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RockinRarity

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  1. RockinRarity
    I went on Facebook this evening (I can't help it - I'm a wee bit addicted to reading my newfeed 12 times a day).
     
    Most of my Facebook friends are not idiots. Even the ones who I may consider to be "below average" aren't even bad and I don't care enough to judge anyways. And the people who are bad, well, I just "unfollow" them so that they don't show up on my newsfeed but they don't get upset that I unfriended them. Everyone's happy.
     
    I see idiocy on Facebook from strangers. I see this whenever one of my Facebook friends comments or likes some outrageously popular post, and then I decide to read the comments.
     
    This is the glorious post that appeared on my newsfeed today. Censored because I don't want this blog to get deleted in case this breaks any rules.
     

     
    Over 1000 comments? Dang. Why people are arguing about this seems ridiculous to me, but you know, telling kids the truth about our bodies is a pretty heavy controversy still. Not that I think everyone should buy this doll, but I don't see it hurting anybody, either.
     
    I had a look at the comments. Most of them were meh, normal. Most of them sane, whether I agreed or disagreed with them.
     
    Then I read this one.
     

     
    Yeah!! Why would a little girl need to know about the differences between boys and girls!! Telling them otherwise deprives them of their innocence, which leads to teen pregnancy!!
     
    ...
     
    ...
     
    ...
     
    Wait.
     
    I think they have a meme for this.
     

     
    So there you have it, folks. The solution to the teen pregnancy crisis. Don't let girls know what boys' genitals look like until marriage. I can't believe that no one had thought of that before!
     
    [Footnote: I am a woman who grew up with 5 brothers and no sisters. I took baths with one or both of my younger brothers regularly, plus there was a fair bit of running around the house naked. As a result, I think that being familiar with different body parts on males and females is healthy and can help lead to being confident with your body and your sexuality as an adult. Also, I did not have sex until I got married to my husband almost 10 months ago, and I am not yet pregnant. Also, I'm 25, not a teen.]
  2. RockinRarity
    When my friend posted the following link to my Facebook wall, anyone who knows me well knows that I could have died happy after reading it (as long as I got to watch everything in Heaven):
     
    http://www.fandompost.com/2014/05/16/viz-to-release-remastered-uncut-sailor-moon-sailor-moon-crystal/
     
    I watched the trailer on that page, too. Finally being able to own DVDs of high-quality original Japanese Sailor Moon episodes? Being able to start watching it on Hulu starting on my 25th birthday? Plus: my husband gets to watch it with me and know and appreciate the show. Hell, I like to remind myself that I couldn't have married anyone else I've ever met because I needed to be with someone who was open to watching Sailor Moon one day. But I digress.
     
    I had heard about the BRAND NEW Sailor Moon anime coming out that was going to be more based on the manga! Yes!! The manga is so good! I mean I still love the old anime, but having a new anime that follows the manga's story more closely is so good. Now, they need to do it with Soul Eater.
     
    AND AND AND!!!!!! A NEW ENGLISH DUB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOLY CRAP I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SEE THE DAY!
     
    *breathes*
     
    OK. Anyone who knows me well knows this:
     
    I loved Sailor Moon ever since I was 5 years old and I saw a Sailor Moon toy commercial for the first time. I can't find the damn commercial on YouTube but oh well. Point is, I was enamored by the idea of superhero girls named after planets who kicked bad guy butt. I guess I was a feminist in blooming? Runs in the family I think. I blame my aunt.
     
    I remember being in second grade and being in school while Sailor Moon was on TV. It was on at 2:30 in the afternoon every weekday, and I was always in school until at least 3. I remember watching the clock every afternoon, and would be excited when 2:30 hit because Sailor Moon was on, but sad because I never got to watch it.
     
    Finally, when I was in fourth grade, Sailor Moon became a regular show on Toonami. So every day at 4:00, my mom would let me take a break from homework and I would watch Sailor Moon. Every day. This was part of my routine until Sailor Moon stopped airing on Toonami a few years later. I managed to be able to catch all of the dubbed episodes eventually, and I was able to see Sailor Moon S and SuperS when they were dubbed for the first time, too.
     
    I remember being in fifth grade, and I had an older cousin in 8th grade who liked Sailor Moon too. Her best friend (a guy) also really liked Sailor Moon, and they got to talk about the Japanese version and how cool it was and how it was so much better than the English version. I knew that the English version said some dumb things, and that was always a bit embarrassing, but it was the best that I had to watch, so I kept with it. My favorite planet of the Solar System was Saturn at the time, and my cousin's friend printed off some pictures of Sailor Saturn for me and wrote up little descriptions of what she's like! I wish I still had it.
     
    I got bullied a lot, though, by some of the boys in my class. The worst thing that ever happened regarding that was I had drawn and colored in a picture of ALL of the Sailor Senshi (or Sailor Scouts as I knew of them at the time). I felt so cool drawing the Sailor Scouts that hadn't been released in North America yet (Sailor Moon S came out when I was in sixth grade). Anyways, I left the drawing on my desk toward the end of the day to do my "chore" to help clean up the classroom, and some of the boys had taken my drawing to the sink, turned on the faucet, and drenched my drawing in water and ruined it! I was beyond devastated.
     
    Sailor Moon had stopped airing on TV for the most part by the time Sailor Moon SuperS was finished. I had heard that they weren't going to dub Stars, which I thought was dumb, but I wasn't too disappointed by that. I knew that I would probably be able to watch the Japanese version one day.
     
