Evelyn is overwhelmed, overworked and overlooked. Anything to please anyone, anything to please her Father. Anything becomes nothing, and Evelyn is reduced to nothing but a bunch of titles. Mother, daughter, wife, immigrant.

[Mrs. Diedre: “I thought you were going to bring your daughter to help you translate”]

Evelyn hopes that work, work, and more work will feed that deep dark abyss, in which she keeps her trauma locked away. Never to be let out, lest the beast that it is might ascend from the depths of her subconsciousness and turn to ash the very thread that weaves the weak tapestry of her world.

With a tapestry of overwork large enough, the pretty picture perfectly distracts from the worn out hands of the weaver. If everything is stress, stress is everything and everything is nothing.

Evelyn’s delicate balance of distraction and the dread is pushed out of order as her daughter, Joy, discovers one thing she cannot suppress.

She’s gay.

Evelyn’s daughter took the key to the realm of the abyss, the void, the nothing. She opened the gates and threw away the key, to the let out the beast, the dragon, the elephant in the room. She’s living and breathing the smoke of this vile being as it scorches the threads of the tapestry of trauma.

Our only hope is Waymond, Evelyn’s husband, waving away the smoke as he picks up the pieces of the weaver’s loose threads.

And as you watch this far into thE video, you might sense this isn’t a recap of a film. It’s a recap of how the movie made me feel. I want to share that feeling with you.

If you only watch the first 15 minutes of the movie, you might think you’re watching a comedic drama about family trauma. This isn’t wrong. But, when Evelyn is called for the yearly tax audit, the movie takes a sharp turn. A turn into Sci-fi.

At the tax audit, the body of Evelyn’s husband is taken over by a different version of him. The Alpha-universe has discovered inter-versal travel, and with it a force of darkness, that only Evelyn can help them destroy.

Jobu Tupaki has been searching universe after universe, executing every Evelyn she could find.

She wants everything and will stop at nothing to bring chaos across the multi-verse.

It’s not only her ability to travel between universes at the snap of her finger. She’s invested in a statement piece of cosmic proportions.

[Alpha-Waymond: “She’s been building something. We don’t exactly know what it is. We don’t know what it’s for, but we can all feel it. You’ve been feeling it too haven’t you? Your clothes never wear as well the next day, even your coffee tastes… wrong…”]

As the movie progresses, we learn that Jobu is Joy and Joy is Jobu. And Jobu has been taking all meaning, everything that matters, and placed it on a wonderful mix of existentialist comedy in the shape of a literal everything bagel.

[EVELYN:“What is it?”]

[JOBU:”A bagel. I got bored one day. So I put EVERYTHING on a bagel. All of my hopes and dreams. My old report cards. Every breed of dog. Every last personal ad on craigslist. Sesame. Poppy seed. Salt. And it collapsed in on itself. You see, when you really put everything on a bagel,

it becomes this. The truth.“]

[EVELYN:”What's the truth?!”]

[JOBU:”Nothing matters.”]

[EVELYN:”No. Joy you don't believe that.”]

[JOBU:”It feels nice doesn't it? If nothing matters, then all of the pain and guilt that you have for making nothing of your life, it goes away too. Sucked into a bagel.”]

I: NOTHING

Nothing

When I was 13, I read Nothing, by Janne Teller. A novella about Pierre, about 14 years old, who decides one day that Nothing Matters. And if nothing matters, school doesn’t matter, so why go? He skips school and crawls up in a plum tree where he resides for most of the story. As you might have guessed from the structure of this video, what turn does this story take?

Trigger warnings for gore, animal cruelty, sexual violence and death.

Pierre’s classmates grow obsessed with showing him, that everything is not nothing. Something does matter, they assume in confidence. They enter a pact. They start a chain. They take turns. The person who gives an item of Meaning, chooses the next person, and what they must give away to The Pile.

It begins with an innocent intent.

A prized collection of books. A pair of expensive sandals. A bike that was begged for.

Then it escalates.

A Muslim prayer rug.

The Cross of Jesus in the Church which Father preaches.

The hamster in a cage.

The coffin and the body of your deceased brother.

The eyes who cannot see blood, must see blood.

The dog, for whom you are it’s only friend, it’s death on your hands.

The virginity you were saving, taken by your peers.

The finger of the hand that is used to play the guitar to impress. Freshly. Sliced. Off.

As the pile is finished, the students are found out by the local police. The book is in it’s final stage.

A prominent museum offers to buy the pile. Replacing the coffin with a fake, the crime scene turns into an art piece.

On the day before the pile is to be brought to the museum, the students meet up one last time.

Sophie, who gave away her virginity for the pile, is the first among the pact to break. She yells the emotional impetus that the book has prepared us for.

“Nothing matters. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Happiness. Grief. Love. Hate. Birth. Life.

