The new nuclear family

The family is a primordial idea. Wild animals recognize the importance of family groups or packs. With a family, the animals survive; without they perish. In human culture, family has generally been limited to those with whom one shares blood. However, as mankind’s capacity to be horrible to one another knows no bounds, oft-times blood relations can be abusive. Times have changed, and with them so has the concept of family. To my generation, the oft-mocked and belittled millennials, family means a lot more than mere blood relations. To us, people earn the right to be family; it’s not a matter of blood, it’s a matter of shared trust. Maybe it was the pop culture we were raised on, maybe it’s the more accepting and open culture that we are promoting, or maybe it’s just a growing cultural awareness. Whatever the cause, the modern idea of a family is much different than it was in the past.  

To many millennials, family are the people who have your back. They’re the people who are there when one needs them, even if it’s 3 in the morning. Because of this many consider their closest friends to be family, and not just friends. With the advent of instant messaging, we’re able to be constantly in contact with anyone, which allows us to form tighter bonds with people outside of our genetic family. Which is good. Family is evolving along with society. This evolution of family is particularly important for queer people! Not all genetic families are supportive or understanding, and this evolution allows queer people to surround themselves with a family that loves and supports them. 

That’s what defines a real family: love and support. Blood and genetics do not define family. If I limited my family to the genetic relations that love and support me, my family could be counted on a single hand. Fortunately for me, I’ve not done that since I was a teenager. Today my family spans the globe and can be counted on two hands! I honestly don’t know where I would be today without my family, and I don’t know who I would be if I had limited my family to genetics.   

Like most 90s kids, I grew up with a pop culture that highlighted atypical familial units: single parents, adopted families, children being raised by their aunts and uncles. As we aged, the pop culture we consumed changed, but the idea of an atypical family stayed. We began to explore new mediums and new cultures, and our minds grew. We saw and read stories about groups of misfits coming together to form families, we bonded over message boards and fan theories, we encouraged each other behind our keyboards and we evolved the concept of family into something that fit into the burgeoning digital world we were creating.  

A list of happy things from 2016

I was going to write out my thoughts on Luke Cage (it’s amazing), but I’m not qualified to really get into it. I can’t discuss how accurate or inaccurate it is to the modern Black American experience—I know nothing about that, I’m white. Instead, I will just say this: it is an amazing show with terrific actors and phenomenal writing. And the soundtrack is well-worth multiple listens.
The world is a complicated place right now, and it is hard to focus on the good in the world right now. That’s what this post is going to do though. We’re gonna look back at 2016, and I’m going to list (kinda) the things that made me happy this year.
- Deadpool: might as well start with the low hanging fruit since it’s just dangling there anyways, flaccid in the wind.
- Tom Holland’s Spider-Man: Finally, a comic’s accurate Spider-Man played by a teenager, who is sarcastic, actually poor, and has an aunt who looks like a normal aunt and not a great-grandmother.
- Bucky and Falcon’s banter: “Can you move the seat?” “No.” Classic.
- Ant-Man’s reaction to seeing Steve Rogers
- Basically all of Civil War
- Wonder Woman and her electric violin intro: by far the best thing DC has put out all year in the film department. I mean, the way she smiles before she jumps into the fray? Amazing. And the only time someone smiles in that movie.
- Saskatoon Pride 2016: just an all-around great time with some great people.
- Getting back into the Pokémon TCG: I’m a nerd, yeah. Get over it.
- Star Trek’s 50th anniversary: Always nice to see loved ones survive the test of time.
- Star Trek Beyond: A return to form for the Star Trek franchise that included using science to defeat the enemy instead of phasers.
- Starting a hilarious and amazing DnD campaign with some great people (plus Hudson): seriously, it’s kind of hilarious. My character had a fling with a bear.
- Luke Cage: I already talked about this, why would I say more?
- Mending relationships with old friends (one in particular)
- Thanksgiving at the sister’s: it was great. Plus we beaked her one friend so hard and she never picked up on our sarcasm.
- Partying with a bunch of directors at a small after party: great times, but man can they drink.
- Hitting one hundred vlogs and getting all the nice letters people sent: Seriously, that was awesome.
- Summertime swimming: nothing is better than Canadian summers spent at a beach.
- Starting a new job: new adventures are always fun. And other clichés. But seriously, I’m enjoying it.
- New Harry Potter: From the screenplay of The Cursed Child to the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, it’s been a good year for the Potter-verse.
- Joe Biden memes: while not new to this year, they become more relevant.
- Expanding my musical horizons: to include actual musicals. And more varied hip-hop.
- Reading The Expanse series: finding and falling in love with new science fiction is always a good thing.
- Preacher: more Dominic Cooper is never a bad thing.
- Season 2 of Supergirl: SUPERMAN SMILED AND WAS NICE TO PEOPLE. Don’t tell Zak Synder.
- Jason Momoa’s Instagram.
- The Rock’s Instagram.
- My Instagram.
- Spending time with loved ones.
- Writing pieces that resonated with people and made a difference.
- Being able to make positive changes in people’s lives
- -Being Canadian: That makes me happy every year, but with everything that happened south of the border this year, I was especially happy about that fact this year.
- Coming out about my gender.
- Being honest about mental health.
- The sun.
- Hanging out with the puppers, and going camping with her.
- And a bunch more probably.
2016 was a rough year, but there has been good stuff too. Tell me what made you happy in the comments!  

