Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 66

Do I make you feel squirmy? Good.

Today is my first day off of Vicks Sinex Aloe in two years. I have an addiction to it because my deviated septum means my right nostril is always making mucus. When I lay down and roll on my side, that mucus travels to the other side and irritates it, resulting in a buildup in both sinuses. I have had this problem most of my life, and throughout childhood, it was my habit to suck the junk back through my nose and into my mouth and play Spit or Swallow?

If what I had in my mouth was small and mostly liquid, then it wasn't so gross to swallow because it's like having a mouthful of thick saltwater. Really not that bad. But some mornings I'd suck back a huge patch of leather booger PLUS a huge wad of viscous snot with an irony taste of blood and pus. This is going in a toilet, cause no fucking way is that crap going into me for digestion. I don't care if it's mostly protein, I still don't want it. I feel confident that most people would agree with me if said nasty clot was in their mouths. Semen is actually nicer, and I spit that out too. (Sorry guys, I'm no swallower. That shit is nasty.)

So, back about two years ago, when cold season hit, I started taking Vicks. I'd done it before, leading to a one year addiction, and quitting wasn't easy. That's because without Vicks, breathing through my nose requires constant playing with my nose to clear it. So I can sit there and pick stuff out or snort water and let the water loosen stuff before I blow it out. Either way, I'm still sticking my fingers up my nose. So lady-like, right? But with Vicks, I spray, wait, and sploosh, one minty booger to play Spit or Swallow? with. And as an added bonus, for the next six hours, no boogers at all. How could I not want to be addicted to breathing free without picking my nose all the time?

All this talk of snot and boogers is actually a segue into my real topic, making people uncomfortable. I've had some reviews, both public and personal lately, where people said they wouldn't read my stuff because it made them feel awkward, and they don't read anything that pushes them out of their comfort zones. More recently, though, I was talking to a sci-fi writer who was complaining about fantasy books showing up in his precious sci-fi category at Amazon. I reminded him that some writers were fusing fantasy and sci-fi, and his reply was he knew, and all of those books were "unreadable crap."

This isn't true. What's true is, this writer has a personal comfort level for his genre, and nothing outside his market is worth his time. I would question the quality of a writer who can only draw experience from one writing field, and who as a reader refuses to acknowledge the talent of writers in other fields.

I do not consider myself a writer of any one field, but when it comes to my reading, I've always been evenly split between fantasy and horror. I'll also read romance, teen romance, YA of many flavors, and yes, sci-fi. A lot of great white hype tropes in all of these fields are dull to me, so I look for books at the fringes of these genres, the fusion stuff that other people go, "Oh, that? That wasn't a real fantasy/horror because of ____."

Which is how I found Anne Rice, because lots of people said her vampires weren't horror. They aren't. It's totally a dark fantasy, and people calling it horror were judging the series by the wrong standards. It isn't written to scare the shit out of you. It's written to keep history buffs turning pages. And it's really great history until you realize that it's ALL history lessons told by whiny privileged white men. (Even Pandora was a man. Yes, he was. Go back and reread his book. He says he was a man in a woman's body. So there were NO female narrators in the series…from a series written by a woman. Is Anne trying to say something without admitting it to…himself? I KID, really! Or, DO I?)

Um…anywho, the thing is, I'm not saying read stuff that bores you. If you're reading a book and it puts you to sleep, then the problem isn't with the writing's challenge level so much as its level of engagement. I've put down books unfinished many times due to boredom with the story or the characters, so if Anne Rice isn't your thing cause you think the stories are dull, I can accept that. Some of Anne's later books bored me cross-eyed, even though I enjoyed most of her series and standalone novels.

No, what I'm talking about is if you stopped reading Lasher because Mona Mayfair seduces Michael easily, without him trying to say much to resist a little girl. Then it isn't that the story is boring, but that it's saying something ugly about people during an intimate moment between two people that the reader doesn't want to see together.

I'll give another example from Piers Anthony's Firefly. There's a woman in that story who details her introduction to sex at the hands of a molester when she was five. The story jarred me hard when she started talking graphically about the experience, and it triggered a lot of uncomfortable memories for me. Each time the book talked about sexuality in this way, it hit me hard, and it made me seriously consider putting the book down. But I didn't, and I made it all the way to the bleak ending. Ever since then, I've wondered how other people took that book, and whenever I've brought it up, reactions have been pretty much against it. All of those scenes were "unnecessary" according to most readers. Even though most of the story revolved around this character and her past.

Sex and reproduction were also major themes in the story, so why the scenes were really deemed unnecessary is because they make the reader extremely uncomfortable. And this is the case whether you've experienced abuse or not. Seeing abuse happen, no matter how mild, should be a discomforting moment in a book. So part of the reasons the scenes are there is to jar the reader and make them feel ill. As far as I was concerned as a reader, Mission Accomplished. It's the same for most readers who dared try Firefly, but a lot of those readers then deny that that was the point. Instead, they insist that the writer is evil, and that the book and even the topic are "unnecessary" in fiction.

In another horror story, The Hollower by Mary Sangiovanni, there is a character who is sexually abused as a child, but the story only shows that a man with a bear came to her in the park. Nothing else is shown, so when the evil monster shows her a bear and she breaks down, there's nothing to really emotionally connect me as a reader to her reaction. The same is true of all the abuse in the book. Another character was abused by his father, beaten for every little thing. But again, the abuse is only implied. It was alluded to, but actually showing abuse in a horror novel, a book meant to discomfort and horrify, is taboo. Why? Because you don't abuse kids. Ever. Not even fictional kids, and not even if your whole point is to talk about abuse.

Compare that to It, in which Stephen King details the abuse of every main character, even touching on racism through Mike and explaining Henry's behavior through narration about his abusive father. At the end of the book, King has the kids reconnect psychically by having sex. This is for most readers an "ick moment," but I read the book at 12, and as a victim of bullying AND a sexually active child, that was the most honest writing I'd ever seen in my whole life. It was the book that made me want to write. And the thing is, the consensual nature of the minor gangbang made it less discomforting than the scene of abuse in Firefly, which I read at 16.

The tone of the writing makes the scene less vulgar and more about the redemptive qualities of intimate contact. Where as in Firefly, the act is one of molest, an exploitation of a young child even if she thinks she's the one in control. Her willingness to go along with her abuser's desires makes me want to skip pages and get as far away from that moment as possible. The same is true when she tries to defend her molester and ends up getting him sent away anyway. Both stories cover the same topics of sex and abuse, but King's version shows how the victims support each other, and the sex in their story is transformative. But while the same can be said of the sex in Firefly, that it is transformative, the resulting adult is so flawed that she openly contemplates showing her son how to masturbate. It's a difficult scene, but there is a point, to show the side effects of sexual abuse in spite of early intervention. Everything in the book was needed, but that doesn't mean it's something you're supposed to agree with or feel validated by. Quite the opposite, you should be going "My God, this is awful." Because it is. BUT, there is a point to it, even if you don't want to see it.

Let me switch gears and talk about Lolita. For years, I went to bookstores and went to find this book, only to stare at it and wonder what mystical power it had, that everyone knew the book, but no one would actually read or discuss it.

