My Very Heated Issue with Sailor Moon

Recently, I've finally come around to do something I've always wanted to do, but never had the time/energy/drive/passion/whatever to do: watch my childhood passion, Sailor Moon.

I chose to watch the english subtitled version this time, because it's much better and really shows what the show intended. And honestly, the sub is MUCH better than the shit I grew up with.

I grew up on the dub of the show, where they completely botched it up and made it "educational" with "Sailor Moon Says" at the end (Don't all of you remember that certain time period where a lot of cartoons were required to be 'educational' by either promoting good morals or teaching kids numbers or geography. Shows like Barney and Animaniacs followed this lead). "Make sure to eat your vegetables, because you'll grow strong!" Umm, yeah. Why would I take advice from a fictional character who doesn't even touch vegetables? Besides, donuts, cookies and cake taste better.

The voice actors/actresses were so annoying and didn't really fit their characters (save for Terri Hawkes as Sailor Moon in the second season(?) and movies and whoever did the voice for Dr. Tomoe). I swear, everytime the English Raye (Sailor Mars) would scream "FIREBALLS...CHARGE!", I'd cringe like a wilting plant. IT'S "AKIO TAISAN!" And don't even get me started on how anoying Chibi-usa/Rini is in the dub. It's not at all possible to be more annoying than that chick who's the Nanny in that 90s TV show. I think her first name is Fran...

What I most hated about the dub was how they blatantly hid the relationships between some of the characters. For example, in the first season, two of the Dark Kingdom Generals, Zoicite and Kunzite, were gay lovers. In the dub, they made Zoicite a girl!!!! Granted, Zoicite could totally pass for the opposite sex, but still, what's the harm in letting them be? And the same shit happened with Fish Eye in season 4. He was a guy, but the dub made him a girl! And they all did it because they didn't want parents to flip the fuck out.

"OMGWHYISTHERETWOGAYPEOPLEONMYCHILD'STELEVISIONSCREEEEEEEN?"

"GODDOESNOTTHINKTHISISNORMALORRIGHT,TAKEITOFFMYSCREEEEEEEEEEEN!"

...And you wonder why gays and lesbians suffer so much in our culture. It's because parents are so afraid of showing their children people with different sexualities and not let them accept it.

BUT: nothing could compare to the stupidity of the english localizers than how they dealt with Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus (heh). Clearly, in the original and foreign country dubs, such as those in Germany, Italy and France, they weren't afraid to show that Neptune and Uranus(heh) were lovers. Nothing was shown about it (no kiss, no sex), except for their closeness and very deep relationship. But according to the dubbers or whoever is in charge of this whackjob, they think that closeness like that should NEVER be attained by best friends, so what do they do?

They make them 'cousins.'

*headdesk*

Look, if they were really concerned about it, having them be best friends would be MUCH more understandable than having them as 'cousins'. And true, there are cousins out there who are really close, but it just irked me so much to see that they're lovers, but they are reduced to being blood relatives, just so it won't upset people.

And this can be used in the countless examples of gay ignorance and fear, when it's seen as okay in one culture, but completely incomprehensible in another.

A life-changing decision

I've made a very important decision that might really change my entire future:

I am leaving my family without them knowing.

I have had enough of the chaos and the abuse I had to endure these past few years in the house. I never had a chance to leave before now because nobody in my area was willing to take me in or give two shits about my well-being (when I told so-called "friends" about my problems at home, they would just say, "uhh...what do you expect us to do? Coddle you?"). But now I have an escape and I'm staying with a good friend of mine in one state away and I'm leaving Sunday.

I'm not going to change my mind, but I'm scared shitless. I will have almost no money after I pay for the ticket, I'm worried that I might not be able to go back to school in the end of August and my mother might disown me.

I'm doing this because I don't want to put my life at risk anymore, nor let people use me as an excuse for all the problems at home. But she might not get that. And I want her to get help because she's not happy with life right now, but I can't be in the picture if I'm causing so much crap. And there's always the risk that she'll ruin my life if I do go back home for school.

I'm not backing down from this, but I'm just not prepared for what might happen... I'm worried about money the most, since I would feel so horrible and selfish if I mooch money off of people. And I hope my mom will understand why I did what I did...

RANT RANT RANT!

