Confess Your Unpopular Opinion (The Invisible Moth Version)

Oh, this’ll be fun. (Sarcasm inserted.)

Necessary disclaimer: These are just my personal views, tastes, musings, or random brain firings. If you do happen to disagree with me, please don’t come after me with torches and pitchforks. We’re all adults here. (Teenagers included in this instance.)

There are times when I just feel the need to express an unpopular opinion. Often when I do, I discover that in fact I am not the only one who holds said perspective. And this becomes a win-win for all of us lonely outcasts.

So, here we go…

#1: I don’t like Star Wars. Hey, hey, hey, remember my disclaimer! Put those rotten tomatoes back in the compost! If you love Star Wars, good for you (absolutely no sarcasm hiding in this statement). It’s just a big flop for me. Oh, not totally — I liked it when I was a kid, and there was all the fun of the spaceships and the scary aliens and the race to defeat the evil Empire so they wouldn’t blow up more planets. And I liked Yoda (back when he was still a Muppet and not CGI). But the real failings — as I see them — of this series became crystal-clear to me as an adult, when I lived with a Star Wars fan.

Here’s the reason this movie series never fails to get on my nerves anymore:

It makes me beyond mad that the Jedi Council — the supposed good-doers, protectors of liberty, defenders of freedom — actually created the “monster” known as Darth Vader through their own petty actions. If Anakin Skywalker had just been allowed to make his marriage to Queen Padme public knowledge, then he wouldn’t have been going crazy trying to keep it secret while hoping to find a way to save her from dying, per the vision he had. The Jedi themselves could have tried to help Anakin, and he wouldn’t have felt the need to go to the Emperor. Then Darth Vader never would’ve come to be, Luke and Leia would’ve been raised by their real parents, and the Empire would’ve been defeated a lot sooner.

When my family watched Rogue One, I honestly fell asleep, and woke up just in time to see Darth Vader kicking major behind with his red light saber. You go, Anakin, kill ’em all.

Ahem. Moving on…

#2: I didn’t like the way The Hunger Games ended. I am not a fan of dystopia. Against my better judgement, I gave in to peer pressure to read The Hunger Games. Book 1 sucked me right in, and I committed to finishing the trilogy. This nearly killed me. I was Team Gale all the way, and I will never forgive Katniss for ditching him. I also thought it was just ridiculous that Katniss — who had most of the Capitol’s head games figured out early on — couldn’t get a clue that Alma Coin was completely using her, and just knock that horrible woman off much earlier. And Prim dies ANYWAY — come on, Suzanne Collins, but you just invalidated the entire premise of your series!!! That did not go over well with me.

#3: I don’t mind the way Allegiant ended. I’m fully aware that to this day there are people sobbing into their Faction t-shirts because of Tris Prior’s demise. But I one-hundred-percent stand by Veronica Roth determining that was necessary for her story. I certainly don’t think her actions meant death threats to her email were required, folks. If you didn’t like the ending of the trilogy, just don’t re-read it and move on to other authors.

#4: Superhero movies need to take a break for a while. Like approximately 17 years. Again, truly no offense meant to comic book fans who are gushing over some of their fictional idols finally coming to the silver screen. But, as someone who was never part of all that (although I have intense respect for Stan Lee), I’m getting a little…bored with all the superhero films. I’d just really like to see something different in the cinemas.

#5: Radio stations need to play not-as-popular songs. There are lots of bands that produced much more content in their studio recordings than the one single everybody knows. Given that I don’t have access to Pandora or ITunes, what I can listen to is often limited to YouTube and my local radio broadcasts. Considering that I am terrible anymore with remembering the titles of songs/names of artists, that creates issues with searching on YouTube. And my regional radio stations are in general very mainstream and same old, same old, unfortunately.

#6: Please, please, lay off the fairytale re-tellings for a bit. Oh, come on, blow out that torch and return your pitchfork to the garden. There are now so many versions of Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and Snow White in our culture that I’m simply tired of it. Why can’t we read more adaptations of Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, The Billy Goats Gruff, Puss in Boots, The Princess and the Frog? Or go in a totally unexpected direction, like the Beaumont and Beasley series does, by turning the traditional tales upside down?

#7: While we’re at it, let’s give Sherlock Holmes and Alice in Wonderland a rest, too. Both of these classics are so beloved that modern variations are literally exploding in our culture, and that makes me weary of them. (Actually, can we add vampires, werewolves, and zombies to this, too?)

#8: Musicals are unrealistic and dull. Back off now, Hamilton fans (don’t make me sic my cat on you). There is something about being in a theatre and watching a full-flung spectacle of acting/music/lighting effects, that transports you to a fictional place, and it doesn’t bother you that people wouldn’t really break into song just after proposing, or admitting they were a drug addict. But when I try to watch movies of musicals, I just can’t do it. The pragmatic flaws get to me too much.

#9: Gel pens are overrated. While this may seem like a small thing to most of the world, I have very tight muscles in most of my body from anxiety, and trying to write with gel pens is too hard. Most of the time, the ink doesn’t flow well, and that means I have to press more, which leads to more tensing of muscles, and the problem is not fixed. (Ballpoints are definitely out of the realm of possibility these days.) I’ve had to switch to exclusively writing my long-hand drafts with rollerballs (which for some reason are generally more expensive and less available than gel pens).

#10: Kale is disgusting. True, I’ve only tried kale twice, but both times it was so salty and/or so bland that it just made me gag. I know kale is one of the new “super foods,” but it can just go and be super somewhere other than my kitchen.