When Real Life Taints Fiction

On October 10, 2010, a webcomic called d20 Monkey published this strip:

I apologize for not being able to find a high resolution version; they did a pretty good job of scrubbing it from the internet.  I wouldn't want to post a high-res version anyway, since it's not my work to redistribute.  I can't read all the words, but here's a transcription of what I can get:

Panel 1:"What's the big damn deal, (anyway)?  The (issue) is handled."
"You have no idea what you've done, do you?"
Panel 2:"Enlighten me, Frodo."
"You Bizarro'd us.  You demanded no 'Emo Church Girls' and now, through the law of Bizarro we will get just that.  Emo church chicks forever."
"What are you boys talking about?"
Panel 3:"Hey pops.  Count Chuckula here thinks the Bizzarro law is crap."
"It's true.  I once specified 'no trannies' (? ? ?) for new players.  Someone answered the ad and the following week...  I opened the door and Bam!  Tranny.  And I don't care what they say, a good looking tranny is still a tranny."
Panel 4:A good looking tranny is still a tranny.
A Public Service Announcement from d20Monkey.com

Basically, the punch line makes fun of trans people.  Now, you could argue that it’s just that one character who’s transphobic, and it doesn’t reflect the views of the writers, but I don’t buy it.  I think you would have to be transphobic to think of the so-called “joke” in the first place, or to find it funny.

When that comic was first posted in 2010, it had only been a few years since I realized I was trans.  I was brittle at the time, evangelical about LGBT issues, and ready to be offended by everything.  I also should mention that trans issues weren’t in the news back then the way they are now.  Trans people were acceptable targets, a group you could mock without as much fear of retribution.

I was also fairly new into D&D.  I learned about d20 Monkey from an RPG forum, and enjoyed the first few strips.  Then I came to that one.  I tried to laugh it off, but it just bugged me.  I posted a reply to the comic, complaining.  I checked back for a response or apology, but never saw one, and eventually they took the comic down.  But I could no longer enjoy the comic any more, and soon stopped reading it.  I didn’t think about d20 Monkey again for years, and honestly forgot they existed.

Until one of my favorite webcomics, Dork Tower, let d20 Monkey do guest strips for a week.  During Pride month, no less.  Now, I have no idea how involved d20 Monkey has been with trans issues in the years since I stopped reading.  For all I know, their comic now features a gay main character and they contribute thousands of dollars to trans charities.  All I can tell you is that seeing them temporarily take over a beloved webcomic was a bit like seeing the White House taken over by transphobic white supremacists.  A flood of emotions came over me.  Memories of the severe depression I fought through when I first realized I was trans.  Remembering when I first noticed just how much anti-trans “humor” permeated our society.

It's a fine line.  When actors or writers turn out to be bad people, it can taint their work to a such a degree that it’s completely unenjoyable.  Sometimes I have to remember that it takes hundreds of people to make a movie, and I shouldn’t let one actor bring it down for me.  But then, if the movie hinges on that actor’s performance, it’s hard to enjoy watching them.  Books and comic strips always hinge on the writer’s performance, so they’re right out.

For example, I still enjoy older Mel Gibson movies, even though they’re not quite as fun as they were before I disliked the actor.  Same goes for Johnny Depp.  I have no pull to see any new Mel Gibson or Johnny Depp movies, but I would still see a movie if they were in it but not the main star (Crimes of Grindelwald, for example, which sucked for entirely different reasons).  At least I know my money is being divided among hundreds of people.

However, I can’t enjoy Orson Scott Card’s books any more.  Books are too intimate a medium, like you’re walking through the author’s mind to explore their imagination.  If I don’t like an author as a person, it’s almost impossible for me to enjoy reading their work.  I’ve also stopped reading Dilbert, and I sold all the Dilbert books I had in my house.  I just haven’t found them funny since Scott Adams went off the deep end.

In the case of d20 Monkey, I only found it sporadically funny in the first place.  I enjoyed it because it was a D&D themed comic at a time when D&D comics weren’t quite as common as they are now, but I only really laughed at maybe one out of five comics.  So it’s not a big loss for me.  I have no idea how progressive the comic is now.  I have no idea if they ever posted a public apology anywhere, or just quietly removed the offending comic hoping nobody would remember it.  I don’t know if the author’s opinion of trans issues has changed in the past nine years.  They’re allowed to have mistakes in their past, as long as they learned from them.  I know I’ve got plenty of regrets of my own.  I don’t expect other people to stop reading the comic just because I personally found one of their older strips offensive, and I’m not pushing to get the comic taken off the internet.

But it did bother me enough to write a blog about it.

