I Will Pretend That It is Quiet

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beer, blog, culture, evil, fear, fiction, friends, god, good, jesus, life, love, philosophy, questions, romance, stories, story, theology, what makes a man

“Of course I did,” he says to his friend. He searches his glass like its empty, even though there’s still enough in there to spill. “You know me.” He flaps his hand open and closed as he talks, touching the fingertips together like the mouth of a puppet that’s not there.

“Sure,” the man beside him says, scratching his beard.

“He’s not kidding,” a third says.

“No way!” the second man jumps back in surprise. Now the second and third hold a conversation about the first; though he’s right there, he has buried himself in his cell phone.

He’s escaped from something. I don’t know from what, and he doesn’t know for how long.

Across the table from me, I can see a pair of glasses resting atop a shiny, bald head. As if to confirm that I am, in fact, looking at a person rather than an exceptionally social piece of eyewear, a man pops up beneath them periodically like a green-shirted gopher, emulating basketball players in the middle of the fairway where he nearly knocks over a waitress. Repeatedly.

She’s beautiful, at that. She weaves through the crowd like she knows it well. That’s really impressive, if I think about it long enough – or really sad, if you consider the people who come here often enough on a Saturday night to be predictable.

She is a pink pixy, and she sweeps golden dust wherever she turns her head. She keeps people happy simply by walking to and fro – she keeps drinks cold, and blood hot.

She is lovely. And the more I think about that, the more I realize that I don’t want her – I haven’t since I walked in the door, and I will not by the end of the night.

It has surprisingly little to do with the fact that her jeans end before her pockets do, or that I can see more of what’s holding her up than what’s holding her in.No, it’s because, when her eyes meet mine, it affirms for me what I already know, what I’ve long since decided:

She is not perfect. She cannot be. It’s not her fault – perfect simply belongs to another person, someone who is already mine, someone who is far away, and who I miss terribly, and she is all the lovelier for it.

Sometimes I fear to miss her, even more than I actually miss her, and sometimes that makes her ugly in ways that she is not. And then I remember that I’m not perfect.

The blue-shirted man with the puppet-hand is awake again. He sips a dark drink, headed with enough foam that I know it will leave a mustache when he takes it from his lips. I hope it pleases him, gives him courage in some primal, Freudian way – Lord knows he could use the help in the facial-hair department.

My drink is not so dark. It’s more a color I don’t care to consider too hard, and in just saying that I do it anyway – it’s the color of my piss after I haven’t been too good to my body. It doesn’t taste as bad as that though, though the first drink was the best and it is, regrettably, going downhill from there.

It’s crisp,though, and refreshing and bitter. If I’m going to eat something, it should be now, while I’m drinking something like this.

The girl who brought it to me is pretty too, very much so. I hope she comes back soon –when she’s around it reminds me that I’m not completely lost in this place that I don’t know very well. (I know that that’s a stretch, but it’s a first thought that comes to mind – it’s a primal one, and the person on this page needs to feel something.)

Yes, she’s very pretty – and, again, she’s not perfect. Nobody here is – I know, because they are too close, and there is no shortage of them. Perfection is, by definition –no, by necessity (as I redact such a nebulous, purposeless concept as a “definition”)– Perfect is either far away and out of reach, or closer to you than your own heart. There is no in-between, and in each way, it is one of a kind.

This room is filled with beautiful people. But they are neither close, nor far away, and each one looks just enough like the one next to them to make me smile.

On the television, a scorpion snips the string of a woman’s bikini top as a black sports car flies by, catching her attention, and she instantly falls in love with the driver whom she can’t see.

Damn, that little arachnid is a pervert.

The glasses have stood up now, and are making the green-shirted man dance to a beat that has no music. I expected as much, but it still makes me blush with that special embarrassment that you can only feel on behalf of another person.

I just realized I’m here paying for a drink again, and for food that I could make better myself. I’m alive and awake the way I should have been five hours ago. I needed those five hours to get me to now, when I should be closing my eyes, falling asleep, asking to be forgiven for what I’ve done today and asking for mercy when I wake up.

I am nowhere close to any of those things right now. How am I ever going to go to work on Monday?

Sitting in a place like this, I thought I’d see at least one person crying. Maybe it’s because I want to myself, a little. Either way, it’s a full bar, and I’m staring at a lot of backs.

A girl starts dancing close to her friend. She looks like a snake before a piper.

The piper always believes she’s in control, but does the snake believe the same thing? Does the piper mistake curiosity and calculation for passivity?

When she wraps her arms around the person with her, is it a gesture of vulnerability, of unguarded calm?

Or is she quietly setting her fangs, unnoticed, seemingly tamed but ready to push them in when the time comes?

Biting into this burger teaches me something – I actually wanted chicken, and I want something darker to drink once the piss is gone.

I also realize why I’m sitting here, enjoying it not so much but still paying for it.

I still want to be well. It’s something I can’t stop thinking about. I am here because I want to be not the person I am when I’m alone in my room with two lights on and alternately opening and closing the window on the chance that the wet night-time air might be what’s interfering with my holiness, and I want so much to not be afraid anymore.

And now I betray the fact that, in my mind, holiness is defined by a lack of fear, a lack of anxiety and distrust. I don’t know that. This may very well be the agony of my own perfection.

