#people really saw “irrational hatred of men” and are for some reason thinking this included valid critique of transmisogyny

[sistress]

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[macgyvertape]

Castlevania kinda had a pacing problem

spoilers for all of Netflix’s Castlevania. I haven’t seen much analysis for the show on tumblr, im honestly curious if discussions I had with irl friends mirror what fandom talks about

tldr: Castlevania seems inconsistently paced from season to season, and within season as well, leads to a lot of characters motivations feeling unclear so characters repeatedly explain why they are doing something while they’re doing it

overview of the seasons:

S1 I know somewhat of a test for Netflix but it has good main trio character establishment and sets the scale of the conflict

s2: pretty complete emotional arc for most characters and resolves the plot of killing Dracula while setting up additional characters to continue the story. Isaac, Hector, Carmilla all established with the audience as characters whose story would continue

honestly I would bet this is the most popular season

S3: s2 did a bit of worldbuilding, but this season really fleshed out the world with both a wide range of locations and exploring the question of “what now, Dracula is dead but vampires and night creatures remain”.

There were basically 4 plot threads: 1) Sypha/Trevor investigating the cult & Saint Germain; 2) Hector & Carmilla (also introducing Lenore, Striga, Morana); 3) Isaac’s journey of revenge & self discovery; 4) Alucard sits around the castle and is betrayed.

overall characters roughly feel like they are in the same place if not worse. A big criticism I saw at the time, which hold up after rewatching this before s4 is nothing felt resolved for the main characters

I would say this season is where the pacing issues start to become apparent, juggling 4 plot threads that lack a central theme or even mutual character connection. If there was a central theme it would be “humans are awful to each other”. The Judge doing Hot Fuzz style murders, The Wizard in the tower, Sumi & Taka

S4: it starts with the same 4 plot threads, though upfront it is made clear that the plot theme is “people are trying to resurrect Dracula”, and the progression of the plot works to resolve unrelated plot threads until the main trio reunites for the boss fights. To me and my friends watching it was obvious that the show would reunite the main trio, the question was how and how far into the run time.

Season 4 is why I’m writing this essay, for the past 2 days I’ve been like, yeah that character sure explained their motives repeatedly maybe with some philosophical discussion, but it’s just such a weird place considering where they were in s3

Alucard’s arc:

Where he was left in season 3, it was after killing people he had trusted in self defense and impaling their corpses. It was clearly meant to parallel Dracula’s dislike of humanity. However overall his character lacked a proactive motivating force.

Honestly the most interesting thing I found in s3 was Alucard clearly misses Sypha and Trevor, however they don’t miss him or refer to him

One reason Sumi & Taka betray Alucard is for the secrets and power of Castlevania. After inviting the village including St Germain who Alucard was warned of into the Castle, Alucard makes 0 effort to secure anything, not even his personal childhood room. Guess he really learned nothing

Discussing St Germain, I think it’s funny that they had a several minute flashback sequence for his lost girlfriend (who doesn’t have a name or a voice actor), to remind the viewer of who he is, and to justify how he’s suddenly back and down for murder.

In s4 there is the call to help the village, and the walk back to the castle is a montage of Alucard opening up to Greta and becoming friendly literally overnight. He laughs off the impaling, and basically all of the darker things he went through in season 3, which has me asking what was the point of his season 3 arc then? 

Honestly writing this I realize the biggest parallel he has with Dracula is the call to action from a bold woman with a dramatic entrance speech which then leads to a romance

Isaac’s arc:

in s3, with all the other themes of “humanity sucks” I was always unsure if the townspeople were meant to appear irrational while attacking a larger force instead of letting him pass through an leave, or him not caring about how he’s provoking them is meant to show his insanity

ive seen the discussion elsewhere, curious about the Discourse here

is s4 Isaac has the whole monologue about how he now has agency but him gaining that agency was his s3 arc. In s4 he’s already at the point of accepting it. By the end of s4 he’s one of those who comes the furthest from his first character appearance to his last.

s4e5 where of Isaac attacking Carmilla in Isaac’s 2nd appearance had him resolving like 4 plot threads at once (Carmilla, Striga& Morana, Hector, and Isaac himself).

but i do wonder if Trevor, Sypha, or Alucard even know any of these people exist. I think not

I was honestly confused if I missed a scene from his dialogue about building something and what is inherent nature, to “My plan has evolved, my plan is now conquest” because he only conquests the one castle and the rest is left unclear

Upon rewatch the connection there is “killing [the wizard] felt just ... I liked that feeling”, so the show says that Isaac in the end attacked Carmilla for the sake of justice and not revenge.

