#now i just dont care. i wanna dive into the stories asians tell and the art that asians makes coming out of asia. theres so much to unearth

[usertoxicyaoi]

anyway i love being asian and i love saying that out loud with my whole chest out. there's so much tradition and history in our culture and when you're in the west sometimes you fail to understand or you miss the sentiment, the reasoning, the point, of certain practices within the culture. either that, or you feel ashamed of them. until you start seeing, for example, white people doing and taking up practices belonging to the asian culture and you, as an asian, are like .... uh ............ what the fuck am /i/ doing being ashamed about it then .......

like. for example, oiling your hair. when i was a kid, my ammi would oil my hair every single time a day before i was going to wash my hair. that act, yes, held so much meaning for the both of us. it was something my naani did to her, so she did it with me. generational. it was our bonding time. it was her teaching me how we look after our hair. and then ... as i grew up, i didn't get my hair oiled by my ammi anymore. when she asked me why, i had said to her back then that i looked greasy and it was so embarrassing because i'd smell of oil when i would go to school and. yeah. she stopped doing it. and my hair got damaged. and its been years and today, i saw my ammi oiling her hair, and she just called me over, and i sat on the floor and she oiled my hair. and it just felt. like a lot. and i felt ... heavy.

and then i realised that despite being in my late twenties, there's still so much left in me to unpack and unlearn and relearn wrt me being asian. i thought i'd gone past that phase. but i haven't. and thats okay!

which is why its so important for me to have ... this space ... i guess ... where i can validate myself. where i can watch things that are asian, made by asians, doing asian things and following the culture so that i too feel comfortable in my own skin. in the people who look like me. in the food i eat. in the clothes i wear. in the languages i speak. in the art and media i enjoy. in all the big and little things i do.

but anyway. i love being asian. i wish i could talk about it more and how much it means to me when i make a deep dive and indulge within my culture and how rooted that makes me feel. i often feel like i've neglected so much of what it means to be asian, but its still not too late. and there's a deep comfort in that.

[brybryby]

VERY LONG POST IM SORRY. DONT FEEL OBLIGED TO READ

HI. Alrighty, this has been on my mind for a while (ever since promotional content for Trials started being released).

I have a TON of analyses in the drafts, but I want to make this post before I release them for public viewing.

I know that I like to make goofy, light-hearted little fan animations and fan art of Outlast, but I think I need to start changing how I navigate through the content. After spending so much of my time deep diving and writing up these analyses, my eyes have been opened to just how much the franchise revolves around fucked up historical events. I feel that some of the stuff I've posted is tone deaf, or at least the way I posted about it is. And I think—for the most part—there's an understanding that I don't intend to be harmful, but I fear that the way I go about it **is**. (And obviously, action takes precedence over intent.)

For contextualization, when I initially got into Outlast at the age of 12, I was enthralled by the horror aesthetics and found a lot of the angsty gore to be cathartic. I felt so “taboo” and “scandalous” lol (especially as a developing child trying to understand myself amidst my puberty stage). I was young and—for lack of a better word—braindead in how I navigated the media. I was naive, mindless, ignorant, etc etc… Now that I have a deeper understanding of the narratives and historical implications/influences, I need to do better in how I interact with the franchise.

What am I getting at?

Pretty much, I'm working on being more careful with how I interact with the media. At the same time, I want the analyses that I post to be educational. And most importantly, please message me if I ever say some bullshit. Seriously. All I ever want to do with my life is to be a positive impact. I genuinely get upset if I cause harm to someone else. (One time I literally cried at a high school football game as a freshman because I thought I hurt someone else's feelings. It turned out they were faking it lmao. Then they started feeling bad and then that made me feel bad for crying and yea yea).

Seriously though. I know that my posts can get public outreach, and anything that has public outreach can be influential and have a good or bad impact. So please let me know if I do or say anything harmful or ignorant. I won't be offended. I don’t want to spread harmful stuff. There are many instances in my life where people sit me down to have meaningful conversations about shit I've said or done and how I can improve myself.

That said, I'll be posting more analyses and making my own syntheses of historical events. My next analysis post will be about Waylon's Asian-coding (specifically Korean-coding), how Trials actually supports this (using themes of US immigration), and why it is apparent to many Asian fans (including me, hehe).

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That's pretty much it. But if you wanna stick around a bit further, I'll tell you my (excruciatingly long) story about how I got into Outlast :) along with how much it has invaded my brain and life :') and maybe get a little ~personal~ hehe

STORYTIME:

So, the game came out in 2013. Nearly 10 years ago. I was 12 at the time of its release. Let me tell you…this game was a HUGE impact in the horror community. HOLY. SHIT. It changed the way I looked at lockers and beds. I remember it being critically acclaimed (and rightfully so). It may have not been the most technical video game, but it certainly was a piece of art.

I remember commercials being shown everywhere. The trailer of beta Miles Upshur running and parkouring through Mount Massive while being chased by the tiny beta model of Chris Walker will forever be canonized as part my childhood. I remember specifically heading to the bathroom from my living room and my dad interrupting me to say “Hey! Check this out!” and then proceeding to play the trailer for my 12-year-old eyes. I was scared shitless.

Couple weeks later, Conan O'Brien featured Outlast in one of his segments of “Clueless Gamer” (yeah, my family and I used to watch Conan lol). I was very familiar with Slender and Amnesia, which were the 2 other games featured in this Halloween special, but this was the first time I REALLY got to check out Outlast.

