#have to worry about censors particularly or anything like that. believe me though I’d much prefer if they finally got to fucking kiss after

[fortunatelylori]

Hi, loved what you wrote about 365 days! What do you say about people who claim it promotes rape culture? I personally loved the movie for what it was but I think it’s interesting to discuss possible ramifications of it... Should we be worried about what men take away from it?

Hey, nonnie!

Thank you! I’m glad people are enjoying the meta. I fully expected to have about 2 notes on it when I posted it so the response has been a very nice surprise.

Having thoughtful debates about anything is always interesting so I’m certainly not opposed to it. Also simply because you enjoy something, that doesn’t mean you can’t and shouldn’t be aware of its flaws or negative implications.

Being a heavy metal fan, I’ve had conversations about the possible negative effects art may have on society more times than I care to count and it is ultimately very much a “the chicken or the egg” type of debate. At the end of the day, it’s really up to our own individual perception of how art and life co-exist.

Personally I believe art is a reflection of life, a cumulative, stylized expression of our experiences, our interests, passions, obsessions, desires and needs. Meaning that it is not art that influences our behavior but rather it is our behavior that shapes our art.

There is only one notable exception to this: propaganda art

This is a particularly insidious form of manipulation because it generally uses long standing conflicts that exist within a society and validate and justify them. Obviously images of the 3rd Rich and communism will come to mind here.

There is also a sort of hybrid form of art that is both made for artistic purposes but also co-opted politically, either from the beginning or as it evolves. The classic example of this is Rambo which started as an anti-war movie and developed into a pro-US empire franchise over time. (by the way Stallone brought back the franchise to its roots with the last film so very proud of him for that)

Another example of a hybrid movie is Ghostbusters 2016 which started out as a continuation of a legacy franchise and devolved into a woke piece of marketing meant to further antagonize large masses of people during a historical election.

I’d argue something like Ghostbusters 2016 is far more dangerous than 365 dni, simply because it tries to spoon-feed you an agenda you neither signed up for or would necessarily look for in a movie that’s supposedly about how to kill evil Chris Hemsworths. And it goes even further than that by attempting to draw your support for it by labeling you problematic if you refuse to take part in the manipulation.

As I’ve said in my original meta, 365 dni doesn’t have any agenda aside from getting you off. And that’s the really important aspect here: 365 dni exists to get women hot and bothered. So why are we even asking what men will get out of this film? It wasn’t made for them. It was made for our enjoyment so wouldn’t we be better served to ask what we’re getting out of it?

But let’s for the sake of argument ponder what theoretical men might get out of this movie. Does anyone truly believe that men don’t already know that kidnapping women is wrong? Will 365 dni change their minds?

Also, incidentally, are there only bad things men can get out of watching this movie? Can they perhaps not find anything positive in it? Like let’s say a deeper understanding of foreplay or why giving their partners oral sex is good? Or that it really does pay off to learn how to dance?

Honestly, I’m pretty sure most men will avoid this movie on principal and also because most of them were dragged by their girlfriends to the cinema when 50 shades came out and you know what they say: you burn me once … But if they do manage to stumble upon it, I tend to see it as a positive thing, not a negative one.

Now … to the direct accusation that this movie glorifies rape. It doesn’t. It’s explicitly anti-rape by both having Massimo state that he will wait for Laura to initiate sexual intercourse as well physically mutilate a man that tries to rape her.

In fact, if you go through this movie beat by beat, from the moment they have dinner, it’s always Laura that initiates sexual play, not Massimo. It’s Laura who takes her clothes off the next morning, it’s Laura who goes to his hotel room, it’s Laura who teases him at the club and it’s ultimately Laura that decides the time has come for them to have sex. Massimo responds and plays into the game but he isn’t actually the instigator.

The whole film is, in fact, built around Laura’s need for sexual fulfillment. It starts with her in a state of sexual and emotional frustration. Massimo appears in her life as the antidote to that. If this movie does anything is validating a woman’s desire for sex and her expectation that her needs are met by her partner.

That being said, is the kidnapping of Laura an uncomfortable aspect of this film? I’d personally say yes. I would have preferred they went about it in a different way: perhaps have Laura indebted to Massimo in some way that would force her to accept his offer to spend 365 days with him. It would have certainly spared us that back alley drugging scene.

That’s how I would have written it if I could have. But here’s the thing, independent of my tastes and preferences or anyone else’s:

Kink exists outside of PC culture and is non-negotiable

Like it or not, people, and that includes women, have all sorts of sexual fantasies. There are women who have kidnapping fantasies or rape fantasies. There are women who have masochistic or domination fantasies. And on and on.

Fantasy is powerful because it allows us to experience things in a safe and healthy environment. It should be celebrated and nurtured, not censored.

Simply because you don’t like something doesn’t give you the right to will it out of existence. Regulate your own viewing experience and let others do the same.

Which brings me to my last salient point:

Women can vicariously enjoy things

Women tend to be very good at pointing out the multitude of ways in which we are better than men. And, don’t get me wrong, we are. We are clearly very much the superior sex. Lol

However, one thing I believe men are far better at than women is enjoying things without worrying if their enjoyment is correct or beneficial to society at large.

How many men have you met that are worried about the negative effects the violence in John Wick might have on the youth of America? (this is not a dig at John Wick by the way. I love him and 100% support his desire to murder anyone who messes with his glorious dogs)

The truth is that one of the side effects of the patriarchy is that women are always second guessing the things they like and worrying constantly about what the potential negative impact their enjoyment might have on others.

I don’t know if anyone out there needs to hear this from me but you are allowed to like things just because you like them. You are allowed to notice problematic aspects in a story and still love it because after all nothing in life has any business being perfect. Some things, though, do come close:

[kuriboo]

so here we are, y’all. i’ve finally reached the end of the zexal anime, and, uh, it sure was a ride. a ride from start to finish. i’m gonna write out some final thoughts, if i end up forgetting something i might make another post of this, but, don’t count on it. but, before anything, i do intend to read the zexal manga at some point as well, and when i do, you might see me post some funny or interesting screenshots in this tag too? probably not a lot, i don’t know, i’ve never read the zexal manga either. just be aware that the zexal liveblog might not actually be over.

i know people like to talk in terms of zexal i and zexal ii, but hulu doesn’t split up zexal like that, it’s actually in three seasons? i think i generally know what people are referring to with zexal i and zexal ii(?), but i’m genuinely not sure and the terms feel super weird to me anyway, but just to be safe, i’ll refer to things as the first half and the second half. the first half ends with the duel against dr faker and yuma vs kite, part 2 picks up with...whatever the hell happened after the yuma vs kite duel, which certainly wasn’t a continuation of kite’s character arc, but we won’t worry about that.

with that, uh, let’s go high-five the sky

before starting zexal: i’d pretty much watched all the other yugioh series, and was keeping up with vrains as much as i could as it aired. i saw one episode once, before i started watching the whole thing, that aired on some channel we normally don’t get but got a like free preview weekend of it or something. the episode i saw was the episode where yuma meets the guy who makes the statues, i think. whatever it was, the impression i got from what i saw was: this yugioh protagonist is really bad at card games, whines a lot, and his voice kinda grates on me, and also this protagonist is younger than i was at the time, which tended to lead to more annoying behavior. this kid didn’t want to shut up, man. couldn’t sit through the whole thing

so, this was how i rated zexal against the other yugioh series, keeping in mind that this is a rating of series, and not yugioh protagonists, and noting that the members of the A tier are not in any sort of order and all members have equal ratings: 

(sevens is unrated because it’s just barely started.)

(there’s not really much of anything that could top gx, tbh, because gx got me through the hardest time, the hardest year, of my life, and i don’t know where i’d be without it. gx helped save 17 year old me from myself)

now, i’ve finished zexal. i’ve watched every single episode of zexal. it’s important to note that i watched the dub of duel monsters, the dubs of gx and 5ds along with the sub of their non-dubbed final seasons, the dub of zexal, the sub of arc v alongside a stretch of dubbed episodes towards the end, and the sub of vrains along with the dub of the first 20 episodes. i’m aware zexal’s sub was better than the dub, but i generally prefer dubs when possible and also i’m largely comparing it against every other yugioh dub. it’s not an unfair comparison. 

so, here is how i now rate zexal against the other yugioh series, keeping in mind the members of the A tier aren’t in any sort of order:

you may have noticed this is the same as the previous rating. that’s correct. zexal was my least favorite yugioh series before i began watching it, and now that i’ve finished, it’s still my least favorite yugioh series. i know for a lot of people, zexal was their favorite yugioh series, but i simply can’t vibe with that. i’m sorry. i’m also aware the dub of zexal is a lot worse than the original. that doesn’t change the fact that i’m mostly rating dubs against each other here (haven���t seen enough of the arc v dub to account for that, but every other series i’m strongly thinking about the dubs). also, i’ll still give zexal credit for that. i’ll excuse some of its bad points as bad dub writing. some.

this chart, though, doesn’t paint a complete picture of how my opinion of zexal has changed. because it has. i like zexal a lot more now than i did before i started really watching it.

we’ll address good points first, so if anyone wants to bail for the bad points to avoid any sort of hurt feelings or anything like that, they can while still reading good stuff. again, i know a lot of yugioh fans’ favorite yugioh series is zexal, and my opinions are directly opposed to that, and again, i’m sorry. 

there was some pretty cool new cards in this one, particularly in the numbers side of things. shark drake was cool. i liked all of the arclights’ numbers; honestly, how could i not love dyson sphere or number 69? i’ve forgotten a lot of it by now but there was some cool stuff especially in the first part. 

the two best characters in this series, in terms of both writing and personality, were easily astral and shark. astral’s probably my number one, shark’s probably my number two.

