Hope

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

My Report Card.

/ toseealife / 2 Comments

How do you handle disappointments?

I’ve had a lot of them over the past couple of months. They always center around people doing things differently than I was expecting, and not just different, but badly.

As everyone knows I have high standards, and they may be too high at times. I don’t see myself failing as much as I can see other people failing, and I feel let down. Sometimes I do actually have a legitimate reason to expect differently, but not always.

Can you relate?

Well, I can not write some inspired post about how to fix disappointment once and for all. If we were to grade our lives like a report card, how many Ds would we give them? D for a disappointment, D for feeling discouraged, D for despairing of change.

What about some other letters, hmm? How do I personally handle the first D so I don’t get the other two?

Well, I always think about my problem for a while, I weigh it. I may decide I just need to move on, I may decide I need to do something, but the main thing is that I have to give myself an F.

F is good on this report card. F means Forgiveness. Forgive the people who let yo down, forgive yourself for getting discouraged or upset. Forgive God even for doing something you cannot understand. (Not that God needs it, it’s for us.)

Then you might want to give yourself a C for comparison. Compared to bigger issues, this may not really be important, but if it is, C is for Conversation and Companionship. I find it helpful to talk to people about what happened, let them point out things I hadn’t considered, and provide comfort, and then be grateful that they listened to me.

B is for Be Real. It’s not all about me, and the people who let me down often have mistaken ideas about what I want, or they just forget, or they are truly wrong but still need grace. I’ve probably done similar things, so don’t be too harsh.

A is for acceptance. Stuff happens, but often it can end up being a good thing. Never forget that God might be using you in this to help someone else, or that you might be learning something important that you couldn’t otherwise know. At the end of the day, just accept that people will never make you completely happy anyway. It is partly a choice, and partly God’s gift.

You know, I just made this up off the top of my head, but it is what I do to beat disappointment, and  I think it’s pretty good advice. (I might want to copy this list for myself.)

So, how was your report card and do you have any other ideas about not letting disappointments discourage you? Feel free to share them below.

Until next time–Natasha.003zhaoshaoang-flower-bird

Legacy

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Ever wonder what your impact will be on the world? When you’re gone what will be different because of you? There’s a name for what you leave behind you; it’s called Legacy.

Good old Girl Meets World has an episode devoted to this that I recommend checking out if you can. I don’t want to spend too much time explaining it but I might use the show itself as an example here.

Girl Meets World made its share of mistakes, but it was always clear that their intention was good. You could tell they really wanted to make you think, and they wanted to help you.

It’s a connection that the creator of a movie, show, or book makes with their audience. It’s a way that we know they care, and if we watch or read it, they in turn know we care. Some of us are moved to tears just by realizing that someone out there wants to do right by us, others of us less emotional people just give it respect.

We actually feel betrayed when a show like this gets cancelled, and a book series suddenly takes a different turn and stops being about promoting the good things we liked it for.

Then, bitter or disappointed or just sad, we talk about what that thing meant to us. Other people think we’re nutty for caring so much. We try to explain.

This is why: Someone cared. Someone tried. Someone actually succeeded.

It didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to be good.

I felt understood, or I felt respected. Like the writers actually cared what they were introducing to my mind.

There are those of us who like dirty movies, or horror, but let’s be honest, even if we do, do we truly like the people who put that stuff out there. We let them screw us, figuratively speaking, but do we give them an ounce of respect for it? We may not regard out own minds, but do we really appreciate that they don’t regard us either?

In my limited experience, the people who like horror and sexually charged material are also the ones with low self respect. You expose yourself to garbage when you feel like garbage, it’s just true. (Not that you have to, but that’s why.)

The people who loved Girl Meets World loved it because it respected them. They respected themselves enough to accept it. The kids who got helped by it’s messages about bullying, being yourself, choosing rightly, they all got helped because they had it in them to be helped.

Half the time, the show just reminded us of what we already knew.

But that was okay, goodness knows we need that.

Girl Meets World wanted to make people’s lives better, makes their relationships better, and thereby make the world better. Hence the title Girl (you, boy can be substituted as we all know) Meets (relationships) World (it says itself.)

At the end of both Girl Meets World and its predecessor Boy Meets World, Riley and Cory both realize the meaning of meeting the world. and while I still hope for something more, because of my faith, I won’t deny it’s a good message. Meet the world. Know you aren’t alone in it. Then change it.

That’s a legacy worth leaving. That’s what legacy is. Who you are, who you meet, what you impact. That’s what you leave behind you. Material legacy just represents the unseen legacy.

Those are my thoughts, and this is also my thank you to this show and to every book and movie I’ve ever liked and learned from. Until next time–Natasha.