    And because of the wonders of the Internet, and because of a website that no longer exists because it broke a lot of copyright laws (anyone remember a site called TV Links? No? Am I that old? lol) with some assistance from YouTube, I managed to get a hold of all 200 Japanese episodes of Sailor Moon.
     
    Boy, was I convinced of how much better the Japanese version was. I remember watching some comparison videos of the two, and I became angry at how much butchering they did to the Sailor Moon dub just to appease American child audiences.
     
    I can only find a comparison video of half of an episode these days, but if anyone wants to take the time to find out exactly what these differences are, there is a website called www.smuncensored.com that goes through all of the episodes that were dubbed into English and points out the changes that were made to each episode. No one really updates the site anymore but I am super impressed that people took the time to mark all of these differences so that people like me don't have to.
     
    Basically, what's wrong with the original English version in a nutshell:
     
    -much of the script was completely rewritten, and many of these rewrites include changes in character and plot. Not to mention that they make the characters talk like stupid valley girls half the time, and much of their vocabulary includes extremely dated vernacular that does not age well at all.
     
    -there was tons of censorship, and while that's not necessarily the fault of the people who were dubbing the show (Americans have stricter rules about what can be shown on kids' TV, after all), and at the time of the dubbing, it was generally believed that cartoons were primarily for children so in order for Sailor Moon to sell, it needed to be marketed to children... but sometimes, they really went out of their way to censor over nothing. Also, some of the worst cases of censorship are just plain insulting to the original work. They make really emotional scenes not very emotional at all just because it's not appropriate for children to know about death and sadness? I could get in a debate about that, but yeah, that mindset just irritates me in general and I wish that they dubbers didn't feel the need to go out of their way to censor as much of the show as they could.
     
    -LittleKuriboh made this word popular in Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series when Yugi and the gang went up against the staff of 4Kids: LOCALIZATION. Cutting references to the fact that Sailor Moon is a Japanese show (but not cutting all of it? yeah sometimes they never cut Japanese lettering) and "Americanizing" it as much as possible was the game they played.
     
    -I'm gonna get a lot of shit for this, but I'm going to say it anyways. Most of the voices. SUCK. INCLUDING Sailor Moon herself. I know that dubbies LURV TERRI HAWKES OMG SHE'S THE BEST SHE'S THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN VOICE SAILOR MOON but honestly, not a fan. Terri Hawkes made Sailor Moon sound super ditzy and like a valley girl with some sass and it's like... no. It completely changes Sailor Moon's original character to make her like that. Terri was decent with her acting so it's not like she was horrible or anything, but who honestly thought that it was a good idea for Sailor Moon to scream with a vibrato? Seriously.
     
    -Oh wait other voices that suck. Luna. Sounds like an 80 year old British woman. Which, she isn't. It's one thing to listen to her talk in her cat form, but when you watch the Sailor Moon S movie and you see her young-looking human body with that voice? It sounds COMPLETELY off. Tuxedo Mask's voice is OK but his acting is pretty terrible. Amy's voice doesn't really sound like a teenager's at all, and trust me, I've met a lot of teenage girls and I haven't met one who sounds like that (I'm talking more about the DiC Amy, the Cloverway one was better but not by a lot). I appreciate that Susan Roman was dedicated to the show enough to voice Lita/Sailor Jupiter for the whole thing but I don't really like the "butch" factor that she gives the character. Rini's first voice grates my ears (but her Cloverway voice is the best the whole series! STEPHANIE BEARD FOR THE NEW DUB PLEASE? Maybe?). Nephlite is TERRIBLE - I heard one sentence today and I was done forever. Molly is obnoxious. Zoisite, Emerald, and Fish Eye all have the EXACT same voice actress and it's SUPER obvious (I just read that she died a few months ago from lung cancer? Dang that sucks). Same goes for Queen Serenity, Sailor Moon's mom, and Sailor Neptune. Those women didn't even try to make the voices more varied - did they just assume that the kids watching the show wouldn't notice or care? Who knows. Apparently the woman who voices Zoisite et al voiced a few other characters too who I didn't notice, so she could make her voice more varied, she just... didn't.
     
    -the characters are way bitchier in the dub than they are in the Japanese version. I read the manga when I was in middle school and character descriptions said that Sailor Moon and Sailor Mars were best friends. I was incredibly confused when I read that, because I only remember the two of them yelling at each other - I didn't think that they liked each other at all!! But then I watched the Japanese version, and then I thought, "Oh... I see it now..." Way to go, dub. Ruining character development and relationships for the sake of gags and laughs. Classy.
     
    -Sailor Moon Says. Think Sonic Says, but none of them were good enough to become an Internet meme, and they include lots of awkward pauses and the morals are ridiculously forced. I specifically remember one that said, "Queen Beryl did a terrible thing by destroying the Moon Kingdom. But we need to take care of our planet by recycling and shit." I wish they actually said "recycling and shit" because that's hilarious. I'm just too funny sometimes.
     
    OK. I think you get the idea.
     
    Now to the main reason why I decided to login and write this blog post today.
     
    When the new Sailor Moon Crystal anime premiered a couple of Saturdays ago, I was reading people's comments about what they thought of it. I thought that it was very well-done, I enjoyed the return of Usagi's seiyuu, and I had the manga with me to compare the show and the manga side-by-side, and let me tell you, it is 95% the same. The new anime is almost literally an animated version of the manga.
     
    But I read so many SCATHING reviews from people who watched it. Usually along the lines of, "It's not like the original!" (and by original they mean the English dub that they grew up with) or "The art sucks!" or "The plot moves too quickly!" (they never read the manga). I think that the Facebook group I follow deleted a lot of the negative reviews because I couldn't find any specific ones anymore, otherwise I'd give some examples. Point is, their opinions were based off the fact that they had little to no experience with the source material of what they were watching. They just wanted more of the old English dub that they grew up with.
     