Isaac in his last conversation expresses the theme of s4 “build something new on these old bones, where people can live for the future”

however, his arc honestly feel scenes were cut, and then dialogue was written around it. He’s the only living character who doesn’t show up in the epilogue and the sentient night creature “what if I could empty hell” dialogue was some of the most interesting worldbuilding. Night creatures with sentience and possibility of regaining memories!!!!

The Council of Sisters & Hector’s arc:

oh I’ve already seen s4 discourse about Lenore/Hector while searching for character analysis, a chunk of it seems to be rationalizing the absolute difference between how s3 ended with these characters and s4. It was extremely confusing for me and my friends; wondering if 1) was Hector showing more emotional intelligence than before and putting on a facade to cover up hatred? Nope 2) did more time pass than 6 weeks for there to be some kind stockholm syndrome? No, Hector seems fine to let Lenore kill herself

The slave control ring: played up in the climax of s3 and easily solved s4. s3 Lenore says if he tries to harm them, flee, or take it off it would cause crippling pain, in s4 Hector just easily cuts off his own finger.

for a control ring that they take time to show a version being on the Rebus, it doesn’t do much controlling of Hector

also guess the definition of “do harm” just refers to direct action

Lenore in s4: has no purpose in conquest, has that useless remarked on by multiple characters, is imprisoned, then kills herself after a genre aware philosophical discussion. This essay is long enough, but what the fuck happened to this character who ended s3 clearly physically and sexually abusive? Seriously this was one of the biggest writing changes to the point where she was treating Hector as an equal. Compare her last words in s3 “shh the real people [vampires] are talking”. The change in the relationship is actually something I would have taken being shown, or atleast told of what exactly caused this change other than the vague “you adopted him”

Striga&Morana get the best arc of the Council. 3 scenes: the tent argument, Daybreak armor fight & argument resolution, declaration of feelings and turning away. You could argue Castlevania is plot to be connective tissue between fight scenes, but for all the dialogue about human resistance in different seasons it was nice to see it. Overall the scenes were short but had a lot of showing what their relationship is not just telling,

unlike Carmilla. For as much hyping up as they did with her, and as much power as she had, she only appeared in 2 episodes and no other group except Isaac knew about her military conquest.

the map scene where she states her motive for conquest of wanting to take things from old men is the key example of how characterization became tell not show. How interesting was that monologue compared to the past seasons flashback to her murmuring the old vampire lord, or all her repeated insults of men/man-children that shows how she judges people??

That monologue had to carry the weight of justifying the Sisterhood bonds falling apart as well as why her motivation changed from building a human pen from Styria to Braila to world conquest. I think it did so poorly

Sypha & Trevor

really Sypha & Trevor have the main plot in the show. I checked and post season 1 the only episode they don’t appear in is s4e6, which is entirely devoted to the Isaac, Hector, and Council of Sisterhood arc. Their partnership and adventures are the main plot of the show.

Its easy to see what Trevor’s arc was over the show: coming to peace with the deaths of his family, taking up the mantle of being a Belmont, and starting a new family with Sypha.

