The time has come for the fourth movement. #SaveTheOA #WatchTheOA #TheOAisReal
Read from the beginning for context:
The story concludes tomorrow morning.
PART IV - THE OUTSIDER'S ANGUISH
Sometimes, a TV show is the best thing you have.
Most television is just meaningless entertainment. Once in a while, a show comes along that speaks to people.
People who need help but can't get it. People who look at the screen, see something resembling themselves or their struggle and their pain, and find comfort in it.
People like me.
I know television can be a lifeline because it's been a lifeline for me. I wouldn't be alive right now without storytelling that gave me characters who made me feel less alone, even when I really was alone.
You can call it false, or illusory, but given the solipsistic nature of our brains, our mental experience of reality is our reality.
And my mental experience can be decidedly awful. Some of this is internal—neurons misfiring in response to stimuli and causing searing pain, the feeling of being trapped in a cage because some invisible thing is blocking you from doing what you want to do,
getting locked out of your own thought process by a broken fight-flight-freeze response that tries to do all three at once!
Some of it is external—the way people around me respond. The majority of humans are fine with me so long as I play a pretty pretend (which I do almost constantly), but playing pretend isn't so pretty when you're doing it for years on end. It's exhausting.
And the moment pretend breaks? Cruelty. Exclusion. Not universally, but mostly. I understand the reaction. It's self-preservation. Who wants to care? Ignoring and pushing out of sight is easier.
When I see the homeless man on the bus bench beside me, alternately shouting and mumbling incoherently to himself, I don't see a stranger, or someone to be feared or reviled. I see a mirror. I know what it's like to have a brain that forces you to behave and act in a certain way.
The OA is one of those rare shows that really speaks to people. It isn't even necessarily that the show is important to me personally, but I see how important it is to so many people, and I can't let this stand.
I know I can't change capitalism. I can't stop global warming. I am one utterly insignificant person who's been chewed up and spat out by the system a few times now, to the point where I'm not sure I can actually do anything.
Maybe this is a futility, too, but I see it as a win-win scenario. Scenario one, something that helped a lot of people returns and make existence on this rock a little better. Scenario two, I illustrate the enduring callousness of corporate entities.
The movements conclude here:
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