The Top 5 Most Attractive Animated Guys, From the Point of View of a Chick Who Doesn't Really Like Guys.

Hi, blog that I haven't updated in almost a year.

It's come to my attention that I've never indulged in that most popular form of internet self-expression, the top 10 list.

By coincidence, I also happened to view this video, wherein the Nostalgia Chick polled young female creatures on their favorite animated men and then ranked the results according to popularity.

That's all well and good, thought I, but these are all presumably women who actually like men. What about women who aren't sexually attracted to dudes - how would their rankings of fictional, illustrated males play out? My curiosity aroused, I toddled off to talk to all of the lesbians I know.

Then I remembered that I don't personally know any lesbians (at least that I care to talk to) and immediately sat back down again.

As far as my own sexual preference goes, it's complicated. I'm about as interested in men as I am anybody else, which is to say, not at all, unless I'm experiencing some altered state of consciousness (con raves count as drugs, right?) However, if I was the kind of person who went around having indiscriminate sex, it would be entirely with women, because breasts are awesome, I already have a fair amount of vagina-handling experience, and hair bondage doesn't really work with the amount of head-hair most guys possess. Since this officially makes me the gayest woman I know, I figured it more than qualified me to write such a list myself, and after a bit of giggling and soul searching I finally sat down to compile....

hako's Top 5* Most Attractive Animated Guys, From the Point of View of a Chick Who Doesn't Really Like Guys.

*I'm only doing five because I really couldn't think of any more than that. Y'know, since I don't particularly care for them and all.

#5: Section Chief Daisuke Aramaki - Ghost in the Shell
Seriously. Like, for real, seriously, if I was over 40 and living in Japan in 2030 and had maybe been divorced and had my heart broken already but wanted a nice, honorable someone to spend the rest of my life with? Oh yeah. Chief Aramaki is the man. He is just such a badass I don't even, and besides that, he's a fantastic boss and an even better human being. He's the kind of guy who answers the "what's your greatest flaw" question on job interviews with "I work too hard" and is deadly serious, and I want to cuddle him for it. Him and his hair.

This is of course in the alternate universe where I don't want to be the Major's spoiled-rotten live-in girlfriend.

#4: Col. Roy Mustang - Fullmetal Alchemist
He's a bit of a dick, depending on which continuity you follow (I tend toward the anime because that's what I saw first), but there's just something really likeable about the Colonel. He's ambitious. He's a supportive team leader. He looks really good in a uniform. He's an asshole to the protagonist, whom I can't stand. He pretends to be a womanizer, but in reality he's been hung up on the same totally amazing girl since he was in his teens. He has PTSD. Also, did I mention that he looks really good in a uniform? 'Cause he does.

#3: Constable Kazuki Fuse - Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
I have this sick, unhealthy thing for woobie characters. Y'know, the ones you just want to pick up and snuggle because bad things keep happening to them. Fuse is kind of like Roy, only since he doesn't have the comic relief team, the ambition, or the kick-ass love interest, all that's really left is the PTSD, and hoo boy. Basically the entire point of this movie is that God hates this guy and wants to screw him over as much as possible, and he's done absolutely nothing to deserve it. I have no idea why I find this so attractive.

#2: Mikihisa Asakura - Shaman King
When I was in 8th grade and feeling the influence of hormones for the first time, I had this ungodly crush on Yoh Asakura. Really, I was terrifying. I plastered my wall with pictures of him, I wrote his name on my hand every day until it didn't come off in the shower anymore, and he even inspired my very first crappy 12-year-old forays into erotic fanfiction. Then I grew up a little and realized that his dad was totally where it was at.

It's really hard to pinpoint what I like about Miki; when you get down to it, he's not exactly the best dad on earth (although he's far from the worst), and he's such a space cadet that he'd probably be a pretty miserable domestic partner too - you'd be forever nagging him to do simple stuff like take out the trash or unload the dishwasher. And yet, there's something about his space-cadet-ness that just fascinates me. I could see myself sitting down for long, rambling conversations about completely random stuff with him, then leaning back together to look up at the sky and point out shapes in the clouds. While he may not have been there for his kids (or at least the one who didn't burn his face off) all the time, he comes through when he's needed, and does so like a total boss. Also, I dig ANY man who can so effectively rock the glasses-ponytail-guitar* trifecta.

*glasses and guitar not pictured. Trust me, they exist.

Honorable Mention: Briareos - Appleseed
I figured I should at least give a nod to Bri before I go on to #1, because without him, #1 probably wouldn't exist. Briareos is basically the proto-#1; more reserved, more emotionally scarred, and lacking a face. Not that his cyborg kit isn't cool, especially with those bunny ears. Unfortunately, he would eventually be upstaged by his mark 2...

#1: Batou - Ghost in the Shell
You think you're a great guy? That anybody would be lucky to have you? Think again, because you are not Batou and you never will be. Batou is the kind of man who is just so wonderful that the universe would not be able to contain his existence. He's strong, funny, masculine, intelligent, kindhearted, and manages to be oddly attractive despite not having eyes or eyebrows (though I think the ponytail helps in this department.) He's got the whole PTSD aw-I-just-wanna-cuddle-him thing that I love so much going on. He has been hung up on the same godly force of a woman for at least a decade, despite her veritable airport checkout counter of emotional baggage and the knowledge that she regularly screws around with a lesbian couple in her off hours. Better still, he channels his devotion to said woman into offering her support instead of just harassing her for a commitment; he loves her so much that he's basically content to be the best friend, because that's what she needs from him. I don't care how many dinners you've bought or prepared, how many shoulders you've offered for the absorption of tears, or how lenient you are when it comes to choosing date activities -- you are not anywhere near as good a love interest as Batou.