Years later, while writing Little Monsters, I decided to look the book up in Project Gutenberg, allowing me to get the book without admitting to anyone that I had done so. And…I was severely disappointed. I mean, I get why Humbert was talking so obliquely about his chosen topic, because he's on trial, and he's testifying and downplaying what he did. But his crime with his young lover pales in comparison to what Humbert does to her mother. He has her locked away as hysterical so he can go seduce a little girl. Meanwhile, his romantic interest has already been deflowered by a boy near her own age, and what Humbert has to offer doesn't look so hot with experience for comparison.

But the thing is, for all the power Lolita has in talking about pedophilia, NOTHING HAPPENS. The sex scene you're all avoiding is "And that was that." That's the whole sex scene. Really, you can uncover your eyes now. Before that, the only other thing that happened in the book is Delores and Humbert dry hump while reading a magazine together. And I had to read that passage twice to confirm that something illicit had just happened. Again, I understand why Humbert is erring on the side of discretion, but I don't understand how a book with nothing in it can have so much power over so many people.

I see a lot of people who call themselves avid readers who still only read from one field, and who only read stuff that confirms their views. Part of me is tempted to blame this on the Internet and our ability to filter out what we don't want to know about. But then I think about Lolita, and about how people know the book exists, but no one has the guts to read it and find out what a snoozer it is. So, how did it sell so many copies if no one has ever read it? Obviously, lots of people must have, and must still do, because there's always a print copy in any store I go to. So why is it that no one talks about it? Because no one talks about child abuse. Ever. It's like you honestly still believe in the fantasy "maybe the problem will just go away if we ignore it long enough."

You can't make problems better by avoiding the topic, and if you avoid it in your fiction just because it makes you squirm, then you're being willfully ignorant in every facet of your life. Which may allow you to remain a qualified armchair therapist, but it still leaves you woefully equipped to deal with reality when it's someone in your family or you who is the victim.

Please, push your boundaries and your comfort zones in your fiction reading selections. Read about something that makes you anxious or upset. These are genuine emotions, and if the author is making you feel anxious for a fake character, then they are doing their job right by making you feel something. You can't always feel validated and happy while reading. Choosing to only read for escapism is embracing ignorance and calling it truth. It's intellectually dishonest, and it's depriving you of the chance to grow as a person by experiencing discomfort and, possibly, enlightenment.

People are talking, but are you listening?

Today I got up and read this article from Colorlines by Akiba Solomon, and her complaints hit on what I've been talking about over here for a while. The whole thing is a great read, but I want to quote part and riff off of it:

Black women have been defining ourselves since before Sojourner Truth made her infamous 1851 "Ain't I a Woman" speech. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, black women tell, no scream, about our humanity, complexity, legacy, pride, sisterhood, spirituality, money problems, romantic desires, bone-deep sadness, moral conflicts, sexuality and joy. Some of us are dying for a "Sunday Kind of Love." Some of us think we're cute and "Cleva." Some of us aren't that damn deep. The problem isn't that black women haven't defined ourselves for ourselves. It's that mainstream media DON'T LISTEN.

And that's the problem for all minority groups. It isn't that people aren't talking about how oppression works. It's that the people who still actively oppress others don't listen to anyone. The real problem with black women isn't a white male-dominated media marginalizing black women's voices into a stereotyped view of a whole race. NO! The real problem is, black women just aren't talking enough to define themselves.

This same type of dismissive technique is used on women in general, on blacks in general, and on any fringe group that the established white media doesn't want to acknowledge. To give you an idea of how easy it is to marginalize someone in the media, even someone supposedly empowered, during the 2008 elective cycle, Yahoo put any and all references to Hilary Clinton in Queer News. It didn't matter if she was talking to gays or talking about jobs to unions, Hilary was a de facto queer to Yahoo. Obama was more hit or miss, but half of his articles also got flagged as queer, this despite his stated religious intolerance of gay civil rights. Meanwhile, anything said by the GOP, no matter how trivial or petty, was put in Headline news. A white man says it? Damn, must be front page news! A woman said it? Back to the back page with the homos and blacks.

The excuse that minorities aren't writing enough of their own stories doesn't fly either. There's lots of writing online about these issues, but the mainstream media still chooses to present a white-centric view of the world. Any article that attacks or merely questions the white male status quo is not published. And if it isn't vetted by a "real news source" it's even easier for other whites to marginalize the impact of their continued racism. How can there be a racism problem, if it's never mentioned once on the evening news?

The fact is, ANY PRIVILEGED PERSON WHO WANTED TO EDUCATE THEMSELVES COULD, simply by going online to look at the blogs of minority writers. But you don't want to hear how you're still bad people, so you lock out any and all voices of dissent that don't fit in with your personal narrative. You stick with white news sources to make sure everything you read fits in with your view of the world. But you're not really racist, just interested in "maintaining personal harmony," or something.

I could turn this around and talk about all the times I've tried to talk to people about being trans, or about the times I addressed the cyclical nature of child abuse without success. But examples specific to me aren't needed to illustrate the scope of this denial problem. The problem is, white people are GREAT at shifting blame from themselves for the commission of a crime (because discrimination is a crime, you know) to their victims for letting it happen. Then you say "Well those people should be more aware. And why aren't they speaking out on this if they really think it's such a problem?" Only, they are speaking out, RIGHT NOW, and you're marginalizing their complaint, at the same time erasing all the similar complaints that came before it. You never personally heard a complaint before now, so using only your anecdotal evidence, there must never have been a problem until the uppity minority decided to make a big deal out of it.

Bam, racism erased. Never happened at all, and it was just the black "misunderstanding." (A backhand slap that implies that blacks are too stupid to know whether they've been prejudiced against or not, and they NEED a white to explain why something is or is not racist.) It's that easy for white people to ignore every minority problem, even if a problem is widespread. Just look at Arizona, being blatantly racist in making law enforcement and education policies, and yet the white people in Arizona seem almost mute about the issues. Why? Because…they're racists. If they weren't, the governor would have been recalled. If they weren't, none of these bills banning books and idea would fly. These policies fly because the white voters of Arizona WANT THIS. To suggest anything else is to make excuses for racism while at the same time continuing to marginalize and erase people.

Black women have been speaking to their problems for a long, long time. Problem is, their articles are dismissed or ignored, while the white writer gets away with making statements like "The problem with black women is, they haven't defined themselves yet." Yes, they have, and so has every minority present on the civil rights battlefield. The only people who don't recognize that are our common enemy, the white privileged people who remain willfully ignorant of how they help perpetuate oppression.

Black women have defined themselves, but it's up to white people to actually read what black women have to say and stop pretending there's no discussion on this topic. There's plenty of discussion. You're just tuning it out because you don't like the message they're sending. But whose fault is that? Theirs, for spitting truths in your face, or yours for being incapable of listening to the truth?

I can be angry without being hateful…

I struggle a lot to find the right words when writing about any topic, and given how often I'm misunderstood, I feel like a piss poor writer. It doesn't help that often someone else will come along and sum up my ideas more succinctly than I ever could. I suppose that on the good side, this means I will never reach the point of thinking of myself as a great writer, because I always feel short of my intended goals.

