to the world, I think I've made it easier for people who identify as LGBTQ to step up to the plate and get into the wrestling business. I sacrificed my WWE career and living my childhood dream to inspire others to chase their dreams of becoming a mega WWE star even if they're LGBTQ.

RC: Why did you decide to found the #BlocktheHate movement? FR: There is so much power in storytelling. I always say in my speaking engagements, "Don't die with a story in you. Tell it." That is why the #BlocktheHate movement I started is so important to me. We need more LGBTQ representation in the media. We need more out athletes. By that, I mean lots of different kinds of LGBTQ people living all different kinds of lives in front of and behind the camera.

RC: What is the mission of the #BlocktheHate movement and what are you looking to accomplish with it? FR: The #BlocktheHate movement started with me, first openly gay WWE superstar active on the roster. My goal has been to inspire others to be comfortable in their own skin. The point of this movement is to show that we all aren't as different from each other as we think. We all get bullied for one reason or another, but in order to be strong and successful, you must block the hate. At the end of the day, I want the #BlocktheHate posse, which represents equality for all, to be the next "middle finger" in a positive way.

RC: How do you feel about receiving the OUTshine Vanguard Award? FR: I'm thrilled to receive the OUTshine Vanguard Award for my relentless advocacy work and support of the LGBTQ community. I truly believe that my fight is much bigger than in the ring. My fight is outside of the ring continuing to fight bigotry, hatred, and be the voice of the voiceless members our LGBTQ community, or anyone that might get bullied for various reasons.

RC: Why do you think fighting for LGBTQ equality is so important? FR: Equality is very important to me because I feel that I have a responsibility of protecting and promoting all human rights for all human beings. Every day, I fight towards a vision of justice and equity for all LGBTQ. I would honestly be failing if I didn't take on this fight. The road to full equality and acceptance is a long one, but I will continue paving the way for equal rights and visibility until I'm six feet under.

RC: Is there anything else you would like to share with Wire Magazine readers? FR: Word on the street is that Marvel is ready and looking for its first openly gay superhero. I'm not hard to find, but with the help of you, the viewers reading this, spreading the word definitely wouldn't hurt. Lastly, my social media is my open diary to the world, so anything I ever post always comes from the heart. I post to elevate, not to hate, so follow me on Instagram and Twitter @realfredrosser, and my Instagram weekly podcast @proandbrowrestling. Be part of my family on social media. #BlocktheHate #spreadtheword #strengthinnumbers #closedfistopenheart #poweredbypride

This was originally published in Wire Magazine Issue 8.2019

#wire magazine #wiremag.com #wire #miami #miami beach #south beach #sobe #fort lauderdale #wynwood #wilton manors #gay #lgbt #glbt #outshine film festival #outshine

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noisysoup · 6 years

Text

A tale of deceit and mistrust

Hey there. I don’t really post on here at all, mainly because I honestly don’t understand how this works, but I’ve recently endured many months of extreme mental trauma with a very recent climax and don’t have many people that I feel comfortable directly sharing it with, so I figured screaming into the endless void here could be some sort of solution. To preface this, people say there’s always 2 sides to a story. That’s very true, but there’s also a collective story. I’m not here to tell my side of this story today to the best of my ability because bias must be left alone on this for you to try understand. Even I don’t fully understand what happened or what’s continuing to happen. To anyone going through something similar, or even if you’re just going through your own bullshit that this life throws at you, know that you’re not alone. There’s help out there. I’m actively seeking therapy and have been for a while now (remember this, because it becomes very important later down the line). I’ll be editing real life names and changing/blurring names through messages that I show here. Everything here is 100% real and the messages themselves are real and unedited other than name changes. I may be upset, but I’m not vengeful. Also, please be warned before you read any of this: This is going to be difficult for some people to read. Let this serve as a trigger warning for anyone who can’t handle intense situations involving depression, anxiety, self-harm, or suicide.

I understand that this post is very long and that some people won’t care to read the whole thing, so I’ll put a little tl;dr at the very bottom because I really want people who are in the know about this to know what really happened, not just know what they chose to hear.

This story has no definite beginning, so let’s start with introducing the people at play here:

Me, of course, and the one person who I can speak on most accurately as I change and develop throughout this story.

My girlfriend of almost 5 years, who I’ll be referring to as Brenda and who supported me through all of this.

A friend turned anomaly who I grew up with and who I’ll be referring to as Anna and who initially serves as a deuteragonist.

A second friend, Anna’s significant other, who lies in the middle as a neutral character and who I’ll be referring to as Naomi.

There are more characters, of course, but those characters are much less significant in relation to the events that unfold here so do not need proper introductions quite yet.

Let’s start with high school. High school was... Rough for me, to say the least. This is where most of the problems begin to unfold. I lost my grandmother to cancer on January 28th, 2013, during my Freshman year. She was very close to me, my best friend and someone who unconditionally loved me and taught me how to unconditionally love. I was there when she passed. She was placed in hospice care for around a month in our house until her body couldn’t hold on any longer. Everyone in my family was absolutely devastated and couldn’t accept what had happened. Later, we’d come to find out that the event had actually developed into PTSD in my mother. This is also the moment that something inside of me changed. You see, at the same time as this, I was invested in one of the worst things I could have been at the time: A girl that I’d had a crush on for a very long time. She’ll be left unnamed, but she had brewed up a darkness within me. This girl led me to believe she loved me and I, being the stupid and immature child that I was, fell for it and became enveloped in her and would do anything for her validation. She introduced me into cutting (I mainly did it for attention at first if I’m entirely honest), but once my grandmother passed, I noticed that it took away from the pain I felt inside. I began to regularly cut myself to cope with the fear I held inside, and this took hold of me anytime a situation became even slightly overwhelming. I started developing intense suicidal thoughts and would actively think about different ways that my life could end, though I only had 1 or 2 moments where I planned out a death for myself. I fell behind in schoolwork and would be obviously distressed in class until I was recommended to seek counseling in school. This ended up helping me a lot, and it slowly came out during these counseling session that I regularly self harmed until I was made to call my parents and admit this to them. My parents took this better than I thought they would and they ended up being very supportive and understanding of my mental health. They took my switchblade that I’d use and hid it, telling me to never do something so foul to myself again. Having someone actively intervene in the bad things I did to myself and the negative emotions I felt really helped me feel cared about and like I didn’t need them. Of course, these moments came in spurts because depression isn’t a constant in your life. Sometimes it comes and sometimes it goes, which is something that I came to learn the hard way. During this time, I also severely struggled with my sexuality. I was constantly bullied by people calling me gay because of the way I would act around my friends and really started to question whether or not I was because I’d always liked girls but there were guys that I felt some sort of attraction to every now and then. I would go into the football field house to workout and have people come up to me asking if I was gay, people would call me a faggot when I just wanted to be alone and try to better myself physically. It really got to my head and is something I’d talk a lot about with my future girlfriend.