I say I want to trust. But trust burns, because it is rooted in not knowing. I don’t want to burn. I would rather not burn than learn how to burn well.

“All that is gold does not glitter” – No, sometimes it glows white-hot as it’s thrust into blue flames, and does anyone ever ask it how it’s feeling then, as they fawn over it, imagining how beautiful it will be?

Maybe it doesn’t want to be beautiful, if this is what it takes, what it costs. Certainly, if I were ever melted down, stretched, beaten, frozen solid and then adorned with gems for the sake of representing someone else’s eternal love, I would feel cheated.

Is it worth it, to simply be that beautiful? To be perfect?

I sit in a corner, at a watering-hole for people who only become thirstier the more they drink. They drink loudly, wanting more, because what’s there is not enough. Dead things are never enough. The glasses make their green shirt dance to Michael Jackson, and he is joined by a proud white boy as they both try to keep the King of Pop alive through clumsy feet. But he’s deader than anything. Nothing is changing that.

Dead things are never enough, and I would make sense of that to each of them if I could.

I sit here, where there is drought. There is a book in my backpack that talks about living things – living words, living dances, living people, life in full, for the price of repentance and rest, quietness and trust. These things draw the tears I wasn’t sure I wanted.

I will pretend that it is quiet, recalling that I have been led to Living Water and have refused to drink.

It’s Monday. What Are You Reading?

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blog, culture, fiction, friends, life, marci johnson, monday, sci-fi, story, theology, what are you reading

Because I am actually a horrible target for peer pressure, I will humor my writer friend Marci Johnson and do my short post:

1. The Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft: The Route to Horror by Timo Airaksinen
2. “The Existence of God” and other letters by Fenelon.
3. The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis
4. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
5. CthulhuTech by Matthew Grau

“Route to Horror” is a bit more like homework, as I’m using it to further my research. Airaksinen’s work on Lovecraft is not terribly well known, from what I can tell, and where it is known it isn’t very well received by purists. It’s from the New Studies in Aesthetics series, though, so it’s not meant to be specifically philosophy or literary criticism, but a new perspective on the mix. While he makes several presumptive statements about the topic without backing them up, he still raises valid points for which there is evidence, even if you can’t always get it from him. Thankfully, I have a background in the source material.

Fenelon and a Kempis have been the backbone of my devotional life for a long time.  This is my third time through each.

Meanwhile, my girlfriend and I read Dickens together whenever we can over Skype. It’s a great way to spend quality time while four hours apart, and is even more fun with her as the narrator and me doing the different voices for the characters in the dialogue.

And, well… Yeah. CthulhuTech. That’s a tabletop RPG, and I’m currently reading through the core rule book. It’s actually quite fun, and the setting is very fascinating, even as an amalgam of blatant and admitted rip-offs; it becomes its own thing very quickly, and I’ve needed something to spark my imagination for a long time. I think I may have found it.

So. It’s Monday. What are you reading? 

The Part Where I Start To Get the Whole Thing About Heavy Metal

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Christianity, church, culture, dark, disturbed, fear, god, good, in flames, jars of clay, life, love, metal, music, poetry, red

You say this pace beckons evil spirits,
But I care not what you call it;
To me it’s two-hundred beats per minute.
On tablature I scrawled it.

Passive voice aside, this is one of my favorite tongue-in-cheek lines from the band Tourniquet, off their album, Microscopic View of a Telescopic Realm. Here, frontman Luke Easter challenges the Evangelical Christian community at large regarding their distaste for most anything that didn’t come right out of the big red book in the back of the pew that they often confuse for a bible. Anything that comes tumbling out of K-LOVE radio is also acceptable, but anything else is patently unholy.

Especially rock music.

Heavy metal has been and still is a big part of my life. There are a lot of bands with very positive, challenging messages who use aggressive chords and double-bass as a vehicle for their thoughts. The craftsmanship of the music and the skill of its execution can be breathtaking.

So to have a large part of the faith community I’m a part of wrinkling their noses when they see my In Flames tour shirt, it makes me feel like a bit of a black sheep. Most of their reasons are old to me by now – the images are dark, the music is loud,  I can’t understand the words, why do they have to be so angry? This is also why I can’t share Gojira’s latest album with my girlfriend, even though it’s exquisite art and I will argue til the end of time that her refusal makes her uncultured.

I promptly duck as a copy of A Tale of Two Cities wings inches above my head.

I pick myself up, fix my hair, and mumblingly admit – ok, fine. Yes. There is something to that.

This is not a sudden “change of heart” in which I join the old-schoolers of religious fundamentalism; I simply have to acknowledge a set of attitudes and human behaviors that take on a new light as I think on what I believe.

The main thing that can put heavy metal at cross-purposes with the Imitation of Christ is not the words, it’s not the music, it’s not the people who sing it or their tattoos or piercings – it’s the noise, pure and simple.

The band Red has become a powerhouse in the world of faith-informed rock music. Their words are honest and convicting, and the chugging of guitars and drums is right at home in their message. However, I have never felt quite at peace while listening to them, either. While “Let Go” and “Shadows” capture authentic need and spiritual tension, I never end up feeling less afraid or overshadowed for listening to it. Sometimes what’s needed is the catharsis of the articulation, but it doesn’t seem to really ease anything.

