#political bullshit

[catbountry]

It's been a year since the premiere of Trigun: Stampede. The series, despite the fears of the fans of the '98 anime, actually turned out really good; Yasuhiro Nightow is a big superhero comics nerd, and wanted to have this new anime adaption be an adaption similar to the adaptions of the MCU, back when those movies were consistently enjoyable, and I daresay a bunch of the people watched Trigun probably were either already anime fans, or they were nomad fans who may have been really into the MCU at one point.

I have a lot of thoughts on an American perspective on Vash the Stampede as a character, with a lot of comparisons to American comic book superheroes. And while Trigun wasn't my first anime, I was hooked on it, as someone who grew up around Batman and Spawn's 90's popularity. During my first Otakon in 2001, I must have seen a dozen Vash's and Wolfwoods. I remember the year there was a Wolfwood cosplayer whose Punisher gun was shaped like the Star of David instead of a cross, making him a rabbi. That shit was amazing. The larger point is that I've loved this character for more than half of my entire time being alive, and I haven't seen a lot of discussion of Trigun viewed from a more political lens, and why it resonates so much with Americans (or at least me, who is an American) in particular

Buckle up, kids, this is gonna be long and rambly.

There was a period of time where I watched nearly every single new MCU movie in the theater. It was exciting seeing adaptions of comic books that would have probably never gotten a movie before the success of The Avengers. And I don't think it's a mistake that the most comic book-y of the movies are usually the best; Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel remain as probably my favorite MCU movies. Nightow was working directly with the studio making a new Trigun anime and reportedly got the crew to watch a bunch of Marvel movies to set the tone for the anime as an adaption; it's why Vash got a completely new redesign that freaked all us old fans the fuck out. Though it appears that once again, Trigun tried and failed to get that massive Japanese audience that most successful anime have. But boy, oh boy, do us westerners fucking love Trigun, especially us Americans. Nightow's love of superhero comics bled into Trigun, and it just so happened that he was incredibly influenced by Spawn, Hellboy and Batman as much as he was influenced by Akira Toriyama and mechanical art. McFarlane Toys released a Vash figure that is McFarlane'd the fuck up. Nightow loves all superhero comics but especially the Blade trilogy.

Just look at this and imagine being 13 years old and seeing this on a screen for the first time with the instrumental hard rock opening.

Also, I wouldn't actually get around to reading Spawn until I was an adult, but you know what? It's pretty good. The writing is definitely weaker than the art, but holy shit, that art goes hard and I still think that shit's cool as fuck.

As stated before, around the early 2000's Trigun was considered peak anime, though it's been more overlooked in recent years in favor of Cowboy Bebop, an anime that has aged gracefully by comparison. But while Bebop has that sort of timeless cool and level of quality that drew the attention of filmmakers like the Wachoski sisters, Trigun has that very specific kind of adolescent sense of coolness that comic book fans get, especially back in the 90's before this sort of thing would be smothered to death by MCU's Joss Whedoning of superheroes. Spawn, Hellboy and Batman are still cool. And Trigun also has a shitton of guns, obviously, given that Vash being an incredibly OP gunslinger in a world where everybody has guns.

And America loves guns.

I think the contrast of Vash's pacifism while still wielding a gun is extremely interesting because it's not something you see very much (I bet if I watched more westerns, I'd have a better idea if this is a trope in them at all). Batman does not use guns and doesn't kill people, which is why there's still discourse around Tim Burton's Batman films to this day still; I don't think Kevin Smith has budged on this. Other more morally grey superheroes will use guns (by this definition I'm counting The Punisher even if he doesn't have any superpowers, unless you count severe PTSD as a superpower). And a lot of them had huge surges in popularity in the 90's around the time Nightow was making Trigun. Vash posed like Batman or Spider-Man looking brooding (like the gif above) happens a lot in the earlier issues even though that's not really his character.