Ugh, today's not a good day...

I'm just going to go off and yell completely random things that are making me sad and pissing me off first, then I'll do a list of positive things that have happened.

- I hate how I'm socially incompetent. I don't know how to change it and I don't want to change my entire self to be something I'm not. You have no idea what I would give to be able to have it, but I can't change myself because it will never last. But I want real life friends....

- I hate how I ALWAYS have to make the first contact with someone to see what's up. I NEVER get a phone call nor an IM from someone. It just shows they don't care about me at all.

- I hate people who tell me that I need a certain physical attribute to be considered 'attractive', i.e. bigger breasts. Plus on top of that, my social incompetency just makes me a total loser and not desirable.

- I hate how the only guys who DO show interest in me are either really ugly or total douchecanoes.

- I hate being ignored by people, but they don't understand that sometimes I'm not up for conversation. And when I am, I'm so totally boring that they'll move on and never speak to me again. And then that makes me feel even more like crap. They just think, "oh, well she's boring and awkward and socially retarded. Why should I care? There's more fun people out there to talk to"

- I hate putting my problems on people, but what else do I have? I don't have friends, I don't have a therapist (I might in the near future), my family doesn't give two shits about me and the jezzies I did friend on facebook don't even know I exist anymore.

- I hate how I'm so annoying. I'm trying to stop, but it doesn't matter what I do; I'm an annoying person who nobody likes.

- I hate crying over this. It's getting me nowhere and is just sinking me deeper into my depression.

- I hate how nobody understands why I feel the way I feel. I want my life to change, but it has to happen soon, or things will go from bad to worse.

The only good thing in my life:

- I'm going to go see a therapist on Saturday. Hopefully I can get help with all of this.

Honesty Time

I don't know why this affects me this way. I really don't.

But it does.

I have an autistic twin brother, who I love so dearly. However, while growing up, I was always associated with him by his disability. Thankfully I wasn't at the same caliber as he was, but I could still sense that something was 'wrong' with me.

Throughout elementary and middle school, I had to go see a speech therapist, so I could get caught up with the rest of my peers. It wasn't easy. But when I did, they basically already hated me and ignored me.

From an early age, I knew I was different from the rest of my peers. I was loud and boisterous, very reckless and rebellious, yet incredibly immature. I've come a long way since those times, but the pain I felt being rejected by my peers was so incredibly hurtful. And it still hurts to this day.

Not a day goes by where I don't wonder, "What's wrong with me? Do I come across as a mentally challenged person? A social retard? What am I doing wrong that makes people steer clear of me? Why can't I have a boyfriend and friends? Why can't I have what most people I want to be, have?

WHY CAN'T I BE NORMAL?"

I wish I knew the answer...

The Road to Self-Improvement

After going through a LOT of drama with friends and family these past few weeks, I've come to realize that maybe I'm not fully all right. Some things were caused by me acting like a 5-year-old, some things were caused by me being incredibly selfish, and some things were caused because of putting my problems on other people. Not to mention massive trust issues I have from my past

But all of this has convinced me that I need to get help for myself. I can't expect people to help me fix my problems (although it would be nice to have some real life friends who would listen and be there for you in thick or thin...).

As of right now, here are a few goals I wish to gain for myself through personal discovery and therapy:
~ Become more of a selfless person, yet maintaining a balance between giving and taking (I've always been fairly selfish, but I try to help out when I can. But this is mostly for my friendships and romantic relationships; I tend to be more take than give.)
~ Try to go with the flow and learn that sometimes things won't go my way.
~ Try to trust people more and quiet the doubts I always have about people (I might still get hurt by this, but I have to try)
~ Be a calmer person and find ways to calm myself down before I do something stupid.
~ Try to act more like my age, instead of a 5-year-old (this will take a while, but I've made progress)
~ Try to be an effective communicator and promote mature discussion with my friends, family and partners.
~ STOP PUTTING MY PROBLEMS ON OTHER PEOPLE AND EXPECTING THEM TO FIX IT FOR ME!

Hopefully with all these goals to start from, I can make progress in all of them and then become an improved person.

Catholicism can shove it!

[I apologize in advance for the length of this blog post. But as I have said, I do sometime have a tendency to write insanely long stories and blogs. I hope you enjoy!]