Here’s the reason, I think:

‘And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?’ – 1 Kings 19:11-13

Problems are loud. Danger, fear, and anxiety, are all very, very noisy. We focus on noise, we pay attention to it, and it distracts us from the quiet place where peace usually is. Listening to something that talks about our problems, even proposes the solutions to those problems, but still sounds like those problems, isn’t really a recipe for growth or healing. Catharsis and encouragement, certainly, in their place,  but the truth is that true wisdom doesn’t scream at the top of its lungs.

More so, aggression is the sound of resistance. If I start listening to Red or Disturbed during serious bouts of fear and insecurity, what I’m hearing is the sound of possible resistance, the ability to fight back. While perseverance and personal will are necessary, everything I believe in reminds me that it’s not enough, and that what I really need to do is to not fight my own battles but to give up and die, to sink to a place where they are already won.

“I am an indestructible master of war!” I bellow at my fears, my demons, preparing for battle, while the still, small voice says, “Lay your weapons down – there are no enemies in front of you.”

I love and will always love loud music. It has a special place in my heart and even in my introspection and worship. But I am willing to admit, finally, that it cannot take the place of certain necessary things. If the solutions speak as loudly as the problems, then I can get very confused about which ones I am listening to at any given moment. It is necessary to practice hearing small, still things, so that I can recognize such a voice when it tries to guide me to the quiet places.

If I Were A Webcomic…

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blog, culture, fiction, gws, lfg, lgbt, licd, life, love, philosophy, pvp, romance, story, webcomics

I am a pretty dedicated web-comic reader. It’s not often that you find a form of entertainment that’s easily accessible and caters to your interests consistently each week. It might be arguable that I have made a bad habit of keeping up with such things, but I’m sure the authors would think otherwise. So far, my daily repertoire includes Cyanide & Happiness, Penny Arcade, PvP, Girls With Slingshots, Least I Could Do, and Looking for Group.

Most of these focus on gaming or nerd culture, and some are just nostalgic or smartly written. But there is a thread running through them that seems to be growing thicker. This is not intended to be a soapbox, merely on observation: There are a LOT of gay people in web-comics.

It’s not only homosexuals. Girls With Slingshots in particular sports a plethora of “alternative lifestyles” represented in its characters, including straight characters, a homosexual transgender, a monogamous straight couple, a monogamous lesbian couple, an open relationship between an asexual and a “romantically bisexual straight girl”, and a librarian with a dominance fetish.

I have come to guess that this comic is set in Portland. Or maybe Clawson, Michigan.

GWS: Jamie and Erin discuss a nebulous idea of “love”.

As I said, I don’t plan on using this as a soap-box to discuss these relationships. I do see GWS as a collection of very unhealthy individuals, and read it with this in mind. But what I’d rather focus on for the moment is the demographic.

A Gallup report from October 2012 reported that homosexual adults make up about  3.4% of the American population, drawing from the largest pool of LGBT participants yet. This means that, in a random pool of one hundred American adults, three of them will answer “Yes” to being a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individual and one person further will say “Meehhh-aybe not really?”

In the cast of GWS we have around one (and a half?) bisexual persons, three lesbians, and a gay cross-dresser (I think? I’m still a little confused about Darren…) Further still, at least two additional alternative lifestyles are represented. By all data, this leaves nearly three hundred other people unaccounted for, leading lives presumably unworthy of artistic attention.

Now, I’m by no means accusing Danielle Corsetto of actually holding this mindset. This woman, of a different orientation and worldview than myself, is a creative writer with a sharp wit and a smart knowledge of human interaction, and she uses her talent as a means for commenting on the world she lives in. These qualities come together to spell GOOD ARTIST. However, she has written a story where a number of people whose lives are steeped in the “alternative” have all managed to find one another. The resulting focus of the drama gives the utopian illusion that they are not a marginalized population, but rather the norm. Translated to the real word, however, they are still in the 3.4%, and what’s more they do not interact with the 300 other people that necessarily surround them – as presented, they are isolated.

Admittedly, GWS does have much more social conscience than comparable comics such as LICD or Menage a 3 (R-rated, NSFW) which exist mainly for entertainment, satire, and, in the latter case, titillation. Even Go Get A Roomie! (again, NSFW – I promise these aren’t on my rounds…), a comic very spiritually close to GWS, doesn’t come close to the human sympathy present when Corsetto’s writing is at its best. I understand that Corsetto is using her comic as a platform to explore and discuss the choices made by various people – her characters are facsimiles in a myth, not one-to-one representations of real individuals. But again, this conscience is for a very marginal part of society – in attempting to explore a utopia that normalizes the “alternative”, it threatens to disengage the real-world 96.6%, which becomes larger every time a new character with an alternative lifestyle is included.

Now, briefly, we’ll turn our gaze to Scott Kurtz’s PvP. One of the supporting characters is gay. It rarely gets brought up. The fact is not pivotal in the characters’ workplace. It does not permeate the narrative. The characters in this comic are not obsessed with their own sexuality. Max is the 3.4% in this narrative, and no more or less is made about it. People are allowed to be people, and the existence of someone on the margins is not a cause for dehumanizing them nor for initiating an agenda for their empowerment. It sounds like real life. It sounds like my experience with real life. This I deeply admire and appreciate.