I feel all right like I could take on the world. Light up the stars I got some pages to turn. I’m singing o-o-oh, o-o-oh. I’ve got a  ticket to the top of the sky. I’m coming up I’m on the ride of my life. O-o-oh, o-o-oh. Take on the world. Take on the world. Take on the world.

SAMSUNG CSC

Reach higher.

Don’t go to sleep.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

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.

image.jpg

Classic

Redefining.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

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

Rules don’t apply–part 2

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Picking up where I left off:

I was just talking about rules and love and “The hiding place.” You know, just a typical organized post from Natasha. 🙂

All joking aside, I’ve thought a lot about Mercy lately. I was just talking to my sister about another show we used to watch that loved to break its characters.

[Okay, this is Natasha lingo. When I say “break” or “killed” a character, I mean they either took a potentially great storyline and didn’t finish it; or they made the character do something that they would never  do and so proved they didn’t even know what their own character stood for. That ruins it for me every time.] I digress:

They broke this one character, and though they could have repaired her with some really smart writing, they didn’t. They left her broken. Eventually my sisters and I realized the show just didn’t know how to explain it’s own content.

What has puzzled me is that, though these characters aren’t even real, they can make mistakes that really bother people; and people will not forgive them. Although, sorry fans, but it didn’t actually happen. I will be the first to deny that just because it’s a show that means it didn’t matter, it does matter. I just wonder, if this can be our attitude towards a sin that is made up, what is our attitude towards a sin that actually affects us?

That does tie in to Mercy; and rules; and everything I was talking about in part one. The biggest question both in my fan fiction story and in real life was “How do you treat sin?” Many of us don’t even use the word anymore, (at least seriously.) Sin is just a Christian myth right? It’s not real. Well, often on this blog I just use the words wrong, evil, or bad to avoid confusion. But Sin is just simpler, it means all those things. And believe it nor not, whether we use the word or don’t, all of us still believe in it.

We just might call it intolerance, being a bigot, extremism; and a bunch of other fancy words that really just mean THIS-IS-BAD.

You can say Right and Wrong don’t exist and I can debate that; but right now I’m pointing out that we all deal with Sin. Other people do things to us that are bad, because they hurt, or they make us afraid, or they just make us angry because it’s so not fair.

And that’s where deciding what we live by really comes into play. In my fan fiction world of judging people by their backgrounds, the few people who finally say “This is stupid” get treated like the criminals. You rocked the boat, you questioned the system, how dare you!

But the reason I wrote my version at all was because the original story refused to pick sides. It never said what was actually true, though it hinted. It was leaning one way, then abruptly it started to lean the other way. It turned into a story more about defining right and wrong yourself than actually seeking truth. The sad thing is that the creators of this story never realized it was popular because it said something different to people than the standard “be yourself” message that most of us are sick of.

Look; things have come to a pretty pass if I need the world to tell me what the Bible already has told me many times; but I do worry about other people. Ideally, I want Christianity to spread, I can’t help it. But if not I at least want Goodness to spread. Thomas Jefferson said that if doctrine is good it will produce good men, if not, then it won’t. He is right. Jesus said the same thing, in a different way. But no one needs to say it, it’s just common sense. Good begets good, evil begets evil. Duh.

The greatest good of all is love. As my character said in her speech, love is what gives us a reason to do anything. It saddens me when people are looking around and wondering why they do anything; because they realize there’s no love in what they are doing.

But, what if the antagonist had a point, Love is sappy. What will it really fix?

Now this brings me to Mercy. (Didn’t think I could tie all this together? Well, I wasn’t sure either, but I knew it was connected.)

In the end, you can decide that the rules really are wrong. Like judging people by their background, that’s just stupid. You can even decide to rebel against those rules.(#TheRebelution.) But, just rebelling isn’t enough. A lot of hate goes around because people are fed up with the way things are, but that hate is turned on other people.

I am a full fledged conservative, but I don’t hate liberals. I am a radical Christian, but I don’t hate atheists. I am a Trump supporter, but I do not hate Hillary Clinton. I am surrounded by imperfect people, but I do not hate them.

To me, hate is the last thing a Christian should be doling out. WE get plenty of opportunities, but we are told to love, even when it makes no sense. I hate evil, but  do not hate people. People are not the problem. Evil is the problem.

I am also not perfect, don’t take me as the best example of what it means to be Christian. All I am saying is it is about love. Love is what makes Christianity right; not vice versa. That’s something even Christians do not understand a lot of the time.

If love was easy to understand and to do, more people would do it. That’s the plain truth. I still fail at love, but I’m hooked. Once you start pursuing it, you really can’t stop.

In the end, love is what tells us what is right. When we become focused on what’s best for everyone, we will make better choices. That is what ties into rules, politics, and faith. There, told you they were connected.

So, nothing sappy about it. Until next time–Natasha.cropped-welcome-scan.jpg