#i have no many stories i could tell about my highschool especially about twilight

[jacobsbadwig]

Okay, I'm officially asking abt your bear story 🐻! Are you from Appalachia? (leahclearwaterdefensesquad)

Yeah, so I grew up in a little town between Knoxville and Gatlinburg Tennessee. Hometown area of Dolly Parton,  Emmett Cullen, and some of the best fucking Sweet Tea you’ll ever drink. As a kid who grew up in the lower Appalachian mountains, it was not uncommon for bears to come into town or your backyard since we and the bears shared a backyard so to speak. If you know, you know.

@leahclearwaterdefensesquad

THE GANG GETS MAULED BY A BEAR

Side bar: one thing people don’t realize with Smokey mountains, is that it can get pretty damn hot and humid from all that sweet sweet altitude, and the seasonal change is more apparent.

Anyway, so it’s the end of my Sophomore or Junior year (I can’t remember which because I had this teacher, three semesters in a row because he taught English and creative writing). For context, if it were my Junior year, that means Eclipse would have came out that November before the semester I’m talking about.  It’s fucking 90 degrees outside. (It very well may have been a few weeks before the annual May showers which turned our area into the hottest shower you could imagine). I bring up the rain because we also got a lot of flooding, and our school had its own trailer park full of portable classrooms. And when the weather was too severe, we could go into an inclement weather classroom. This idea will return later.

So it’s the beginning of fourth period, and it’s just hot as fuck outside, and we’re in our portable classroom like we have been all semester. Now, the thing I forgot to mention is the portables didn’t have a working bathroom and usually one side of the portable had heat and the other side had the air conditioning. Our side of the portable had the heat, which was great when the semester began, but it’s fucking May at this point. The other thing is you had to walk into a door and then the doors to the classrooms would be on either side with their own classroom doors, so we couldn’t actually prop the doors open. There is no fan to circulate air either, and if I’m not mistaken, The windows didn’t open.

So it’s Mid-May, mid afternoon, 90 degrees inside of a proverbial oven, and my friend Jessica gets light headed. She goes to the nurse because she’s starting to pass out, and the rest of us are start to sweat like crazy. The problem with being hot is you can only take so much off before it breaks the dress code. Then other students start getting sick. My Yeah fer Mr. P is like ‘fuck it, we should just go outside to the gazebo.’ The intercom goes off, and the lady says “Everyone please stay in your classrooms until further notice.” Shit. So he calls up to the office and tells them “yo, my students are hot in our portable. We’d go next door but they are having class this period. Can we go to our inclement weather classroom?’ While he is on the phone, a few of my classmates are coming in from getting water or using the bathroom. The head office makes it clear we must stay in our classroom until further notice. Don’t let anyone out. They will see if we can go to our other classroom except that classroom is also in use. 

My teacher who is a dude in his early 30s and works out is like ‘fuck it. Everyone if you can strip down to a layer above your underwear, go ahead. Do whatever you want today. There’s no way we can have class it’s so damn hot.’ So we’re chilling and about a few minutes of everyone being on their phones. Someone gets a text that there’s a fucking bear in front of the school, and it’s been there for the entire class period. At this point, it’s about thirty minutes before the bus bell rings. And there’s a fucking bear that the office didn’t bother to tell anyone. Apparently, this baby bear has been roaming around our front lawn since the end of third block, and they were worried that the momma would eventually come around looking for it (which she did). The Middle school is also in the same gate but they had their own parking lot. So our school essentially put us under a lockdown drill without telling us “hey, don’t leave your class room so you don’t get mauled by a fucking bear!”

TL;DR: I almost got heatstroke or mauled because our school didn’t tell us for 1hr30 mins that a bear was in our front lawn.

[sadiespells37]

I love anthology shows. There’s just something about the one and done format that’s appealing to me. Maybe it’s the fact that the writers can get away with weirder stuff since they know they’ll only have this one chance with these characters or this premise or maybe it’s just one two many New Year’s/Fourth of July Twilight Zone marathons. Whatever the reason for my soft spot I have a hell of one for you folks tonight.

I’m sure almost no one will have heard of this show. It was a Hulu original sci-fi anthology show that only ran for 6 episodes back in 2017. I’d call it kind of an internet age Tales From The Crypt. Not in the gore or sexuality sense, but in its over the top goofyness, in a good way, and ability to run with an interesting idea. Anyway let’s get to the episode in question for tonight and why it’s a good fit for LGBTQPril.

Based on a urban legend from various places around the internet that I’m sure you’ve heard of if you’re a nerd like me (solidarity bump 👊) Polybius is set in 1984 and concerns an evil arcade cabinet and the player who finds its secrets and it’s that player I want to discuss.

Andrew Myers is our protagonist in this story and the reason I wanted to feature this episode tonight. Andrew is gay, but not just that. He is gay, in a very small town, in the early 1980s, as a highschooler, with parents religious enough to hang a crucifix in their son’s room, make sure he says his prayers every night and prevent him from playing video games because they are the work of the devil. All he is trying to do is survive until he can leave Beaverton and keeps his head down and runs like hell to do so. Once he gets involved with the evil arcade game in question and accidentally involves his friend/crush Jess and new friend Amy too, his attitude begins to change it leads to a moment right before the final battle with the demon where he confesses his love for Jess, tells him he knows he doesn’t feel the same, but he’s just tired of running and hiding.

This episode might not focus as strongly on the LGBTQ+ aspect of its story like previous entries did, but I still find it’s approach unique and welcome. They could have quite easily made this about a nerdy guy keeping his head down from bullies. Instead though they chose to make it about a young man’s struggles with being gay in a small town in the 80s and how focusing on keeping your head down to avoid the negatives of life means your not really living it. It doesn’t sugarcoat the harsh realities of being gay in high school, especially in that small a town and especially in that time with the parents he has either. But in spite of all that though he learns that somethings are worth fighting for and being able to be yourself without hiding is one of them. It’s a great lesson to impart on other young people around Andrew’s age who it is quite possible that could be going through the same or similar problems because of their gender identity or sexuality. The message that things will get better later yes, but also never forget that there are still things worth it to go back for right now.

Dimension 404 S1E4: Polybis (2017)

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That’s it for tonight. Hope you’re enjoying LGBTQPril. Don’t forget to like and/or comment, leave suggestions, or even write your own post with the tag #LGBTQPril. See you folks next time