PvP – Just like being at work.

In art and entertainment nowadays, there seems to be this need to insert a “token” gay person, or other “alternative lifestyle”. We even see this in contemporary DC and Marvel comics. Harry Potter’s Albus Dumbledore was “retroactively” outed as gay. Shows like Glee and Modern Family have taken that to a new level. All right, yes, we understand, homosexuality and alternative relationships are a social issue and something to be paid attention to. This we accept and understand and must be humble and patient about, but all over people seem to be working to balloon 3.4% into something that it’s not – or insisting that it should be bigger.

My art does not contain gay people – I am not a gay person, and do not know many gay people, and therefore do not know how to appropriately write homosexual characters. Further, I disagree with the lifestyle, but I refuse to use my art as a platform for that discussion. I feel it would be inappropriate, and detract from the stories I wish to produce. In many circles, this will mark me as “non-progressive”. Such a label tells me that the artistic community has lost a great deal of humility indeed.

Frankly, I refuse to be party to the fad of normalizing something that, by nature, resists such attempts, and I have little patience for agendas that attempt to define the macrocosm by a microcosm based on individual “rights”. Our rights are those things that guard our humanity when our natural inclination is to dehumanize one another. Our rights are not an omnipotent social contract that ensures our behavior is entitled to acceptance, support, or dissemination.  To argue such is the height of human arrogance. But this is what we witness in the inflation of the 3.4% – the realities of homosexuality and alternative lifestyles are not being explored, they are being thrust into the public forum with a bullhorn to gather converts. In a very real way, a large amount of contemporary art is telling us that 3.4% isn’t good enough – society shouldn’t just be more open-minded, progressive, or accepting; society ought to be more gay, more polyamorous, more gender-bent, more self-and-sex centered. 

I have my own opinions and disagreements with “alternative lifestyles”, homosexuality among them. I care more for people’s health than their happiness. I feel that sex-centered (arguably obsessed) lifestyles, of any orientation, are deeply unhealthy and I feel that the insistence of pursuing these behaviors perpetuates self-damage. But more than these, I oppose the idea that I am not allowed to express these opinions of mine because they somehow encourage a status-quo that needs to be changed or, even worse: somebody might feel bad when challenged by what I have to say, namely that choices lead to consequences. This latter part, I promise you, is a big deal in the art I create, regardless of particulars.

I and my art will forever oppose the dehumanization of the minority. More than that, I and my art will forever work towards the health of the collective. But I will not work, or create, towards the normalization of something that resists being normalized, and moreover that I believe to be unhealthy. To do so would be at-odds with the very concepts of human flourishing and equality. In the miasmic, grey area of artistic license that exists in the gaps between these ideals, I appreciate honesty and accuracy when I find it.

On that note, I will return to Scott Kurtz and PvP. In thinking about all this, and after a recent story arc, I’ve come to realize that PvP is perhaps the comic I most look forward to on my daily web excursions. So a simple thank-you, Scott - for presenting a society, culture, and characters that are funny enough, neurotic enough, and real enough to remind me of the ones I live in and with, day to day. No more, and no less.

Young The Giant – “Cough Syrup”

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cough syrup, culture, faith, god, guitar, jesus, life, music, philosophy, religion, rock, young the giant, youtube

It’s not often that I’ll go out of my way to advocate something, but here’s one such occasion.

I only just heard this song for the first time tonight, tuning in to the guitar solo at about two-and-a-half minutes in and I had to stand still and listen through the rest of it.

It might just be my time of life right now, but the urgent, active seeking within the lyrics feels like it’s going to yank me out of the vibrating complacency I’ve found myself in lately and drag me with it – “If I could find a way to see this straight / I’d run away to some fortune that I should have found by now / So I run now to the things they said could restore me / Restore life the way it should be / I’m waiting for this cough syrup to come down…”

This whole image of “Cough Syrup” asserts the focus of the song as being this idea of substance abuse – our tendency to numb ourselves in the face of uncertainty. But that’s the problem itself, isn’t it? The “valorization of certainty and the demotion of wonder”, our unwillingness to live in the “twilight of simple faith.”

I hate it there, myself, honestly. I hate the idea that whoever’s in there might not be on my side, even though he claims to be, and to know the desires of my heart before they’re fully formed. He interprets the sighs and the swells while, to me, they still feel like havoc and heartache.

That’s where I’ll find this “fortune I should have found by now”, this is where life is restored the way it should be… In those dark, gloaming places that we’ve taught ourselves to fear.

“If I could find a way to see this straight, I’d run away” … I hope I’ll run away there.

