NOTE: Because of the sensitive nature of one of the subjects featured in this post, comments have been turned off to discourage any negative comments directed to them on this site, but you can tweet your always thoughts to me on Twitter @DC408Dxtr. Enjoy this special story.
A DCBLOG Thanksgiving Special
BY DC CUEVA
> @DC408Dxtr / @DC408DxNow
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you from all of us at DCBLOG, myself and my family. We hope you all are enjoying these four days off to enjoy time with family and friends, and kick back to have food, watch football, take part in the mall madness and endure hours of travel on this kickoff weekend of the holiday season.
This week, we are taking advantage of this holiday break in the MTV Trifecta and the current season of The Real World in Seattle to bring you long-form stories from our extensive coverage of the Real World/Challenge franchise, and Are You The One?. And tonight, we begin with a special,
expanded version of a unique and inspiring story from my strongest passion.
At DCBLOG, the Trifecta is our pride and joy...we bring you insightful and outstanding coverage of the three shows that galvanize viewers with its drama, its unexpected twists & turns, and its amazing people. And while we bring you all the social reaction to every episode of the three shows, and recap them too, our focus and specialty is original storytelling. We put our lens on the stories of this ecosystem brought to us by the more than 300+ alumni and current cast members of those shows and the erstwhile Road Rules. Behind these people and the moments they bring us are stories, large & small, from around the spectrum. And often, it's these kinds of stories that stand out in our coverage and present these people in a unique light outside of the TV screen.
Most of our MTV Trifecta posts feature ExtraTime, which gives us the chance to tell these stories to you, so you can understand these people better and this world around us through the prism of the Trifecta. At the end of our Pulse diaries and Wrap recaps, or in their own dedicated posts such as this one, ExtraTime has been able to tell these great stories, both big & small, and provides more context to these people than just what MTV shows us each week. We've been able to present a slew of stories spanning both the serious and the silly, the inspiring and the unique. There is no ecosystem in reality TV that offers great drama on the screen, and fascinating stories and people off of it.
For this, our first long-form story of this cycle, this involves the person who is, along with host TJ Lavin, the face of The Challenge and whose popularity, notoriety and stature have increased over the years to where he is synonymous with this show. Starting on his original Real World season, he has had an incredible run over the past ten years spanning fourteen shows, and the latest chapter of what he did this past summer embodies the love/hate persona he has with fans, viewers and everyone within the community of this ecosystem. But as you will find out, it is not totally representative of who he is as a person overall...not everything about him is of a negative stigma.
It is the story of a unique individual who lives and breathes the world's most popular sport but then was sidelined by a rare disease. Her story of survival invokes the story of a woman who epitomized the spirit of never giving up in the face of adversity, and how like a person who battled ovarian cancer, overcame her own battle against a childhood form of cancer, all while who she was inspired by would ultimately succumb to cancer. And along the way, she has established a special friendship with a man, who despite having a somewhat questionable image to many, has a softer side to him after the humbling experience of losing one of his best friends to cancer two years ago this month.
We've brought you this story here before, but having just marked the second anniversary of both the passing of Challenge legend Diem Brown and the disease diagnosis of the co-subject of this post at the same time, this week we're revisiting it in a longer form in light of what happened to him the last time we saw him on our screens. This story would've been lost in the shuffle if not for what happened at the end of Rivals III this past summer, but a story like this is so unique and special that we feel it deserves to be told on its own here, especially with us being able to present this during this time of family bonding and time of inspiration on this Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
On this first installment of DC ExtraTime In-Depth, we proudly present a story of perseverance and true inspiration, and the unique relationship of a six-time Challenge champion and someone who overcame the odds. This is the story of Johnny Bananas & Kasey Harvey: A Diem Strong Bond.
