#NEARLY as common as people who do it for male characters because people can't seem to accept a cute male character at face value

[boy-above]

venti is already an adult i am so tired of some people insisting the 2600(+) year old depressed alcoholic god is a child because he looks feminine. i'm tired of people doing "adult venti" designs as an excuse to make him more masculine. there's female characters that have the same proportions as he does but they dont "look like they're 12" to these people because they're women therefore femininity is acceptable, but a male character having feminine proportions means immediate infantilization for any male character no matter how obvious it is that they're an adult. "adult venti" my ass you just made cisgender venti / adheres to gender roles venti 🙃🙃🙃

[megaderping]

I think the biggest issue with Naoto discussion is that there are so many intersecting perspectives with very strong feelings involved, and if a Persona 4 remake does happen, I fully suspect that Atlus is going to have their hands full figuring out how to handle the character in the modern day. First there's the cultural context of misogyny in the workplace and especially in the legal and justice systems in Japan, which informs Naoto's character a lot. It is important to consider this, as this was a Japanese game made in 2008 at a time where queer visibility wasn't nearly as prominent, but that alone doesn't invalidate criticism to the arc's execution, regardless of creator intention. A big point of contention is how the arc was handled. Specifically the way it uses talk of body alteration procedures, surgical equipment, and treats the idea of transition as scary. If you consider how draconian the laws behind legally transitioning in Japan are, you can perhaps make a case for why it might cause Naoto internal conflict as complete surgical transition/sterilization/diagnosis were all requirements at the time of the game's development and only recently were declared unconstitutional. Though, as this excellent video pointed out, it's possible this was meant to be a reference to the story Flowers for Algernon, given the weapon you get if you return there later. However, even if that was the intent, transgender people exist in Japan and have since well before Persona 4, and anime such as The Dirty Pair aired in the 80's with very progressive takes on transness. It's very unlikely that the team behind Persona 4 was completely unaware of queer issues and symbolism, given that Persona 3 had that infamous transphobic joke in the original version's babe hunt.

The Dirty Pair, a 1985 anime that was surprisingly progressive.

I think the issue, more than anything, is that the tropes at play don't exist in a vacuum and what comes after Naoto's dungeon raises a lot more red flags. Jokes about Naoto's chest size, the narrative framing Kanji's crush as only acceptable after the reveal, on top of the uncomfortable execution of the romance route in Naoto's Social Link. You get so much "Naoto is actually a girl" in a way where it's other characters talking about/over Naoto, which is what really makes the framing off putting to a lot of people, myself included. And it's not even that you can't do an arc about a female character fighting against prejudiced preconceptions in the criminal justice field without controversy, because Persona 5 pulled this off far less contentiously.