New Millennium Cyanide Christ

Tags

dark, evil, fear, fiction, god, good, horror, philosophy, questions, story

THE FOLLOWING IS A TRANSCRIPT OF WHAT IS CONSIDERED TO BE THE LAST RECORDED INTERVIEW OF FREELANCE REPORTER, L. J. ——-. THOSE WHO LAST SAW HIM ATTEST THAT HE WAS INVESTIGATING SEVERAL STRANGE AND UNSETTLING DISTURBANCES THAT HAD BEEN OCCURRING IN THE WAREHOUSE DISTRICT OF [REDACTED], MAINLY IN THE FORM OF WHAT WITNESSES BELIEVED TO BE DISTRESSED HUMAN CRIES AND MUTTERINGS EMANATING FROM BENEATH THE STREETS.  THIS INTERVIEW IS TRANSCRIBED FROM A TAP RECOVERED FROM THE OUTLET SEWER TWO MILES FROM [REDACTED], AFTER HEAVY FLOODING. 

[Several minutes of ambient noise are present on the recording before a large door can be heard opening. Mr. ------- can be heard responding with surprise at what lies on the other side, followed by what is presumed to be the sound of him vomiting.] 

“Wh…who did this to you?”

“…I’m afraid I don’t understand the question, friend.”

“What happened!? Why are you like this?”

“Well – I suppose it was just a last resort, honestly.”

“From what?”

“Me. …I can tell that you don’t understand, and I don’t expect you to. Listen, have you ever felt a compulsion so powerful that you just couldn’t ignore it? In fact you were afraid of what might happen if you left it unabated?”

“I… I guess?”

“Hunger? Thirst? Sex?”

“Of course”

“Well, then you understand a little.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“Ah… perhaps not. I hang here, in this tree I’ve made, that I might bear much fruit.”

“…Fruit?”

“Yes – Love, joy, piece, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control. Now, this last one – how often is it considered, really? How often is it practiced? Certainly to no extent by myself until now. I — Ah…!!”

[And unidentified wet, tearing sound is heard, accompanied by a metallic ring.]

“Oh dear God! Are you…!?”

“No! No… Leave me. I… ! …Alright, it is better. It is better…. But as I’ve said, there are plenty of the others to go around. What does it matter of I dedicate myself to a single one, to make up for a great deficit in this fearful, fallen place?”

“How on earth does this solve that problem?”

“Well, you would… Agh!! …You would say it is right for one to face their fears, wouldn’t you?”

“After this, I…”

“Wouldn’t you!?”

“Yes!”

“Then… this is me, facing my terrible, crippling fear of being uncomfortable – here I cripple my despicable desire to find the easy way out. I deny myself any way out at all – and I achieve both penance, and sanctification.”

“I can’t imagine how…”

“You do not need to understand – not unless you were up here with me.”

“How… how can you even talk? How are you even alive?”

[There is a gurgling sound.]

“Righteousness finds a way… Are you going so soon?”

“I don’t… I can’t stay here.”

“No? …What burdens you, friend? Don’t you wish to be free from appetite? From compulsion? I can see that you are of the same sort as I – not even your desires are your own, the delusion of control is cracking all over your face. Do you not want to learn another way?”

“I… I…”

“Come… Build your cross next to mine.”

“I… What would you… What are… I… Ah…”

[There is the sound of steps on concrete, much reluctant noise from Mr. ------- followed by the sharp snap of chains and cries of intense physical and psychological distress.] 

“How are you, friend?”

“The hooks! The hooks…! They…!”

“They are the very teeth of God!”

[Similar sounds as before, eventually replaced by deep, rhythmic wheezing.]

“… I won’t be needing this anymore…”

[There is a crack as the tape-recorder is presumably kicked, falling down a nearby drain from whence it was recently recovered after heavy rainfall caused the sewers were emptied. -------'s whereabouts, as well as those of the second person on the tape, remain unknown.]

Why “Shuffle!” Might Not Be But Probably Still Is One of the Worst Things to Ever Happen

Tags

anime, blog, comedy, criticism, culture, erogi, fiction, friends, funny, harem, life, love, meme, questions, relationships, romance, Shuffle!, story, Twilight

This is where I out myself as a sometimes manga and anime fan. I have my weaboo moments. I’m also pretty bad at them, considering I had an utter lapse of reason and chose to ignore the fact that I had no idea what the word erogi meant when I read through the description of Naval’s short anime Shuffle! (2005-2006) before I decided to watch through it.

Whoo boy.

Shuffle!’s premise follows in what is known as the harem genre of Japanese animated stories – yes, I am serious. In this particular incarnation, based on a multiple-ending video-game/interactive comic of sorts, Rin Sushimi is an ‘average’ high-school 17-year-old in a not-so-average world where the realms of gods and demons intersect with that of humans. In fact, Rin attends school with members of both these other races, and the magic they bring with them is a common additive to his life. But Rin is a about to get a lot closer to both worlds when their respective kings inform him that their respective daughters are incurably in love with him.

Respectable. Right?

Ha.

See, Sia and Nerine, princesses of the gods and demons respectively (again…), each met Rin – once – eight years prior and have been in love with him ever since. So much so that they have convinced their fathers to help them take up residence in the human world so they can dedicate themselves to competing for Rin’s heart, at which point he will claim kingship of the realm of whichever princess he marries.

But wait, what’s this? Rin is already living with his childhood friend Kaede, who isn’t very good at hiding her intense affection for him. Not to mention the green-haired Asa who, also having known Rin since Junior High, bravely pines for her soul-mate from the sidelines. In fact, talk to literally every girl in the show and you will find that they harbor deep-seated, relentless, cripplingly fanciful dreams of being with mild-mannered Mr. Sushimi. What, oh what, are five girls in such dire straits supposed to do with one another?

