And now I guess I -am- being clever

I want to preface this by saying that I am a huge fan of “Community”. It is easily my favorite show on television right now, and coming from someone who has a natural aversion to sitcoms that's saying quite a bit. It's satire at its best, and the writers have routinely shown impressive insight in previous episodes into matters like religious diversity, gender roles, and bullying. Plus, they had a zombie episode. Clearly this was a show I was destined to enjoy, and enjoy it I do.

This past week, continuing their theme of bringing us hilarity via pop-culture awareness, the minds behind “Community” came up with an episode centered around Dungeons & Dragons. As an avid D&D geek, I was over the moon. Two of my favorite things were intersecting, and clearly this was going to be the best thing ever. Come to find out, the impetus for this group of people playing this particular game is for the benefit of a previously-mentioned but never-before-seen character called Fat Neil, whose downwardly-spiraling emotional state draws the group's collective concern. Okay, I thought, the writers are clearly just pulling things straight out of my head to use in the show now. This is going to be the most amazing episode ever.

The reality is that after watching it twice since it aired on Thursday, February 3^rd, I'm no closer to sorting out how I felt about the episode as a whole.

I have to say, the D&D-specific parts were utterly inspired. Having started out gaming in a group where only one of us (the one actually running the game) had ever played before, I can say that the writers and actors brilliantly captured the uncertainty and slight embarrassment that I remember from that first session. Even more so, they managed to convey how absorbing a game like that can be, and how much fun can be had by those involved. To all of that, I give a very enthusiastic A+.

The rest of the episode engendered far more mixed feelings, enough so that I'm not entirely sure how to go about articulating my reaction. Let's break it down, shall we?

Good: I was excited to see some explicit attention being paid to harassment of those who are fat/overweight/People of Size. The damage done to Neil's confidence and self-worth is well articulated, as is the overwhelming despair that can swallow someone when they reach their adult life and realize that things have not, in fact, gotten better.

Not So Good: Which brings me to my next point. Something that struck me right away was the similarity between Neil's situation (I'm going to drop the 'Fat' part, even though the episode itself never did) to the bullying epidemic that's gotten so much recent national attention. Those cases, of course, involve children and young adults being tormented for being (or being suspected of being) gay, and this one is a matter of weight. Still, the parallel is so striking that I'm left feeling that it must have been intentional. But if that's the case, why make the substitution at all? Why make Neil fat instead gay? I'm willing to admit the possibility that it was so that they could avoid the “Very Special Episode” trope. What it felt like to this viewer, however, was a way to talk about a serious issue without requiring the full resolution that would be expected if they addressed a hot-button issue straight-on. It felt like they made him Fat Neil instead of Gay Neil because fatophobia doesn't carry the same stigma as homophobia, and therefore doesn't have to be taken as seriously. In our current political climate, making fun of homosexuality is dangerous; making fun of fat people is standard operating procedure.

Good: Neil's gradual re-engagement with the world and people around him is well-portrayed, and makes a convincing argument for this (admittedly ridiculous) rescue attempt actually working. He's not considering suicide because he's fat; he's considering it because he's isolated. That's what bullying and harassment and abuse do—they cut people off from the world, from those who might care about them, from the very things that make life worth living. He's not smiling because people are playing Dungeons & Dragons; he's smiling because they're playing with him. The more he feels like a part of the group (a part of the community, if you'll pardon the pun), the less mournful he becomes.

Not So Good: For all the sensitivity that most of the characters are trying to show, there's still a glaring moment of fatophobia and fat-for-laughs about midway through the episode. Isolated from the rest of the group, Pierce decides to cheat by acquiring a second copy of the game they're playing. (I won't go into detail about the gamer part of me that was FULL OF RAGE at this twist, but suffice it to say I was growling at Pierce through the screen.) He does this with the help of another fat character, Garrett, who brings him a crate full of AD&D materials and is subsequently distracted by Pierce literally waving a candy bar in front of his face and then throwing it down the hall. This is, I will freely admit, completely in-character for Pierce. However, by having it occur in isolation, the moderating voices of the other characters are absent and it becomes nothing more than a “fat people will act like animals for candy” joke. In the middle of an episode about the dangers of using people's weight to humiliate them. It's a jarring moment, to say the least.

Good: At the end of the episode Neil takes a stand, and he does so by empathizing with his attacker (Chevy Chase's character Pierce Hawthorne) rather than attacking back. It's a wonderful moment of realization, that the slurs and humiliation that have been lobbied against him throughout the episode have less to do with him than they do with Pierce's own insecurities. In realizing this and choosing empathy over antagonism, he manages to strip Pierce of his power, both in real life and in the game. That's an important lesson, and one that was conveyed with a wonderful kind of subtle strength.