One such example came last night on Twitter, a tweet made by @profsusurro (sic):

Oppression makes me rage & that rage is an engine but radical love has to be it's fuel

And this, I think, sums up just about everything about me. I'm not just committed to freeing my people from oppression, but in freeing all people everywhere from this tired system of control. I get angry because we as a people are not making progress. In fact, looking at the current governments and their schemes to disassemble free speech using copyright laws, I think we're losing ground to our rich oppressors.

But despite the amount of hate that goes into oppression, I don't want to turn the tables or make anyone into my servants as revenge. I'm not motivated to act based on a need to return the favors done to me in the past. I'm motivated by the hope that a new generation of kids like me will grow up never knowing the hatred I suffered daily at the hands of "good people."

My enemies will always try to flip this around, claiming that I am trying to destroy society and everyone's way of life. And this has the partial ring of truth to it, which is why the message sticks and works with so many fearful privileged peoples. I do want to destroy your oppressive society, and if I could succeed, the world would never be the same as you previously understood it. But it would not be an evil world. It would be a world full of love and acceptance instead of grudging tolerance. (Which some of you claim is the best you can offer to anyone who doesn't share your exact same views.)

But in that new world, there would not be prisons full of white people serving time for their racism. There would not be a court of homophobia leading witch hunts to find out which straights were still intolerant of sexual diversity. There would be none of the CCTV cameras mounted on every pole like there is now. There would not be police harassment of anyone, not like we see with the cops when dealing with POC today. The world I want to see without oppression has no punishment cooked up for the people who willfully helped enable oppressors to keep working unchecked for centuries.

I don't really believe I'll see a world without oppression in my time. Far too many people are busy using false victim cards to claim that they deserve the right to oppress others. They're just "returning the favor," and the fact that the oppressed have done nothing at all to the person using this logic is irrelevant. It can't be your fault that opression is still going on, so it must be the fault of minorities, for making a big deal out of "little things." If us uppity minorities would just learn our places, you claim, then the world would be perfect. But I can't help but notice how your perfect world still includes rampant slavery, fear mongering, and a steady supply of wars to keep the world populations in check.

You people who practice willful oppression of minorities rage about the unfairness of losing even a little privilege, and the fuel for your engine is unreasoning hate. You have no reason to hate other people, but you do anyway.

I have reasons to hate. I've had bones broken, had my will crushed and oppressed in the name of gender conformity. I've had people who claimed to love me tell me that they would prefer it if I remained unhappy, because they were happier with my false gender than they were with me being myself. To them, they saw no big deal in attacking my choices and pushing me to conform, even if it would make me miserable. Their happiness and need to oppress comes before my right to pursue happiness.

I have very, very good reasons to hate, but I don't. I am angry, a lot. I get outraged by watching "good people" attack others who are beneath them, simply because they can. I get angry that these same people feign innocence or ignorance of their crimes when called on it, and then turn around and use being called out as a further sign that they're "the real victim here."

People like this actively oppress, and then deny that this is what they're doing. So I have very good reasons to be angry at these inhumane, lazy, stupid people. They could educate themselves to stop being stupid. They could work to overcome their laziness and inhumanity. But their conditions are willful, and anyone like me attempting to point this out will be attacked. Why? Because none of you wants to admit that you're the problem. Oppression isn't your problem. It's for some elected officials to fix, someday, perhaps after the budget is balanced and all white people have good jobs. But it has nothing to do with you people, even if you are actively oppressing someone and living in denial about it.

But I don't hate you. I don't want to turn the tables and make you as miserable as you've made me over the years. I just want you to stop hurting others. I want you to accept that you are harming others, and I want you to strive to be as humanitarian as you claim to be when pressed about your privilege. And if loving you and expecting better from you is wrong, then people, I don't ever want to be "right" with you.

All we need is love. It's already my fuel of choice, so maybe you should think about changing from your current fuel over to something that can really change our world for the better. Hate and fear have always shaped patriarchal societies, so perhaps when we convince the men to share the role of leadership, we can also convince them to drop their favorite weapon of FUD.

It's your fault I'm hateful, not mine…

I'm often amazed by the statements people make to justify their prejudices, but nothing is quite so stunning as people saying, "The real problem here is, YOU don't care enough, bitch." So the person trying to spread awareness, who has a history of verbal and financial support to these causes, is the person who doesn't care enough, while the person unwilling to discuss the topic or get involved is really the "good guy."

This isn't true. There's no logic twist of verbal Kung Fu that can make this statement logical, and it requires leverage coming from privilege to make this tortured dog hobble a few steps. Yet, I've seen folks in the comments use it multiple times for multiple topics. And I ought to know, because I've just spent the other night stripping the ability to comment out of both my blogs. Every time there's been a round of personal attacks against me, it's because I've highlighted some news article that didn't sit well with others.

Most of the people who responded tried to shoot the messenger and tell me that the real problem in the world was me. Not the people who committed the crimes, or the people who do nothing and don't talk about the problems. No, the real problem is me, for always trying to ruin your day with "bad news." So I don't care about you, or that you're suffering from your first world problems too.

Well, maybe you're right. Maybe after watching hour after hour of your Facebook stream, I got tired of trying to care about you. Maybe after the 23rd status update where you complained about the teenagers in Starbucks making goo-goo eyes, I stopped caring about your opinions of other people. Maybe after your complaints about how others look or dress has left me with a lower impression of you. Maybe after your most recent "high-larious" Twilight jab, I wandered away from your sparkling wit. Maybe after your passive-aggressive complaints about your co-workers, I've come to expect nothing from you but more complaints about little shit that doesn't mean anything at the end of the day.

You can't stand Justin Bieber? Boo hoo, that's not a real problem. It's a first world white person's problem, and has the shallowness of a standing puddle in a pothole. There are people with real problems in the world, and if you would shut up and tune into the world instead of finding petty reasons to ignore it, you would find problems that you could help resolve. You could care more and do more, even with just a few dollars a month and a little commitment of time. You could care more and have a direct impact on the lives of people around you.

Or you can tell me that you're really a good person, and I'm the mean one who doesn't help anyone. I just complain and complain and never do anything direct. Right, because if I don't tell you specifically on the blog, "Today I donated grocery money to Billy Martin," it didn't really happen. That means it's perfectly okay for you to say "You abandoned your people," because you've never personally seen me hand cash over to other trans people. I think this is bullshit, that every time I make a cash donation to any person, I have to publicly report it, or else it opens up the possibility of folks later saying that I didn't help out, or that I don't care enough about others.

It's denial, really. It's putting on blinders and filters so that your behavior is seen as good to you, even if you're an abusive douchebag. And because I know there's that one guy saying "What about you?" I always say I'm a bad person. In fact, I get into arguments with people because they cannot stand the idea of someone being "negative." It never dawns on them that I'm being honest. I wish more of you evil bastards could be honest enough to admit that you were evil, because then it would spare everyone you know a lot of grief. Instead, you'll tell them you're good, always getting folks to believe it, right up until they need your help with something and you use verbal Kung Fu to get out of helping. Then it's their fault for expecting to much from a friend who probably told them repeatedly, "If you need anything just ask." And these are the people claiming that I don't care enough.