With Sypha I actually had to scroll through tv tropes for what is her character arc, and I guess hers is disillusionment from adventure and life outside the speakers? My friends joke that Sypha’s magic is what the plot demands to look cool in a fight, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Tangent: the ending of their arc was easy to guess: as soon as Trevor went to fight the final boss alone I literally said “oh i bet Sypha’s pregnant, Trevor’s doing a heroic sacrifice, theyll use the unexplained magical dagger mcguffin, and 60/40 odds that he goes through an infinite corridor to outright come back vs just the implication he might come back”

I guess my final thought of the show, was overall the SUPER Final Boss got my by surprise. It was a good twist I enjoyed. Not that Death appeared, I had guessed that from the heavy foreshadowing, but I was surprised by who it was, because I had thought I thought the characters involved feeling shoehorned into the plot was just more bad writing. The Alchemist who put St Germain on the path or murder for no discernible motive for helping? Sure gotta move the plot along. New Dracula court member Varney who has a whole introduction with almost every character he meets and banter about his smell? Sure thats basically how all characters talk with a snarky and acerbic voice.

[sapphicambitions]

like when I say I think Luke Castellan is gay I don’t mean it as a cutesy “don’t u wish ur fave was gay” kind of way I mean textually and seriously I believe he was gay. 

I could cite the petty stuff like “he only had female friends growing up” and “he clearly never showed interest in women even though many women were interested in him” or “he is one of the few people in the series who didn’t actually have a serious love interest / partner” or whatever but i feel like it’s actually much deeper than that. Luke was a young person who had a difficult and strained relationship with his parents. He saw how flawed the system was and how it was treating people like him, and sought to change the system, give power to people like him, and start it all over. (Yeah, he fell victim to people who influenced him to the dark side but that had nothing to do with his gayness, imo.) He just reminds me a lot of characters like Nico and Catra from She-Ra: repressed gay with a strained relationship with parental figures, angry and willing to take down the world. In this essay I will-

.......like no but seriously

Luke had a very troubled childhood because of his mother’s damaged mind, and the fact that she was constantly having fits and telling him how terrible things were going to be for him. When Luke is (angrily) describing his childhood to Hermes he says: “You could’ve helped me when she was having one of her fits, shaking me and saying crazy things about my fate. When I used to hide in the closet so she wouldn’t find me with those glowing eyes,” like!!! he even mentions hiding in a closet (let me find the subtext where i want it)  but seriously, you know what’s one of the first things my mother said to me when I came out to her? “You know how much harder your life is going to be, don’t you?” So then Luke ran away from his home and found a new family, one that looked out for each other and loved each other more than their blood family ever did. This is a queer narrative!!

And with Hermes, it was all sorts of fucked up. His father kept him at a distance. Made Luke feel like there was something wrong with him, like he didn’t love him. His dad made it very clear to him what his expectations were of him, tried to encourage him to be a great hero, like all the heroes before him (when he was talking to him about sending him on a quest and Hermes said “You will get a change to be a great hero before…”) but Luke didn’t want to be the person his father expected him to be. He wanted to be something new, something true to himself. Luke was always burdened down with the weight of his parent’s expectations, both the expectation that he should strive to be a perfect hero and the knowledge that his future was doomed. 

So one time i was at a bar with friends and me and the only other queer person there were talking and he was like “gay men and their dads, you know what i mean?” and I was like “yeah also gay women and their moms” and we had a whole discussion about growing up with a certain set of expectations of who you’ll be from your parents and the gendered expectations they have for you and having to crush all of that when you come out to them and navigating the difficulties that come with that when you want to be your own person so like there’s your real world comparison / evidence for that argument

ALSO Luke ran away from home but then kind of immediately went to Camp Half-Blood where he was shoved into the Hermes cabin with all of his siblings and undetermined kids and then still expected to scrape part of his food in the fire and be thankful to his deadbeat dad. That would suck! He was already harboring all of this rage inside of him, and then he went on his quest. Saw the world. Was exposed to other schools of thought. He understood that he was just being used as a pawn. He came back a different person, he didn’t quite fit in at camp anymore now that he’d seen the world. Kind of like when I went off to be gay at college and then came back to my childhood home and had to be straight around all my high school friends. just saying.

