Stephanie Bri

My history with Star Wars is complicated. I was born in 1982. I was coming of age during that awkward period when people had forgotten about Star Wars. I have distinct memories of people my age saying things like it was old and outdated. Then the Special Editions happened and suddenly everyone was a Star Wars fan all over again. That’s what the Special Editions did. They didn’t erase your childhood, they breathed new life into a dying franchise.

I grew up in the days of VHS. I had Star Wars, as it was known then, on a recorded tape. Then one fateful day my dad recorded over it with a football game. Some stupid sports competition called the Super Bowl or something stupid like that. I hated football for the longest time for this.

I then recorded Return of the Jedi at the tail end of a VHS tape that was already full of other movies. Unfortunately the tape ran out right when Vader turned Luke’s lightsaber on the tape ended. I grew up for most of my life never seeing the ending of the film. I knew how it ended because I owned the storybook but still. My experience with Star Wars wasn’t tainted by nostalgia like it was for most people. I didn’t even get to see The Empire Strikes Back until I was in 3rd grade. Long after I had seen the first and third films a couple dozen times each. It was the missing piece of the puzzle. Yet I wasn’t a fan of the film. I liked it okay, it had a few key moments but for the most part I didn’t like it as much as everyone else. I don’t quite remember why.

Then in 1996 I got the Faces boxed Set on VHS. This was the last time the original unaltered trilogy was released on home video before the revised Special Editions would take their place. For the first time in my life I was able to watch the entire trilogy in order of release. This was game changing for me. The movies finally made sense. This was also around the time I discovered the books of the expanded universe. I quickly became a book nerd obsessed with those stories.

When I was 16 years old Star Wars returned to the big screen in the form of Episode One The Phantom Menace. This quickly became my favorite Star Wars film. It wasn’t long before the other prequels came out cementing their place in my heart while also locking me in as a life-long Star Wars fan. It took the special editions to get me to really become obsessed with Star Wars because they were finally more in line with the expanded universe which was alright with me. I also loved the newly inserted CGI special effects. The movies looked modern again. Breathtaking. I fell in love with CGI because of Star Wars.

I won’t recount my experience with the Disney fanfiction. I despise everything that has come since the Prequels. Okay that’s not entirely fair I liked the Disney Trilogy OKAY, especially The Last Jedi which was my favorite of the bunch. But I digress this is about the real Star Wars not the fanfiction.

What I learned over the years is everyone has their own vision of Star Wars. Everyone has their own preferred version of Star Wars. And that’s okay with me. I like that it has become such a phenomenon that people from all ages and all walks of life can get something entirely different out of it than every single other person. The larger community as a whole is extremely diverse. This has, unfortunately led to some division and derision in the fanbase but for the most part it’s kept the franchise alive, and that’s all that matters.

This has been my life since I was 12 years old. Working dead end jobs. I started throwing newspapers at people’s front porches. I also had a side hustle racking leaves, shoveling snow, pulling weeds, even selling Kool Aid to construction workers before I got shut down by the tax man. I have done some jobs let me tell you.

In my short 40 years on this earth I have been working for more than I didn’t work. In fact at last count I was over 100 different jobs in my life. I have done a little bit of everything. I sent a long stretch of my life delivering pizzas. This was my first career change.

It started with Pizza Hut giving me a job. I hadn’t earned my GED yet so I was limited in where I could work. Thankfully you don’t need an education to throw pizzas at front porches. I signed up for the management training program that is designed to help store employees save up to buy their own franchises. I had a dream of owning my own Dominos some day.

Then I took my first detour. While still in high school I began chasing the American dream. In this instance I was chasing the stars. I wanted to be a hip-hop producer, famous rapper and DJ. Instead of putting my savings towards buying a pizza store I blew it all on opening a record studio. I produced a grand total of 5 underground records, 2 singles and about four or five music videos. It was a fools errand. I ended up losing my ass on the ordeal. I wound up homeless for the second time in my life. I ended up crawling back to mom and dad tail tucked between my legs.