    I read more comments today regarding the NEW English dub of the original anime. If I thought the reviews from earlier were scathing, well, I don't really know what scathing means. These were worse:
     
    "I'm incredibly disappointed with the remastered series... But that's just the inner 6 yr old me crying inside.. I wish they would have stuck closer with the original voice actors rather than these people.. It's pretty bad. Oh well, I'll stick to the old original dub thank you!"
     
    "The new voices have ruined this for me. I will not be buying it and I LOVE Sailor Moon. I am heartbroken."
     
    "This is just a big pile of NO. In the original english dub Luna's accent made her sound older & more mature. She is supposed to be watching after the girls & now she just sounds like one of them."
     
    Stuff like this permeated the comments on the video clips that we saw for the new dub. And for what it's worth, I thought that it was pretty great. Fortunately there were some people who were similar-minded to me. This particular post sums it up pretty well:
     
    "I don't think they got the memo. They are completely stuck in the past. I mean if you listen to the original Japanese voices, they are not far off at all. The old 90s voices are and some were extremely horrible. I watched it as a kid and I admit, it will take sometime to get used to the new voices, but im excited. And to see everyone bitch so much over something like this, is so stupid. They obviously don't know that much about the original Japanese version. I mean seriously don't watch it if you don't like it. Watch in Japanese or the old cut up shit but bitching and whining people are doing, is annoying as fuck."
     
    I bolded two parts for emphasis.
     
    It's a little like reading comments from Gen 1 MLP fans saying that the new show (Friendship is Magic) is terrible because of little nit-picky things that aren't *supposed* to be a certain way according to them.
     
    Actually wait. It's worse.
     
    It's more like if fans of the Gen 3.5 cartoon came on this forum to complain about Friendship is Magic because Friendship is Magic is nothing like the "original" (which, in their minds, original means Gen 3.5, not Gen 1).
     
    I was pretty angry this morning when I read all those comments. I was actually offended.
     
    I do not really understand how people could feel that they have a right to an opinion over something they clearly have little knowledge of. These are people who call themselves huge Sailor Moon fans without understanding the source material of the new content that's coming out. It bothers me, too, when dub fans insinuate that the dub is the "original." No, the dub is not the original. The dub is a hacked and slashed version of a show that added filler and personality changes (the anime) to its original source material (the manga).
     
    Just because something is original TO YOU, it doesn't mean that it's the "original." I don't understand why people think that they have authority in their opinion when it is not very well-researched nor do they have anything to say when trying to respond to people who disagree with them.
     
    I'm not saying that these people aren't allowed to like the old English dub. They can like whatever the hell they want.
     
    But can people admit that maybe they like something because of nostalgia, and NOT because it is actually high-quality?
     
    I have seen some people here and there saying that they were "petitioning" to get Terri Hawkes to voice Sailor Moon in the redub. Do they not understand the purpose of the redub? Why would they think that it was going to be more of the same that they grew up with? I'm afraid that I don't quite understand.
     
    We as Friendship is Magic fans are in a bit of an interesting position, I know, too. Because I think that a lot of bronies get a lot of flack for hating the old gens, or at least some of the old gens. It's a little different here, though, because people dislike the old gens of MLP for being "too girly" aka not having a broad enough audience in mind, whereas people hate the Sailor Moon English dub because it DOESN'T pay much mind to the original source material.
     
    I think, though, that despite those differences, we are in similar positions, because we have people who try to dismiss our dislike. I once had a dub lover tell me, "Don't be a hater. Without the dub you wouldn't have gotten into Sailor Moon, and it wouldn't have gotten popular in the states." I think that old MLP fans can say the same thing about the older gens.
     
    While what the person said about it not becoming popular is true, I don't think that excuses the mistakes that were made while originally dubbing the show. Just because it was better for a show to be dubbed poorly than not at all, it doesn't mean that the poorly dubbed version is the best version of the dub that could possibly exist. Because people scrutinized the old dub, we will be getting a newer, better dub. And I know that not everyone will think that the new dub will be better. But based off the clips that I saw this morning, it is going to stay as true to the original source material as it possibly can. Heck, it already advertised that it would be uncut and uncensored. Pretty sure that they are keeping the Japanese music and original sound effects. So already, it is going to be better just because they are trying to keep it true to the original source material rather than try to hack the show into pieces and market the show as something that it's not.
     
    Hating is stupid, and getting angry over CHANGE and DIFFERENT FROM MY CHILDHOOD is a waste of time. I don't think that being different from what you grew up with is a valid reason to hate something. If you can be negative about something over something as trivial as your own nostalgia, then it's your loss.
     
    I just think that it sucks that there are others who identify as Sailor Moon fans who will decide to hate the new material and to cling to the past. It would be so much more fun being in a fandom where people learned to adapt.
  3. RockinRarity
    So I was going to put in a long post in the iOS vs. Android thread, but I decided to cut that post short and post my musings here instead. Since, well, it was beginning to get really off topic.
     
    I really like ranting about this topic because I feel like not enough people do it. My knowledge of technology is above-average so I feel that saying my opinions on this matter may do the general public some good, as well as give insight to why people like me could even bear to think this way.
     
    I'll just start by saying that "Apple Culture" just really, really irritates me. It irritates me to the point of getting defensive and posting long Internet rants. This is because there are Apple fans who think that their products are invincible and therefore it makes themselves look smarter or whatever. It's complete arrogance because while claiming to have the best product, you are looking down on other people over something as trivial as what company you decide to throw your money at. And that arrogance is based off what you heard from other people without doing your own research, and you follow those people like sheep. Why should sheep be arrogant?
     