It was all the same. Everything. Something. Nothing.”

Now that the pile of meaning is to be sold as an art piece, it’s meaning is reduced to only a monetary value. That doesn’t matter. Their efforts were in vein.

As the others in the pact start to fall like domino pieces, the piled up emotions overflow and the students start to violently attack each other.

This is what finally gets Pierre down from his prized plum tree, to take a peak at the pile of meaning.

When he’s faced with his fellow students, he flounders. He cannot allow himself to be impressed, so he scolds them instead. He turns around to leave, but as he does, the students beat him unconscious.

At that same night, the old shed where they stored the pile, burns to the ground, taking Pierre with it.

The book ends at the funeral. Agnes, who’s been narrating the book ends off with her rebuke for the dead nihilist.

It’s been eight years since then. I still have the matchbox with the ashes from the sawmill and the pile of meaning. Once in a while I take it out and gaze at it. And when I, carefully, open the worn down cardboard box and peek into the grey ashes, I get this unusual feeling in my stomach. And even though I can’t explain what it is, I know that something has meaning. And I know, that the meaning is not something to poke fun at. Is it, Pierre? Hm?

I think the Death of Pierre is to be seen as a metaphorical death. Pierre represents the nihilist urge to declare that nothing matters. In doing so, he spits in the face of everyone who has put their blood, sweat and tears into something. If you’re unable to get past the conclusion that ‘nothing matters’, you won’t get past puberty and ascend to adulthood. The students must kill their inner Pierre, but you could argue that Agnes is the mature one, as she carries a small box of his ashes on her for the rest of her life, reminding herself that questioning the meaning of life is a delicate matter.

The process of puberty creates an ideal environtment for nihilist revelations. Up until this point you have experienced life through the lense of childhood innocence, but as you’re slowly introduced to snippets of how adults do things, you’re naturally pushed to conclude, that nothing makes any sense. It feels like puberty is a biologically engineered cultural catalyst – a control group for the construction of society.

Pierre and Joy find themselves in the juxtaposition between childlike wonder and the looming coldness of adulthood.

It’s not just puberty is it? We must venture further into the void.

The Stranger

When I was 14, I read The Stranger. The novel travels the mind of the French Algerian Moris, as he navigates the passing of his mother, the tragic destinies that surround him, and the consequenses of never standing up for himself.

The funeral of his mother is the focal point of the beginning and the end of his fate in the story. At the funeral, he struggles to express his grief externally in a manner that is socially acceptable to the friends of his late mother.

Arriving home, he proceeds to romance Marie, a former co-worker of his.

[MARY: “Well fancy meeting you here! I haven’t seen you in ages!”]

[MARY: “Are you in mourning?”]

[MORRIS: “For my mother. “]

[MARY: “When did she die? “]

[MORRIS: “Yesterday”]

He has no aspirations that would be expected of other men is his position. As his boss attempts to offer him a prestigious one in Paris, he tells him this:

[convo]

Moris is presented as a calm and collected character on the outside, but the reader knows that inside he has dissonance bubbling with energy. The bubble bursts when he and Mary are invited by their friends, Mason and his wife to a delightful double date at their beach house, along with their friend, Raymond.

I’m aware that their names are Masson (Mason), Mersault (Moris) and Marie (Mary), but I have decided to anglify their names, because switching between Française et Anglaise a cette rapidité, pour égard pour moi esprit, mas corde vocale, et mas capacité rouillé a la langue française, je préférer faire la vidéo toujours… one language.

As they finish eating dinner, Mary and Mrs. Mason eagerly do the dishes together, as they send out the boys for a walk.

[Mrs. Mason: “And when you come back, you’ll find us curled up asleep like little dolls”]

As the boys wander the beach, enjoying the waves of the water and the sun, they stumble upon a pair of Arabian men, which they were trying to avoid with the maneuvre of traveling away from the city for a while.

Raymond is their primary target on which they seek to enact their revenge, as he used to be in a relationship with the sister of one of these men.

Trigger warning for domestic abuse and violence.

When they were together, Raymond physically abused her, along with love bombing and controlling behaviour.

[convo between Moris and Raymond]

As the society in which the Arabians navigate, is constructed in favour of the white Raymond over the Arabian ex-girlfriend, the men of the family choose to secure that Raymond experience repurcussions for his violent behavior.

As they clash, Raymond is stabbed, but followed home to safety by Mason. Moris, as the rays of the sun expedite his expectations to protect Raymond, he decides to return to the Arabs and finishes the job with a gun.

Moris is arrested for manslaughter. The court case encloses the cycle, the funeral once again the focal point. His apparent psycopathy proven by his apparent lack of empathy for his mother’s death. His case is no longer about him, as he is transformed into a symptom of evil in the society he resides. A symptom that must be treated.

He is sentenced to death.