The Greatest Insult

Everybody has their idea of the worst insult, the worst thing someone can say to you.  For Marty McFly, it was being called chicken.  For Sheldon Cooper, it’s disrespecting his grandmother.  For some people, insulting is an art form, while others just randomly pull words from a bucket of obscenities.  I had a friend in high school who had written and memorized a page-long insult that took several minutes for me to read, but he could recite it in 20 seconds like he was channeling Dennis Leary.

I once saw an insult comic at a RenFest, who would take money from the audience to insult other members of the audience.  He ended the show with a $100 insult, and it was pretty impressive.  Everyone laughed their heads off, including the one being insulted.  Nobody got offended, because his insults could have applied to anybody.  The comic didn’t actually know the people he was insulting, so they were just words.  His insults didn’t point out physical flaws – he didn’t make fun of anyone’s weight or height or baldness.  Instead he made long, baseless accusations about things he couldn’t possibly know.  So if he ranted at someone for being a chronic masturbator, the words meant nothing because he would have said them to anyone.

If the movie “Roadhouse” has taught me one thing (and hopefully it hasn’t), it’s that most insults are just words designed to provoke a specific response.  If you give in to that response, you’re giving them exactly what they want.  The words themselves mean nothing if the insulter doesn’t know you.  Did he call your mom a bitch?  Well, does this person actually know your mom?  Did he say you have a tiny penis?  Well, has he actually seen you naked?  If the insulter would say these things to anybody to get into a fight, then the words are hollow, and you have no reason to feel disrespected.

The greatest insult has to be from someone who already knows you, or at least knows things about you.  If a customer calls you lazy because you made their burger too slow, they don’t know if you were up all night taking care of the baby and had to mow the lawn that morning before coming into work.  But when your wife calls you lazy, it’s because she knows you didn’t do either of those things.  She also knows you played video games all weekend when you were supposed to be fixing the car, and now she has to take the bus to work.  When she calls you lazy, it should hit hard, and you should feel guilty about it.

The greatest insult, in my opinion, doesn’t involve any offensive words, doesn’t involve any references to your mother, and can only come from someone who knows you at least a little.  And drumroll please, here it is, the worst thing one human being can say to another:

The world would be a better place if you weren’t in it.

That’s it, that’s all, but it has to be said with sincerity.  The idea that your existence not only causes the insulter pain, but many others as well.  That you are doing more harm than good in the world.  That if you would simply fade away, society would benefit.  That anything good you’ve ever done is outweighed by all the bad.

When someone criticizes you for your political opinions, they don’t know all the reasons you voted the way you do.  Maybe you don’t like Politician X, but still vote for them because Politician Y is so much worse.  Maybe you don’t like your candidate’s position on Issue A, but you overlook it because Issue B is so much more important to you.  I get that, I really do.  Sometimes you just have to hold your nose and push that button, electing the lesser of two evils.

Lately I’ve heard a lot of people ask why we can’t just get along, saying we should love our neighbor regardless of their political opinions.  And I want to believe that.  But your politics don’t exist in a vacuum.  Your vote directly helps or hurts people besides yourself.  Sometimes I’m the person your politics hurt.

If you vote for Candidate X, and Candidate X believes that the world would be a better place if people like me weren’t in it, it’s hard not to take that personally.  Your vote is a direct insult to me, the worst possible insult, and it may even put me in physical danger.  So as much as I want to reconcile with the other side, as much as I want to accept people’s politics the same way I accept other differences, it’s a much harder sell.  Politics are a choice, and if you’re making the choice to hurt people like me, we’re going to have a hard time being friends.

My Pet Monster

So I got into bed last night, after watching several spooky videos on YouTube.  A few minutes later, some mysterious creature jumped up on the bed, and curled up into a ball on my back.  Intellectually I knew it was my youngest cat, Kara.  However, it felt a lot heavier than Kara, and the way she initially curled up, it felt like she had more legs than cats usually have.  I pictured a giant hand pressing against my back, or some large tarantula-cat hybrid.

I started picturing all sorts of weird, demonic animals that could touching me.  I kept wanting to reach out and touch it, but I didn't want to get my hand bitten off by demon spawn.  But then it occurred to me, so what if this is a demonic spider-cat.  It's curled up next to me sleeping.  This means it loves me, and I make it feel safe.  If it is a demon creature, then all the better, because it's my demon creature.  You can't get better protection than your own little monster.

I finally did pet it, and it was, indeed, Kara.  Kind of disappointing, to be honest.

Shut Up, Shut Up, SHUT UP!

Random gripe of the day:

When I eat lunch at work, I usually read.  I love reading, but often I only get about three pages read during my lunch hour.