High school wasn’t all bad, though. After my terrible communicative relationship with the last girl ended, I found one of the best things in my life: Brenda. She was actually very good friends with the previous girl and that’s how I met her. I’ve been with Brenda since October 25th, 2013, and I hope to stay with her for the rest of my life. She’s been so supportive of me and helped me see things in my life so much differently. She’s taken my negative viewpoints and helped me reshape them to more positive viewpoints. She’s helped change me from someone who I absolutely despise looking back on to someone that I can say that I’m proud to be. She’s been there when I was at my worst and she’s been there when I was at my best. I know that I’m drilling in about how great she is, but I promise, it’s very integral to this story. Brenda and I were in band together and going through high school band events with her made the rest of my high school experience so much better and so much faster, so there’s not a whole lot more relevant information from high school specifically to be spoken on other than another of the relevant characters: Anna. I’ve known Anna since we were pretty little, and my girlfriend was pretty good friends with her for a very long time. She’s had a pretty rough life, moving back and forth all over the state and country, so her and I never really had much of a chance to communicate until the end of high school when she moved back to my hometown and settled back down. She’d always been super shy and super reserved, but a really good friend of mine became a really good friend of her’s, so we began talking slightly more. We never were great friends in high school, but I would talk to her in classes where I noticed she was sitting all alone just staring down at her phone. I was... Kind of weird back in high school, so I’m sure her perception of me at the time was fairly negative, and our relationship as friends remained more as knowing that we had a few common interests in things like games and concepts for artistic ideas.

After high school, I kind of accepted that everyone I knew and had grown close to would go their separate ways as we go off to college. A lot of my friends had high ambitions for the furthering of their knowledge, going off to big colleges like A&M or UT Austin. I couldn’t afford colleges like that, and to be honest, I never really wanted to attend them. Brenda had always been super interested in UNT ever since she went with her brother (who’s about 4 or 5 years older than us) when he went to visit it. Her interest piqued my interest, and I saw that they had a seemingly great computer engineering program and even had a separate campus for the engineers. This was really cool to me, but the best draw in was the amount of opportunity I had with financial aid and the low cost/ease of entry to get in, so of course I was drawn into it. I get to go to a cool college with my girlfriend? How could I resist that? I had automatic acceptance and got in and my entire family was super excited for me, with me being the first person to attend a real college in my family, let alone a university. Even if none of my other friends came, I figured the real ones would still keep in touch with me (which they thankfully have, and I’m very grateful for). For a while, me and Brenda figured we were the only people going to UNT until we noticed another UNT acceptance board outside of our school: Anna had been accepted and was going to be there with us. Since Brenda was pretty good friends with her and I was starting to become friends with her, we were excited to know that a friendly face was going to be there to accompany us on our voyage to a bigger, brighter future.

We started college in the fall of 2016. My first semester was a mixed bag, mostly stemming from me having absolutely no idea what the hell I was doing. However, it was still a time that I hold dearly in my heart. I raided competitively in World of Warcraft, clearing all of Mythic Emerald Nightmare while it was still current content, attended 16 hours of classes and kept a 3.6 GPA, and met a whole lot of really cool and interesting people, a majority of which I still talk to. Before this time, I also couldn’t really afford a smartphone, but with the help of financial aid, I was finally able to purchase my own phone that was capable of downloading Pokemon: Go. Being on a college campus meant there were Pokestops and gyms all over the place, and we’d constantly walk around during our free time playing the game. How is this relevant? Anna really enjoyed Pokemon: Go, so it was an excuse for me and Brenda to walk the mile and a halfish to visit her at her dorm or for her to come to campus and screw around with us. During this time, all of us became friends and had a great time together just being carefree kids. It helped bring Anna out of her shell and introduced more of her character to us, and I knew that we’d be good friends when I started seeing more of who she was underneath her timid shell. We’d spend hours at her dorm some nights watching vine compilations and laughing our asses off, and we started becoming more comfortable with venting frustrations about little things as a group. We slowly learned of Anna’s gf, Naomi, who she’d known for a while and played a bit of Overwatch with. I got very into Overwatch the summer before coming to college, so I snagged her battletag and added her. Over the coming months, we’d play together a bit and started talking a bit more than we had before. Eventually, Anna became comfortable enough to introduce me to Naomi and we all started playing together and I started to get to know her a little bit, too, but nothing super interesting or noteworthy happened during this time.

That summer, I took my first real job working in a warehouse as part of a picking program for a large shipping industry. The job itself wasn’t too bad and payed pretty well, but the hours I worked were killer. I’d typically work 10-12 hour days and be working 6 days a week. Of course, I’d tell my friends about this because it sucked not having a whole lot of free time and you tell your friends your frustrations. I learned that this venting process really helped me calm down after work, helped to serve as a stress relief to just get my feelings out there so I wouldn’t boil over and I started to vent pretty regularly without it becoming a huge topic of focus in conversations. Just something where you’d tell your friends that one part of your day sucked and move on. Pretty normal, yeah? I thought so, too. Anyway, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. After having this job for about 2 months, I quit due to shitty management and being treated like a subhuman by the people I worked with and the people I worked for. Having more free time meant that I could hang out with my friends in person a lot more and meant that I could hang out with people in games a lot more, which is something that I had missed for a while. Having this break from responsibility before the next semester of college was really nice, because that’s when things start to crumble a bit.