Yeah. Dig your girl out of a pile of concrete, rebar, and shipping containers first, using only your bare hands and a symbolically-shaped I-beam, all while under the threat of a nuclear attack, and then we'll talk.

("MOTOKOOOO!")
 

So there. I'd write a list of my top 10 girls, but a.) I'd probably stretch it out to like 32, and b.) I'd cram the first 31 into maybe a paragraph and then go on about the Major for nine pages. And nobody wants to read that.

Feminism is bullshit.

This is going to be a long, rambly one, so I apologize in advance.

Oh wait, nobody reads my blog. Never mind.

Anyway, it all started with this video. Leaving aside the absurdity of the title "true female characters", I was kind of hoping for a celebration of real humans depicted in games as opposed to tired stereotypes; instead I got sort of a confused mush of "WOMEN SHOULDN'T ADHERE TO CULTURAL STEREOTYPES, EXCEPT FOR THE ANTI-STEREOTYPE OF THEM NOT ADHERING TO STEREOTYPES", which, to add insult to injury, flashed a picture of Alyx Vance for about two seconds and didn't even mention her by name. Since any good study of excellent female characterization in games should, at the very least, be a seven-minute love ballad written about and directed toward the delightful Miss Vance, I wandered onto the forums to see if anyone else was as upset by her omission as I, and to my delight, a lot of people were (with the exception of one gentleman who dismissed her as "a typical badass latino girl with daddy issues", both parts of which are completely factually wrong - Alyx is half black and half Malaysian, and her father was an integral part of her life, leaving her with absolutely no void to be filled, nor any compulsion to find another older male with which to fill it.)

As I continued to read the comments, I found one lamenting the fact that Chell, the silent, player-controlled protagonist of Portal, had been prettied up for the sequel, and that it was unfortunate that women in games couldn't just look normal instead of being attractive. Before I get into this, let me provide a little context for those of you not reading my blog who haven't played Portal:



Personally, I don't get what the big deal is - the proto-Chell really shows that the game was more about introducing the concept of the world of Portal than pouring a lot of effort into its design, because quite honestly, she's a bit unsettling to look at. And not in an 'unattractive' way, either - it's more the psychological result of the subtle flaws and just plain wrong bits in her facial modeling that aren't quite wrong enough to let you actively point them out. In the words of Harry S. Plinkett, "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR FAAAACE?"

By contrast, new Chell looks like a smoothed-out, realistic human being. Nothing has been changed from the old Chell, except that they've clearly put more effort into her. The jumpsuit is there (tied around her waist presumably to signify her comfort in her surroundings and her rebellion against her captors), and the tank top was probably underneath it the entire time anyway; you can see a bit of white there on old Chell. New Chell is arguably more clothed, as she actually has boots instead of just surgically implanted heel springs. Also, this is concept art; I'm willing to bet that the game model will not be quite as lovingly rendered.

Anyway, I responded to that comment with one of my own saying that she looked perfectly normal to me, and that people in general aren't nearly as unattractive as the commenter seems to think they are, with the exception of my Mac Basics instructor, who looked (and sounded) like the unfortunate lovechild of a pig and Nina from Office Space. I also pointed out that men in videogames, or in any medium of fiction, for that matter, don't exactly look like guys you'd see walking down the street, because the whole appeal of fiction, especially the interactive variety, is that it shows us things we don't see every day. Men are idealized, women are idealized, and that's really kind of the reason fiction exists. My piece said, I left for work, then came home and went to bed.

When I got up the next morning, I decided to see how the thread was progressing. I found a response to my comment which rather rudely made the point that male characters didn't have to show nearly as much skin as female characters because male characters are not designed so that players can masturbate to them. After I recovered from the LOLWUT, I reiterated my point that gaming in and of itself is supposed to be something of an escapist fantasy, and wondered where on earth he was getting this idea that female characters in games don't wear anything (admittedly I'm not much of a gamer myself, but the only truly ridiculously skimpy outfit I recall ever seeing on a female character in a game was the armor on my melee character in Atlantica Online.)
He fired back (completely ignoring a large portion of my post, I might add) citing the infected in Left 4 Dead - the males come in all shapes and sizes, and the sole female wears lingerie. Hilariously enough, he completely neglected to mention everygirl player character Zoey, and in retrospect I should have called him on this; instead I asked him, again, where he was getting this idea that a g-string was the standard uniform for female game characters, and then responded to his query as to whether I'd ever see how alienated women feel when all female game characters are male fantasies with the shocking revelation that I do, in fact, possess a vagina.

Which brings me to part one of my argument: seeing sexualized women in fiction does not bother females as much as seeing sexualized men does males. I mean, I personally find the bikini armor rather tasteless, because I choose to dress rather conservatively, but it doesn't disgust me to the point that I refuse to play any video games, ever. Now, when the female assets get out of control to the point of being anatomically impossible, that's one thing, but a woman who's not afraid to show off what she's got, especially if she's an interesting character? Hell yeah. Women with large breasts and tight clothing can be very well written, as can those in less revealing outfits, and the point that the video that started all of this ruckus should have made, instead of descending into a politically correct screed, is that writers can't let character development stop with character design.

I'm also willing to bet that another factor in this phenomenon is that male homosexuality has a different cultural significance than female homosexuality. When a guy sees a male character who's obviously been designed with fanservice in mind, of course he's going to be disgusted, because in general, men have it pounded into their skulls that any manifestation of homosexuality, even something as benign as appreciating the male figure, is weak and something to be ashamed of. Teenage boys call each other 'fag' as an insult because it's a quick and easy way to emasculate someone. By contrast, female homosexuality doesn't have anywhere near the same stigma - a woman trying to insult another woman will go after either her appearance or the number of people she takes to bed, but usually not whom she chooses to go to bed with. When a woman admires the body of another woman, any men in the vicinity will usually think it's 'hot'. Because of this, women in general feel more comfortable looking at depictions of their own sex in various states of undress, while men (again, in general) will run for the nearest vomit receptacle in the same situation.