Now, let me preface that during this time, internet culture was very interesting and even less safe than it is today. I had a ton of bad experiences on the internet during my childhood. But oddly (and embarrassingly), the emo/scene/horror/creepypasta culture was what brought me comfort amongst a sea of awful things you could find on the internet. It was probably unhealthy for my developing brain, but I indulged in a lot of angst that was presented with heavy gore and violence. And to be honest, looking at this kind of stuff at a young age helped me process a lot of my own personal shit that I experienced outside of the internet realm. (To be clear, I don't endorse this type of violence, and I don't endorse exploring the internet in the same way I did as a child—it was probably very unhealthy and I think it caused some early development issues.)

But nothing—and I mean NOTHING—scratched that itch more than the way Outlast did. I watched the finger cutting scene in Conan's “Clueless Gamer” and was fucking mortified. I was scared of the dark for weeks. But I remember spending that night in my bedroom looking at more Outlast content to get that cathartic fix to fill my emotional hole of…I don't know…morbid curiosity? I definitely felt shame at the time. I don't know. In recent years, I've been on this journey to process stuff I experienced during my childhood and I struggle to go about my middle-school/junior-high stage because…I don't know…puberty? Access to the internet? I once got bullied by a forum of adult men for posting fan art LMAO. I was 12 years old—I forgot what the fan art even was. ANYWAYS, yea. That was only one instance of my conglomeration of internet experiences. (Like many other peeps, I had to hide my gender & racial identity to preserve my sanity). Indulging in gore art was therapeutic and helped me release negative emotions in a non-harmful way. Horror-genre communities online have been mostly friendly and welcoming towards me. That's probably why I fell in love with Outlast as an art rather than a video game.

I wasn't in the fandom straight off the bat. I had other hyper fixations at times but I navigated through these other fixations with this personal “Outlast standard” where the art and fiction I consumed needed to be horror-themed, gorey, or angsty. And Outlast isn't solely to blame. I was into gore and angst before the game came out. It just so happened that it came out at such a perfect time in my life. (Horror made my queer self feel accepted)

This whole “Outlast standard” stuck with me throughout high school. Uh… this next bit of information may get a little personal. During my sophomore year, someone really important in my life passed away. Then I had this life-impacting thing happen during my junior year that changed how I perceived things forever (lol, this sounds so dramatic). I turned to art to help me process and yada yada… but y'know what really helped? You know what I turned to when I needed to “scratch the itch”? (I bet you'll never guess)

I finally considered myself a part of the Outlast fandom in 2018-2019. I was a high school junior/senior and I posted the Outlast-Outkast animation that got retweeted by Red Barrels. Had a lot of fun in the fandom during that time and it helped get my mind off of things. Also, I loved the fact that Waylon graduated from Berkeley. I was applying to colleges during this time and it made me romanticize Berkeley, lol. I ended up getting accepted. Had an awesome time. I recently graduated and got my Bachelor's. I'm very privileged and gracious for my experience. I spent a lot of grueling time and energy dedicated towards my education.

During my college years, a lot of the unprocessed shit from my childhood started resurfacing and it was becoming hard to navigate through life. I became really disconnected with people who were close to me. Art started to fall out of my life. Stuff happened. Got in touch with psychiatrists thanks to my college's free health services. I don't mean to downplay or normalize what happened, but I'll bring up that many college students deal with mental illness and depression (and this could be attributed to many things: moving away from family, student-life, financial pressure, pressure to secure jobs/internships, living alone for the first time, maturing into an adult, etc. etc.).

But I remember sitting alone in my studio apartment one weekend and started surfing Tumblr. I came across new Outlast fan art and it sparked my hyper fixation all over again. I re-read the comics and—OKAY THIS IS GONNA SOUND FUCKING RIDICULOUS—but I started jogging because Miles went on jogs LMAOOAKJDGHJAHKGFL. I finally picked up the pencil and started drawing again (after like…months) and drew Miles and Waylon flipping off Murkoff. And THAT was when I realized what the narratives of Outlast were actually about—FUCKIN' CAPITALISM AAUGGGHHH. MY LITTLE POOPOO BRAIN AT AGE 12 NEVER UNDERSTOOD THAT. AND NOW THAT I'M AN ADULT—NOW THAT I CAN BLATANTLY SEE MYSELF AND MY PEERS AS VICTIMS/PRODUCTS OF CAPITALISM—CAN FINALLY FIND SO MUCH VALUE AND MEANING IN THIS GAME HHHRHRJGHKSDKFGLAJKDG SAY W H A T IM GONNA *explodes*

Then a year later, I started drawing more and more again. Trials' promotional marketing was becoming more prominent. I started posting my fan art on Tumblr. Then I made the fanimation (thank you Mr. Baichoo, you're so awesome, I will forever be a fan of yours) and now here I am. Still fixated on this silly little game for nearly 10 years. WHEW.

I FEEL LIKE A SHRIMP CHIP. Anyways, thanks. I much needed to get this off my chest.

Also, hey! Just wanted to say thanks for the friendly and welcoming interactions in this space. It feels so much safer and more comforting than previous internet experiences I've had. Since 2013, the fandom has evolved a lot. In my opinion, it has evolved for the better. The resurgence of new fans bring such refreshing perspectives and fields of knowledge that haven't been influenced by some of the harmful internet culture that I grew up in. So truly, many thanks to y'all for making the fandom space a nicer place (especially for such a heavy game). Also, what the heck, everyone in the fandom is seriously so talented and artistic

Uh… fan art time? (old stuff/sketches I haven’t posted)

But seriously if you got this far, thank you