I spent the next couple of years pursuing that elusive GED I failed to get while in high school. Once completed I opened up a whole new world of possibilities. I was finally qualified to run a cash register at a local gas station. I did this nights and weekends while pursing my next dream, YouTube celebrity. YouTube was brand spanking new. There was no template for what became a sensation. First there was Smosh peeing to the Mortal Kombat theme song. Then there was that fat guy lip synching that got famous over night. Everybody was chasing the next big thing. I started a website called Gamerz Jackpot. I lived in the town of Jackpot, Nevada and the website was devoted to video games. This was before let’s plays on YouTube were a thing.

My friends and I pursued that dream for a couple of years before the money ran out and bigger sites than ours got funding from Microsoft to go big. This left us in the dust.

I went through a period of denial. I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I even ended up enrolling in truck driving school on a whim. I had to sell my car to pay for it against my better judgement. At least I had support from my parents who thought trucking was a good fit for a loner like me. They were wrong. I flunked out of trucking school and went back to the drawing board.

Through a series of unfortunate events I found myself homeless for the third time in my life. This time I did something drastic. I applied for student loans, enrolled in the local University and began pursuing an actual career field. I studied mass communications. I had a dream of going to Hollywood and making it in the movies as a producer, video editor or camera operator/cinematographer. But somehow I ended up going into local news instead. This is where my life changed for the better. I finally found my passion. I was getting paid to be a writer. My dream had come true. I made it. I finally lived on my own merits. I had an apartment, bought a car with my own money and was living a pretty good life. I even bought a house on a piece of land.

Then COVID-19 changed everything. I ended up losing my job. Most news outlets went out of business or consolidated. The jobs were long gone. I decided to make a change yet again. I moved to the big city, Dallas, Texas. This was the first time I had ever lived in a town larger than 50,000 people. I was lost and on my own. I moved into an apartment with my cat, paid off my car and landed a temp job working in an office. I figured why not?

I spent the next two full years bouncing from one temp job to another. I did a little bit of everything yet again. I worked at a day care center. I was a mall Easter Bunny photographer. I even took a job at a thrift store collecting donations. I had hit rock bottom again. I was down on my luck with no path forward.

That all changed last week. Fate intervened. First I lost my job at the thrift store. Then after only three days of job hunting I landed what was the perfect job for me. Data entry for Samsung Electronics. Although I only started today I am optimistic about this new chapter in my life. For the first time in a long time I see a path forwards that doesn’t lead to another round of homelessness. That peace of mind is all I could ask for at this juncture in my life. Things are finally looking up for me and I couldn’t be happier.

I was a Nintendo fan from the earliest days of gaming. Even before the NES I had Donkey Kong, Mario Bros and Popeye on my Atari 2600. I have been a Nintendo loyalist all the way through to the Switch. I stood in line to get a Wii on launch day. I stood in line to preoder a Switch. I bought a Wii U at a time when the cool thing to do was get a Playstation 4 or Xbox One. I stuck with them through the hard times.

I wanna talk about each Nintendo generation. Let’s start with the NES. This is the easiest to be nostalgic for because they had a flat monopoly back then. There was no competition. Everybody and their dog played Nintendo. This was the foundation of the modern retro era of Nintendo. All that nostalgia for the NES is what drives their sales to this day. 

I skipped the Super NES. I discovered the Sega Genesis and went whole hog into that eco system. I ended up buying a used Super Nintendo from a pawn shop the very day the N64 launched. I remember this vividly because I returned my brand new in the box N64 to the store to pay for it and a drum set I never played. I discovered a passion for SNES. For the longest time I swore it was the greatest console of all time. I even went so far as write Sega off entirely because I felt SNES surpassed Genesis in every way. I have since changed my mind but that’s an article for another day. 

Then along came the N64 finally. I bought mine in 2000 for my 18th birthday. The very same day I also took home my Playstation game console. In the end I would spend more time playing PS1 than N64 but my Nintendo loyalism had me sell my PS1 to buy more N64 games. Despite the droughts, which were long and painful, I continued to swear by the N64. I told people it wasn’t about quantity of games it was about quality. 

