I need to be vulnerable with you all for a moment.
Last month, I had a moment where my brain shut off for a moment. Life had thrown me a major curveball, my plans for the future suddenly had to change into more of a blurred fog of whatever it is I may want. There was nothing I could do to get things back to how they were before and it ate at me from the inside. Nothing felt good anymore. I was really sad and needed time to be sad. I took to scrolling endlessly on Instagram reels (I no longer have TikTok, as I spent too much time endlessly scrolling on it). Videos started to come up that I didn’t want, but I’d watch them. What was I supposed to do, think about the things that were making me miserable? Absolutely not.
Instagram’s algorithm must have known that I was desperate for content to consume. So, it happened again. And I was so, so in need of that sweet, sweet content. So, I let it happen.
I got more Family Guy content on my feed. Once again, it fucked up the algorithm that I had worked so hard to curate.
When I got over my sadness enough to see clearly again, the Family Guy content continued to come. I figured I would make more content with the problems I was having: turning endless Family Guy clips on my feed into reaction content. After that, of course, I managed to save my Instagram Reels algorithm. Now I’m back to animal videos and these videos of people talking about wildly upsetting erotic novels. I don’t need to hear about how this girl’s stalker killed her family and also her mean ex-boyfriend so he is, of course, a good man to be in love with. That’s far from the worst of it. Loooots of borderline illegal shit that makes me very uncomfortable. Anyways, not what this piece is about.
As in my last Family Guy reaction piece, I went through my feed and chose the episodes I watched based on the clips they gave me. I didn’t give myself a time limit like last time, I just chose the first 10 that were shown to me. I watched through all of them and, also like last time, kept track of how many times I chuckled even a little at each episode. If I’m being honest, this batch didn’t end up getting too much out of me. Which is shocking because we know I love the adventures of the Griffin family, with the adorkable father Peter, his ginger bombshell wife Lois, their 3 wacky children Chris, Meg, and Stewie, and their ever so wonderful talking dog Brian.
I am being sarcastic, I would kill Peter Griffin with a nail gun if given the opportunity. But, my grief riddled brain put me into this mess, and now I guess I have to write myself out of it.
…
Season 22 Episode 1: “Fertilized Megg”
Chuckle counter: 1
I mean like. It wasn’t great. Not horribly terrible either. Just fine, I guess. I think the most entertaining bit was the one clip I saw on Instagram before I even saw the episode, actually. They needed to fast forward through Meg’s pregnancy (she was a surrogate for the Griffins’ gay neighbors, an episode plotline done better in an American Dad! Episode, but whatever) in a way that wasn’t boring or stupid, so they opted to have the nine months of the pregnancy be shown through Peter trying meth and what happened every few months. Honestly, not a terrible bit. Also, Lois desperately wanting to be a hot grandma is the only motivation she has ever had in any of the episodes that I’ve seen that makes me not hate her. Like, yeah, I get it. How cool would it be to be a hot grandma? That shit would rule. I don’t know, I don’t remember too much else from this episode…which is okay, I think.
…hello?
Season 15 Episode 16: “Saturated Fat Guy’
Chuckle counter: 0
Yayyyyy another episode about Peter being fat hehe haha yay!!!! Get it, he’s fat?? Yay!! Lois won’t let Peter eat unhealthy food because he’s FAT and then Peter opens an unhealthy food truck because he’s so FAT!!! Guys, you’re gonna want to check this one out!
The B-plot saves this one from being a total zero. Meg wants to join roller derby, but Chris is protective and thinks it is too dangerous. A pretty standard, kind of sweet B-plot that didn’t make me want to click out of the episode as a whole. This show can be nice, if it wants to. Once again, I wish I remembered more from this episode. I watched them a few days ago and it is too late to rewatch them all to jog my memory—
…
Did you guys hear that?
Season 19 Episode 10: “Fecal Matters”
Chuckle counter: 2
An episode in which Peter must come to terms with his own internal moral dilemmas as his mortal enemy, Giant Chicken, is dying from the flu. Peter, acting as a nurse due to his…immunity from the flu? God, I really can’t remember. Whatever, regardless of what it was, Peter has the ability to save him because he’s a nurse and he kind of doesn’t want to because that is his enemy. I don’t remember anything the family did in this episode other than what Peter did. God, I haven’t mentioned Stewie and Brian at all in this piece and they’re, like, pretty integral pieces to all of these episodes in some way, I’m sure. I just can’t remember.
Okay, back to business. It was another episode I didn’t feel strongly about—
Guys what the fuck was that?
…hello?
…
OH FUCK—
…
Okay, we’re safe now. You won’t have to hear about Family Guy anymore.
…
Last month was tough. I was put in a position that made me reevaluate everything I wanted to do with myself both personally and creatively. I had to be honest with myself and realize that I wasn’t allowing myself to do anything. I physically and mentally could not bring myself to do shit. Any attempt at drawing or embroidering or writing or going outside or reading or fucking whatever was just all in vain. And that isn’t exclusive to only last month. Last month I only had to have the conversation with myself, everything about doing nothing has been my life for probably a decade.