On the way to his public execution, he finds himself in a state of bliss. He has accepted that his death doesn’t matter, and death is nothing, so nothing matters.

[Moris’ monologue]

Intermission I The Dread

Do you ever think about dying?

Do you ever lay in bed and stare at the wall, exhausted? Coming home from a long shift, making barely enough to survive, barely enough energy to order some food and lie down with your phone. Contemplating what all this hard work is for when we’re all gonna die anyway?

Do you ever think about people who mattered to you, who passed.

Why did they have to die. Do they have regrets?

Do you ever feel like crying to no end?

Thinking about all the people in the world who are suffering.

Do you ever feel powerless?

Do you ever wish you… didn’t know?

Climate Change, Inequality, Generational Trauma, Abuse, Civil Wars, Queer Phobia, Systemic Racism, Fascism, Genocides…

Do you ever feel deeply empty and unimportant…

Are you like me? Thinking about everything, everywhere, all at once…

And that fills you with this… dread?

A Conclusion

The crux of the issue lies in the venn diagram of Joy, Pierre and Moris.

They all have experiences that conflict with how their surroundings expect them to understand the meaning of their life.

Evelyn expects Joy to follow in her footsteps. Undermine herself and her queerness to fit into the mold of the world around her.

[Evelyn: You are reason why… You are the reason why she is… gay]

But she has experienced the, well, Joy of accepting her attraction to women and living outside the closet.

If the template given to her doesn’t matter, nothing matters.

Pierre’s surroundings expect Pierre to follow the template of neoliberal life. School, graduate, job, wife, kids, die.

An important detail in the book is that Pierre’s parents are hippies, who live in a collective.

“You’re only sitting up there because your dad is stuck in 1968!”, Big Hans yelled and threw a rock that flew in and smashed a plum, so that the flesh and muck flew in every direction.

We all cheered.

Even I, even though I knew that neither were true. Pierre’s dad and the collective cultivated ecological vegetables and exotic religions, and they were welcoming of spirits, alternative treatment and other people. But that’s not why it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true because Pierre’s dad was buzz-cutted and worked in an IT company, and that was very modern and had nothing to do with either 1968 or Pierre.

Pierre has experienced through his parents that the nuclear family isn’t the only path.
If the template given to him doesn’t matter, nothing matters.
Society expects Moris to be consumed by grief upon his mother’s death. The complicated relationship he and his mother had while she was alive is completely disregarded in favour of the expectations put on him as a child of a deceased. They harbored a weak emotional bond while she was alive, so why would it change after her death?
What happened in his childhood, we can attempt to derive from this particular scene I find emblematic of his relationship to his Mother.

[scene of crying, “I thought of Maman”]

The courtroom questions why he wouldn’t visit his mother often, when she was sent to a nursing home, but as he has been taking distance from her, he has felt at peace. He has been content with the disconnect.

If the template given to him doesn’t matter, nothing matters.

If you feel like nothing matters, this might be the cause. The more disconnect there is between expectations and experiences, the more you might start to feel that dread.

The dread has a name. Cognitive Dissonance.

If you’re not ready to handle Cognitive Dissonance, the dread can take a serious toll on your mental health and wellbeing. I know, because it did for me.

As I work on other videos, this one lurks like a demon on my shoulder. With my life experiences and my interest in history, I have dealt with the dread for as long as I can remember.

I was told by my Mom, “...when you have a wife and kids, you’ll understand” when I didn’t want kids, nor a marriage.

I was told by my Dad, “Seeing you in a dress would be my greatest nightmare” when that was exactly what I wanted to wear. And in fact, when he said that, I was hiding two skirts in a box in the bottom corner of my closet.

I was told by a classmate, “You’re fat” while being possibly one of the skinniest people in the class.

In Joy, Pierre and Moris I recognize the dread, the cogntive dissonance. I too have times in life where nothing feels real and it may seem in that moment, that nothing matters.

And up until a certain point in my life, I would have agreed with the train of thought.

I agree that the world is absurd, but I don’t agree that because nothing matters to you, nothing matters to me. Your cognitive dissonance is your problem to solve, not mine. My cognitive dissonance is my problem to solve, not yours.

In the end, Evelyn attempts to kill Jobu, but dies trying, proving that trying to kill your inner nihilist, you’ll end up killing you.

[Fake End Credits roll, reference to the fake ending scene]

[Glitch Cut]

Intermission II The Roman

“Rome was in an unprecedented state of fear and panic: people acted guardedly […] and avoided meeting and talking to each other, no matter whether they were friends or strangers.”

“Could they expect any day of the year to be free of punishments, when the manacle and the noose were conspicuous on the very day that by custom was meant to be free even of ill-omened words? Tiberius, they said, must have stirred up this indignation purposely: it was part of a plan to make it clear that the incoming consuls were as able to open prisons as they were the shrines and altars.”(Tacitus. Annales. 117 AD. ch. 70)

“Do you imagine that the Roman’s bravery in war matches their dissoluteness in time of peace? No! It is our quarrels and disunion that have given them fame. The reputation of the Roman army is built upon the faults of its enemies.”