I care plenty, people. I give what I can, and if I had more money, energy, and time, I'd give more. But for some of you folks, there's nothing I can do that shows I care enough. I've said something that offended you, and now you have to take umbrage, even if you don't have anything valid to be mad about. I said you're privileged. You are. I said you ignored pressing civil rights and social problems in favor of petty complaints about your neighbors. You have. So when you come here complaining that I don't care enough, and that's the real problem, it isn't that I don't care enough. You're in denial and looking for a way to justify your self-centered world view.

I'm not. In the scheme of things, I'm one person out of seven billion. I don't even have the skills to make the Z list of athletes, artists, or other celebrities, and I'm way past my prime to be dropping a porn and letting a publicist sweet talk my way into reality TV. So all I can do is open up my own blog, and shout from my corner of the world, "There's more important stuff to worry about than what the couple next to you in Starbucks is doing!"

And for this, I get called a bitch, among other things. Well, I'm sorry, but I am a bitch. I was raised by an alcoholic redhead who never went an hour without finding a way to say something mean. When I wasn't with her, I lived with an almost alcoholic dad who thought parenting was lectures and spankings. I had a schizophrenic little brother who alternated between claiming to love me and trying to kill me. At every turn that I'd reached out to find a best friend and ally, some adult told me to go away. I had a shit life, so I'd turn it around that after decades of abuse, it's amazing how much an evil person like me still can give a shit about others, when after all I've given, people can still turn around and say, "Bitch, I don't owe you nothin'."

And here's my pickle. I was abused every day, for years. I didn't just live in a figurative closet. For two years, after coming home from school, I would shut myself in my closet and cry and pray for God to just take me now. You probably don't have a past anywhere near as dark as mine, but you can't spare thought for others. So, my excuse for being wary of trusting others is because I was sexually assaulted by my best friend. What's your reason for ignoring the world and pretending that your problems are so bad that you can't spare any give a shit for anyone else? I mean, really, I've been trying to give some of my spare shit so you can at least give that much. But instead of thanking me for bringing these problems to your attention, you're attacking me, for not caring enough about "real problems."

One of us is wrong for our views. Mine involves self-assessment and recognition of my flaws. Yours involves assessment of my life and finding fault with my presentation. If you could just admit that and begin real self-assessment, we'd be halfway to you giving a shit without my help.

Someone just brought up Marina in comments…

Bitch, fuck you. I know who you are, but I will not out you from your fucking anonymous closet, nor will I post that bullshit you spewed. This is a journal, not a forum. You want to say that shit in public? Go to a trans support forum and repeat that. I'll bet you'll make lots of new friends.

So the record is straight, cunt, hubby and I have given Marina money whenever we could for as long as we could, and she REFUSED to take any more well over two years ago because it would put her disability benefits at risk. She felt so guilty about all the money we gave her that she sent me $800 to go to Amsterdam on. Since then, I've offered to send more, and she keeps turning me down.

I still write to Marina all the time, and she's doing well despite still being in Texas. Could things be better for her? Yes, if Texas wasn't such a fucked up and hateful place. Would I like to keep sending money to my sister? Yes, but she WON'T LET US. Furthermore, I can still want to help Marina, AND want to talk about racial disparity. You have revealed that you also believe in zero-sum sympathy, where if I'm talking about this one topic, obviously, I can't also be thinking of Marina. Well fuck you, you self-centered cunt. I still think of Marina, and I still talk to her. I want to move Marina over here, but we can't afford it. So now that I've explained myself, I'll throw this in your face: what have YOU done for Marina lately? Or did you just bring her up in an attempt to be morally superior? Because if that was your game, it didn't fly.

And finally, bitch, I have a set of holes in my frontal lobe, plaque scars which you were told about before. I have MRI slides showing the damage, but even before then, I was suffering from mild dyslexia. I have to read slow because the letters jumble, and despite this, I'm slowly picking up Italian bit by bit, along with Japanese and German. But how dare you decide to throw in my face that I have a learning disability, as if my inability to learn languages faster is indicative of my mental capacity. You are the cunt who said "Blacks are poor because they can't control their emotions." So you are a fucking racist, no matter how enlightened or smart you may think you are.

Fuck you two ways, cunt. Fuck you for being a racist, and fuck you, for trying to use Marina as an emotional weapon to foster your self-serving views.

I swear to God, this is why I want to turn off ALL comments, but WordPress can't get that one simple fucking setting right.

A more standard rant…

Sometimes people come to me and say things like, "Zoe, I don't understand why you're always so unhappy. Why don't you go outside and get to know people? That will make you happy."

With no due respect, fuck you.

But really, you want an insight into why I'm crazy? Okay. From childhood through my early teens, I was physically abused by other kids. Yet all throughout this torture, I had therapists and shrinks tell me "children aren't capable of evil." I've been told to tell the truth by adults, only to be ridiculed for it, so pretty much every lie you tell to children, I knew was a lie right from the start. Because the pretty lies only apply to privileged children.

I grew up and finally broke free of other people by pushing everyone away. I was an asshole in doing it, but I cut every connection and found the strength to change myself. After a blazing fast two year transition and gender surgery, society told me "Congratulations! We're ready to accept you now!" Why? Because I'm pretty, short, and speak with a whiny voice. So long as I smile and don't act like an angry tranny, people want to pull me along, to show how tolerant and open minded they are. They'll still criticize my uglier sisters for not passing, and they'll still let their evil bully children rape and torture the next generation of queers. But so long as I smile and keep my mouth shut, I can ride with the cool kids.

Obviously, I chose to walk away from the cool kids to keep talking about the problems in our world, and since then, I've been asked questions like "Which gender were you when you were raped?" I've had women take me aside and say "This isn't how you get man friends," like I should want to buddy up with the same males who want to "spend five minutes alone" with me. I've had visits to my blog from people telling me that they live in reality, unlike me, and then they proceed to say the most awful things about how they can accept murdering half the planet as collateral damage, or how they can't worry about racism because white people are totally suffering too. Yet, they "live in reality," and I'm the deluded one.

So I finally pop from all of the assholes baiting me, and I start to really write some shit meant ot provoke people and get them talking. Only thing is, the only people talking are morons. The rest of polite society is still pretty much the same pearl-clutching bunch of pansies that I recall from my childhood. If the oppressed underclasses are willing to smile and play nice, you'll invite them to your parties. But if they act up or remind you that your party runs on oppression, then they gotta go.

I really can't win by joining any group. I don't even fit in with other transsexuals, and I got banned from a support group the day after I joined because "some of the members were concerned for their children."

I don't have any real world friends anymore, and because of the actions of my online friends, I no longer view any online acquaintances as true friends because there's just too much risk that they'll turn around and treat me like shit.

My mother is sending me an email once a month, at least, loaded with enough venom to piss me off twice over. In theory, I may have stopped those emails this year, but I thought that after I emailed her and said "I neither want nor need your approval" a week after my surgery. But this time I was more direct in making my opinion of her clear, so maybe she will stay away.

