No Compromise

 It's a dog-eat-dog world.

What baffles me so much about any school of thought, politically speaking, is this fear that any compromise whatsoever will result in a runaway avalanche effect at full steam in the other direction. If you compromise on gun rights in favor of gun control, somehow that automatically means that every single gun you own will be immediately confiscated. If you compromise on fossil fuels in favor of green energy, somehow that automatically means that you are in favor of shutting down the oil industry entirely and cut out thousands of jobs. And if you compromise on cracking down on crime in favor of reducing police brutality, somehow that automatically means that you are in favor of hamstringing our police forces and allowing criminals to walk freely on our streets.

As I'm writing this, it occurs to me that this is a mindset that is naturally borne from our American capitalist mentality, the idea that all in life is a competition, and everything to be gained exists within a zero-sum game. In such a high-risk/high-reward system such as modern business, every penny you fail to pinch gets pinched by someone else, and failure to be as diligent and downright ruthless in your methods inevitably results in your business going under. This type of mentality is EVERYWHERE in our country, from our religion to how we grade our students to how we play sports and games - "Stand firm in your beliefs, and give a hundred and ten percent," because anything less than that will mean that the other guy "beats you." So really, I shouldn't be surprised that some of the most successful practices in our country are lead by those least keen on compromise. They've spent their whole lives being spoon-fed this idea that any leeway you give on your ideas is ground that the "other guy" will take, and that once "they" have even a little wiggle room, they will snatch your victory out from under you.

Except there is no victory for any side here. No one will never have enough money or enough energy or enough "freedom" to ever truly "win" anything. Even the filthy rich know this - why do you think they keep trying to get richer? They know that, at any moment, it could all get taken away from them by "the other guy," even if it's a million to one chance. So they keep playing the game as if any step they take that doesn't further their own ends could potentially ruin their entire way of life. Because in the business world, the only thing that truly matters is the bottom line.

This is not a way of life that has an ending. There is no finish line you can cross in life except in death. I don't believe there is any such thing in this world as true good or true evil - all in life is based on perspective. The same decision can appear to be unquestionably right or wrong depending on your perspective. What this means, however, is that when it comes down to it, no idea is ever inherently special. The only thing - the ONLY thing - that makes YOUR values and YOUR ideas and YOUR way of life worth anything at all is that they are YOURS.

You can make any argument you want in favor of your own ideas. Anyone can. And if you're good enough with words, you can convince a whole lot of people that you're right. But ultimately, no one is ever more "right" than anyone else. But we've all been trained to think that we are. I wish I had an answer to this problem, but I honestly don't know how this can possibly change. Even if ninety-nine percent of the country decide to compromise, whether it's in religion, social class, school, guns, energy or crime, the one percent who don't will end up gaining that much more influence, and momentarily be that much more "right." And everyone who's played the game long enough knows this, so in the end, no one ever compromises.

All I can say is that until someone in charge is willing to compromise, we're going to KEEP seeing school shootings, we're going to KEEP seeing the divide in social class, we're going to KEEP seeing the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, we're going to KEEP seeing established energy companies keep progressive companies down, we're going to KEEP seeing religious bigotry trying to undermine anything that challenges its dogma, and we're going to KEEP seeing unlawful police brutality going undeterred. The majority of those in charge of the status quo are convinced that there is no room for compromise, that any leeway they give ultimately undermines their cause, and will ultimately bankrupt them.

Not all in life is business, but this country sure treats it that way.

A Deceptive Statistic

This is a great example of a selective statistic. First of all, it doesn't specify a time-frame. Is this number of deaths in a year? Is it number of deaths specifically in 2012? This could be over any given time period. But moving past that, this statistic is also presumably limited to this particular kind of rifle, because I can say with certainty that the number of deaths from guns *in general* in the year 2012 is well into the thousands.

But wait, you say, the whole point of the argument is to illustrate how little this particular weapon contributes to overall deaths in a bid to reduce the vitriol aimed at this particular weapon. Well, sure, but you're comparing it to *all* murders committed by these other three things. Were there 1,589 deaths by kitchen knife alone, or does that statistics extend to pocket knives? Were those 518 deaths solely caused by ball-peen hammers, or does that include sledgehammers? I'm guessing the open-hand includes being beaten to death as well as strangulation, but the illustrations leave the original creator of this image a gross degree of leeway. If you're comparing the deaths of one, individual type of rifle, then it's only fair to compare those to something just as arbitrary.

These kinds of deceptive illustrations are ridiculously manipulative, and they preach the kind of message that is so easy for proponents of responsible gun ownership to pounce on. In the year 2013, there have been a little over 9,000 gun deaths in the United States. *That* is a statistic. And when the statistics predominantly lean in the favor of your opponents, it is very tempting to rely on fallacious material like this as ammunition to lob against those opponents under the illusion of being unfairly treated. But that statistic does not concern me here (although it ought to concern you). What concerns me is that there are very real points to be made here, and I know plenty of good, responsible gun owners who have reasonable arguments to make in favor of reasonable gun laws. *This* is not one of them, and touting an illustration like this to try to silence the real truth out there is akin to putting your hands over your ears and saying "I can't hear you" at the top of your lungs. It's insulting to yourself, to your peers, to proponents of gun control, and to those 9,000 gun victims in 2013. Instead of making up statistics, why don't we have a real conversation where we can all at least agree on where we stand? To do otherwise is to let another year go by with another 9,000 victims that could be avoided *without* losing the right to your legal firearms.

Evangelion, and why Hideaki Anno hates you

I did not write this. This is a transcript of a copy-pasta of a series of Anonymous 4chan (or 4chan like) image-board comments that, when spun together, weave (in my opinion) a brilliant expose on the background of the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime. As I've illustrated before, Evangelion has played an important role in my life, and this was such a well written dissertation that I did not want it to be lost in obscurity. So I transcribed it, with the aid of an online OCR service, from this image, making only minor grammatical corrections and editing emphasized format for consistency.

If you would like to take credit for this transcript, or know the person who wrote it, please let me know.

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Real talk: if you never actually watched Neon Genesis Evangelion all the way through, everything you know about it is wrong. Although for that matter, even the people who watched it all the way through are wrong about it. Let's talk about the creator: Hideaki Anno, and why he's happiest when you are angry. If you like Eva, Hideaki Anno hates you. That's just how it is. If you can't wrap your mind around this basic truth you are missing out on a lot of hysterical black irony.

It's hard to explain to people who haven't grown up with anime in the 90's (or at least, don't make the effort to go back and watch a lot of older anime) just how revolutionary Evangelion was to the industry. There was an expectation - even from people within the studio - that it would be cancelled within the first ten episodes. They were given a hugely limited budget, which they famously used up before the finale episodes.

It was not only a psychological exploration of what it means to be depressed, but it was a blatant dress-down of mecha and harem anime - i.e. the shit the otaku cult fap to constantly. Psychological breakdowns and meta-commentary are so common in anime nowadays, people don't realize that it's a trend Eva more or less pioneered, along with a bunch of other things.

A large basis for Evangelion - of which Anno has openly owned - is kind of an intensely public therapy session. Anno was said to have a huge disenchantment with the otaku lifestyle, going so far as to say said lifestyle was akin to autism. He fell into a depression. That depression took form in Eva, and basically started tearing apart a lot of what was common at the time.

For example, Eva basically deconstructs mecha and harem archetypes by asking “If fully developed human beings that acted like this existed in real life, and were forced to pilot giant robots, how would this play out?” We're given a hypothetical scenario of how teenaged pilots would realistically react under the pressures of piloting a mecha at the stakes are SAVING THE WORLD. We're given common archetypes - the tsundere, the cool onee-san, the kuudere - and have the show go out of its way to show that they're not walking sex fantasies but actual three-dimensional women: human beings capable of living and operating without your penis to validate them. We're also given the pressures of society that is placed upon people with depression, giving them little sympathy and instead berating them for not sucking it up.

And then, you know, there was Kawou, who showed up at the end of the series for one episode and gave the otaku fan-base a huge case of gay panic when Shinji was kind of on board to ride his baloney pony. With all the harem options available, it was kind of a sardonic twist of the knife to have Shinji go with the dude that shows up out of nowhere instead. The promotional pictures of Kaworu and Shinji hanging all over each other in pin-ups similar to Asuka, Rei and Misato just kind of shove that in their faces all the more.