College only gets harder the longer you stay, and that’s also something I learned the hard way. The fall semester of 2017 is when I had my second computer science course. I absolutely bombed the first major project that we were assigned in that class because I didn’t understand anything that we were doing and became super frustrated. After I saw my grade, I got pretty upset (I have pretty high standards for myself). I really wanted to just drop out of college because the rest of my classes weren’t going super great either, but bombing something in my major field of study felt absolutely awful. That day, I went to our student union to have lunch. I was in line to get some Chick-fil-A when I heard a familiar voice: Anna’s. Me and her grabbed food and had lunch together and started talking about our lives and stuff as we hadn’t really talked much since the semester started and we were both busy. I told her about me bombing my project and she told me about how difficult her art classes were. We had a pretty lengthy conversation following this, traveling from topic to topic pretty seamlessly, until I had to get to my next class. Since she was done for the day, she offered to chat with me until we got to my class. This began a regular routine of us having lunch together then walking to my next class where we’d part ways, and this really started to build up our friendship. We’d talk a lot about our interests, discussing how we’d both eventually like to work on games, showing each other memes we thought were funny, and everything in between. We became really good friends through this, and this experience really changed me as a person. I slowly started realizing, however, that certain things and phrases I would say would cause her to have an unpleasant look as if they offended her but she was too afraid to say anything. One day, I asked her if me saying something upset her, and she eventually told me that yes, it did. I didn’t take offense to this, as I didn’t really even realize that it was offending her (which is really stupid of me to be honest, and something that I really don’t like about the way that I used to act and things that I used to say). This discussion really led me to look at how I talk and stop using certain words and phrases because they��re really uncalled for and immature. I’d later come to find out that this moment in time terrified her because she thought I’d hate her for telling me that something I said was bad, but I couldn’t be happier that she told me. Despite everything that’s happened since this moment, I’m glad that I asked because it’s helped me mature as a person. But, again, I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

Having gone through these changes as a person, I really changed the way that I looked at everything and flipped my college life around. I ended the semester with a 3.9 GPA because I took the power of initiative that I had with her and applied it to other areas of my life. I brought my grades up enormously, made damn near perfect grades, and only got a 3.9 because a file upload system for a lab report broke and I didn’t catch it in time to realize my own mistake. I was ecstatic, and my relationships with others began to blossom a bit more. My relationship with Brenda became much more understanding, I began to spend more time with her and her friends, and I spent more time with myself. I was in a pretty good place in my life. But something that I haven’t brought up in a while is that darkness inside of me. I don’t want you to think that it wasn’t there, because it was. It was slowly getting worse, but the overwhelming positivity in my life kept it at bay... For a while. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but a catalyst suddenly set it off. In December, I became extremely depressed despite how happy I was. I would have regular panic attacks over absolutely nothing and have nightmares about the most brutal and horrifying events. I started feeling very lonely, and then I remembered that I noticed Anna had been playing a lot of one particular game for a while- ARK: Survival Evolved. Me and her had talked about it a bit and she really loved dinosaurs, so she got very invested in that game. It sounded really cool and interesting from what she’d told me about it, so I messaged her one day and asked if she’d wanna play with me. When she said yes, I bought the game and we hopped in to an official server and she taught me how to play. I was hooked pretty much instantly, even though I had no idea what was going on at first. We played this game together quite a lot, so we spoke quite a lot about stuff.

One night, I had a bad panic attack while in a discord call with her, which is one of the worst thing that can happen when you’re just trying to have fun. It’s hard to act like nothing’s happening, so I didn’t. I told her what was happening, muted my mic, and let it happen. Afterwards, we stopped playing and just started talking to each other. I just... Vented to her about everything. Told her about my grandma, about the girl who ruined me in highschool... I told her a lot. I didn’t expect anything back, but she continued the conversation on her own end and we stayed up until 3 A.M. sharing stories that hurt us and just let someone else know our story. And it was nice. From then on, we started playing almost every day together. It wasn’t just ARK, though. We would play Overwatch with Naomi pretty consistently, even played a bit of Minecraft with Naomi. Me and Naomi became really good friends after all of this, too. Over this period of time, I get really try to stay stable mentally by being around others and not letting myself get too much into my head.

The next semester starts, and I’m starting to feel a bit better emotionally. I’m super hopeful for the future and I’m getting really excited to advance in my major and get to the complex stuff. What a fool I was. This was my worst semester yet. My physics class was filled with a ridiculous amount of work that was underexplained in class to the point where I literally had to teach myself physics to even understand what was going on. Plenty of people had to buy a Chegg subscription to finish the homework. My chemistry professor acted as if chemistry should have been our only class that we were taking the entire semester and set the difficulty level ridiculously high just because he could. My computer science class had exams that were presented in such a way that, no matter how much you studied or knew, you would need a cheatsheet to complete every question. I was eventually talked into going into counseling by Anna and Brenda and stuck with that for a while. Everything was wrong with this semester except for a few things: Talking to Brenda, spending time with Anna, helping Naomi with math, and watching anime with Anna and Naomi. Those were the only saving graces for this semester, but none took more of my time than being with Anna. We spent an unhealthy amount of time together, literally about 5 hours every single day playing ARK and talking about everything that was wrong with our lives and having extremely deep conversations weekly. This happened through the course of the entire semester. Me and Anna quickly became best friends. We still had lunch together whenever we could, talked about a lot of stuff together, and I started to notice something. I felt like I was developing some sort of romantic feelings for her. Now, let me be EXTREMELY clear about one thing: Firstly I did not ever feel like I loved her in any way other than platonically. If anything, it was just above a crush. Secondly, even if I did “love” her in that way, I’m not a cheater. I have enough willpower to just deal with it. The problem came from the fact that I continuously felt that feeling grow because I’m the type of person who can only have a romantic relationship with someone that I’m already close to and feel a personal connection with. For the longest time, I never said anything to her about it, until a certain event happened.

All of the semester built up and culminated into a large and sudden burst right after I stopped going to counseling sessions regularly where I got the very intense urge to kill myself on May 4th, 2018. I was being torn up inside, and this was pretty late at night and I was all alone. Brenda was out of the state at the time, but Anna had been messaging me previously. She asked if I wanted to play something, but I felt so wrong on the inside and couldn’t convince myself that she really wanted to be around me. I finally told her that I wanted to be alone (which was a lie) and then I planned everything out, but got too scared because I thought about how the people who cared about me would react and I just didn’t have the heart to fully go through with it. I ended up crying myself to sleep and woke up the next morning and admitted what had happened to Anna. She told me to schedule a an emergency counseling session so I did. When I got there, I told them what happened, and they recommended I go to a professional help clinic. I thought I had insurance at the time, so I agreed. What ended up happening is I was sent to a loony bin and had invalid insurance. I sat in that building for hours upon hours in a single room, knowing I wouldn’t be able to pay for it. I eventually asked Anna to come bail me out at close to midnight, and by some stroke of good luck we were able to convince them to let me go. Oh, did I mention I had a final the next day? Because I did. Luckily, Anna let me spend the night at her apartment and we got up the next day pretty early because she had to go to work and I had to study for my final. After I was done, I waited for her to get off work and her mom picked us up. You see, her mom and I both suffered mentally in eerily similar ways, and it scared the death out of her mom because of how awful it was the way that the thoughts appear in your mind and how intense and sort of exciting they become. I spent the day and night with her mom so that I wouldn’t be alone and then went back to my apartment the next day. After that point, everyone started to treat my mental illness a little more seriously. People who knew were actively messaging me to check on me, seeing if I wanted to do anything and spend time with them because I absolutely hate being alone. The situation was one of the worst I’ve been through, but seeing the support that I had afterwards was so nice that I’m tearing up now just thinking about it. However, things started to taper off, as they do, and people seemed to forget anything had ever happened.