Sae Niijima deals with many similar themes but doesn't seem nearly as contentious, and I think a large part of that is due to Sae openly presenting as a woman from the start. The game openly depicts the misogyny from Sae's superiors and coworkers, such as how she's unmarried and fighting an uphill battle for success in a male-dominated field. Persona has toyed with these ideas in the aftermath of Persona 4 and even when revisiting older titles. Persona 2 went back and added the character of Shiori Miyashiro in the PSP release, a lady detective who has a lot in common with Naoto (e.g. knowingly endangering oneself to get the truth behind a supernatural case). It's also astonishing that we have Lala Escargot in Persona 5, which also had that infamous gay couple that played into horrible stereotypes that were only slightly fixed in royal's international release. Lala, whether trans or a drag queen, is given surprising respect, and her identity is never called into question. A Persona 4 remake could learn from this and cut back on the characters asserting what Naoto feels, what Naoto "really is," etc, and let Naoto and Naoto alone decide. Ultimately, Naoto means different things to different people, and these things can carry great personal weight and importance. Many trans and nonbinary Persona fans see themselves in Naoto. Others favor Naoto as some flavor of gnc or find Naoto embracing femininity and detective work empowering. I think the problem is that when this topic comes up, there's a lot of hostility. Trans fans and people who favor trans Naoto get told to shut up at best, and at worst get hit with shit tons of transphobia and gross conduct. On the other hand, I don't think people who prefer more canon-compliant depictions of Naoto are inherently malicious. It's how they approach these discussions and treat people that makes a difference. Just because someone uses she/her for Naoto doesn't mean they're being intentionally transphobic, but I totally get people wanting to avoid material that uses those pronouns all the same. I also don't think people are wrong to be uncomfortable with the resolution of Naoto's arc in canon. I think people who get upset when fanworks go with trans or NB interpretations of Naoto could stand to be more empathetic, as a lot of those fanworks come from people who connected to Naoto and want to explore what could've been. I don't think more canon-compliant fanworks are inherently malicious either, but no one is obligated to stick around works or spaces that make them feel uncomfortable. Tbh, I'm just wondering what Atlus will do. Persona 3 Reload removed that one transphobic joke during the babe hunt in all languages. Persona 5 Tactica had male marriage fantasies for Joker. I think Atlus is trying to be more inclusive, but Persona 3 Reload also kept Toriumi's crush on the protagonist and Chihiro defending student-teacher romances, so it's really unclear how much of Persona 4's more divisive aspects will be retooled. Because it's not just Naoto. Persona 4 has a lot of aspects that haven't aged well, like all the jokes about Kanji being predatory if he's attracted to guys, or Kashiwagi being creepy toward students, or the fatphobia with Hanako while Ebihara's past of being overweight is treated with more sympathy. I love Naoto and Persona 4, but I also think it's important to be able to criticize elements of the game that could be executed better.

[onewomancitadel]

I had a hell of a time the other day and I ended up reading some slashfic out of distraction and honestly I've come back around to being an apologist to it... it was very interesting because the characters were really psychologically small, the question of misogyny which normally infuses hetfic was totally absent (by virtue of what it is) but even the question of gender was relatively minimal, a lot of it was sexless and when it was sexy it was weirdly - juvenile? - genuinely like smushing Barbie dolls together. I almost feel like the word I'd use to describe it all was 'innocent'; it was innocent psychologically, socially, sexually, in narrative consequences.

It's interesting because the much-maligned fujoshi - even I have partaken in the sport - is usually termed as an oversexed A/B/O nightmare busy getting men pregnant. And it's true that they exist, but in their own way I kind of find them quaint: the sex they always have is outlandishly perfect and bereft of all psychological complexity. Even pregnancy, in this case, is turned into something even if difficult, always beautiful and nongendered, not the experience it is in the real world (even hetfic at its happiest is not ignorant of the implicit place pregnancy has cultually).

I find the angle of psychological simplicity a surprise because the way it is normally termed is that male characters are capable of psychological complexity women lack (or lack in writing). Whereas I think the thesis is actually kind of the opposite: it can be simple because it is not painful. There's something existentially deeper here which is that I think what we find is that we believe the other gender(s) has it easier; existential meaning is located along the border of it. It's very human. Simplicity seems desirable. (It's not to devalue feminist analysis in any way).

And I think that this generally speaks to the issue that I have with a lot of storytelling atittudes - the desire to escape that complexity - for people who really do just seek out storytelling as an avenue for fluffy pleasure. For me, the idea that the full spectrum of human experience is elided from something very fully, deeply human - literally narrating someone's perspective of the world - is essentially existential horror to me, the worst of all kinds of horror. I don't think this is an issue found simply along slashfic/hetfic lines (and indeed femslash, for similar reasons), but is more apparent in slashfic just because it really offers the optimum escapist experience.

There are surely exceptions, but you find this in the genre of whumpfic; even that sort of melodramatic pain is played out in a nearly childish, thumping-the-toys way. You'll notice that I've pretty much ignored the question of sexuality - it's beyond the purview of this post, but also because I don't think it's really that straightforward. And there is slashfic which isn't 'childish', to be sure; there's a difference between simplicity and childishness, and I think you can surely make the case that this applies to the mainstream romance genre. The two have a lot in common.

But the thing I find valuable here is that there is something essential, maybe even deeper than any other argument put forward about why slashfic draws such an overwhelming audience, to be found here.