astral was definitely great. his observations he kept making about humanity based on yuma was definitely one of the funnier things in the series, and the last duel of the series ending with astral’s last observation was poetic. he talked smack about yuma a lot, and a lot of the time it was pretty well deserved, and that was very cathartic and very good humor. his whole arc where he learns to trust yuma in part 1 and they truly become partners, then yuma meets vector who convinces yuma to keep pretty big secrets from astral, then astral realizes yuma’s been keeping these big secrets from him which is something astral never thought would happen by that point, and astral almost loses himself in that darkness of feeling betrayed and angry and sad, that was all really really good. yuma and astral not not immediately going back to loyal trusting partners and needing time before astral could truly trust yuma again also felt natural and real and i enjoyed it a lot. i like astral’s hairstyle, i like his dub censored ass, i like his whole ghost-like vibe. i don’t appreciate that astral is a nudist, even among the other residents of astral world who all wear actual clothes. i kind of wish astral would wear clothes but i would still want his ass to be censored because it’s hilarious. there is a lot i like about astral. i also just think he’s neat. my easy favorite. cannot go wrong with snarky glowy alien boy.

shark surprised me. i didn’t like him for a fair amount of part 1. he hurt yuma’s feelings a lot and i hated that. but when he started accepting yuma’s repeated attempts at friendship and turned around, i liked him a lot. he’s got purple hair, he plays a guitar (i think electric guitar? might’ve been electric bass), and his development was super interesting. i figured he had some kind of shitty home life that yuma would help him cope with using the power of friendship, but it was quite a bit more than that. he got disqualified from a tournament he desperately wanted to win because of a trick his opponent pulled, eventually evened out and became a pretty cool chill dude, and then it turned out he was like the head emperor of an alien planet that astral had set out to destroy?? he was the leader of a group of people and then blamed himself for their destruction?? he felt torn between his guilt/duty to his people and the new friendships he’d made with yuma and astral?? and he ended up deciding to go back to his alien emperor ways even though it pitted him against his friends which was hard but he had to make it up for the people he’d lost before?? but then he learned don thousand had been manipulating for a long long time and then faced against don thousand at yuma’s side een though he chose to turn his back on that friendship?? he didn’t let some fanfic choose his life for him??? he had shark drake??? there’s a lot of cool shit about shark and he’s got a lot of interesting shit going for him. i love a character that gets me to analyze what’s going on in their mind as they do certain things or make certain choices. i also love me a character who ends up getting/remembering magical powers. sorry shark astral’s in first but i still think shark’s neat too.

byron arclight!!! byron arclight! he’s not on the same level as astral and shark, but mAN i love byron arclight. he was constantly roasting everyone when he appeared and had some of the funniest dialogue in the entire series. anyone he looked at he’d be like “look aliens made me physically look like a child, my sons are taller and look older than me now, i couldn’t possibly give a shit about whatever your deal is.” he got super strong magic powers and used them to kidnap a small child. he became evil and told his sons to be evil with him because he was mad at dr faker, but they all kinda sucked at being evil and decided to be good guys instead by part 2. it’s honestly a shame the arclights didn’t appear in the series, especially part 2 (and especially byron, i’m p sure he appeared the least of the arclights) because i like them all actually. that episode where trey erased yuma’s like most important memories... dyson sphere... quattro telling off shark for dueling poorly while shark was sufferering the effects of POISON... what absolute legends. also byron had number 69.

yuma’s pretty cool, ended up being a more compelling character than i thought he would be. he’s a sweet kid, he’s annoyed initially by astral’s presence but he still helps astral with his quest to gather all the numbers anyway and he likes astral the more they hang out. that episode where yuma loses his memories because of trey really showed yuma’s pre-series development pretty well. yuma talks a lot and shouts the same few catchphrases a lot and it can get annoying, but there’s a lot more to yuma then that. at his core, he’s actually a pretty scared and lonely kid who doesn’t believe in himself, he looks at his current situation and goes “there’s no way i can win this duel there’s no point i might as well quit”. he’s not inherently upbeat and positive and self-confident like he usually appears. “feel the flow” is his source of strength, it’s what gets him going, gets him to believe in himself and inspires bravery in him. he’s actually one of the strongest people in the show for it, to be honest. his friends are so important to him, he cares about them so much and would do anything for them, even when his friends aren’t acting so friendly to him. even when his friends want conflicting things he tries his best to appease both sides. he becomes a voice of reason a lot in part 2, honestly. he kept voicing my thoughts and things i said throughout the season, which at times was really cathartic honestly. he kept challenging the status quo. why do we HAVE to do this, why can’t we find a compromise for THAT. he’s a good kid. i’m adopting him.

kite in part 1 is a cool Strong Opposition To The Number Hunt guy. he needs a glasses prescription but refuses to do anything about it and dies on the moon for it apparently, which i think is pretty funny of him. since he’s not astral he has to number hunt differently and the way he does it hurts people, but he’s only doing it because if he has all the numbers, then there might be a way to help his little brother who is suffering some big shit. his life literally revolves around his little brother who wants kite to just live his life for himself and be happy and have fun, to which kite replies “i don’t know how to do any of that”. relatable. eventually he realizes his dad is a dick. and beats him up until his dad says okay i’ll be good now. i won’t throw trash at astral world anymore i promise. kite’s hear to kick ass and take names and he runs out of names before he runs out of ass. but he gets new names by the time he runs out of ass so it’s okay. kite does some pretty fun stuff in part 1 and actually gives astral a run for his money which doesn’t happen often in part 1 so that’s pretty fun. also. his name is kite and his brother’s name is heart. dr faker is the worst at names but i’d expect that from someone who’s name is faker. it’s pretty funny, honestly

dumon is great. he’s a nice guy who is always trying to help out his friends. him first meeting shark and them pretty much despising each other and then realizing hmm maybe that other guy isn’t as obnoxious as i thought all before shark even realizes he’s nasch and nasch and dumon are like best friends? top-tier, def funny. after like that first meeting though dumon always came off as a nice guy. i like dumon. also, his dub voice actor voices dub yusaku and i was assigned yusaku by the government so i really appreciate that. he does a good job as yusaku. and honestly a good job at dumon, too. dumon is one of the best voices in the whole show. he’s great. i just think he’s neat

rio!!!! once rio wakes up, she’s great. you can tell like within an episode that she and shark are the kind of siblings that constantly snark at each other but would do literall anything for each other. shark tried to do anything he could to help her before she woke up, and rio stuck by his side no matter what in the barians vs astral conflict. the foreshadowing in that episode where she pretended she was knocked out like the rest of yuma’s friends but she really wasn’t!! within like a week of waking up she reveals shark can’t sleep in the dark and i think that he hates onions. she’s the picture of confidence, and it seems to come more naturally to her than yuma’s forced and learned confidence. she believes in herself for sure, she’s a great duelist and she knows it, she’s got that ice aesthetic that i love, she’s cute... i’m gonna go adopt shark and rio right now. she’s also fiercely protective of her friends. but she’s not afraid to tease them either! and she will do it! she’s unrepentantly herself and i love it. 

vector is funny. vector had some great lines in part 2. “ray shadows” was always predictably not what he seemed at first glance but that’s not a bad thing. just because i knew “ray shadows” was bad didn’t make the reveal of him being vector any less satisfying, honestly. that whole sequence of what happened when vector revealed himself was one of my favorite parts of the second half. vector constantly leading yuma into “the ray way” (usually a poor way), then after reealing himself talking about doing things the ray way, absolutely poetic. that reveal causing a huge shift in yuma and astral’s relationship, beautiful. did you just say the b word??? he also had funny lines. most major villains in zexal (byron and vector) were pretty funny honestly. neither of them were the ultimate antagonist which is fine, but probably the best humor in the series to me came from the major villains. it made them less intimidating, maybe, but it made them a lot more enjoyable to watch.  

number 96 looked like a dark version of astral, which is essentially what he was, but like, he literally looked like astral. but you know what? while astral’s ass was censored, number 96′s wasn’t censored in the slightest.  to this day i don’t understand why but this is so funny to me. 4k media really said astral wasn’t valid but number 96 was. 

there’s a lot of good stuff in zexal. and i enjoyed it! at the end of the day, that’s what i care about the most. doesn’t matter as much if something’s good or bad as much as if i’m enjoying it. and i enjoyed quite a bit of zexal. 

i did say it was my least favorite yugioh anime currently, however. which means there must be parts of this anime i didn’t like. so let’s get into the aspects of zexal i didn’t like. feel free to bail now if you’re not interested in that. i’m not interested in hurting any feelings or tarnishing anyone’s love for zexal. 

yikes

for what it’s worth, i like the first half a lot more than the second half. most of the problems i have with the first half are also present within the second half, but the second half has a lot of unique things i don’t like.

i know i said something doesn’t have to be good to be enjoyable. anyone can enjoy bad things. i enjoy plenty of bad things! look, i watch sword art online!! i’m no stranger to the concept. but a lot of things i didn’t like about zexal were just...too glaring for me to enjoy anway.

let’s start with cards.

i think xyz summoning should’ve been pronounced as x-y-z and not x-eez. i hated it from episode one and i am still holding to that.

i don’t like tori’s whole fairy cheerleader archetype. i don’t like the way they all look. these things were in arc v, too, and given to a slightly better character but i didn’t like these things in arc v and i don’t like these now. arc v gave me something to look forward to when i needed it most, i don’t say many bad things about it. but i hate these things in both series they were featured in. i think that says a lot. it’s the combo of the hair and the eyes. their hair is way too big. their eyes tend to look bad. it’s just not a great look.

the series started off with a very simple set of rules for number cards: number cards come from astral, and there are 100 of them (and only number cards can only destroy other number cards, which is less important here). the first half of zexal stuck to that prett well. the second half of zexal just laughed at the idea of rules and said i’mma break them. characters are suddenly given number cards that go over the number 100. all these characters are barians. and these cards didn’t come from astral. what the heck! you’re breaking rules left and right! and then don thousand comes out with his stupid imaginary number, and then two duels later yuma comes out with his own new number, future number zero. you’re breaking all the rules. you’re breaking all my trust in everything. you’ve stopped pretending there’s any sense of rules entirely and you’ve started making things up as you go. i don’t like that!! especially imaginary number and future number zero had basically no explanation as to where these things come from, how do these characters have these cards? it’s one thing when yuma comes out with a new gagaga card or something, that’s acceptable and makes plenty of sense, but the new number cards don’t. also, don thousand, yuma doesn’t know enough math to know what an imaginary number even is.

