And the lights are not fluorescent, and there are no words on the page.

Imitatio Essay

My dad has the feel of the texture of the angler, ugly little minimalist-style loveseat in the corner of our living room practically inside him at this point, and it's all my fault. But mostly his.

This certainly doesn't come as a surprise, in my case. He's the one who paid for my room and board, who always said to follow my dreams and gave me "Sure, that's great!" the day I first shoved the fanfiction.net homepage in his face and said I wanted to make one too. He sounded confused as he said it, the way he does whenever I show him a particularly offbeat show, like he couldn't follow my way from singing to dancing to acting to writing creative fiction in his head. But he knew he held my tiny hand along the cobblestone walkway, so he added an audible optimistic tilt to the corner of his voice and is always the one to sit across from me in that damn chair when my mother refuses to watch any "dumb cartoons".

I don't particularly know why I make him do this, but I know that the fact that I don't gives me claim to ignorance, making it probably his fault as the only other party in this recurring scenario, and he always likes whatever I pick anyway, so there.

It's usually been that way, since I started placing myself in charge of family movie night. First because I wanted the three of us to trap ourselves with approx. 2 hours of media we all enjoyed, and then it was in efforts of exposing my family to what I had deemed "quality art" (or, at the very least, art that wasn't the same 3 crime and/or medical shows, low budget comedies where everyone involves only signed up for the project for a free vacation, or generic action thrillers) in hopes they would enjoy media as much as I did after growing some standards. Of course, my mother had a tendency to kick and scream her way to the couch for these viewings, but my heart was in the right place (or, at the very least, somewhere within the left hand corner).

But then I didn't know. And I couldn't explain myself as I tucked myself into the side of that couch, glazing back at my father to find his reaction. The captions on, to make sure he caught all the words. The "Are you paying attention?" and the pausing, the shushing and shushing back.

He'd playfully shove my head to the side, and I'd giggle, and finally he'd ask why I care about his impressions of a webtoon pilot I found off the backwaters of Youtube, and I could justify myself just fine, but I couldn't answer him.

I figure, faintly, in the recess of my gaping mind, I could wave at the recent scientific discovery that my father would never understand me on the carnal level I hoped he would when I got old enough.

A myriad of reasons dangled behind my actions. Maybe I'd get to probe him for first impressions afterward (Just first—My dad wouldn't sit through a rerun), not have to worry he won't get the full picture of my 40 minute character analyzing info dumps, the hopes that he likes it. Really, I'd just wanted him to bear witness to it too, for my own sake. To see if it tugged at him enough to turn to my mother, carefully setting the coffee machine for tomorrow, and go "Hey, [REDACTED]. Come check out this thing [REDACTED] found.".

I guess I suppose I think I figured that, as long as he was experiencing the same thing I was, he would figure it out then and there, he would call my mother over like that for my TV debut.