In the coming weeks, Anna got super invested into competitive Overwatch and started talking to me a lot less. At this point, I had become very attached to her because of how much we had interacted and how much she had helped me and it was extremely unhealthy and I will 100% admit to that. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that I felt like we were slipping apart as friends because of that. Does it make it true? No, not at all, but my worries shouldn’t just be passed over because someone else feels differently about them. She made me feel stupid for thinking we were slowly losing our friendship and that she was replacing me with a game. Instead of showing me that we were still friends, she simply told me that we were and continued doing things that, to me, suggested the opposite. I loved Overwatch, but any time she mentioned it from this point onward, it stung. I slowly started to hate the game, this game that I loved, because I felt like it was replacing a friendship. I felt that I had been so much of a stress on her that she started talking to me less and playing that game more as a coping mechanism and that made me feel so shitty, and you know what? I was right. And it’s my fault that it even happened in the first place, I should have done something else, I should have caught on that our relationship was turning unhealthy earlier, but I didn’t and my best friend replaced me with other people that she didn’t even know in a game that had helped connect us in the first place. And I’m such an idiot for that. This part of the story is on me. This part is my fault. Everything that happened before this and directly after this is on my shoulders and will be directly on my shoulders for the rest of my life and I’m just going to have to live with it.

In some stupid effort to revive our friendship and make her feel compelled to talk to me again, I finally told her that I felt as if I had feelings for her. Again, I never told her that I loved her, I simply told her that I felt like I had feelings for her. This was another mistake, and the beginning of the end. I absolutely freaked out after this, I knew immediately that I shouldn’t have done it and I... I freaked out. I went and told Brenda everything that night, and we had a lengthy conversation about it. I mentioned earlier that I would be providing images to keep bias out of this story, because everything up to this point has been directly from my point of view. Putting these images in here is going to be hard for me. Reading them makes me wince because of how utterly weak I was for doing this. I hate these messages, but they complete the story.

As you can see, we agreed to take a week break from talking to each other. I hate admitting this, but this was very hard for me. I felt like shit for this week, and I’m so weak for that. The day after this, I got the impulse to kill myself again and messaged Naomi about it. I felt like Brenda was slipping away from me at this point as well, so Naomi felt like all I really had at the moment. I shouldn’t have done that, either. I scared the hell out of her because of the way that I brought it up. I’m a bad person for doing that. But afterwards, I calmed down and me and Naomi ended up playing quite a bit of Final Fantasy together over the course of that week, which did help me get through it a little bit, but I’m still such an idiot for regressing this much at this point. Everything I had worked towards improving was shot down because I made a string of bad decisions trying to make myself happy. I digress, however, so let’s get back on track here.

After this little break, we both agree that we had been spending too much time together and decide that a change in our friendship is in need. We put a cap of one continuous hour of voice calls a day and would adjust that number from there as we both saw fit. We would still continue to message each other, but we both agreed to not just talk to each other (mainly for me because of how much of a comfort blanket she was to me at this point). A few days later, she had a counseling session where her therapist recommended a new system to try for her: She would stop talking about serious stuff past 10, get off of the computer by 11, and be in bed by 11:30ish, with the only exception to those rules being Naomi. I was completely fine with this and actually thought it was a good idea myself... Until she immediately broke those rules. I called her out on it, but she didn’t take me seriously. Kind of treated me as if it were a joke when I was being serious, and that upset me. The following messages are what happened when we tried to discuss this issue. You know, like friends do.

As you can see, there was a huge amount of misunderstanding here on her part. Whether or not it was intentional for her to misconstrue what I was saying is something that I still question to this day, but she really seemed to not be listening to what I was saying and focused on what she wanted to hear. She wanted to hear this as a personal attack, so she did, and she became extremely and overly defensive, justifying her actions because she didn’t think they felt wrong (which, might I point out, us spending an exorbitant amount of time together didn’t feel wrong at the time, either). And then she got scared and stopped messaging me. For a while.

I attempted to reach out to her multiple times after this, but the only real response that I got from her was that she needs time to get better and that I should respect that. So... I tried. But it became increasingly obvious to me that she didn’t really care about me anymore, or at least she was trying not to at the time. A few weeks later, which felt like more than enough time to me, I sent the following message hoping to get some sort of reaction. This is the thing that I regret doing the most, because I think this is the nail in the coffin and the main reason that things have lead to the point where they are now. However, the things I said here aren’t untrue. Everything I said, I stand by. But I shouldn’t have said it in the first place.

And I did just that. I left every discord server, ever group chat, removed her from all social media, off of every game... I removed her from my life as much as I could. Naomi then stops talking to me as well, although our friendship is ended on a much more positive note. I felt so betrayed and, even though I admit to being a large part of the problem, I didn’t feel like I should be treated this way. I was in a very bad place and needed friends to support me. No one can handle everything in life on their own, and she had been the person to help show me that. But then she turned that all around on me and made me feel guilty for doing it in the first place. I was confused and felt so alone. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Another few weeks go by and instead of letting myself grow weaker, Brenda helps me become better. We work on my thought processes, I started focusing on self improvement more than the previous weeks, and I learn a lot about myself. I start doing a lot of research on the things that I feel and how other people have dealt with them. Over the course of Anna not talking to me, I try to forget about her and change myself into a better person. And I do just that. I become better, I force myself to do things that I don’t want, and it helps me become better. I realize a lot about myself. I realize that my struggles in high school over my sexuality were because part of me did like guys, but I still liked girls, too. But I realized it was beyond that and part of the reason that I developed feelings for Anna in the first place. I like people who I find interesting, regardless of sexuality or gender. I realized that I’m pansexual and that if Brenda were transgender or if she were a guy that I wouldn’t care. I’d still love her just as much as I do now, and this sets me on a path of openness. Instead of trying to directly make myself happy, I work directly on stopping myself from being unhappy, and I achieve so much in a 4 week span and I’m so proud of doing that and so grateful of Brenda for being there by my side and pushing me on, but one thing still remains in the very back of my mind, causing me to be unhappy. Anna. I felt like I was ready at this point, I had a lot to say and apologize for, but I had no way back. Until Brenda offered me a big favor. She told me that she’d reach out to her on my behalf if I really wanted her to, and I thought about it for a bit. I really pondered if this is something that I wanted. Would this truly be the last thing that would tie up loose ends and stop all of the unhappiness? At the time, I decided it was and took her up on the offer a few days later. Anna responded to her saying that she was willing to talk to me, but only on a superficial level about super small things. I was completely fine with this. We could slowly build our relationship back up from here, and this time I was willing to be truly patient.

