|
As a middle schooler
Friday, September 21st 2018, 6:23 AM; 124; 0; +0 | 0 | -0
Nowadays, it’s common to find strong friendships and even relationships online, but in the early aughts, not so much. As a middle schooler, I felt baffled and amazed to make such strong connections with players all over the world. Despite our differences — age, gender, culture, religion, race — they valued my opinions and respected what I had to say.
In Maplestory, my friends and I would discuss the complexities of romantic relationships, which never would have come up at my private Catholic school, where my peers and teachers expected us to uphold and respect only one particular type (straight and “traditional” relationships). I felt miserable and repressed at school; how could I be myself with classmates and teachers who would turn their nose up to anything that was slightly different from them? In Maplestory, I felt like I had found a friends group who respected me, even if we didn’t always agree. At school, sharing an unpopular or new opinion would mark me as a target for ostracization www.lolga.com.
|