astral’s whole deck angers me. astral is one of the most important characters of the series, and you couldn’t bother to give him any non-xyz monsters. his whole deck is spells and traps. you gave tori, who only duels once and isn’t very good at it, her own whole archetype, but you couldn’t bother to think of a single monster to give astral. and even then, the only xyz monsters astral uses are utopia forms, (not including shark drake and galaxy-eyes, who were only brought out to serve as material for a utopia monster. this is the laziest deck in the whole series, and you gave it to a major protagonist. like, the second most important protagonist in the whole series. i get he only duels without yuma once, but dude. i hate this.

i also really don’t like that the only number yuma and astral use most of the time is utopia. i know utopia was the first one they had together and it’s popular and shit. but there are other numbers! other numbers yuma gains! that i would like to see him use! but instead the show just...keeps giving him new forms for utopia? for some reason? at least on one occasion one of yuma’s new forms has like the same exact ability as another number yuma has at the time. it’s infuriating. to me, at least. plenty of other characters only really use one number most of the time the duel, but most other characters only really have that one number and maybe another form of it or maybe two other forms. yuma doesn’t have that excuse. i’m not saying i never want him to use utopia ever. i just like variety. if you’re introducing the idea of collecting a lot of things, i wanna see those things used.

i hate don thousand’s dueling gimmicks most of all. he gets access to the numeron code and uses it to cheat in his duels, even though kite has it and zexal really gave the impression before this point that you needed to obtain the numeron code to use it, but don thousand’s just like, i fused earth and barian world and somehow i can use the numeron code now. ??????? no fucking sense. on top of that, his cards are super unbalanced. i could not stand watching this duel.

i don’t like the literally no excuse given of other characters besides yuma, the arclights maybe, and the barians maybe, the literally no excuse given for other characters suddenly being able to see astral. being able to see astral required either special powers or special circumstances but then at the end of part 1 going in to part 2 characters were just like “i can see astral now!!!” and that was the end of this and this was the stupidest laziest thing ever. dunno if this was a dub-only thing, maybe the sub explained it, but it really bothered me and still does.

i don’t think chaos was explained very well, at least in the dub, and i looked it up later on and know pretty much what it is now but when you introduce new concepts and ideas, please explain them to me or else i feel like there’s literally no rules to the universe and characters are just making things up as they go.

a lot of the time in the second half, astral is written really weirdly and, not as good. especially post-vector reveal. i’m not talking about any stubbornness on astral’s part because that’s who he is. part 2 starts going in and after a while of it already going, astral just comes in and explains things to yuma that astral definitely didn’t know before. i know astral starts out with almost no memories and regains them all throughout the series but i don’t think any of this like came right after astral regained some memory. the numeron code seems to come out of nowhere, and oh, by the way, this thing can rewrite the entire rules of the universe. it’s a race to see who gets the numeron code first! except, uh, kite ends up winning it i think but that ends up literally not mattering because don thousand and astral both finds ways to use it without even having it. so there wasn’t much of a point of a lot of the duels before the don thousand duel, huh. that’s a lot of time wasted. and apparently astral can use the numeron code after regaining all 100 numbers, but. i don’t remember when astral first introduced that fact and when he got all 100 numbers. but it only is relevant after the duel against nasch and astral only makes any attempt to use the numeron code then. i don’t even know how he got the numeron code after that duel anyway. kite had it and he died on the moon. don thousand could use it without actually having it but then he was defeated. was astral always able to use it without actually having it like don thousand? why didn’t he does this before, then? everything related to the numeron code is vague and explained poorly and every time the numeron code comes up someone makes up some new bullshit thing related to the numeron code and i hate it. i hate the stupid numeron code.

back on track with astral. there’s other stuff besides the numeron code he seemed to know about without any real explanation. i do not remember a lot of them. besides the numeron code. i think i repressed the rest of out of annoyance. i think the worst astral was written was right before his duel with yuma. i get that astral intended to use the duel to help yuma and not hurt him. but he could’ve accomplished this without being an entire jackass. yuma’s mourning the loss of friends that he’s also blaming himself for. and then astral decides to resolve that by telling yuma that astral’s gonna go kill a bunch more people and yuma can’t stop him? that’s uh, not helping anything astral. you had other options to get yuma to duel (while yuma was in a state of not wanting to duel ever again) rather than telling yuma more people are about to die. the point of the whole duel was to remind yuma how to have fun in duels. but uh. when you put a bunch of lives at risk like that after a bunch of people just died, that’s not a great way to introduce fun. yuma promised astral to duel against him before astral left earlier on in the series! you had other options! astral acts like he doesn’t have other options but he literally does! there’s stupid stuff like this astral does earlier in the second half but i have forgotten the details. i get astral’s an alien who’s pretty socially awkward and doesn’t get earth people super well, but b the end of the series he certainly should understand them a little better, or at least, he should understand yuma pretty well, after hanging out with yuma literally all the time. it’s stupid! astral’s better than all this! there’s no way this is the fault of dub writing! unless 4k media made entirely new animation for multiple episodes. like. of the entire episode. 

there were multiple times in the second half i didn’t understand character motivations in certain events at all and had to really come up with my own weird headcanons to make sense of it. this is probably largely a result of dub writing.

i wish the arclights were more relevant in the second half. most of all they did was watch things happen. they’re cool and powerful give them something to do.

kite felt extremely pointless in the second half of zexal. he was given a clear character direction to go after the first half and basically abandoned it the second the second half started. he had this pointless rivalry with mizar that only ever felt relevant when they dueled each other on the moon to get the numeron code. kite realizes he needs glasses. he wins the duel. and then he fucking dies somehow. and everyone else gets access to the numeron code. it’s all really stupid and makes no sense. i wouldn’t care about him not being as narratively important as yuma, shark and astral. kite’s not from astral world, kite’s not from barian world, and he doesn’t have any partnership with anyone from either world. at most, he thinks astral’s neat now. but they keep dragging along this stupid rivalry between mizar and kite that literally amounted to “my galaxy-eyes dragon is better than your galaxy-eyes dragon”, these two idiots dueled about it multiple times, and it was just pointless. it ate up too much time. i could feel myself aging. the second half of zexal had enough filler episodes that made me want to tear my hair out without this stuff.

i hate mizar so much. he’s probably my second least favorite character in the series. all mizar EVER does is duel kite over who has a cooler galaxy-eyes dragon, which isn’t even a question because kite’s is cooler and he had it long before mizar ever showed up which at most makes mizar a copier idiot. the most relevant thing mizar does is duel kite on the moon for the numeron code, but i’ve been over that. you could take mizar out without changing much. he’s by far the least interesting barian emperor. mizar is more annoying than kite ever was, and is more annoying than the other barian emperors ever were. and yet mizar lives longer than pretty much every barian emperor except nasch. he got the honor of being written out of existence by don thousand himself. radical. cool. get him out of my sight. i can’t stand him.

there’s a point where there’s a number shown on baby vector. i really wanted to know what was up with that and how it was relevant. this was never explained at all. i’m gonna assume this was don thousand altering vector’s memories or something and move on and never address it again because this show just did and said so many things without explaining any of it whatsoever. this stuff needs established rules and explanations. otherwise it just feels like everythings made up on the fly, it’s all completely random shit with not much planning behind it, that the writers don’t care...it feels insulting. i had this same issue with the infinity stones in the marvel cinematic universe. this is not something i just don’t like because it happened in zexal. i like knowing things.

so if mizar’s my second least favorite, who’s my least favorite character overall? i’ll tell you who

tori fucking meadows.

tori. geez. has there ever been a worse character? yes, mineta from my hero academia exists. but what exactly is tori’s crime? what has she done to make me dislike her so much. well, nothing. ‘nothing?’ yes. she didn’t do anything. but at the same time, she didn’t do anything. my problem with her is she literally does nothing, she barely has any sort of relevance to anything, and she’s annoying. i’m very serious. there’s only two things she’s ever done: she got possessed by a barian emperor to duel against yuma once, and there was that time she challenged yuma to a fashion contest, which was a little entertaining. those are the only things she’s ever done. and yet, somehow, she finds her way into every single episode. it is rare for an episode to go by without her. well, if she’s in so many episodes, surely she must be doing something of importance? nah. her only purpose is to cheer yuma on when he’s discouraged and to get distressed when yuma looks like he’s in a bad spot. this is not a joke. this is not an exaggeration. there are entire episodes where her only dialogue is “(sad voice) Yuma...! Astral...!” i constantly forget she’s there and then the show reminds me she’s there and i get mad because she doesn’t do anything. it’s either be sad about duel going well for yuma, or tori going “yuma you can do it” and yuma going “YEAH YOU’RE RIGHT THANKS TORI”. yeah, she doesn’t even give good motivational speeches, she just says the laziest most generic thing possible, and yuma just cheers himself up anyway because that’s usually what he does anyway. there’s not point to her being there. oh, and she got to be the damsel of distress once to convince yuma to duel. that’s great. lovely. that’s definitely not shady/shifty as hell. all girls are only good for fueling boys’ pain and suffering, right. 