My little brother still hates me and thinks I'm the whore of Satan. He has seduced two girls from out of school, and he's got an arrest record as long as his arm. But he can still be morally superior to me and say that he doesn't want me around his kids. Adding insult to injury, we both thought we were sterile. No, he's got two kids, and I'm the person planning animal adoptions. Why? Because as a result of all the abuse I suffered at the hands of my little brother, I'm now mentally incapable of child rearing. Even if I were more stable, MS makes me physically incapable of the task. So I can't even contemplate adoption.

I rarely get to talk to the family members who I actually do want to hear from. They've all got jobs and kids and real lives going on, and anyway, it's hard sorting out when the right time to chat is. The fault for us not connecting is as much mine as it is theirs, but that's life, and what can you do?

Oh, and hubby still can't have sex, so I'm extremely horny and can't do anything except fap or play with toys. This wouldn't be quite so bad, but during the summer, I had dudes stopping me, young guys from the college up the road, asking, "Do you have the time?" or "Can we take a coffee?" And every time, I held up my hand, pointed to my ring and said, "I'm sorry, but I'm married."

And for all this good behavior, I STILL had someone call me a sexual predator. Not for anything I did, but for some fictional event I wrote.

So, if you've read all of this and STILL need to ask me, "Zoe, why are you always so upset?" you're going to set me off in another explosion. And no, I won't feel bad about being upset. I have my coping mechanisms, and I try to find creative outlets so I can be happy too. But I'm not going to show up on my journal and put on a happy face for you just because you need validation that the world is okay. You won't get that from me anyway. I think the world sucks and that we all need to work to change it. But most folks think someone else should do it for them, and they don't believe they owe each other anything.

I owe you my honesty. I was dishonest enough through my childhood because other people conditioned me to lie and hide to avoid physical and verbal attacks. Society made me, and when I rejected society to become something better than what I was, society still rejected me for saying things they don't want to know about. I've been shouted down over and over, put in my place, and told I'm full of shit so many times, I've lost count.

Do I have reasons to be happy? Sure, I've got a few. I eat well, and I have a good husband who makes me laugh. I've got my video games, and when my hands aren't too sore, I've got a guitar to play with. Sometimes, I even get back into a few moments of writing bliss before I'm reminded that nobody reads my crap.

But I don't have my health because I have multiple sclerosis. I don't have lots of friends to visit and party with. I don't have lots of people to chat online with, family or friends. The only thing I had that perked me up was my writing, and yet I feel consistently misunderstood. It's like even if we all know the same language, the words don't mean the same things to everyone else.

So if we weren't clear before, this is why I'm in a lousy mood so often these days, why I end up being rubbed the wrong way with just one trigger word in Twitter, why I have to avoid everyone for days at a time. I'm actually sparing you from much worst ranting episodes. And my reward for thinking of you is you asking me, "Why can't you be happy?"

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF—! (*>_<) \,|,/

Oy…more from the racist pigs

This is going to be my last post on this topic for a few days, cause I like to switch around the sources for my insane rants to avoid a rut. Anywho, shock of shocks, yesterday Poor and Happy continued to post racist spam supporting his views that there are more poor white people than blacks. Statistics, books titles, and even an attack that "I am not even honest." But if he likes I can be completely honest and wear my disgust for his views openly and with pride. PH, you are a white supremacist coming to my blog, apparently forgetting that guys like you beat and tortured me throughout my formative years, and you're trying to convert me to join your cult? Aren't you aware that trannies like me only want to recruit straight men to the queer agenda? Don't you see what a threat I am to your straightness? So why on Earth would you explain why you still have to be racist to me, your worst enemy? Do you really think I'll change my mind about assholes like you?

What drive me nuts is his reason why he can't be a racist, why he chooses to ignore black people being the victims of racism, because his own people need his attention so badly. Which suggest that caring is a zero sum game, and if I care about racism, I'll have nothing left over for poor people who are also lacking melatonin. But I can quickly round up a few white people who I've used PayPal to send donations for bills, groceries, or surgery. It's just, I can also round up people in other ethnic groups too. You guys who can only help whites are racists. And nonthing you say about being good people will make it so, because YOU place limits on your empathy, and the limits you use ARE racist.

But worse, someone else showed up to back that pony and ask, "Are you afraid to look at the evidence?" Are you guys both morons who want to argue about your racism like it's really concern for your own tribe? YES! The fact is, even if the statistics that PH attempted to post were accurate, it would still not change reality to suit your views. You cannot come up with statistics to show that whites are stopped more often than blacks. You cannot find laws that make racial profiling of whites SOP. You cannot find numbers to show more whites in prison, and you cannot show that there are more rich black people than rich whites. You cannot deny that white privilege exist and is alive and well in our modern societies.

But what you HAVE shown with your attacks is that you are white supremacists who believe that the rest of the races must suffer until ALL WHITES have life good. Otherwise, you can't be bothered to think of anyone else while millions of white people are impoverished. Like I said before, no matter what I say, you'll have a white victims' card to play in rebuttal. Typical of racists, which is why I'll continue to erase stupid shit from Poor and Happy and anyone else who comes here making a defense of their whiteness on the grounds that white people are suffering too.

Further, I will not stop talking about race, among the dozen other social issues I discuss about people outside of my own "tribe." I will continue to talk up all civil rights, while these guys will only talk about the problems facing their race. Which shows which of us is really being honest. I can open my eyes and see all the problems that people have. These racists can only see how white people suffer. And when anyone else points out their myopia, they declare, "You just can be honest about what's going on."

You're absolutely right. If I was 100% honest about your comment, I shouldn't have been so nice in answering you. I wouldn't have posted you comment at all. I would have paraphrased it to make you sound even more moronic, and I would have said, "Fuck you, you racist scumbag! Get the fuck off my blog with your hateful bullshit!" But silly me, I tried tact, which doesn't work on douchebags with IQs this low.

I expected to catch some flack for that post, but I'm stunned by the low intelligence of the men showing up to make defenses of their racism. But then I don't suppose I should be. The left-leaning liberal racists know well enough not to respond to a charge like mine because that would expose them. Only the morons looked at my post and decided to defend themselves using the classic "I can't give a fuck about other issues while ___ is still taking place." And it's very telling that they can't think about blacks until all white people are above the median poverty line, since that's an event that no race can ever achieve without first dominating and subjugating all other races.

So I'll tell you what, guys. I'll pretend you racist morons don't exist until all blacks are treated with equal respect to whites. Until every black illegally jailed for the color of their skin is free, I don't give a fuck about your cause. But, the moment people like you stop mistreating blacks just because you can, then I'll starting chipping in a dollar here and there to The American Honky College Fund.

This really is too easy…but I'll still do it.

Today's post is inspired by a commenter, "Poor and Happy," who I'm sure thought I wasn't going to let his comment get through moderation. So like most white dudes who visit my blog, he said some stupid shit. How stupid? I'll post his quote, in its entirety and without removing context:

There are more poor white people than poor blacks. It is you that play the race card for emotional appeal. It is a cheap way to get attention. But you found out the attention is not good.

Now I could first go after the fumbling English skills of this commenter, but that really is rather easy. No, instead, just days after MLK day, I would like to address why I "play the race card" even though there's "still poor white people in the world" who I haven't helped.