Several years ago, there was an attempt by a conservative thinktank to discredit a bunch of Hollywood actors saying that gun violence in America is a serious issue and contrasted their statements scenes of them shooting guns in movies, but if we're being real here, gunplay in movies can be really fucking cool. Again I invoke The Matrix, or movies by Robert Rodriguez and John Woo. Look at video games, and compare the decline in violent crime that's been happening here since the 70's and 80's, as culture warriors bemoan movies and video games for becoming more violent. Remember when Wayne LaPierre, vice president of the NRA, brought up fucking Splatterhouse as a reason why Sandy Hook happened? Do you know what Splatterhouse looks like?

It looks like this.

You know how these guys constantly say the only way to counter a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun? Usually, the inference is that if the "good guy" with a gun shoots, he's shooting to kill. Deadpool and the Punisher would shoot to kill. But Vash is constantly trying to avoid it. And I remember as a teenager finding that really cool? And the manga and anime don't shy away from how impractical Vash's pacifism is. It's a bit more realistic than Steven Universe's ending, but also Steven Universe was made for children.

I know Avatar: The Last Airbender is often invoked when criticizing Steven Universe's philosophy, but I haven't really seen Vash's similar philosophy criticized in the same way, and I think a lot of that has to do with the presence of Wolfwood, who is the "I think we're gonna have to kill this guy" guy. I'm honestly surprised I haven't seen art of this yet. I may have to get on that. I already drew Vash horrified at the Trolley Problem.

Vash is a character designed with maximum coolness in mind, but also an overpowered being who is capable of killing millions, and in the anime, he somehow destroys July City without killing anyone directly, but the destruction of the city led to a bunch of people dying. He's so deeply committed to not wanting to kill anyone that he's probably killed more people than he would have if he just shot Knives. The best Batman stories acknowledge that Batman's refusal to kill Joker has similarly results in the deaths of people Batman could have prevented if he killed one guy, and this could also apply to Vash's relationship with his brother Knives, who was kind of destined to be a mass murderer with a name like that, let's be real.

Online, we tend to joke about bringing out the guillotines, or justify not feeling an sympathy for billionaires who die in a sub trying to view the Titanic. But if you were given a gun and a real human person begging for their life, what would you actually do? Do you honestly think that you would be the ethical Death Note user?

Vash has guns but he chooses not to kill people; he prefers to not even use them unless he has to, instead opting to run away and look cool doing it somehow.

He really, really doesn't want to kill people. He doesn't become numb to people dying. It hurts him every single time he watches someone get killed. In reality, most of us that aren't sociopaths would be distressed at the thought of killing someone. The only reason armies in real life work is that they become inoculated to the idea of violence and dehumanize the enemy. Vash is no soldier. He is idealistic, he is empathetic, and he sees every human being as a person worthy of life. Batman refuses to use guns, as that's how his parents were killed in front of him. Vash has to use guns in order to protect people from getting killed. He has the ethics of Superman but the tools of a comic book antihero. He's the logical conclusion of an shonen anime protagonist in a world that chews up anyone with that kind of optimism and hope and spits them out. And yet... he still keeps going. He remains committed. He's still cheery, goofy, lovable Vash.

Batman used to kill people, in the earliest comics. With the Comics Code Authority, no superheroes could kill people. In the 80's, comics were getting darker and edgier, taken more seriously. While Alan Moore's Watchmen delved into the moral complexities in a world with superheroes that was similar to ours, Frank Miller was keeping Batman consistent, even as Gotham got darker and uglier.

Batman is a vigilante. The police can be helpful or they can fuck up everything, depending on what's needed for the story. In Batman Year One, there's a scene where Batman crashes a party attended by the elites of Gotham, politicians and mobsters mingling.

Seeing this during the Bush presidency blew my mind. I don't want to get into just how perfectly the members of his administration seemed to resemble a rogue's gallery of sorts with the shared goals of making a lot of money and bombing the shit out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I was extremely anti-war even before the 2000 election as a very opinionated 14 year-old watching, Jon Stewart on The Daily Show and feeling relieved that a grown-up was able to see through all the bullshit; it helps when the guy who's against the war and killing people is funny. I remember writing in my diary at 12 years old after Columbine happened that I wanted to take all of the guns and melt them down in a pot, similarly to that scene in Superman IV where he throws the entire world's nuclear arsenal into the sun. But also that same year I would fall in love with The Matrix... and not long after that, Trigun.