We start talking again. Surprisingly, we talk about quite a lot on the first day, though none of it is super deep. It reminded me of the days when we would have lunch together the very first semester that we started doing it. However, I couldn’t just ignore the fact that I had fucked up pretty hard. I told her that I wanted to talk about what happened, but only when she was truly ready. So I actually waited, and we eventually talked about it a few weeks later. The talk was a bit rough and difficult, but it was overall really good and really productive. During that talk, we decided to take things extremely slow this time, build our friendship up slowly and not ramp up the way it had before, but still being comfortable with eventually becoming close again. I was fine with this. I accepted the fact that we may never be best friends again and that we definitely wouldn’t have the relationship we had before, and I was fine with that because I honestly didn’t want that myself. My relationship with Naomi also starts up again, which I was and still am very grateful for.

I get a job as a maintenance worker at my apartment complex during this time period. At first, I absolutely love it. It’s a lot of fun for me to be able to help people and see physical and tangible progress on something that I’m working on, so this job seems great to me. My boss is a little bit of an ass, but he reminds me a lot of my dad so I figure it won’t be too much to deal with. I work with a cool guy that I quickly become friends with, and he eventually convinces me to buy Final Fantasy XIV and I begin to play it pretty frequently on my days off. Naomi also plays, so I start to spend a bit of time in game with her and she helps me through it. I message Anna every now and then, and she messages me back fairly frequently. We send each other memes, talk about random stuff, and it feels like we’re friends again. It’s nice, I felt nice. But things take a weird turn from here.

I start noticing small things at work that bother me. The way things are operated is really shitty, the jobs that the other maintenance people do are really shitty, my friend starts getting increasingly frustrated while we’re working together and acts out constantly. Another guy I work with treats me as if I’m incompetent even though we started working at around the same time and he knows things I don’t because he works on stuff that I don’t. My days off are nice, though, because Final Fantasy quickly becomes a coping game in a way where I can just come home, hop on, and drop the baggage of the day and not care about anything and just have fun. However, sometimes I just want to vent in the group chat about my day, you know, life friends do with each other. So I do. Anna responds in the group chat, we kind of talk about it, and then she starts direct messaging me because Naomi is at work and probably not reading everything going on. Keep in mind that, at this point, I just wanted to vent. Didn’t necessarily want to have an in depth conversation about it, but if there is an offer by ways of continuing the conversation directly, I was cool with that. So we discuss it a lot more in depth, and in my head I’m thinking, “Cool, our friendship actually is developing. We’re talking about issues here a little more deeply to try and actively help each other resolve them, that’s what friends do.” But now that I look back on it, this should have been a red flag.

The talk goes pretty well, or so I thought at the time. We resolve the situation to a point where I honestly feel a whole lot better about it and have some revitalized energy into going in to work and dealing with the bullshit. A few weeks later, turn comes around at work. This is basically a time where everyone who’s lease ends moves out and we prep all the empty apartments for the people moving in. This sucks. This is absolutely awful, I have to work 7 days a week, 70 hours a week, and it really starts to take it’s toll on me. My mood shifts and I become kind of irritable, but this is something I’d been training to catch through mindfulness so that when I notice myself doing it, I try to catch it. If I’m passive aggressive to people, I try to catch it and then apologize for it, whether they realize it or not. I noticed that I did this with Anna, so I apologized:

As you can see, this was... A pretty constructive and positive conversation, yeah? This is something that I still agree with, This conversation was indeed really constructive and really positive. However, I would like to make one thing clear. Once again, I only wanted her to know what I did in the first place. Didn’t really want to have a huge conversation about it, but since one was started, I participated in it. I’m not going to just dip out of a discussion if one is started, but I’m never trying to start one directly. I’m simply trying to explain myself and hold myself accountable. Remember this.

So, turn goes on. Turn continues to get worse, and I don’t have a lot of energy. My capacity to catch myself with mindfulness wanes and I start slipping back into the mode where I get upset when people don’t respond, and Brenda notices this as well. I notice that Anna is really busy lately, and is one of the people who responds to me the least at the time, and it has really been upsetting me seeing as how well our friendship had been progressing at this point. I go to therapy specifically for the work stuff, and me and my therapist devise a plan: I refocus my energy away from the friendship for a moment and let it lie where it is because I’m putting too much energy in and not getting enough out to satisfy my own expectations at the time, so I let Anna know this because, as seen through previous messages, she wants me to tell her about these things so that we’re always on the same page.

So, there’s a lot of messages here and a lot is talked about. Once again, notice how I state at the very beginning that I DIDN’T want this to turn into a big discussion, I just wanted her to know what I was doing so she would understand the change in interaction. Did I word it poorly at the beginning? Yes, I did, and I admit to that multiple times. But she started a discussion from it. Again, I didn’t WANT a discussion, but discussion are how you directly work through an issue (you know, like friends do), so I didn’t oppose. I’m not afraid of confrontation, so I’m fine with having a discussion. If you’ve read up to this point, though, you may have noticed something... Peculiar about the way that she’s been responding. She’s still being super defensive when I bring something up, but super aggressive whenever she brings something up. She’s starting to act as if she can do no wrong and that her viewpoint is the only valid one, brushing things that I say off because she’s continually misunderstanding things that I say. You may have noticed this trend a while ago, and it’s slowly been developing since we started speaking again. She’s changing pretty rapidly, and it feels... Forced. At this point in time, a small part in the back of my mind starts speaking to me, starts questioning what this is. A seed of an idea is planted in my mind, and over the next few weeks, this idea grows: This isn’t Anna. This isn’t the Anna I knew, and I get that people change; Hell, I changed a lot myself, but this change... This is such a deep personality change that this isn’t even the same person anymore. This feels like a stranger in the body of someone that I used to know. And I can’t brush this idea away.