The most valuable thing to me was considering that it is not about male characters being more complex than female characters - it's the exact opposite. What they profess, I think, is not true, and to take it at face value - that male characters (with one line? With none?) are simply universally better written than women as a consequence of nebulous misogyny which can simply not be contended with - is a grave error I've made in the past. I would dispute that complex female characters scare people; not that they can't understand them, but that it is precisely the sort of thing a lot of people really aren't looking for. It's not safe, it's not comforting, it's not reassuring. And this crosses over with all the people afraid of conflict, afraid of any narrative complexity whatsoever. The issue was not, as it happens, poorly written women.

[lost-technology]

So, I came across a tumblr post that brought to mind one UNPOPULAR headcanon of mine. I sometimes feel like I'm the only person in Modern Trigun Fandom who headcanons Vash as cis-gendered, or at least something "close-enough." Almost every fanfic I see and many, many fanarts that are a little more of the nudery variety will give him mastectomy scars (on top of the stuff he already has), a "plantussy" as the common tongue goes, the tag "vash the stampede has a vagina" and etc. And I'm sitting here, in my lonely world remembering the 2000's fandom where people loved joking about Vash's "fourth gun." Anyway, I have my reasons for my headcanon. The first one is "I just don't think Nightow was thinking about it." - It was a '90s manga. Any trans characters in those tended to be rather prominent. In Trigun Maximum, Elendira the Crimsonnail was explicitly trans. Zazie had their body-surfing between human hosts of both male and female variety and can't really be said to have a gender known to human understanding. I think there were probably some background-characters, too that I can't pick out off the top of my head. And it's like... Vash was just a guy? The second one is that he is shown (manga and OG anime), peeing at a urinal. He goes standing up. This is not exclusive to cis-men by any means, it just seems the easiest track to take given the above. And then there's my more hopefully tumblr-acceptable reason. I have a personal cis-headcanon for story-related angst reasons, which I've shared on this blog before. Click for ANGST!

I have, up until now, been afraid to share my thoughts on this (save my little angst headcanon) becasue... well... tumblr... I know it. I've been afraid that I'd be dogpiled and accused of transphobia and that it would cause some kind of Category 5 Tumblr Event in the fandom, ending in me getting harassed, fought with and blocked by most of the fandom. And it's like... no, I am not transphobic, I just have a differing headcanon than most on one particular character. I do definitely lean in appeal toward the "alien" headcanon, though - as in a situation that would allow "something different" that still has the peeing standing up thing going on. In one of my other fandoms, nearly the entire fandom headcanoned a male-presenting alien species as "kinda having both" - typically in a "hidden penis tucked up inside the body when not in use" combined with a cloacal-vent. It was pretty specific, cool, and something that fandom came up with entirely on its own because the intended age-rating for the show did not allow for vivid details on anyone's naughty-bits.

[mandaloriandragontrainer]

Saw that post about Rayla with over 15k notes (for some reason I can't reblog It) and holy moly haven't you said It was about her I wouldn't have known! I'm glad she got support but worried at the same time since this seems to be a very common issue in fandoms.

I saw a similar thing happening in a fandom I was in‚ the female character was judged for literally everything even stuff she did to help loved ones (mostly boyfriend) and it got way worse when they became canon. Her journey was similar to Rayla's since she went from more serious to more softie and ofc people didn't like that.. It got so bad to the point people wanted her to die while pregnant. And while that was happening they would thirst over male characters who commited genocide. Kinda like bashing Rayla but being ok with Aaravos because he gets the hot guy pass.

Also you mentioned something about reddit hating her? What? I don't get fandoms at all.. Sending you this because you are one of the few mentioning this topic and it drives me crazy. I need to vent

The OP of that post deactivated their blog, but you can find them now at @ripple-rapple! But yeah, I’ve seen it in quite a few of my fandoms myself, and it’s honestly pretty disturbing.