but lemme ask this. let’s replace tori with a very pretty lamp for the entire series. how much of the show would change? and honestly? it’d mostly be just like, bits and pieces of three episodes. she’s literally just taking up space. she doesn’t need to duel to be relevant and do meaningful things. maybe she could do more to help yuma convince astral that blowing up barian world is a bad idea, maybe she’s able to come up with the right words where yuma isn’t. maybe she catches on that something’s wrong with shark before shark switches sides, she doesn’t have to convince him not to and i’d rather she didn’t but she can be an uninvolved person to listen and tell shark it’s not an easy choice for sure but she supports him whatever he does and she’s sure whatever he chooses will be the right choice for him. maybe she could get astral some fashionable clothes. i don’t know! she could actually do something! i’m not asking much here i just want her to be something besides a generic love interest (gross) or a generic supporter with generic advice (annoying).

a lot of yuma’s friend group have similar similar issues, but at least they have parts to play. bronk’s probably the best written of the bunch in part 1 before he dissolves into randomly in love with rio taking over his entire life (gross). cathy honestly is better than average too. rio is exempt from this paragraph because she doesn’t spend too much time in the friend group before bailing to her past life which is valid. yuma starts out with only bronk and tori for friends but he gains a lot of friends during the number hunt. most of these friends were possessed by numbers and yuma befriended them afterwards because ultimately his goal is to have fun and make friends by dueling. but they all stick around and don’t not hang out with him and don’t do much after yuma helps them. yuma has way too many friends that he drags around with him everywhere, and then some combination of the arclights, shark, kite, vector, and rio is often there as well. It’s way too many people and no wonder most of them never do anything because often all the things that could be done are taken. Most of these kids need to stop following Yuma everywhere. For the most part, they’re all annoying, too. I really only care for Bronk and Cathy.

i get it. the protagonist always has friends that are ride or die and help them out no matter what. i get it. but there was never this many constantly around, often times they’d switch around each other if anything, and they always all were either relevant to the plot or played good important roles in helping the protagonist, and they always had development. i think the most development any of yuma’s friend group (ignoring brinks negative development) had was cathy’s hatred of dogs getting a bit less intense. flip’s literally a shitty dude who cheats and yuma told him “hey maybe be less shitty next time” a couple of times and flip said “sure” each time but then never put any effort into being better and just kept being shitty towards other people. caswell just...reiterates what’s happening half the time ans starts literally every sentence with “in the end”. all they’re good for is filler and zexal has really bad filler. they’re not good for anything. they should’ve showed up less at least after the heartland tournament arc if not sooner. i get that the whole thing is to show that yuma wants to make friends through duels but this is unnecesasary and eats up time that could be better spent on other characters who actually do things and who actually are relevant and develop and stuff. the protagonist’s friend group was never this annoying before zexal and it never was after zexal either. when they all got sent to barian world and stopped showing up for like ten episodes i almost finally new peace if those ten episodes weren’t like some of the worst content zexal had to offer.

there’s a lot of pointless boring uneventful unnecessary hetero shit all over the show, too. obviously, the whole deal with yuma and tori, while yuma really has no interest in romance at all and tori can’t take a fucking hint and then somehow the last episode decides to make them start dating for some reason. bronk falls for rio (understandable) and then in a filler episode asks for shark’s permission to date her (gross), shark misunderstands what bronk’s asking and is like “if you wanna deal with me or rio you gotta beat yuma in a duel first”, bronk gets it in his head that means yuma likes rio and duels yuma over rio (gross) and this is all supposed to be a funny whole series of events but it’s not funny and it’s kinda gross actually. orbital and lillybot!! yikes!! i don’t like orbital anyway. lillybot is amazing and great. the show decides to assign lillybot female (tori just says lillybot’s a girl and we’re supposed to take tori’s word for it i guess) so obviously the assigned male robot and the assigned female robot have to date, right! they MUST like each other because he was a boy robot, she was a girl robot, can i make it any more obvious. it’s annoying and stupid. they have kids!!! they have kids for some reason!!! why do they have kids!!!!! zexal never interact with me about romance again.

the girls in this show really get the shit end of the stick, huh. i feel really bad for them. obviously we have tori. who was there the whole time but really didn’t do anything except be generically sad or generically positive. cathy’s a little better than that. she has a bit more personality going for her. she likes cats, she makes cat puns, she duels a dog, she did get possessed by a number... she’s got a few things going for her, but she doesn’t do much either. she doesn’t do anything worth noting in the tournament in heartland, she barely does anything of note related to the barian emperors or don thousand. so that’s not much better. rio probably got the best treatment of any of the girls in zexal. she is a major player in the second half of zexal, being one of the barian emperors. she’s got a very strong personality and did plenty of important things. she helped her and her brother deal with the barian emperors before realizing she was one herself, she reclaimed her title of barian emperor and tried to kick vector’s ass. rio and shark brought a lot of life to each other. she revealed her brother’s need to sleep with a nightlight and she was allowed to be good at dueling! but also, she spend the entire first half of the show in a coma. she wasn’t allowed to have any part in the show before astral and the barian emperors did their thing. so in a way, rio also got the worst treatment, too. discounting rio, though, i think the girl who got the worst of it was actually kari.

i know, i know. kari’s an investigator, a journalist! she’s always after a scoop, she’s always looking after yuma, and she deals with old friends/enemies. she’s not just some generic friend like tori, she’s not in a coma like rio! kari’s great! and i love her! but this isn’t just about girls not getting to do things that matter or girls not getting to have personalities. this goes in a bit different direction than that. she wanted to go out and explore with her dad, just like yuma did, but her parents always brushed her aside and made her do more “girly” things because “girls can’t do what yuma and your dad are doing”! she didn’t get a wole lot of agency in her own life. her parents all but told her that yuma was more important than her, that he had this big destiny related to dueling and that all she was good for was watching out for yuma and making sure he was okay because she’s his older sister. and then both her parents disappeared! and she was just left with that! she grew to hate dueling, to push yuma away from it because their parents basically told her yuma would be in danger because of dueling. which is a totally understandable reaction to your parents telling you that out of seemingly nowhere! except the show doesn’t treat it that way. the show puts her in the wrong for not liking dueling! because everyone has to like dueling kari!! how dare you not like card games. how dare you have any interest in anything else. i’m surprised she’s not more bitter towards her parents for this whole fiasco. she just gets slammed into a caretaker role because girls can only be love interests or caretakers! (tori, cathy, and rio were all set up as love interests at least one time or another, while yuma would rather eat another hot dog than deal with that) but honestly, she does her best to do what her parents told her: take care of yuma during his big dangerous dueling destiny. she watches out for him, she tries to steer him clear of the thing that’s supposed to be dangerous for him. and as a journalist she has to be constantly up to date on current events and happenings, so if something happens that might endanger yuma with his big dangerous dueling destiny, kari’ll probably be on of the first people to know about it in all of heartland. that’s not to say that’s not the only reason she took up the profession. she definitely seems passionate about what she does, she takes it seriously, i’m sure she does actually like being a journalist, but it does help with yuma, too. her parents basically forced her life to go exactly one way. and that’s not shown in a bad light against her parents! if anything, the show basically acts like it’s kari’s fault for not being happy about it every second. all this while yuma gets to be whoever he wants to be and do what he wants to do their whole childhood, he gets a lot more freedom than kari for sure. yuma got the childhood kari wanted and she’s not allowed to grieve what she could’ve had. because it’s not just “kari’s parents forced her into a very specific role for her life and gave her no choice in any of it”. that can actually be a really cool thing to explore. i love chazz princeton! kari has plenty in common with chazz! but i don’t like this setup like this. chazz got to be right about being bitter about what his brothers did to him, about breaking away from them and living life the way he wanted to. but making kari’s parents the right ones in this whole situation is just kinda gross and disgusting. if you’re gonna frame it like that don’t bother. cannot stand the “your parents are always right” sort of shit.

speaking of? goddamn i hate kazuma. i hate yuma and kari’s dad. i would say he’s the worst dad in all of yugioh, but he didn’t start an interdimensional war, so we’ll say he’s the second worst dad in all of yugioh. ...if i tie dr kogami with leo, but either way, leo, dr kogami, and kazuma are the top 3.

how can kazuma be in the top 3?? with leo and dr kogami?? leo and dr kogami are evil villains!! kazuma’s not a bad guy! he helped give yuma more self-confidence! he wanted peace between astral world and barian world!

first of all, if you skipped the paragraph related to kari, go back and read it. it’s required reading for the “why kazuma sucks” portion of our program tonight. okay good, you read it. here’s more reasons why kazuma’s a pretty sucky dad.

this here is a bullshit man.

kazuma had good intentions, i think. he wanted to be a good dad but intentions don’t really mean a damn thing when you look at the results.

pre-zexal, kazuma tsukumo knew about yuma’s destiny and told kari about it. how did he know this? how did he figure this out? that’s a good question. i have no idea why he knows about yuma’s destiny, or how he knows about it. the wiki just says he “showed great intelligence and foresight”, whatever that means. my best guess is that honestly? once kazuma saw what was happening in astral world, he created yuma’s destiny himself. he gave the key to yuma, and then he fucked with astral’s shit so that astral would meet yuma. yeah, kazuma looked at everything going on and was like “i’ll put it on my 12 year old son to save three worlds at the same time! what could go wrong”, and told kari about it beforehand and was like “lol kari can’t do it she’s a girl so i’ll just decide her entire life for her a different way”

uh, clearly yuma was not emotionally capable of dealing with the shit kazuma pulled him into. yuma was ready to never duel again because dueling killed his friends. and then kazuma talks to astral about the whole thing and is weirdly smug about the whole thing related to yuma’s lost friends and lost love for dueling. so like...was that part of your plan or not? do you give a shit about your son’s feelings regarding your whole plan for his life or not? 

after yuma falls into a portal in the hell dimension he ends up being a prisoner on astral world. which was definitely not explained well in the dub. but he and his wife just hang out freely and openly in remote parts of astral world so he sure as shit doesn’t look like a prisoner. and while he’s there he certainly looks like there’s no place he’d rather be. wait, his wife? how did she get in astral world? that’s a good fucking question and i sure would love to know. i guess she’s not allowed to exist outside her relationship with kazuma.