When I posted this response, my opponent questioned my qualifications to represent all females, insisted that women DO get upset at sexualized depictions of other women, and then suggested that I google "Feminism".

Ah, I said to myself; THERE'S the problem.

And so my story finally winds around to its ultimate point; feminist thinking is a tanker truck of cow manure speeding forth from the metropolis of Victimhood, belching thick clouds of misplaced self-righteousness from its exhaust as it goes. While seated comfortably in its cab with a safety belt of smugness securely fastened around his waist, the penis-owner can proudly mow down the arguments and opinions of the legitimate female that stands in his way. She is not a feminist; she does not know how modern women think or what offends them.

Now, there's no denying that feminism, at its base definition (a belief that women should have opportunities and rights equal to those of men), has been important over the course of history; patriarchal society was a thing for thousands and thousands of years, and still is a thing in many parts of the world today. Unfortunately,  in the good old US of A, feminism (like its partner -isms, race and fasc) has become a blanket under which one can hide from those scary monsters known as facts and reasoned discourse while still maintaining some amount of superiority over the opposing party. Crying "anti-feminist!" has just become another way of saying "I disagree with you, so I need to belittle your opinions. Also, you are conservative."

...come on, like that last part isn't totally true.

Anyway, not only is this a cowardly approach to arguing a point, it also smacks real feminism soundly in the face. As I said before, there are plenty of places in the world where women's rights are still an issue; blowing the girl-power whistle on something as dumb as skimpy outfits in video games cheapens the whole thing to the point of parody. While I won't deny that chainmail g-strings are incredibly impractical in combat, I like to think that human beings aren't so stupid and easily led as to see women as objects just because of sexually suggestive clothing.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go finish up my Motoko Kusanagi cosplay. Pink leotards and tight pants; that's the kind of feminism I can get behind!

Tax-funded sex changes? Are you shitting me?

I won't bother prefacing this with an "I'm not transphobic, but...", because I'm not, and there are no buts involved. I'm not even going to cite the friends I have who are transgender as proof of my acceptance of transsexual people.

...except I kind of just totally did. Oops.

Anyway, out in that wild, wonderful land of California (or Kahleefawnyah, if you're the Governator), there's been talk of sex change operations being paid for with public funding under that whole universal health care thing. I won't go into my feelings about socialized medicine right now (hint: I don't like it), but even if there were to be some sort of basic healthcare available for the uninsured...sex change operations? Seriously?

Apparently the argument for it is that the transgendered have the right to feel comfortable in their own bodies, so ungodly amounts of money should be spent removing the breasts and penises that make them hate themselves (or adding them, depending on the situation, I suppose) so they can live like the rest of us. Which is utter bullshit. We all have things we hate about our bodies -- should tax dollars be spent to help people lose weight, or on plastic surgery for middle-aged women who can't bear the thought of aging? How about on boob jobs, or high heels for short people? If you seriously suggested such a thing, even the most open-minded of people would laugh you down the street and around a corner into a bus station locker. But when it comes to transsexual people, they're ~*special flowers*~ who need costly surgery at our expense so they can feel human.

I'm actually trying to figure out how I can get in on this. I wasn't born with purple hair, but I know I was meant to have it, because coloring my hair purple makes me feel more like me, so Mr. Fed, would y'all mind picking up the tab for my monthly can of Manic Panic? Paying someone to apply it for me would be nice too - I can't afford that, and it's a bit of a pain to do it myself. Also, I feel more spiritually aware when I'm cosplaying Motoko Kusanagi, so can I get some bread for shoes and outfits? Thanks a bunch. Oh yeah, and if my employer objects to me doing either of these things, I have your blessing to sue their ass, right? Cool.

What a country we live in.

When I copied this quote into a notepad file for future reference, I saved it as "idiocy".

Here's a little gem I found in a comment thread to an article on Yahoo about reducing the national deficit:

Raise taxes to pre-Reagan era rates. Billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet giving away big chunks of their fortunes to charity (even if it's your own charity) is certainly laudable. However, why was the tax system so lax that people got *this* rich? Even after giving a ridiculous amount of money to charity, Bill Gates still has as much money as the GDP of Equador. Does he work as hard as the entire country of Equador?

I know I probably shouldn't be wasting time arguing in the direction of somebody who can't even spell 'Ecuador' correctly, but the semester's over and I don't have to go to work for another three hours, so here goes.

First off, yes, Bill Gates works just as hard as the country of Ecuador, if not harder. I know it's difficult for you redistributionist, friend-of-the-working-man hags to believe, but being the CEO of a huge corporation is not all kicking back on the beach with a pina colada and letting your underlings handle everything. Yes, some CEOs of huge corporations think it is, but in the business, that sort of thing is widely referred to as "doing it wrong", and their companies ultimately do poorly because of bad leadership. Managing an organization is still work, and it's the kind of work that doesn't leave you alone, that has you keeping your Blackberry (or prototype Windows Phone in this case, I guess; hell, Bill Gates might actually have a cyberbrain already.) glued to your ear or spending holidays working out some upper-management kinks that most people wouldn't even understand the significance of. Just because he's not out there with a hammer and a sweaty brow doesn't mean it's not work.