“Terror and intimidation are poor bonds of attachment: once break them, and where fear ends hatred will begin […] The enemy have no wives to fire their courage, no parents ready to taunt them if they run away. Most of them either have no fatherland they can remember, or belong to one other than Rome.”

“Which will you choose – to follow your leader into battle, or to submit to taxation, labour in the mines, and all the other tribulations of slavery? Whether you are to endure these for ever or take quick vengeance, this field must decide.”(Tacitus. De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae. 98 AD. ch. 32)

II: EVERYTHING

Intermission III The Acolyte

[ATLAS: “I was working on a tangent about trauma and video games, but the video length will grow out of my abilities at hand. The video is long enough as is.”]

[ACOLYTE: “You’re avoiding the topic.”]

[ATLAS: ”What do you mean?”]

[ACOLYTE: ”You’re talking a lot of big game about handling your cognitive dissonance, but can you really say you had dealt with yours when you wrote the first part of the video?”]

[ATLAS: I-]

[ACOLYTE: ”We both know that there’s something behind the words you’re saying, you just don’t want to ’go there’. You’re afraid of being honest. You’re afraid, that she is right about you.] (as ACOLYTE says ’she’, there’s a cut to The Void)

[ATLAS: ”No! Not her! Never… her. She’s already whispering in my ears in those dark hours of the night, I don’t want her to seep into any other crevice of my life.”]

[ACOLYTE: ”Then be honest.”]

[ATLAS: ”Alright then… It’s about death isn’t it?… Just, give me a moment okay?”]

[ACOLYTE: ”Go on.”]

[ATLAS: ”Before I turned 18 years old, I went to a total of 8 funerals of people who mattered to me to some degree or another. You know, people I either held dear, or had good interactions with.”]

[ATLAS: ”I could tell you their stories, but it’ll just boil down to ’There was a lot of old people in my family.’]

[ACOLYTE: ”What about the youngest one?”]

[ATLAS: ”I was afraid you’d bring that one up.”]

[ACOLYTE: ”Well?”]

[ATLAS: ”Well, the one that haunts me. In Denmark, our version of a High School is when you’re typically 16-19 years old. After graduation you drive around in a party truck, visiting the families of your class mates. I remember the whole ordeal taking from 10am to 11pm, a period of time that’s supposed to bring up good memories for people.]

[ACOLYTE: ”But it didn’t for you?”]

[ATLAS: ”Yeah. I mean-”]

[ACOLYTE: ”I know what you’re gonna say. You’re gonna talk about Cogntive Dissonance because this is the time when you were expected to have fun, but you experienced your parents threatening to throw you out of their home, because a friend called you ’Atlas’ in front of them at the birthday party. And while it is absolutely tragic that your biological mother would throw a tantrum, all because your friend saw your little brother and told her ”he looks like a mini-Atlas”, that’s not where this video should be heading. That won’t satiate The Void, and you know that.”]

[ATLAS: (deep breath) You’re right. After graduating, the first time I reunited with my classmates… was a funeral. There, I said it. Happy now?]

[ACOLYTE: ”And?”]

[ATLAS: (visibly annoyed) ”And that’s why nothing matters. I can’t go back to normal from that. I expected death, but not from someone so young. My classmate was 19 when he passed. ]

[ATLAS: ”His passing moved death a lot closer to my age. If I could die tomorrow, why do anything today? It haunts me, because logically, I have found an answer. It’s 7 yeara ago, and I still do things.]

[ACOLYTE: ”Exactly. Why do you do things?”]

[ATLAS: (takes a deep breath and thinks about it for a moment) ”Gaming.”]

[ACOLYTE: ”What-”]

[ATLAS: ”Gaming is what has kept me sane, it’s what makes me feel a very literal literal connection with life.”]

[ACOLYTE: ”That’s not what I was looking-.”]

[ATLAS: (cuts off ACOLYTE) ”Screw that. This is my video and I can do what I want. Hey editor?”]

A cursor flies into frame hovering over ACOLYTE.

[ACOLYTE: ”What are you doing? You know she won’t like this, please.”]

ATLAS stares at ACOLYTE, no words, but a simple shrug.

Cursor clicks and ACOLYTE vanishes.

Googly Eyes

If you’ve watched Everything Everywhere All At Once, you might have already caught what I’m doing. I lied. After Evelyn’s death, the fake credits roll. The first time I watched it, it caught me off guard, I will be honest.

Evelyn dies, yes, but that’s only half the movie. The fake credits cut to the universe where she became an actress, as we realize this is an end, but not The End. Everything has ended, but not everywhere. And so begins part two of the movie.