after kazuma is stuck in astral world, everyone thinks he’s dead for a while, but then when everyone finds out he was alive, he’s treated as this all-knowing projection/recorded hologram who is always right about everything. he always has all the answers and if we don’t know what to do about something then kazuma definitely knows! and after he appears to die he can sometimes appear to people somehow, how he can do that is never explained well at least in the dub, and there are arbitrary conditions to it also never explained in the dub. he can appear in the emperor’s key. he only really seems to do this once to have a weird conversation with astral, and then he also...was able to help vetrix make a barrier during yuma and nasch’s duel, somehow? i mean, i get tron’s whole thing, but kazuma, not so much? if he can appear to astral and vetrix why does he never try to connect with yuma? i’m guessing he probably can’t appear to yuma directly but he never tries to leave a message with astral either. he has these arbitrary weird abilities never explained well (in the dub, at least) and it feels like he’s playing calvinball to make himself seem like a hero or something.

honestly, everthing about yuma’s dad being seemingl dead but still alive, creating his son’s destiny and being this vague benevolent being who is always right and is never allowed to be seen in a bad light related to the consequences to his kids for his meddling, it all seems familiar....

that’s right! it all comes back to sonic!! once again i am literally unable to talk about anything without bringing up sonic, i always bring everything back to sonic!!!

i explained this all a lot better a year ago so i will let myself speak i guess

obviously kazuma isn’t as bad of a person as locke the echidna, not nearly as bad, but there’s parallels, anyway.

so if you agree that yuma is the old comics knuckles of yugioh, if you look at the bad dads section of this article (in case you think i wrote it for some reason, which i didn’t, thankskenpenders did) you can understand why locke is a horrible dad, and looking at the similarties pointed out between locke and kazuma (again, locke is a much worse father than kazuma) you can understand more why i hate kazuma.

so, yeah. i can go on and on about all the things i don’t like zexal. the writing is sometimes sexist and lazy, there’s way too many characters hanging out with the protagonist and most of them have nothing to offer. sometimes things just don’t get explained, or are barely explained. it’s a big ol’ game of calvinball sometimes. and i am aware and accept that some of this is the fault of the dub writers. but there’s also a lot of good things i like about zexal! astral, shark, and yuma were all written really well! there were some really cool monsters in this show! there were some moments of good jokes! the show had good messages and a lot of characters had complex motivations you can sympathize with even if you don’t agree with what they’re doing. this show was very good at being yugioh. and it’s a pretty good show in my book. i enjoyed watching it! it just doesn’t happen to be my favorite yugioh. or like. anything but my least faorite yugioh. but that’s okay. really, the most important thing with watching a show isn’t how well it’s written, how good the visuals are, or anything like that, the most important thing is whether you enjoyed it. and i enjoyed it!

i enjoyed watching yugioh zexal.

if you followed me through my journey watching the anime, thank you. i appreciate it.

this isn’t the end of my journey through zexal. i intend to read the manga too, so when i do get to that, if i end up wanting to post any screenshots or anthing i’ll be using the same tag. that’s sure to be an interesting journey as well.

but anyway. if you read this entire post, thank you. this is over 8,000 words long, damn. 

[utopianparadoxist]

What’s your thoughts on all the Viz and Homestuckdotcom stuff

Mainly, I’m sad about the fine folks at WP who lost their jobs. I’m concerned about Hiveswap, too, but not the way most of the fandom seems to be.

Just to be clear, I don’t have any special insight or anything. Everything I’m about to say is wildly speculatory, but well, so is pretty much all of the doomsaying already out here. I don’t really think all is lost, so if I can provide any comfort, I may as well offer my perspective.

Let’s break this down, because a lot of facts are getting mixed in with people making assumptions. Here’s what happened yesterday:

1) Cohen and Shelby tweeted that they were looking for work. That’s not an official statement on anything, but combined with WP’s branding being removed from the Hiveswap website and Poinko and James leaving, things certainly look bad for WP.

2) On the same day, VIZ launched the new version of the Homestuck website, with a redesign meant to render the comic more accessible--particularly for mobile users--and start future proofing the parts of the comic made on technology that is soon being rendered obsolete and largely unusable, like Flash.

These two things don’t seem innately related. Viz hasn’t done anything except update/future proof the website, which I already expected from the partnership. They also released a news post alluding to new stuff being on the way, which sounds like an update on the epilogue Hussie said he was working on with them. 

Even so, the overall look of the move has the fandom crying foul because they suspect VIZ is instigating some sort of corporate takeover. And while I think it’s good to be careful, I just don’t see the evidence for that yet.

I’m wary of corporate overlords, so I’ve sort of worried about VIZ along those lines before. And that is a risk I am continuing to look out for. But if I was worried about corporate censorship/manipulation of Homestuck, the only thing I’d immediately worry about is the LGBT stuff.And for a corporation, Viz’s track record on LGBT stuff is fairly solid.They’re in charge of re-dubbing the Sailor Moon anime, and have garnered positive press for NOT censoring the LGBT stuff the original dub did. They’ve published some LGBT manga. They’re not an LGBT corporation or anything, but their track record veers positive, is all I’m saying.

I can’t really think of what else they’d mess with. I’ve heard of them censoring religious imagery, and Homestuck does deal in some heavy spiritual/mythological themes, but I definitely wouldnt say anything in the comic is overtly religious.

More to the point, if they were going to mess with the actual comic, I don’t see why they wouldn’t have done so now, while they were doing the redesign. And while we’re at it, I should mention its questionable that VIZ actually has control over Homestuck’s actual IP.

The Homestuck website is copyrighted to Viz *and* Homestuck itself, which is the legal entity I’d expect holds all the actual creative rights. That probably wouldn’t matter if VIZ wanted to just strongarm Hussie with lawyers, though-- billion dollar corporations are dangerous that way.

I’m just saying, I don’t know that having partial control of the site at all implies Hussie just “handed off” creative control to VIZ. That seems like a wild assumption.

Also an assumption is the idea that VIZ “fired” WP so that they could develop the game themselves, which...I don’t really buy at all right now. Its not clear to me that VIZ has the expertise, manpower, or even interest in developing Hiveswap themselves.

Again, I am not claiming to have facts here. This is just an alternate line of fandom speculation. Please, for the love of fuck, don’t treat me like an expert. But here’s how things look from my perspective.

Because VIZ is largely a soulless corporation, the only motivation I can confidently ascribe to them is the one all companies have: making money.And Hiveswap doesn’t exactly seem like it sold gangbusters, honestly.

@sometipsygnostalgic has noted how lackluster the advertising for the game was, and its true they seemed to be relying on word of mouth and hype to get the game sold. That doesn’t seem to have happened.

I find it hard to believe VIZ would watch this commercial flop unfold, and come out of it thinking its best move is to invest MORE money in the endeavor. Corporations don’t typically respond to market failure by doubling down on their investments, just in general.

But more to the point, I don’t see that VIZ has a clear route to do so. The company only JUST involved itself in narrative driven indie games-- and it’s involved itself as a publisher, NOT a developer. It partnered with two developers that we currently know of: 1) Rose City Games, the devs of The World Next Door, and until now, 2) What Pumpkin.

Rose City Games looks a lot like WP, staff-wise--it seems to be a small indie team of about a dozen and a half people, working on their first game. They’ve done some organizational work and stuff like that, but nothing that suggests to me that they’d be prepared or willing to just...take on Hiveswap in WP’s stead.

And there IS NO IN-HOUSE GAME DEV STUDIO at Viz. It doesn’t exist. Making Hiveswap themselves would mean building one, just like WP had to, and I don’t see why they’d want to take the risk with the less than promising results of Act 1.

While it’s possible this is some kind of takeover situation, that is a big IF to me right now. VIZ would be making some legit hard business decisions in pursuing that maneuver, and it’s not clear they’re going to. I think its at least as possible that development on the game is simply canceled, or ideally, frozen until there's enough funds to actually pay people.

That last point is what I think fans should focus on. IF it’s a matter of simple lack of funs forcing What Pumpkin to close doors because there isn't, uh, the money to friggin pay people, then...there’s probably hope.

Like I said, VIZ did just allude to more news coming. IF whatever they’re working on with Hussie is good/interesting enough to, say, get new people reading Homestuck, then all of a sudden the comic would be drawing new interest while also advertising to incoming readers about...Hiveswap, which is now advertised for on the web-site through pop up ads.

Kind of invasive? Sure. But word of mouth didn’t get the game sold, so if some old-fashioned advertising does and Hiveswap/Homestuck collectively start collecting enough hype and profit that the staff of WP can be rehired, I won’t complain.

All in all, I’ll just say we’ll have a much better idea of what this partnership between Hussie and VIZ looks like--and what VIZ’s intent is--once we see some actual content they’ve produced together. I suggest the fandom wait it out to see what this Epilogue is, and what kind of content might be coming after.

With any luck, that wait will only last until 4/13.

[yeonchi]

2020: Red Pill Year

At the end of every year, I write up a post to sum up what I did this year and share my (controversial) opinions of the year’s current affairs. My original plan was for this to be part of my end-of-year review post, but since it started getting long, I decided to split it into two posts. In this post, I’m going to be talking about current affairs; my wrap-up of the year will come in another post to be released on New Year’s Eve.

I’ve experienced a lot through my ten years on social media, but the events of the last four years (since graduating high school) have changed me a lot and led me to take the red pill on a few things. I suspect that being sheltered and isolated from society for at least 20 years contributed to some of my feelings and opinions.

From this point on, I’m going to be giving my opinions on current affairs, and I’ve been really looking forward to writing this given the year that we’ve had. Everything that’s happened feels like a perfect storm that if you were to go back in time and warn people of what would happen in 2020, you would be labelled a conspiracy theorist. Because I have a lot of things to talk about, I’ve split them up into sections under headings.

