How Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt changed my life (and the unlearning of shame)

Hi.

I'm pretty new to this site but I've already had a ton of fun and met a few cool ppl already. I've always wanted to write some blogs since I was younger, but the mixing of my shyness and embarrassment to open up to people (unseen or not) had always prevented me from doing anything more than typing out my thoughts onto private word documents, or scribbling onto the pages of my sketchbooks or margins of my school notebooks.

Spacehey's formula is already hella refreshing for me, even though I lived through the latter part of the old web, yet never really engaged with it properly because I was a troubled kid that jumped around trying to please others instead of learning to be myself. This site and its users really are giving me the experience I'd always wished for back when i'd made an emo MySpace page with a buncha glitter and edgy red and black smeared all over it. It's made me really think about the time between then and now and I get a little sentimental thinking about how far I've come since. Since between the time I made that emo myspace page and now, I'd gone through a whole character arc of turning into a shameful, repressed, and angry, nerdy boy; to developing into a not exactly perfect, but still definitely a much more happy, and free woman.

OH yes, this is about my trans experience and how a stupid fart, piss, cum, and vomit comedy anime show named Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt helped me overcome the shame I felt for existing, and how it changed my life for the better. And I'm posting it on this silly little site where I have the ability to spew glitter and emojis into your face.

When I was a kid, I loved anime and video games. I liked my little gamecube with my little mario sunshine game, I loved my gameboy advance with my power rangers time force game, and I really loved Naruto. When I saw Naruto on my 14-inch Sony Trinitron, throwing kunai and casting Jutsu with his little hand symbols, I was hooked. I watched the entirety of the show in 10,000 parts chopped up into 5 minute videos on the old YouTube. I bought a leaf village headband, I practiced the fire jutsu hand symbols, and drew the ugliest art I can imagine of people doing ninja battles and casting magic. It was fun, especially since I had a friend who was way better at art than me, and showed me her art of Death Note characters. I loved all sorts of anime, from Yu-gi-oh to One piece, Haruhi Suzumiya to Pokemon.

I had a lot of fun gushing about anime to people, but somewhere along the way I'd heard a lot of people who didn't like the stuff I liked. My newer friends didn't care at all about that nerdy stuff, other people would say things about the *those* types of people, the kind of person who watched that stuff, and they would say stuff that made me feel like I should be ashamed to enjoy any of it. So I did start to feel ashamed. I stopped watching anime, and threw all my art and comics into the trash pile I had in the corner of my closet, never to be used again. I looked at my art with disgust and derision. The thing that'd brought about so much happiness and creativity within me had died then. It still hasn't fully been brought back, but I try every day to harness the same feelings I had back then, before I'd been tainted with this shame for what I truly enjoyed.

By the time I started my first year of high school, I'd treat anything with even a hint of anime style with disgust. I played Call of Duty and Halo, so I was definitely way cooler than the dumb kid that I was a few years prior. I basically lived every second that I wasn't in a classroom on my pc and xbox, and just immersed myself entirely in games like Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, Counter Strike: Source, Red dead Redemption, or GTA4. No matter how much time I spent with other people online though, I always felt like I needed to hold myself to some nebulous standard; choke some part of me down and act in ways that I didn't feel natural doing. A standard I would eventually learn was just the general pressures of having to act like a "normal" teenage boy. I had to like and date girls, dress in my baggy jeans and letterman jackets, play Halo (well, I did enjoy that one a lot at least), and had to act like a man in everything I did. I wasn't allowed to like girly things, like painting my nails or having long hair.

I chopped my shoulder-length hair off. I used a sharpie to paint my nails but after a couple fingers I stopped and felt so ashamed I never took my hand out of my pocket until the ink faded away. I forced down all these feelings of uneasiness and yearning and just kept up an outward appearance of a MAN. I talked about girls in shitty ways, I kicked rocks at walls, whatever the hell teenage boys did I had to do it. My friends at the time dragged me around and I did whatever they did, because they were also all boys.

Then, one day when going on imageboards and random websites, I found a group of friends in an unlikely place. A bunch of random people who'd never talked before just, started a little group and we all started posting random crap. Said whatever the hell was on our minds. I respected them a lot, they had a lot of interesting and varied tastes and always had interesting things to say and new stuff to share with me. They also happened to like anime. Like, that kinda was 50% of their whole thing, and the other 50% was video games. So, I ended up hearing a lot about that "cringey" anime crap. I thought it was all so dumb.

Then, one day in 2010, someone in that group shared with me a trailer to something called Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt.




I watched this dumb trailer with a loud blaring horn and a Powerpuff girl artstyle and just was sorta amazed. For some reason, I thought that shit was super cool. I used to like powerpuff girls when I was really young, so I kinda liked the style. The subject matter was more mature though, but I thought it seemed really interesting and unique. I was a little apprehensive to give my real thoughts, but my friends seemed to be just as excited for it as I was. So, I shared my real thoughts on it too and we all were really excited for this new Gainax animation, whatever Gainax was.

When the first episode dropped online, I was obsessed. It was basically love at first sight. The animation was incredible, the art style was like nothing I'd ever seen before, the music was just, so great. And the characters too, I just loved how sassy they were, how Chuck could get knocked around and never die, how Garterbelt always snapped back at Panty and Stocking's remarks, and how they all were just so funny and colorful. They cursed in english and the japanese onomatopoeia accentuated every scene's action and comedy perfectly. It was really funny and so much fun to watch.