Here’s what happens:  I sit down to read.  Three minutes later, someone will walk into the break room to get coffee.  They’ll talk to me the entire time, because humans are basically gibbering monkeys that are afraid their jaws will atrophy if they aren’t constantly making noise.  Okay, more realistically, they think it will be rude to walk by me without saying hello.  A note to such humans:  It is rude to speak to someone who is obviously reading.  But the way they figure it, they’re only taking three minutes out of my day, and that’s not enough to really interrupt my reading.  What they don’t seem to get is, thirty seconds after they walk out of the break room, someone else walks in the process starts all over.  My entire lunch hour ends up spent making small talk with twenty different coworkers, each of whom thinks they’re the only one I’ve spoken to all hour.

So, I started wearing earphones.  I can’t listen to music with lyrics while I read, but that’s fine, I have plenty of MP3s of instrumental music.  Movie soundtracks are my favorite, especially Danny Elfman.  Sometimes I’ll match the music to the fiction, like listening to John Williams while reading Star Wars novels.  I even listen to nature MP3s, like crashing waves  or thunderstorms, just to drown out my coworkers.  Once or twice I’ve forgotten my phone, and still wore the earphones to keep people from talking to me.  Yes, I’m antisocial, I’ll cop to that.  But I also just have different ideas about what should be considered rude.

The earphones/book combo keeps about half the employees from talking to me.  Some of them even look a little relieved, like “Good, he has earphones on, I don’t have to make small talk.”  Well, if you didn’t want to make small talk, why did you do it before?  Because for some reason you thought it would be rude to ignore someone who might as well be wearing a “Do Not Disturb” sign?  I swear, our society has issues.  Anyway, as I was saying, earphones+book stops half the yakkers.  But the other half just greet me louder.  “HI MATT, HOW ARE YOU DOING?  IS YOUR WIFE DOING OKAY?  HOW’S THE CAR?  DID YOU WATCH THAT SPORTSBALL GAME LAST NIGHT?  MY KID JUST TURNED THREE, ISN’T THAT GREAT?”  Oh, thank goodness you came along.  I’ve been dying to speak to someone, but I accidentally got these earphones stuck in my ears.  I’ve been waiting all lunch hour for someone loud enough to talk to over my music.

This is why I prefer to eat lunch in my car, but that’s only feasible for about half the year.

Look, let me make this clear for those in the back:

It is not rude to ignore someone who obviously wants to be ignored.

It is rude to interrupt someone who is reading.

It is rude to engage someone who is listening to earphones.

If someone is both wearing earphones and reading, it is a clear sign that they do not want your attention.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a coworker in the break room, or a single woman on a bus, these are signs that the person doesn’t want to be disturbed.  Like a rattlesnake’s rattle, or the quills on a porcupine, this is how nature says “Go Away.”  It’s not a secret, it’s blatantly obvious, and if you don’t pick up on these signals, you’re an idiot.  Just.  Shut.  Up.

You would think it gets better when two coworkers come into the break room at once, because they’ll talk to each other.  But people are just loud in general.  They’ll stand right next to each other and shout loud enough to hear across the building.  They’re not angry, they’re not arguing, this just seems to be how people speak when they’re happy.  I can turn my music up until my ears hurt, and I’ll still hear them over it.  Heck, it’s not just in the break room.  When I’m working at my desk, I can hear every single word of three distinct conversations, all from different directions, each over 50 feet away, sometimes in offices with closed doors.  Seriously, why do people shout at each other when they’re standing three feet apart?  Indoor voices, people!  And don’t get me started on people who insist on using speakerphones.

Another weird phenomenon I’ve noticed:  When an employee gets a personal call on his cell phone, he will walk somewhere else to have a more private conversation.  Makes sense.  Except, he won’t actually go somewhere that doesn’t have people, all that matters to him is getting away from his own department.  So he’ll walk away from one group of people, only to disturb a different group of people.  Apparently it’s socially acceptable to annoy your coworkers as long as they’re not the ones you specifically have to work with.  For some reason, my cubicle wall seems to be the popular hangout for other departments to make private cell phone calls.

*Sigh*  At least I know I’m not going deaf.

A Random Memory

The management of this theater, in cooperation with the Tennessee State Fire Marshal’s office, requests that you take a moment to look around the theater and familiarize yourself with the location of all emergency exits.

The aisle ways in which you entered, and the passageways, designated by the illuminated Emergency Exit signs, visible to you at either the right or left of the forward section, have been checked and are clear exits from the building in the event of an emergency.

Thank you for your time and attention.

That’s one of the first things I ever memorized.  I probably knew it by heart before I learned any Bible verses or even the Pledge of Allegiance.  I’m not sure if that says something about our society, but I’m not trying to make any sort of statement.  I just thought it was funny that I still remember it; that version hasn’t been in use for years.