I had been coasting on the idea that one day everything will be alright and no longer stressful. The idea that one day, I will have the life I want and then and only then will I finally be able to get done the shit I want to get done. I can’t do anything now because everything feels impossible to do. The world is caving in and only when I conquer that can I explore and create and enjoy my passions.
God, do I even have passions?
I force myself into creativity and I fall apart. I think it is what I need when, in fact, the more I push myself the more I hate leaving that bubble of feeling helpless and doing nothing. What do I even do with that? How do I even handle that? How do I get back into it without falling out of love with something I want to fall more in love with? How can I even be creative when the pencil sits in my hand and I can do nothing with it? Am I an amalgamation of flesh and wasted creative potential?!
Then Family Guy came back onto my feed. It came back and finally I had something to work with. Unwanted Family Guy clips, once a force that could light a fire in my stomach out of sheer confusion and amazement at how horrible constant content consumption got, was back in my lap again and I had once again known the heat that burned. I wrote down the episodes Instagram Reels showed me. I watched them. I kept track of the times I enjoyed myself in the slightest. I updated my friends as I watched. I was finally back in it. I was finally where I wanted to be. I was fueled by confusion and content consumption and anger and spite and all of the sudden…
I felt nothing.
I forgot to write this piece. Maybe forgot isn’t the right word, maybe I put it off on purpose because I genuinely didn’t feel strongly enough about the episodes to even write an interesting angry piece. I couldn’t fathom the idea of making something creative and funny out of shit I didn’t even care enough about. All in a lame attempt to try and revive feelings that spurred creativity a year ago.
Did I change my algorithm on purpose? Maybe in my grief riddled mind I knew that if I watched through all the Family Guy shit my feed wanted to give me, I would find some creative purpose that I had lost ages ago. Perhaps I sabotaged my algorithm because I knew that content consumption and anger about said content creation were the only ways to actually motivate me to feel creative. To feel alive again, I must be angry about the slop I am fed and rehash that anger to an audience in a way that will make them point and laugh with me. My only outlet being a means of anger, wildly unproductive anger that means nothing. That, for sure, would make me feel alive again.
I didn’t write anything about my anger for weeks. There was no anger, there was no recollection of any moments I had seen in Family Guy .
…
I completed a miniature. Like, a really tiny miniature. I had bought three with a birthday gift card. One was much smaller than expected, so I did that one quickly out of fear I’d lose the tiny pieces. I worked fast and suddenly got it done. I only fucked up once (well twice, if you count losing a mini grape basket) and put everything together as I was supposed to.
I put the little figure of the animal in his winery—his name is Neil and I believe he is a tiny bear—and I couldn’t help but feel a sense of wonder in myself. How did I do that? Every single thing was so tiny and intricate and I put them together. Neil sits in a little blue chair in the middle level of his winery. He sits in front of a shelf with items so small you can hardly comprehend what they’re meant to be. Neil sits in the level below his bunk bed with a little tiny book on it. His winery is supposed to have working lights which do not function to no fault of my own (I was not told that I needed to purchase a whole separate piece in order for it to work). I created a life for little Neil and his wine business and I felt alive.
I felt alive in September when I did drawing studies of a character I enjoy in order to understand how to draw and stylize him.
I felt alive in July when I read The Haar in just two days because I had never fallen in love with a book like that.
I felt alive in October as I walked through the new neighborhood my family had just moved to and saw there was a tennis court I could play on.
I think I feel alive more than I am willing to admit. I also think I don’t let myself feel alive more than I would like to. Those things clash and clatter in my brain and cause me to force myself into creativity. It forces me to do things like this: begin writing a sequel to my Family Guy piece only for me to sneak up on and kill the part of me that was forcing me to do something I felt nothing about. I killed her with a big knife, by the way, but that’s unimportant. She’s gone for now, but she’ll likely be back. And that is okay, life goes on.
To force a love for something is to leave it fruitless. To force creativity is to stave one’s mind. To force yourself to sit and rot and do nothing over anything is living in limbo. Now, the question becomes: what is and isn’t forcing these things? I don’t have an answer. I don’t think you came to this article for answers, you came for Peter Griffin. Go to Fortnite, since he’s going to be there now, I guess. But here, I can’t give you much other than a stream of consciousness that has taken 10 years to get to. To sit with these thoughts and do nothing is harmful, so I create. I create and I live and I express as I breathe.
My sketchbook sits open on an unfinished page. There are dozens of blank pages following that one. There is so much to express on a blank page, and to have so many is overwhelming at times but it is, ultimately, a gift.
I don’t know if I have anything else to say. If you really, really want to know how I feel about the other 7 Family Guy episodes I left out, then you are shit out of luck. Well, except for the one where Lois reconnected with her father after he suffered a health emergency. I actually liked that one. Other than that, I have nothing for you.
I will get an exacto knife and some tweezers in the mail tomorrow. Those will help with the miniatures that I haven’t made yet. Neil is about to get some neighbors, and I, for one, am incredibly excited.