Again, we come back to the idea of someone using a gun, a weapon designed to kill people, and using it in pursuit of the exact opposite. That resonated with me. I myself was very idealistic, and the political climate of my teenage years seemed to do almost everything to stamp that out of me. Things feel just as fraught two decades later, but in slightly different ways. Pacifism is looked down upon, as indicated by the backlash to the ending of Steven Universe, and how one crazy lady called Rebecca Sugar, a Jewish person, a Nazi for writing it that way. But for Steven, things worked out. For Vash? Well, he still has hope somehow, despite everything. I think the fact that he strives to protect human life, even when someone is a complete monster, is admirable in that it cuts to the very basic desire to not see people hurt. But we're also selfish, and scared, and sometimes it's hard to conceive of a solution to a problem that doesn't involve violence. Seeing dead bodies on TV or the internet upsets us, but we're often paralyzed by feeling like we can't do anything, and even if we tried, we'd likely perish in the attempt. We desire revenge, punishment for those who transgress by inflicting violence, and we can rationalize using it against the right targets. Vash the Stampede would have a fucking breakdown dealing with the state-backed violence that's been a part of geopolitics pretty much as long as there have been states and geopolitics. Vash would try and solve the bombings of Gaza with an impassioned plea for both sides to stop fighting before he would somehow wind up making things worse and it would eat away at him inside, no matter how brave a face he puts on as he tries to find some kind of hope in a hopeless situation. And... you know what? I kind of wish more people would be like that. Maybe if there were enough people like that, these sorts of things wouldn't happen in the first place. I wish more people could look at human suffering and feel compelled to try and stop it, not discriminating against one side or the other, trying to understand why people are doing what they do. Seeing anti-war protestors in Tel Aviv brings back memories of protests against the start of the War on Terror, and how hated America was internationally during those years, even when most Americans approved of the war. Michael Moore was booed at the Oscars for condemning George W. Bush and the War on Terror. It's terrifying that those in power want us killing each other and have conditioned us to support it. I want so badly for human beings to come together to just stop the violence, but it feels impossible, like we're destined for failure, like we might somehow make things worse or become worse versions of ourselves full of hatred and ugliness. But we should want to try, even if it's hard or unprofitable or we have no idea how to even do it. Somebody actually dedicating themselves to trying to fight our violent impulses out of love is appealing, and if they're more powerful than use, and can do more... well, I want the biblically accurate angel with every mental illness willing to martyr himself over and over again. But it is more fun when he's Bugs Bunny about it.

[errorcritical]

"don't pressure people to vote" IM SORRY BUT ITS TOO FUCKING LATE NOW

you can do your little "I don't like/trust anyone so I'm just gonna sit out" bullshit when we're not literally a hairs breadth from disaster every election

[fraiserire]

I want to scream, I want to cry, I want break things, I want to rip things apart, I want rip myself apart, I want to punch something until I break every bone in my hand and it’s left raw, I want to kick, I want to fight tooth and nail, I want set everything on fire, I want to claw my way out, I want to claw my very heart but still nothing seems to be enough for the all the rage and anger and astounding amount of pain that is lodged into my very being, heart and soul.

[troythecatfish]

Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, the world’s most prolific liars now have plausible deniability for real world events people painstakingly documented. Politicians around the globe have been swatting away potentially damming pieces of evidence - grainy video footage of hotel trysts, voice recordings attacking political opponents - by dismissing them as AI generated fakes. Adding to the confusion, actual AI disinformation is flooding the internet, making it even harder to understand reality.

[samijami]

Calling pity for billionaires and fascists 'basic empathy', and then not having empathy towards who they're hurting is just one example of the hypocrisy and bullshittery of this country.

[the-fruit-tea-devil]

The same people that say “kill all TERFs” “TERFs deserve to die” are usually the same exact people to turn around and say “just because Palestine is a transphobic nation doesn’t mean the people deserve to die”

[cunny-kicker]

[delicehm]

"Be gay do crime" I'm gay and do some minor illegal actions that can get me into prison for from a few weeks to a few years(literally just say some things online and offline, my country is weird), but those two things about me are not connected. Do I do it right?