The weeks go on, turn goes on and eventually ends, we continue to talk occasionally and I spend a lot of my free time with Brenda or playing with Naomi, but me and Anna never do anything together outside of talking. I begin to notice these more rapid changes that Anna’s developing, and she becomes increasingly aggressive with things and unwilling to change her view. I notice how close minded she is, notice that she’s so close minded that she doesn’t even realize she’s close minded. But I can’t say anything because I know that this new Anna will just get upset about me bringing it up and it will just make things worse. I don’t know what to do at this point. I so sorely want the old Anna back, just want to talk to my old friend about nothing, but she doesn’t exist anymore. I start talking to Brenda about whether or not I really want to even be friends with her or not anymore. She tells me to go with my heart, but my heart knows that the real Anna is there, buried underneath this coping mechanism she’s developed to help with some bigger issue that I’ll never know of going on within herself. I don’t even feel like we’re friends anymore, which is an issue that I’d continually brought up and an issue that she’d continued to brush off. I feel weird inside.

College starts back up. Slightly before it does, we show each other our schedules and they conflict pretty sharply with me being at the engineering part of campus all day which is a few miles away from the main campus. I ask if she wants to do lunch still because it’s something we’d done for the past year. We find that Wednesdays will work right after she gets out of her last class, so we plan to have lunch then. The week goes on, we get to Wednesday, and we have lunch. It’s actually pretty nice, and she seems different in person than she does online. She’s actually talking to me about stuff and I’m talking to her about stuff. One of Brenda’s roommates spots us and starts talking to us. Brenda’s roommate asks me why I’m not on the engineering campus, and I tell her I’m there early just to have lunch with Anna, and she says, “Wow, you’re a pretty good friend for doing that. I definitely wouldn’t do that,” to which Anna responds, “Yeah, he is isn’t he.” This kind of comes as a shocker and puts me in a slightly better mood. This is... Weird. But welcome. It comes time for me to get to class, we part ways, and the week goes on. For the first 2 weeks, my first Friday class is cancelled so we schedule to have lunch for those days as well, and considering how well the first lunch went, this is a nice sentiment. We don’t talk a whole lot outside of school, which is cool with me because we’re both pretty busy, but... Something just doesn’t seem right to me. Something just doesn’t feel right. And I don’t say anything about it.

I continue working at my maintenance job while going to school, and it gets really overwhelming. I don’t have a whole lot of time to get the work done that I need to get done during the week and weekends are really the only times I have to do anything. Sleeping becomes a chore and I start to get super exhausted constantly. I get really anxious when I have free time and don’t do anything that my brain identifies as productive, but I know that I need some rest. Spending time with friends like Brenda, Naomi, and Anna really help relieve the stress of going to work and school at the same time, despite that being time that I could be doing homework with, and I look forward to those moments in time. The second week of school, Anna has to cancel our lunch to complete her application with Petsmart. This was completely fine, she had to do something important that would help her with her financial situation. Nothing wrong with this. Then, on Thursday, I try to remind her that we have lunch on Friday as well. She tells me that she’s meeting with someone during that time. This one kind of hurt a bit because she made plans with someone else over our plans, and I wasn’t super happy or okay with this, but I waited to say anything because she probably just forgot. It turns out that she did, but... She forgot that we made plans literally a week after we made plans. That stung quite a bit. The next day we also had plans to do a raid day in Pokemon Go with me, Anna, and Brenda. We go, and I just feel weird inside. I feel like I’m in a car with strangers again, and I don’t really talk much. I notice this attitude, and I try to change it, but I’m still upset on the inside.

I make sure that we’re still on for lunch the following week, and we have lunch. This lunch goes fine, nothing too special. Mainly sharing memes with each other but not really having too much conversation about much of anything. My work week after this is really rough, though, and so is the week after. I’m so tired at this point and my coursework is starting to get a bit rough. The next time we have lunch is really awkward. All Anna talks about is how great her day was and I try to smile and be happy for her, but then she asks how mine has been. I don’t lie, and I tell her that it sucks. I don’t have the energy to fake a smile, don’t have the energy to put any emotion behind my voice, it’s just a really uncomfortable experience. This is the last time we have lunch because she cancels again for the next week. This one really got to me, and this is at the peak of me questioning whether or not I want to be friends with her still because she’s completely different than how she used to be at this point. The following Wednesday, I decide to start using the hour we had lunch with each other previously to put in more time at work until I get my financial aid and I can finally quit my job because I can’t take the stress of my job on top of being a full-time college student anymore, so I send her a message to kind of cancel the rest of our lunches until further notice and let her know about it. The following is what occurs afterwards:

Those images speak for themselves. She did exactly the same thing again, but this time she caught herself. And what does she do? She bails on me. Which, you know, that’s fine. I’ve been debating whether or not to be her friend anymore anyway, so it’s no real skin off of my back. Am I upset? Yeah, a little. This was my best friend and I still hold onto those memories fondly, but she seems to misremember a lot. We decided pretty early on back into talking that this wasn’t going to remain a superficial friendship, but she seems to focus on the fact that that was all it was supposed to be this whole time when that’s blatantly untrue. Was she at least respectful and seemingly tried to end things on a somewhat positive note? Yeah, she called me the most talented individual from our hometown and wished me the best. But you know what? That little idea that I’d had in my mind was right the whole time. Because this last message that she sent me is all a facade. It’s all fake. She is fake, and I’ve felt it for a while. But now I have proof, and now people will know and now I know for a definite fact.

I did something I shouldn’t have done a few days later, something that Brenda forbade me to do but I did it anyway because that last message concerned me about what’s going on in her life to put up this gigantic wall around herself, trying to convince herself that her life is alright, being super defensive about everything that I had an issue with that I tried to resolve with her as a friend and out of concern as a human being. I went on her tumblr. And I found the following.