Become best friends, of course.

[From here-on-out, this article will contain extensive amounts of derp, rage, fail, hopefully occasional awesome, and indiscriminate spoilers. Also, I am not so generous as to provide a TL;DR. You have been warned.]

First, let’s examine the things that Shuffle! has going for it: the art is quite beautiful, the characters are beyond cute, the dialogue is often snappy, the slapstick is quite fun and it’s easy to find yourself actually caring for the persons presented based on their huge-eyed delivery alone.

Read: bait. This entire anime is built to exacerbate some of the most infantile of adolescent romantic fantasies, in the guise of something far more innocent than American derivations of the same themes would ever put out. One of the lures of Japanese entertainment, becoming more and more marketed towards Western consumers, is the degree of emotional complexity offered by its characters. American young people are getting sick of the stereotypes thrust at them by Jersey Shore and How I Met Your Mother. For the young man who sees the sexual exploits of America’s pretty boys and says, “But I don’t want to be a total douche-bag,” he can vicariously live out his fantasies through the white knight that is Rin Sushimi. For the young woman who sees honor and romance in diving down to the depths of emotional and even physical vulnerability but doesn’t want to run the risk of being taken advantage of in such a state, she can find herself in the red-haired Sia.

Shuffle! is dangerous as erotica for emotional people. Let’s examine how, shall we?

First, there are the girls. Their ever-present friendship, mutual respect, and vulnerability as they all vocally pursue the same man’s affections is incredible – they even go so far as to successively aid one another in attaining Rin’s love and devotion. There is not a hint of real jealousy amongst any of them through most of the series; most instances of dreams deferred are greeted with sincere chokes of “I’m so happy for you both” through trickles of tears where most of us would expect to see one girl try and tear the others’ faces off with screams of “You bitch! You bitch!!” and other instances of devolving vocabulary. No, no, here everyone stays more-or-less perfectly collected (there is a series of caveats here, though; more on that later).

And it is this sort of unwavering devotion – to lover and to friends – that makes these girls ultimately carbon-copies of one-another. Each of them is endearingly sweet and well-mannered. And then you realize that all of them cook, to please Rin. All of them clean, so that Rin doesn’t have to. All of them fulfill very stereotypically female societal roles so that their man can stand out as the hunk he is. None of them has any sort of aspirations of her own, nothing deeper than hair color that differentiates her from her foils. Even the high-spirited Asa, who excitedly pursues her dreams of attending a prestigious university, still manages to find the time to do her ‘womanly’ duties for her eventual beau (yes, Rin picks the non-royalty girl. How sweet of him, righ’?) and feverishly works to help him study so that he can attend college with her despite her seeming insistence that she won’t let even him hold her back. Ultimately, Shuffle! comes off as a sort of reverse-role version of Twilight where a group of hollow heroines a la Bella Swan, requiring existential validation via a male, vie for the affections of a single Edward or Jacob – though Rin is admittedly a far better catch than either the fruitcake or the furry. Respectively.

But now that we’re on the topic, let’s focus on Rin, shall we?

Because Rin is perfect. If a girl does not at one point understand the irresistible draw that is Rin Sushimi, she soon comes to. Because Rin is kind, gentle, soft-spoken, always thinking of others, going out of his way to make their days brighter and their lives a little easier. There is not a selfish bone in the man’s body, the writers would have us believe, and he defends the honor of the women in his life against the lecherous advances of other ‘normal’ high-school males. Not to mention that Rin’s own self-control is legendary – he is suitably embarrassed when he sees a girl in her underwear, and he attempts to respectfully disengage himself from awkward situations (often placed there by the women wanting his attention). Rin even passes the ultimate test of physical self-control numerous times – once while shielding a topless Asa so that she can cover up, once when he is propositioned by Sia after seeing her naked, and then again when Kaede desperately offers herself to him by appearing nude in his bed while he’s asleep. Each time, he “flees from sexual immorality”, refusing to take advantage of these women whom he cares about so deeply and proves that he was, in fact, the inspiration for the Biblical story of Joseph (yes, I am implying that Rin’s control on his libido is so powerfully holy that it impacted history thousands of years prior).

As I’m sure you’ve guessed, this is my roundabout way of saying, “I call bullcrap.”

The fact is, Rin is amongst the most impossibly righteous of Mary Sues, except specialized. Oh so specialized. Whereas the stereotypes that the girls fulfill are fairly common and oft-represented, Rin represents something far less common and therefore all the more attractive – and dangerous.

See, Rin’s single misstep in the entire story is that he is oblivious to and does not immediately rebuff the simultaneous affections of his admirers. The point at which he finally realizes this is supposed to be a pivotal turning-point, a crisis of character punctuated by ejaculations of “Damn! Damn! Damn!” as he punches a light-post. Of course, we can read between the lines and find a perfect 17-year-old bemoaning the fact that he’s too nice.

Now, let’s pause for a moment and reflect on the fact that this is exactly the direction in which impressionable, emotionally-geared young men are going to want to move. In a culture saturated by drunk jocks and sleazy co-eds, Rin Sushimi represents a chance for the good guy to get all the attention. Surely, if his aloof demeanor and selfless attitude can be emulated, shouldn’t that also lead to a bevy of female attention?