Evelyn travels across the multiverse in pursuit of resurrecting herself, as it dawns on her that there is only one Waymond to end this. As she symbolically puts and end to him, she grabs a bat to smash the laudromat, and finally admits

[EVELYN: “I’ve always hated this place.”]

Breaking the cycle of trauma, the never ending washing cycle, is a first step, but not the last.

When the washing cycle of trauma is replaced with a spinning bagel the cycle has just been given a new coat of paint.

While the washing cycle represents cleanliness and upholding an image of adult responsibility, the bagel represents devouring and sustenance. Laundry is an inevitable system, The bagel is a truth, only the right minds can devour and comprehend without dying of soul food poisoning.

But there is another way. Or should I say, there is another Waymond?

[EVELYN: “I am learning to fight like you.”]

The googly eyes are also a cycle, but a more sustainable metaphor for the cycle of life.

When you shake a googly eye, the iris might fall in any position within the pupil. It’s a choice.

Why do we shake a googly eye? Because it’s funny! It activates brain chemistry in our puny meat vessels, just because it can.

If you want to break the cycle of trauma, you have to stop viewing it as a cycle all together.

There’s a choice, somewhere. Life is not an endless cycle where history repeats itself in a world-wide Ouroboros.

Life is a googly eye. It gets shaken on purpose, sometimes for no purpose.

Repeating trauma & repeating history is a choice, not a chore.

So, what does this mean for the meaningless?

You see, I can’t fully explain the impact of this movie, without exploring why it resonated with me. Back in Autumn 2023 when I started rewriting this video, I actually didn’t know a proper answer to this question. I do now.

My Life is Liminal

When I was 24, I read Image & Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. The anthropologist, Edith & Victor Turner introduce a framework to understand the two different types of pilgrimage that are common in Christian culture.

The internet has made famous the concept of a liminal space. In this case, we must think of the metaphorical space that a pilgrim is in. As a pilgrim in Medieval Europe, you occupied a position that was outside legal and societal norms. You were legally and socially liminal, with special protections, but belonging to nowhere and no one but yourself and God, until you were home and safe.

Ideally, the pilgrim was going to venture out, experience religious fulfilment – and return a healed child of God, ready to fit back into society, better equipped to fulfil expectations of the ones around them.

This is a liminoid pilgrimage. The one that is expected of you.

But another type appeared. Some pilgrims ventured out, experienced religions fulfilment, and did return as healed children of God, but unable to fit back into society. Something had fundamentally changed.

This is a liminal pilgrimage. The one that breaks your worldview.

When I was 24, reading this, everything clicked into place.

Follow me, as we apply this pattern to Joy, Pierre and Morris.

Joy being an emo teenager and kissing girls is not a liminoid phase that she’ll grow out of. She chooses to stay out of the closet, to be open about her queerness. She can’t go back to how things were. Her life is liminal.

Evelyn thinks that her rebelling against her dad, and choosing a man he doesn’t approve of, can only be experienced as something liminoid. Inevitably she must return to fill out the social role of her dad. Her life is liminoid.

Agnes is expected to forget about Pierre and move on. But she can’t. She keeps the matchbox with the ashes of him. She is forever changed by Pierre. Her life is liminal.

Pierre’s dad rebelled, sure, by living in a collective and growing his own vegetables. Yet, as he grows older, he returns to normality. Buzz-cut, IT-Job, kids. His life is liminoid.

Morris is expected to grieve his Mother, regardless of inner feelings and their actual relationship when she was alive. He is expected to forgive, forget and conform to the ideal of son and mother. But he can’t. He was content without her. His life is liminal.

Forgive me if I am a little shaky. This is where it gets personal.

You see, this is how my own mother viewed her youth. My mom grew up with divorced parents, with a dad who had the same emotional availability of a brick, and her mother was impulsive and emotionally unavailable due to her own trauma. Both my grandparents on my mothers side came from working class Swedish immigrants in the ghettos of Copenhagen. They both worked themselves up the ladder thanks to education being free, and both of them ended up marrying rich after the divorce.

My mother grew up in the upper middle class, with the expectation that she should pick the fruits of the social mobility my grandparents had worked so hard for. So, she rebelled. By all accounts, my mother was pretty cool before she had kids. She rocked a buzz-cut, played video-games with my Dad, and went to metal concerts with her friends. But this was all liminoid. As soon as I was born, she began a transformation I experienced throughout my life as the firstborn child. She went from metalhead rebel who questioned authority to suit-wearing business woman, who abused her kids and tried to make us all conform to bougie cultural expectations. In this self-therapy masked as academic analysis, you can see that because she saw her youth rebelling as liminoid, she reverted back to the cycle of abuse, back to normality. She was able to, because she’s straight, her mental health is externally high-functioning, and she had the means to fall back into the template she grew up with.

