This story was originally published on The Spinoff.
Most probably think of it as a small country town, but when I moved there from an even smaller country town at age 15, Gore was a metropolis. It had a Warehouse. It had a movie theatre next to a hairdressers that was open on a Wednesday (a Wednesday!) night. It had two supermarkets and a roundabout. It had lots of bogans and lots of centre parks. There were opportunities in Gore, especially if (like me) you enjoyed staring at the shiny ball gowns in Farry’s and then strutting next door to Deka for a big bag of pick’n’mix and dreams of golden days to come.
So it was with an optimistic heart and a brain full of repressed memories that I dived like an old brown trout into Three’s new coming-of-age comedy series n00b, which makes the rare move of setting its story in Gore. The year is 2005 and Nikau (Max Crean), captain of the first XV and most popular student at the fictional Gore College, is in the midst of a social downfall. In a time when the internet offered new ways to escape and connect, Nikau has a secret passion for writing fanfiction shipping Ashton Kutcher and Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance. When his secret is exposed, his social stocks plummet.