Luke saw the flaws in the system, the way the gods ruled the world. The way the gods treated their children and how much it hurt them. He felt so betrayed and hurt and abandoned by his dad and all the gods, so instead of sitting with it, he thought “I can do better.” Luke sought to rebuild the world, scrap it all and start new. Start with new leaders who took better care of everyone, who did things completely differently than the way it was done before, and raze anything before it. We’re going to ignore the fact that he was influenced to the dark side for a moment because it’s not related to this essay, but I also feel like this is a very queer narrative. (how many times can i say that phrase in this essay) Seeing the flaws in the way the world is treating people like you and wanting to do better. Luke said (this not an actual book quote more of a dramatic sentiment): “I won’t be used and I won’t be who you want me to be. I will become my own person and there’s nothing you can fucking do to stop me. I will make a new world, better than before, without you, for people like me, and I will tear down the walls of the previous world if I fucking have to” and i just think that’s very gay rights of him.

A thing that I’m a big fan of is seeing specific character types and relating them to each other. For example: our fave Nico di Angelo and Catra from She-Ra. (If you haven’t seen She-Ra, she’s the DEFINITION of an angry repressing gay) We can see from Nico’s narrative and from Catra’s narrative and also just straight up my own personal narrative that sometimes when you’re gay and repressing and afraid of becoming the person you are warned against, while also knowing that you were meant for more but maybe not quite understanding what that more is yet, and overall just want to feel accepted and loved as who you truly are but not receiving that, it can tend to make one lash out in angry and irresponsible ways. It can make one isolate themselves from those they previously were close to. It can lead to irrational and impulsive choices for all the wrong reasons because you don’t feel right and you don’t know why. Not at all saying this is the same across the board for queer people, it’s just something that honestly happens to some people and I can relate to when i see it in characters. 

I see that in Luke. He is weighed down by everything his parents want him to be, both good and bad, and is trying to scrap the world and make a new one for people like him. He wants to take his turn, pushing aside anyone who’s hurt him. Luke was someone who was constantly being torn apart by the world and just wanted to feel safe and secure in who he was and the world he was in. He was acting in anger and fear and hurt and revenge for his childhood and because he still felt like there wasn’t a place in the world for him. He lashed out against his father and his family and his friends and pushed them all away. Sure, he had some friends at Camp Half-Blood, but Annabeth’s devotion to him was not enough to make up for like, all of his childhood trauma. First everything with his mom and then being on the run for so long and then meeting his dad and then losing Thalia (which also fueled his anger and hatred of the gods but like we knew that) and his quest and just everything. He was dealt a cruel hand and he didn’t handle it well. Not that that has anything to do with him being gay but I’m just lamenting over the tragedy of his life. Anyway.

Also not to quote the Lighting Thief because it’s not technically in Rick’s canon but i still think they perfectly understood the characters so I’m including it, but the idea that Luke has tried to be a good kid, he’s tried to do what was expected of him, he’s done everything they ever asked of him, but it didn’t pay off. It didn’t matter. It still wasn’t a world he belonged in. “you know this world will never be ours as long as our parents rule over the stars” and “it’s time to make the world our own” strikes me very much to the tune of LGBT activism. once again ringing in that idea of “if you won’t make the world better than i will do it with my bare hands” he also sings “the gods were never on our side, so i think it’s time we watched them fall” which gets to me every time because like he was just a kid! he was just a kid who had so much hurt and anger inside of him and he went about everything the wrong way but he was just a fucking kid! 

also YES to be petty and shallow but while Annabeth and Thalia refer to luke romantically, he never mentioned the same for him. Kelli the sexy monster hits on him during Battle of the Labyrinth and was clearly interested in him and he pushes her away without any hesitation. IN FACT the only demigods referenced on Luke’s ship are Chris and Ethan (why we didn’t see any of that trio, I’ll never understand), with Ethan working much closer with Luke and being a major player in the Titan War. (also I think Ethan is queer too but that’s a battle for another day.) And Rick LOVES romances. pretty much every character gets paired up with someone in the original series (percy and annabeth, grover and juniper, even Clarisse and Chris) which is fab thank u rick for my percabeth rights but Luke is the only character who does not get a girlfriend!! because he’s a homosexual!!!! you know what other character didn’t get paired off in the original series??? NICO, a known homo!!!  i do think that luke is a case of “accidentally written homo” because this was before rick saved the world and gave us nico’s coming out and really started pushing for queer rep in the books (thank u again rick!!!!), so I’m allowed to find my gay subtext in the original series, thank u very much!

listen all im saying is that my favorite character narrative is “angry gay coded villain who is repressing and lashing out at the world because of it” and i truly believe luke fits into that narrative and I stand by my argument.