Let me warn you now, some of the things I’ll be saying will be controversial and there may be a few censored slurs in this. I’ve also peppered a few jokes here and there, so if you don’t get them, that’s on you. You are free to stop reading here, but if you decide to keep reading and you want to discuss anything about what I’ve said, I’ll only accept comments from people who have the ability to debate calmly without resorting to insults or are open-minded about their views. I have no time for idiots or brainlets.

My justification for using the n-word

I feel like I should address this before I go on. In January 2017, I shared an infamous Chris Rock sketch from 1996 where he decries African-American people whose actions spoil other peoples’ impressions of their community by acting in a criminal or stereotypical manner. As an Asian of Chinese ethnicity with family from Hong Kong, I have to admit that I’ve used the n-word (both soft-a and hard-r versions) to decry the actions of mainland Chinese people whose actions taint my view of them, or the stupidity of politicians in Hong Kong. I even started another page just so people on my news feed didn’t have to read some of the toxic shit I had to say.

Later that year, some gaijin bitch I was having a feud with found that page and reported every post where I said the n-word (that page barely had any fans, btw), which led me to be postblocked three times. He only agreed to stop when I called him out for being an asshole and told him to kill himself (like iDubbbz did Keemstar).

From that point on, I resolved to be less hateful online and one thing that I did was to stop using the n-word. However, the news that followed in the years after that made me realise that in insight, I was somehow correct in my justification and that the other guy was, whether intentional or not, being pro-China. The current climate of the internet, where censorship is rampant and people have a tendency to overreact to things that aren’t as much a problem as they think, has discouraged me from talking about current affairs like I used to and led me to doing so in these yearly posts instead.

“BUT YoU Can't USe THE N-Word, tHAT's oUr woRD” Shut the fuck up. Either everyone can say that word or nobody should be allowed to say that word (in any of its forms). This includes black people. iDubbbz’s Content Cop on Tana Mongeau made me realise this concept of gatekeeping over words because some people “own” the word or want to “take it back” is bullshit and dare I say, racist. The n-word has been used in songs and non-black people are known to listen to them, so how would you stop them from singing the word when it comes up?

In Chinese, the n-word translates to “black ghost”, but I prefer to define it as “black-hearted ghost” in order to cover “black-hearted” people of any race.

The homophobic f-slur (not to be mistaken for the f-word) is also a word of contention, particularly because of its initial usage on 4chan as an insult, which began to spread to the rest of the internet from about 2014 onwards. In my opinion, there’s not as much uproar over the f-slur compared to the n-word, particularly nowadays when there are more pressing things to be worried about.

If you keep reading on, you’ll get to see how angry I feel about certain things, particularly in some topics where I make reference to the n-word.

Coronavirus

Naming and pandemic management

In January, we were still dealing with fires that were burning various regions of Eastern Australia. I was on a cruise ship (not Princess Cruises) coming back to Sydney from New Zealand when I heard that biosecurity officials were starting to screen flights coming from Wuhan. Near the end of 2019, I had heard inklings of SARS-like pneumonia cases coming from Wuhan on Facebook pages about Hong Kong. Before we knew it, the coronavirus had become a worldwide pandemic.

The term “COVID-19″ was coined in February to describe the pneumonia caused by the virus, which was coined “SARS-CoV-2”. To be honest, I’m not fond of the terms “COVID” or “COVID-19” because even though it does make sense when you think about it (Coronavirus disease 2019), I honestly believe that this was an act of political correctness by the WHO and China to protect people’s “feelings” by obscuring the fact that the first cases of the coronavirus were found in Wuhan, putting the blame on other countries for creating the virus and brushing off the effect that this virus has had on the people of Wuhan, China and the world. Therefore, I believe that the virus started in Wuhan until there is proof beyond all reasonable doubt that the virus came from somewhere else. Pro-democracy supporters in Hong Kong and Taiwan still refer to it as the “Wuhan pneumonia” (武漢肺炎) because of these reasons whereas officials and pro-establishment supporters refer to it by its politically correct name (新型肺炎/新冠肺炎). I’ve referred to it as the “Wuhan coronavirus” once at the start of the year, but I just refer to it as “coronavirus” now. Frankly, it would have been better if we all just called it SARS 2.0. Given “SARS-CoV-2″, it makes sense. Hell, I’d even call it the “n-word f-slur virus” after iDubbbz’s favourite compound slur, but I digress. For the record, I’m not too keen on Trump naming it the “China virus” over “Wuhan virus” or any other name.

This wasn’t the main thing that pissed me off about the WHO, however. Taiwan had managed to manage the epidemic quite well early on, which only resulted in 7 people dying (since May 2020) whereas the virus is still rampant in the US and Europe at the time of writing. In an interview with Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward on 28 March, he awkwardly denied to respond to comments regarding Taiwan’s management of the epidemic and whether the WHO would consider giving them membership. Later, on 8 April, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom claimed that he was subjected to racial abuse coming from Taiwan.

If I could use the n-word to describe China, its government and the people who support them, then the WHO are a bunch of n-word-lovers, which is really ironic given that a literal n-word like Tedros is running the fucking WHO. I’m sick of Taiwan being portrayed as the underdog by China and n-word-lover countries breaking ties with Taiwan in favour of China. And frankly, a fucking crybaby like Tedros deserves all the racial abuse he gets for that allegation about Taiwan.

I don’t deny that the WHO has done good for the world over the years, but when it came to the coronavirus, it’s like they’ve been deliberately trying to appease China. China’s initial management of the coronavirus has been less than ideal, which is why I still point the blame at them for allowing the pandemic to get to where it is now (apparently they did similar things back during SARS, but I digress). I suspect that there have been more cases and deaths in China than what has been reported, but since many countries have had more cases and deaths than China at this point, I truly believe that we shouldn’t be pointing fingers until the pandemic has been suppressed.

Racism

Moving onto coronavirus racism now and dear god, I wish Asians living in Western countries would just shut the fuck up about coronavirus racism and check their privilege. As an Asian living in a Western country (ironic, I know), it honestly bugs me how much I see Asians crying and playing the victim card (particularly on NextAsian, whose audience is the Asian-American community) when I haven’t experienced as much racial abuse from other people in my life (probably because I haven’t been going outside as much during lockdown, let alone before). Look, yes, I’m not denying that racism still exists, but people need to understand that changing attitudes in society have led to cases of racism falling over the years and there are Asians living in Asian countries who are probably more oppressed than your house being graffitied or a Karen at the supermarket calling you “coronavirus”. If you call out someone for doing or saying something racist, like making squinty eyes in a photo or being white and selling Asian food at their restaurant (particularly if the comment or action is not directed at you), then you’re just taking someone else’s problem and making it yours. People need to learn to mind their own fucking business.

I remember arriving at the train station on my way to uni one time and hearing a man ranting about “fucking Japs” as he walked past. The comment wasn’t directed at me (I’m not Japanese btw), he didn’t make eye contact with me and I don’t recall him coming back or saying anything else either, so I just let it go. In short, it’s not just Westerners or the media who needs to change their attitudes of racial perception. Much as I hate to say it, Asians living in the West need to change their attitudes as to how they deal with racism. Here’s a tip - just say “ok cracker” and move on.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree that Chinese people shouldn’t be blamed for starting or spreading the coronavirus. But were Middle Eastern people blamed for starting or spreading MERS back in 2012? No, they weren’t (or at least I haven’t heard anything about it because racists were still worried about Muslims being terrorists). This comes back to my complaint about political correctness in naming the virus and my point that we shouldn’t be pointing fingers until we have the pandemic under control.

Lockdowns

Taking a look at lockdowns now and as I said, the lockdown has given me a good excuse to do a lot of things as a NEET that I would have doubts doing otherwise. I’ve been trying to find a job for years with no luck and right now, I’m on the cusp of getting one, which is why I’m aiming to finish my personal project by the end of next year. Weekly hotpots and takeaways became staples for my family during the lockdown and because of that, I hope to get back to the gym soon, as the one I go to is right in the city and I still have a lot of unused visits on a pass I bought at the start of the year (if I had known things were going to end up like this, I probably would have forgone gym for the year).

As a university student, I can say that I dodged a bullet, because there was a risk that Grade 6 and Year 12 students would not be able to attend their graduation ceremonies. I had planned on doing two additional subjects this year in addition to the one I still had left, but the lockdown quashed those plans and I decided to end it there. To be honest, it could have been worse. Someone on CUHK Secrets who was born in 1997 was talking about how they were unable to attend their graduation ceremonies because of various factors; they couldn’t attend their kindergarten graduation in 2003 because of SARS, they couldn’t attend their primary school graduation in 2009 because of swine flu, they couldn’t attend their secondary school graduation in 2015 due to bad timing, they couldn’t attend their undergrad ceremony in 2019 because of the protests, and they couldn’t attend their masters ceremony this year because of the coronavirus.

There have been a lot of people who were affected by the lockdowns, whether it be losing their jobs, businesses or loved ones before they got a chance to see them among others. The lockdowns have particularly made an impact in Melbourne, where the second wave has led to compulsory face masks, a nightly curfew and a “ring of steel” with regional Victoria. My sympathies go out to everyone affected and I want to say that if there was an easier way for us to get through lockdown, maybe by allowing people to see loved ones out of our travel zones, then we would probably have taken it. People advocating against lockdowns and people advocating for or defending lockdowns are two ends of the spectrum; if we tried to find a middle ground, then we would probably have gaps through which more cases could come in. I don’t doubt that the lockdown has helped get the numbers down and allowed us to get back to normal quicker, but I wish that there would have been a way for people to see their dying loved ones in person. Are lockdowns a conspiracy to get us to stay at home? I disagree. I’m pretty sure that even evil overlords would want us to get back to buying and consuming things as soon as possible, though maybe I’m being a bit too optimistic.