Not So Good: There are no consequences. Pierce never apologizes for essentially trolling a young man on the verge of suicide, and the rest of the characters neither seem to expect him to nor seem particularly bothered by his silence. The episode even ends by saying that “Pierce Hawthorne saved the life of Fat Neil… while learning very, very little.” (Yeah, he's not the only one, narrator. Seriously, drop the 'Fat' part.) So . . . what's the moral here, exactly? That it's okay for him to have been grossly abusive to a suicidal man, because it totally helped in the end, really? Let me take this moment to say that, as someone who greatly enjoys tabletop RPGs, I have played in games before where someone has gone out of their way to be difficult, unhelpful, and an overall hindrance in the way that Pierce behaves in this episode. I wouldn't ever feel compelled to classify any of them as “the best game I've ever played in my life”, and that's without the personal attacks that Neil endured. That response is unbelievable to the point of being offensive. Perhaps it was meant to be Neil being deliberately kind to Pierce, but if that was the case I have to say that it fell short of its goal. The resolution felt tacked-on and disingenuous to me, and probably colored my opinion of large portions of the rest of the episode.

Now, I had originally intended to simply write a review of this episode and attempt to articulate why, even after two viewings, I'm still undecided on whether or not I actually liked it. However, something happened yesterday that I feel compelled to share, because if there's one thing this episode did do well it was emphasizing the fact that you can't just let bullies get away with the shit that they pull.

Before I went to work this morning I checked my Twitter feed where I was following (among others) Dan Harmon, the creator of “Community”. He had linked to an article discussing Thursday's episode that discussed many of the things that had concerned me. The article's view was overall positive, but I remained unconvinced. I still had concerns. So, perhaps unwisely, I decided to reply to the message that Harmon had posted. I said:

@danharmon @CleverCase I'm still not sure how I feel about the episode. The D&D parts were freakin' INSPIRED. The rest...not so sure.

Now, I wasn't expecting a response. I've replied to several people I follow on Twitter, and never receive any indication that they saw what I said. That's fine; after all, they have no idea who I am, and I'm sure most of them get countless replies from the myriad of random fans who follow their feed. So I was surprised when, mere minutes later, a response did in fact appear in my feed. This is what Mr. Harmon had to say:

@hungrylikewolf I have a similar dilemma: On one hand, who gives a fuck what you think, and on the other hand, shut up and eat shit.

To say that I was shocked would be a massive understatement. I couldn't see what, in what seemed to me to be a fairly innocuous statement of ambivalence, could have inspired such a furious and hateful response. I was incredibly shaken, unable to believe that someone I genuinely admired would say such a thing, especially in a response to my concern over an episode about bullying. On top of that, minutes after that someone else decided to weigh in and applaud Mr. Harmon for how he had “handled that Tweet”. Again, I was in shock. What was there to handle?

I started my workday (I have a job in retail) extremely shaken and distressed. Much as I wanted to, I couldn't seem to simply let this go. You don't actually know each other, I tried to tell myself. You're effectively strangers. His bullshit doesn't matter. Intellectually, I knew that, but it didn't make my stomach unknot or ease the burning behind my eyes. When I couldn't hold off crying anymore, I was glad that I had slipped on an icy patch on my way to my car and could blame the tears on my abraded hands if anyone asked.

Let me say that again: I was thankful that I had suffered physical pain because I didn't want to admit why I was really crying. I'm willing to bet that it's a situation that sounds familiar to at least a few of you. It sure as hell was to me. Still, it took me nearly half an hour of working to calm myself down before I was able to think clearly enough to realize why I was reacting so strongly. Put quite simply, I had been triggered.

It wasn't the first time this had ever happened to me, but it was the first time since the psychological meaning of the word “trigger” had entered my awareness, and the first time I've been able to name it. The fact that I could now let me focus enough to figure out precisely why Mr. Harmon's words had been so upsetting. (Beyond the fact that that's simply a horrible thing to say to anyone. I mean, really.)

I spent a good portion of my childhood and adolescence trying desperately to be invisible. In my experience, the attention of my peers was rarely positive, and a steady stream of taunts and ridicule sent my way for no other reason than that I was the fat girl and an easy target taught me very early on that it was better if I didn't try to stand out. Better that people forget I was there, so that they wouldn't remember that humiliating me was one of their favorite games. I was shy, I kept quiet more often than not, and I tried with all my might to simply blend into the background. Even when I started becoming more active online, I was still afraid to speak up because of that old certainty that I would be shouted down, told as I was so often early in life that my opinions didn't matter. Afraid that someone would simply sneer out an insult that I'd be unable to counter. I am fat, it's not like I can dispute it, and for so much of my life I believed that that made me less deserving.

Well, I'm sick of staying quiet. I'm sick of keeping my head down and letting people get away with the horrible things that they say and do. If no one else is going to do it, then by God I'll stand up and tell the Pierce Hawthornes of the world that their behavior is unacceptable, and that if they act deliberately hurtful then I have no interest in knowing them.

I don't expect Mr. Harmon to care that I'm no longer following him on Twitter; I don't anticipate that he'll care about any of this. I sincerely doubt, in fact, that he'll ever even be aware of this post's existence. But I want him and all the other Pierce Hawthornes out there to imagine, for just a moment, that those words had not been spoken to someone who's finally learned her own self-worth, but to a suicidal teenager who believes that she only exists at the sufferance of others. I'm standing up for her, and for everyone else who can't yet stand up for themselves.

Neil wasn't saved by Pierce being an insensitive jackass; he was saved by the realization that there were others willing to support him, and by the decision to give his support to someone else who needed it. That, at least, is a lesson worth passing on.

And to any who might be tempted to tell me to learn how to take a joke, let me assure you that I would be more than happy to do so, just as soon as you learn how to be funny.