Thank u for attending my TED Talk

[gapimnydiaries]

Diary Entry #17

Dear Diary,

I have a story to tell you –

“Where do you see yourself in 10 years?” I asked him.

He thought about it for a while and responded.

“Um, I want to have a house, and I want to have a job. On the weekends I want to go to the movies, and I want to have a group of friends to go with.”

“That sounds pretty good! How can you get there?”

Another pause.

“Well, I have to quit meth…”

It was a warm, sunny afternoon. I sat across from a friend on a balcony looking down on a calm street. We got into a conversation about his struggles with methamphetamine addiction, and I wanted to understand where he was coming from. I thought it would be a good idea to talk first about his aspirations rather than the gritty details of how he became addicted. I was shocked by how simple and “normal” his dreams were for the future. I had always taken shelter, school and friends for granted, but my friend didn’t have those things. He grew up in an impoverished neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York where drugs and violence were rampant. He joined the military, which was his ticket out of that environment. He finished his service only to fall back into a life of drugs and destitution. All of these complicated social issues were also intertwined with his sexuality. In our conversation, he told me he just wanted to be normal – a place to live, a job and friends. What was noticeably missing in his vision was a family.

◆◆◆

I recently read an article in the Huffington Post called “The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness” by Michael Hobbes that I thought captured very well some of the psychological problems that plague the modern gay man, and it has become one of my most referenced articles. One concept that stood out to me was minority stress that describes the constant psychological strain associated with being a stigmatized minority. In the case of being a minority in sexuality, relatively minor stresses dealing with perceived or actual social rejection and prejudice accumulate over time and lead to prolonged psychological trauma. It also talked about the sadness of not being able to have a traditional family. That was definitely an "aha!" moment for me because up to that point, I had not realized that a significant portion of my own depression could be attributed to my sexuality.

In junior year of college, I was going to a weekend retreat with the board of one of my college organizations. It was one of those bonding opportunities that gets the board closer to each other so we can work better together. The retreat would start with talks of organizational agenda setting and annual planning and eventually progress into secret sharing after a few rounds of drinks. When everyone was having a good time playing “Fuck, Marry, Kill”, I had already retreated into the corner anxiously like I always did in similar situations. I had to mentally prepare all kinds of reasons why I didn’t have an extensive dating history by college and came up with stories of attractions to various imaginary people. I would be mentally exhausted by the end of the night trying my hardest to provide unsatisfactory answers. To everyone else, it made me seem secretive and unwilling to share, defeating the point of a bonding night. It took me a while to process how those experiences shaped my interactions with others and my own psyche. I now realized how much my sexuality contributed to my social anxiety and unwillingness to get emotionally close to others. I felt like I had something to hide and was afraid I would be “discovered”. It was difficult to develop the kind of close friendship I saw in others because I couldn’t let my guards down.

I am much more comfortable with my sexuality today, but unfortunately the stress persists. When I visited relatives in China this past summer, I had an earful of questions about why I didn’t get a girlfriend in medical school or when I would get one. My family members were making all kinds of commitments to attend my wedding, including my 80 year old grandmother. When this came up, and it did a lot, I simply smiled and nodded. To them, I was an exemplar child -- well educated and professionally accomplished. To me, I just felt like a fraud – I likely would never be able to deliver the kind of “normal” marriage and family they expected. I was going to be a disappointment to people who loved me the most. I believe that the closer one is to family, the worse the feeling. It only took me half a week before I couldn’t take it anymore and wanted to take the next flight back to the U.S….