Second, when did the country of Ecuador ever produce a software system that billions of people around the world use and buy products for? Bill Gates' obscene amounts of money didn't just fall from the sky; he took a risk, spearheaded a company to make things people wanted, and it paid off. He continues to profit from that initial risk. Even if the profit amounts to more than the GDP of a South American country, so what? Whose place is it to say that anyone has too much money, and that some of it needs to be taken away?

Lemme clue you in on a little secret, commenter; the world is not fair. Some people have more money than others. And you know how this usually happens? They provide things that other people need and are willing to pay for. Becoming that rich is not easy, by any means. For every Bill Gates, there are a dozen people who thought they were going to develop the next big operating system but never got it off the ground. And yet, why do you think people take risks in creating products? Because they want to be as rich as people like Bill Gates. Without possible wealth as a motivator, how many ground-breaking technologies do you think would have gotten off the ground? If companies didn't want to sell their products and make money, do you think they'd put as much effort as they do into making them useful and user-friendly? If we start penalizing the rich simply for being rich, who's going to want to take that kind of risk anymore?

It's easy to look at rich people and say they have too much money. And you know why it's easy? Because it doesn't require the least modicum of rational thought. People like you are the reason we have Commander-in-Chief Penismouth on watch. It all sounds pretty and harmonious until our society starts stagnating because nobody ever has to work for a goddamn thing.

The Curse of St. Christopher

When I acquired my first car, the lady from whom my parents purchased it on my behalf gifted me with a pendant bearing the image of St. Christopher. She told me that, although she herself was not Catholic, she had been given the pendant when she got her first car and had kept it hanging from the rear-view mirror of each car she had owned, and that it felt right to her to pass it on to me, with what would be my first car. While I thought that a more useful gift would have been to remove all traces of the horrid vanilla air freshener that had been clipped to the glove box, I appreciated the sentiment and thanked her warmly, and St. Christopher stayed in his place of honor, dangling just behind the windshield. I felt, as I rocketed through the Ohio countryside in this vehicle of which I was still getting the feel but with which I had already fallen in love, somehow safer, as if this pendant, given with such honest intentions, would actually protect me from harm.

The trouble started about a month later, after I'd settled into the car, which I'd christened Akio (after Akio Ohtsuka, the voice of Batou in the various animated incarnations of Ghost in the Shell.) It was a windy day, over which hung a mass of roiling gray thunderheads, coyly waiting for just the right moment to let loose and start raining in earnest. I was on my way home after a trip to the nearest Pat Catan's for art supplies, and as I was nervous about taking the highway with the threat of heavy rain looming, I had decided to take the long way back into town. Unfortunately I'd forgotten what those heathens in Indian-name-nobody-can-spell-unless-they-live-here Falls called the state route I needed to get onto, and as the intersection was not marked with any sort of number-bearing sign, I'd ended up driving quite a ways out of the way looking for it. I was at an intersection, preparing to turn right into a parking lot where I could check my map, or at least turn around and find an alternate route through the streets I recognized from my commute to work, when it happened.

WHAM.

The first thing I registered was that the open bottle of Coke in my cupholder had exploded onto my seat, the shifter, and my pants; the realization that someone had just rear-ended me came a few seconds later. The car seemed okay - it was rumbling away as usual, and Megumi Hayashibara was still belting out Omokage through the stereo. I checked my mirror; the driver of the car behind me was signaling that he'd turn into the nearby parking lot as well, and as soon as the light changed, I, still shaking madly, trundled cautiously around the corner and pulled into the nearest empty space I could find, terrified that the back end of the car was going to fall off.

 As it turned out, Akio was fine. There was barely even a scratch, and my novelty bumper stickers survived unscathed. The man who ran into me was very nice about the whole thing, and he seemed relieved that I wasn't going to call the police or anything (I didn't see the use, as there was no damage to either myself or the vehicle, and I was positive they had better things to do than come look at a little nick in my car. After he'd make sure I was all right, he left, and I turned around and went home by the first street I recognized. By the time I got home, the incident had changed from terrifying to interestingly funny in my mind, and when I told my parents the story, I think I even joked about how St. Christopher should have been protecting me from something like that. He can't be everywhere at once, said my mom, and we went on with our lives.

A few weeks later, I was stopped at a red light on my way to school when the motorist behind me tapped on my window and informed me that I had a flat tire. I hadn't noticed any of the tires being low when I'd gotten into the car, so I assumed it had been punctured by something and pulled into the parking lot of a nearby community center. I called my parents to let them know what had happened, and my dad came out to help me change the tire. Neither of us could see any sign of puncture in the flat tire, and he suggested that I try just filling it up with air, putting it back on the car, and then keeping an eye on it. The next morning, I braved a chilly rain to do just that, and the tire behaved perfectly from that point on. How odd.

Finally, things got serious. It was November 2nd, and I was having a wonderful day. I'd gotten up early to go help vote in a more conservative congress, had just participated in an extremely enjoyable art class, and was on my way home to change clothes before heading out to the job that I didn't exactly enjoy, but which I liked well enough for the awesome people I did it with. I was about a block away from my house, crawling through the midafternoon traffic jam, one hand tapping the steering wheel in time to Bad Apple!!, wondering if I could make it to work on the same playlist I'd been going through since I'd left the house that morning.

WHAM.