I got my GameCube in 2003 when it came down to $99 and I got it with the Zelda Collectors Disc. I went fully into GameCube. I would argue that only sheep bought a PS2 and only PC master race nerds bothered with the Xbox. I was all in on GameCube. It had some great games and delivered some fantastic experiences. But it was missing features the others had. It was lacking in 3rd party support and there were the ever present droughts. On top of that Nintendo hadn’t figure out how to make their games into the world of 3D yet so many games were lacking. But I swore by it and would get offended by people who talked down about it. 

I stood in line to get a Wii on launch day. Partially because I knew it would play GameCube games. Partially because I was excited for Twilight Princess and wanted to try it with motion controls. And partially because it was the first time I could afford to buy a brand new game console at launch. It didn’t take long before I became jaded with Wii. The first sign I was losing interest was when my parents hijacked my Wii for their own purposes. I determined it just wasn’t for me so I sold it and devoted myself to PC gaming and emulation. I determined I would rather play retro Nintendo games than current gen games. 

Then I bought a Wii U. What pushed me over the edge was the club Nintendo. I had a couple dozen digital purchases on Wii I wanted to transfer over to Wii U for the points. I got sucked into the world of Club Nintendo. I was buying retro games I already had access to just for the bonus points. While I enjoyed the Wii U for what it was I was still angry over the droughts and lack of 3rd party games. I would make excuses for Nintendo. I would get angry at 3rd party companies for not making games for my beloved console. 

Then I bought a Switch. At first I was satisfied with my purchase. Arms was a great fun new game. Mario Odyssey was super fun. But then the Wii U ports became the norm. I already had a Wii U I wasn’t going to pay full price to rebuy games I already played. I tried to get into the 3rd party offerings that were finally coming to the system but they were often lacking features or suffered from performance issues. By this time I had already bought myself both a PS3 and a PS4 so I quickly found myself preferring to buy those 3rd party games for those consoles over the Switch anyways. 

Then I lost interest in the Switch entirely. I sold it to  a used video game store for more money than I paid for it brand new. I was happy to be rid of it. My Wii U was stolen so I let it go in the past. 

By the time I realized Nintendo was jerking me around it was too late. I had already given them thousands of dollars of my hard earned money. I was knee deep into their eco system with no way out. I was a loyalist. I would defend their asinine  decisions while at the same time being angry over their bullshit mistakes. I finally learned my lesson. I went all in on PS4 and I never looked back. Now I am beyond jaded. I can’t look at a Nintendo game or console without disdain. I have nothing but disgust in my heart for every bad decision the company makes. I am over their bullshit. The spell was broken and I see clearly now. Nintendo sucks. 

I remember the first time I tried to play Minecraft. I had no idea what I was doing. I was cutting down trees and then it went dark. Out of no where a skeleton attacked me and I died. I lost my entire inventory and was left in the middle of nowhere unsure what happened. 

I had to watch YouTube how to videos to learn how to play the game. Even then I kept dying multiple times. I was so bad at the game I decided to only play on Peaceful until I learned the mechanics. I played on Peaceful for a full year in survival before I felt comfortable enough to dabble in the normal difficulty. Today I play in Normal to Hard depending on what kind of mood I am in. I prefer normal to hard but I don’t need to use peaceful as a crutch anymore. 

I would have completely lost interest in Minecraft if I hadn’t discovered Creative Mode. I kept dying so much in survival I nearly gave up on the game. Then once I discovered I could play “sim city” in creative mode by building my own cities I finally found my niche in the game. I spent multiple years building a massive city in the game before the 1.18 update destroyed my world with the new world generation. I lost interest in creative after the work I had spent years on was lost. I tried a couple of times to start over but I never got back to the level I was at before and I lost interest. 

Over the years I have grown to appreciate Minecraft even more for the type of game it is. I have learned the ins and outs of survival. I have learned how to get by in Skyblock. I have discovered the different ways to get pleasure out of Creative by just using it as a canvas to build my dream world. There are endless possibilities. This is why I have fallen in love with Minecraft as a game. 

Today I find myself so involved with Minecraft I now watch YouTubers playing the game as my primary source of entertainment. I have come to enjoy live streams, edited worlds, tips and tricks videos and different challenges as well as other sorts of interesting videos. There different ways to play the game has spawned nearly infinite ways to produce Minecraft content online. This has resulted in hours of entertainment on my end. 