    This is the most common (and stupidest) reason to get arrogant about Apple products.
     
    "I got a Macbook because it's superior because it doesn't get viruses!!!"
     
    Yeah, and neither do most PCs because there are free anti-virus programs that can protect you on top of the fact that only people who don't know shit about computers get viruses on their computers in the first place.
     
    I understand wanting a Mac if you need special software only available on a Mac, or even if you prefer Mac and you feel like throwing your money at Apple - because it's not my business who you decide to support.
     
    But don't try to tell me that my computer (or phone) is inadequate, because that's stupid. My friend got a Macbook Pro in 2007, the same year that I got a Dell Inspiron. Her Macbook Pro was going to the shitter just as much as my Dell was (perhaps more so? I remember her Macbook freezing a lot; at least my Dell didn't do that, it was just loud and would overheat so I had to blow a fan on it, haha). Her Macbook eventually bit the dust and wouldn't even turn on anymore. My old Dell can still function, with its only "repair" being a battery replacement.
     
    I just bought a new Dell a month and a half ago and already it's miles better than my old Dell was when it was new - and I paid just under $500 for it. My friend got a new Macbook Pro with Retina Display (because it's cool?) with Apple Care (Apple's 3-year support plan) for... $1500? She got a discount which is great, but dang, if that thing is going to be used the same way that I'm using my new Dell and it's expected to live as long as my Dell... why bother paying the extra $1000? The fact that you have to go to Apple to fix your computer is kind of bullshit too. If my Dell breaks, I can take it to a local computer repair place and they'll have it fixed for less than an arm and a leg. Can't say the same thing about Apple.
     
    Anyone who says that Apple is majestically better than Google or Microsoft knows next to nothing about technology and probably shouldn't have such an uninformed opinion. You are allowed to prefer Apple based on your own personal taste, and you are definitely allowed to prefer Apple based on your software needs. But if your Macbook and iPhone are primarily used as Facebook machines, then you're probably wasting your money. More so for a Macbook than an iPhone, though - at least the iPhone is only $100 more with a contract than your average Android device, and the only major difference is where you can buy your apps from.
     
    I will say that we should be grateful to Apple for being so innovative in technology. Without Steve Jobs, we wouldn't have smartphones or tablets, I am sure. We also wouldn't have had a decent competitor for Microsoft so that they can stay humble and on their toes and actually try to make good products (doesn't always work though... I'm looking at you, Windows 8). But ever since he died, Apple themselves hasn't been contributing a whole lot of anything brand new to the market. The last big thing to come out was the iPad.
     
    While Apple has come out with new technology, competitors have come out with products that compare. These products are basically just as good as whatever Apple has come out with.
     
    The ONLY exception to this, I think, is the iPod. I have looked and looked and looked for an alternative to an iPod that would suit my needs as a music lover, but I don't think that such a device exists. I mean, if all you need is a 2GB device for some of your music, then you can get an alternative to the iPod Shuffle (which is a piece of shit, by the way - if you're gonna get an iPod, get a nano or higher, jeez). But I've read a lot of reviews for other devices that have a larger capacity for music and if I need to upgrade to a 32 GB device, the iPod Touch is an obvious choice... if the Samsung Galaxy Player had a higher GB capacity and was more up-to-date by a smart device's standards, I would buy that in a heartbeat. I really want something that can hold a ton of songs but I can also use a Spotify premium plan to play Spotify playlists offline so that I don't have to buy (or pirate) music every time I want to listen to a bunch of different songs on my own time.
     
    I own an Android device, and while it definitely works for my needs, it only has an 8GB capacity so I can barely put any apps on there, and for some reason its performance has been dragging. This doesn't turn me off from Android as a whole, though, because my husband has the exact same phone as I do and his runs a lot more smoothly than mine. I think his needs are just lesser than mine (as that is usually the case when it comes to technology, except when it comes to gaming). But now that I've had experience with a smartphone, I am more in-tune to what my needs are in that area. So unless a better Android phone comes out by the time my 2-year contract is up, I would love a Moto X.
     
    I'm also a pretty big Google fan, so that contributes to me being an Android girl.
     
    But what really set me off was a couple of summers ago, I was on a vacation to the east coast with a friend of mine. We were in Boston on the 4th of July to watch the fireworks and some of her friends from New Hampshire were with us. I knew that they all had parents who had money, but I don't think anything really prepared me for realizing this, but every. single. person had an iPhone. All of them.
     
    And it creeped me out.
     
    It creeped me out because I realized just what mass marketing can do to people. These people, who are all individuals, all of a sudden were glued to the same piece of technology as everyone else. That just didn't sit right with me. I'm all for people sharing something in common to the point where it brings people together (like MLP, for example), in fact that brings me a lot of joy. That's not what the iPhone was doing in this particular instance, though. Sure it is a communication device and it helps people communicate with others from pretty much anywhere, but in this particular situation, everyone was isolating themselves from the people directly with them with the exact same tool.
     
    I didn't want that for myself. I wanted to stay up-to-date with technology, but not at the cost of looking like a drone. So I went with Android, which I knew was reputable and functions much like an iPhone. I have been decently happy with it, but I look forward to getting a newer piece of technology when my contract is up later this year.
     
    To wrap this up, all I wanted to say was that technology is not magic. All companies and their products have pros and cons to them. What marketing can do is convince you to buy a product without really understanding your own needs or understanding what else is out there. It bothers me that people just do what their told because a shiny advertisement said something. This is our hard-earned money - or our credit scores - that are at stake here. Not that money should be idolized, but throwing money at companies that display shiny ads is why many of us in our country have such huge debt.
     