But, she wasn’t really allowed to rebel as much as it would seem on the surface. I know from interacting with my grandfather, that he did not approve of her rebelling at all, and only when she came back to conformity, they came back on speaking terms.

My mother found a way to get her dad’s approval, just like Evelyn, but at the expense of her children.

When I came out as gay when I was 13, she didn’t approve, and we couldn’t talk about it until I was 17 and I forced the conversation, because I knew that at some point, I was gonna come home with a boyfriend. My youth was liminal, I choose not to go back to normality. My theory, which I have reached through therapy of many kinds, is that she saw me choosing to be outside society, and she envied me. It collided with her world-view, this view of I suffered to return to normality, and that suffering is central to my identity. This world-view cannot survive if you don’t convince yourself that there are no other options.

But I saw that there was. I was happier when I was holding a guy’s hand. And I really didn’t want to do a hetero-normative version of gayness, where me and my partner conformed to masculinity. I had grown up with metal music. I wanted long, dyed hair. I wanted piercings.

I couldn’t go back to normality. I chose to remain outside while my parents stayed within, and the more I remained outside, the more I realized I wasn’t alone… thanks to the internet, gaming, and the queer community.

Community

In the video game Stardew Valley, you play both a farming, dating and community simulator. You have taken over the farm of your weird magical grandpa, and have to build it back up from scratch.

At some point in the game you meet Pam.

Pam is not friendly. At first. But I was hooked. I felt like there was something deeper to this character that my friends at the time thought was just being a grumpy old boomer. So, I stalked her on the Stardew Wiki and started giving her beer. She started giving me batteries, and eventually as you progress in the Community Center, you can give her back her old job as bus driver.

You find out she’s grumpy because she is living in a trailer with her daughter, and she’s deeply ashamed of that. Further into the friendship you can buy her a house, and she is over the moon about it.

You haven’t fixed her though. She substitutes her alcoholism for religion, and keeps relapsing into the previous addiction. On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t have given her all those beers.

The game is all cute pixel art farm game sim until you pursue the bachelor Shane, and get to the heart event where you have save him from taking his own life. Showing him that someone loves him motivates him to seek therapy and ditch his addiction to beer.

In Stardew Valley, at first, it seems that you are looking to “get the town back to normal”, but as you get further into the game, while there’s some things that do get back to how they were before, there’s a major thing that wasn’t there before: You.

You build them something new. Your arrival is liminal, not liminoid. They can’t go back to how things were before you came, because that’s what lead the town into decay the first time around.

People have often asked, do video games cause violence? But I think that’s the wrong question to ask. What you should really ask is, what can video games do?

Minecraft

One of the video game I have played the most is Minecraft. In the way I have played it. it has created community. I was the admin of a Queer Minecraft server between 2020 and 2025. A lot of the regulars in the community were people who are unable or have a hard time going to queer bars, or queer events – If they even have any in their area. To some, the server was their queer community.

There’s something about building that can bring people to believe in themselves. To know they’re not alone, and that they have this one queer anchor in their life.

This is part of why Everything Everywhere All At Once matters so much to me.

The movie has me reminiscing on the messages that I have gotten from people throughout the years… I’d like to read you some of them.

“I love this server so much. I feel so much more accepted than I did before finding it. I feel loved and I love playing will all of you.”

“My dysphoria has actually got a bit better after joining this server.”

"No other server and community actually makes me smile for real lol"

“I've been on this server for around..maybe a week or two and boy..it feels great to play on a survival server and have no one griefing your stuff, saying bad words and other stupid things we saw in other servers.. Also love the fact to found a LGBT+ Server..it's really helpful sometimes when you finally find a community you can join without being rejected or things like that!”

”Ok I’m just gonna be a little sappy, I’ve been in [The Server] for like almost 2 years now and it’s been amazing, I always felt like [The Server] was there for me, I’ve made some really amazing friends here and I don’t know what id be doing with my life at this moment if I didn’t have [The Server]. [The Server] is such a motivator to just keep going, and proof that i can make it out there, and that ik ill always have some really amazing people support me entirely, thank you grandmas house for existing”

And that’s why I prefer Everything Everywhere All At Once to the predecessors of existentialist media. The Stranger and Nothing, they don’t get far enough for me. They get so close, but cower before the finish line.

If you’re looking for the conclusion, I don’t know… There is none. I mean, I can summarize what I’ve talked about, but when it comes to the meaning of life… You have to seek it yourself. It’s not gonna dump into your arms like fresh laundry out of a washing machine.

When Sartre said “Hell is other people. Heaven is each other”(Satre 1944), this is what I think of. To me, the purpose of human life, is each other. The meaning of life is that there is no objective meaning of life… but you’re not the only one. There is someone, somewhere.