I have even tried my hand at streaming Minecraft from time to time. I enjoy playing the game while others watch me and cheer me on as I experiment with the different play mechanics. I even played on a multiplayer server with my girlfriend for a period of time. 

Minecraft is a game with endless possibilities. It provides hours of entertainment in game. It provides countless hours of content online. It provides a fun way to interact with other people online. There are so many ways to enjoy Minecraft it’s unbelievable to me how much reach this game has. It has taken the top spot for my favorite video game of all time. I often find myself bored with non-Minecraft YouTube content. Even the algorithm has learned this about me. It feeds me an endless barrage of Minecraft videos from dozens of creators from all over the world. It’s the best game and I have the greatest time interacting with it in so many different ways. Long live Minecraft. 

We’ve been under constant attack from the far right in recent months. Some would argue visibility isn’t what we need right now, it’s solidarity. We need both and today is important for so many reasons.

Trans Day of Visibility is more than just reminding people Trans people exist. It’s about us showing ourselves living our best lives. It’s how we prove to the rest of the world we’re no different from them. It’s how we tell them we’re not a threat. The more people see us as regular people the more they will stand up for us to be treated like regular people. If we don’t stand up and be seen then all they have to go by is reports they see in the media. We can’t let that be our narrative.

I came out in the summer of 2020. I started transitioning at a time when it wasn’t convenient to do so. I ended up not only losing my job, my family, my friends and my home, I lost my career too. I had to change careers because I changed my name. I can’t show my writing style by linking to stories that bear someone else’s name. Not without having to explain why that person is me even though we have different names.

I had to be visible before coming out. I worked in the news media business. I was quite visible in the local community. People knew who I was. I was a staple in the town. All the important people knew my name and recognized my face. SO when those things changed so did the way people treated me. Former friends turned into enemies. Family turned its back on me. I lost my house and had to move in with a trans friend who adopted me as her sister. I had to adjust. It wasn’t easy for me.

I have had to fight for my rights living in Texas. I was illegally discriminate against by the state when I tried to apply for food stamps. I was legally entitled to the benefit but the state said trans was not a protected class and they could discriminate against me. I had to take legal action and won. By doing that I made it easier for other trans people in Texas to get their food stamps. But I had to fight for them. I had to go through the ringer and be put in the newspaper for it to happen. I gave up my privacy so other trans people would have an easier time getting benefits they were legally entitled to themselves. Nobody showed me any gratitude for this just more trolls attacking me online.

I am tired of fighting. I wanna just live my life. That is how we win. We can’t all fight all the time. If we did we’d become too drained to keep going. We have to pick our battles. I chose to fight when I had no choice. It wasn’t easy for me. To be told by the state I wasn’t protected was heartbreaking. They tried to use that against me. That didn’t stop me from pushing forward with my legal complaint. I fought for you. I did it because I had no choice. And the thanks I get is trolls attacking me on the internet. People telling me to get a job. No matter how much I struggled in trying to find a job. It was disheartening. Then the legislative and administrative attacks on Trans and nonbinary people began in full earnest.

I don’t have any fight left in me to be honest. I put myself out there for others and got nothing in return. I won a legal battle most don’t even know was fought. That is discouraging in itself. Why should I keep fighting for people who won’t appreciate what I did for them already? I have to fight for myself. I have to be visible for my own well being. Trans Day of Visibility is about US living our best lives as best we can. By being seen as normal people we win the culture war. The legal victories will follow that.

Empire Records is a testament of changing tastes. I didn’t see this movie in it’s prime back in the 90’s early 2000s when it would have impacted me. I saw it a couple of years ago when I was living alone in a trailer house I bought. At the time I thought it was one of those hidden gems I missed out on. Upon second viewing I am scratching my head wondering what I ever saw in this film.

For starters the acting is all over the place. Some of it is terrible, some is passable none of it is good. The story doesn’t make a lick of sense. The scenes feel like they are just cut together without any rhyme or reason. It reeks of 90s MTV. I just didn’t get into it the second time.