    Apple has high-quality products. I'm not trying to say otherwise. But I am all for quality - and buying what you need - at a price that people can afford. And for people to know that technology is simply a tool for bettering our lives. It doesn't have to be a competition or a religion.
  4. RockinRarity
    I started actively engaging in the Tumblr thing a couple of months ago. I had had a Tumblr for quite a while but became disinterested while I was planning my wedding. I got back into Tumblr and, while I do enjoy what I see, certain parts of it have become... interesting.
     
    Anyone who has been on Tumblr long enough knows about the Social Justice Warriors. The people who write blogs about discrimination and reblog others' posts about it who spend so much energy on the topic and direct their opinions is the totally wrong direction (to the point of extremism, or worse), and it drives all of the sane Tumblr users nuts.
     
    I encountered my first SJW quite a bit ago when a friend of mine (who would be an SJW if she didn't have a brain) reblogged a post from one of these kinds of people. It said:
     
    So, I can understand where this person is coming from... except, of course, usually my reaction to hearing, "All straight people think that gay men are drama queens" I would say, "Um, no, pretty sure that's not true?"
     
    My friend, who by the way is biracial and female, responded:
     
    Things got interesting after that.
     
    SJW:
     
    Friend:
     
    Bravo! Totally agreed.
     
    I wanted to let her know that I was on her side, so I decided to chime in:
     
    So I thought that was pretty intelligent, reasonable, and kind. I gave myself a pat on the back for that one.
     
    Too bad SJW had other things to say:
     
    Um.
     
    So SJW sees one post from me and assumes that I must plug my ears whenever I hear people talk about oppression? Gosh, either she's the greatest Internet psychologist ever for being able to deduce my behavior through one Tumblr post, or there's something wrong. F'd up indeed, Friend.
     
    This entire thing would have made better conversation if:
    1. It wasn't a strawman
    2. Or a false cause
    3. Or if the whole thing wasn't an appeal to emotion
    4. The SJW never used a personal attack against me because of my post, otherwise known as an ad hominem
    5. She could take criticism and didn't have to rely on tu quoque
    6. She didn't think that white straight men are by nature oppressive - genetic
    7. She could admit that these issues aren't black or white
    8. She didn't laugh at the idea of being compassionate and reasonable - essentially dismissing my argument/suggestion without a real explanation why.
     
    It goes on.
     
    Someone else chimed in at this point, agreeing with me:
     
    Look! Reasonable person has reasonable thing to say!
     
    But SJW chimed in again:
     
    White people from birth are told that they are better than people of color??? I have never been told that in my life. If she is using hyperbole here, it's not helping her case.
     
    Oh, and she responds to my "compassion and reason" comment...
     
    Ugh.
     
    1. If they are supported by facts, give us facts, not just anecdotes.
    2. We are listening. And counter-arguing. If you think that everyone who legitimately listens to what you have to say automatically will agree with you, HAHAHAHA you naive narcissistic peanut - I stopped believing that before I got into high school, and here you are, a young adult woman, still believing that everything that you type on a keyboard is magic truth?
    3. You are allowed to be wrong. So are we. But you need to actually argue your points without resorting to half of the logical fallacies that exist.
    4. Hey, I have compassion for the oppressed too. I hate racism, sexism, and homophobia. It makes me facepalm, and I call people out on their racism, sexism, and homophobia if I can find a way to speak to them that will help us see eye-to-eye without calling them names or telling them to fuck off or that it has to be us vs. them. Why can't we all just be human?
    5. Oh and basically you are putting words in my mouth. Because if one white person said it, then all white people think it, right???
     
    So I pretty much ended with this:
     
    SJW never responded to this one.
     
    So.
     
    I think one of the worst parts about all this is that the original blog post got over 15,000 notes.
     
    Why is shit like this popular.
     
    See, this scares me. I mean at best these people are teenagers and arrogant college students who will grow out of a phase. At worst people are learning about the world and how to argue beliefs and logical claims from effing Tumblr, and what they learn about critical thinking in Tumblr will stick with them forever.
     
    SJWs are a thing because people are not taught how to make logical, compelling arguments. These people learn about oppression and learn that everything about oppression is the fault of the straight white man and then their critical thinking stops there. These people are narcissistic adolescent and young adult women who are bored with lives or bitter about past experiences with certain individuals that they involve themselves in Tumblr drama and mask the drama as fighting for minority rights.
     
    I was going through this particular person's entire Tumblr to find some of these posts and holy shit. There is just so much wrong with what she says a lot of the time. She even insults bronies and says that we all sexualize cartoon horses and ruin the show for little girls.
     
    I just, how do they function in normal society? Doesn't everyone hate them? And are they completely unable to see that the reason for other people's hate is because of how they approach others who are part of these "majority" groups?
     
    Now generally I believe that people are decently good at figuring out their own problems and being self-reflective and choosing to learn from mistakes and whatnot.
     
    But being literally blind to your own faults must be so debilitating.
     
    Well, you know what the Bible says:
    Matthew 7: 4-5
  5. RockinRarity
    In my experience, it's not very often that someone shares to others on the Internet just why they are Christian or Catholic and why they came to be the person they are today. Many people who call themselves Christian may not even say that it makes that big of a difference in their lives.
     
    I guess, perhaps, that I am a bit different.
     
    There is one reason why this story of my life is the first part that I am sharing. This is because it is the most important.
     