[chaosdisorganized]

Tumblr mobile pissing me off because I was going to make a political post about abolishing the two party system and I had a screenshot of George Washington's Farewell Address and Tumblr fucked up the formatting.

Anyways here's the link

Here's the screenshot I took, maybe Tumblr won't fucked it up this time

Ahh it worked. I was going on a long rant about how to abolish the two party system and what we as voters should do to rise against its corruption but Tumblr ate the post after fucking up that screenshot. Fucking hell. Not that anyone would even listen to me anyways I know my political beliefs are kind of out there and bizarre but uhh vote 3rd party, stop supporting and upholding the two party system, we will never see true meaningful government reform if we keep doing the same thing we've been doing for centuries. Needless to say I hate all the president candidates for 2024 and I wish the US would stop supporting the two party system which continuously breeds corruption in our government. Thanks.

[captainjimothycarter]

They truly hate us huh? Remember to vote blue, folks.

[catbountry]

Hi, I'm the one who made the Respawn of the Dead page on Fanlore. I'm sorry about the misinformation about you being an admin and it's fixed to be accurate now to say you were just a mod.

And I'm sorry about not disclosing that you've since distanced yourself from that site. Thats now in there too. I respect you as a fic writer both for your fic (loved the TF2 Harlan Ellison and Steven King-inspired ones) and because it's impressive that you've kept your username for so long. I think that literally everyone who's been online long enough can theoretically be "canceled" on the Internet if everything they've ever done was connected to only one pseud, including myself. Fandom's honestly a minefield that doesn't take to cultural changes at all. The culture of, say, 4chan, Tf2chan, those things, it's so different compared to today. Same with Kiwifarms when it was just known for being the CWCwiki. One day, the culture of social media will be just like those, and I think being able to own up to who you were then to compare with how you are now, as a better person, is a respectable skill to have.

I don't know everything you've done, (I know some of the Vade thing and some of what's on the receipt blog,) but it seems some Fannish people just see "Kiwifarms" and think you're supporting the site as it is currently, which wasn't what it was back in the 2010s. I tried to be very neutral since I figured TF2 Tumblr/Twitter would find my article first, but now it's more positive on you and your body of work on there. I'm sorry that the article brought up old wounds, hopefully all misinfo on it is fixed now.

Wow, I actually wasn't sure if I'd get a response. Thank you for being so considerate, for enjoying my fic, and being so understanding. I used the same pseud for years because, well, I'm proud of Respawn of the Dead, warts and all. I don't want to distance myself from it and I'm okay with it being my legacy. Also I'm just absolutely lousy at hiding myself. If I changed my name, people would figure out it's me, so I don't really bother.

If you don't mind, just for the sake of fandom oral history, I'd like to expand upon the period of Medic being a Nazi in fandom. This might be interesting to you as somebody interested in TF2 fandom lore.

Medic being a Nazi was assumed by a lot of fans, due to him fitting a bunch of "Nazi mad scientist" tropes. This remained the case until fans went to Valve's headquarters and straight up asked an employee if he was, to which they were told "no." And then people stopped writing Nazi Medic (for the most part) because it wasn't canon. People still made art but again, we did not know the horrors that the future had in store for us.

It really is wild to think how drastically things have shifted politically online since the late 2000's, when nobody could have predicted that being a Nazi would be anything but the most fringe of fringe, and these people would be regarded as internet sideshows to be gawked at and trolled. Also, Respawn of the Dead was written around the time Inglorious Basterds came out, so there were a lot of sexy Nazis or repentant Nazis in certain fandoms at the time.