You see, when I go to a movie theater, all I see is white people. Oh, occasionally Ice Cube gets to release a black movie, but since How High, Method Man and Redman haven't been allowed back in front of a movie camera…I think. Anyway, the thing is, when a black movie comes out and I go to see it, I'm frequently one of a minority of white people in the room. That's because white people don't watch black movies. (They also don't watch queer films, but that's a whole other rant for another day.)

Danny Glover can't make a movie about the revolution in Haiti because the backers keep asking for a white hero to save the black people. It wouldn't be historically accurate, but Hollywood's concern is making sure that racist white people will have "someone to identify with" in the film. See, many so-called open-minded whites are so racist that they can't sit for a few hours through a film with an all black cast who are talking about how oppressive whites are. That level of honest self-assessment is lost on the vast majority of white people, who STILL get to insist that despite their close-minded views, they are not "really racist."

Right, because to be REALLY racist, you have to be willing to utter the slurs with conviction. If you can't say nigger, or spic, or gook; if you can't spit these words with real venom, then you can't be a real racist. It's true, you may only have white friends, only read white authors and only talk about matters that mean something to your people. But just because you shun everything about another race and avoid the topic like it's covered in the ebola virus, that doesn't really make you racist does it?

Yes, honky. Yes it does.

But let's keep going. If I leave the theater and go to a bookstore, almost all the books have white main characters, and are written by white authors. If I want a book with black characters written by a black author, I will be pointed to a segregated section of the store, a single bookshelf labeled "African-American." Blacks no longer have to ride at the back of the bus in America, but they are still at hanging out the back of the white publishing world. But just because black authors still can't find a white audience without a whitewashed cover or a push from Oprah, does that really mean that white publishers are racists?

Yes, they are.

Lots of affluent white publishers will sputter that they're not, and that they're just "catering to the market." But if they programmed readers to avoid diversity, and then complain that they can't do anything to reprogram people, then that is willful intent to maintain a white dominant status quo. That's racist. So even as they claim to be color blind, most of New York and Hollywood "liberals" are just as racist as people from the deep south who still wave rebel flags and swear that one day the south will rise again, and they're going to take back their slaves. The only difference is, the southerner wears their racism proudly, while the liberal pretends he is open-minded and above such social constructs. One is quick to hoot and holler over being stupid, while the other backpedals and insists that the offended parties "just misunderstood." But they're both racists. One is just better at self-assessment than the other is.

But getting back to my commenter, if you can claim that you won't talk about race because people of your own race are still "poor," then you are the worst kind of racist. Because no matter what valid topic is brought before you, you will always have a white victim card to play to make it all about your people again. Prisons are made up mostly of blacks and Hispanics? "So what? The white guards are constantly at risk of riots!" Drop outs in school are mostly black? "But white educators struggle so much to teach those uppity savages!" Drugs have been forced on the colored populations by white criminals? "But those criminal whites are just…uh…" Yeah, take your time, racist.

Closing this rant out, let's look at the rest of what this "Poor and Happy" white male wrote in an attempt to shame me out of speaking on the topic. In the game of mental maneuvering, this guy is wheeling a tricycle in circles and pretending he's on a Harley. This is pretty much par for the course for the males who come here seeking to comment and defend their racist or sexist views. They write in short sentences, and using little words. Yet they still manage to act superior despite defending their low-brow views using first grade writing skills.

But the real tragedy is, this douchebag will never learn. He will read this post and put his racist blinders on to make me the bad guy. He's really a good guy just helping out his people, and I can't appreciate how much blacks have stolen from the whites. The fact that the world still looks to be dominated by whites is merely an illusion, and white people must be defended from the black menace.

My husband has misguided notions that people like this can be taught if you just find the right example to show them the error of their ways. But to say this, he also ignores the number of Atheists who are still racist and/or sexist. Even enlightened people who do not use old world religions to justify their closed minds can find ways to be prejudiced, and they can still find ways to claim that they are not, and that other people are just "misunderstanding them."

But this guy not only went with this line of "There are more poor whites than poor blacks," he also wrote back again to tell me to read a book and "get educated on the topic." Because to his mind, the real problem here is, I just can't see how much control whites have lost to those scheming black people. I'm sorry white dude, but I don't see blacks controlling 99% of businesses. I don't see prisons full of white people, serving lengthy prison sentences for minor infractions that people of better social status might get a fine and probation for. I don't see white people being stopped more often by cops and security guards just for the color of their skin.

Maybe you do. Maybe you're so color blind that when you go to the movies, you just don't notice the lack of blackness in these films. Maybe when you look at whitewashed covers, you don't see a big deal. Maybe when you read only of white people having white adventures, you don't notice the absence of any other colors.

If that's the case, you're a racist, and I don't really have to examine your views more closely, because you're the bass-ackwards moron still living in the past, while I'm the cultured and enlightened world-traveler you're calling out for expecting better from you. Sorry, Goober, but that shit doesn't fly.

And Poor and Happy? Don't bother writing again. I will erase everything else you write, because this is not a platform for racists to explain their views. Now please, go off to fight in whatever culture war you think is going on.

A ramble and two ranty rants for the price of one…

Yesterday was mostly a lost cause, and involved a nearly day-long Twitter rant that probably ended another two friendships. One was my fault, as I called someone a bitch, and when they asked for an apology, I said "I'd rather add a shallow to my original statement and be done with you." They'd rubbed me the wrong way by implying that SOPA and PIPA happened because of the minority of people who were pirates. So the corporations are justified for dealing with a minor problem that THEY STARTED (Go back and look at the release of dual tape decks. Yes, their paranoia came before there was an internet, much less internet piracy.) by punishing their entire audience of legitimate customers with legal sanctions? If you can really believe that, then yeah, you're shallow. But I probably did go too far with the bitch comment.

Anywho, this rant led to an editor of a small press lecturing me like I was advocating stealing books and movies just to stick it to Teh Man. Even after I clarified that my only download in all of last year was Teen Wolf, she still went on and on about her small press and how her authors needed my money. So I blocked her, and I'm never going to look at her press, much less risk taking one of her author's books. I guess she won that argument.

But somewhere near the end of said rant, I'd commented that if people were pirating my stuff, even one book, I'd be happy because someone wanted me. About an hour later, I finally smoked enough pot to calm down, and I joked, "I've searched every torrent site, and no one is pirating me. Goddamn it." This inspired someone else to actually look, and it seems that The Campaign Trilogy is in fact being pirated on torrent sites. None of my newer titles from 2009-2010 shows up, but my first completed series is on a few sites.

This pleases me more than you might expect, because even if it's only one book series, people are curious enough about the plot to want to crib the books. I could choose to bitch how my prices are dirt cheap and that these people are cheapskates. Actually, these people are cheapskates either way, but I'm choosing to be happy about this because someone at least wants my books enough to look for them.

Thing is, it's the performance of later books that influenced my decision to quit, and I'm still not seeing any interest in those books. Since then, I've had all kinds of desperate thoughts as my writing addiction seeks ways to make me feel empowered again. Maybe if I put up a poll and let you guys make decisions, you'll suddenly speak up. Maybe if I write a new story about ___, it will convince you to be a fan and help with promotions. Maybe if I revise one of the older stories, it will have more success on the second release.