    The reason why I am a Catholic Christian is much of the reason why I am who I am today. Everything that I have experienced in my life, at least on a large scale, is influenced by my religious beliefs. It wouldn't make sense to talk about my romance life or my Internet life without talking about the most fundamental and foundational aspect of myself.
     
    Before I go on, I want to make this very clear: I chose this religion for myself. Yes, most of my family is Catholic too, but I'm not the type of person to believe something just because I was raised to believe it. I'm no theologian, but I have independently studied more about Catholicism than most. I would love to get a master's in theology, but that's for another stage in life.
     
    Now I begin my story.
     
    I am the fourth of six children in my family. I have 3 older brothers and 2 younger brothers, making me the only girl out of all my siblings. As you can probably tell, growing up was quite the adventure. We had a wild household, but thanks to the disciplinary measures of my parents, the house was not uncontrollable. It helps that my dad can put on a scary face when he wants to.
     
    We went to Mass every Sunday. At Mass, we would sing songs, as you probably know. My mom has a lovely singing voice. I admired it as a child. I wanted to sing just like my mom. so I started singing church songs as much as I could as soon as I could. That got me participating in Mass early in life. For the most part, I didn't even see Mass as boring like a lot of children do.
     
    The church that I grew up in however was not a normal Catholic Church. This church is called a Charismatic Catholic Church, meaning that we would have Mass, but within it, we would have something called Charismatic worship, which involves the raising of hands, shouting praises to God, and even speaking in tongues. I know that that sort of thing can scare people, but trust me when I say that my church was nothing like Jesus Camp. Anyways, I suppose that also kept Mass from being too boring, too.
     
    But not only did I grow up in this church, my parents and much of my dad's side of the family were also involved with another Christian group - an interdenominational, charismatic Christian group where Christians from multiple denominations can come together and praise God. Not only were there prayer meetings every other Sunday, but the adults were part of small sharing groups separated by men and women where they would share their lives with one another, and, in general, they agree to uphold good Christian standards for one another. In this Christian group's view - a community, rather - it is not good enough to just be a Christian who goes to church on Sundays and then does whatever they want during the rest of the week. We need to be Christians every day.
     
    That's basically my background as a Christian child. I went to Christian summer camps between the ages of 9 and 14, I received First Communion and Confirmation in the Catholic Church, and I attended Christian/Catholic school from 3rd grade until I graduated high school. I went on several retreats during high school, was part of a high school youth group and small group in the charismatic Christian group, and my senior year I got to be a retreat leader for my senior class retreat. I gave 2 talks and lead a small group full of my classmates. As I got older, I wasn't just somebody who cruised through Christianity and never thought of it as having no real effect on my life. I didn't always remember to have personal prayer, but I went to church, went to youth group, and learned more about God in school and in my personal life. And as I continued to grow into that way of life, I felt more security and satisfaction in who I was.
     
    After I graduated high school, I attended Eastern Michigan University, a public university in southeastern Michigan. This was my first time attending a public school since 2nd grade. I still lived with my parents for my first 2 years there because I was poor, but I was still learning to live in a non-Christian - and sometimes anti-Christian - environment.
     
    This begins the chapter of me learning to become an adult Christian. Because eventually, if you want to follow a religion without feeling like a miserable robot, you have to figure out why you are in it and why you believe what you believe. It's a part of growing up.
     
    I suppose that I will start this part of the story with my sophomore year in college. At this point in my life, I had been:
    -Talking to people on the Internet for 4 and a half years
    -Dating an old friend from high school for 2 and a half years
    -Participating on the official Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series forum for 10 months
    -Living with my parents, not going to move out for another year
    -A part of a Christian group in college related to the interdenominational Christian community for a year
     
    The first 3 things on the list were decisions that I made completely on my own. The last 2 things on the list were decisions that my parents either made me choose (living with them) or encouraged me to choose (the Christian group). It's not that I didn't enjoy being part of the Christian group, in fact I liked it a lot. But I was still pretty new with it, and I knew that my parents wouldn't like it much if I decided to stop going to their prayer meetings.
     
    At any rate, the Christian group was holding a weekend retreat at the beginning of October. The theme of the retreat was about learning more about the Holy Spirit and learning about how to take beginners' steps into how to be an adult Christian. I enjoy retreats and I really wanted to go to it, but the retreat costed $110. Back then, that was a pretty steep price for me. I had a less-than part-time job and I had to pay for some of my classes. There wasn't any way that I could just pull $110 out of my bank account. They offered scholarships, but the maximum amount that they could give to an individual was $30. That helped, but I was still $80 short. It was getting much closer to the date of the retreat, and people were still begging me to go and they prayed for my finances, but it wasn't until a couple of weeks before the retreat that I discovered that I could make it work to go. I babysat one weekend and made $40. It was much easier for me to scrounge up another $40 than it was to try to scrounge up $110. God helped provide the money that I needed to attend the retreat.
     
    So I went.
     
    On Saturday night, we were encouraged to ask God for a gift of the Holy Spirit that we thought that God may want to give us, and that the people in our small groups are to pray over each other for that gift.
     
    Now, I had been prayed over several times in my life for several gifts, and I knew about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The year of my Catholic Confirmation, I began to pray every day for Wisdom, Knowledge, and Understanding. I've asked for prayer for things like patience, peace, joy, etc. I had received the gift of tongues ages ago. What do I ask for?
     
    Then I remembered something four years ago. I was one of maybe 4-5 people on a high school retreat who was bold enough to admit that God wanted me to receive the gift of healing, and I was selected to pray over someone who wanted healing from being afraid of the dark. Since then, I hadn't used the gift of healing at all.
     