I don’t really follow Marvel anymore (aside from Spider-Man), but I still have a soft spot for Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. I remember the fandom absolutely tearing her apart for snapping at Tony (i.e. making a single sarcastic remark) when his suit attacked her in her own bed. How dare she be mean to him when she nearly died? She’s a horrible girlfriend! And wow they were mad when the two reconciled, got married, and had a child—after all, she’s toxic and he could do way better than her. Never mind the fact she was more responsible than anyone else for changing him from a pretty horrible person to a true hero. And the best part? Shipping him instead with people whom he has far more antagonistic relationships with. You don’t have to put down a canon love interest who’s almost always a woman to enjoy a non-canon pairing.

Anyway, tangent over. That’s really disgusting… I hope everything worked out okay in the end for your girl and her child!

But yeah, I don’t go on the TDP subreddit much, because every time I do it’s a cesspool of negativity. I have a hard time believing anyone on there even likes the show. If you hate it that much just… don’t watch it? It’s also kind of the headquarters for dark magic apologists (at least it used to be), which is hilariously ironic. I can excuse a practice that corrupts your very soul, but I draw the line at a traumatized teenaged girl making a questionable decision to protect the boy she loves.

[project1939]

Day 67- Film (number 1): Captive Women 

Release date: October 10th, 1952. 

Studio: RKO 

Genre: Sci-Fi 

Director: Stuart Gilmore 

Producer: Jack Pollexfen, Aubrey Wisberg 

Actors: Robert Clarke, Ron Randell, Margaret Field, Gloria Saunders 

Plot Summary: In the year 3000, after a nuclear war destroys most of the world, different “tribes” of survivors vie for influence and resources. The Upriver People are ruled by a war lord type guy, the Mutates are disfigured people with mutated genes from nuclear weapons, and the Norms, seemingly the most similar to people before the war.

My Rating (out of five stars): * 

Oh lord, this film was bad. I think it qualifies as the worst one I’ve seen for the project, out of nearly 70! Not only was it poorly made, badly acted, and hilariously C Grade, but it was boring, preachy, and uninspired. The running time was 64 minutes, but I’ve seen films three times that long that felt faster. 

The Good: 

Uh... um... Oh wait, there was a pretty impressive cat fight in this! 

The Bad: 

The story. It was a muddled mess. The plot seemed to be a product of some kind of nuclear mutation itself- like the script fell into a puddle of nuclear waste and sat in it for awhile. It was hard to keep track of who belonged to what tribe, what tribe to care about, or what anyone was even doing. It didn’t help that a lot of the actors looked similar. I was constantly confusing the two main female characters, and two of the lead male characters caused the same confusion. 

The jank cheap-looking sets. The trees and bushes were so obviously fake, they even sounded plastic. At one point in my notes I wrote, “Plan 9 from Nuclear Waste?” It was basically the same ridiculously cheap level of Plan 9 from Outer Space! 

The costumes. I didn’t know something could be so weird, so random, and so boring all at once. Most of the men looked like they wandered off a Robinhood set, while the women looked like they were screen-testing for Ben-Hur. There were some other male characters that either had Druid or Biker Gang vibes going on. 

The acting. It was an unpredictable mess of over-acters and under-acters. 

The moralizing. Some of it goes back to the tired old- “The US is better than the commies cause religion!” The beginning even mentioned that after the war, “science, education, and a true religion has been lost.” (Emphasis theirs.) We know which one they mean, of course. Then we find out the Norms worship the devil, but the Mutates still believe in Jesus. Cause there’s only one or the other to choose from, I guess? Blech.  

Somehow at the end, the characters becoming God fearing Christians is going to make world peace. Cause Abrahamic religions never ever start wars, silly! 

Hey, ladies, sexual assault is sexy, huh? You like it, don’t you?  (I'm being sarcastic, btw. The way the men treated women in this was gross.)

It was also funny how, a thousand years into the future, people are still bound to strict Puritanical views of sex. When a leader of the Mutates tells a couple they can’t get married because their offspring would be too horrible, the couple leaves, acting like they can never be together because they can’t get married. Why can't they have a common-law marriage? Or live in sin? Or just f-ck if they want to? Or even be romantic but asexual? Anything! In 1,000 years, people can't see past all that?