Perception

My brain doesn’t work right.  I have trouble communicating with other human beings.  I perceive the world differently than most people.  Or maybe everyone feels like that, but I don’t hear them talk about it.

I don’t enjoy discussing my hobbies.  “Riiiight,” you say, having read my past blogs.  But it’s true.  I like lecturing about my hobbies, but not really discussing them.  I’ll write long-winded blogs, or have mostly one-sided conversations, but I have difficulty engaging in two-way dialogue about activities I love.  On some level, I view all conversations as instructive.  If the other person knows more about the subject than I do, there’s no point in me speaking except to ask questions.  If the other person knows less than I do, then I have the compulsion to share all my knowledge to the point that they can’t get a word in edgewise.  It’s not healthy, and I don’t know how other people enjoy two-way conversations on a more equal basis.  I’m afraid I might be alienating people, alternating between being too quiet and being a know-it-all.

When I play D&D, I take notes so I can post session recaps on my blog.  But multiple players have told me that I always get the details wrong.  This bothers me because I’m writing down what happens as it comes out of the DM’s mouth.  Sometimes I even read the published module to confirm some of the events (I never read past our current spot, scout’s honor).  If my memory and another player’s memory disagree, it seems like mine would be the right one; I have the notes to back it up.  But even the DM has said to me, “I always love reading your blog the next day so I can see your version of events.  I’ll read it and be like, ‘That’s what happened?  Cool!’”  He’s nice about it, even complimentary – “That’s way more exciting than the way I remember running it” kind of thing.  But you don’t know how frustrating it is that I take all these measures and still get the details wrong.

I know part of it is that I don’t always catch sarcasm.  If a player asks if the vampires we’re fighting sparkle, and the DM says “Yeah, sure,” then guess what’s going in the blog.  This is made worse by the fact that, in my experience, D&D players tend to be unusually sarcastic people.  Some of this would be rectified if I interacted with people more.  I would eventually get used to all the verbal inflections that indicate sarcasm.  But in-person social interaction gives me anxiety, and being around too many humans makes me tired.

I’m also not good at reading between the lines.  Some DMs will describe exactly what we see, but let us draw our own conclusions about what it means.  Sometimes it’s intentionally obvious that A+B=C, but I still end up with W.  If the DM describes a fountain surrounded by corpses, I’ll be the one assuming that the water tastes so good, even the dead want to try it.  If our characters find themselves locked in a room while a two-headed ogre bangs on the door, I’ll be the one asking if we should let him in, because maybe the two-headed ogre is in trouble and needs our help.

I recently realized that I had a major misconception about a plot point in Avengers: Infinity War.  Gamora says something along the lines of, “I found the map to the Soul Stone, and I burned it to ash.”  I always interpreted “it” to mean the stone, not the map.  Meaning she destroyed the stone.  And that’s why Thanos had to sacrifice her to get the stone back, because that’s how you reforge an Infinity Stone that’s been destroyed.  And being the Soul Stone, it requires the soul of a living being to be recreated.  I talked about the scene to several people and in a couple of blogs, speaking as if everyone shared my interpretation of the scene, because I had no reason to believe differently.

But that’s not what happened.  She burned the map to ash, so Thanos needed her memory to guide him to the stone, and the only reason he has to sacrifice her is because (as Red Skull explains if I would just listen) obtaining the Soul Stone works differently than the other stones.  Honestly, I like my version better, but I’m still embarrassed by my misconception.  And I have these misinterpretations All. The. Time.  I know I’m not the only one to make these mistakes, but they just seem to happen more to me than anyone else I know.

I don’t know where to go from here.  I don’t feel like an adult, but a lot of people say that.  Sometimes I wonder if I’m actually mentally handicapped, and the rest of the world is just humoring me.  I’d think I have Imposter Syndrome, except those are people who don’t believe they deserve their accomplishments.  I have no accomplishments, so I can’t say I don’t deserve them.

This Might Not Have Actually Happened

About 25 years ago, when I first got my driver's license, I got stuck trying to make a left turn at a traffic light.  This light didn't have a left arrow, and there was an infinite stream of cars I needed to turn through.  I sat through several cycles waiting for an opportunity to turn.  I couldn't even change my mind at that point, because the traffic to my right was also bumper to bumper.

I thought I'd be stuck there forever.  In fact, I'm still there right now.  The first few years were especially difficult.  Pizza places can be iffy about delivering to cars stuck in traffic, but if you tip them enough they get over it.  And then Uber Eats came along, and I found I could get all the comforts of home shipped to my car.

Life could be worse.