#Greg & Sho spend 2 years falling in love

[marsontherocks]

I'm like, waist deep in an oc obsession rn its sooo bad anyways heres some oc art

1 & 2- OCs

3 & 4- Sho & Greg kinda angst because I'm normal(lie) about these 2

5- John Dough redesign from my game My Last Speed Date

6- My pfp I drew a while back of my sona :3

Putting more info about stuff in tags lol

[julesplanb-blog]

“To understand the miracle of living”

(Day 2)

The following note contains heavy spoilers on the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero” (season 3 episode 4) and some minor ones on other episodes from the show. Please also check tags for content warning.

I used to be one of those persons relatively at peace with the very concept of death, yet always struggling with the unfairness of it, the way it strikes indifferently young or old people, comes as the natural ending of a fully-lived life for some, and robs some others of it. I don't believe in afterlife, at least not in an afterlife our beings, minds, souls, if you want to call it that way, could apprehend (thus, survive) anyway. And though the thought of _not existing anymore _would be utterly scary to me, the idea of life having an end wasn't. If anything, it appeared to me as something giving life meaning: if here and now was all that we have, then here and now was incredibly precious. Which is why I'd always fear I wouldn't get enough of it. Fear that I would die before I got to see everything I wanted to see, read everything I wanted to read, met everyone I've wanted to talk to, and wrote every story I had in mind.

Then something happened. The city I was living in went through several attacks. Friends got injured. Friends lost friends. The all city got traumatized. And, I guess, I got traumatized. In the following weeks, the fear of dying or losing people would eat a lot of mind space whenever I would be in the subway, on a café terrace, at the theather... Whenever I would actually be, you know, living on, and in the end, it was smothering me. Till the next attack, on a different city, but where relatives happened to live. For the 3rd time in 15 months I found myself calling people I loved on the phone, to make sure they did not die a horrible, unfair and pointless death. And I believe that's the day something snapped.

From that day I stopped being afraid. I stopped thinking about it. I stopped watching my back on every subway station. Which seemed like a good thing until I realized: I wasn't afraid anymore because I did not care anymore. For nothing. I used to fear death a lot because they were so many things that would make me happy, because I used to enjoyed living, so much, in so many aspects, and so the only way my stupid brain found to stop that fear was to make everything tasteless and pointless and not important anymore. Nothing mattered. Nothing would make me laugh, or cry. I couldn't feel anything anymore. Couldn't be inspired by any words, couldn't find beauty in any landscape, taste in any food, enlightment in any book. At some point, I wouldn't even experience physical pain from injuries, or physical pleasure from the touch of the water. This turned out to be the worst experience of my life. Worse than fighting that physical illness I've been struggling with for 12 years, worse than grieving the death of my favorite human being, and worse than being in fear all the time. I was actually missing it. The constant fear. The pain. The sorrow. Those proofs that not only I was alive, but that I wanted to be, that I wanted to stay longer. I figured out pleasure and pain, joy and fear, were just one big switch. I couldn't turn some off and still have the rest of it. And to my horror, I had no idea of to switch the whole system back on. So I held on as tight as I could to the smallest thing left: that fear of never getting it back. That tiny evidence that some part of me still wanted more life. For a while I would stay away from art, writing, fiction, books, because they were my very favorite things in life and it was devastating to try those on and realize they wouldn't work anymore. I was also scared to waste it on a shut down mind. "Oh, I'll keep that movie for when I'll be better and actually able to enjoy it"

I was all wrong of course. The best way to get better, was to feed that tiny piece of me left with art, writing and books. Which I started to do at some point, asking around for new things to read, watch, experience. I've read brand new authors. Wrote a short novel myself. Got back on drawing and music  And I could tell I was slowly getting my senses back, when a friend of mine told me I should try Black Mirror Season 3. Now, if you did watch the 2 first seasons of this british anthology on technology, you know how strange a choice it would be to advise such a dark show on someone trying to find reasons to being alive. But to this day, I suspect that friend actually wanted me to experience "San Junipero", and couldn't spoil the surprise by advising me to skip directly to that very episode....

The contrast effect with the previous episodes probably carries some weight in what makes "San Junipero" such a grand, beautiful piece of writing. If you recall the first episode of Black Mirror, "National Anthem", you know the show is not only about technology itself, but about the way we use it. About, with or without smart electronic devices, we behave. All it would have taken for "National Anthem" to end right was people behaving with basic decency. Same goes for the Waldo Moment. Or "15 millions merits": it's not the technology that guts you in the end, it's the choice the human protagonist makes. All and all, Black Mirror is quite a pessimistic take, not on progress, but on human nature.

But not in "San Junipero". In this one, we finally get to see a future where technology but more importantly, people, are displaying kindness. And it's all the more powerfull when you realize how easy it would have been to write something dark on such a topic.

Indeed, San Junipero, which appears at the beginning to be a "party town", in 1987, is actually a virtual reality where elder people can spend a limited amount of time every week as their younger selves, in order to fight alzheimer's effect or simply enjoy life pleasures in their final days, and where they can be uploaded permanently after they pass. As I said, death occurs in thousands of unfair ways and to me, the only thing that did seemed fair about it was that it's coming for everyone, no matter what you did, no matter who you are. It's quite easy to imagine a future, or at least a Black Mirror episode, where a technology used to cheat death would just be one more, final, unfathomable injustice. Say, only rich people can access it. But it's not the case here. If the time allowed in the system is limited, it's only to prevent people for losing their minds. And staying or not staying is entirely up to you.