This has happened before. I would watch a movie and become instantly enamored with it. Then years later when I try to revisit said movie I question my own sanity. I did this with Ghost World. To this day I can’t figure out what I ever saw in that film.

I don’t mind growing older. My tastes are bound to change. I think I must have been going through a 90s nostalgia phase when I watched it the first time because that’s the only explanation I have for walking away impressed. This movie did nothing for me on my second viewing except make me miss going to Hastings to brows the CD section.

Once the nostalgia wore off I realized there was nothing there. Likely because I didn’t see it when it was new I don’t have nostalgia for the specific film just the time period. I can honestly say I have little nostalgia for the 90s though. I listen to music from my youth because that’s what you do when you turn 40. I don’t, however, reminisce the good old days. I hated the 90s during the time I lived through it. I was happy to be rid of that awful decade.

I don’t know what got into me the first time around but I can honestly say I am glad the spell was broken. I doubt I will ever revisit this movie again. It did nothing for me the second time and I expected to enjoy it. I went in remembering how much I liked it. But then I sat there pondering my own existence for watching such rubbish.

Sometimes you have to leave a movie in the past. This is one of those films. If you missed out on it during it’s first run chances are you missed it entirely. It doesn’t work in todays world. I kept thinking there were far too many employees for such a small record store. Even back in the day I would have felt it was over staffed. I don’t remember Hastings having that many employees and it was a much larger store.

Then there is the Hastings factor. Obviously there was a store called Music Town which was likely a stand in for Sam Goody. I didn’t care for how oppressed the workers acted being bought by a chain. They made it sound like working for a corporate store would ruin their ability to have good times. I have worked for franchises and I have worked for mom and pop shops and I can tell you there is no difference other than the franchise you don’t have to wonder if they are going to make payroll.

I didn’t like this movie upon second viewing. This is a rare case of falling out of love with something I once enjoyed so much I bought a physical copy on DVD to enjoy it again and again. I don’t even know what happened to that DVD but I assure you it won’t be getting popped into my Playstation console anytime soon. Maybe I was drunk the first time I watched it? I don’t know but all I can say is I will avoid it like the plague going forward.

I don’t talk about my previous engagement much because it was so long ago it doesn’t even feel real anymore. It’s almost like it never happened.

I am in love with a woman named Christina. We met on the internet via Twitter. It was a long courtship that began with us chatting about the NBA finals via private messages. I wouldn’t trad my relationship with her for the world. She is the most special person I have ever met. Yet I still occasionally remember my failed relationship that nearly ended in marriage.

At the time I thought getting married was something I wanted out of life. Looking back on it I couldn’t tell you why I believed in it then so strongly whereas today I find it laughable at best. I don’t have a very positive outlook on marriage these days. But that’s not the point of this essay. I wanted to explore my feelings on another subject, love.

Two summers ago I wrote a series of articles chronicling all the women I thought I loved over the years. As I wrote through that series I came to realize most of them were nothing more than infatuations. I had an idealized version of love in my head that doesn’t match the real thing. I can tell you from my experiences with Christina I now fully understand what true love feels like. I didn’t before I met her.

I write this unsure of how I feel about Carmen, the woman I nearly married. I know we became engaged in a whirlwind of emotions that sprang from both of our broken pasts. We wanted to get married so badly we didn’t even stop to realize there wasn’t any true love between us. I had feelings for her but they weren’t love as I know it now.

I had a dream last night I was getting back together with Carmen. It was a long and complicated dream that involved some deeply buried memories resurfacing. It put me in a state of mind where I was in a pretty bad mood all day today. I don’t want to think about Carmen and what happened to her. I don’t like dwelling on how our relationship ended because it reminds me of the guilt I felt for the way she turned out.

I don’t have feelings for her anymore. I now understand that what I felt for her at the time was not love. It was something else. The both of us were using one another to better our own lives. She was using me to escape an uncomfortable home life. I was using her to live out a fantasy of what the American dream was supposed to be. I had a job working at Dominos. She was working as a teachers assistant. We both had plans to hurry up and get married as quickly as possible. Of course we didn’t have the support of either family we just wanted to be joined together to escape our respective lives. In the end it didn’t work out. She wound up in a mental heath facility committed most likely for life as she went insane. I ended up throwing myself into my music to the point I started a recording studio to distract me from my feelings.