It was a more intense WHAM than the first time, and shortly after it came a second WHAM. Envisioning a pileup, I decided to curl up in a ball and wait for everything to stop, wishing that someone would turn that bloody music down (in my panic I'd forgotten how to work the stereo.) I raised my head from the fetal position when I heard the driver of the car behind me tapping on my window to see if I was all right. I nodded, and shakily piloted my car around a corner onto a nearby side street. I remembered that, although my first collision had felt terrifying as well, there hadn't been any damage to the car whatsoever, and I expected to see maybe a scratch or a dent, something more along the lines of a battle scar that could become an interesting story once everything stopped being so scary. However, as I got out of the car and looked toward the rear end, a sick feeling began churning deep down inside my stomach as I noticed the driver's side taillight hanging very visibly out of its socket.

Basically, Akio's back end was a complete mess. Half of the bumper was in shards, and a large chunk of it had actually fallen off. The lid of the trunk was crumpled upward, to the point that I had to force it open and was unable to get it to close again. My stickers were ruined: "What Would Gordon Freeman Do?" was in admittedly still readable ribbons; "Kayabuki - Aramaki 2012" was fragmented beyond legibility, and all that remained of "D0G is my copilot" was a tiny shred of a corner. Wanting very much for someone to hug me, I called my mom, and she walked over almost at once. After taking some pictures of the damage, collecting the necessary insurance information, and filling out the police paperwork, Akio and I limped sadly home. I wondered aloud why St. Christopher had allowed this to happen, and my mom reminded me that his area of expertise was travelers, not vehicles.

Incidentally, I had to call off of work for an entire week due to an injury I sustained to my shoulder during the crash.

To make matters worse, the repair estimate for the car --my first car, my Akio-kun, the one I was supposed to drive into the ground and have all sorts of awesome stories about-- came back as 'chuck it and get a new one'. I was understandably heartbroken; I'd had the thing for all of three months, and everything about it, from the look to the space to the way it handled, fit me like a well-sized glove. However, insurance companies don't factor sentimental value into settlements, although ironically I ended up receiving an amount very near what it would have cost to fix the old car with which to pay for a new one. The last time I saw Akio was when I went to pick up the plates and leave my keys with the shop that would be handling the salvage. I took a piece of the bumper to remember him by, and I still have the personalized charm I made for him hanging in front of one of the windows in my room.

The proceeds from the settlement went entirely toward my new car, another 2002 ZX2, which I named Atsuko, after Atsuko Tanaka, the Japanese voice of Major Motoko Kusanagi. My reasons for doing this were many; first of all, I name all of my name-worthy possessions after voice actresses or singers; second, we have something of a Ghost in the Shell theme going with car names in my family (my mother's Prius is actually named Motoko because it's more computer than car, and I jokingly refer to my dad's Subaru Forester as Ishikawa because it's old and ugly and smells like cigarettes); third, it sounded reasonably similar to 'Akio', which seemed appropriate as it was the same car only in a different color (dark blue as opposed to red); and fourth, because I am not at all a fan of Ms. Tanaka's portrayal of the aforementioned Major Kusanagi, and I was determined not to love this car in the same way I'd loved the other. Also, one of my computers was already named 'Mary Elizabeth', and this car was undeniably female and didn't feel much like a Barbara or Yoshiko, so my options were limited. Still, in an attempt to make the best of things, I made a new charm for Atsuko, fitted her out with the rest of my car bling, including St. Christopher, and tried to move on. I still hadn't made the connection.

Atsuko had brake problems starting about half an hour off the lot, but about $600 at the repair shop cleared that up, and we settled into a grudging respect for each other. Then winter came, and with it, my first experience driving in snow. Not just any snow, mind you, but the snow that's been barreling across the Midwest, that caved in that one footballing arena, and that's left streets everywhere barren, inhospitable icy messes. I did all right on the drive down to school; I got into the flow of steering into the skids, and I was practically crawling anyway. On the way home, however, the roads were much clearer, and as I felt that the car was gripping better than it had on the trip there, I decided to speed up a little (though still not to the extent I would have had there been no snow at all.) Everything felt fine. The car started to skid slightly to the left, and I corrected it. Then, suddenly, the car spun in the opposite direction, and the next thing I remember is finding myself stuck in a snowbank. I'd also destroyed someone's mailbox. Oops.

After returning home, deeply ashamed of my mishap, I marched straight out to the car and removed the St. Christopher pendant from the rear-view mirror. Enough was enough - he was obviously happy where he was and hadn't taken to me at all. Although I hadn't come to any serious, lasting harm through my various vehicular misadventures, my cars, through what I can only assume is some sort of loophole in the Saint Code, hadn't been so lucky. Akio was sitting in a scrapyard being slowly picked apart, and now here was Atsuko with an enormous dent in her driver's side rear quarter panel, a dent that I interpreted as a warning shot. I'd have to be an idiot not to get the message at this point; I've been a licensed driver for all of five months, and I have owned multiple vehicles. That isn't right.

So we'll see how things go from here. Either it was the curse of St. Christopher all along, or I just have really bad luck when it comes to cars; if I get in another accident, I'll know. I'm happy to report, though, that on Monday I drove in weather just as bad, if not worse, than that of the previous Monday, when the mailbox incident occurred, and although at one point my car skidded so badly that I was perpendicular to the road, with oncoming traffic in both directions, Atsuko and I both made it home safe and sound.

COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU

[[NOTE: For this post to reach maximum effectiveness, imagine it as a chick flick trailer with the instrumental music for the establishing part and then the sappy ballad when the drama kicks in.]]

FREE TRANSFORM - TRAILER

by hako

FADE IN:

INT: ART ROOM - MIDAFTERNOON - ESTABLISHING
Dusky gold sunlight filters in through the worn curtains, illuminating the motes of dust hovering in the air. A dozen students are working at easels scattered in a rough circle around the room,  drawing a still life consisting of several glass bottles of varying sizes, lit by a standing lamp. THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST is sketching furiously on a pad of newsprint with a piece of vine charcoal. Her hands are ground in with black dust, which is also visible in smudges on her face. She is approached by THE SNOOTY ART TEACHER LADY, who studies her drawing, looking between it and the still life.