…Sure, and what other expectations come as a result? What happens when said young man does not receive instant, intense female attention? What happens when the object of his affection does not fall for him, even in all his sweetness and selflessness? Or what if she does love him back, but not with the same undistracted devotion that he’s come to expect? What sort of pressure does that put on a girl, when she is supposed to emulate the same unquestioning, eternal passion, loyalty, and service that her beloved has come to expect, displaying it constantly before her “I love you” is accepted as meaning anything?

Of course, Rin would never think that. But plenty of young men trying to imitate him would.

These and similar things done in the name of “love” in this story – and what they thereby teach young men and women about what is “romantic” – become even more problematic when pathologies start getting thrown into the mix.

Consider: every single potential love interest for Rin has a significant flaw that drives a wedge between them. Let’s start with the fact that Primula is a pre-teen and demonstrate that things get worse from there: Nerine, for one, has absorbed her clone and all of her memories and so suffers from a crippling inferiority complex. Sia, meanwhile, has absorbed her twin and has a split-personality. And Kaede is a long-fuse bipolar with a case of something like reverse Stockholm syndrome, violently defending her exclusive right to enslave herself to Rin for the sake of his comfort and romantic affections. The only one suitably perfect for Rin clearly is Asa… Except, oh wait! She’s actually a half-demon and her stubborn refusal to diffuse her magical energies is slowly tearing her body apart from the inside out!

Boy, Rin really knows how to pick ‘em. But of course he can’t have any pathologies of his own, right?

Well, that depends on how you want to view the end of the series – in which Rin goes to great lengths to get Asa to use her magic and save herself. Now, keep in mind that Asa has informed Rin that, being largely human, she has very unstable control over her abilities. She insists that she would rather die than use her power, and risk hurting those closest to her, especially her mother. Rin receives this information – and promptly slits his wrist in order to force her hand. In the ultimate display of “If I can’t have you, no one can,” Rin places Asa in a situation completely contrary to her wishes in which her selflessness will cause the death of the one she loves.

But, she chooses to use her power to save Rin, thereby saving herself, finding out it wasn’t so bad after all, and everything gonna happy. Which, in this case, means that all the other girls accept Rin’s choice in Asa and are content to continue to love him from afar. Forever. Except for Sia – she’s still intent on taking advantage of the polygamist society she comes from and managing to become at least one of Rin’s wives.

Dafuq, guys.

Shuffle!, at times, can be a quirky, fun, cute journey for a young man who wades through the tides of romantic affection in order to find true love. Meanwhile, everyone in the story learns that the passionate emotions of love are not enough, but that real love requires relationship and intention, followed up by consistence and loyalty.

But the characters in this story are far too shallow to learn these lessons effectively. Shuffle! presents itself as an emotional study in selflessness, an alternative to the promiscuous and hormone-driven dramas that our culture is becoming used to, and in many ways presents an attractive reality where “nice guys finish first” and women are finally given the opportunity to risk emotional and physical vulnerability without too many irreversible consequences. But do we want the incoming generation to get used to this style of romance, where identity and dignity and friendship are acceptable casualties of passion? The “safety” demonstrated in this ideal can never be attained, of course, but why is it an ideal in the first place? The fact is, romances of this nature are studies in idolatry, a sort which has very predictable outcomes. It is the risk itself, and the person on whom we take that risk, that should encourage us to protect and serve one another as we embark on the terrors of a worthwhile romance.

Why am I so concerned about this? Besides the abysmal condition in which contemporary romances and marriages find themselves? Well, because it affects my own life as well. I am in a relationship with a girl who is unique and special, a true individual, whom I deeply admire and respect. In return, she chooses to return and invest those feelings in me, and informs me regularly of all the ways I’m good for her. Now, sometimes life gets in the way. As we learn to do life together and try to sort out the details, we become distracted, frustrated, sometimes distressed as we try and make one another’s dreams come true while holding on to the ways in which we can’t neglect our own. It becomes necessary to be patient in the places where selflessness actually means something – biting your tongue and deciding that your needs can wait until the other’s have been met, no matter how contrary or counter-intuitive that feels in the moments where you really just want to hold their attention.

Where would my relationship be if I operated off the expectations that Shuffle! hands to me, of being the object of worship and comparing my beloved’s affections to those demonstrated by the women of this show?

I hope to God that I never make her feel that inadequate.

…But that part near the end where Rimu poisons Rin so that she can discretely cuddle him for a few minutes while he’s out cold? Yeah, that was hilarious.

20 Minutes

Tags

dark, evil, fear, life, love, music, poetry, questions, romance, what makes a man

I’m going to give this to myself,
To myself, or maybe someone else:
Twenty minutes to wax eloquent about something so 性交 up;
So 性交 up we’ll put it in cipher
Because those of you who know the best
Know that eloquence and opaqueness go best together.

Twenty minutes:
Twenty minutes isn’t damn near time enough to explore what I only need moments to explain,
The very depths of my dysfunction, my never-anonymity.

I may fall to weakness, but my infidelity begins long before that:
Such is the fragility of sacred promises,
That stand up to molten fire and bolts of thunder
yet they can be broken by cheap static,
the chemical exchanges between neurons.