Another transparently lurid title that has nothing much to do with most of the plot.

[aotopmha]

Attack on Titan Series Thoughts

I've been mulling over Attack on Titan's ending and how I'd rate the whole story from all kinds of angles and I've reached the conclusion that above all else, the ending is really fucking annoying.

A great or a terrible ending would help me make my mind up much more easily.

If it's great, it's great. If it's terrible it's a good story with a terrible ending.

But instead, it is a mixed bag: there are things about it I like a lot and things about it I don't like.

It is a very common belief that the ending is paramount to a story's quality, but I've found that this is not really true for me. My favourite anime ever pretty much doesn't even have a proper ending. My needs for an ending basically encompass some sort of sense of closure and that's about it.

Especially longer-running series often either make the journey worth it just by being as long as they are (so a pretty generic ending is okay) or fall off in quality long before they are done. But AoT is neither of these for me.

AoT in this sense is complicated for me because I can't decide whether the ending impacted the quality of the story or not depending on which aspect of the ending I focus on.

Some details make it immensely satisfying to me and some details sour it a little bit.

I think right now the good and bad things balance out so in general nothing changes about how I view the story overall.

In basics, I really like the emotional core of Attack on Titan, but I've always found it flawed on the technical level.

I'd give the story a 10 just for how much it emotionally engaged me and made me care. This story is the reason why I started this blog and I became active talking about media in the first place.

For a time I was losing the sense of fun of being a fan: people just became really hostile when discussing stuff.

But this past week or so has been incredible in my inbox, reminding me of the highs of being a fan, with so many wonderful messages.

Other stories have made me more angry, made me cry more or laugh more, but AoT made me feel the biggest spectrum of feelings.

No other story has made me do this, at most I only became a member of various forums as a random member; I didn't create a blog with the aim to talk about one.

From a technical level, I would give it a 6-7 depending on the section of the story.

The foreshadowing for various twists is pretty loose from start to finish, there is a bunch of redundant scenes all over the story and the pacing can be really uneven. It is not nearly as *well-crafted* of a story in my eyes as I see people praise it to be.

The art is a pretty huge mess at points, too.

I think sometimes the fact that this is the author's very first actual long-running story very much shines through. I think only a beginner would dare to employ historical imagery as bluntly as Isayama did, too, for example.

But to me the emotional core is magical.

The average of these two aspects, emotional and technical, would be around 8-8.5.

But at the same time, when I finished that last chapter I felt like I couldn't rate it and this has rarely happened to me.

I've kind of slowly distanced myself from number ratings in general because consuming media is a very emotional and personal thing and exploring it via positives and negatives feels much more apt.

From that perspective, I think the story is incredibly emotionally intelligent and understands humanity really well.

Stemming from that in turn, I think themes are the strongest aspect of the story next to characters. While I think the story faltered in a some instances when it came to characters, I think the themes mostly stood tall all the way through.

I think it ended up giving answers to and looping back to ideas it started with: seeing the good in the cruel world, facing humanity's unending desire for conflict and need to survive, living without regrets, learning to see the world in more complex shades of gray rather than black and whites and learning to do the right thing when needed.

As a mystery box, it does answer pretty much all of the big mysteries of the story and I think I don't really take issue with any of the big answers except maybe one very specific one. The numerous twists throughout the story range from absolutely genius to fairly typical. Again, the foreshadowing gets a lot of praise when it comes to this story, but I think a lot of the story actually isn't planned. Isayama just uses some details in clever ways to make it seem like it was planned.

I think that is a skill in itself that never gets nearly enough credit, but in the end, I think that is the weakest part of the story along with the world itself.

I like the walls themselves and I really like some of the Titan designs, but other than that I never had much interest in the world of AoT on its own. It always has to be connected to characters or themes for me to care. The crystal cave, time sand dunes and certain Titan skeleton are the most interesting settings in the story for me in that sense.