◆◆◆

When I asked my friend why he kept using meth despite all its negative consequences on his life, he said he felt powerful and sexy with it. It’s boring to meet guys without it because he didn’t feel attractive and confident. He had been struggling with depression and loneliness, and taking drugs was his way to have a moment of feeling like normal, no matter how temporary. He actively looked for people who party and play (hook up while on drugs) on Grindr. He just wanted to feel good about himself, and drugs were his gateway to that feeling. I nodded with an implicit understanding – I knew that feeling too well.

Perhaps you have read my last year’s diary entry on my entrance into the gay world, and it wasn’t full of rainbows and unicorns, so to speak. When I first came into contact with the gay world, a series of painful rejections quickly crushed my naive idealism and simple desires for acceptance. My self-esteem was at an all-time low, and what came with it was depression and a sense of self-hatred. There must’ve been something wrong with me if none of the pretty profiles on dating apps wanted me, right? In Hobbes’ article, he describes a process of being “re-traumatized” as one enters the gay world, a community where we are waiting to be accepted for who we are, only to be ruthlessly rejected for our ethnicity, appearance, income or demeanor. A quote that stood out to me was that “every gay man I know carries around a mental portfolio of all the shitty things other gay men have said and done to him.” In an age of anonymous, headless profiles on dating apps, it’s easy to forget all social etiquette, and we end up with a collective toxic culture that makes everyone miserable.

I have been ghosted or blocked on datings apps more times than I can keep track in the past years, but I do remember a few notable ones. One time I talked to a guy for several weeks and made plans to get boba. I was blocked right after finally sending him a picture. Another time I went rock climbing with a guy and never received a reply to my text after. There was a time that I traveled all the way from Boston to Hartford for a second meeting with a guy who said “you are a great person with a great personality and career, but not exactly my type physically.” Over the years I have struggled with deleting the apps but only to go back on a few days later. I think using dating apps is like gambling. We are on it to hit whatever jackpot that we imagine for ourselves, whether it’s the perfect boyfriend or the hot-boy-next-door hookup. But just like the casino, the player never wins. We end up creating an environment where guys with the best profile pictures get all the attention and can therefore pick and choose and leave the rest of us miserable and desperate from the trail of rejections.

The rejections, especially in the form of ignoring, ghosting and blocking, left me confused and depressed. At times it seemed like I was bracing myself for the eventual rejection in all my interaction with guys. I was defensive and quick to jump to conclusions whenever there was even a lag in response. Many of my friends have told me that I just needed more confidence, but it was very hard to find confidence when I had just received so many rejections. It was especially bad when this was compounded by being Asian and getting racist responses from apps. A friend once commented to me, when you have low self-esteem, you become desperate. And when you are desperate, you do the most irrational things. People engage in risky hook ups and drugs in an attempt to fill this painful void, but it’s like scratching an itch; they offer ephemeral relief but only to make the problem worse long term.

◆◆◆

“Sometimes, I only eat a little bit of my food, like a quarter of a sandwich, and it would make me feel really fat, so I just threw the rest into the toilet.”

A while into the conversation, my friend admitted that he had been struggling with bulimia. Even though he had a normal Body Mass Index, which is how weight is measured to determine if someone is in a healthy range, he had an altered view of his body and believed he was overweight. He mentioned to me how there are so many fit and muscular guys and Grindr, and it made him feel unattractive.

A few years ago, I met up with a guy in Downtown LA. I was surprised that he even responded to me because he had what looked like a modeling picture on his Jack’d profile with the most amazing tan and ripped muscles. Fortunately for my anxiety, he looked a lot more normal in person, and we had a discussion about what he believed to be an inevitable progression for many guys in gay life. He said that when someone first enters the gay world, the person has this vision of finding and settling down with a normal looking, nice guy. Then he gets into the partying culture and starts to work out and look better. All of a sudden the nice guys are not fun and attractive enough. At the time, I was quite surprised and told myself “no, that’s not going to be me, I will always want the nice guy”.

