Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-24187738-20151214152123/@comment-25308539-20151223163216

When I was a kid, I had a massive crush on Audrey Hepburn. I just absolutely loved her to bits and watched all her movies, and watched all the documentaries, and read everything I could about her. Through my teenage years, she was my go-to fantasy for whenever I was thinking about, you know, teenage stuff - making friends, going on dates, that sort of thing.

Flash forward to mid 2014 - the second of four years in my psychology degree. My Audrey phase was long over, and she mostly became a relic of my adolescence. But what remained was this deep interest in the power of the imagination. When you get to fourth year, honours year, you pick a topic you like and spend the year researching it. Frankly, I didn't have any better ideas, so I felt like getting a headstart. For many months I buckled down and started reading about imaginary relationships with fictional and media personalities. (For those particularly interested, the term is 'parasocial relationship'; or just shoot me a message if you want to know more.)

At this point, you might be wondering 'what does this have to do with Love Live?' That'll come shortly. Firstly, I should mention that it's around this 2014 period where I started to get introduced to anime. In my early days of anime, I had this feeling that something lost had been found. Especially in the slice of life genre, where I genuinely felt that the characters had been my friends for years, just like in my Audrey Hepburn phase. But at least this time, I was building the background knowledge to understand this whole imaginary relationships phenomenon from a psychological perspective.

However, the people around me... weren't as enthusiastic. I tried to keep an open mind and accepted that not everyone would think highly of imaginary relationships, but the kind of responses I started to get from some friends and classmates were bordering on malicious. It seemed instinctual to most others to dismiss this kind of thing; to brand someone as sad, or lonely. I've even been called degenerate at one point. And that hurts. It's one thing to have your interests attacked, it's another to have your emotions and passions belittled and devalued when someone says that your feelings for a character 'just don't matter'.

I knew that wasn't the entire truth. I'm not a sad or lonely person. I'm not particularly introverted. I don't have low self esteem or anything else people would rattle off when talking to me.(My current research confirms and disconfirms some of these, but that's for another time.) Eventually though, all the negativity did wear me down, until I slowly lost interest in the topic altogether.

Then I watched Love Live. Love Live got my blood boiling. Love Live gave me a slap in the face, pulled me up, and told me that this whole topic was worth fighting for. Love Live made me unafraid and unashamed to fight for it. There have already been some great stories in this thread about the big lessons of Love Live such as working hard for your dreams and never giving up. Of course those played a big part.

And then Rin. I'll be spoiling season 2 of the anime here. Oh my goodness, Rin. In episode five, she essentially became a mirror that pierced right into the kind of person I was. In that episode, we see how the innocent, naive cruelty of some unknowing kids were what forced her to lock away a part of herself. Just as she was no longer comfortable with being 'cute', I was no longer comfortable with the idea that imaginary relationships were a positive thing. And I came to absolutely adore her. Her struggles were my struggles, her victories were my victories. By the end of the show, I was convinced that I couldn't just let all of the research I'd already done just rot. It was only a small dream, but a dream nonetheless - my research topic had to be in imaginary relationships.

It's at this point I realised something. All of the support I had gotten from μ's and Rin were real. All of the gratitude I had to give in return was real. Them being fictional characters became irrelevant. Any relationship may be imaginary, but it definitely exists. It was that eureka moment, that proof of existence where I could say "for better or for worse, this exists" - this truly was the life changing moment. I splashed my face with some water then sat down and got to work and never really stopped working.

Until, somewhere along the way, I picked up SIF and that almost jeopardised my chances of even making it into honours year. (Long story short, tiering + exams = one really close call.)

Today, I had my first meeting with my supervisor to discuss my research for the coming year. And I'm psyched as ever to get started (pun completely intended). Even though there were lots of building blocks along the way, I can confidently say that Love Live was the most influential factor in getting me to where I am now. And that seems to be some kind of mad scientist who's being kept alive by cheesy idol songs, and I'm totally ok with that.