I think it does also fall in the pit of some pretty frustrating dark fantasy tropes, most specifically with a certain blonde female character who had one of the best character arcs in the story that was kind of just thrown under the bus.

It can't quite escape the pitfalls of that genre and it just so happens to be my favourite genre of story, so I constantly see excessive shock value rape, forced pregnancy and gay erasure happen in stories that I think are great otherwise. It's frustrating.

I hoped AoT would be better than that because for so long it was, but it didn't end up being as such.

But at the same time, I think most of its female cast still ended up being pretty great and did some pretty fun archetype-defying stuff. It's a pretty strange dichotomy. It is actually much better than most dark fantasy, but not quite there yet.

This is actually true for the male cast, too, I think. It does some fun playing around with all of the character archetypes.

The story's action scenes are thrilling and some of the action setpieces are really memorable. The final arc really shines in that sense to me. As a horror spectacle it is especially excellent.

Despite sometimes coming across as narmy/unintentionally funny, it still somehow manages to make the Titans a credible threat and this is true throughout the entire story, for different, evolving reasons.

I think the Titans have become iconic for a reason and never lost the luster throughout any of the story.

Along with that, my final point is that it is one of the few stories that sets up a kill 'em all setting that actually kills major characters with substantial focus and commits to it. It also doesn't kill too many characters where no character ever gets to actually develop.

So, considering all of what I listed above, what would my general thoughts be?

I think it still is a story worth checking out.

Personally I obviously love the story as a whole.

But I think any fan of dark fantasy/sci-fi could get a bunch of entertainment out of it: above all I think it is an extremely digestable series.

It's sometimes a very dense read, but I never felt it was a "hard" read. It's a very dark story with a lot of horrible things happening, but I never felt it was difficult to get through even in its darkest of moments.

My favourite characters ended up being Gabi, Reiner, Eren, Pieck, Armin and Annie. Zeke and Hange get a shoutout, too.

My favourite chapters ended up being 71, 82, 100, 122, 131 and 137.

Who are you guys' favourite characters and what are your favourite chapters and why?

Send me an ask explaining why for fun! (Or ask me for my reasonings?)

[gelatomesomeironqrow]

Hello to everyone who follows me and to those who don't follow me.

As we all know, my blog consists of whatever the heck I want it to and for the most part, everyone seems to be okay with it lol

Anyways, a little known fact about me is that I absolutely love foreign films and tv shows. Most specifically, Kdramas hold a very special place in my heart. I am and have always been a fan of chemistry be it characters from anime or cartoons or actors and actresses. So my shipper heart doesn't discriminate between LGBTQ or hetero. They have chemistry I usually love them or at least appreciate their story. I admit I have my favorites.

But, kdramas tend to follow a very typical and repetitive plot. Girl meets boy. Most specifically, a poor, down on her luck girl meets a rich and arrogant boy. They can't stop thinking about each other but they hate each other. Except not really. They get together. Family or other reasons drive them to separate. They end up getting back together because they are miserable without the other. Oh and someone usually ends up nearly dying. (Sounds like you would get sick of watching Kdramas right? Wrong.)

But.

While most kdramas follow this theme, I've compiled a list of my personal favorites.

They are my favorites because while there's a main girl and a main guy, the plots don't typically follow this plot. So for those interested in checking some of these out, here are 12 of my favorite kdramas for various reasons.

At number one, I need to give props to the very first kdrama I have ever checked out.

Queen Inhyun's Man/Queen and I.

This kdrama was my first. And boy did it set my standards pretty high. The chemistry between the leads was off the charts and the leads even dated for awhile after filming completed. The kissing. It definitely wasn't the usual kissing you see on kdramas as I would find out. But besides that, who doesn't like a good time travel romantic story?

Moving on, to number 2, we have Love with Flaws.

Now. I adore this kdrama. I liked all the characters. The leads romance was a little lackluster but the story mainly focuses on the importance of family. Family is highlighted so much in this kdrama and I loved every minute of it.

At number 3, Hi, Bye, Mama.