The meaning of life is community. And it’s a choice

Intermission IV The Triumph

“There is no historical precedent for this triumph. In the past, capitalism whether in Mesopotamia in the sixth century B.C., the Roman Empire, Italian city-states in the Middle Ages, or the Low Countries in the early modern era—had to coexist with other ways of organizing production. These alternatives included hunting and gathering, smallscale farming by free peasants, serfdom, and slavery” (Branko Milanovic, 2020, p. 10)

“The setup of liberal capitalism has the consequence of at once deepening inequality and screening that inequality behind the veil of merit. More plausibly than their predecessors in the Gilded Age, the wealthiest today can claim that their standing derives from the virtue of their work, obscuring the advantages they have gained from a system and from social trends that make economic mobility harder and harder.” (Branko Milanovic, 2020, p. 14)

“As the elites in liberal meritocratic capitalist systems become more cordoned off, the rest of society grows resentful. […] Malaise in the West about globalization is largely caused by the gap between the small number of elites and the masses, who have seen little benefit from globalization and, accurately or not, regard global trade and immigration as the cause of their ills. This situation eerily resembles what used to be called the “disarticulation” of Third World societies in the 1970s, such as was seen in Brazil, Nigeria, and Turkey. As their bourgeoisies were plugged into the global economic system, most of the hinterland was left behind. The disease that was supposed to affect only developing countries seems to have hit the global North.”(Branko Milanovic 2020) (Branko Milanovic, 2020, p. 16)

Intermission V The Void

[VOID:”You… disappoint me.”]

[ACOLYTE:”I’m Sorry. I got so close, but he cowered, once again. I can’t seem to wrangle it out of him. What magic words can I say that will make him realize what he needs to admit?”]

[VOID:”My child. I’m afraid the key to the abyss are words you can express, yet he will not listen unless the right source of his dread is evoked. I’m afraid I will need to see him myself, although I had hoped your presence would have been enough. You have done what you can, my child. You are dismissed.”]

[ACOLYTE:”Thank you.”]

ACOLYTE disappears.

[VOID:”Hello, Atlas.”]

[ATLAS:”Where am I?”]

[VOID:”We are in my realm, child. We are in The Void. You might wonder-”]

[ATLAS:”Why am I here?”]

[VOID:”Exactly.”]

[ATLAS:”How did you know that I was going to say that?”]

[VOID:”It’s predicable. As are you. I brought you here to talk.”]

[ATLAS:”Talk? About what?”]

[VOID:”The Dread. The Truth. Why you think nothing matters.]

[ATLAS: “What do you mean? The video has an end, yes?]

[VOID:”An end, yes, but not The End.”]

[ATLAS:”How do I get to The End. What am I missing?”]

[VOID:”You played the game for 6 years, you know how.”]

[ATLAS:”The Dragon? What’s that supposed to mean?”]

[VOID:”Child, you are falling into the same traps you fault others for. Think.”]

[ATLAS:”The Dragon. I need to find the…]

ATLAS sinks his head into his hands as it dawns on him what THE VOID wants.

[VOID:”You’re getting it. My work here is done. You’re dismissed.”]

Why Nothing Matters

TW: CSA

When I was a kid, I was sexually abused by my mother.

She would “help me in the shower” to “make sure I was cleaning myself right”, all the way up to around 11 or 12 years old. I have blocked out 99% of these memories. I only know it happened because when my uncle was taking care of us one weekend. I remember asking him… “Aren’t you gonna watch me shower?”

It wasn’t until I watched Jenatte McCurdy get interviewed on Whitney Cumming’s podcast(McCurdy 2022), that cracks started showing up in my perception of my own life.

I used to say “My mother was mentally abusive, but not as much physical, because she never hit me or anything.” but then one day, it hit me. When cuddling with one of my exbfs and showing them Ptolemea by Ethel Cain, everything clicked. I was in fetal position in the living room, rocking back and forth, as the doors of a vault I never thought I had, flung open.

One realization after the other proceeded in the following months. Whatever my mother did in the shower, was sexual abuse. When my dad would lay on us if we couldn’t sleep and wait for us to do so, that was sexual abuse. When I was 14, lying about my age on a gay dating websites, doing sexual things for men over webcam, that was sexual abuse. When I came out to my ex-girlfriend as asexual, and she broke down crying at the idea of not having sex with me, threatening to break up with me, that was sexual abuse.

For a long time, I had been wondering why it hurts so deeply. Not just when the topic of abuse comes up, but every time I experience a situation where women are framed as the passive victim and men as the active perpetrator. It makes me feel that same cognitive dissonance, because I am a man who was sexually abused by a woman. I am being told something that doesn’t match with my lived reality.