    So I asked for it again.
     
    I was one of the first people in my group to be prayed over, so after my prayer session was over, someone in my group not only wanted to pray for a gift of the Holy Spirit, but she also wanted prayer for her ankle to heal because she had hurt it while running. I laid my hand on her ankle and started praying.
     
    I prayed and I prayed, and at first I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to help, and that there was no way that I would even have the power to heal this person's ankle. It's not possible for a mere person like me to perform a miracle.
     
    Then I thought, "Of course I don't have the power to heal people!" The point of me PRAYING for someone's ankle to heal is that I am asking God to answer our prayers, and that the gift that I have been given by God is for Him to use me as a vessel of His power. So I surrendered myself to God and let Him take over - knowing that it is not me who heals people, but God.
     
    And then something really, really weird happened.
     
    I swear on my life that I am not making this up.
     
    I could feel parts of the inside of her ankle move.
     
    I don't know what it was exactly - bone, muscle, whatever - but I could feel it all move into wherever it is supposed to go.
     
    The funny thing is that, at first, I didn't really think anything of it. I don't remember exactly what I thought of it initially, but it was probably something along the lines of, "I wonder what that's all about...". It wasn't until the next morning that the person whose ankle I was praying over was able to approach me and say that her ankle was healed during her prayer session. Then I was able to put two and two together (I mean, how was I supposed to know what a healing feels like? lol).
     
    Now, something like this doesn't usually happen to anyone, let alone more than once... but it happened again a couple of months after the retreat.
     
    I know a young woman who suffers from chronic pain in her joints. She was a dancer, but she was at her senior year in college and she was suffering from severe knee pain. She was told by her doctors that she could never dance again, and she had a degree in dancing to finish up. Most of her professors, unfortunately, were not very understanding and were suspecting her of faking her pain to get free credit. That distrust from her professors, her constant pain, and her dreams of being a dancer being squashed, things were not going very well for her.
     
    Our Christian group has something called the Advent Vigil in early December, where the usual prayer meeting is extended for 3 hours and, at the end, involves praying over one another. The girl with the knee injury was in my group. I can't remember everything that she asked for prayer for, but I laid my hand on her injured knee and started praying.
     
    And it happened again. The insides of her knee began to shift back to where they were supposed to go.
     
    Because I knew what was happening as the inside of her knee began to shift around, I became much more fascinated with the process. I could feel a difference between the way her knee was before and after, and after felt a bit more like my knee, a healthy and uninjured knee - the way it should be.
     
    The difference between this healing and the one from before, however, was that it wasn't a complete healing - the time for healing did not heal her from her pain completely. But what it did was it made her much more comfortable, and her knee became much more movable, at least in the moment. I am unsure of how the healing made a difference in the long run - although she is doing much better now - but I know that it was something for at least a short while.
     
    Recently, I studied the Bible passage about having faith the size of a mustard seed.
     
     
    Basically, this passage means that even with a little faith, you can do great things. There is a faith greater still to have - like faith that can move mountains - but you can do things in God's name and with God's strength even if you only have a little bit of faith. I would know - I don't consider my faith to be all that strong, even on my best days.
     
    Now, that is not the end of my story, because the story only answers the questions, "Why do I believe in God?", "Why do I believe in a God who works through people to perform His miracles?", "Why do I believe in the God of the New Testament," and "Why am I a Christian?" But any Christian who calls upon the name of the Lord can heal like that. Why am I specifically Catholic, aside from the fact that I grew up Catholic?
     
    Because, honestly, when someone asks why you are a Catholic, your primary answer should not be, "Because I was raised Catholic." Catholicism gets criticized for being an "impersonal" religion that only involves going through the motions and repeating memorized prayers without putting any heart into it. But here's the thing... there is supposed to be heart while you are "going through the motions" and saying your prayers. Some people just don't put any heart into it because they're lazy, and that is sad.
     
    So I did not want to be lazy. In Catholic school, I took Theology class seriously and learned everything that I could, even if the teacher was bad. I always wanted to know more about the Catholic Church and what it taught and why it taught what it did. I learned from Jason Evert, a Catholic who has written several books and traveled to many many churches and schools across the United States about sexual purity, that there are practical reasons to save sex for marriage, and it is not just one of those "because I told you so" sorts of teachings that you are used to hearing as children. I know that there are reasons for everything that the Catholic Church teaches. I want to know it all.
     
    I have done lots of independent study as well. I have lurked the Catholic Answers Forums for the answers to all sorts of questions, engaging my thoughts in all sorts of discussions, figuring out whether or not what each particular person says is true based on what I know about the Catholic Church and my own personal experiences. Especially concerning moral theology - is this situation always right, always wrong, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, or too dependent on circumstances?
     
    But it wasn't just Church Teaching that I wanted to know about. I wanted to know God Himself.
     
    In college, I found that I actually enjoyed going to Mass during the weekday. I made it a point to go at least twice a week to Mass. I would have liked to go every day, but class made that pretty impossible. I also liked to take my prayer time in the Catholic chapel near campus. During one of the most difficult times of my life, I spent hours each week praying, reading my Bible, ranting at God, moping, and sleeping in that chapel. It was during one of my prayer times in that chapel that it was challenged upon me to break up with my boyfriend of 3 and a half years - something that I knew that I had to do but never had the courage to bring up. A month later God was telling me to see one of the counselors at my university to talk about the mess that was my emotional life.
     
    God's presence in that chapel changed my life. And by God's presence, I mean that literally. Because as a Catholic, I believe in the Eucharist, which is God's presence in bread and wine that Catholics receive at Holy Communion at the end of Mass. The tabernacle keeps the Eucharist safe inside the church, where people can pray and literally be in God's presence. I couldn't be more grateful for that chapel's presence on the campus of my school.
     
