This all came out right now. Do I have something here?

 

It’s too hard to carry all this anymore.  I hate saying these words, but I need to, because I can’t get past it.  I’ve seen art submitted for the masses of men raping and impregnating lesbians and some people liked it.  Sure, it was a small number, but still, people LIKED it, not one person, not nobody, multiple people liked a violating act of copulation that had horrible after effects that would last the entirety of that person’s life.  This is how sick people can be, this is who trolls allow themselves to be, gross, horrible monstrous people so bad you don’t know how to talk.  I can’t walk sometimes because it’s too awful to think these people took the time to do this and decided the world should see it.  Like all acts like this; pedophilia, incest, rape, abuse, it’s so gross, all I can this is “how could you do this.”  And they do this to heroines, too, some of the strongest women I know. 

 

All I try to do in public, on the internet, is say no to this, say no to the monster, say no to the horror and I can’t say no hard enough.  I try to build up people with the little I know, but the world seems rigged against this and my mouth and hands can’t speak right.  I read Miley Cyrus’ shock and pain at trolls against her and her boldness, her “screw it, I’m going to do this even though lots will say ‘you’re messing with the rock gods, you’re unqualified, you’re a poseur, you aren’t good enough’ and though it may not be objectively good, I will have fun” attitude.  I show that attitude so rarely, thinking calculation ensures security, but I want the attitude of choosing to play Paranoid in Guitar Hero though I’m no guitarist all the time, that “I don’t CARE if I stink at this, I will have a good time.”  It’s so hard to do that, even without mood disorders.

 

But also, their knock you down attitude is horribly toxic and it’s in the government, which makes it almost unlivable.  I will always blame Chris Cornell’s suicide on the alcohol making the dangerous politics unleashed in 2016 too brutal to cope with.  I’ve heard Laura Bailey, a sweet (though also a powerful cusser) lady who crafted the nicest character I knew at the time, Rise Kujikawa, with a script and her voice, was assaulted so bad for playing a transgender character who looks so strong and in need of hugs that Matthew Mercer had to intervene.  The attack on Ukraine and the SCOTUS hate that June hurt Tara Platt so much, she tried to explain scientifically why it was nonsense in a hope that people who probably buy that ‘calculate the Earth’s age through the lineage in Luke’ would somehow understand.  I’ve had communion with such people, they threw out science when Charles Darwin got published, failing to understand that the lineage is Luke explaining Jesus wasn’t just made by God as a God, but as a human after a long legacy of good and bad people the way they would know how, an explanation that He is God and man.  But the deepest cut came from Abby Trott’s tweet, it hit with the impact of a deeply hurt, crying teenager running up and slamming her door after her uncle said “no, you’re not a lesbian and you don’t like Miley Cyrus, that’s Satan talking,” though her parents tried to avoid this coming up.  I once angrily opposed this right outside rape.  But I learned Gibbs’ rule 51 from NCIS; Sometimes, you’re wrong.

 

That stupid algorithm and time, it was bad before the site was bought; I swear only 1/5^th of the fun or tender art of Edelgard I tweeted visibly made it to Tara and now it feels worse.  Of course, sometimes, it probably wasn’t what she thought or felt either.  Right now, I’m mostly mad because of the following event; she’s a professional, intelligent actress, I’m not a friend, just a fan, but I can guess things about people and try to read them based on how they present themselves on social media.  An acting performance that I was jolted back into remembering more prominently due to Laura Bailey and Ashley Johnson’s “Adrift” in Stray Gods was my classmate Jordan Phelps playing Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables” at my High School, Bellingham High School, a year after I graduated, the play was in 2008.  I am incredibly detail-oriented.  He wasn’t just good by High School acting standards.  He was GOOD, he brought to life a pain-wracked character abused by the letter of the law who is trying to do the morally right thing, though it means he is hounded by Javert, who remembers him from prison, and has to be part of battle.  He was so good I don’t want to see another rendition of the play, not even Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, out of anxiety that his performance would be diluted.  The conflict between “letter of the law” people and moral people is a struggle Tara played as Edelgard, who reminds me of Valjean, she broke the rules and ended up doing things she clearly tells you she hates and only does because no other option exists.  An additional thing that is a little trivial in the game’s story, but resonates with me because no one else told this story; Edelgard is openly bisexual and possibly a lesbian.  She probably could end up with Caspar or Ferdinand based on their relationships (Caspar embodies Edelgard’s vision of success through effort and Ferdinand’s boldness and assurance in himself works well with Edelgard being the likely “woman rolling her eyes” behind the successful man as “Bruce Almighty” phrased it), but definitely flirts with Dorothea and Lysithea and her adoration of Byleth hits harder if you choose to be a woman.  If you do that, it takes on an aspect of romance no one else has told; the fact that Nintendo animated a scene where Edelgard cradles Byleth, weeping, thinking she is dead, then Sothis leaves Byleth, she awakens and hugs her, is a scene I think the LGBTQ+ community needs after all the assault they’ve been through.  It especially hits hard because my brain thinks it shouldn’t hit like it does; when I played it, Tara had been married to Yuri Lowenthal, a man, for almost 20 years and I keep thinking she was given a sheet of paper on a music stand that said “EDELGARD CRIES” or “EDELGARD: [cries]” and she sounds like her chest has been ripped out.  Voice acting wise, Laura Bailey made me feel the same when Rise Kujikawa cries in the 8 rank of her relationship in Persona 4, the desire to hug this person because they hurt so much.  This is all relevant because Jordan Phelps was probably the first openly gay man my Mom the choir teacher knew.  She learned from him how to be better to them all (and that wasn’t easy, I know my Grandparents, I wouldn’t call them homophobic, but more “quick to stereotype and judge” because their own lives had limited their experience and society reinforced these stereotypes and judgements by not condemning them).  I don’t think Tara saw the clip of Jordan because Twitter was broken before it was bought and now it’s that plus empowered trolls.

 

Around 2008, I saw “The Laramie Project” at Whatcom Community College, learning about how horrific Matthew Shepard was killed, that no Christian truly stood by him in the play, and it hurt like Hell itself.  I swore to help and it cost me a Church, it made June 12^th permanently stand on my calendar and it led me to side with Edelgard as the internet called her a woman Hitler, an extremist who deserved death.  And I don’t regret it, because it feels more God than anything they’ve said or any law or ruling they passed.