Love in the face of darkness

There is a lot of turmoil in the world right now. A lot of people are eagerly waiting for 2016 to end, after it has brought us tragedy after tragedy. And yeah, it has been a pretty rough year with the constant celebrity deaths, Brexit, Trump, DAPL, and everything else. There a lot of angry and hurt people right now, and I can’t blame them. I’m angry and hurt too. Every time I read the news I find something else that upsets me. Here in Canada, I can pretend to be apart from all the problems, I can easily bury my head in the sand and say that these global issues won’t affect me.
      I know it’s a lie, but it is a nice lie.
     The truth isn’t as nice. The truth is hard and heavy. All these events have global ramifications. And we all have the responsibility to admit that and understand that. To the South we have a rebirth of fascism and a resurgence of racism. To the East we have one of the oldest powers in the world slowly crumbling under the weight of its own failings. Just passed that, we have Russia casually sticking their fingers into multiple pots, watching the reactions and waiting. The Middle East is continuing to be the battleground it’s been for generations, and North Korea has upped their blustering.
       We can try and pretend that things are not as bad as they seem, but that would be a lie. Things are bad—no, they’re terrifying when one actually thinks about it. There’s a president-elect who has been officially endorsed by the KKK and the Kremlin. The American police are brutishly attacking peaceful and legal protestors—including one young woman who may be facing amputation from the police’s “non-lethal” methods. When we live in a world where protestors can lose limbs from the police’s non-lethal methods, we really need to reconsider…well, everything.
          Our ancestors fought for our freedoms and against tyranny in two brutal world wars. They sacrificed everything so we wouldn’t have to deal with a dictator taking away our freedoms, and we have repaid them by democratically electing a person who idolizes dictators and ran on a platform of hate. We owe it to everyone who fought and died in the world wars to stand up right now. We owe it to them to stop all of this before it escalates any farther. They fought and died so that everyone would have peace and freedom. They fought to liberate the Jewish people, and now their progeny want to get rid of the Jewish people. We have unprecedented numbers of people openly calling for white supremacy, and many of these people are so-called Christians who have apparently forgotten everything Jesus ever said.
        The point of this is not to depress or anger, although I can easily see how it could do both. We need to stand together. History has shown that we can defeat Nazis through force, let us show future generations that we can defeat them through unity and love. We as a people are better than this, we know our history and we should not be repeating it. We need to stand together against hate. We need to show the Neo-Nazis taking over America that their ideals are not the ideals the modern world has been built upon. We need to stand together and show Russia that bullying isn’t something that we will tolerate. Together we can prevail against the darkness invading our societies. Together we can show that love and acceptance is the proper way to go.
       There has been a lot of bad this year so much that it seemingly overshadows the good, and it is okay to feel that way. So much has happened this year that it can be hard to keep track. Dozens of major terror attacks in Europe and the Middle East. The Pulse shooting. Natural disasters. Ebola. Zika. The deaths of so many influential people. Suicides in Northern Canadian communities. Things seem so dark right now, and a lot of people are saying this is the worst single year in history. Honestly, I’d almost be inclined to agree with them.
        There has been good this year as well though! There have been countless medical breakthroughs! Endangered species have seen population growth! Worldwide crime has dropped, even if that’s hard to believe. Disparate groups have banded together to stand against ISIS. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets to support Black Lives Matter. This year, hidden by the thicket of bad, we have shown solidarity. In the dark, we have stood together to shine our lights.
        Together we can bring down the darkness. The fight will not be easy, and it will not be over quick. Things are bad, and they may be bad for a while yet, but as long as we stand together in love and unity we can prevail.
       To the Christians reading this, Jesus taught that when struck on one cheek to turn the other one towards the striker. He leaves what to do next vague, but remember what happened when he found the vendors in the temple: he chased them out. All these Neo-Nazis and Fascists are vendors infringing on the temple trying to corrupt the holy. Chase them out, and stand with all your brothers and sisters: the Muslims, the Jewish people, the queer community, the Black community, the Latin community, the Asian community, the disabled community, and everyone else that has been hurt by hate this year. “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Too many forget what Jesus considered to be the second most important commandment. It’s time to remember.
       To those of other religions reading this, stay strong and stand together.
       To the atheists reading this, remember to practice love and acceptance to all.
      We will win. Love will trump hate. Love and peace to you all.