    Two Bible passages have become my favorites. I will share them.
     
    Psalm 37: 4, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."
     
    Proverbs 3: 5-8, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing for your flesh and refreshment for your bones."
     
    God is my rock. Jesus is the purpose of my life. The Mass and the Eucharist keep me going, joyful and strong.
     
    But my walk with God is not over until the moment I die. I still have much to learn.
     
    And that is why I am Catholic.
  6. RockinRarity
    Funny story.
     
    The reason why I am on the Internet today is because of fanfiction.net almost 9 years ago.
     
    I was a fan of Teen Titans ever since its debut on Cartoon Network in the summer of 2003. I was about to go into my freshman year of high school, and after watching a preview of it on Cartoon Network before its debut, I knew that I would love the show because I loved the animation.
     
    In 2004, desperate to fill my need of more Teen Titans material (back before I knew what headcanon was), I performed a Google search about the possible pasts of some of the characters. Pages and pages and pages of nothing interesting were glazed over, until finally... a fanfiction.net link appeared before my eyes. I was hooked.
     
    I actually began writing Teen Titans fanfiction in 2004. The problem was this: I never finished anything that wasn't a one-shot.
     
    I had several large ideas. Some of them I started. I even had 10 chapters going on one story. But I stopped.
     
    The funny thing is that, to this day, YEARS later, people will STILL subscribe to that story! XD
     
    But I am scared to read it because of how terrible I will think that it is. And then I will get embarrassed and tell myself that I'm no good.
     
    This is frustrating because I actually graduated from college with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing. What the hell.
     
    I'm such a perfectionist, and a lazy one at that. If I don't get something done right away, I won't post it. I will lose motivation to write about it, and then when the motivation comes back, I will read it over and think, "This sucks. Starting over." And then I start over and the cycle continues.
     
    This is why I haven't even written a bloody book. I have had this awesome idea ever since 7th grade that I want published so badly. But dang. The idea is so huge. And then I start on chapter one, and it sucks. It sucks, it sucks, and it sucks.
     
    My creative writing friend suggested to me that I just write and not worry about editing. That sounds like the best idea in the world. Except that I am afraid that if the first chapter sucks, then all of it would suck, and then I would have to overhaul the whole thing. There goes my life.
     
    So I feel like in order to get over this funk, I should write MLP fanfiction.
     
    I haven't written fanfiction in years. I don't even like reading it anymore. I have tried a few times, and it is just boring to me. I guess that I am not a fan of other people's headcanons.
     
    If it isn't boring, it makes me mad at how inaccurately the author portrayed certain characters. Like this one time, I wanted to fill my headcanon with some Trixie past, so I read a short fanfiction about her life. And it sucked. The person wanted to portray Trixie as this broken soul, which is perfectly fine, except that the way that the author portrayed it didn't make any sense. Trixie's parents both passed away and Trixie was an awesome magician and so she wanted to be the best magician possible for her mom's sake. The premise itself isn't bad, it's just that the whole thing felt so melodramatic and it didn't make any sense as to why Trixie would go out of her way to be nasty to other ponies for her mom's sake.
     
    Except... now I have developed my own headcanon because of this story. I didn't like the story, but the premise gave me some ideas that make sense for character development purposes. I would have to think about it more, though.
     
    I guess maybe that's the problem. I think too much, but I don't write enough.
     
    But in order to write well, I think that I do need to think about what I am writing, at least to some extent.
     
    But here, see, I am writing this blog now, and it was the act of writing that got me thinking in the right direction.
     
    But I write too much about writing. I write too much about what the plot should be, or what the diologue should be, or what the character development should be.
     
    I need to take my own damn advice sometimes. "Just do it, Sally. Just do it."
  7. RockinRarity
    So despite the fact that I am open about many of my opinions on parts of the Internet, I have never actually had a blog before. I've been told that I should start one, but considering that I know so many different types of people, it is overwhelming to think about what I should write about when my audience would be so varied.
     
    Granted, we are a diverse group of bronies here. But as a community, we at least have My Little Pony in common, and that's what makes me comfortable starting a blog on this particular website. I won't be exclusively talking about My Little Pony (in fact most of my posts won't really have anything to do with the show or the fandom), but I trust that I can share my thoughts and my stories without feeling like I'm the catalyst for a war, as controversial as some of my thoughts may be, but that's nothing new for those of you who have seen me around.
     
    At any rate, another reason for starting this blog is because I know that a few people have peaked interest in knowing some of my life story. I believe that blogging is a better medium to use, as opposed to creating a forum thread.
     
    I know off the top of my head 2 major life stories I will blog about at some point:
    -Why I am a Roman Catholic Christian
    -My Life on the Internet
     
    Both of these stories dig into how I became the person that I am today. Neither tell a complete story, as there are other factors in my life that quite frankly I don't feel compelled to share about - but the Internet and religion are two significant social experiences and I hope that sharing my experiences of these topics and the ways that they have formed me as a person can be a beneficial read for those who have questions about either subject. Perhaps I can, too, relearn from them as I type them out and share them with everyone.
     
    Kind words and constructive feedback are always welcome. Suggestions are also welcome, as well as legitimate questions and discussions, even on subjects we may not necessarily see eye-to-eye on. Harsh judgmental comments and comments feeding debate that can only end when someone gives in and lets the other person have the last word will be frowned upon and ignored by me.
     
    The first post will come when I have time to type it up.
     
    Toodaloo~
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