THE SNOOTY ART TEACHER LADY

(nodding slowly)

Very nice. What do you think?

THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST

(without looking up)

Well, honestly, I'm still getting used to the feeling of actually drawing on paper, not to mention the conspicuous lack of 'undo' command. If I was doing this on the computer, I'd probably be personally ashamed of it.

The Snooty Art Teacher Lady gives her the sort of look where, had she been wearing a monacle, it would have fallen into her cup of tea. The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist smiles and returns to her drawing. A school bell rings, because in movies, institutions of higher learning still have "change class" bells for some reason, and they go off without warning.

CUT TO:
INT: UNIVERSITY HALLWAY - AFTERNOON
The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist is walking with HER GENERIC ETHNICALLY DIVERSE MALE FRIEND at her side, other students passing by them in both directions.

THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST

(gesturing animatedly)

I don't get it! Drawing with a tablet is just the same as drawing with a pencil and paper! It's not like you just press a button and pictures pop onto the screen! 

CUT TO:
A series of shots wherein The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist sits in front of her computer in her dark bedroom, enthusiastically working at her tablet, then shows a near-photorealistic piece to an instructor, who shakes her head disapprovingly.

THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST (CON'T, V.O.)

They tell me to paint, I paint, and then they get all mad because it's not on a canvas that takes forever to dry and would have been a pain in the ass to lug back and forth from my car every day? I thought I was here to study art, not FACISM!

CUT TO:
UNIVERSITY HALLWAY

HER GENERIC ETHNICALLY DIVERSE MALE FRIEND

Hey, it's just the way things are. It's the way it's always been. Drawing and painting are for charcoal and oils, and Photoshop is for graphic design. Live with it.

THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST

Yeah, well, maybe it wouldn't be that way if people stopped saying that!

CUT TO:

ART ROOM - MIDDAY

The Snooty Art Teacher Lady stands in the middle of the circle of easels, addressing the class.

THE SNOOTY ART TEACHER LADY

Your final project will be a series of at least THREE drawings, sized 18 by 24 inches, illustrating, in some form, motion. I don't care about the subject matter - I want you to choose something that has some personal meaning to you.

The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist is shown in closeup. 

THE SNOOTY ART TEACHER LADY (V.O.)

Use whatever medium you'd like.

The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist's eyes widen.

FADE IN WITH WOOSH NOISE:

INT: CAFE - AFTERNOON

The room is small and crowded with other young adults. Dim light comes from mismatched lamps and sconces with frilled shades. The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist sits at a wooden table with Her Generic Ethnically Diverse Male Friend. Her laptop is in front of her, and the reflection of a Photoshop file in progress can be seen in the lenses of her nerdy-but-not-too-nerdy glasses.

HER GENERIC ETHNICALLY DIVERSE MALE FRIEND

I dunno if this is such a good idea, girl. 

THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST

She said to use whatever medium I'd like, and quite frankly, at this point in the semester, I am sick of charcoal, pastel, and conte crayon. The project is three drawings, 18 by 24, showing movement, and that's what I'm doing.

HER GENERIC ETHNICALLY DIVERSE MALE FRIEND

Okay, it's your funeral. And hey, I thought you liked pastel!
 

The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist glares at him, then leans in toward her laptop.

THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST

(whispering)

All lies, sweetheart - you're my one and only, I promise.

Her Generic Ethnically Diverse Male Friend rolls his eyes.

CUT TO:

INT: ART ROOM

Everyone is working on their projects, with easels and bristol board in front of them, except for The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist, who has her laptop on a table in front of her and her tablet on a book in her lap. The Snooty Art Teacher Lady walks up behind her.

THE SNOOTY ART TEACHER LADY

And just what, exactly, are you doing?

THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST

(smiling)

My final project.

The Snooty Art Teacher Lady narrows her eyes.

THE SNOOTY ART TEACHER LADY

I'm sorry, but this is an art class, not a collage-wherein-the-president's-head-has-been-switched-with-that-of-a-dog class, and I expect you to take it seriously.

THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST

(loudly)

I'm taking it just as seriously as anyone else!

THE SNOOTY ART TEACHER LADY

(more loudly)

Then put your toys away and get to work!

The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist gives The Snooty Art Teacher Lady a bitter look, then slams the lid of her laptop shut.

CUT TO:

INT: ART ROOM - EVENING

The room is empty except for The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist, who is seated at an easel, sketching forlornly on a sheet of bristol board, drawing and erasing repeatedly. She hears a soft creaking noise and turns around; THE OBLIGATORY ATTRACTIVE FEMALE CLASSMATE, who looks sort of like a cross between Juna Ariyoshi and Yoko Kayabuki and has the approximate voice of Merle Dandridge, has been watching her from the doorway.

THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST

(sullenly)

Yeah?

THE OBLIGATORY ATTRACTIVE FEMALE CLASSMATE

I...heard what she said to you earlier.

THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST

You and everyone else in the room. What do you want?

THE OBLIGATORY ATTRACTIVE FEMALE CLASSMATE

(smiling)

I want to learn how to paint the way you do.

CUT TO:
A montage of scenes, wherein The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist teaches The Obligatory Attractive Female Classmate the ins and outs of painting in Photoshop. There are many shots of The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist standing close behind her, looking over her shoulder, and a lingering shot of The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist's hand closing around that of The Obligatory Attractive Female Classmate as she holds the pen tablet.

THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST (V.O.)

Most people think it's just tracing whatever you can find, recoloring it, and calling it your own, but it's not. It's just as much self expression as painting with a brush, or drawing with charcoal. 

ONSCREEN TEXT (WHITE VERDANA AGAINST A BLACK BACKGROUND): IN A WORLD WHERE THE LINE HAD ALWAYS BEEN CLEARLY DEFINED

The montage continues; The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist is shown sitting alone in her dark bedroom, the only light coming from her computer screen, with tears sliding down her cheeks. Her knees are pulled up in front of her, and her tablet rests on them; slowly, she rests her forehead against her knees and hugs the tablet against her chest.

THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST (V.O.)

They think that just because it doesn't make a mess, or because you can't mix your mom's ashes or your own bodily fluids into your media, it's not art.

ONSCREEN TEXT: SHE SELECTED THE BLUR TOOL

The montage continues further, with various tasteful shots of The Obligatory Attractive Female Classmate posing nude as The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist sketches her with the tablet. There is an extended shot of The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist making out with The Obligatory Attractive Female Classmate in the rain, because these movies always seem to have a part where somebody enthusiastically kisses somebody else during a violent downpour.

THE SPITFIRE EVERYGIRL PROTAGONIST (V.O.)

But it is art, and I'm not gonna let anyone tell me different.

ONSCREEN TEXT: AND SET THE PRESSURE TO 100%

The montage continues on with intermixed shots of The Spitfire Everygirl Protagonist working at her laptop, holding hands with The Obligatory Attractive Female Classmate, and laughing about various things with The Obligatory Attractive Female Classmate and Her Generic Ethnically Diverse Male Friend, finally ending with a shot of her putting up her three final project pieces for display. The screen fades to black before they can be seen clearly.

TITLE TEXT: FREE TRANSFORM

The title is shown skewed out of proportion in a bounding box, until a cursor comes onscreen and drags a corner of the bounding box down until it is legible. This fades after it has been onscreen long enough to be read.

TAGLINE TEXT: DEFINE YOUR OWN BRUSH. DISTORT YOUR PERSPECTIVE.
-------------

Well? I think I might actually have something here...

My story, a work in progress.

When I was seven, the administrators of my school approached my parents with the suggestion that I be skipped up a grade due to my amazingly above-average test scores. To this day I don't understand why I was the one singled out for this privilege; I started kindergarten knowing how to read, but that was pretty much the only advantage I had over my peers, for whatever it was worth. My parents agreed, thinking that I'd find the third grade more challenging than the second, and I spent the summer bitching about having to learn cursive writing so I'd be all caught up to the rest of the third graders. School was school, and I went into my first day of third grade just as unenthusiastic as I'd be about any other grade. It was then that all of my problems started.

As a side note, my natural handwriting remained in perfect stasis during those elementary school years when I was forced to write in cursive, and in middle school, when I was allowed to dust it off and bring it back into regular use once more, I found it just as I'd left it, the handwriting of a six-year-old. My penmanship has aged a few years since; now it looks like something an eight-year-old might have written.

Anyway, third grade. Having just been moved up from a lower grade and not being involved in any school or community programs whatsoever, I didn't know anyone, and I had to try to fit my way into the little groups that had already sprung up during the three years that these other children had been associating with each other. I bounced from group to group depending on who would accept me; sometimes I was trading jokes with the boys, sometimes I was playing jumprope with the girls, and a lot of the time I'd just go sit by myself under my favorite crabapple tree on the playground and dream up stories. I was at that age where I still saw magic in everything, plus I'd recently read The Chronicles of Narnia and A Wrinkle In Time and its sequels (which I still hold up as the most beautiful pieces of writing I've ever experienced), so I had plenty going on in my head. During those times when I couldn't find any kids who'd tolerate me, I'd go galloping around the playground on one of my many invisible horses, having all sorts of arcane, spiritually-motivated adventures.

Apparently this was a bad thing.

I don't remember exactly what started it, but eventually I became "that weird girl." The one who didn't play sports or go to church, who had no grasp of popular culture, who wore dresses when most of the other girls were always wearing jeans, and who talked to her imaginary friends and said, quite seriously, that they were gods. My teacher, a Mrs. Armbruster, didn't help matters either, convinced as she was that her classroom was some sort of police state over which she reigned as a kind of benevolent dictator. Quite aside from teaching us useful or interesting factual things, or at least the rudiments of logical thought, whereby we might explore the world and draw our own conclusions from it, she seemed to think that her job was to mold us into a cohesive collective where everyone got along and had a part to play. I, that kid who never did the homework but tested well, wrote better than any of the rest of the class, and constantly corrected my teacher's spelling and pronunciation (I actually had to convince her that 'recreation' was a word when I added it to my spelling list for the week - she was sure that I was trying to write 're-creation'), did not fit neatly into her collective, and this bothered her, to the point that she began to confront me about it on a regular basis. There were apparently many phone calls to my parents that I only found out about years later, and I also became one of those kids that the guidance counselor calls into their office at the beginning of each school year just to see how they're doing.