This is what she really thinks of me. That last message she sent me was utter bullshit. Wishing me the best? No she’s not. I’m the most talented individual and I’ll make it out there? She doesn’t believe that. Nothing that she’d said to me over the past 3 months was the truth. This wasn’t Anna. The old Anna is dead, and this is what’s replaced her. A careless, lying husk. Let’s go through this message and deconstruct it a bit now that you know the story. “Toxic men using me as a catalyst for all their feelings and emotional baggage” Apparently I’m toxic for talking to my friends about my feelings (YOU KNOW, LIKE FRIENDS DO) and that I put all my emotional baggage on just one single person because I’m a gigantic piece of shit. We’ll go with that. “It may have taken 5 times” Really? 5 times? Maybe you’re just misremembering with that poor memory that you admit to having, or maybe you’re just delusional now Anna, but this is time number 3. It is an undeniable fact that this is the 3rd time that we have stopped talking, but maybe you’re just playing this up for attention at this point, eh? Not even going to touch that middle garbage, just more defending her position and playing a holier-than-thou part where she can never do any wrong and that she has no faults because she didn’t want to be the bad guy. Whatever. “Using me as a therapist” You mean talking my feelings through with friends? How am I using you as a therapist when I continually told you that I didn’t want these long drawn out conversations about things? How am I using you as a therapist when you are the one who always draws it out of me because you yourself have reverted mentally back into being a savior archetype DESPITE me continually telling you that I didn’t want you to be my therapist? How am I using you as a therapist when I am literally actively seeking therapy with a licensed professional? That’s ridiculous. “Becoming codependent on me to express their feelings” Was I codependent on you? Yeah, I was several months ago and I absolutely hate the fact that I was, but don’t you dare for one second act as if you weren’t also codependent on me. And don’t you dare act like it was a way to express my feelings as if I didn’t have actual severe issues that were life threatening. That’s disgusting behavior. And oh boy, this last part... “Always fell in love with me - despite whatever including being GAY and being friends WITH MY GF” Oh, so I “always fell in love with you”, eh? Despite me never ONCE telling you that I loved you in that way, it was a constant thing every time, yeah? Oh boy, I developed feelings for someone who’s gay when I’m also in a relationship. You know for a fact that I would have never acted upon those feelings at all because I’m not a piece of human garbage and have the willpower to get over it. I told you that one singular time and told you afterwards that they weren’t real. You know for a fact that I discussed it with my own girlfriend as well. You continue to act so fucking righteous despite being so blatantly ignorant. Who are you anymore? You aren’t Anna. What happened to you?

That last paragraph was way more aggressive than I wanted it to be, but it’s my raw feelings about seeing that post. I can’t believe the person who I was closest with would be capable of saying that about me, would be able to say that on a platform where people who don’t know the full story would read it and go, “Oh yes girl, fuck him and fuck men!”. Do I expect anyone to be on my side after all of this? No, I don’t. I made plenty of mistakes along this path, and I’ve shown those mistakes. But I don’t think I deserve this. I don’t deserve to be treated this way by someone that I cared so deeply about. I don’t deserve to be so utterly disrespected as a human being under such false, misconstrued claims. It’s such a cowardly thing to do that... I’m just so confused. How could the person who would once regularly say things like this:

Come around and be so fake in her final message to me then post something like that for all of her followers to see. I just don’t understand. And I’m so broken on the inside. I still talk to Naomi but... I’m not sure how much longer she’s going to want to continue talking to me. After last time, I’m partially expecting her to up and leave at any given moment, too. I don’t really have anyone right now other than Brenda, and her work schedule plus her school schedule conflict so heavily with mine that we hardly get to talk. I figured I could just use this to vent, to show some people the truth even if they don’t give a shit about me as a person. This has taken me around 10 hours to put together, so I’m hoping at least one person reads it through. And Anna (the real Anna, not this disgusting human being that’s taken her form) if you’re reading this... I’m sorry. I didn’t want any of this.

tl;dr: Became best friends with a girl I knew from a very young age. Spent too much time with her on a daily basis for a few months and talked about too much in too little of a span of time. She helped me immensely and I slowly started to feel as though I developed feelings for her, told her, then freaked out, which caused a rift in our friendship that led to a break in talking. That break mentally damaged me (mostly my fault) and things were never the same afterwards. I tried to be her friend again, but she never really was my friend in the first place it seems. Look at the images attached to the post, most of the context to understand those is within the paragraph you just read. I’m the color red, girlfriend is the color purple, ex-best friend is the color green, and her girlfriend is the color yellow, Cheetah Cucks is the name of the group chat we had with me, the friend, and her girlfriend. Even though I fucked up a lot, I don’t feel like I deserve all of this. I don’t know if there’s something more going on in her life right now or what. I feel devalued as a human being and I feel completely broken. I’m not pushing all of the blame on her at all, but... Fuck.

#you're not alone #mental health #mental support #personal rant #story

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jessicakehoe · 5 years

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How Mina Gerges Went From Being a Viral Meme to a Body Positivity Champion

Mina Gerges has had a rollercoaster few years. Since 2015, when his elaborate Instagram recreations of celebrity red carpet looks went viral, he’s dealt with a fallout with his family, a body image battle, homophobia, and online trolls but has emerged as a body positivity champion and now, one of the faces of Sephora Canada’s new national campaign. Read on for our interview with Gerges about body diversity, LGBTQ representation and more.

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Literally crying in excitement to share that I’m in Sephora’s new national campaign😭 When I was 9 years old, I’d sneak into my mom’s room and wear her red lipstick when she wasn’t home. I went to an all-boys school in Abu Dhabi and had to pretend to be someone I’m not so that I’d fit in and not get bullied more, and I always cherished these moments of joy I felt in my mom’s red lipstick. I think about my younger self, and how much he needed to know that he’d be okay. That there’s nothing wrong with him for being different. That our culture may never understand him, but that he’s so beautiful and nothing’s wrong with him. Fast forward to this monumental campaign – a gay Middle Eastern immigrant as the face of a makeup brand. I’ve been looking at this picture for a week, in awe of the confidence and power that radiate through this image. I see resilience and beauty, shining so bright and unapologetically as an openly gay Middle Eastern man despite belonging to a culture that systemically erases and persecutes our LGBTQ community. Representation matters, and I am grateful to fight for the visibility of our community and share the struggles we face, because we’re still so unrepresented in the media. To think that this can give hope to just one young queer Middle Eastern person that they matter, that they’re seen, and that there’s nothing wrong with them brings me tears. I’m beyond grateful that my first ever campaign is with a brand like Sephora that has always been a safe space for me to explore my gender expression, and that’s so unapologetic and bold about celebrating diversity. To me, beauty is reclaiming my culture from the toxic masculinity that’s so engrained within it, and creating new narratives about what it means to be LGBTQ and Middle Eastern/ North African. To that young, scared, lonely Mina who was always told there’s something wrong with him for being gay, I just want you to know that you’ll be okay, and you’re going to look so beautiful in billboards all over this country one day. Shot by the incredible @leeorwild 🌟@sephoracanada #SephoraPartner

A post shared by MINA GERGES (مينا) (@itsminagerges) on Jul 2, 2019 at 4:01pm PDT

Buzzfeed writing a post about your Instagram account is the sort of thing most teens dream about. But for Mina Gerges, then a 19-year-old student at Western University, it was a bittersweet moment. Yes, his cheeky red carpet recreations suddenly had thousands more likes, his inbox was flooded with emails and interview requests, and he’d even gotten a repost from Katy Perry but that Buzzfeed story had another consequence: it outed him to his conservative Egyptian parents.