blocked words

When words fail, we blame writer’s block. For those who do not write, the idea can seem either ridiculous or irritating. It is neither of those things. Writer’s block is a huge, nigh insurmountable mountain that can appear without warning leaving the writer dazed, confused, and frustrated. Hours can be spent pounding around the keyboard attempting to find a pass of any size through this damnable mountain, only to have an avalanche come crashing down upon the writer’s head. Now, instead of just a picturesque mountain, the writer has a suffocating and chilling mass pressing down upon them, slowly killing what hope they had left.
Damn.
There are times when the writer is left for days in this situation, barely clinging to life, before remembering that they have a match, a shovel, a staff of igniting, something! that can get them out from under the crushing snows. Slowly, resolutely, the writer pulls themselves out of the crushing snow, and, if they are lucky, they find that the snows have pushed them to the entrance of a winding mountain pass. This pass is full of twists and turns, and oft-times will have the writer backtracking to find some obscured turn that they missed, but eventually the pass will show them clear. The writer, exhausted but exhilarated, triumphant, will begin to write with a renewed passion and dedication! The path clear in front of them.
Until the next moment of writer’s block.

blank pages

Here I sit
staring at a wall of white
words dammed up
soul damned up
thoughts like a river coursing
-once
now dwindling trickling stopped
blank whiteness searing in
taunting my hand
cursing my mind
words a well fresh water
-poison
so here I sit
words bottled up so long
they’ve become rotten
lost the way
maybe lost the say
ink stains the paper
-yet it does not create

On the Election

I have friends who still believe that both candidates in the American election were bad choices. I have friends who believe that the reactions would’ve been the same no matter what. Worse still, I have friends who believe the right person won.

All of those friends are wrong. At best they are woefully ignorant of the situation, and at worst they are xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic imbeciles. Being as these people are friends, I truly wish that I could believe the best of them, unfortunately I can’t do that. They live in this world, they have the responsibility to open their eyes and see what is going on around them. The fact that they choose not to is a point against them.

Donald Trump is a bad man. It’s a simple statement. He’s a failure. He’s a thief who takes from charities. He’s a bully who mocks disabled people. He doesn’t care about the military and calls POWs losers. He’s an abuser in every sense who believes that women are things for him to take and enjoy. By now most people have heard the “grab em by the pussy” tape, and yet somehow this cretin got elected. He threatened to have his opponent assassinated, and said that if he lost he would not accept the results. He called Mexicans rapists and Muslims terrorists. He claimed that Black people lived in war-torn hellholes. On the day of the worst mass shooting in US history he tweeted out “I told you so”.

But he has been elected. Even though he’s going to trial for rape and fraud in the next couple weeks. He was officially endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. Every living president was against him. But he has been elected.

I watched the polls coming in with my heart breaking. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. People were voting for a man who bragged about abusing women. People were voting for a man who is openly racist. I went to bed in disbelief, and that morning I wept as I read people’s reactions to the election.

I wept as I read about Muslim families deciding that they couldn’t wear their hijabs in public anymore, I wept as their Imams told them it was okay to not wear them and that Allah would understand. I wept as my family in the LGBT community were too frightened to leave their homes, and I wept as people told them their few rights would be taken away from them. I wept at the videos of white males running up to black people, calling them n*****s and that they’d be sent back to their own country soon enough, I wept as white men threatened to murder black people on the street. I stared incredulously at swastikas spray painted on businesses run by people of colour. After a while I ran out of tears and just became empty.

Teachers began to share what they had to tell their students, many of those students minorities. The stories were heartbreaking, but none more than the kindergarten teacher who was asked if they [black people] were going to become slaves again with Trump elected. A five year old was worried about slavery in 2016 in a country that prides itself on freedom.

Don’t get me wrong, America has a lot of freedom for the straight, white Christians. Everyone else should just be happy that they get to live in the same country.

I had a friend who claimed that people would’ve been upset either way. And, yeah, people would’ve been upset if Hillary had won. But people wouldn’t be scared. Five year olds wouldn’t be worried about slavery. LGBT people wouldn’t be worried about having their marriages annulled. Women wouldn’t be worried about going to prison over abortions.

I have spent the last two days worrying about my loved ones in the States, all the while hearing from straight white people about how things were going to be okay and that people were overreacting. The thing is, history is cyclical. We often repeat the mistakes of past generations. Germany was warning Americans this whole time about Trump because he was saying things that sounded a lot like someone from their history. A certain man who believed that other races were inferior. A certain man who ran on a racist platform that led to one of the worst wars in human history. A certain man who committed genocide. History repeats, but it doesn’t necessarily repeat in the same place. Trump is a man who openly admired Adolf Hitler, and kept a copy of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside.

Maybe nothing bad will come of this—other than all the bad that’s happened in the past two days. Maybe Trump will be a good president. I’m sure the people of Germany, Russia, China, Cuba, Italy, North Korea, and many more thought something similar.