The anime Dance Dance Danseur dwells on the angst of conforming to standards of performance--of art, and of gender. Why does its protagonist seek out the pain of classical ballet training?

this dropped back in August to a resounding thud, which is too bad because I had a whole plan for how to adapt and develop the essay further into a whole illustrated zine/comic essay. oh well. I still like the essay a lot and figured I might as well post it here. and if nothing else, experimenting with colored pencils for the illustration helped push me towards using that as the medium for Health Goth