Hong Kong

The situation in general

Taking a look at the situation in Hong Kong over the past year and everything that’s happened just proved my opinions right. Protests aside, the way that they have managed the coronavirus has been subpar to the point that they are now dealing with a fourth wave when Melbourne has just managed to overcome the second wave. The situation is more precarious in Hong Kong not only because of population density (there are lots of residential high-rise flats there), but also because they’ve been through SARS, bird flu and swine flu before. The main reason why we’re in this situation is because not only did the government not close the border to mainland China, but the exceptions they imposed were too lenient that they were allowing people to come (back) into Hong Kong without having to observe 14 days quarantine. And on top of that, they’re offering $5000 HKD subsidies to positive cases in an effort to encourage the lower class to get tested, like that isn’t going to lead to people purposefully trying to contract the virus just to get their hands on that money, given the mentality of these people. At least other countries have guidelines and strict criteria with their subsidies.

It’s interesting that this perfect storm and the protests that started it all were a result of a cuck patrolling a thot, the thot’s mother going to a pro-Beijing party to seek justice and the government exploiting this whole situation to push the extradition law, then exploiting the chaos caused by the protests to push the national security law before throwing the thot’s mother away like a used condom. Nice to know that incels and MGTOWs have the power to change society, but not in the way they would probably want it.

Jokes aside, there have been so many things that have happened over the last 18 months that it would be impossible for me to state them all, like boomers wearing white clothes lynching young people wearing black clothes (KKK vibes, anyone), riot police entering a train station and attacking everyone inside and the police siding with boomers, gangsters and the government against young people. More recently, there’s the 12 young people who were arrested at sea as part of a government conspiracy to get them arrested in Chinese waters, the saga over the pro-democracy politicians resigning en masse and all the police shit that’s still going on.

I don’t blame anyone who has decided to leave Hong Kong because of all this, and I don’t blame anyone who has decided to stay, maybe because they don’t have the ability nor the resources to move or maybe because they want to be there when we get to the end of the tunnel, or rather, the bottom of the pot as they would say. My family moved to Australia in the 80′s because my grandparents were concerned about what would happen to Hong Kong after the handover; if they were still alive today, they and probably many others would have been proven right.

I know a lot of people say that it’s bad to attack your opponents, but these events have made me so angry that I have to say this (besides, I’ve held these views since 2014 and don’t tell me you wouldn’t attack a Trump or Biden supporter this way because let’s face it, you probably have). If you don’t want to talk about the Hong Kong protests, that’s fine, but if you decide to stand against the protesters (or stand with the Hong Kong government, the Chinese government and/or the police), then you are an n-word if you are Asian or an n-word lover if you are not and I have no sympathy for black-hearted ghosts like you.

Some people have said that these protests were more successful than Occupy Central and I have to agree. While we did make an impact on the international stage, not very many of us were united in our goals or willing to keep the movement going, so Occupy Central basically ended in failure. This time around, governments around the world have started taking measures against China, resulting in their crybaby spokespeople condemning foreign interference every time the US or some other country announces sanctions or other shit towards China. It’s really funny that this is all they can do without being the first country to trigger the start of World War Three; if the sanctioned individuals don’t have interests or assets in foreign countries, then why are these n-words so concerned about this?

A philosophy that the protesters have adopted is the doctrine of laam chau (攬炒), also known as “phoenixism” or “if we burn, you burn with us”, a line from The Hunger Games. Both the Hong Kong and Chinese governments have criticised this doctrine because they believe that they will only end up destroying Hong Kong themselves, but has it ever occurred to anyone that, given everything that’s happened over the past 18 months, including the arrests and whatnot, it is actually them who are laam chau-ing us (and the world as well)?

Families have also been split over this entire issue as well. It’s honestly bullshit how some people, particularly boomers, put their patriotism and support for the police over the rest of their family, particularly those who support the protesters. It’s no better than disowning your child just because they came out as LGBT. Frankly, if I was that petty with parents who supported the government and the police, I’d just dump them in a home and never visit them. It’s the most humane thing I’d probably do, but I wouldn’t do it because a) my parents aren’t that stupid and b) I care enough about my parents to not be petty over this bullshit.

It’s honestly weird and fascinating how boomers can parrot the government’s (or any other pro-government organisation’s) position on anything and be smug about it. The only reason why boomers can be so “passionate” about being patriotic is because they’re usually coaxed with free money and free food. At any other time, they don’t need to do anything because the government are on their side so they can do all the heavy work for them. Their lack of education and addiction to TVB news also contributes to this.

Speaking of TVB, the mainstream media in Hong Kong is no longer our friend. The only media outlets we can still trust are those who are pro-democracy or those who are still trying very hard to remain neutral, such as Apple Daily or RTHK. Now TV and Cable TV were touted as alternative news sources, but they’ve been taken over by executives who used to work for TVB or aTV (remember when it was still a thing?). When the protests started in 2019, there was a movement to boycott all businesses advertising on TVB or having TVB on their televisions because of their bias toward the government and the police. The organisers of the Facebook page behind it were arrested in April, but another page sprang up soon after. Some artists and employees working for TVB were shelved, had their contracts cancelled or decided to resign because their views did not toe the party line. Good on them for resigning, I’d say, because there are many better places they could be useful at. God, it’s so weird how a cultural institution that defined our childhoods has now become an enemy.

Hong Kong protests vs. Black Lives Matter

When the Black Lives Matter movement came back to prominence in May following the death of George Floyd, I feared that this was an attempt to derail the Hong Kong protests by providing the world with a “convenient” distraction. I mean, people love black dicks more than Asian dicks, amirite? However, I was surprised when BLM protesters were willing to learn off HK protesters, because it shows that they must have been doing something right, I guess.

In spite of this, I have to say that BLM haven’t gotten enough ideas off of Hongkongers. BLM supporters encourage the boycotting of stores and businesses that are against BLM and the support of those that support BLM, but do you have any centralised platforms to collect that information? That’s right, I’m talking about the yellow economic circle of Hong Kong, where we boycott (read: “renovate”) stores and businesses that are pro-police or pro-government and support (read: “punish”) stores and businesses that support the protesters or embrace similar pro-democracy ideologies.

Funnily enough, pro-establishment politicians, supporters and media mock and laugh at us for our economic circle, but I don’t see them trying to copy us even though we’ve compiled a list of stores and businesses that are on their side so we can boycott them. Consumers have the right to procure goods and services from any business they choose, regardless of political stance; to condemn consumers for choosing businesses based on their political stances is not only biased, but anti-consumer. If BLM can put out an app that serves the purposes of the BLM economic circle and, at the same time, piss off Republican politicians and supporters (not just Trump supporters), I can finally say they’ve done something right. 

One thing that really pissed me off was that n-words and n-word-lovers were actually saying that the Hong Kong protests should not be compared with the BLM protests. Through a quote tweet, I’m going to debunk their claims of the two being “polar opposites”, skipping over things (mostly related to BLM) that are already obvious.

The first thing I should point out is that they state “Minneapolis riots” when they’re obviously trying to support BLM. Doesn’t BLM disavow violence and rioting?

Racism: How are the Hong Kong protests “racist”? If this is about “racism” towards Mainland Chinese people, then your argument is invalid because they are the same race and that’s not what the word means. If this is about minorities living in Hong Kong, then that’s beside the point of the protests. If anything, Hongkongers have connected with minorities more than ever before.

Trump: Face it, the only reason why the Hong Kong protests are “pro-Trump” is because he’s been vocal in his opposition to China and “orange man bad”. Activists are seeking bipartisan support because they don’t want to see Hong Kong become a bargaining chip between two candidates and importantly, bills and acts regarding Hong Kong have received bipartisan support in Congress.

White-Americanism: Where the fuck do they get this from, honestly? Is this another “all white people are racist” argument?

Colonialism: This argument cannot be used for BLM because it’s centred in America, a country which the US government obviously owns. As for Hong Kong, I’m gonna have to play devil’s advocate on this one. It’s extremely wishful thinking to think that the UK or US will send their forces in to Hong Kong because China can easily send out their troops, who have bases in Hong Kong. Therefore, it’s also extremely wishful thinking to think that they will take control of Hong Kong in any capacity. Some people support this international intervention in the hope of eventual independence, but it’s wishful thinking as well with China as they are now.

Capitalism: Honestly, they’ve got it backwards here. Many companies in the US (and the world) have spoken up or taken steps in support of Black Lives Matter while many companies in Hong Kong tend to support the government and China. It’s not really a case of pro or anti-capitalism, but rather who has capitalism on their side.

Funding: Personally, if the Hong Kong protests were funded by the CIA (or NED), then there would have been something on WikiLeaks and the mainstream media (despite people’s disdain for them) would have covered it by now and not just the Chinese media. Therefore, I’m sceptical of this because it’s not common knowledge proven beyond all reasonable doubt. As for BLM, the same thing can be said of them apparently being funded by Chinese interests.

Spontaneous vs. Intricate: Doesn’t an uprising or protest need planning? Wouldn’t the “spontaneous risings” of BLM also be “intricately organised” as well? Weren’t the “intricately organised riots” in Hong Kong also “spontaneous”? This is going into conspiracy territory, which makes them no better than the conspiracy theorists they disavow.

Weaponless vs. Deadly Weapons: Like bricks, umbrellas and other things can compare to tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. Yes, there were molotov cocktails and shit, but the point here is to not excuse one protest and criticise the other when there have been documented cases of violence by both police and protesters in both protests. To that point, I believe that no revolution can happen without violence on both sides.

In short, the people who made this are n-words and anyone who unironically believes this are n-words who get their news from n-word sources. The claims made are very superficial and no attempt was made at backing up their claims, even outside of Twitter. Also, I find it ironic that these people are showing their support for one marginalised group while perpetuating hate for another when the whole point of Black Lives Matter and other similar movements is about fighting against hate and injustice (though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by these people, especially given that there have been cases of anti-black racism in China). Yes, the Hong Kong protests and the Black Lives Matter protests are different, but there are common factors in both of them and supporters of both groups should stand together against hate and injustice. To stand with one but not the other is nothing short of hypocrisy, and I say this not just for those who support BLM but not HK, but also for those who support HK but not BLM. Even if you only believe in the underlying causes, namely being against racism and police brutality (and also violence), that’s all that really matters.