Phew. Speaking of family, get prepared for an emotional rollercoaster of a story. This kdrama highlights relationships and the aftermath of dealing with loss, with a side of the supernatural.

At number 4, Black.

Switching gears off of family, be prepared to be on the edge of your seat the entire kdrama. A supernatural thriller, the ending was a bit lackluster(and that might just be my picky self complaining) but it still doesn't take away from the genius of this kdrama.

For number 5, we have Goblin. (If you're a fan of Train to Busan you may recognize the Male lead)

You've probably noticed a common theme, I love my supernatural kdramas. This one however, is filled with comedy and you need it to combat the amount of emotions you go through. These actors do such a good job portraying their characters.

Number 6; Kill me Heal Me.

If anyone wants a good story about a mental illness, I bring to you a story about Dissociative identity disorder. This drama is just so good and it really does a good job highlighting how people with this mental illness live with it.

At number 7, Good Doctor.

The American remake did a good job of portraying an autistic doctor but it has nothing on the original.

Number 8, Chief Kim

The antics this show gets into is just hilarious. I highly recommend watching it.

Number 9, Still 17.

As the title suggests. It's about a girl who is in a coma for over 10 years and so when she wakes up, her body aged but mentally she is still 17.

Number 10; While you were sleeping

Ya'll, this kdrama. I don't even know how to describe it. It's not exactly supernatural, more like psychic abilities and fate. But it is so good.

Number 11; The Smile has your left your eyes.

Phew, boy, this kdrama is dark but just so special, its a remake on the Japanese drama of the same name but dang is it just special.

Number 12 is a new one but damn is it good.

Sweet Home.

This is a show about a supernatural apocalypse, I love zombie apocalypse movies like Resident Evil and Train to Busan. This just with monsters and not zombies.

[thetwominuteshate-blog]

Hello, cruel world.

I am exhausted with living on this earth.

I could throw literary quotes at you. I could tell you that society at large has become what the dystopian science fiction authors of yesteryear predicted it would. I could start this blog with a call to arms, urging you to riot in the streets and tear down the prison we've built for ourselves.

But the truth is I'm just tired. I'm tired of constantly living in fear. I'm tired of feeling no connection with the world around me. I'm tired of seeing so much suffering that spans continents, in "the greatest nation in the world", while criminals look down on us with derision from their ivory towers. I am tired of feeling as though, no matter what I do, my decisions are of no consequence. I'm tired of the world slowly eroding me until there is nothing good left in me. I'm tired of feeling alone, and I am so, so tired of seeing the world as it could be--as it SHOULD be--and always coming up so short I can't even see the finish line.

I've been rejecting the reality I've found myself in for far too long, escaping into worlds of my own making or the worlds others have created for the sake of escaping my own despair. But it doesn't have to be this way. I still reject this reality, the efficient brutality of a race that has been born into an environment so unforgiving that we fail to put our own violent natures behind us. I reject the notion that the world cannot improve. I have had enough.

Those of you who have read George Orwell's 1984 might remember the Two Minutes Hate. For those of you who haven't or have forgotten, the Two Minutes' Hate is a daily ritual put in place by a maddeningly restrictive government with the intention of directing the fear and anger of common individuals living in such a repressive society by placing them in front of a television screen that projects images of whomever the Party deems is an enemy. The Other. When I first read it, this excerpt in particular stood out to me:

"The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp."

These days, most of what I see in the media is the Two Minutes Hate. Talking heads on two dimensional screens telling us who we should hate. Vicious propaganda that those who lack the will to fight the ones keeping them locked in misery buy into wholeheartedly. Instead of directing their rage at the ones responsible, people punch down, ostracizing people less fortunate than them.

But this isn't the reason why I chose to name this blog after the Two Minutes Hate. Because hate is a funny thing--when we don't let it eat away at us, it gives us the strength to fight without abandon. It causes us to reduce things to rubble and burn the remains so there is no trace of its existence. It can be a powerful tool. But it is fire, and most of us, if not all, aren't well enough equipped with the knowledge to know which things are worth burning.