Today I know what love looks like. When I wake up in the morning I count the minutes until I can see Christina. When I go to bed I feel guilty I can’t spend just a few more precious moments with her. Sometimes I lie in bed texting her as I fall asleep. When I look in her eyes I look into her soul. I see the counterpart to my own soul. She is beyond a shadow of a doubt the very reason I try to be a better person. Neither of us are using one another. We have a mutually beneficial relationship that stems from wanting what is best for the other person. I cry when she is sad. I smile when she is glad. I celebrate her victories and I share every moment with her I can make the time to during the day.

It took me 39 years before I knew what true love felt like. Now that I have it I can move on beyond my past. I can forget about the woman I almost married. I can look towards the future with my new partner, the most wonderful girlfriend I have ever had. I can live a full life knowing I found my soulmate. I couldn’t say that before.

A rebranding is in order. It was inevitable. This website has already gone through a number of changes over the years. It started as a comic book fan site. Then it was a horror and comic book blog. Then just a general purpose blog for my random thoughts. Now it’s time I make some changes again.

First things first, this website is not going to change. I worked hard pouring my soul into my writing here. I wanna keep it loose and open ended. This is my website. It bears my name. That being said some things are going to change.

I have made several different YouTube channels over the years. I have gone through many phases with multiple changes to content formatting. I have struggled to find a consistent brand during that time. I have created vlogs. I have made toy videos. I have done movie reviews and podcasts as well as a news cast I tried to keep up once a month. None of these projects worked because my heart wasn’t in it.

I can’t decide if I wanna make a brand new channel or rebrand the content on my main channel. I am kinda struggling with how to move forward. I haven’t been inspired to make a video in months. I chose the simple vlog format because it was easy to produce content but I forgot the one short coming of the format, topics. I have trouble coming up with topics. I didn’t want it to become a channel that mirrored the content I previously produced under my old channel, The Spiders Lair. so I decided to forgo talking about horror, comics, movies and video games on purpose. I didn’t want it to be a trans culture channel either. So I left it alone while I spent time with my thoughts.

Here is what I discovered. Everything keeps going back to horror. I like talking about horror movies. I enjoy watching horror movies more than any other type of movie. Out of the thousand plus DVDs I own 2/3rds of them are horror. I want to talk about horror only. I want to watch movies and then share my thoughts on that movie. I don’t want to edit videos. I don’t want high production values just a simple horror vlog. But I wanna make sure horror is the central focus of the channel moving forward.

Here is what I am trying to decide. Should I kill all previous content and replace it with a horror vlog, or should I start a new channel exclusively for talking horror? I don’t wanna start over again with zero subscribers. It is so difficult to get people to subscribe as it is. However I don’t want to close the door on open-ended content either. Someday I might get the whim to go back and make more toy videos just for fun. I don’t wanna confuse my audience by cluttering my horror channel up with non horror content. If I rebrand I need to decide if I go all in or create a new channel. This is what I am struggling with today. If I make a horror exclusive channel I need to come up with a brand name. Something I can market. A part of me wants to bring back The Spiders Lair. A part of me wants to return to playing the character The Retro Witch. Still a small part of me wants to try and think of something different. Something original. I don’t like going back to the well so to speak.

I can’t make this decision over night. I don’t wanna make any drastic changes right away. I don’t want to be impulsive. I would like to take my time and think this through. I don’t do that enough thanks largely in part to being bipolar. However I do want to make a change soon because I am itching to get back to making new content again. So if I rebrand my channel I wanna figure out what to do with my old content. Otherwise I need to figure out a name for my new channel. Something that stands out. In the mean time I need to get additional input from other sources before I make a decision. The inevitable podcast will follow most likely once I make a decision.

I have always struggled with self esteem. I have such low esteem of myself I often feel invisible. Nothing makes me feel more worthless than when there is a pop culture thing I am supposed to like I just can’t stand. Especially when all my like-minded peers are into the thing I don’t like.