It's Lent season. A season that is extremely important to many Catholics around the world. All followers of the guy with the big hat are all expected to give up at least one thing for Lent, be it sex, soda, or even sanity.

I for one, can't give two shits about it.

You know why? Because Catholicism is boring, discriminating, and incredibly harsh.

Now, I'm not trying to upset people who think that religion is really fascinating and whatnot, but Catholicism does absolutely nothing for me. And as I got older, starting from a young, precocious 6-year-old who was way too rowdy and loud, the more I realized that Catholicism was increasingly mind-numbingly stupid.

So for this post, I'm going to tell you guys about my experience with the Catholic church.

Even from a young age, I knew I wouldn't be the best Catholic I could be: I was a spoiled brat (as the baby and only girl with two older brothers) and being sinful was just plain more fun. Stealing from the cookie jar before dinner was my type of fun! But then the infamous Catholic guilt complex would kick in and I'd feel like a total failure in God's eyes. And this happened when I was 7. Then I somehow got sick of feeling guilty and the breakaway from Catholics had begun.

One of the things I truly disliked about being a Catholic was going to CCD every Tuesday night, mostly against my will. At first, it wasn't so bad; I liked going and learning new things and listening to the pretty organ music. However, that would only last for a short while. Then it came to the point where I dreaded going there. I would beg and beg my mother to not make me go and she would stand in front of me, with her hands on her hips, glaring daggers at me while I wailed on the floor in protest. Eventually, she'd pick me up and almost throw me into my booster seat and holler at me to stop carrying on. All the teachers (who were all volunteers from the church) knew I was quite the handful.

On some days they would take us kids to the church for a mass. We were all expected to sit at the pew and kneel down during certain times for prayers and hymns. I for one hated that shit. I would constantly complain about how the seats were uncomfortable, that kneeling hurt my knees and that I was just so tired of doing this stuff. I always got a scolding from the teacher for that. It has never failed me.

Then came my first sign that me as a Catholic wasn't meant to be. It was during my first Holy Communion at the age of eight. I was excited to wear the pretty white dress and veil for it. But that was the only thing I was excited about. The whole mass thing was nothing but a bore to me.

But my first anti-Catholic defining moment was when I first took communion. If you're a Catholic, you know the thin piece of bread tastes literally like cardboard (not that I know what cardboard tastes like...). So I'm up at the altar, looking at the priest who's holding the bowl of the cardboard bread disguised as the "body of christ", I take it in my hand and I put it in my mouth, all eager to see how it tasted.

It. Tasted. Horrible.

It tasted SO horrible that I started to gag on it and I had this intense urge to spit it out. So when I'm gagging (and making a LOT of noise so the whole church paid attention to me), some church parents come over to me to see if I'm choking. But when they see that I'm just gagging at the taste, they give me this look of disdain and this one woman holds my mouth closed so I'm forced to chew and swallow the crap. I eventually do and when I ask the woman to let me go get a drink of water, she forcefully nudges me back to my pew. Then I go sit down, but I'm slouched over, really pissed off that I couldn't even go get a damn swig of water from the water fountain.

The next two moments come a few years later, when I'm about 10. As I got older, the way CCD was taught was completely different from when I was a kid. It became more in-depth and more mature. The first moment, I remember one time when we went on a field trip somewhere (I think it was to a retreat) and we had to write a two page paper on our experience there. All I remember was being so bored that I slept through most of the activities and getting yelled at for doing so. So when we had to write the paper, I was at a loss, ya see?

So what did I do? I wrote "The retreat was really, really, really, really, really,...[two pages later]...really, really boring." Needless to say, when I handed it in, I got sent straight to the headmaster's office and they had an emergency conference with my mother. Then the bitch that was the head of CCD told me that I would have to go to church every Sunday for six months or I will be kicked out of CCD. I wanted to get kicked out; my mother forced me to go to church every fucking Sunday.