There was a TF2 fic, I believe it was called Do No Harm, that legit had Medic working in a concentration camp in a position where he felt like he had to work there or he'd be shot, and he ate human flesh given to him by an evil, Aryan Nazi OC. I don't know if the author distanced herself from the work, because she did re-work it to make it into an original novel that she sold on Amazon. I absolutely could not see anything written like this now that wasn't some kind of dogwhistle, but the author was pretty progressive, actually. So much so we had a fight while I was in my anti-SJW phase and she did not appreciate me bringing up the things she wrote about that emphasized the humanity of a Nazi character, who in all fairness, did deflect in her story. I'm sure she's probably put a lot more distance between herself and that story in the years since, given the way things have gone since Trump's presidency. I wouldn't know, though, since we don't talk, and haven't in nearly a decade.

The person who wrote that is probably forgotten by anybody who wasn't in the fandom at the time, even though she was known for this fic and it was praised almost universally when it was being updated. But she was not the only one doing this. I cannot emphasize enough just how far in the past Nazis felt to us. At the time, being a Nazi was a stupid way of thinking that would never come back outside of attention-hungry edgelords co-opting its imagery, especially in America, an allied nation that loves using Nazis as villains in its media. If you told any of us in 2009 that fascism and white nationalism would make a comeback in America, we would not have believed you unless you were counting neoconservatives and evangelical white Christians as Nazis, and while I think a lot of those people are now pretty much that nowadays, back then it would have been a little bit of a stretch. But the thing is, the white supremacy on an institutional level was always there. We didn't really notice it until it started being pointing out, and at the same time, a bunch of fuckin' white nationalists and neo-Nazis just started popping up all over the place because someone with blue hair and pronouns told them a video game character having her titties out was bad or something. I'm still not entirely sure how that escalated that quickly, but Jesus Christ. It's a shame "clown world" got used mostly by right-wing people online because the label feels pretty apt and also applies to them a lot more. There is something deeply pathetic but also kind of hilarious about filming yourself letting a gas stove burn, or shooting cases of beer to own the libs.

I think most people that used TF2chan are pretty progressive now, a lot of them have come out as some flavor of queer, and the use of "-fag" as a suffix is frowned upon in the official TF2chan Discord server as being incredibly childish and cringey. We were all young adults but clearly we had a lot of growing up to do. I think it is important to point out that a lot of this edgelord shit done at the time, while hurtful and not cool, was done by a lot of people who hadn't figured out who they were yet, and weren't really bad people. Dr. Tanner, who was actually the first person to write a TF2 longfic and beat Respawn of the Dead by at least a few months with the first version of The Lessons (which is gone now), got cited by name in an interview with an old TF2chan user for being really racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic, only to completely turn around once he came out as trans. I think a lot of this behavior kind of functioned as a shield, because there was still a separation between the internet and real life. Now, there's more people on the internet with less websites people visit, and fandom spaces where everyone is an adult are harder to find. Everything is very politically charged now. The right-wing is further to the right than it was even when I was a teenager and a young adult during Bush's presidency, which given that we got into two forever wars under his administration, is insane to think about. It doesn't feel real, but it is.

So yeah, that's why nobody writes or draws Medic as a Nazi anymore, and that's a good thing. Sorry for the tl;dr.

If you have any questions about old TF2chan and TF2 fandom, I'd be happy to answer them.

[errorcritical]

"fun" USAmerican politics mnemonic i just thought of:

if its blue, they probably wont kill you

if its red, they want you dead

[fraiserire]

No, I don’t care about celebrities' opinions, and here’s why for those who care to read for some reason.

They could care less about anyone else. If it’s not profiting them, why would they care? They get paid to be in la la land. They get paid to speak for certain politicians and groups and whatever is society gnat like brain decides is important for the week. I don’t care about their opinions or political stance or anything else about them because they don’t care about anything else either, want to know why I think this? What have they done to actually help anyone else other than give a small profit away to look somewhat decent or ask their fan base for money?

So no, I don’t give a fuck about what Taylor Swift says or Tom Cruise says. I watch the movies that entertain me and listen to the albums that I feel something for, other than that why would I listen to them?

[spectralhero]

Look I get the whole abortion thing but I can't fucking believe Stacey Abrams said the heartbeats on the ultrasounds are fake.

"Manufactured". She actually fucking called it manufactured and people fucking FALL FOR THAT SHIT!?