But I've heard all of this before, and none of it is true. I can put up a poll, and one person will click it. I can write a new book, and it will get one or two sales in the first week, and then it will go away and sit quietly with the rest of my flops. I can revise a book and re-release it, but sales won't improve even if the revision includes a better cover.

And yet, I don't know what else I want to do. Don't think I haven't spent a lot of time obsessing over alternatives, but all of them require a large initial investment that I don't have. And no, don't point to my new gaming hobby as the problem. One of my plans involved buying 3D Studio Max licenses for all of my PCs to make a render farm for a cartoon project. Total cost to start? Roughly $10,000. By comparison, getting into gaming cost me just under $1,000 for the TV and console. (Roughly my whole earnings for the summer editing job, minus the money I gave to hubby. (Which was half after taxes) Which was 40% of my original fee.))) My first year costs for writing were $1,500. My costs for hiring a cover band and studio time are almost as high as they are for the 3D plan, so yeah, my other creative alternatives are exponentially more expensive than my current hobbies.

With the gaming hobby, I never expect it to pay back my investment, and that's the problem I got into with my writing. To be fair, I had a lot of writers telling me how good my stuff was, and how original and different my books were. Somewhere along the way, I started to believe them, and to think that maybe my stuff was worth something more than free. Low sales have shaken my faith, and being attacked by friends pushed me right out of the advertising side of things too.

So, what am I doing? I don't know. Part of me still wants to write and release books on Smashwords, even if no one knows they exist. It may even be better this way, because then I can't be accused of promoting filth. I'm not promoting anything. I'm just a little loser hack sitting in my play sandbox, quietly cranking out obscure stories that nobody wants.

I want to talk about someone else's book for a bit. I'm reading Maurice Broaddus' King's Justice. This is book two in a King Arthur reboot series set in the ghetto of Indianapolis. I started to add it to my currently-reading list on Goodreads, and I noticed how many white women gave the book low stars for being "too ghetto." Say what? Cracker bitch did not just reveal what a racist she was, did she? Actually, a LOT of white women used the term "too ghetto" when talking about a book with nearly an all black cast, in a black inner city neighborhood, and talking mostly about inner city problems in much the same way that the original King Arthur's knights spoke of unrest in their land. But apparently, these white chicks still expected this book to talk white because they thought this was urban romance, not urban fantasy.

This pisses me off not for the open racism, but for the readers basically saying, "This isn't the book I thought it would be, so it isn't very good." The book may actually be the most challenging thing your privileged white ass will read all year, but instead of setting aside your sheltered views, you kept your white blinders on and never set aside your views to read the book honestly. If you are white and your main complaint is "I was put off by the blackness," congratulations, you're a racist. From here you can own your shit and try to be a better person, or you can attack me, the transsexual bisexual, for pointing out your prejudice. Maybe you can even make an attack convincing enough to let you go back to believing your own hype when you say, "I'm a good person." But that won't make it any more true than if you stood in your garage and said, "I'm a car."

A lot of readers are like this, incapable of actual critical thinking or thinking outside their own clique or tribe. You just read stuff that agrees with your views and move on. If questioned about it later, you'll be like "I liked it." But when actual problems or flaws are pointed out, you go, "Oh, I didn't notice. I was just zoning on the words." You don't look for symbolism or allegory. You don't read between the lines, and if you do, you read a message that isn't there. You're piss poor readers, and you're terrible fans.

You praise whites-only shite that elevates colonialist values and racial superiority as false morality, and yet, you claim to support diversity. Please, crackers. Supporting all white straight writers from mainstream publishers is not supporting diversity. That's supporting Teh Man. If you read a book set in a ghetto and complain that it's too ghetto, then you aren't supporting diversity. You're supporting Teh Man. And if you're getting hot under the collar and want to boycott all my titles now, you're actively contemplating oppressing actual diversity in favor of supporting Teh Man.

And, because I love pissing you off, I'll close this rant by pointing out that I'm a bisexual transsexual. If I were like most white writers, all my characters would be white and queer, and my idea of diversity would be writing a white man instead of a woman for a change of pace. In fact, I've written about a straight Hispanic teenage boy and a straight Hispanic man, a straight black man, a gay white man who has a relationship with a bisexual black man, and a bisexual Eurasian (biracial, half Italian and half Chinese) who joins a romantic transgender polyamory. This among the straight white men and women. I'm all kinds of diverse, bitches.

But then that's not surprising. Being an outsider to every social group, I'm not so stuck in my POV that I'm unwilling to swap views as a creative exercise. More surprising would be finding a white male writer who don't have 30 white main characters and maybe one black dude or Asian chick as a token book when people complained about their lack of diversity. But despite searching for a few years, I've yet to be surprised in this way.

Okay, I lied. I need to add one more rant. I wrote a book about a gay man who preached tolerance for all people, and no one accused me of supporting the gay agenda. I wrote a book about a teen scam artist Hispanic who smokes, but no one accused me of promoting negative stereotypes about people of color. I wrote a book about a black man working in an ethical porn house and no one accused me of endorsing porn as a career, or of stereotyping black men. But wouldn't you know it? I wrote a book about a little girl getting molested, and I got accused of promoting what happened in the book. That's not what's ironic. What's ironic is, the people attacking me are from a community of writing whose main complaint is "Don't make assumptions about what kind of people we are based on what we write." Yes, they don't want anyone to judge them for what they write, but they still reserve the right to be judgmental to others. Hypocritical much?

And if you think it's just me, go into any horror board and casually drop "Oh, you read vampires too? I LOVED Twilight." Oops, look at all the hypocrites passing judgment now. And note how many horror people suddenly posses spiritual morality, and "just don't want girls reading the wrong kind of fiction." Oh, so they shouldn't read your filth either, right? Yeah, sputter for a new excuse. You're still a hypocrite.

"Oh Zoe, are you ever going to let this go?" Yep, right after certain people admit, publicly, that they were hypocrites for using an inaccurate hateful slur and several other personal attacks against me for the contents of one book, even though they co-published a book with a book "promoting" much worse values. They may never admit that they pulled some male privilege bullshit by belittling me in public while we were arguing about a completely unrelated topic, but no, I will not let this go and walk away.

When Scott called me a bitch out of nowhere at TODP, I cried three days and closed all my forum accounts. I stopped talking to anyone, and I stopped trying to make points about civil rights in forums. Why bother talking when there's always a man to tell you "Bitch, shut up cause you're up in my man space"?

But the dude I'm waiting for an apology from attacked me on Twitter, while we were talking about trans-gay politics. He is a straight man who jumped in to assist his gay friend, and in the process, he accused me of "abandoning my people." When I warned him that he was going too far and risking our friendship, he DIDN'T EVEN WAIT TEN SECONDS before adding, "And you're a pedophile."

This coming from a man who sold a book in which a girl is seduced by her father, in which a homeless man eats a dumpster baby, in which a white supremacist serial killer murders ethnic kids while molesting a white girl and forcing her to watch him torture and kill other kids. This is the man who published under the label "Publishers of whatever the fuck we want," coming to me and calling me names in public because he couldn't just back down in a debate and admit that he, a straight man, had no business mediating in a discussion of gay and trans lobbies. Instead, he took his straight white male privilege and stabbed a friend of several years with a verbal attack. Being "right" was more important than the discussion itself, more important than our friendship.