Things escalated through the rest of elementary school, and I resigned myself to it and stopped trying. Okay, my peers didn't much care for me, but as long as I had a book and some room to sit and think, I didn't mind it much. There were some kids in my class that I'd casually interact with, and through my masochistic relationship with the Girl Scouts, I even came across a couple of friends. In fourth grade I got an in-school suspension for joking about knifing a kid, but ultimately my parents were only mad at me for my poor judgment in joking about such a thing in a school setting, and the whole issue blew over after that. In fifth grade some of the girls thought it would be funny to put a series of love notes in my locker, by which I wasn't taken in for a single moment (What fifth-grade boy actually leaves romantic notes? Typed notes, to boot?) They were remarkably stupid; each would have some little request to change something about my personal habits, like stop wearing that scarf you found in the art room as a bandanna, or start carrying around a book that isn't Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess (another book that I shamelessly admit to still loving). It culminated in a request for me to come to a parking lot near my house to meet the mysterious boy who was writing these notes, and at that point I turned them all in to my teacher out of annoyed spite for whomever was writing them. The girls came forward, and each was instructed to apologize to me both verbally and in writing, which I found hilarious. My teachers were surprised that I hadn't been seriously traumatized by this or anything, but from where I stood, it was a dumb prank that didn't work; I didn't even like boys yet. What was there to get upset about?

From there I moved into middle school, and everything went to hell. I still had my best friends from fifth grade, but the whole student body was hitting puberty and was just waiting to lash out at anyone for any reason they could think of because of it. It didn't help that in sixth grade I met Greta, a singularly odd child who was feverishly obsessed with sexuality and the Harry Potter series. I declared her my best friend when I found out that she had read the His Dark Materials trilogy, a series of which I was extremely enamored at the time, and I was so glad to have made a new friend that I eagerly went along with whatever she wanted to do. I turned a blind eye to her defacing of public property with her bodily wastes, accepted all of the wild stories she told me about herself, and even let her destroy a few of my personal possessions. When it got to the point where she began showing me pornography when I went over to her house, I broke down and told my mom about it, and from there our friendship became much more strained. I still spent time with her, even though my other friends and I agreed that she was no good, because even though I'd given up on being well-liked by my fellow students, I still couldn't bring myself to outright refuse someone's acceptance. Eventually she got me, herself, and our school's one black girl suspended as part of a conspiracy to further spread the rumor that our shop teacher was a child molester, and soon after that, she moved. I never spoke to her again.

Associating myself with Greta had two major side effects; the first was that people started to pay much more attention to me because of her. While I had kind of formed my own little pocket of oddness to curl up in, Greta flaunted hers, and delighted in the attention she got when she'd go to the guidance counselor (usually with me in tow) and complain about the teasing. After lying down with this particular dog there was no getting rid of the fleas, and I became the target of the same vitriolic hatred regularly directed at her; I did odd things and didn't fit the suburban mold. In the chiding words of my guidance counselor, the nail that sticks up must be pounded down.

The second side effect was the lesbian thing. I don't know if Greta herself started that, although I wouldn't put it past her; I refused to sleep over at her house, even before the pornography incident, because of her repeated suggestive advances. At any rate, it became 'common knowledge' throughout the school that I kissed girls in the bathroom, because I never showed any interest in boys (asking me to dances became a spectator sport among them) and homosexuality was just coming onto everyone's radar as something new to use as an insult. I'd been complaining about the abuse I'd been getting since way back in third grade, and nothing was ever done, so I didn't pursue the issue much this time. However, when certain people started throwing rocks at myself and my 'lover' (my best friend, whom I would later affectionately refer to as 'S-chan'), I went to the principal with renewed vigor, thinking I might actually have a case this time. He assured me he'd take care of it, and told me to come to him if it happened again. Well, I did, and after the third time he started pretending he wasn't in his office. I just gave up at that point; middle schoolers were going to be hateful middle schoolers. Whatever.

Things looked up in high school, where everyone was mostly content to ignore me. I went about my business, and even formed a group of friends through my interest in anime. However, I'd gotten in the habit of not doing any homework whatsoever, and it showed in my abysmal grades. My parents, who had already taken my brother out of third grade (by an odd coincidence, he too had been subjected to Mrs. Armbruster, and dealing with her again was more than my mom and dad could bear), removed me from school after my sophomore year, thinking that I'd do high school over again. I was devestated; I'd finally found my nook in the school community, and I enjoyed going because I always seemed to see and hear interesting things when I was there.

It was around that time that things got really bad. After I left school, none of my friends bothered to keep in contact except for S-chan, with whom I could only communicate seriously though the fictional characters we took on as personas in our online roleplay. When she too started to ignore me and then act like she'd been all worried during the periods when she hadn't spoken to me, I finally said enough is enough and wrote her a note telling her never to speak to me again.  I felt like I didn't have any purpose in the world anymore; I didn't know what I wanted to do, I hated everything school related, I was still very upset with my parents for taking me out of high school when I'd finally found a place there, and now I was all alone for the first time since third grade, except for my dog. I wanted very badly to die, but I was too afraid to do anything about it. Pretty much the only things that kept me going were my internet acquaintances and Paku Romi's "Tooi Kioku" album, from which I drew my current 'net handle.

When I was almost 18, my parents told me that I was only allowed to live with them as long as I was working or in school. I tried and failed to find a job locally (I'd never even considered learning to drive, as I had nowhere to go), and nearly ended up killing myself on my 18th birthday, out of an intense feeling of sheer pointlessness in the broad scheme of things. I was still too scared to actually do it, though, and just ended up listening to what I'd planned to be my last song ("Aqua" by Gabriela Robin, from the Earth Girl Arjuna soundtrack) over and over again until I'd cried everything out.

 And hey, I'm glad I stuck around. I got my GED and started college, and now I'm taking a bunch of art and design classes to build up a portfolio for actual art school someday when I can afford it. I have a job where I like pretty much everyone I work with, and where I make just enough to keep my car fueled and inching toward being paid off. I get along fine at school, and as a whole, things are pretty awesome right now.

So, to all of you bleeding-heart idiots who martyr every kid who kills himself because he was called a fag one too many times: I don't even want to hear it.