rewatched yuri on ice and good lord do i have thoughts

this is gonna sound REALLY OVERDRAMATIC and REALLY SAPPY but i swear on a bible to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth here

so since 2018, i've made it a tradition that every winter, i rewatch yuri on ice-- any time between october and december will do. this year it fell behind quite late because my our flag means death hyperfixation has been EXTREMELY potent. but i mentioned this tradition to my little sister, who's 12 at the time, and she asked to do it with me this year!! i happily accepted cause she's the coolest, and i'm always happy to do stuff with my family if they're willing

but i always forget how much yoi brings me back, yknow?

i discovered yuri on ice when i was my sister's age, if i'm remembering correctly. i would have been in seventh grade. i had heard about it from pinterest, or tumblr, or something. can't remember how i found out it existed, i just had.

for context, seventh grade wasn't a good year for me, at all. just in relation to this, not really talking about the other things that went on, i had just discovered that i was, in fact, queer. YIPPEE, right?? no. no. you're so silly for thinking that!! i went to a middle school where the student body was 80% conservative and christian. i was fighting for my LIFEEE even being a feminist and, at the time, atheist there-- imagine the scrutiny i received when i came out to the public. i was excited to be queer! i was excited that i had figured this all out, that i was part of an accepting and beautiful community. my parents were great about it! my friends were too!!! but the rest of my life-- not so much. i mean for fucks sake, how many times can you get bullied after being out for like, a month??? like????? but as a young queer kid, i was filled with piss and vinegar. so yeah i felt bad about it but i also just knew they were dumb fucks lmaooooo.

but enough about that-- even before realizing i was queer, i was SO INTO queer spaces and ships, though i never saw anything explicitly queer in media. yeah, i could ship stucky as much as i damn well pleased, but it's not like it magically turned my life into a wonderland where queerness was loved and accepted.

that was when i discovered it-- yuri on ice! i had heard that it was queer, so i turned it on. i used pirated youtube screencaps because i didn't know of the existence of stuff like crunchyroll or funimation, after all, it was the first anime i had ever watched either!! 
and god. good fucking god was i obsessed. move over latin class, a new hyperfixation had appeared!!!! i have a distinct memory of watching it on my family's way to a big cat reserve, happy that i had wifi so i could watch an episode or two on my ipod touch with my big black headphones. i would watch it ALL THE TIME. like, constantly. and i talked about it too!! my dad never heard the end of it. 

what really mattered was that up until that point, i had never seen explicitly queer characters in media before. and it meant so so much to me-- soft caresses and hugs from behind and kisses and engagement rings!! it showed me that queer love was something that was achievable. not only was it achievable, it was openly accepted and even celebrated. everyone in yuri's life was accepting and loving and supportive. not to mention, it wasn't some sob story where one of them dies at the end. they just figure skated!! and were happy!! and wanted to be together forever!! 

and of course, bringing it up at school got me made fun of.

but fuck all of that. in the same way that learning about queer greek myth and queer figures from the past had, yuri on ice shined a beacon of hope in my stupid little gay life.

and not to mention, i didn't know what gender envy was at the time, but there was nothing like the masculinity portrayed in yuri on ice that i had ever seen before. i grew up in a traditional family, if that makes sense-- like, yeah, my dad could be considered gender non-conforming, but not really. my brother, and both of my cousins, were into sports, and wrestling each other, and video games, and everything that was so stereotypically painted BOY. i always liked "girly" things, princesses and dresses and being polite and lovely and graceful, so i suppressed a lot of my gender dysphoria and feelings because i didn't think that boys could be any of those things. and a masculinity that was graceful, delicate, sexy, beautiful, even effeminate at times, was REVOLUTIONARY to my little brain. i wanted to be like yurio, yuri, and victor, mostly victor, in so many ways, that i just didn't know how to explain was gender envy!! 

rewatching yuri on ice again dredged up all those old feelings. i think it's cause i watched it with my little sister. she was too young to be consuming media before the big boom of queer rep, so i don't think she really understands what it was like to not see yourself in everything you watch. i also don't think she gets how it feels to be able to take solace from a hateful world in something beautiful, sweet, and kind. to be able to watch a show and know that the whole world won't always call you slurs, the whole world won't always make you hide, the whole world won't always turn you away because of who you are and who you love. that you're gonna get your boyishness, and you're gonna get your delicate masculinity, and goddammit you're gonna get your kisses and your engagement rings and your stupid airport reunion. it's something so special that i don't feel like i can explain very well. 

but this stupid fucking anime means so so much to me.

stupid fucking skating anime!!! making me emotional at 3 am on a saturday

but seriously. the impact it had on my life is something that will never go away. so if im crying at the episode 7 kiss or the final episode or even the part where yurio gives yuuri the pork cutlet pierogis, just pat me on the back or look away!!!!

tl;dr: representation matters, i love yuri on ice, don't look at me i'm ugly crying, i had a sorta-kinda-hard childhood ok, i have gender envy for victor nikiforov