Y'all believing that are fucking batshit crazy just like her.

[theinariakuma]

Excuse me while I sit here willing part of the world to burn. I need to rant. It's US political bullshit. Feel free to ignore

Oveturn bullshit

Looks like they're overturning Roe v Wade from what I'm gathering.

I am so mad.

So fucking mad

I'm lucky enough I don't need this law to protect me, but they're leaving it in the states hands now. We see what's happening in some of those states.

I do not fucking care what your beliefs are. I don't give a shit if it's against your religion, beliefs, etc.

They took the choice from women in states who might have needed it. And whatever your beliefs are should never be forced upon another person. This is a bad thing for everyone regardless if you liked it or not.

This is going to lead back to illegal, unsafe abortions for those who need it.

I... I just can't believe this shit..

[sheephunter]

Omg wood bad

Is the gist of what certain politicians in my country just recently went with.

Summarised context: the politicians wanted to put into law that burning wood as primary source for internal house heating in condensed residential areas (towns, cities) should be illegal

Which is bullshit for a country that's ranked in top 10 most forested countries, as well as culturaly connected to those forests, BUT I DIGRESS, let's see what their arguments are.

"We won't have so many bad carbon emmisions"; "we'll be eco friendly"; "we'll be able to breathe easier and healthier"; mostly enviromental buzzword phrases you hear on the advertisement.

I'd be fooled to believe it, if it didn't reek of corporate lobbying and policymaking centralising around capital city.

Wood burning for house heating is more ecofriendly than vast majority of alternatives, that they advocated for. Yes the smoke can permeate the air, but dissipates quickly once it clears. Unlike smoke from burning fossil fuels, you know, like from 500+ cars all running around the city at the same time, because public transit ain't cheap anymore. And let's not forget factories creating so many pollutants, i'm suprised people aren't fully mutated into another species yet by now.

Let's list some thoughts of mine:

1. The capital city is regularly affected by temperature inversion, where the clouds above it will form heavy fog inside the valley it is in. Fog affected by smog. And a lot of road traffic happens during those hours. A point heavily neglected in the politicians ranting over wood burning.

2. Ever since Russian gas supply started being placed on the "avoid buying list". There has been extreme push towards coal and oil use for house heating and energy supply. Giving me a feeling there is corporate lobbying medling going on.

3. Properly stored and used wood, will give off a suprisingly low amount of carbon emmisions, due to the fact that as wood dries up, most of the harmful components produced by burning will already be safely gone before it even comes in contact with fire.

4. People burned wood for millenias in this countries area and never reported anything of the sort that the politicians were ranting about, until the industrialization of the country in recent present centuries.

5. And i could go on after more research

My parents own a small plot of land in the forest, out of which we take around 3-5 trees each year due to various naturaly caused damage to them that usually leads to the death of the tree (my dad literally took agricultural classes on maintaining a forest, so he knows which tree needs to collapse and when, to keep the forest healthy). The forest is thriving, because the owners of land in that forest KNOW what they're doing. Banning wood burning will lead to misinformation and ecoproblems.

The wood we store for a minimum of 1 year in a well airated, dry outdoor environment. By the time it gets used in the furnace, it is already perfectly dry and energy efficient. Banning wood burning will lead to misinformation and ecoproblems.

We have a 30+ year old mechanical, with some electrical components, because we used to also burn oil before realising it was a waste of money, furnace. We burn wood only when it is really cold outside. We recycle a ton of paper, and flammable stuff as fire starters, to the point our house can barely produce waste outside of stuff like plastic, glass, metal. And again banning wood burning will lead to misinformation and ecoproblems.

The ash remains can then be perfectly used as fertilizer. When the field is empty of veggie plants we will throw ash all over and let the rain and snow wash it into the soil, giving it many nutrients for plant growth. And when there are veggie plants on the field, we dump ash on the compost heap. We rarely use animal excrement to fertilize our veggie growing field and garden, and still yield healthy harvests each year. Banning wood burning will lead to misinformation and ecoproblems.

Seriously out of all things those idiot politicians will go after, the one thing i won't tolerate is wood.