I've been filled with hate nearly for as long as I can remember. Full disclosure: I'm a 27-year-old white, bisexual cis male. For most of my life I lived in a small town and have largely kept myself in seclusion due to bullying throughout my childhood into my teen years. I only recently became aware of the deepening aspects of my sexuality, but over the years I've faced baseless accusations of homosexuality to the point that a cowardly bully had his friend fight me. As a result, I faced suspension. My school district, like most, put on a public face that disavowed bullying, but enabled it when it occurred. The culture I was surrounded by swam in toxic masculinity, boys that pretended to be men through the ownership of trucks flying the Confederate flag and other meaningless, superficial displays of their own insecurities. My "community", which is so very important to conservative culture, treated me like a stubborn weed long before I could even grasp cruelty. I felt suffocated, unable to flourish because there was always someone watching my every move. As a result, I've come to loathe authority in all its forms.

That's just backstory, though. Over the years I've come to realize that my circumstances were relatively fortunate. I'm privileged; people have been murdered over the merest suspicion that they might be gay. There are people who face severe bullying on a near-daily basis, and that's in this country alone. The atrocities committed in our world's history dwarf mine to a subatomic level. I've had friends who have been raped, faced child and domestic abuse, and even now are in circumstances far more dire than my own. It's no longer for my own sake that I hate, it's for those who are beaten down and cannot fight back, whether on an individual or cultural basis.

I'm not here to play white, straight(ish) savior. In fact, I wouldn't even consider myself to be an ordinary person. I am on the verge of mental instability--for years I've felt the effects of severe depression, which is finally in check. For a time I was so suicidal that I abused substances on a daily basis because the only calming thoughts I had in sobriety were of my own death. I have a deep desire to hurt and destroy, to get back at the world that I feel cut me open and left me to bleed out. I'm a sadist and a masochist in the BDSM scene. I have twisted fantasies that run so deeply to my core and no outlet for them outside of the scene. I want to make others suffer for the injustices they inflict upon those who are undeserving of pain. Because whoever came up with the idiom, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" should have been tortured without cause, broken by suffering that held no ultimate meaning. Then he'd have a greater grasp on the state of the reality as it is.

Hate is addictive. Orwell was right; it spreads like a wildfire, and it's impossible not to be caught in the blaze yourself unless you sequester yourself with comfort and ignorance. And turning a blind eye to the problems others face, whether it's next door or on the other side of the globe, is possibly worse. Until now, I've feared the repercussions of acting against authority, the odds of my successful retribution stacked heavily against me. Even now, I fear the things I will express will draw fire from all sides, so I'm shielding myself through an anonymity browser in order to ward off potential enemies, whether they are a collective agency like the NSA or some alt-right IT cunt with internet access. Those of us in the United States have been officially granted a right to free speech, but we live in an era in which seizing that right can go so far as to get you killed, especially if you call for progress and your voice is heard by millions.

But my end goal is not society's complete collapse. There are pieces of this world worth preserving. I may only be useful for tearing things down, but someday I hope someone will build them back up into something better that works for all people. I long to help individuals understand that all people are just that--people. Not secondary or tertiary characters in your life, good-or-evil projections onto a screen for you to scream at. It's this mentality that causes entire populations to suffer, and I know my work will never be done until the most marginalized find a place in society.

But this is not a call to empathy. Part of recognizing each other's humanity is holding each other accountable for their actions. I believe no person can be perfectly good--we all do terrible things, myself thoroughly included--but there are those of us who are so mindlessly destructive in their actions that I honestly believe the world would be better off without them. This quality of malignance does not discriminate between race, gender, or age. We are among self-made monsters on a daily basis, and they deserve as much sympathy as they dole out.

Words without action are meaningless. I don't intend to sit here and tell y'all to start a French-style bloodletting while I sit comfortably in a downtown loft. This is a time for action. This is a time for violence. This is a time to stand up against the birth of fascism in the so-called "Land of the Free". This is a time for hate.

I am Winston Smith, and this is my Two Minutes Hate. This is my war. Will you join me?