I have always loved Star Wars. You are supposed to like Star Wars. You are supposed to like a lot of things that I do like for instance The Terminator franchise, Ghostbusters, the MCU, Lord of the Rings, the Matrix and even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I also enjoy a lot of things you are supposed to hate such as Star Wars the Phantom Menace, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Harry Potter, and The Twilight Saga. When it comes to music my tastes are quite popular. I like pop music. I like the MOST popular music mostly Lada Gaga, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and the like. The more popular something is the more I tend to dig it.

Except for a few certain things. There are things I am supposed to like I just can’t stand. For example the Halloween movies. Listen I am a big time horror fan. I rarely come across a horror movie I don’t like. I even enjoy the schlocky b movies. But despite my best efforts I can’t get into Halloween at all. I have tried. I’ve seen nearly every film in the franchise and the more I try to force myself to like them the more they push me away.

This causes feelings of alienation. Inadequacy. Low Self Esteem. And self loathing. I feel worthless. Like a true horror fan would LOVE Halloween. Does hating it make me less of a fan of the genre I proclaim to love so much? Especially since the slasher sub-genre is my personal favorite. Hell my favorite movie of all time is a slasher. So it’s not like I am a stranger to the genres tropes. I get it. I am all for the kills. Yet as hard as I try I can’t bring myself to like Halloween.

There are other things you are supposed to like I can’t stand such as Star Trek, the band Queen, Legend of Zelda and most problematically for me is the Marvel movies. While I do enjoy most of the Avengers mainline films, I feel the market is over saturated with MCU and the vast majority of it turns me off.

I can’t help but wonder if there is something wrong with me personally. I know you are allowed to dislike certain things, I get it. But when it’s something every single one of your peers loves, and you typically have similar taste otherwise, it makes me feel like a mutant or an alien only pretending to be human. I want to like the same things my friends like. I want to enjoy the movies I am supposed to enjoy. It makes me question what is wrong with me? Sometimes I think nothing. I am allowed to be different. And there it is. I just feel different. As bad as that makes me feel sometimes. I suppose that’s okay but it doesn’t change the fact I feel like a poser.

Maybe I am not as much of a horror fan as I proclaim to be? Or maybe I am looking at it all wrong? Maybe the way you enjoy the films is to forget about the non existent story and just enjoy the kills? I do that with so many other slasher movies why can’t I do that with the mother of them all? The original slasher that started the trend? I guess I have some thinking to do. Maybe I am being too harsh a critic. Maybe I set my standards too high for something that is meant to be schlock? All I know is I am tired of wanting to fit in but being unable to do so properly.

I recently got to become an aunt. It happened when my adopted sister adopted a teenager of her own. This new child has become the newest member of my family and I couldn’t be happier I found her.

I’ve had a rocky relationship with my blood family. Most of them are ultra conservative Evangelical Christians so they tend to not want anything to do with me. Thus I turned to my found family. I moved in with my adopted sister Robin two years ago last month. I lived with her and her wife for 6 months before they helped me get into a place of my own. I can honestly say they have been better for me than my own blood family.

There is a catch. Keyohnee, my new niece, lives in Quebec, Canada. Right now Robin is on a quest to fetch her and bring her back to the States where she belongs. Following a series of events she finally has a firm date when she should arrive. I couldn’t be more excited to meet her. During the few weeks since I found out about her we have bonded quite a bit. We mostly chat on Facebook Messenger but we also call each other on Discord at least once a day when we can.

I have grown attached to this girl and I am anxious to have her be a bigger part of my life. As a fully grown trans woman I understand the trials she will face living in Texas first hand. I plan on being a part of her support network. I will revel in the right to get to protect her from this world as best as I can.

When you are queer your found family becomes more important to you than blood relatives who stabbed you in the back ever were. I am willing to admit I already have love in my heart for this dear child. I can’t wait to get to know her in person. Only a few short days away and I get my wish. A niece I get to bond with on a regular basis. I am too excited for words. I want the whole world to know she is my family and I intend to see to it she is treated well.