My second moment of badassery had to do with me stealing something. So I was sitting in the classroom, listening to the lecture, when I see inside the desk that I'm sitting in, is a wad of gel pens. Seeing back then that gel pens were all the rage at that time (circa 2000), I really wanted some. However, my mother told me that I'd die of lead poisoning if I got gel pens. And I also noticed that I was sitting at the same desk as this little bitch who lived down the street from me and made fun of me. So the little horrible Catholic ended up taking the pens for myself. And I didn't feel any guilt for it whatsoever. The next class, the 'principal' came in and asked all of us if any one of us stole the girls' gel pens and that she was incredibly upset about them going missing. I could have spoken up and been honest with them, but I kept my mouth shut. And looking back on it, she got her just desserts, since she ended up stealing my Tamagotchi a few years before then. BITCH, HOW DO YOU THINK I FELT WHEN YOU STOLE MY PRECIOUS BOOPY?!

Another year continues and I get confirmed with the church in sixth grade, everyone's happy, yaddy yadda. Then for another year, I'm part of the teen group at my church and we're at a meeting where we talk about marriage, relationships and sex. Also, I must add, this was the origin of my feminism and seeing the hypocricy and degradation of women in the church.

I'll go down a list of all the shit they told us girls:

~ We're 'allowed' to pursue careers, but when we do get married, our only goal in life is to be a housewife to tend to and obey our husband and to raise his children. The only 'acceptable' way where you can work after getting married is if he's on disability or you're widowed. No mention of divorce or money issues whatsoever.
~ They acknowledged that some women don't want to get married, but they said that these women would have to remain virgins for the rest of their lives if they want to get accepted into heaven, since they would fall short of fulfilling the Seven Sacraments by not marrying.
~ They said that women should remain 'pure' until their wedding night and that when you have sex within marriage, it's only for purposes of procreation; not pleasure.
~ Birth control will give you a one-way ticket to hell if you use it, even for non-sexual uses. So women and girls with terrible cramps and highly irregular periods would have to suffer!
~ Women are not allowed to ask guys out on dates; it's a man's job to do that. If a woman does it, she'll be labeled a slut by society if she asks the guy out for coffee.
~ Pre-marital sex will make you contract HIV and get pregnant, even when using a condom.
~ If you get pregnant out-of-wedlock, you're expected to marry the father of the baby if you want to get into heaven.
~ Women that get pregnant out-of-wedlock will fall into poverty, never get a good job, and go clinically insane and you will die. (this was my favorite one)

On the last piece of shit they spewed, a girl's hand raised up high to ask a question to the lecturer (the lecturer was creepy Catholic and seemed possessed). She tells her, "My older sister got pregnant and kept my nephew and she's graduating from UPenn this semester. She didn't self-destruct when she got pregnant. She seems just fine being a single mom."

The woman's response (I. SHIT. YOU. NOT. It just came back into my mind recently, after being dormant for almost 7 years. It makes me feel so upset every single time I think about it.): "That's great to hear she's graduating. However, she's never going to go to heaven and neither is her son, since he's a bastard child. And since she has a kid, she'll be labeled a whore by everyone and nobody is going to hire her for a job or want to marry her. There also must have been something wrong with her for her baby's father to not want to spend the rest of his life with her."

The girl responds: "Yeah. I highly doubt she would want to spend the rest of her life with her rapist."

The woman: "Then she obviously deserved what she got. Should have kept her legs closed, like a good Catholic girl would."

I swear, at that moment, I was completely turned off by Catholicism. And I never want to go back to it. (Thankfully, the crazy lady got quite the earful from a very angry mother of the girl and was fired from the church. However, one year later, she comes into my middle school health class and spews all this stupid religious shit about saving ourselves for marriage. She said something offensive to another student and she got an earful from another angry mother and was not allowed back into the school district.)

So you see, people, Catholicism has not been nice to me, nor to anyone else who doesn't share the same beliefs as them. It's sad that there are people who feel like they have to obey everything they say, even if your own personal opinions clash with their beliefs.

Why can't people be allowed to practice their religion in a way that will match their own values? If we could do that, then there wouldn't be so much oppression of peoples' values and morals.

Okay, I'm done. Now...where did I put my birth control pills?

Productivity :D

It's so weird.

I'm actually feeling... productive with my time.

This is the first time ever in college where I felt productive. But maybe it's because of the ever so fast deadlines I have coming up.

It's a good thing I have the entire weekend to do my women's studies project and not have to worry about my Environmental Science project; got that shit done today!

It would be SO great if it would last for the rest of the semester. But I have the feeling it won't.

Oh well, might as well enjoy it while it lasts.