“We somehow went eight months without talking about it,” recounts Gerges over black coffee at a Toronto cafe. But unbeknownst to him, his parents were Googling him every day, suddenly privy to the secret life that Gerges had been living for months. They’d seen the tongue-in-cheek recreations he’d been shooting in his bedroom with the help of his sisters (looks that included a dress fashioned out of a garbage bag and tinfoil to echo Jennifer Lopez’s outfit at the 2015 Vanity Fair Oscar party and curtains painstakingly painted to resemble Kim Kardashian’s look for the 2015 Met Gala), the interviews he’d been giving to various media outlets, and even the Arabic news sites that had picked up the story. Finally, several months after that first Buzzfeed post in January 2015, his parents sat him down to talk.

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Yes, those are cheese slices on my head 🧀😂 #MetGala #MinaGerges #RitaOra

A post shared by MINA GERGES (مينا) (@itsminagerges) on May 1, 2017 at 8:06pm PDT

“The language barrier made it so difficult to communicate what I felt or to communicate even what it is [to be gay],” explains Gerges. “At the time the only Arabic word for what it means to be gay, ‘khaneeth,’ directly translated to something negative—it connotes being a pervert, effeminate, and is more commonly used as a way of saying faggot.”

Since then, fuelled by the efforts of LGBTQ activists, the terminology has expanded to include words like ‘mithli’ which translates to “same” or “homo,” but the perception of queer people as being sexually deviant is so ingrained in Middle Eastern culture that no matter how hard Gerges tried to mend the relationship with his parents, nothing worked. Hard as that was—and continues to be—it also gave him the motivation to use his social media presence to change the way the Arab community viewed LGBTQ people, and to give them positive examples to look to.

“A lot of what I do now is informed from what I learned trying to deal with my parents,” he says. “I’m educating myself on what it’s like to be queer in the Middle East and what I can do with my platform to talk about this or to create any kind of change. And I’ve found a community of kids who have felt exactly the way that I have felt. I take that back. Not just kids, but older men and younger men, queer women, trans people from the Middle East, who have found similarities in our stories.”

Photography by Samuel Engelking

Gerges, who grew up between Cairo in Egypt and Abu Dhabi in the UAE, moved to Canada at the age of 12 with his mother and two sisters (his father came later). In both the countries where he grew up, being gay or even acknowledging LGBTQ people or rights was completely missing from the culture. In fact, he had no idea what the word ‘gay’ meant or even that it existed until someone called him that in high school. To be out and proud may not have been something Gerges ever saw growing up, but even after moving to Canada it was a very narrow version of “gay” that his formative understanding of the term was built on.

“The first time I Googled “gay men” all I saw was images of white, muscular, slim men,” he says. “So I thought that that was the norm.”

In trying to fit that mould as a young man grappling with his identity and sexuality, Gerges went down a spiral of eating disorders and body dysmorphia. He became anorexic in his first year of university, a time when he was not only struggling with being accepted in the gay community “as a plus-size man of colour” but also deeply unhappy studying science, something his parents had encouraged him to do. (He later switched to media studies.) When he began his celeb recreation posts in the summer of 2014, he was already suffering from anorexia.

“The people who may have followed me from the very beginning saw a Mina who was anorexic, at 150 lbs. And when I was in recovery shortly after, I started gaining back some weight and I was happy. But it was hard to find that happiness when I went on social media. I was at the height of my creativity where it wasn’t just drag, it was DIY, it was kind of like the golden age of my work. But all that people could comment about was my weight. I was like ‘I just spent eight hours painting this garbage bag so it can look like a million dollar dress and all you have to say is to call me a whale.’ It broke me. It was one of the worst things I’ve experienced in my life.”

He took eight months off social media between October 2015 and May 2016. During this hiatus, Gerges took the time to heal, using the distance from people’s hateful comments to learn how to love and accept his body. When he was finally ready to return to social media, he made a promise to himself that things were going to be different.

Photography by Samuel Engelking

“I decided I wasn’t going to FaceTune my body anymore. Instead of hiding it I’m going to be so unapologetic about this body and maybe if people see confidence they will be less likely to say mean things. Honestly something as simple as not FaceTuning out stretch marks felt like such a liberating act of protest. And also reclaiming a platform that I was basically bullied off of.”

And that was the beginning of a new chapter for Gerges’ public persona. In 2018 he posted a shirtless picture of himself along with a lengthy caption about why it was “the scariest yet most empowering post I’ve ever made.”

“The feedback was unlike anything that I had ever experienced. It was a lot of people from the LGBT community, not just men, who were sharing with me very similar stories about their struggles with their body image and experiencing an eating disorder. That’s when it clicked for me. I’d felt so alone when I was 19-20 years old but here I was getting all these messages from people telling me they’d had the exact same journey but were ashamed to talk about it. That’s when I was like ‘this is my calling.’ Let’s shift this conversation.”

Last year, Gerges did a nude photo shoot with NOW Toronto for their annual Body Issue. He posted the nude photos on Instagram when the issue came out and lost 4000 followers.

“You see male models who are thin and muscular pose for pictures just like these, or even more scandalous ones, and those pictures end up in editorials and in ad campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana and Versace.” But when a body like his is nude, he says, the comments move swiftly from praise to criticism. “That double standard is why we need to talk about body positivity and the fact that bodies like mine, which don’t fit into this beauty ideal, experience the world differently and are treated differently because of it. It was crazy to get the backlash for that when thinner, more muscular guys are being praised for the exact same thing.”

Photography by Samuel Engelking

“It was a voice that needed to be heard and a story that needed to be told,” says Samuel Engelking, the photographer who shot the images for the Love Your Body issue. Engelking, who has photographed the likes of Margaret Atwood, Ai Weiwei and MIA, says of working with Gerges, “When we first met on set I was immediately taken by his positive spirit and confidence despite the unusual circumstances of the shoot.”

This newfound confidence is what Gerges’ followers are responding to, and he’s seen a shift in the way they interact with him online, even though the negative and hurtful comments about him, his body and his Middle Eastern identity—even from others in the Arab world—do still keep rolling in.

“Giving up my culture as these, for lack of a better word, these haters would want me to, is not an option,” he says. “I refuse to be shamed out of my culture. It is mine just as much as it is yours. Nothing that you can do will prevent me from embracing being Egyptian and being North African. You cannot take that away from me.”

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