Well, almost. The episode follows Yorki on her first night in San Junipero, where she meets Kelly (now there's a lot to discuss about the way Yorki being gay and Kelly being bi is addressed or not addressed, and I think it's done quite beautifully, but that's a topic for another note entirely). Ensue a bound between the two women, who ultimately fall for each other, only, they don't welcome those feelings the same way. While loving Kelly makes Yorki happy, Kelly doesn't want to "do feelings". Doesn't want to like anyone here in San Junipero. "So you've been just totally fucking inconvenient", she says to Yorki when the two are reunited.

We then find out about San Junipero's true nature, and about Yorki and Kelly's respective situations: they're both old, on the final weeks of their lives but those lives coulnd't have been more different. Yorki suffered a car accident about 40 years ago - the very night she came out as gay to her folks, who rejected her -, and has been quadriplegic since there, missing out on life, while Kelly was married for 50 years, and had a daughter who died in her late 30's, before the technology was even available. Her husband passed away too, a couple years ago, and wouldn't even try on San Junipero, because it could not foresee living on without their daughter.

And Kelly is set on the same choice: she's in San Junipero in her last months because she wants to "have a good time" but does not intend to stay after she dies. Not because she believes she'll actually be reunited with her husband and daughter in heaven - she in fact believes life is all, and that there's nothing past it - but because she gets a sense that living forever is meaningless. That it would take away meaning and taste out ouf everything in life, that she'll end up like most of San Junipero's permanent residents: alone, trying every fucked up thing they could in a desperate attempt to feel something. Because in a way, she gets that she already lived her life, experienced it all and is done.

On the other hand, Yorki can't wait to be a permanent resident, but her family - again - won't let her, so in order to do so, she has to marry Greg, a nurse at her care facility, who will allow her to be euthanized then uploaded into the system. When Kelly finds out about Yorki's situation, she offers to be the one marrying her. "Greg seems great but... why not someone you connected with?". (At this point I was already smiling ear to ear - and, ok, crying just a tad). Yorki thus becomes a permanent resident and finally gets to enjoy walking, moving, feeling. And being loved, something we know she was deprived of basically her whole life. So it makes sense for her to want to share it with Kelly, to have Kelly staying with her. "This is so real", she says to her. "This is not a trap". But Kelly then tells her about her own life story ("did it occur to you to ask?"), about her late husband and daughter, and states again that she made her choice not to stay in San Junipero.

So while I was actually understanding both their point of view, and especially Kelly's, I was fearing the episode ending on Yorki's finally getting her chance to live... in a solitary, meaningless place. Trapped. Because that's what that show is about: how technology and our way to use it is a trap. And that's what the episode was about, wasn't it? Stating that living forever is pointless without a reason, a person to share it with and that accepting death itself should not be that depressing. Yorki and Kelly's fight about it ends with Kelly running away in her car, and crashing, just as Yorki did 40 years ago following her fight with her folks, about being gay. And at the very moment Yorki reaches for Kelly's hand to help her back on her feet, Kelly's time in San Junipero is up, and she's sucked out of the system, back to her dying body, while Yorki remains alone. But then comes the final twist. The one that you usually fear for Black Mirror has the ability to leave you listless on the floor. The one, that, here, in an consistent, organic way with the rest of the narrative, actually brings tears of joy to your eyes. Yorki's line earlier turns out to be true: it's not a trap.”

So Kelly passes over, and actually chose to stay in San Junipero. For a second there, through the overwhelming wave of mere happiness I was experiencing, the tiniest part of me got upset. Because the former me, the "before PTSD and emotional shutdown me" was actually agreing with Kelly, on forever being pointless, on having lived your life and accepting there's an end to it and it felt like a let down to have a character not believing in afterlife but still finding meaning in death, going the other way in the end. This feeling lasted a second or so, before I realized something in Kelly's very last words and on the last shot of the episode itself.

Kelly did not change her mind about the meaning or aftermath of death, let alone about the lack of meaning in "forever". She doesn't say "ok let's go on living forever" but that, “all things considered” she’s ready for the rest of it. I guess that by mimicking Yorki's car accident, which left her trapped in a organic, natural and, yes, 'real' body but deprived her of any physical experience, Kelly put herself in her lover's shoes, became aware that the full life she lived, the joy, the pain, the all experience of it, was denied to Yorki, and that San Junipero is her chance to finally get that. To live. But as her last line states, Kelly's final choice to stay in San Junipero isn't made out of pity, but out of that second and more personal / self-centered realization that there's a "rest of it" for her too. Some things left to experience, some happiness left to live. She makes that choice out of realization she does have, in her love for Yorki, a reason to stay on a big longer.

I don"t think that "For the rest of it" happens to be San Junipero's last spoken line by chance. For me, it's one final description of what the system has to offer. Just like the very last image happens to be the computing servers hosting the population's spirits, consciousness, souls, if you'll have it.

Kelly and Yorki's souls still exist on a physical, thus perishable, mortal medium. At some point, that server will crash, or run out of power. Something will end it. Just as an organic body, it is ephemeral and won't last forever. Because San Junipero, the system, and, I think the story, isn't about forever. It's about love, connecting with people, and other reasons making worthwile to hang around a bit longer.

It's about "the rest of it". It's about more life. And as of today, yes. I do know what that's worth.