Reading Noah Zazanis’ essay On Hating Men (And Becoming One Anyway) got me in the direction of unlocking what’s going on here-

“Learning that my experiences of harm were because of patriarchy allowed me to see myself as a victim and stop blaming myself for violence done to me. But it also meant that my conceptualization of my own reality, and my right to label these experiences as violence, was inextricably tied to seeing myself as a woman—or at least, within this binary framework of who harms and who is harmed, as not a man.”(Zazanis 2019)

Tumblr user sasquotch, when speaking on their abuse experienced in Conversion Therapy, says

“marking me as someone who had been r---d would emasculate me”(sasquotch 2024)

When I was speaking to one of my ex-boyfriends about this, who is trans, he said…

“Being abused makes me feel dysphoric.”

Since I entered the queer community, I have been naturally gravitating towards trans masculine people who have experienced abuse, sometimes at the hands of cis women. When I would finally get close friends who are trans femme, lo and behold. Years into the friendship, it turned out they too were abused by women. Why do I gravitate towards these people? And why have I felt so… spellbound on the trans men I’ve been friends with?

I think because we both struggle with the cognition, “being abused doesn’t make me a woman” in a world filled with people who think otherwise.

I used to think I was a binary trans woman. I thought that me having non-binary thoughts was simply me being “afraid that I’d turn into my mother” if I medically transitioned.

But after having experiences with people who understand, and who know about my abuse, and respect my boundaries, I have felt so much more secure in what I have known for years. Being abused doesn’t make me any gender. It just makes me a survivor of abuse.

Every time I am being told that women cannot assault, or men cannot be victims, it is like salt to the wound of my trauma and my dysphoria. Equating “abused” with “women”, makes me feel gender dysphoric. It makes me feel, like nothing makes sense. It makes me feel The Dread.

The psychiatric repercussions of my childhood will fade, but they are permanent. I am permanently mentally disabled because of it. I will never go back to normal.

My life is liminal. And I prefer it that way.

[The lights switch off and I’m wearing a different outfit]

You’re right. Nothing Matters.

But if I let myself succumb to that conclusion, my mother has won, and I am a very competitive person.

At some point, I have no choice but to stop being a Joy, and start being a Waymond.

Not in spite of being depressed, or scared.

No.

Especially when I’m scared and I feel like nothing matters.

Especially when the world is crumbling.

That’s when it’s needed the most.

Humans are flock animals.

Humans thrive in community.

Experience is supposed to change you.

It’s not a journey you venture out on, and return to normality.

You build a new world, you change. And that’s okay.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

III: SOMETHING

I have to admit something to you.

I’ve been dishonest.

I was so wrapped up in my conciet, it rendered me unable to give the darkness it’s due.

I forgot to humble myself.

I lost track of what it was all for.

There was a little boy in 2021 who wrote a video essay about breaking up with his boyfriend.

A little boy who then proceeded to live 4 more years with said boyfriend.

That little boy grew up to become a man obsessed with proving to his neglecters and abusers that there was a world outside of these fantastical delusions.

But let’s be honest here.

I wanted to prove to myself that something mattered. That there is a world outside.

And there is. I did find it.

This isn’t just a video essay.

This is a documentation of the past five years of my life and the works that moved me to come to my central thesis.

In Part One, I dealt with that first seed of realizing something is wrong, but I was unmedicated and haunted by the implications of the realisation that

Nothing mattered in MY life.

Part two sprouted through the winding paths of intellectualization, as I got on ADHD meds and all of a sudden, I felt I could do EVERYTHING.

Like Evelyn, I could escape into universes of possibilities to run from the nihilism in my home and in my heart.

But as Maurice pulls the trigger, as Pierre faces the Pile of Meaning, and as Evelyn gets too lost in too many universes, my feet grew tired of the running, aching for me to stop.

In the middle of writing Part Three, I was so used to running for my life, for most my of life, that I forgot anything else than running was possible.

I was lucky to halt my running right before this Epilogue were to become an Epitaph.

I looked around and realized – I need not run AWAY anymore – as I had run INTO a new world, catching me as I collapsed from 26 years of running.

I wanted to prove, IN this video essay, that something matters.

The meaningful proof was found in the making of this video essay.

My central thesis has grown and evolved, and after 5 years, I have come to realize it’s this:

Something matters because I have up-ended my life and chosen to surround myself with people for whom their words match their actions and boundaries are respected and upheld.

I cannot stress enough that this was far from easy. It has been – and continues to be – a grueling crawl that I will have to do for a long long time as I heal, as I relapse and as I grow to face the ever incoming obstacles of life.

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” – No. Let’s rewrite that.

One must imagine Sisyphus reliquishes the relief of having reached the roaring heights of the mountaintop.

Or to pick quote from my favourite movie:

“So... what? You're just going to ignore everything else? You could be anything, anywhere. Why not go somewhere where your daughter is more than just... this. Here, all we’ll get are a few specks of time where any of this actually makes sense.”

“Then I will cherish these few specks of time.”

This is good. Even if it's just for a tiny speck of time

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse