Controversy.

Not real?

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

I had a new experience since my last post. Somebody online got a bit aggressive in a discussion and I felt somewhat like it was a personal attack. Thankfully, it got no worse because I did not respond.

I’m well aware  I may be the only person on this blog, ironically, never to have had this happen before, so I’m not going to act like it was a big deal. It is actually the topic we were discussing that bothered me, because I’ve known many people to get defensive about it.

Well, specifically, I’ve known many people to get defensive about how they like to watch horror movies, or read what I would call horror novels, though I believe they are mostly known as Young Adult Fiction. (Yeah, burn.)

Seriously, the amount of times this conversation has happened is a bit scary to me:

Me: You like to watch so and so?

Person: Yeah, I love that (show, movie, etc.)

Me: But it’s horrible.

Person: ( a little less enthusiastically) but I like it.

Me: But stuff like that leaves images in your brain…

Person: But I know it’s not real.

Me: just because it’s not real…

Person: Well, it doesn’t affect me.

It doesn’t always happen in that order, but I can almost guarantee the words “I like it”,”It’s not real”, and “It doesn’t affect me”, will come up.

I should fill in a little bit more of that online debate. See the debate was about books and writing, not movies. That’s mainly because the people I was having it with are readers, and likely not as big on movies as the people I debate movies with. I used to assume that people who were readers didn’t have the same problems (content-wise) as people who weren’t, but I have been disillusioned.

I find to my shock that many teens of about my age or younger write mainly one kind of story. You know the type if you’ve ever browsed through the Young adult section in a bookstore or library. (I avoid that section now.) It’s dramatic, it’s about teens, it usually involves mutants, vampires, zombies, or a post apocalyptic setting that might have a combination of two or all of those choices. The narration is usually in first-person. There is a lot of fear, confusion, and fighting back happening in that person’s mind, soul, or surroundings. On top of this, the person tends to be either incredibly immature, or incredibly callous and cynical. And they can be as young as 12 or as old as 16, usually.

My point being, these books are almost always garbage. Even if they are well-written, there are still several inherent problems with them.

The first one would be they are extremely dark. And that is what my debate centered on, how dark can a book be? (And still be healthy? I presume is the implied question.) Most of the people in this online thing thought it was all right to put a lot of darkness in a story, if, in the end, good overcomes it. Others cautioned against putting too much, and one or two thought it was perfectly fine to get in touch with you inner-villain and go all out on your characters.

Something you guys need to know about fiction writers: our characters become real to us.

The evil characters are not like real people to me, personally, but the ones between good and evil can be,  and the good characters always develop a lot of personality.

But the good ones suffer the most, and that is why the darkness question centers on them. But it also centers on the reader. And on the movie watcher, because movies and books have this in common, they make you, the participant, part of the adventure. They have you rooting for the hero and getting upset when things turn out badly. At least this is what a movie is intended to do. A book does even more in that it can leave it up to you to judge what should have happened. A book gets your mind involved, a movie may only get your emotions. Either way, you are meant to get something out of it.

If there is a lot of darkness in a book, that is what the reader will walk away with. I once got a nightmare from such a book, and I am not a person who usually gets nightmares relating to what I read. When I read such stuff, something inside me just says “This is not right.” But personal feelings aside, I think there are biblical reasons not to focus on darkness.

Suffering, evil, and all that goes with it are a part of life. But going to great lengths in your imagination to see and create such things is unhealthy. We are not meant to live that stuff on purpose. As evidenced by the fact that actors who played too many psycho characters have committed suicide, and many bands that have music centered on darkness are not composed of very stable people.

All I am stating is common sense. If this is where darkness leads then don’t go there. But it makes people angry when I knock their favorite material. Which to me is more evidence in my favor. If someone knocks my reading and watching habits, I’m not going to get super defensive unless I personally have misgivings about it already. When I am confident it’s good, I don’t give a rip what anyone says.

But if a part of me were saying “maybe this isn’t good for me.” I would be defensive, or, I’d choose the better option of considering that this person might be right.

That’s what I ask of my readers, who may already agree with me, or maybe only read all of this because they were mad. I can’t know for certain.

But I know that this stuff is important. The fact that it is fiction only means that it represents what people will learn to expect instead of what they already have; and if you expect bad things, you will get bad things. That’s all I have to say on that. Until next time-Natasha.100_4316

Are We Starving?

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So, I don’t really think I’ve brought up the controversy if homosexuality yet.

I am going to refrain from giving my opinion on it at the moment. My reason is that after hearing something related to the issue on one of the YouTube channels I watch, my mind got going in a different direction than just the right-wrong question.

As important as that is, there is a forgotten man, so to speak, when the issue is discussed.

The mindset of accepting the gay or lesbian lifestyle has formed a cage around people who don’t accept it. I don’t mean that they get called haters, I mean the cage no one talks about. The issue is simply a kind of stigma that is growing among people against showing any kind of affection to your friends of the same sex, without it being read as sexual.

I don’t know about you, but I am noticing an increasing emotional starvation among the people of our culture. It seems to center around the fact that no one shows any affection for us.

This is the thing, a pat on the shoulder, a kiss on the cheek, holding hands; those all used to be something friends could do. Not guy friends generally, but girls could. Men used to greet each other with a hand shake or a slap on the back. Some still do. In our generation, guys have (wisely) taken to inventing their own hugs and handshakes that are clearly defined as being strictly bro-things. Girls actually could take a cue from that idea.

It may seem weird that I am bringing it up, but it’s high time someone did. Human beings need physical touch. They need to hear words of affection. And they need to hear it from everyone, everyone they are close to. No matter what age, gender, or relation. And we are meant to exchange embraces with all the people we care about. I know plenty of people wouldn’t argue with me on this, and would even think it was obvious, but people my age and younger are starting to wonder.

If I am completely blunt, they are starting to wonder if the fact that they like getting hugged by people of the same sex, does that make them homosexual? They are wondering if they are gay because they like even the most innocent of touches. Even the word touch has some very ugly connotations attached to it now, you probably thought of some of them when I used it, or you didn’t. Good for you.

No one is telling kids that it is normal to want physical contact with people. It is just a way of feeling that they see you, if that makes sense. It is easy to feel ignored when someone glances at you and that’s it, they won’t give you a hug or any acknowledgement. But if they had their eyes closed and still gave you a hug, you wouldn’t feel ignored at all. Think about it, touch is powerful. A person can look at you, and hear you, but not really be seeing you or listening to you, and you can feel invisible or unimportant. But a simple hug or a pat on the shoulder, and you feel noticed. Some people who don’t like to be touched don’t like it because they feel too seen. Some people dislike PDA for the same reason.

I won’t deny there’s always some respect due when you’re using touch as a way to show affection, but there’s respect do no matter what way you show it. The point is I see this taboo touch thing as a direct attack on love.

That may sound nuts, but hear me out. Friendship is a difficult thing to maintain, and it is hard to have a deep, meaningful friendship nowadays because people have forgotten how to do it. There is an uncertain balance among millennials and Generation y-ers over how important friendship is.

Most kids, it must be admitted, will dump friendship over romance. There’s a counter movement that protests that any friendship between girls is more important than any boy. And it usually is between girls, because if the guys say that, they are labeled gay. Ouch.

This is not fair to the guys mostly, but not to the girls either. For one thing, you cannot tell a girl that a guy may never be more important than her girl friendships. That is just not true. When she is married, her husband is going to be more important. And if it is a case of doing the right thing, or if the guy is just the better friend of the two, it is not fair to give the girl friend such preference.

That is another post right there, but what I am saying is, well intentioned as it may be, glorifying friendship is not the answer. I have heard many sides of the question, and my solution is more complicated than just having friends and not being afraid to hug and stuff.

We are getting separated from each other more and more as every mode of affection is getting frowned on with suspicion, or cheered on as progressive. I have realized that everyone is meant to love every person they come in contact with, not through words and  physical touch of course, but in the way they treat them. It has never been a reality to have everyone earth love each other since Adam and Eve fell, but that should be the mindset of everyone who wants to do right by their fellow human beings.

And it turns out, love is different in different situations, but it is the motive and not the actions that decided what kind of love it is.

Squeezing every expression of love more and more into the sexual category is not just stupid, it’s flat-out wrong. It is disrespectful and flippant, and I am heartily sick of it.

I really hope the tide starts to turn in this, we need it to.

Until next post–Natasha.

Don’t go to sleep.

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I found out some stuff this week about Disney. I’m aware not everyone who reads this may watch Disney stuff often, but I’m one of the millions of kids who grew up watching almost only Disney, (and VeggieTales.) Now Disney has changed a lot over the years. But one thing I could always count on was that the movies would at least make a pretense of having a good message. More often than not, they delivered. Even the ones I used to dislike I now like, except for Beauty and the Beast, I never have and probably never will like that movie. And guess what? They are remaking it.

That’s not all, there’s some controversy over what one of the directors said about the movie. I refuse to detail it because it’s better if you don’t know, and if you do, you already can guess what I’m referring to.

Over the years I’ve come to expect certain jokes and insinuations to be in adult movies, sometimes I can laugh at them, most of the time I roll my eyes, but you go into it knowing that’s a possibility. There are always times when the movie ends up being completely different form what you saw in the commercial, but most of the time you know what you’re getting. Fine. I didn’t watch PG-13 movies that often till I was 17 at least. I still don’t watch R-rated stuff that often and then only if it’s R-rated for a legitimate reason.

I have this thing about ratings. I think it’s ridiculous to say adults should be exposed to inappropriate content more than children, without it hurting them at all. That’s what most people think of ratings, and most kids see PG-13 material before they are 13 because, heck, they can handle it.

Ratings are actually supposed to be a tool that you could use to decide what to expose yourself to, it’s not your age that matters, it was your tolerance level. That’s how many people use them anyway.

Personally, violence and sensual scenes ae two things I can’t handle well, I will have the images stuck in my mind for days, maybe months. I put up with them if the movie is worth it, and avert my eyes when necessary.

So, why am I telling you all this? So you can think I’m sheltered? Actually, my parents don’t make this choice for me, I do it myself. My siblings and I have standards that we help each other enforce, and we’ve gotten mad at our dad for not warning us of content he knows we don’t like. I used to think it would be cool to watch age rated stuff, and then I realized that my standards weren’t magically going to change because I grew older, they only increased. This is thanks to my mom’s carefulness in what she allowed us to see, though she wasn’t always there, and what you see at other people’s houses is not something your parents can always control. And mine are not the slightly scary type who drill anyone we visit with about what we can watch.

So, there are things I have seen that I regret to this day, and that is why I keep my standards high. I know things like stupid jokes, stupid characters, and stupid plot lines, are inevitable; but you have to keep looking.

To bring this back to Disney, I have to thank Disney for a lot of things. Frozen, for example.  (I might do a post someday about why that’s my favorite movie despite it being a kids’ movie. Would anyone read that?) Disney has never succumbed to the corruption of standards and morals that, it must be admitted, a lot of production studios for other kids’ movies have. (Have you seen some of the things they are advertising–straight up?) But I have been concerned that they can’t hold up much longer, and now I’m really concerned.

Look, I get that not every screenwriter is a God–fearing person. I get that I cant’ expect Christian Values out of every movie made by Disney. I get it, I live in world that hates God being in their business. But, does that really justify shoving spoonfuls of propaganda down unsuspecting children’s throats?

Let’s try to be objective. For along time Disney had stayed neutral, they have never tried to appeal to the Right or the Left, to the Atheist or the Theist, they have held the middle ground. And in so doing, they managed to please most of us, which is not usually what happens. Now, throwing a controversial thing into their movie, even if the kids miss it, is that really the best idea?

From even a business perspective, it makes no sense to me. I’ll grant you, the demographic the controversy appeals to (and there always is one) will likely support this movie. but that will be outweighed by the amount of people who will avoid it because of the content. The scarier prospect is if it’s not.

And if they get away with this where does it stop? You may laugh at me for being paranoid, as I’m sure many people I know would, but am I really? isn’t this how every decline starts? One person gets away with one thing, then another person gets away with another thing, and then everyone thinks it’s okay.

I am asking us all to consider, what is the real gain in letting such things happen without a fight? What do we lose in the long run. Think about it, we sacrifice our morals, we expose our children’s minds to ideas they aren’t mature enough to resist, we spend our money; all on colored lights, loud speakers, and an hour or two of entertainment. Entertainment!

Long sigh. I may not be able to stop the writers from being allowed to do this, but I hope I can encourage a few people not to put up with it. I want people to look around and realize it’s a new day, we don’t have to accept this crud anymore. We can change it. I want to put some good material in this world, the kind that parents will feel good about and kids will love. The more of us who aspire to that, the less power these people have. Just don’t ignore it. Don’t go to sleep.

Until next post–Natasha.

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Classic

Redefining.

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I think the biggest part of the Rebelution is redefining.

We redefine what people are capable of. Teens especially.

We redefine what we need to be interested in.

We redefine how we spend our time.

We redefine our acceptable standards.

On that note, I’ve spent two posts trying to redefine what it is to be lady and a gentleman. But I know if enough people read those posts, someone is going to read it who has questions.

Like: what exactly do I mean when I say that ladies demonstrate kindness and gentleness, or gentlemen demonstrate chivalry.

Let’s talk about it:

Like I said in Ladylike, I think any girl can be lady, no matter what her personality or tastes happen to be. Likewise, any man can be a gentleman.

Often when I watch a movie and say “Now there’s a real man.” I’ll be saying it at a different moment than my dad will. My dad likes it when guys actually act like real guys. That is, they drink, and have contests of strength, and act like flawed human beings, who still have good hearts. He says that’s how guys are around each other. I wouldn’t know. But personally, I watch how these men treat the female characters of the movie.

It’s not just that I’m a romantic, it’s that I know that a lot of boys really don’t talk about girls like they’re even human beings; not just when they’re talking bout who’s hottest or whatever, I mean even when they talk about how girls act with other girls, or with guys, or what girls like, etc. (To be fair, girls do the same thing.)

What impresses me about a man? He doesn’t have to be soft spoken or really gentle outwardly, (though that is always nice) it’s his attitude. When a man, off  screen or on, actually treats a woman, even if it’s his mother, like he cares about how she feels and thinks, and like she’s something to be protected and not taken advantage of, that makes an impression.

Whether this is  romantic relationship, a platonic one, or a family one, it really makes no difference. A man who really cares and shows it by being there, and being there in the right way, that’s the real deal. I like how Gianna Jessen defines men, either as weasels (men who don’t come through) or as uncommon. Which is self explanatory.

Now, I have no hate or anger toward guys who simply don’t come through. I’ve known a lot of them. I’m used to them. But that’s just it, the Uncommon man is uncommon.

I don’t want the girls to think I’m neglecting us, so here’s the straight scoop. The man who comes through may be uncommon, but so it the girl or woman who will let him. Ouch. I don’t intend to come down on us ladies, often there’s a lot of reasons we are the way we are.

To be honest, the Uncommon man and woman are uncommon really because we aren’t training them anymore. We aren’t encouraging them to come out of hiding and astonish us.

What does it look like to do that? It depends.

There’s an example I wanted to use here. On the show Kim Possible, there’s a really stupid episode (The Cupid Effect) that I watched with some amazement the first time. I won’t go into the whole plot, but there is one memorable line that Ron Stoppable utters to Junior, who had used an evil device to cause girls to rave over him. Junior has just laughed at Ron for being in disguise as a girl. (In order to get close enough to stop him.) Ron retorts “Well, you are no gentlemen.”

As stupid as the situation was, and I don’t recommend the episode, I think Ron made a good point. In his usual, unintentional way. It’s not the clothes, it’s why you wear them. Cross dressing really has nothing to do with the plot here, but if someone were to object, I’d point out that Ron was doing it in order to rescue a lot of girls, including his own girlfriend; whilst Junior, who is a muscular sort of man-boy, was using a hypnotic device to control all these girls. Ron may not look the part, but at least he’s acting it.

That sums it up,( in a weird way.) Anything a guy does, if it’s in an effort to respect a girl, or even his own father, can be honorable. Do I think they get it right every time? No. But I do think they get it right more when they are trying to.

As for us girls, well, we have  our share of respect issues. I’ve listened to other girls diss guys while I’m around, and I always get really uncomfortable listening. Look, I know it’s frustrating when guys don’t know how to be manly about things like break ups, or dates, or whatever; but can I just level with you and say:  “If you don’t want to deal with that, stop agreeing to date guys who aren’t ready for relationship.”

It’s not always the guy’s fault. We need to have their backs as much as they need to have ours. I don’t want to have to spell this out, but girls, set standards.

Back to what I mentioned earlier. Guys and girls alike need to understand this, we are all human.

There’s actually a pretty good movie for this subject, called “The Swap.” It shows how, though we express it in different ways, guys and girls are having the same feelings of loss, and anxiety.

It’s actually not that hard to empathize with each other if we’re willing to try.                         In the end, we all want a lot of the same things. We want people to be considerate of us; to treat us like equals; not to make fun of us; and so on. It’s just our definitions of those things happen to be different. But that’s good. It varies from person to person anyway.

To at bottom, being a lady or gentleman really is about treating everyone with respect.005leonidafremov

Unbelievable.

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I cannot believe what I just read, there’s this article on a news website about how one university in WA has declared proper grammar to be racist.

I was incredulous. I read the short article and from what I could gather, though the people themselves did not explain it clearly, their position is that because English is always changing, it is not fair to expect people who are speaking English poorly or as a second language to keep up with it. I am perhaps giving their position more credit than it deserves since they didn’t actually state that, they just said racism was ingrained in our culture.

You can read it for yourself, if you want exactly what they said:

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/02/22/university-of-washington-declares-correct-grammar-is-racist/

People, do I really even need  to say it?

Okay, I will: this is absolutely ridiculous.

Not only is this grossly unfair to young writers like myself and most of my followers, who want to do well in their writing, but it is an insult to the very ethnicities they claim to be assisting.

If you don’t speak English well, you deserve the chance to learn how to do it better. You deserve the opportunity to read and be able to understand great books, great concepts, and great feeling. You deserve to not sound like an idiot when you write and when you speak. You deserve to learn. You do not deserve to be written off by people who don’t understand what respect is. This isn’t even about entitlement, there is no record of the students complaining about this, even if they did, no one should buy that kind of thinking. It’s demeaning.

I don’t believe we are entitled to much in this world, but to learn and improve is one thing everyone is entitled to, God sends us into the world with that ability. Even the mentally challenged ones.

To tell someone they cannot use proper grammar is like telling them they cannot learn how to walk. It’s like telling them they are retarded, and not by choice, but by the system. Sadly, many kids are told they can’t walk. Guess what, a lot of them learn how to anyway. (See the testimony of Gianna Jessen.)

Now, it may be brought up that the English language really does change, and that is true. But so does the Spanish language. I have been studying Spanish for over a year, I also study French and Khmer and I know ASL. Each of those languages has slightly different or completely different grammar. If I do not use it, I will sound like I did not actually learn the language to the natives of it. That will demonstrate a lack of effort, and a disrespect to their tongue. They may forgive me if I make a few errors, but if it is clear I blatantly did not try, what will they think?

Why should I not feel this way about anyone who does not try to learn my language properly? Just because I clearly am a racist because my whole culture is, so I must be too. What a straw man.

The truth is I do not respect some people of other ethnicities, but it is not their race, it is their behavior. And I do not hate them because of it, I don’t respect some people of the same race as me either because they are not deserving of respect. There is a respect for humanity everyone must be shown, and I have no problem with that; but respect for intelligence, ability, and virtue, all that must be earned and anyone who says otherwise doesn’t understand what those things are.

Racism is not saying or thinking someone of a different race is stupid or uneducated or bad, it is thinking they are that way because of their race and not actually weighing them in terms of their behavior.

And saying someone is racist because they point this out, that is actually being biased. I trust all my readers are intelligent enough to figure this out without my help, I’m just laying out my position.

By the way, I have relatives who are Mexican, I am several different ethnicities myself, and
I have family members who have been the victims of racism, so I know what I’m talking about.

It does no good to hate people just for being what they are; and that goes for people born in the middle class and with white skin just as much as it does for the impoverished ones.

Education is the key to ending racism, and these people will only increase it by attacking grammar. Because then what next? history is already being rewritten as it is, will math or science follow? (Arguably science already has, but I won’t go into that.)

So I want everyone to see this post as a defense of the races who got dissed by this stupid idea; and a defense of the races who were supposed to feel defended and in reality were even more insulted. I’m not afraid to say all this either because I’m tired of us just accepting the labels.

P. S. (I may have unwittingly made some grammatical errors while writing this, I am not perfect.)

–Natasha.

SAMSUNG CSC

Reach higher.

The Indefensible.

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I’ve been thinking about how my political views effect my writing here. I’ve been reading about how this country got started, so politics are on the brain. I never want to use this blog as an attempt to get followers who agree with me, so I hestitate to bring up the subject too often, but because this is an ideas blog, I also think it’s only fair to let people  know where I stand.

Le tme also say that I don’t judge people’s worth as people by their political views, and I wouldn’t want to be judged by it either.

I only care about politics as it relates to my faith, many Christians don’t believe we should be concerned or involved in politics. And in countries where the system doesn’t allow Christianity in its government, that might be a fair view. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care. Everyone should care. But there is the trap, as C. S. Lewis describes in The Screwtape Letters, of coming to use your faith as a support for political views, instead of seeing your views as a  direct result of your faith. In other words, you make your faith match your politics, or any other mode of thinking you might have. Obviously this is wrong.

I am a  conservative, but that is because I found those principles to be in line with what the Bible teaches, if I was convinced Liberalism was more in line, I would be that. I know plenty of Christians who are liberals, and that’s up to them. I actually don’t think God cares about that first and foremost.

The problem is we often care about it a little too much, I’m sure if you had a dime for every time you’ve heard someone put the opposing side in a box (or basket) you’d be rich. Or at least you’d have a lot of dimes.

The situation we have now is pretty sad, almost no one can see the other side as full human beings. We don’t talk about them like that, and we don’t treat them like that, often enough. They are indefensible.

Like Trump and Hillary, whichever side you are on, one of them is indefensible. I do think that sometimes, there is no just way to defend someone’s actions. But we have carried it a little too far when I can, on two different occasions, get shocked and somewhat hostile reactions from kids in my own family when I say I support Trump. It’s an immediate guilt by association. Would I feel the same if it had been over Hillary? Well, that’s tricky.

I would not ever condone voting for her, but do I condone the things people say about her? No, not all of them. I would defend Hillary Clinton as I would defend another human being, but not as a politician. All this means is that I believe people deserve some measure of respect, whether I like them or not.

I know I will have people who don’t agree with me reading this, and that is okay. They can even hate me if they wish. I won’t return it. It is not that I have never been tempted to hate people who believe things I find horrible or ridiculous. (And, let’s face it, we all know I can’t help feeling that way whichever side I’m on.) My whole reason for not holding a grudge is simply that I don’t believe it is right to do so. Grudges are stupid.

Even the Clintons (pardon my phrasing) need to be forgiven and loved, and that may never look like what the people who support them would call love, but calling it hate to not support them is ridiculous. It just is. I would not say anyone who does not support one of the politicians I favor hates anyone, let alone the politician themselves. I may be giving myself as an example too often here, but I’ve been reading about Thomas Jefferson, and this was his  belief. He never even defended himself to the press of his day because he didn’t think it was necessary. And he remained friends with one of his opponents (more than one actually) to his dying day. He stated that politics were no reason to end a friendship. (Though there may be reasons within that general category to end one, but that’s another discussion.)

At the end of the day, though I care about my country and my people, I recognize that no country lasts forever; and no political party does either. It would be foolish to stake all one’s beliefs on those things. I believe more strongly in love, justice, and God’s will.

A really good, and short, book that covers this is The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, particularly the chapter on Affections, (if I’m not mistaken in my locations.) He’ll say it better than I.  I hope though, I said what I was trying to communicate.

So, there, that’s my piece for now. Until next time–Natasha.