This video was actually my furry awakening, among other things. Before this I kinda dabbled in furry things; I liked a lot of furry art, I attempted drawing furries (and failing), and I just kinda watched as an outsider. But I didn't really consider myself a furry, cus I wasn't 'furry' enough. I didn't have a fursona or anything, so how could I be a furry? Something about this video really just opened my mind up to just say "You know what, I am a furry!"

It also helped close the chapter of my life where I was desperately searching for a way to describe my gender. Now I'm just me. The labels I do use are just kinda post-it notes to say "This is the closest thing to describing my gender." But really, I'm just me. I don't need an explicit hyperspecific label to be valid as a person. My gender and understanding of gender is constantly changing and evolving with me, and it just gets too exhausting to try keep up with it, especially when I have better things I could be doing. So now I just sit in the lazy river and let the changes flow by, knowing that I'm still me no matter how my gender changes. Pretty crazy that I had such a big epiphany over a video about boinking animal people, huh? So yeah, I'm Kai and I'm a gender non conforming furry.

Disclaimer: This should be obvious but, this is not me saying there's anything wrong with hyperspecific labels or anything. Just that, for me personally, this is what works for me.

I love all the videos on this channel but this one especially hits hard because I'm learning how to unmask myself. It's a very difficult process, especially because of the fear that when you take the mask off, there will be nothing else there. That your mask is all that you are. Once I hit high school, it all came crashing down. The exhaustion of pretending to be someone else hit all at once and I shattered. The strange thing is, up until the illusion broke, I didn't even know there was a mask there. I thought this was normal. But once it broke, I knew there was something wrong.

Skipping forward some years (some painful years), we get to where I am now. I'm still learning what is and isn't my mask, how to unmask, when to use the mask to my advantage. But things are much better now. This isn't something that will be fixed in just a few years. This will take a lifetime, and I know it. But there are small things now that I'm able to do without even thinking about 'letting myself' do them. And whenever I notice I'm doing them, it makes me happy. It shows that there is still something behind that mask.

Yeah, another video about autism. They're just incredibly important to me, to know I'm not alone in my experiences.

The recountings of childhood in this video are especially relatable to me. I'm gonna make a page eventually talking about my experiences in life with autism so I'm not gonna go into detail here, but a lot of what is said in this video feels like I'm looking in a mirror, watching someone talk about the same things that happened to me. A big difference though is religion, I am not and have not ever been religious. As a child, my mum would tell me I could believe in whatever I wanted to believe in, or nothing at all if I wanted. I also feel as though, from what I can remember, I was a lot less aware of things. I wasn't aware that I was changing myself to fit what other people thought I was supposed to be, it just happened. I wasn't aware that people didn't like me because of my differences. I wasn't aware that there was anything 'wrong'.

Fun Fact: One of the things I'm very autistic about is animatronics! I need to make a page about them.

I'm pretty sure a friend introduced me to Rock-afire Explosion cus I wasn't aware of them, probably because we don't have Chuck-E-Cheese here. But yeah, once I heard about this and everything that happened with concept unification, I was hella hooked.

Theres so many things I love about this video. First is seeing the animatronics in such a raw form, without the cosmetics and stuff, and seeing how all the little parts fit together. Second, seeing how they used the old animatronics to bring life to the new ones. Its so cool to see the robotic parts take on a new life with new cosmetics. The third is just the vibes. I love the vibes of old video tapes but this one is something else. You could say it has an almost creepy vibe to it? Mostly at the end when the music stops and it's just the static noises with the animatronics just standing there, totally something you'd see in an indie horror game nowadays. But theres also the overwhelming sense of sadness. Rock-afire Explosion being entirely replaced and reskinned. Also the fact that there were many parts of the original stage show that were destroyed because they couldn't be reused in the new one. I could go on forever about this but I'm sure this'll come up when I make a page about animatronics.

I gotta do a rewatch of this before I ramble about it... For now just know I love MCR so this was essential to include.