That's a major fucking hypocrite. I'll let Scott go, and I'll let go of my anger at anyone else, forgive everything else that happened as a result of this "row." But I'm not going to forgive a personal attack from someone who had written to me privately that it was okay to trust him, only to have him violate my trust in the most ugly and abusive way possible.

So yeah, anybody else knowing who this is, please, stay silent about their behavior and remain embarrassed by my outlandish behavior. Don't call out the abuser in your midst and make him apologize. But the fight is public information. You can still look it up and see how he brings the attack out of nowhere if you think I'm making this up. If you know he attacked me out of nowhere with a tangent and choose to say nothing, you're comfortable with oppression. Period. And no, maybe "I don't know you." But I know that a lot of you talk shit about supporting diversity and respecting tolerance.

Well you're in the corner of the straight white guy who attacked me, and you can't be bothered to at least tell him, "Uh, actually, that was kind of a douche move, man. Would an apology kill you?" I'm calling you on this, and if you still can't be bothered to speak up, then fuck you, you ain't "good people." You're a person of privilege who let a privileged attack happen and chose to support the white guy's right to be an abuser. Again. Which is par for the course for your community, sheltering abusers and then lamenting "Why are all the women leaving? We're such nice guys." No, you aren't. You're not even in the same zip code as nice.

Please, take your time guys. After all, your silence doesn't make you look like major hypocrites.

Game review – Assasin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles

As some of you may have noticed, I'm getting back into gaming, but I'll admit, there's going to be one sticking point for me with a lot of games: the writing. I never hear any complaints about the story in games because I think most gamers have lowered expectations, as opposed to the inability to discern quality. I mean, face it, when every "great" Japanese game involves misogyny and machismo as the opening salvos ("Our princess was kidnapped, and you're the only fat male plumber strong enough to face this diabolical plot"), after a while gamers don't expect so much from game writers. Which is why writing shit fests like the Resident Evil games get praised for epic storylines, even if the story is shit. It's still a step up from "Our princess is in another castle."

This being the case, Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles may possibly be praised for the "epic" storyline by gamers, but only because those folks aren't noticing the game is a variant of "Our princess is in another castle." *SPOILER ALERT* In fact, this is a game that ends with Altair failing to get onto the boat carrying the princess to another castle.

Some of you may say "But Zoe, that game ties into the larger games, and that princess shows up in the console games. She's very important to the plot!" Setting aside the fact that I have my doubts about the AC plot itself, I'll grant you that maybe in the bigger games, she is more important. But here, she's just a convenient plot device to get this piece of shit to the finish line. She's such a write-off that the game makers don't seem to notice that she starts off referring to your character as Assassin when they meet, yet without a formal introduction begins calling him Altair in every level afterward. So I guess in addition to not hiring any real writers, a story editor was also another job role lacking from this project.

If you haven't picked up my feelings for this game yet, I think Altairs' Chronicles is a graphically pretty platformer that literally has nothing else going for it. The touchscreen controls are kludgy and work right only about half the time. And who could forgot that "amazing" combat system, with combos like "mash one button repeatedly until the enemy falls down, then mash the other button and hope the game interprets that as a brilliant killing stroke instead of just waving your sword in the air uselessly." But usually you just wave your sword around uselessly. There's only three bosses in the game, and Altair, despite his claims of being an assassin, keeps letting these higher ranking bosses go so he can fight them again. Don't worry about having to sort out fighting styles either, because the fights are slow, predicable, and repetitive.

Then there's the platforming aspects involving "deadly sewers." Frankly, I wanted to meet a sewage worker, because those fuckers would have to be superhuman to do their job every day and survive all these traps.

Note, I did not say "ingenuous traps" because every trap is so stupid a five-year-old could solve it while still waking up for school. The only reason this game is difficult is because of the touch screen interface, and not because the puzzles or traps are hard. On the puzzles, the game makers don't even think they should let you try to work it out. They just have Altair "look" with a floating camera to point where he should go, and he narrates exactly what the player needs to do to "solve the puzzle." Most of the time, the "puzzle" is a blatantly obvious floor switch with the box to hold it down less than five paces away. Which is why when the bosses praised me for bypassing their "deadly traps" I began to wonder if everyone else in town had suffered some chemical form of mental retardation.

Outside the castles, there's moving platforms and gas-grill fire traps, among other anachronistic goodies. As the game wore on, the logic of the world fell apart more and more. It's almost like the producers were trying to cram Altair into a Super Mario castle level. This is frustrating because at times the game offers moments of interesting combat, like Altair stopping the siege of a castle on his own. But for every five minutes of good game play, there's half an hour of idiocy disguised as "clever platforming." And it's not that you don't expect to find traps in a game. But why would you find swinging pendulum blades on the exterior wall of a castle? Or slow moving, wall-mounted Skilsaws? It doesn't make any sense, but then nothing in this game does. I'm a heavy pot smoker, but I think the people making this game may possibly have better drugs than I can afford.

And then there's the acting, or lack thereof. There's possibly three voice actors in the whole game, and they seemed incapable of staying in the right voice or accent for any one scene. Every guard has the same voice. (And every guard uses the same screen art for dialog sections) There's a boss who speaks in the most bland dull voice when he says "Guards, don't let the intruder survive." (Note the lack of an exclamation point.) Then in one scene a character speaking to Altair suddenly takes on Altair's voice for his final line. In one character's case, the game makers used three recycled lines from three different characters. So his voice is a guard's in the first line, a gruff voice of a boss in the second, and the voice of an elderly torturer in the last. The whole thing comes off as a weekend project that the game makers couldn't care to finish right. I get that this is a mobile gaming port of a DS title, but the game has a rough and unfinished quality that never stopped being irritating, and the acting was the cheese grater on the road rash of my day.

At a certain point, I just gave up on playing and went to YouTube to watch someone else play the game on an iPad, which I'm told has a more responsive screen than my Windows Phone. Even if that is 100% true and they had the more responsive controls, that poor dude died just as often as I did, and always because the touchscreen misinterpreted the user's input and did something else. (Possibly the only advantage of having the controls on screen throughout the game, so I could see what the player did, and how the game incorrectly interpreted the input.) So instead of jumping onto the platform he needed, the player would jump diagonally and plummet to his death five or six times. At certain points, the poor gamer dude dies so often that he just edits a fade in to the next sequence. And again, this game wouldn't be this hard with real controls. If I were reviewing this on the DS, I think I might have added the complaint, "And it's too easy to play through." Fortunately, this review won't be sullied by any comments about ease of use.

I'm still interested in playing Assassins Creed on my console at some point, but Altair's Chronicles was definitely not the game to sell me on the series or on the writing. This game even fails to get the most basic aspect of the game, the game play, right. It's a franchise title that was tacked on for extra profits, and it shows in the lack of quality in every aspect of development. For this reason, I give Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles one star, and I recommend it to masochists who hate fun. And if I were a deadly assassin, I would kill the team who made this game to prevent more atrocities from being cranked out from their languid and demonically-possessed hands.