Twenty minutes before I take the rest I promised myself,
That same that I’m now tearing the carpet out from under
and nailing it to this white blank page.
Woken by kaleidoscopic transgressions,
His body, shaming her heart, revenging on his heart, screwing the other’s eye, given to his eyes, shaming her body, given to my eyes, shaming my body, shaming my heart, breaking your heart, shaming your trust
Shaming you
Shaming me

To the steady, traceable, countable cadence of demolition,
To the burning of a nuclear pride gone critical under pressure,
To The Art of Dying,
ゴジラ
I surrender nine minutes:

4/4
2/4
21/16
4/4
2/4
21/16
4/4
2/4
21/16

4/4

2/4

21

16

A Machine For Pigs

Tags

confession, dark, ghost story, gothic, love, plague doctor, poetry, questions, romance

Bring some blood to oil the gears
a little, until they become something recognizable again -
I would ask, were it not your arm in the wires,
Sacrificing knife between my lips to grisly work.

But there needs be blood, you know,
and I won’t tell; I will keep it in and close
and do the work myself
though I am dry…

And as the machine runs with no oil
I will mask the smoke with smokescreens,
I will clear the air with hot air and I will mask the rot of my regression with

Mint
Rosemary
Posies
Chamomile
Thyme

Vapors into dusty lungs,
Gag and blow the rust away
Give room for clarity which comes in coughs -

                                                         I live for these pneumoniac spasms.

- Miasmic, bloated with plague and cure alike
is your love.

Now look into pitted eyes,
Touch lips to raven’s maw
Bury fingers in black fabric and
learn them like my smile that tells you that
everything will be all right

Because I will not let it out;
This body is a temple ending in wingtips
Black, gothic facade, dignified and house of God
Contagion zepelid swelling in places all all-wrong -
Clocktower scaffold bathed in quieting blood

Pleas

Let there be blood to quiet the gears,
Embalming incense to soften cookie-cutter fears,
bronzed and cast as cogs.
Silence these squeals
That would finally tell the truth to you:
That this is not
A tower or resting place
A hall for mending broken hearts or
place of sanctuary -
I am not Machseh and
I make not a marriage bed or build a shrine toward God

The screams that would betray, glancing through clocks and cables rigged
That beneath everything you love, my love,

        Is a Machine for Pigs.

The Dark Side of the Womb

Tags

blog, dark, evil, fear, fiction, ghost story, horror, story

So, I forgot to mention that my short story, “Elliott”, was anthologized last month in the most recent CLP collection, The Dark Side of the Womb. You  can get a copy here, here, and here.

Also, here’s a teaser to whet your appetite:

I loved Grandma.

I hated going to her house.

On the outside it was a big, yellow, Victorian place with a long white porch. It was the definition of inviting. It sat right on the middle of the street amongst others just like it. In the fall, when the leaves turned, the huge oaks that flanked it looked like they were on fire.

I used to wish they were, so that they’d burn the place down.

Grandma had nothing but love to give and she poured it into that house. That was where she gathered all the cousins together when we were in town for the holidays. There was more than my eight-year-old self and my cousins could have asked for – boxes upon boxes of games, books, crayons, toys, and three stories of mystery to explore. 

Which we did. For a while. See, for every bit that Grandma loved us and wanted us to love her, that house didn’t seem to have the same ideas. I could feel it. It was in good repair, lovely in the daytime, but there were parts of it that still felt, even smelled, too old.

And too big. Big enough to get lost in. It took a couple years before we were sure we’d seen every inch of that place. Then, once in a while, a door would open into somewhere we didn’t quite expect. A few times we went running through the halls only to discover that, despite all our exploring, we’d wound up somewhere we’d never been – and we’d turn around and go back the way we’d come. We didn’t want the house to get any bigger.

But it always did, no matter how hard we ran from it. That house got bigger faster than we did. I remember the first time that I saw Dad pull up the panel of wood flooring in the kitchen that led to the cellar. I’d never even noticed there was such a thing. It was hidden in plain sight, right in the otherwise uniform room that we went in and out of all the time. We ate dinner there, played cards, shucked corn. Then all at once Dad had torn that safe, sturdy floor away and I was staring into this dark, wet, cavernous mouth right below my chair – that chair that Grandma always reserved for me, where I would sit and color at the table with a plate of bread and butter and Grandpa’s honey next to me. 

I lost my appetite for sweets for a while after that.

More than anything, none of us ever dared to try the attic. That was one of the first ways in which the house showed itself as bigger than we thought. We’d discovered the drop-down staircase on the second floor that led up there, and just as we were about to pull it Grandpa walked in. I can’t remember many other times when he yelled at us so loudly. Dad put me on his lap afterward, seeing that I was shaken. His explanation of things didn’t prove to be very comforting.

Apparently, Grandpa only acted like that when he was scared for us.

The fact that the adults explicitly said that the attic was off-limits made it the representation of all the dread we felt in that house. Whatever they were scared of, however worried they were that we’d find ourselves up there, they needn’t have been. We were too scared to be curious, and none of us would dare try anything.

None of us except for Elliott. He was the worst of all of it.

I hated my cousin Elliott . . .