All lives don’t matter until black lives matter and all lives don’t matter until (young) Hongkonger lives matter.

In regards to ACAB

At the start of the year, in my review for the Doctor Who episode Orphan 55, I said that climate change protesters should check their privilege in regards to police brutality. This was because Hongkongers have suffered more compared to those vegans and if their countries were in the same situation as Hong Kong or China, they wouldn’t be able to protest in the first place. After hearing of the police brutality at BLM protests and weighing everything up, I’ve become an ACAB person now.

I’ve held this attitude in regards to the police in Hong Kong since 2014, but I’ve been iffy to say the same for police in places like the US or Australia. An old friend of mine from primary school looks like the type of person who would support ACAB, but she is actually against it. I never understood why until she posted some toxic tweets on her Instagram story showing some ACABers celebrating the death of someone’s father, who was a member of the police force, and explained that she didn’t support ACAB because she didn’t support the toxicity surrounding the people who support it.

Over time, I’ve come to realise that ACAB symbolises a deeper problem that can’t be solved by only dealing with the shallower problems. As the saying goes, “a few bad apples spoil the barrel” - good cops will eventually become bad cops as they are silenced into submission to cover up the actions of other bad cops. In Hong Kong, there is another saying - “好仔唔當差”/“Good men don’t become cops”. Look, I don’t deny that there are good cops and bad cops and that it is the system that is corrupt. That can be said for other countries, but for Hong Kong, I believe that the notion of good cops still existing there is well and truly dead. That notion is so dead that some Hongkongers mock the police and their families with phrases like “while the cop’s on overtime, the wife has a threesome”.

Anyone who mocks ACAB by saying things like “well, what if you really need the police someday” is missing the point. Yes, we need the police force and there are good cops out there, but what ACABers are looking for is a change in the system so that there is more scrutiny over police being held accountable for their actions. If it means calling for an independent investigation/inquiry into or the disbanding of the (current) police force, then so be it. How can we trust the police to enforce the law if they can’t uphold the laws that they are beholden to?

Last year, I read a tweet from a Mainland Chinese person living in Australia who is supportive of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. He says that any person who supports the police is an idiot because if their enforcement of the law is lawful, then they don’t need your support, but if their enforcement of the law is unlawful, then you might be the next person to be beaten up by them.

Speaking of climate change protests, Greta Thunberg finally said something useful that isn’t about climate change- wait, you say she was nominated to say it? Oh well, it was a nice try.

Oh, and by the way, Leticia Lee (李偲嫣), a pigfucker who has been supporting the Hong Kong police since before Occupy Central, has died of what is suspected to be the coronavirus. All cops are bastards and so are the people who support them.

The US elections

I never thought I’d be saying this, but I honestly hoped that Donald Trump would be reelected for four more years. I honestly hoped that the left wouldn’t learn from 2016 and not attack people who disagree with them, but yet they still managed to get Joe Biden elected while still attacking those who disagree with them. You could say that BLM was what turned the scales, but I think that Trump’s management of the coronavirus was what did it. I guess you can manipulate elections by manipulating people’s feelings, only this time around, Trump wasn’t good enough in that aspect.

On a side note, has anyone ever considered that some people can’t accept other people’s opinions if they aren’t willing to compromise and look at things from their point of view? These people wonder why others can’t accept their opinions and viewpoints and then get surprised when they say “fuck it” and double down on their own opinions and viewpoints while completely rejecting the opinions and viewpoints other people want them to even consider.

When Trump was elected in 2016, I only saw it as an ironic meme in that there would be a rise in unemployment figures as Trump personally went to every workplace and told everyone “You’re fired” given how he used to host The Apprentice. A lot of celebrities and people around me on social media started becoming anti-Trump like it was a meme. I’ve never been a fan of Trump myself, but SJW bullshit aside, seeing the measures he (and the Republicans) took against China in response to the situation in Hong Kong gradually warmed me to him. He was the one who led the US to take the first step when no other country was brave enough to. It’s the reason why some Hongkongers and Taiwanese people feel the same way.

I’ve heard some people say that Trump isn’t really going to help Hong Kong and that he is doing all this just to benefit himself. Firstly, it’s not just Trump, but also other Republicans (and maybe even Democrats) who are pushing for action within the US government, and secondly, what makes you think Biden will do anything for Hong Kong after Obama never did anything following Occupy Central? I thought that a second Trump term would be the best thing for Hong Kong, but now that things have ended up this way, I hope that the Biden administration will be just as hard on China compared to now (given what I said about bipartisan support). If Biden decides to reverse the sanctions on China, well, don’t say the right didn’t warn you about “China Joe”.

Do I believe that the election was rigged? Maybe and maybe not. The left was crying about Russian interference back in 2016 and yet here we are. Frankly, I can accept the result of the election because I have a bad feeling that, according to some on the right, Joe Biden will be deposed in favour of Kamala Harris, who has been elected vice-president. On one hand, I don’t believe it will happen because it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but on the other hand, I don’t think Biden will serve out the whole of his first term or his second term if he gets reelected.

As I’ve said for two elections in a row on the Waifu Network: Well may we say “God save the world”, because nothing will save the United States of America!

China (and why I’ve used the n-word in relation to them)

With China seemingly being victimised daily by “attacks” and “interference” from other countries, it’s hard not to think of them as absolute crybabies. It’s essentially how I feel about Asians living in Western countries and crying about racism (see above). It’s not the first time these Ken/Karen-like attitudes have been put on show and they certainly won’t be the last. But how did mainland Chinese people become such Kens and Karens (if you want a better term other than “n-words”) after a glorious history of ancient knowledge and understanding? People have discussed this over the years and this post is an attempt at distilling what I’ve read and what I think. Information has been sourced from this Reddit ELI5 post, this blog by Jeraldine Phneah and this article from The Diplomat.  Hopefully you’ll understand all of this after you read it.

From 1839, there was a long history of violence and instability in China that took a particularly dark turn when the CCP took power in 1949. Movements like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution not only killed a lot of people in an attempt to modernise China with Western influences (if it weren’t for that, Chinese people would probably still be wearing changshans and qipaos like in historical dramas instead of using computers and smartphones), but drove a lot of people into fear and poverty as food was rationed, salary was standardised and people were encouraged to dob in other people for being intellectuals, disagreeing with the government or hiding their wealth from the government. This resulted in society becoming “every man for himself” as people were forced to do anything they could to survive. The hukou system back then meant that people couldn’t move from place to place, so many poor people ended up working in factories and living in crowded dormitories where modesty is neither a privilege nor a right. On top of that, not many people back then were able to get a good education like we do today, so lower-class people were encouraged to mimic what upper-class people did. Given the living conditions of Chinese society back then, one can only imagine the kind of corruption happening amongst the upper class that would be mimicked by the lower class.

During the Deng Xiaoping era of the late-70′s and 80′s, China saw large growths in economy, production, infrastructure and technology. While the quality of life did begin improving, a lot of the mentalities of the Mao Zedong era remained. Regulations couldn’t keep up with industry and the environment became polluted as a result. Factories began cutting corners and as a result, subpar quality, if not fake, products began appearing on the market. Poor people became rich very quickly and the “every man for himself” mentality became inherited into materialism. People began buying impulsively and buying more daily essentials than they needed even though there was no crisis and life had improved since the Cultural Revolution. If you people thought toilet paper shortages were the first of its kind, then you don’t know about formula shortages. If you thought the rise of daigou services in the past five years were the first of its kind, then you don’t know about parallel trading and the 2008 Chinese formula scandal.

Now we get to the main point of the topic. With the economic boom in China, more and more people began travelling to other places where people lived better lives in the past than they did in China. However, due to the lack of education and/or exposure to foreign cultures for many people, they were never taught the etiquette of being wealthy or being in another country. While some tourists try to understand the history and culture of other countries, mainland Chinese tourists tend to just buy expensive shit because they’ve apparently got a lot of money to waste. On top of that, there are tourists who tend to gravitate towards their own culture, for example they might eat at Chinese restaurants instead of trying out other places that aren’t Chinese. It’s why their market is so lucrative to many businesses and companies because these n-words will spend money on anything (or if they can get it for free, like buffet food on cruise ships, they’ll gorge on it).

In Chinese culture, loudness and positivity (熱鬧) is a good thing to them because it means that everyone is happy and whatever they are doing is fun. It’s why you tend to hear them being loud; it’s because they’re happy. But what they don’t understand is that not everyone likes this noise pollution and so, they end up thinking that Chinese tourists are annoying. As for modesty (i.e. going to the toilet on the street), refer back to the crowded dormitories bit from earlier; in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if families have three or more generations living in the one house nowadays.

From this, you can see where Hongkongers’ sentiments on mainland Chinese people come from. In the past, people were fleeing to Hong Kong to escape communist rule; following the 1997 handover, 150 people are migrating to Hong Kong every day while people are fleeing to other countries for a better life. With more and more mainlanders moving to Hong Kong, “mainlandisation” measures such as the use of Mandarin instead of Cantonese in schools and national education is causing mainlander immigration to become cultural enrichment (at least in my opinion). This is part of the reason why Hongkongers tend not to identify as Chinese and why all these protests have occurred over the years.

I’m gonna have to call this post here because it is getting long(er than usual) and I need to write my end-of-year review post. There are two things that I also became redpilled on, namely Doctor Who and censorship, particularly on the internet, which I’ll cover in the post to be released on New Year’s Eve.

I’ve tried my best to cover everything I could in this, but I make no guarantee that I’ve covered everything I wanted to cover because there is just too much. I hope people can understand why I feel a certain way about certain things and be civil in their discourse.

I look forward to cranking it on the moon when the struggle in Hong Kong is over.