Hell, to show how much people still perceived Eva to be the passionate shonen romp mecha anime usually they thought it was at the time: Eva was originally aired on a children's time-slot. When people started to side-eye Anno about the show's descent into ugly cynicism, he more or less responded saying children should be subjected to how much life sucks as early as possible (the show was moved to a later and more adult time-slot, regardless, but this is still funny).

Basically, Anno was making a hugely sarcastic commentary to people that didn't actually pick up on sarcasm very well, and as we all know: it back-fired big time. It became a moe-bait titan.

Your thoughts on the TV ending aside, what followed was a vicious backlash. The otaku fan-base lashed out at Anno with multiple death threats (some of which were later featured in the End of Eva movie). They missed the point on a lot of characters, but Rei was probably the one Anno was most furious about, as by trying to break down how an emotionally-dependent, submissive fuck-doll would be REALLY CREEPY and NOT OKAY, he only had her end up being an iconic cultural wet dream.

So, Anno responds by creating the theatrical finale of the series, End of Evangelion, and it was just one giant “FUCK YOU” to the fan-base. The TV ending was a pretty positive, constructive resolution to Shinji's plight, but given the backlash, Anno was basically "OH, YOU WANT MORE EMOTIONAL TORTURE PORN? I WILL GIVE YOU THE EMOTIONAL TORTURE PORN," and he delivers. If you watched EoE without actually watching the series, a lot of that context can go over your head. THAT scene with Shinji in the hospital room with Asuka? That was Anno basically pointing a finger at the otaku fans through the fourth wall and going "THIS IS WHAT YOU'RE DOING, YOU'RE THIS FUCKED UP, YOU SICK FREAKS!" The irony is a large portion of the fandom DIDN'T GET IT and instead praised that scene to show Shinji was ‘maturing’ and ‘growing up.‘

Basically, End of Eva was one of the most beautifully animated middle-fingers ever to be conceived. Like, I have no doubt that a lot of the narrative resolutions in EoE were always planned, but I also suspect that EoE was made to be a lot angrier, and with a lot more spite, than was originally intended. Asuka's last line, the famous ‘I feel sick’ or ‘how disgusting’ (depending on how you want to translate her line), could be interpreted as directed to the fan-base.

And hell, in interviews alter the movie, he's also on record as saying he did End of Eva to ‘bring the fans back to reality’ and also compared fan commentary on his work to bathroom graffiti.

He really hates you.

And now the Rebuild movies, which seem to be a continuation more than a retelling. We're introduced to a new character: Mari, who doesn't seem to exist beyond providing panty shots and talking about how her breasts are too big, stealing the spotlight from Asuka, and selling a lot of figures. Anno was apparently on record as saying he put her in the movies to ‘destroy Eva.’ She's the moe-bait fantasy the otaku nerds clearly crave, and Anno is sarcastically giving it to them. And then 3.0 came out, which was a theatrical-length movie about Shinji's big gay awakening with Kaworu, among other more emotional torture porn trolling.

It's to the point where I'm kind of left delightfully pondering if the fourth Rebuild movie will have an obscenely positive resolution (along the lines of the TV series) or a spiteful miserable one (along the lines of the End of Eva movie). Knowing Anno's track-record, he'll go by whatever he thinks the fan-base will rage at the most, and it's a really hard call because they're both proven to give his fandom a collective aneurysm.

Evangelion is a franchise that keeps being worked on and continued seemingly out of pure spite. It's not even a secret. Anno is quoted everywhere as telling everyone that he hates his fans, that he wants to destroy his own franchise, that this is a thing that he is in fact doing…and he seems to get even more furious when they keep making him a success instead. It's really funny. All the more so is how tragic this irony is as he's clearly invested in telling the story he wants to tell as artfully and skillfully as he can: his own commentary on the rise and pitfalls of human nature and what it means to grow as a person.

It's the ultimate bad romance between a creator and his fan-base and it's tragic how many people miss out on how amazing this is.

So, here you go, it is explained. This is brought to by the collected conversations between me and Muun as we laugh at Anno's life. Enjoy.

P&S - Till the World Ends

Quick AMV I threw together after a couple hours in Adobe Premiere. Took the transformation scene from the anime "Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt" set it to part of "Till the World Ends" by Britney Spears.

"Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt" is a property of Madman Entertainment, Manga Entertainment, Funimation Entertainment and Studio Gainax. "Till the World Ends" is a property of its respective owner. Please support the official release.

Self Pity

I love Stephen Fry, and I generally find him to be particularly inspiring. I'd like to take a look at this quote though, and analyze what he's saying for a moment.

I always hear that self-pity does not get you anywhere. But every time I try to look at life a different way, I find myself at a loss for what to replace that self-pity with. I mean, what am I supposed to feel about myself INSTEAD of self pity? Am I supposed to imagine that I'm actually awesome? Replace self pity with self confidence? Sarcasm aside, I feel an enormous reluctance to believe any positive thing about myself simply out of fear of being mistaken. In my opinion, the only thing worse than feeling self pity is feeling self aggrandizing, particularly when it's unearned. I see so many people who just think they are the bee's knees, and honestly, I find myself disliking them even more than the self-pitying introverts I'm familiar with. As positive as a quality as self confidence is, to demonstrate it often makes me feel severely lacking in humility. And the last thing I would want to do is come off as someone so out of touch with anything that they don't even realize how lacking they are. That, to me, feels much more dangerous than self pity. I guess that's what it comes down to - self pity may be negative, but at least in doing so, I feel secure. Secure in the knowledge that I'm not over-estimating myself, not overstretching my limits, not biting off more than I can chew.

I know all the old adages - shoot for the moon, and even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars. Or it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Or one must not walk too carefully in life only to arrive safely at death. But frankly, those maxims seem hollow and contrived. Easy to make such a claim if you've already made the journey. When you look back and have some success to bolster you, courage is easier to come by. But when you have more failure than success behind you, you begin to think that you haven't been cautious enough.


How would you advise that I overcome this particular mental roadblock, Mister Fry?

Pony Pony Yukai

Song: "Hare Hare Yukai" by Aya Hirano
Footage: Equestria Girls
Program Used: Adobe Premiere Pro CS5

Saw the musical number from Equestria Girls, and thought it would fit pretty well with the opening to Haruhi Suzumiya.

Just a little note about gun control

(Time of original posting: Tuesday, December 18, 2012 at 9:58am)

There are two sides to any issue. I know quite a few gun owners who have an immense respect and appreciation for gun safety. They take every precaution, they most certainly do not treat their guns as "toys," and go to great lengths to educate themselves on the subject. There are probably quite a few gun owners on a hair trigger who see their guns as their last and only resort in any given conflict or situation, but I do believe that the majority of gun owners are respectable citizens just like anybody else. A lot of gun owners probably hear about these school shootings and, between bouts of grief for the horrible tragedy, probably feel an intense hatred towards the shooter, as the shooter inevitably paints all gun owners as trigger-happy malcontents who are an inch away from blowing the head off the nearest innocent bystander. You could be the safest, most precautionary gun owner in the world, follow all the rules, and do everything right, and all it takes is one trigger happy lunatic for the people around you to see you as an unstable, gun-toting maniac.

I can honestly appreciate that.

That said, it is easier to get a gun license in this country than it is to get a driver's license. It is easier to buy a gun than it is to buy a pet. You can walk into a Wal-Mart and pick up parts and ammo for any number of weapons, from concealable handguns to high caliber rifles. Many gun owners are not generally fans of regulation, but in case it wasn't abundantly clear, we regulate just about everything in this country. We regulate alcohol, we regulate prescription drugs, we regulate tobacco, we regulate vehicles, we regulate movies, TV shows and video games by age group, and yes, we regulate guns.

Anything that is potentially harmful, anything that you wouldn't want a child to pick up and play with, anything that could hurt or kill someone if handled incorrectly, is and should be regulated. It's not tyrannical to try to keep these things out of the hands of someone who doesn't know how to or has no intention to handle it correctly. I'm not saying gun owners are unintelligent - quite the opposite, many of my friends and family own guns, and they are very smart about the way that they handle them. We're not asking that gun owners give up their right to bear arms, we're just asking that they be smart about it. We know that you know how to handle your weapon. We're just asking that you go through the right channels to make sure that it's the intelligent gun owner like you who gets the gun, and not the psychopath who decides to shoot up a school.