In my exploration of the gay world, I have discovered more and more a whole lifestyle centered on partying. I started in West Hollywood and made my way around some of the gay centers in the country like the Castro and Hell’s Kitchen. I have been to clubs in LA, NYC, San Francisco, Boston, Miami, San Diego and even some international spots like Valparaíso, Mexico City and Bangkok. I started learning about the various colors of circuit parties in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Interestingly, the attendants are typically young professionals who can afford the ticket and travel expenses to attend these parties, and I have gotten a glimpse of the scale of the drug culture in these events.

I went to Songkran in Thailand during April, and I think I finally understood what that guy meant with the progression of gay life. What I saw were professionally successful gaysians with model-like bodies from around the world descend upon the city overnight, filling up all the hotels in the well-known Silom district and meandering around in the busy streets of Bangkok. I was told by an acquaintance that the parties served as body building check-points for these guys who planned their travels around Songkran in April, White Party in May and EDC in June, etc. and that the most muscular guys are the ones who are perhaps most insecure about their bodies. Perhaps these guys are the ones who have “succeeded” to reach the body image zenith that gay guys strive for and are now enjoying the partying life, but then what?

We live in the era of social media and are under the constant bombardment of impossibly muscular guys from around the world who fill up our Instagram feed. These guys put Adam West’s Batman and George Reeve’s Superman to shame. The western standard of beauty for men has changed over the years to “more muscle and less body fat the better”, and the world is catching up. It takes an incredible amount of training and dieting, as well as good genetics, to reach that level. Most of us with normal lives busy with school and work will find it hard to pursue that lifestyle, but our Instagram and Facebook give the illusion that it’s ubiquitous and anything less is unattractive. We could blame professional makeup and Photoshop for the guys in magazines, but Instagram is real people! We forget that people take painstaking effort to curate their social media profiles by picking one out of hundreds of pictures with the best lighting, angle and shading. We are now all looking for someone who looks like that and feel bad that people don’t like us for not looking that way.

That day, I tried to offer as many words of encouragement and comfort to my friend as he shared his struggles with mental health, substance abuse and body image. I tried to tell him that it’s possible to be gay and to have a normal and perhaps even “successful” life. I wished to give him more hope for the future so he could heal from his past traumas and end his drug addition. But deep down, I don’t feel so different from him. I struggle with my own insecurities and psychological void. I have a hard time defining my own vision of “success” in life in the context of the gay world. Just like my friend, I need to figure out where my own path leads to and define a vision that is worth striving for.

I would like to suggest that one way to counter the toxic culture in the gay community is to create supportive, friendly and less-sexualized spaces both in person and online. I admire the work done by organizations such as GAPIMNY in NYC and AQUA in DC that offer in-person communities and safe spaces for gaysians to explore their identities and connect with others in a more meaningful way. However, not everyone lives in a big city with a large enough gaysian population, so online communities become extremely important. I want to put in a pitch for G3S where we offer an opportunity to discuss gaysian related issues and offer a supportive online space for those who might not have any organizations locally. We also have a mentorship program that connects people in a more personal setting where someone new to the gay world can be paired up with a mentor who have more experiences with coming to terms with their identities. Additionally, we are working to expand our model to more in-person groups by developing local chapters in cities like LA, SF and Toronto in an effort to create a more affirming gaysian culture.

I think we all have an individual responsibility to improve our collective culture. For me, I think it’s about treating myself and others well and with respect. I want to keep a realistic perspective of how many of the above mentioned issues affect me personally and take myself out of a loop of negative thoughts. I want to have goals for myself, whether it’s body image or professionally, but I want to keep them realistic and measured against my own growth. I am also making an effort to treat my online interactions with the same courtesy I would with my in-person interactions. I do my best to clearly communicate my intentions and only make promises I can keep. I think my life would improve significantly if I surround myself with kind and supportive people who are invested in my success. I want to thank all my friends in G3S and GAPIMNY who have supported me and encouraged me to write this follow up entry!

Fish