Relationships

What A Dating Novice Knows…

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

I know it’s been a really long time.

Sorry, I had the busiest semester I’ve ever had, so blogging kind of got pushed to the back burner.

I’m not sure I’ll have a whole lot to say today, but I wanted to write about relationships again.

Mainly because I finally started dating.

Yay!!!!

Yeah in a culture where thousands of people are saying that dating and relationships are a waste of time, and a lot more are obsessed with calling people toxic, and just overall acting entitled…I’m trying to find someone I can actually get along with.

I think sometimes being “not crazy” can actually make it harder.

I guess that sounds kind of like being a pick-me, so maybe I’m wrong about that.

But the thing is, I don’t know what guys want…and honestly, I’m not sure they know either.

I’ve met a couple of them from a dating website, and got ghosted by a few already.

And the ones I have met up with who are still int ouch, it’s hard to gauge interest.

See everybody is different.

Is it a bad sign if they hardly text me between meet-ups, or is just normal guy stuff.

I mean all you get on the internet is other people’s opinions, right?

Being what I am, a not feminist, not woke, not liberal, 24 year old woman who just wants to find love and start a family–is surprisingly had to match, hard to define.

Because beyond principals, I don’t know what works with me.

I liked a guy for years only to realize he was stringing me along for attention, and didn’t actually like me back…and he was a Christian who was supposed to know better. Amazes me how selfish even Chrsitians can be.

I’m also the type of chick who thinks that sweating the little details is stupid. If I can get around a difficulty by adjusting myself to it, I will. I’d rather change my approach than give up on something if I’m interested in.

And that has made me good at doing anything that depends solely on me. I’ll find a way if I want to do it bad enough.

My siblings and parents like to agonize over details, I just roll with the punches.

I would think that would make dating a cinch for me. I never run out of conversation topics, I’m willing to listen to other people’s interests, and I’m not picky about where to eat or go for fun.

And in some ways, it is easy to do the basic parts of dating.

But the thing is, I still have no idea what I’m doing, right?

I’m coming to realize that most people don’t.

We’re all insecure, we all are under the pressure to be liked.

I think there’s truth in that it used to be easier. I mean, love has never been easy.

It’s a common theme of most tragedies and sad ballads for most of Time, it’s not easy. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be valuable.

But that said, I do think that we’ve made it harder to just get past the stage of being strangers, by being so isolated in our lives. I have the same problem with friends.

I mean, sine we rely on phones now, I get paranoid if I don’t hear from someone within 10 minutes of messaging or calling them.

Part of that is my abandonment complex, thanks Dad, and part of it is just me, being someone who’s quick to worry. I want to get better, but there’s just something about phones that makes it so hard to control your anxiety, ever notice that?

I don’t want to bring my baggage into a new relationship…but if I’m honest, I really can’t help it.

I mean, we all do it.

And let’s face it, when you’ve been mistreated, it’s hard not to look for it again. Like when you have a sore place on your body and you keep touching it to see if it still hurts…yeah it still does.

Before, I spent a lot of time being nice to people I wanted to be friends with. But apparently, that’s a turn off.

You seem too eager, and it’s like your friendship and respect is cheap.

And I think thanks to being both a tough woman with high standards, and ordinary girl who wants love, I ended up this odd mix of easygoing and also sensitive.

Many things don’t bother me, maybe some of you ladies can relate.

Maybe you don’t care about the toilet seat, the restaurant or the size of the rock, right?

But if you feel ignored, or used, it starts to feel so familiar.

And when nothing is wrong you look for something to be wrong.

I don’t like being this way, but I got addicted to it.

My father, being the manipulative person that he was, was the king of scaring you if you thought things were all right.

If I was having a good day, or we hadn’t fought in say, 5 days straight, he simply felt the need to start a fight so that his quota of tension could be met. He fed off of it.

I want to talk about antyi, and he bing up the unpelasnt isde of it.

He used to change our bedtime stories to psychotic tales of people yelling and hurting each other, no matter how innocent the story was.

I mean, it was funny, he had good delivery…but you always felt kind of icky for laughing.

One of my therapists was the first t point out that that’s kind of messed up…who knew?

I had no idea until she said it, how much my paranoia could be influenced by my father’s insistence on making everything dark, suspicious, or perverse. Or just gross.

I don’t mean to say everything is his fault…but the thing is, I can’t account for my personality quirks any other way.

I was fearless mostly when I was a very little child, but my father scared me. Overtime I developed other anxieties.

But now that most of those are gone, I still have the habit of being anxious in my mind.

And par of that is my father filled my head with the idea that things are always about to go wrong.

I actually handle stress well, usually. I stay calm, I know how to take a moment and just let it out…yet I feel this pressure to despair, to think “this is just how my life always goes” and blow things out of proportion.

Some of that I had long before I knew my father was like that…but kids do copy what they see.

And I find his voice in my head a lot, even now.

The thing is, I feel like I have to apologize for that to whoever I’m with.

Like: I‘m sorry, my father messed me up, and I really want to be better, but I don’t know if you’re safe yet…so can you bear with me wile I try to get past it?

Therapy was no help in this area. They just kept making me focus even more on what could go wrong.

Like do I really need to hear this again?

My last one was a real gem, he told me I had a lot of blame for people in my past.

This was after weeks of him not given me any constructive feedback, so I would just keep telling him different stories, hoping he’d figure out something helpful that I was missing. Apparently not…and hey, at any point he could have asked me why I focused n that so much and worked out a solution. Instead he got mad the first time I acted out a little bit because of my issues, and that was it for me.

I’m perfectly willing to admit, I’m not perfect. I do rude things sometimes…who doesn’t?

But that is no excuse to jump on me and make all kinds of claims about my character that you have no way to know from one thing I said.

I mean, I know I’m defensive…

You know why that is? I used to be open to feedback when I was younger, I did my best to embrace it…but it was never good enough.

I learned the hard way then that people don’t always care about helping you, they just want to control you. It’s not about who’s right, it’s about you not being exactly how they want.

Yes it’s hard for me to trust anyone who criticizes me, because so often I cannot please them even after taking their advice, so I gave up.

I literally stopped speaking to my father for years for most of the time I was around him because nothing I ever said to him got me anything but hatred, or was at all pleasant to being with.

I did the same to other adults I knew, and I never heard the end of it from him: “You offend people so much, why do you not answer them?”

You know what happened once my father moved out? And just once I was at a church he didn’t go to? I miraculously stopped doing that.

I now never go silent on people like that, at least, very very rarely, and only when it wasn’t a remark I was sure they wanted an answer to.

Great right?

But it freaks you out to realize how much one person can change your personality.

My sisters even confirmed it.

I used to have “freak outs” or as I called them “moments” when my ahter was around.

Not always to do with him, but I’d be so stressed, I’d just wig out for several minutes, talking too fast and almost crying and laughing at the same time. I twas weird, looking back, I can’t understand it.

But once he was gone, it just stopped. I no longer had the urge to do that.

I do think I project this image of being more together than I really am, but who doesn’t do that if they want to remain employed?

It’s not wrong to act professional…but at some point, with someone, you have to let your guard down.

We can only talk about impersonal things for so long, you know what I mean?

Also, you can’t just trauma dump, that’s not good either.

But really, other people don’t know what works for you.

I’ll say there are guidelines.

In my limited experience with men, I’ve worked out at least a few real red flags. And they aren’t the ones most women talk about.

  1. A guy who makes you do all the work. You text first, you decide everything, he never disagrees with you.

I don’t mean that a guy who is easygoing is bad, I mean that he shows no interest whatsoever in getting to know you, but he craves your attention. I spent years hoping that both my dad, and other men I knew would change their minds about me…it doesn’t work.

2. Someone who never asks you about yourself.

This can also be social awkwardness, but if you’ve been talking for a while and you know more about them and they don’t ever ask about you, bad sign.

But those both are ones other people point out, what baffles me is how rarely anyone I know mentions this one:

3. The guy is just a jerk to you.

There was a really hot guy in my dance class who definitely knew he was hot, and my classmates seemed to think he was into me.

I think he would have if I was interested, but the guy would just be a jerk to me and to my friend in the class. Like he’d say things that seemed like they were to deliberately make me uncomfortable. It freaked me out. Also he was creepy in other ways.

I’m sure he thought it was smooth–and hey, in highschool, maybe it was. Girls have low self esteem in their teenage years. I’m sure being hot and cocky was all you needed back then.

But for a mature woman, who actually has thinks she looks for, like compassion and considerateness, it was unattractive. Canceled out the hot part.

I mean, was I attracted to him? Physically yes, but i was rep by his personality, and not in a “you get on my nerves but I still like you” kind of way.

Nothing ever happened between us, and I’m glad of that. But I was surprised later when one of the other guys I knew in class expressed surprise that I thought the hot one was a creep. This guy was on the uglier side, and said he thought I thought he was the creep.

Other than the obvious play for a compliment, I thought that was kind of a weird thing to say.

This guy didn’t hit on me or anything, really, like I know every one reading this is going to think, he just seemed to want female attention.

I enjoyed the male attention I got in the class, but I felt kind of like it was just about me being a girl, and not personality.

However, it’s worked the other way too, I’ve hit it off with guys over personality, who never asked me out.

I can’t explain it except that there must be some other reason they weren’t interested…and it wasn’t that they weren’t into dating, they were ones who went through multiple girlfriends.

Maybe I just give off the vibe too much of a girl who’s ride or die about love.

I do mange to get a rep for being feisty and opiniated everywhere I go.

Hey, at least I’m not forgettable.

But maybe it’s not me, or maybe it’s something I can’t guess. You know, I get sick of asking.

I impressed the guy I’m currently seeing by being able to tell him how I came to Christ…so that was new.

I can’t explain exactly why people don’t click these days.

But one thing I have learned is that it’s a waste of your time to go after anyone who has such wildly different views of life than you.

Even if they say they are in your religion, don’t believe it if it’s not in their actions.

I saw a man on YouTube say that we shouldn’t have low expectations, we should have realistic ones.

He’s right.

I can get the numbers of plenty of men if I want to, but it’s not worth it if they aren’t ones I’d want the heart of.

I know that’s chessy, but it’s true.

Love is not all magic and thrills, but it is about being entrusted with someone else’s well being, and we should take that seriously.

I’d rather feel safe with a man than feel thrilled for a short time only to feel empty later.

And I encourage men to think the same way, hopefully many of them already do.

Don’t settle for someone who has no respect for you.

And don’t dump someone for stupid reasons, there’s a lot of that going around too.

See, having the past I do makes me want something better, not the same old thing. I’m not comfortable with being mistreated, and I intend to stick to that.

So yeah, I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but I know that much..

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

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Paragon of Virtue

/ toseealife / Leave a comment
“For it is in passing that we achieve immortality. Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all. Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by my shoulder, protect thee.“
Pyrrha Nkos

It’s no secret if you’ve followed me for a while that I was originally a big fan of RWBY.

And that I’m still a fan of the first 3 volumes, at least. Possibly the 4-5 ones also.

I’m also a fan of the Justice League Animated show (and recently I watched the Snyder cut of the live action movie, and holy cow was it like watching a different film! One I actually lied. I think we should burn the theatrical cut and pretend it never happened.)

So I was talking to my sister about both these things and comparing the characters, and she specifically requested I blog about this topic.

So here we go:

What is a Paragon?

Let’s look at the web’s definition, though most weebs already know what it is, sort of:

“A paragon means someone or something that is the very best. The English noun paragon comes from the Italian word paragone, which is a touchstone, a black stone that is used to tell the quality of gold. You rub the gold on the touchstone and you can find out how good the gold is.” (vocabulary.com)

Most people acknowledge that the main character of any given kids show or movie is supposed to be the paragon. And if I name names, you’ll see a pattern.

Anime has a paragon almost as a requirement, with a few exceptions, like the Shield Hero.

Midoriya (My Hero Academia)

Naruto (Naruto)

Tohru (Fruits Basket)

Natsu (Fairy Tale, Erza would also be one)

Hiro (Darling in the Franx)

Not all of these are perfect examples, the first two are the closest. But you know the characters who stand above the rest, who everyone wants to be like, who they trust to lead them, who they think has some moral insight that they don’t.

Outside of anime, the paragon is less worshiped, but still present.

Captain America (Avengers)

Xavier (X-men, often Logan also fulfills this role)

Mickey Mouse (any Micky Mouse media)

Aang (Avatar the Last Airbender)

So you see paragons are everywhere. That’s why it’s considered a trope.

For a better explanation of how it is used in a story and the pros and cons, I refer you to Overly Sarcastic Productions excellent video:

Love Red’s videos about tropes

So, of course, the two paragons I wanted to talk about are Ruby, from the show RWBY, and Superman, from the DC Universe. Particularly his recent shows and movie renditions.

I’m going to argue that neither of these characters are good paragons, though they are treated like paragons by their writers and fellow characters, and the fans, by and large.

But my unpopular opinion is that they both suck at fulfilling this role, and that is because people lack understanding of what makes a paragon really work.

I think it goes back to our culture’s lack of understanding of what makes a righteous person to begin with.

(I’ve argued that Gaara should be the protagonist of Naruto also, and a protagonist and paragon do not have to be the same thing but they usually are in anime, however I think Gaara fulfills both roles better.)

It’s easy to see why Superman would be considered the best of the best, who can be better than Superman?

Yet, it’s interesting that in every version of the Justice League that’s written where they turn to the dark side, Superman is the first to fall.

I now the premise is that he is the only one holding the league together, so if he falls, they all fall.

I’m going to argue now that that is actually one of the signs of a bad paragon.

1. Instead of people being inspired by the paragon, they instead rely on them, both intellectually and physically.

Ruby is the bigger offender here, but so is Superman.

Lazy thinking is the bane of every group in real life, but it’s also one of the main things that kills fictional teams.

The whole team relies on thsi one person to know what’s right and to know what to do.

Sample:

Yang from RWBY: “She (Ruby) always knows what to do, so I’m going to follow her.”

Flash from JL animated series: We don’t do that to our enemies.

Diana: Speak for yourself.

Flash: I was trying to speak for Superman.”

This is just one of many examples from the shows where the other characters rely on the example of the paragon…to a point where it seems they may not actually agree with them.

I’m against murder, of course, but Diana stopping herself only because Superman would say to, and not out of any mercy of her own, seems like a red flag.

And it’s made more poignant when we consider that both in the Justice Lords episode of this show, and in the video game and movie versions of the Dark Justice League, Diana goes dark once Superman has led the way. Implying she never had any root in herself and her own ideals to resist the pull of power.

Diana’s weakness is not thinking for herself. Flash, who we learn died before the League went full on power mad in the alternate world, would have been the only person to resist the corruption, and he is the only one to stop Diana in the regular timeline.

J’onn, the Maritian, also expresses how he wonders if they can still be a league, how many battles did they win just because Superman was there, he asks.

[I actually think he’s less necessary than they think based on the show at least, but not in the movies.]

On RWBY, Ruby is followed by her sister, Yang, but also by Ozpin, who insists that victory is in the simpler things. Even the theme song says ‘victory is in a simple soul.’

The problem is, Ruby is not a simple soul.

Actually she is full of insecurities, questions, and later on, she resorts to deception and misleading her allies, just because she’s not sure what they will do with the truth, even though she was angry at Ozpin for doing the same thing.

Whereas Oscar, a much better character, is against ding this, but gets ignored because no one respects him.

And Superman, despite Flash’s well meaning optimism, is not the paragon of mercy Flash thinks he is.

Flash didn’t witness the two times Superman tried to kill Darkseid, a villain who humiliated him more than even Lex Luthor, who he just barely holds himself back from killing as it is. But Superman actually had zero hesitation to try to kill Darkseid, and was only stopped, one by Supergirl using reason, and once by Batman, who used brute force (sort of, he got lucky with a boom tube.)

The issue I have with both Supes and Ruby isn’t that they make these mistakes, while being the leaders, but it’s actually my second point:

2. The paragon lacks humility.

A good paragon has flaws, that’s not the problem. The problem is when they pretend that they don’t.

Ruby makes a crap ton of mistakes, but notably, she never once admits it.

As far back as volume 1, Weiss goes off on Ruby for being reckless and a show-off, but then admits that she herself can be a little ‘demanding’ and offers to compromise.

I might be missing something, but I don’t recall Ruby ever owning up to Weiss having a point. She’s just blindly confident that she’ll impress everyone with her skills. Which she does, but that doesn’t make her a good leader.

Weiss also complains that Ruby is the leader of their team, and offers some valid reasons, which in my mind were proven entirely right by Ruby herself several times, and then some, and while Weiss is hardly perfect, Ruby never tries to amend her actions to give Weiss more confidence in her, or acknowledge Weiss might have a point.

“I’m not perfect! Not yet, but I’m still a hundred times better than you.” Weiss, volume one. (I may have paraphrased slightly)

All the way up to Volumes 6-8, which were all horrible train wrecks, including the actual train wreck that happened in volume 6, where Ruby actually says she never needed her uncle’s help, after he saved her butt like 3 times just since his reintroduction in vol 4, and the other times people bailed her out.

Ruby, much like Naruto and Deku on their shows, doesn’t one off win nay fights on her own after volume 2, and that was a draw. Yet she has the idea that she’s independent somehow…why?

Let’s look at Superman for a moment.

In one of the worst episodes of the first JL show (but still far better than the last season of the Unlimited follow up show) Secret Society, Superman pisses off Flash and Hawk Girl by saying:

“At the end of the day, I’m the invulnerable one. Every hit I take is one someone else doesn’t have to.”

While they get mad at this, no one makes the pretty obvious come back: “Sure, until someone has Kryptonite or Red Sun Radiation.”

Something multiple people have had access to, in the show alone, and on his own show.

Superman may be tough, but everyone knows his weaknesses! He’s not invulnerable or invincible. Plus, even Lois Lane has had to save him, not once, but at least 2 or 3 times on his show, and the others saved him many times on the Justice League show.

So where does he get off suggesting that he’s somehow less subject to peril than they are? If he was less reckless about his own safety, they’d actually win their fights faster because they might employ this thing called strategy.

And this leads into point number 3

3. A paragon that never learns

Because of people worshiping them, and their big head, often bad paragons never learn anything from their mistakes.

The entire show of RWBY is proof of that for Ruby, but Superman is a little less obvious.

However, if we consider what happens in the Justice League show, it’s kind of unnerving.

One episode, Patriot Act, points out that after the League got called into question for having a weapon that was worse than a bomb would have been in their watchtower, and Cadmus has issues with them, instead of losing power, the League gains a second base on the earth, but doesn’t’ dismantle their watchtower.

And the only group that was capable of competing with them has been so publicly shamed that they are no longer a threat. Meaning the League is freer from criticism than ever.

Yet the League is still caught off guard by the villains unifying, and almost loses yet again to Darkseid. Superman, rather than show more caution, seems to be overly confident, and has to be saved, ultimately, by Lex Luthor, the most humiliating choice yet.

I can’t blame Superman entirely for that, but he didn’t really back off after the Cadmus incident. I don’t see how getting more power is learning his lesson about hubris and controlling things too much.

What really stands in the way of the League becoming the Justice Lords by the end of the show? Only Flash, anything could still happen to him. How have they learned and become stronger?

This is a problem with the show overall, but especially with Superman. Everyone else changes and evolves over time at least a little, but he stays the same. The same pride and anger under the surface, and willingness to compromise what he claims he upholds.

And finally, one last point

4. A paragon who is only an example when everyone is looking or they have something to prove.

What I detest about both Ruby and Superman, not because I’d hate them as people if it was true, but because they are hailed as such paragons of virtue, is their lack of consideration for anyone else.

If no one is looking, Ruby never gives a crap about helping anyboyd but herself, if shes’ not playint he hor.

Ruby herself is helped both by Blake and Jaune just on her first day at Beacon Academy, but we see her help no one else, nor try to.

While others stand up to the racism against Faunus, Ruby does nothing.

And when Oscar gets beat on for unfair reasons later in the show, Ruby only steps in one time, and that’s when it’s someone who she’d not get much flack for calling out, but not when her uncle or sister also abuse Oscar.

Ruby is nice to Oscar, because she has a crush on him, and once or twice she is nice to Jaune. So she’s not the worst, but she never goes out of her way to help anybody. Nor is she ever more open-minded than anyone else in the team.

But Superman has to be even worse.

I was reading someone else’s post about Wonder Woman the other day, and they brought up a scene where Diana teaches a little girl how to fight to help her have confidence about playing with the boys. The author commented that she couldn’t see Superman or Batman doing this.

I think Batman actually does demonstrate compassion more often, in his own way, when he helps Ace, one of the villains Cadmus created, as well as Baby Doll, one of his sadder villains, and many others. Actually it’s why he and Diana are good together.

But I agree, I can’t see Superman doing it.

Superman is the type of guy who’d say he has to focus on the big problems, fly around and help people, and the little things aren’t ones he can afford to spend time on.

Yet those things are what make us the most human and help us to stay grounded. If you’d take time to help a kid, even if it’s just over something small, then you will remember what’s really important.

He keeps Lois, the closest relationship he has, at arm’s length. At the end of the show, she still doesn’t know his real identity, that we know of. She knows freaking Batman’s, but not his!

I’ve never seen Superman help a kid, outside of his old comics, and then it was to prove a point, that he was Superman…he still helped either way, and I’m not saying he wouldn’t have anyhow, but he got invested primarily for that reason.

Contrast it with Flash, who is a great guy on and off the job, based on how his coworkers treat him. And is a great guy even to the other League members.

Can you see Superman getting Hawk Girl a coffee and blanket? Or giving an old coot an actual fair chance to explain his magic crystal and have a job later? Or painting someone’s fence?

Me neither. The fact that I wouldn’t even imagine it says a lot.

Oh and RWBY has an example of this too. Pyrrha freaking Nikos!

And that’s the perfect cue for me to launch into why Pyrrha is a way better paragon than Ruby, and why many people would be a better one than Superman.

Ironically, almost any member of the 7 would be better than Superman, but most of them lack the leadership drive to be so.

Good Paragon traits

Basically just turn all the bad ones on thier head.

Let’s star twith the last one and work backwards.

Instead of only dong good when it’s beneficial for them also, good Paragons do good when no one thanks them for it.

On Naruto, Gaara sticks up for the rights of people to have life, and for the ideals of mercy, long before he gets made the leader of the army. He works for years to reform Sand Village, to the point where assassination attempt on him by the elders who think he’s crazy or wrong happen so often that his siblings no longer even react to having to save him and each other’s lives at any given moment.

On RWBY, Pyrrha sticks up for Faunus though it gets her little thanks from her classmates. She also helps Jaune with his problems, even when it would get her the opposite of what she wants, or when he gets mad at her.

But what I love is that she’s got bit of a temper too. When Jaune forsakes his team because Cardin blackmails him, instead of coming to them for help, she makes her sentiment clear until he finally apologizes, but she still bails him out of a tight spot.

Pyrrha helps Jaune for his own sake, even when she’s not getting anyth out of it.

She also is nice to team RWBY, paying for their meal and is generally kind and caring to everyone.

Jaune also is a decent paragon, he has more of the traits of pursuing excellence that they have in anime, but he also sticks up for his team and helps people even when he doesn’t have to, as I mentioned above.

Turning back to Justice League, Wonder Woman is far more compassionate than Superman, and Batman is less arrogant. Flash however is the best example, since he combines both those traits at the same time.

Often the traits of a good paragon would be better if they rested on two or three character’s instead of just one, since few people are that virtuous, but if we want to find who’d be a better starting point, those are our choices.

Hawk Girl has the most integrity of everyone in the League, but lacks the confidence to lead, or she might make the better choice.

Point number 2, all of these other characters learn more than the actual paragon characters do.

Granted, not that much, in Batman’s case.

But Batman has a healthy respect for people with different qualities than himself, whereas Superman doesn’t.

Pyrrha is not given the chance to learn much since she (SPOILER ALERT) dies before she really can. But based on her overall humility, it seems like she would have.

Jaune we see does learn from his mistakes and improve, becoming more of a peacemaker in the group and a protector.

And of course, that includes having humility.

One of my favorite things about Pyrrha’s character, as I got more mature about looking at her, was that she isn’t above improving. She has a power that makes it easy for her to win fights by hardly doing anything, but only uses it to give her a bit of an edge, she still trains like crazy to hone her skills. She still thinks she needs to practice. Shes’ willing to team up with less skilled people like Jaune just because she likes his attitude, and to take orders from him despite his lack of experience, unlike Weiss’s attitude towards Ruby.

Pyrrha could roll her eyes😒at Jaune, but instead she builds him up. And he becomes the kind of leader she believed in, as he even acknowledges in vole 5 when he said she told him something once, and he believed her.

Pyrrha and Jaune

Pyrrha could win more on a different team, or if she asserted herself over Juane, but she doesn’t. Instead she embraces being treated like a normal person by him, and doesn’t see herself as the invincible, untouchable warrior.

And last bu not least, back to point 1.

A good paragon is not worshiped, they are imitated and respected.

Perhaps this is where Pyrrha, Flash, and the others I mentioned shine most clearly beyond their competition of the canon paragons.

While people talk about imitating Ruby, or Superman, no one actually does it. Or when they do, it’s usually the worst parts of them. Because people always copy your underlying attitude more than your professed one.

Flash copies Superman’s reckless actions more than his selfless ones, the Flash is selfless on his own, that’s why he can take that out of Superman’s example, but Superman never really has any interaction with Flash about this, nor do we see any one moment where Flash is inspired by him to be selfless when he’s actually there.

In contrast, Batman is moved by Flash’es compassion towards his foe the Trickster, in the episode about Flash. And tells Orion that he does not understand him.

Batman actually never talks Flash down, notably, and hes’ shown to be a closet fan of the Flash even in other renditions of the League.

So Flash inspires respect from people it’s worthwhile to earn the respect of, and he is looked up to by kids and regular citizens also just for being so good hearted.

Even if not everyone imitates Flash, they respect his heart.

Pyrrha on the other hand has admiration from her peers and superiors alike, but it’s interesting that in her closet ring of friends, she doesn’t inspire the hero worship that Ruby does.

People don’t look up to Pyrrha to lead them, they want to be like her, because she follows the right thing not just in her words, but in her actions.

Ruby and Superman tell people what the right thing is, Pyrrha and Flash show them what it is.

This doesn’t even mean that I’m arguing for Pyrrha and Flash to be the leader of their teams, I don’t think either of them are suited to that, in fact I thin paragons often don’t make good leaders because of their lack of putting themselves first. A leader ha to have some self confidence.

But like Jaune, and like Batman, the best leaders are the ones who are following the example of a paragon who isn’t the leader, but isn’t a blind follower either, who makes their own choices, but i willing to work with others also.

Pyrrha never turns down help, and Flash is the first to ask for it again after the League breaks up.

Every leader I know of who is also a paragon is the most boring and frustrating kind of protagonist, the most engaging leaders are the ones who learn from paragons as they go.

Like the show My Little Pony’s MC Twilight, who has to learn from all her friends in order to become the Princess of Friendship.

Pyrrha’s influence is felt in volume 4 and 6 especially when we see that Juane, as well as her other teammates, all want to be more like her, they do not say that about Ruby.

Ruby can lead, but she can not exemplify. That’s the problem.

Like Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, Luke might be the leader, but he’s following Obi Wan’s example.

Once in a great while, a paragon may make a good protagonist, Twilight Sparkle sort of grows into being a paragon by the end of MLP, usually it’s done best when it’s like that, one character growing into being one over time.

Which is where Pyrrha having struggles and an arc in volume 3 made her much more like a protagonist than Ruby has ever been, fight me.

A paragon can also become a protagonist over time, it’s usually very satisfying to see that actually.

But the starting point has to be them working together, or it just doesn’t feel right, at least to me, it feels fake.

We are all protagonists in our own lives, but we all should want to be paragons, and if we find people looking up to us like ones, we should never forget to be protagonists also, always able to learn from others.

But when you divorce these two characters from helping each other, your story falls apart, because that’s not real life.

And with that, I think I’ll end this post, until next time–Natasha.

Loving Ourselves

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Well my last post seems to have gone over well, so I trust I’m striking a chord with some people at least.

I talked a lot about being arrogant in that post.

What I don’t want to do is come off like I’m blaming Gen Z and Millennials for this.

While I do blame them in some capacity for making their own decision to embrace all this insanity, I can’t say they’re particularly stupid or evil compared to the rest of humanity.

It’s been pointed out by smarter people than me that the age of Moral Standards we’ve lived in for the last 200 years in the West, give or take a few decades or centuries depending on the country, was not a usual thing for humans. It’s the anomaly.

From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance to the Revolution era, it was a very unusual period in history compared to before, especially the pre-Christian era.

Up till then, the general consensus from all people’s was that everyone else was corrupt, and only their culture stood out, and some of them didn’t even go that far.

If you read what the Bible describes people doing, it would shock you how sick it was. Even now, we haven’t gone that far–as a whole–though some of us have.

And God somehow still had hope for those people. It boggles my mind. But He was always looking for the Remnant.

What big movement preachers tend to overlook, though they mean well, and I wish what they talked about was more frequent than it is–is that Positive Change, as well as Ethics being Preserved, is usually the work of small amounts of people.

A few thousand out of many thousands, is usually the biggest amount of people who work together on it.

It can be as few as 8, like the story of Noah (the legend is found in almost every culture in the world by the way, often with the same number of people surviving as the Bible says.)

God has His eyes always on the few.

Jesus even told us “Straight is the gate and narrow is the way to Life, and few will there be that find it.” (Matthew 7:14)

Which seems harsh…but Jesus is just telling us how this works.

The Masses of people are not concerned with morality that much, and if they ever are concerned about a few things in general, it was the phenomenon of the past thousand years to see that, it wasn’t common before.

That’s why some historians have the idea that Man’s Consciousness is evolving. They look at our moving toward higher and higher ethical standards, and or at least more discussion about them, and they say we improved.

But if you look at the bare facts of history, you’ll see each age has its own problems, and they repeat. We’re not smarter as a whole, it’s isl that those of us in each generation that do See Clearly, see a little more, because wise men learn form history and they build off of it, but foolish ones ignore it and they always have.

That was part of the thought that’s been rolling around in my head for several months, which is just this:

Things that people predict will happen if a country doesn’t change it’s course always do actually happen.

And no one listens because no one ever has listened.

You see, a lot of social commentators say that the problem is people just don’t realize what is happening.

But that is not true.

Sure there’s secrete scandals still, there probably always will be as long as mankind is in power.

But the problems that are eating away at us are ones people predicted and called to attention for years, and decades, and even centuries.

Just like in the Bible the Prophets told the Israelites what was happening. And the Israelites didn’t listen.

It’s so hard for us to admit this, isn’t it? That we do what we do, knowing exactly what will happen, and we do it anyway.

Example:

If you got any person to answer you honestly on the subject of depicting violent in movies directed at kids as much as we do, they’d have to acknowledge that statistics do point to violence in entertainment having a bad effect on kids and their development.

[See articles here: https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Children-And-TV-Violence-013.aspx#:~:text=Extensive%20viewing%20of%20television%20violence,to%20imitate%20what%20they%20see.

https://www.bartleby.com/essay/effects-of-tv-violence-on-children-F3CEVXSZTC%5D

But would they stop promoting that stuff by watching it, talking about it, reviewing it, and in many cases, showing it to their own kids.

My father did, and he’d be one of the ones to say it was a problem.

You see? We know…we just don’t care.

That’s always the way.

I’m glad that my faith was never in humanity to begin with, because living in a world where everyone’s corruption is exposed so much via internet would kill anyone’s faith in humanity.

We hope for the best from people, but we cannot depend on it, unless we know them very well.

But that’s not really mean to be a depressing thought. The Bible has said that for years. All these angsty pop culture hot take people are just agreeing with an old teaching, that’s all.

It’s like G. K. Chesterton said, if we try to hit on anything original an good, we’ll only find it was Orthodoxy the entire time.

Even the idea of Self Worth is Christian, though it’s been taken way, way out of it’s proper context, as always.

I don’t know if there’s a better or worse thing to worship other than God. One could make the case for it, but it’s kind of a matter of opinion whether the worship of success and domination of a few hundred years ago is really better or worse than the worship of tribalism and self fulfillment is now. Often both at the same time.

Humans are not better or worse than we’ve been in the past.

But we are regressing out of the progress the last centuries brought us in at least realizing how messed up we were.

People used to admit that there was a lot wrong with human nature, even if they didn’t see it in themselves.

But now we’re really trying to deny that Human Nature is corrupt.

Telling people to “Be themselves” no matter what.

Yes,the message to be genuine is a good one.

But predictably, since other messages were neglected, it’s become “be yourself even if that you is a terrible person.”

Women will admit to be aggressive b—-s publicly now. Like ti’s something to brag about.

“I’m so mean, yay!”

Or “so evil” I hear that one a lot.

“I have no soul” guys say that one too.

“no heart.”

Wow, so brave of all of you to admit to being inhuman. Hip hip hurrah.

I think actual people who are jerks have always been proud of it, if they weren’t arrogant, they probably would be jerks.

But at least it wasn’t approved of by the entire culture before, not for a long time, but we’re swinging back that direction.

Let’s just remember that in Greek Culture, which is where we get a lot of our ideas, rape and kidnapping were normalized parts of their mythology that no one thought twice about. It’s possible to be completely blind to the obvious.

Actually we’re blind to the obvious most often, because we just don’t want to see it.

2 Timothy 3 says this about it:

“But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power.”

Even if we ignore the ones I didn’t emphasize, though they are still prevalent, look at how much those words sum up not just our complaints at a culture, but the things we actually praise.

Romans 1 says that people, known such thins are wrong, not only practice them but approve of those who do.

In 2000 years, nothing has changed.

Ecclesiastes says there is “nothing new under the sun.”

It’s been dawning on me that while I appeal to people’s desire for morality when I debate them, I am assuming they care at all.

But I think less and less of them do.

Aside from the SJW crap that they are programmed to react to, without understanding it at all, they really don’t care about higher thought.

These things have no value to them. They live for entertainment and pleasure. For Self. And no one tells them this is unacceptable.

It’s not a mystery why the Media promotes this. Selfish people buy more things, and care less if you exploit others to provide them with those things.

But it’s sad how the schools and churches have promoted it so much also.

They have us so much under their spell, the Overlords’, that we can be told this point blank, even by our own commercials on TV, and we simply don’t care. Just keep distracting me. The world is a dark place.

Well in Quasimodo’s words to Frollo “Well now I see the only thing that’s dark about it is people like you!”

See, the people who tell us to stay away form the world because of its evil are the same ones making it evil. They don’t want us to catch on, do they? Called Gaslighting.

Because if we did catch on, we might stop them, and evil men fear having their deeds exposed, don’t they?

They hate and fear those of us who know better and have pure hearts. And like Fagan from Oliver Twist, they want to make sure anyone who does is corrupted.

A lot of anime has this theme also. What is Japan trying to tell us, huh? That people who are naturally more inclined to do good than the rest of us are feared the most.

Don’t you fear someone who seems like a better person than you, sometimes? I know I have.

I’ve mostly given up thinking of it that way, we’re all human. But I can do that because I have grace, the people who don’t are still afraid, we remind them of their own death the Bible says.

People have accused Christians of that ever since they first appeared.

I have to recognize as I write this that a lot of people may not even be ready to hear what I’m saying.

They may not even be to where they see a piot ot all this.

I can hope it resonates with someone who is ready, who needs it.

Like “wow I’m not crazy!”

My advice, if i’m qualified to give it, is if you have found yourself noticing all these problems, don’t waste time being chocked by them.

Try to find that remnant of people who still believe in the old values, and stick with them.

And reach who you can. There’s always some wheat among the tares of each generation, perhaps more than we realize, since many of us give up trying to reach them.

It’s not our job to decide who can receive truth and salvation, we are supposed to shoot our shot, and let God choose how it lands.

I don’t know what all our fates will be, and I ‘m not suppose dot know, but I know that we can’t control destiny, only how much we want to take an active role in it. There are still things that will happen no matter what, but there’s a lot we can change also. So we are still supposed to try.

That said, for now I’m done, so until next time, stay honest–Natasha

Content With Singleness

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Wow it has been a while.

I’ve been working on other stuff, so I kind of neglected this blog for a bit, but, it has given me time to think about some new topics of conversation.

Like for example:

Isolation.

So I like to write about relationships, as you know if you’ve been here a while, and I like to write about the nature of love, fear, and so on.

But with all this, the global spy search engine tends to recommend me videos of people talking about their opinion on relationships.

I might think they were outliers, except that even in my own college classes people express the same views.

In my last class, I heard people talk about how being in committed relationships was hard, expensive and so on.

In the same class, a guy also asked some of the girls in the back row if they’d ever consider getting a Sugar Daddy (not him, he was just weird and the topic had come up in the lesson for whatever reason).

On said no way, it would be too awkward, even if it was just to fake date.

The other said she’d do anything for the right amount of money.

I thought “I can’t believe I’m listening to this conversation in the middle of a class.”

What happened right?

I blame the internet mostly.

To use the clice phrase, we’re at a point wehre this is reality? MEn think it’s too much effort to commit, and women think they’d do anything for money in some cases.

Now sure, that’s just one girl…but her attitude is becoming more prevalent.

I don’t know how this happened, where we’ve taken the shame of the diea of doing sex for money.

People call that “slut shaming” now.

Liek being alsut is someting to be proud of.

Even if you had no moral obligations, i’s apoor healthy chioce at the very least, so that’s like saying peope should be proud of smokin gor drinking ro drugs.

That’ll be it next, watch. “Junkie Shaming” the new crime.

IT always baffles me how poeple never stop to think that the reason orgarian might be pushing for this “no shameing our poor decisons” is because they make money off our addictions.

Anyone notice those ads that are oopenly mocking us for our addciotn now?

The ones that are like “You can seek social validation wihtout lagging out.”

“You can game all night etc.”

“Lose to a 12 year old.”

Ha, ha, ah.

Why don’t they just say:

“We know you have no self respect, no purpose in your life, and no value as anything but a consumer to up our numbers, please keep paying us to feed your addiction to screens so that you never think about the world outside your little bubble that might actually have real problems.”

You know in the classic “Fahrenheit 451” the people live in houses where the walls are TV screens, and some you can interact with, making your life more and more into a work of fiction, till they can’t even understand the format of a book, or have a real conversation with a real person anymore.

In an anime of all things, “Darling in the Franxx” People replace real human relationships with a machine-forged connection, and replace sex with happiness stimulation, and food with this weird energy they input into their bodies directly.

They become immortal…but at the price of ceasing to be human beings. At the end they all turn into pure spiritual mental energy and become part of the hive mind. [Sorry for Spoilers, but I doubt anyone reading this would care about those.]

The show isn’t that good at exploring the concept intellectually, but it’s certainly unnerving.

It used to be a joke that we were becoming like machines, but, now people are really starting to just take that seriously.

At least here, to be fair, it’s not global.

But I’m talking about the West, were I live, naturally.

You don’t need me to tell you this, though, you can see it yourself.

If you watch our shows now, even actors are becoming more robotic and fake in their delivery. The goal isn’t to come off as a real person anymore, it’s to be quippy and mock modern culture.

It’s actually become modern culture to mock ourselves, anything and everything, and nothing can be taken seriously.

I listen to people talk sometimes, and it’s like they don’t even know how to be serious at all.

Their tone, their facial expressions, they seem devoid of real purpose…you wait for the joke to be over, but it’s like it never is…until you offend them, then no one has any sense of humor.

I’m not sure how we compartmentalized our lives to this point, it seems like someone took great care to ensure that we did, however.

I can feel the draw myself too. I live in this culture, and I’m tempted by it, same as everyone else.

But at least I still know I’m tempted. As C. S. Lewis pus it, if you can feel the spell working, then you’re not fully under it yet.

Which is found in the Silver Chair, which is actually a book that coves the temptation of distraction and dulled senses a lot. I never liked it, it was unsettling, probably because it hit too close to home.

Actually Prince Rillian in that book acts a lot like people do now. Unable to take anything seriously, unless it’s an insult to the very witch who’s keeping him under her spell. Then he becomes very angry.

He’s easily distracted. Flippant.

But when he breaks free of the enchantment, he becomes clear headed and implores them to help him.

Later the witch tries to re-enchant them all, dulling their minds again, but their friend Puddleglum uses pain to clear his head, and tells her off. Freeing them all finally so they can kill her.

The moral of the story?

Real sensations are what block out the fake ones.

All of us can go along the way we do, until something truly bad happens.

But it seems the Overloads known as the entertainment industry are trying to take great care to tell us that suffering in the land can be remedied only with more distractions.

How many people got movie streaming services during COVID?

A lot of us realized the value of real interactions, but a lot of people, especially younger ones, fell more deeply under the spell of using screens for everything. (I say with irony, because I’m using one right now.)

So let’s talk about this: Why did this happen?

How did we become so distracted?

I think we all know how it slowly became more and more normal to stare at screens.

But let’s talk about the real reason it’s so appealing.

People now use the excuse that they have too much social anxiety to want to make friends, leave their house, and try anything really.

But that’s not it.

I’ve no doubt that many people do have anxiety, but most of the ones I talk to don’t really have anything that crippling, they just have insecurities, and we all have those.

If you can talk and read emotional cues like a normal person, I wouldn’t say you have anxiety, per sec.

But I don’t believe even the insecurities are the real reason.

To put it in blunt language, people of the younger generations–which is starting to see anywhere form 12-40 years old, who voice these views, are often arrogant, self absorbed twits.

It’s not really that we’re afraid to socialize, it’s that we’ve decided three fundamental things.

1: Other people are a lot of work

2: Other people are annoying, and they sometimes find us annoying,

3: Other people are just not worth our time.

Why is everyone we don’t like toxic now?

You notice that?

Some people are toxic, but we’re slapping that label onto every single flaw.

Throughout human history, many individual have not particlayr liekd ohter humans, that’s not new.

What is new is broadcasting that fact with so much flippancy, and so little remorse for it.

I mena, there’s been many cruel societies, but they had families, they had gatering to celebrate, and not showing up still made you kind of an oddball.

Now u can laugh it off.

What I find particualrly delusional about this new way of thingkin is taht poepel ac tlike it’s speical.

Like, “oh wiat, human interaciton is hard? Who knew? It’s not liek we’ve writtne, sung, and performed aobut htat for hundreds of years.”

Yeah, it is hard.

Everything worth doing is hard.

But you don’t duck out of doing it just because of that.

See, we’re not shying away from each other because we’re scared–we’re doing it because we’re spoiled.

We can have a fake form of humanity projected into our homes at any minute of any day at any given time.

We can have porn, and pay for sex if we want the real experience (real being subjective there), so we don’t need to commit to a willing relationship. It’s normalized now to pleasure ourselves if nothing else.

You know. I don’t do any of those things…and I don’t feel I’ve lost anything in my life. I’m kind of glad actually, I feel like they create weird habits.

I guess I’m writing this because I think the real wake up call we need might not just be about politics and religion.

To even get there, we need connection.

The Bible says that God Himself said, even before there was sin, there was one thing that was not good.

And that was: “It is not good for Man to be alone.”

God said man needs help. A supporter. A life saver. Something we need desperately.

Man wanted companionship, but he also needed it.

Don’t we all want that? Most of us don’t admit it, but just being wanted can feel cheap. We want to feel we contribute something also. But just being needed can feel hollow. We feel like it should be both. And it was supposed to be both.

As always, we’re ever rebelling against our Creator.

One would think that we’d at least want to be around each other.

But we should remember that Adam and Eve turned on each other immediately after they turned on God.

People ask sometimes how Christians can believe something that sounds that much like a fairy-tale. The fruit, the trees, the snake.

I don’t find it so hard to believe, because I see all this played out all the time, every day. Even if the facts weren’t true, the principles are on point.

The story of Ed gen isn’t actually about knowledge being a bad thing, like some people say.

Ir’s about trust.

Do you trust God, or the devil?

Do you trust your spouse? Or God?

And when you break the trust of God, and your spouse, guess who wins? Not you. The devil.

Love is about trust. You can’t have love without trust.

And we are so determined not to trust anyone now.

I watched one video, where a woman said she got divorced after 5 years.

I’m thinking “Five years? Unless he was a deadbeat, a cheater, or an abuser, what problems would you have in 5 years that couldn’t be worked out if you were willing to grow?”

You can grow out of a lot in 5 years, so if things weren’t working out, the problem was probably one or both of them didn’t want to change at all.

And what is the idea with expecting to get married, and not have to change anything about yourself?

The idea we’re fed is that people who love you accept you the way you are.

Well yeah, they do.

But that doesn’t man you wouldn’t have to change.

You may put up with someone’s flaws, out of love, but that done mean you like it, or that you should. Flaws often hurt us more than anyone else.

And then there’s the things that aren’t sin, but you still need to be able to let them go.

For example, what if you’re allergic to a food? Should your spouse eat it in front of you? Maybe if you’re okay with it…but what if you aren’t? It’s not a flaw to eat food…but it can be a point of contention.

I’m just using this to illustrate. And yeah, I’ve seen couples fight over things that stupid. Who hasn’t?

I’m not saying someone should be telling you how to change. But if you annoy them…you might want to think about compromising.

And you now…not all of our personal habits are worth hanging onto.

We’re told now that “Self” is the most important thing.

There’s fear at the base of that.

“I can’t trust anyone else to love me, so I have to love me.”

My therapist once told me to try to give myself the kind of parental validation I didn’t get.

That didn’t work. It did work when God helped me.

It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. If everybody out there is so busy loving themselves, they won’t try to love you.

Someone has to be willing to be different. But more people were willing to in the past, when an relationship based on helping each other was considered normal and healthy.

Now people say you shouldn’t need your partner.

And then it’s okay to bail on them. Because you don’t need them anyway.

Like…you can need someone and still learn to live without them. If they do leave, or die perhaps. Things change. But then you learn to need someone else. We’re not made to not need each other. Literally.

And if you don’t see why you need other people…That’s proof that you do.

Anyone who is arrogant enough to think they are doing fine on their own already needs others way more than they realize. It’s just insane to not need anyone.

I’m not here to say you can’t live alone, sure, you can live alone in a house, or apartment. That doesn’t mean you’re alone all the time.

Being alone is supposed to be a punishment, in the prison system. It sounded like a lot of people wouldn’t even mind it, if they had WiFi.

Ugh.

I’m so sick of this.

You know, I consider myself an independent woman. I don’t let other people make my decisions for me.

But I rely on my family all the time for things.

I don’t mind relying on men either. Not for everything, but it’s reasonable for some things.

And I really, really don’t see what the big deal is about it.

Why is it so bad? We’re all born needing everything done for us. All we can do is relieve ourselves, which is a metaphor in of itself.

And we learn our whole life to do more things for ourselves, but we do them with other people. If we stop learning form others, we’re saying we arrived.

I think in marriage you have to learn from each other. That used to be the philosophy of a lot of people. You can’t remake your spouse (at least not without breaking them) but you can teach them, and any decent person was expected to learn.

Not now.

And it’s not good for us.

Depression is at an all time high, mental illness of every kind, low self worth.

But our arrogance is through the roof.

You can be arrogant and still have low self worth. You have an elevated idea of your own rights, but a low idea of the value of you even existing to exercise them.

Figures, as soon as we believe we’re the only ones who have any say in our lives, we feel like they have no meaning.

Men especially need other people to feel like they have meaning in their lives. Women do better amusing ourselves even with indirect contact, and having hobbies, but we still need other people too. I do think we tend to cut ourselves of from them less in general

Also, little tip ladies. if you’re gong to complain about the bar being low for men, maybe you should make sure you’re giving them something to actually impress anyone for. Do you really want it to just be about sex?

I have high standards because I have high ones for myself.

This is what I aspire to be:

  1. Kind
  2. Honest
  3. Smart
  4. Interested in His ( and other peoples) interests, at least enough to be supportive.
  5. Brave enough to confront a problem and also to admit when I’m wrong.
  6. Humble enough not to take myself too seriously.
  7. Confident enough never to not value my part in a relationship or my worth as a person
  8. Determined enough to always try to find solutions, not just gripe about problems.
  9. And relaxed enough to let stuff go that doesn’t really matter.
  10. Not ever thinking I have all the answers, or that I have none of them.

This is just the short list.

I am not all of these things all the time, but I do try to be them.

I’m not expecting someone else to always be like this, but I do expect them to think values are important, and to act be trying to meet them, even if they have slip up.s

I’ve seen enough of people claiming they have values and then not doing jack to fulfill any of them.

And I’m even more scared by people who now don’t care, and don’t think they need values. Except spitting out the SJW programmed ones.

I wouldn’t even mind as much if most of them were honest about it.

Like, I’d rather have someone who is fully convinced that Pride is a moral cause, but at least really believe that, then the many people I know who just say it because it’s what everyone says, they don’t know why they believe it, they don’t care either.

Someone once asked a man on the street what the two biggest problems in our society were:

The man answered “Don’t know, don’t care.”

The questioner said “You’re right, those are the two biggest problems.”

And they are.

We don’t know what’s happening, we don’t know the facts, we don’t know each other.

And when you don’t know, you can’t care.

And we choose not to know, and we choose not to care.

So if I have anything to add to this, it’s that there’s only one solution.

Make a different choice.

That’s literally all you can do about this.

Then teach others to do the same.

We may not stop the culture from doing this, but we don’t have to do it ourselves.

As an aside, i found an article while I was trying to find the quote for this chapter that sort of confirms what I was saying about trust, if you want to check it out:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/01/28/americans-losing-trust-in-each-other-and-institutions/35525131-ce9b-4815-81a4-cc7a6ab2aebc/

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha

Talking about why young people don’t want to get married

/ toseealife / 2 Comments

I have to wonder what’s happened to my generation at times…and then I look at our influences, and it all makes sense.

While the Gen Z– Millennial crowd do seem pretty crazy, it adds up when you think what we’ve been taught and exposed to over time.

I was always the partially sheltered, homeschooled, Christian kid, but I still hear myself say things these days that people from 100 years ago wouldn’t have said…or maybe 150 years ago, the 1920s were kind of nuts too.

But one trend in the Millennial world, at least in the West, that is really concerning to me is how most of them no longer like the idea of getting married.

I always thought that the “marriage is a societal convention” line was something only people who were terrified of commitment would use to get their SOs to agree not to marry them.

I think actually that might be true, and people in their 20s-30s are all just terrified of commitment now.

We’re not the first generation of humans to have this problem, but the first in a while, and the older generation can be pretty hard on us.

To be fair, some of the reasons I’v heard do seem convincing, and heartbreaking, in some cases…and others just seem pathetic.

So let’s unpack each one–though this is not an exhasutive list, I’m sure ther’es more, but I’ve heard 3 or 4 consistnently.

1: Marriages often don’t work out and/or divorce is expensive, and usually favors the woman.

Mostly it was men saying this, but their concern is that if the wife does wnat to laev ethem, they will lose their money, their kids, and everything else.

This is by far the most legitimate reason out of the ones I’ve heard, and the only one I would probably take that seriously.

I mean, of course, no one wants that.

It is also true, Divorce tends to favor women. Whatever the Feminists say, the culture we live in paints women as the victims and in the need of the most financial support.

It is also true that many women have become so entitled because of hearing this crap their whole lives that they are not fit for marriage with a man who has any self respect. They are whiny, demanding, and immature about their part in conflict.

But, I think men should just be not marrying those women then. Here’s the thing,

If you’re going to still have sex, and have kids, and live with said woman, even if she’s not marriage material…then she should be partner material either.

If you are going to use a woman like a wife, but not give her the financial or emotional security of one, and basically say “I can walk whenever I want, and leave you, and the kids, or take them with me” then…you’r basically subjecting her to the same fear as divorce.

And someone is going to say “no, because with two mature people, that won’t be a problem.”

Well, if it’s not a problem…then marry her!

If you consider your relationship is the same thing as a marriage, but not on paper, then put it on paper.

Because it sounds to me like you are just trying to remove all risk from it. A marriage will at least make you think more carefully before you split.

Furthermore, while divorce is hard on fathers, if things did go south between you, and you are not married, then how do you decide who gets the kids, and for how much time? Is a court of law going to be kinder to a father who is not even married to the woman who bore his children?

I think adoption agencies also favor legally married couples.

The point still stands, legally, not being married doesn’t guarantee you anything if you split, so marriage, even if you have the mind frame of divorce being an out, at least will get you some rights. Doesn’t that make much more sense?

Maybe I’m missing the logic here…I just don’t know, if fathers really care about their kids, then wouldn’t they want to guarantee them at least some financial support, as the law requires. You can appeal if the woman is not holding up her end of the deal, but if you are not married, then what?

I’m not sure if the law currently allows for illegitimate children and claims on that, but even if it does, the idea seems kind of ridiculous, talking about who legally has the right to kids when they didn’t even commit to each other enough to make it legal….

Think about that.

Furthermore, if you’re not gonna marry their mom, why do you deserve time with the kids? You didn’t put enough effort into getting those kids into a stable, secure home that marriage would provide. Put whatever name on it you want, it still seems selfish to me.

2: Women are not marriage material.

A lot of men love bashing on women now, on Tiktok and Reddit, and so on. Saying that they don’t want to get married because the woman are entitled, and treat them badly. A lot of them don’t even want to date anymore.

I don’t know how else to say this delicately so….

Ahem

If you are wiling to bang women who you hate, and have zero respect for, just because you somehow think that you are better than them…that makes you just as immature and entitled as those women.

If you want a whore, just say so, don’t try to pin this on women.

Granted, a lot of us are like that…newsflash, a lot of men are like that too.

So you can either take you bad experience in the past, which probably mean you have crap taste and don’t watch for red flags, and broad-brush all women, like a child would, or you can conclude that yes, you dated some bad apples, but you know not all Pope are the same, and you’re going to adjust your methods to find the kind of girl you actually need.

Case in point for me:

I have liked several guys, in recent years, my choices were not so smart. Luckily, I never got as far as dating them when I found this out, I simply was friends with them, and I realized it…

Which, by the way, is always a smart way to start, try getting to know a girl as friend before you date her, and maybe you’ll figure out real quick where she’s a good fit.

What I did learn from being disillusioned was first, that a lot of guys are pathetic, but secondly, that might just be what I was attracted to.

After being abused by my father, my standards for men were knee high, if that much. I expected them to have little to no consideration for my feelings, to blame me if anything went wrong, to ignore me whenever it was not fun fro them, and to make me feel weird of caring that they did.

And that was in a friendship, so trust me, you can spot this early on before you are intimate.

I clued in to it, Thank God (literally), and have pretty much cut that guy out of my life.

But it’s what I was comfortable with, and if I hadn’t heard much better stories form other women, I’d never have known that men are not all like that. Some are actually really good.

I haven’t found one for myself yet, but when I do, I want to be able to accept it, not think it’s just an act. Sound familiar ladies?

(To be fair, if you live in a country where arranged marriage is the norm, I imagine none of this seems relevant…just play along if that’s the case, I have to write from experience.)

I have respect for men, as men, as humans, but I have no respect for men who bash on women for stupid reasons.

Your experiences are not universal, okay?

And again, if you have only dated twits, then check your type. Maybe you are drawn to toxicity, maybe you think they are easy, and then when that’s not true, you feel betrayed.

But no woman is easy, even if she is loose. To really get into a relationship with a woman is never easy, and vice versa.

I want to reiterate that using a woman for sex who you have no respect for and you are wiling to defame publicly on the internet is pretty crappy to do. I suppose you’d say if she did the same, she was just being an entitled b-word.

And if your conclusion is that dating is a waste of time…fine, don’t date.

But it’s no excuse to let your poor judgment sour other young men on the idea of dating and actually trying to approach a relationship maturely.

Of course, women should not be giving sex to men who are not going to marry them, and haven’t married them.

If he says he doesn’t believe in marriage, ladies, run. He doesn’t’ want to risk it on you, why should you risk it on him?

Isn’t this just an excuse to cohabit with people who you are not sure are marriage material, because you can always get out if it goes wrong?

But what is the point at all then? You just want the ease of a two person household, two incomes, and sex…without binding yourself to it and risking it all?

What kind of attitude is that?

And then we wonder why the love dies and they feel like there’s no meaning in it anymore. We treat each other like conveniences, and then we wonder why we feel like we are just a convenience to them.

Moving on…

3: Money

As I said before, divorce can be pricey.

But there are practical solutions to it, if you are really doing to worry that much about it.

You can get legal agreements about who gets the money and how before you get married, you can get contracts about that kind of thing.

Some people suggest that as an alternative to marriage…but it kind of just sounds like marriage with the financial steps, but not the moral and emotional ones.

You can have separate bank accounts, if you insist…might be smartest anyway, couples often fight over how they spend joint checking account money.

But is money really a good reason not to get married?

Making it an issue kind of makes it seem like you are treating your SO like a prostitute.

I do think couples should be clear about their work expectations before they get married. I think people should be clear about all their expectations before marriage.

I personally like having a job, but I don’t like having a full time one, so if my husband does, that would be great.

I mean, I’ve gotta do something with my time, I have nothing against women working if they want to, but I do think it’s kind of missing the point to make marriage about that.

Marriage was not instituted to provide financial stability. It was instituted, firstly, by God, and later by cultures, primarily for companionship and reproduction.

First of all for companionship.

Not all couples who get married need the financial support, and it should not be a factor in divorce or marriage if you ask me. People who divorce just to get money are terrible.

It’s a factor because we have to live, but it’s not the primary concern. You can arrange it all beforehand, but don’t marry someone if they are not okay with you providing for yourself, if that is what you want, and don’t marry someone who is not okay providing for you, if that is what you want (and men do that too, by the way, all the time). Just know what you want.

But if you rush into a relationship not being clear about that, then it was your own fault, and you need to fix it, not just dump that person. Someone will have to compromise, but it’s not enough to slit over, money should not be put above things like love, honor, and a stable family for your kids.

Why do I even need to say that? How far have we fallen?

4: Marriage is oppressive to women because they have to change their name, and it make them men’s property.

….

Right…

Well, that has been true in many cultures and eras, but as it is now…that’s stupid.

You don’t have to change your name, but the reason that women did was to signify a new family being started, with the husband. She leaves her father’s house.

In several cultures, married couples keep both family names, to signify this, and in others cultures, people do not eve have last names.

But marraige iexist in every culture.

So, even if you want to say that in the West, and East, even, marriage oppresses men or women because they change their name, it’s not a sold argument against marriage, just against the form of marriage in this country.

You can get marreid many different ways. You cna kep yoru name, you cn atke both names, the husband can take the wife’s aname if he wants, even.

It hsa nothig to do with marraige itself.

But if you are willing to forego the commitment of marriage because you don’t want to be under a man…

Then yeah, you probably shouldn’t be in a relationship, period.

Whether the man dominates or not (and personally is more of a factor then gender there, even in countries that are patriarchal) marriage, and relationships, require some submission to each other, some humility, some willingness to let the other person have their way.

Going into it with the attitude that the idea itself is oppressive to you is the best recipe for disaster I can imagine.

Like when men all women the “Ball and chain” I hate that.

My father used to refer to it as “having the training collar on his neck”

He actually dominated my mom, always unfairly, and didn’t do what she wanted at all. So I found it puzzling he’d compare it to that. More like my mom had on the collar, and he’d throw a fit if she stepped out of line.

I mean, in a way, it’s nice that all these men and women out themselves online.

Yeah, no one should be marrying you. Yikes!

But it annoys me that poeple applaud this.

Thee people are spoiled, selfish, and superficial.

They care more about their own convenience in marriage then they do about growth, or anyone else’s happiness.

Rom coms used to talk about how you want to make someone else happy when you love them, now it’s all about that makes me happy.

I’m convinced most of the people who get divorced and then tell others marriage is a waste of time, didn’t actually try that hard.

If you went into it with a selfish attitude, then yeah, it wasn’t going to work for you.

Some people are smart enough to realize that partway through and change, but most just quit, because we’ve made quitting easy.

And FYI, if divorce is so tough on men, why do so many of them choose it over working out their problems in counseling?

And women too, for that matter.

I am not married, but, I have actual relationships with people, ones I have to work at.

And here’s the kicker: If you don’t work on your family relationships, you will not work on your marriage one either.

We all have problems in our family, but most people ignoring them, they fight, they forget about it, and nothing changes.

That was my dad, he’s comfortable that way. That was what he witnessed growing up. He just thought we’d be the same as his wacked out family.

But my sisters and I actually want to be able to improve, and grow, and we had enough.

We have worked on our relationship with each other, and it’s much better now than it ever was when my dad was around.

I plan to apply that to marriage also.

Look, I have had moments of wondering if I’d ever get on good terms with my mom, or my siblings ever again, but we have moved beyond it.

If you stick with it, and the other person is willing, you can work it out.

Marriage should probably hit a rough patch after 5 years at the maximum, if you both are maturing and changing.

Oh, and that brings me to number 5, I almost forgot this one:

5. The person you marry sign going to change so much in 5 years. So you should not get married, but especially, you should not marry young.

You know…how young you are when you marry has never made any real difference overall, historical speaking. It’s is how mature people were when the got married. Teens have thought like adults in culture where teens have to be adults, and now we have 25 year olds who still think like kids, because they can. It does not matter.

In cultures where marriage is supported, young people can work it out as easily as older people. Younger people are more willing to learn, and more likely to compromise, if they can be made to see something is not working. They are more likely to focus on outside things, and not just their own interests, like older people do. All traits that enable growth. If you’re 35, you’re not likely to be pliable, or willing to learn.

Also, young men are way more likely to grow out of abusive/toxic behaviors, because they often od them out of immaturity, not for the power trip. And young women are more likely to become sympathetic with time, not not as demanding, because you adjust your expectations at that age.

If you get to 30 and you have not committed to anyone, you’ve had not reason to change, or realize your quirks may not be the easiest to live with, you take that into marriage, and sure, you may have less conflict…but that’s not always a sign of the healthiest relationship.

Conflict can be a good thing, if you are growing.

The time I hardly fought with my family was the time we were the most distant. We don’t fight a lot now, because we fought a lot for a while, working stuff out, adjusting, learning.

Even therapists will tell you sometimes that conflict can show you have real feelings, and the lack of it can show you’ve shut down.

Older people have less enthusiasm, but that also means they have less drive to mature. You have learned to overlook, or to just avoid.

If that come after years of growth, that’s a good thing, but if you’ve skipped that part, I have to wonder if you just didn’t want to change.

I won’t say every older couple is that way. Some people just don’t meet the right person till they are older.

My point is more that shaming people who want to get married young is foolish. If they are willing to put in the work, why shod they wait? Chances are they will get less wiling with time, not more willing.

At 23 I already like to have things more my way then I did at 18, but at 18 I lacked confidence in my own worth also.

I think waiting more time for me was better, but I do not want to wait till 30. I had good reason to wait, my dad mess ed me up good.

But if that is not the case, I see no reason by normal, people, with supportive families who are 20 or 21, and willing to treat marriage with the seriousness it deserves, should not get married.

It’s true, kids do rush into it, but that doesn’t mean it the age that’s the problem, it’s more of that lack of preparation beforehand.

Like going to marriage right after college, if you have never been responsible for anyone, never had to cook and clean for yourself or others, and never had to be on a budget and independent of your parents, that is stupid. Sets you up to be dependent on them in your marriage too, and to expect your spouse to take care of you, not for it to be mutual.

But if you have been prepared, and have made your own decisions before with success, then if you want to get after college, you should. It’s worked for many couples.

And I should say also, you can’t put all couples into one box.

Some people are not ready for marriage at 20, but that does not mean everyone isn’t.

I have had my share of snarky comments form older people about my mental readiness for anything. I have proved time and again that I can make better decisions than my grandparents did, and my parents, often enough.

Given how their marriage ended up, I’m inclined to think I could pick a husband better than they did also, but even if I picked a bad guy, now, at 23, is it any worse than my grandmother who picked bad mean 3 times in a row, even older than I am?

If you can learn from your mistakes, that is what matters.

I suggest either being friends or dating for at least 2 years before you marry, just so you really have a chance to see who that person really is.

But what matters is character, the willingness to change.

It is true, we change a lot over time.

And people who are commit to each other adapt to those changes.

It’s like people who cut off their family once they move out, clearly they let change affect their commitment.

But some of us put in the effort to talk and hang out still. Those people are more likely to grow with you.

This is all stuff to watch out for.

But as far as marriage itself being a bad idea, it is not, and it has never been.

That is alie.

And if people are questioning a thing that has worked across every culture, every time, and every moral group, then I question how big their heads are. Flouting thousands of years of experience because you think you’re just too special for marriage, well…yeah, says a lot about you.

Until next time, stya honest–Natasha

[PS: If you think I left anything out, feel free to shoot me a comment, I wouldn’t mind revisiting this subject. It’s one a lot of people are wondering about now.]

A gamble–analysis of Gambit’s character in X-Men

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Someone actually requested I write this, that’s a first.

And I’m happy to oblige.

Like I said in my post about Rogue, check it out here if you haven’t: When you know you’ll hurt people who love you…, I hadn’t heard of Gambit before watching this show.

At first I didn’t think I’d like him, I’ve seen the flirty, player boy character one too many times on shows and movies to really be into it anymore.

But as with the other characters, this show surprised me by making him seem real, and likable, and he’s actually my second favorite male character.

I’d have to rank the characters as:

Rogue

Wolverine

Gambit

Storm

Beast

And of course, Nightcrawler holds a special place in my heart as the two time side character. It’s impressive how characters that show up only twice in the whole show were still iconic to fans, that’s some good writing.

Suck it Avatar. We don’t need to make them almost die to be relevant.

(Kidding, I like Avatar too, guys. I just don’t like Jet…)

Anyway, so about Gambit.

Full disclose, I’ve never read any X-men comics, I honestly probably won’t just because there’s so many comics, I wouldn’t know where to start to get the really good versions of them and I can’t spend that kind of money hunting through it all. Spiderman was my peak comic book experience. Nothing else has really felt as cool since.

So I have only the show’s limited focus on Gambit to go by.

But the show does a good job with the other characters, so I’m going to assume he’s depicted pretty accurately and analyze him.

I was asked specifically to talk about his hang ups.

Now that be a tricky question, no?

Forgive my poor Cajun accent in writing.

The fact is, like many characters, Gambit is not much for talking about his issues. I think he thinks he’s the strong, silent type.

I actually like that it’s not exactly true, and his idea of himself is probably not actually his character.

Gambit turned out to have a surprisingly soft, compassionate side, even from episode one where he takes it upon himself to protect Jubilee after only just meeting her. He can be a bit too flirty and rude at times to Logan and the others, but he’s always there when they need him.

Ironically, Logan complains about Gambit’s attitude, but acts the same way, must be one of those like forces repel things.

The show doesn’t hint at any thing between Gambit and Rogue until the episode “The Cure” where Logan drops the bomb that Rogue kind of likes him.

Could have fooled me up till then…the show kind of just threw ships at us, but luckily, they were usually likable…usually *cough, JeanxScott is the worst ship *cough.

Well, naturally, Gambit takes that as an invitation to start flirting with Rogue every single scene they’re in together.

Of course she finds it annoying, but secretly charming, because he’s not afraid of her.

I mean, sure, she wants to slap him in that over-confident face sometimes, but, it’s refreshing.

And of course, it leaves us more mature audience members asking ourselves “But why isn’t he afraid?”

It’s not even that Gambit is impervious to the dangers of Rogue’s power, he gets zapped one episode and is kind of mad about it, but it doesn’t stop him from hitting on her afterward.

Oddly enough, he seems to drop the whole issue of being able to touch her at all, and just keeps pushing for a relationship of some sort.

I don’t know if this was stupid or genius on the show’s part, sticking the flirty ladie’s man with the untouchable woman, and saying “hey, this is a great idea!”

My sister says they are kind of a thing in the comics too…I’d say the same irony is there.

I think that some of the appeal to Gambit, might very well be the danger. He seems like that type of guy. Other girls are too easy for him to get, Rogue’s a challenge, both with her power, and with her constant rebuttal, but not quite refusal.

And some men like a challenge, right?

(Wish I could find one)

I think I said this before, but how funny is it that his name is Gambit, and it’s a gambit to try to be close to someone like Rogue.

She’s got a lot of baggage, even if her power wasn’t an issue.

They do get one kiss one time when her power has been neutralized by some device, (it doesn’t last), and Gambit says he loves her, something he never told anyone before, according to him.

This is an interesting detail.

In his backstory episode, some blond b-word claims that Gambit has been with a lot of women

(To which we all say “we know!”)

But “loves only her”…which is not true, but okay, they were engaged once…given that Gambit left her at the alter and ran away, I guess it wasn’t that real.

Maybe he did lover her in a way, but in his words, they were both young, and he was scared.

Well, he sure stepped it up, huh? Went form crazy blond woman to country girl who’s not able to touch people…don’t know if that’s brave or delusional.

I do ship it, for the record, but I mean, anyone ever wonder how in real life this stuff would work?

Gambit at least seems to think that whatever he’s got with Rogue is special.

Rogue however, doesn’t really seem to trust his words. As she continually rebuffs any attempt to get closer to her. She’s willing to sort of date at a distance, but not to commit.

You’d think Gambit would be the one who could commit, but honestly, he seems pretty devoted, all things considered, she’s the one who can’t settle down with the idea.

Gambit lets Rogue have her space, because being a stalker wasn’t cool in the 90s, I take it. But he’s still persistent.

So the question for all of us is, how serious is this guy?

That’ the question about Gambit at all times though. No one in the X-Men really seems to trust his intentions. They all turn on him as soon as Bishop accuse him of assassinating someone. Though Gambit clearly had no plans to do so, and was framed. But the others seem to feel their suspicion was justified, even so, since he never tells them anything about himself.

I mean, if my life history was being part of a gang war/cult that worshiped some forest goddess and paid a weird tithe to her, and almost married the opposition gang’s nut job…I might hesitate to explain that to the X-Men, too.

Though Storm would probably get it, she was worshiped once. Actually, she says she knows Gambit the best, maybe that’s the reason. She feels normal to him.

Rogue stands up for Gambit, but is not especially confident in him.

Gambit is kind of hurt by this, but doesn’t seem to hold it against her so much as he just accepts no one will trust him and he’s on his own.

Actually, Gambit believes in no one and nothing, and doesn’t trust people, as Logan says, or Scott, I forget who was being the biggest prick in that episode.

In the episode with Nightcrawler (which is by far one of the best in the series, I unbiasedly think), Gambit professes that there’s no God and nothing out there for anyone.

I find that funny since he used to pay tribute to a goddess, but then again, maybe he thinks God is indifferent because of that weirdness. That spirit kept them warring against each other, and hurting each other, maybe they’re better off on their own, in his mind.

It’s kind of sad really. Gambit has been burned by his family, as his brother betrayed him and jumped him into the gang. His ex was nuts and tried to off his friends and his brother, and their deity was kind of vindictive…

And then the X-men are suspicious of him too.

Maybe his perspective that he’s a loner makes sense.

So why does he pursue Rogue? Is it because he knows it won’t happen, so he’s essentially alone still?

My theory is that at first, yeah, that probably was it. It was exciting, and there was low emotional risk in his mind because of her “issues” with being close to someone.

I’m trying to think of a PG way to say that they can’t have sex…and I can’t, because I know everyone is thinking it even if I don’t say it.

It is kind of a roadblock though, what is marriage without sex right? And romance for most people has to involve it at some point.

However…

I think Gambit actually fell for Rogue for real along the way.

She is pretty easy to love, even as a fan. I mean, she’s sweet, feisty, and caring, what’s not to like about Rogue. Her crippling insecurity is her biggest problem, but it is understandable, and she’s not what I’d called Toxic over it. Just confused and scared and sad.

I’m surprised Gambit was the only one, honestly, but I guess the show thought Jean was the one who’d have multiple men after her…because she’s got the personality of your average pick me girl in a Wattpad fic…or nay other rom-com…

Go figure.

Actually, it is harder to write a triangle around a girl who’s actually got a personality, because it’s easier to see who’d be a bad match for her, people won’t get behind a ship so easily if the chemistry is in questions. Look at Avatar. The only thing fans complain about is how that show did ships. (For good reason, not a single one has chemistry except possibly Sokka’s.)

Gambit probably just flirted with Rogue at first because, well, that’s what he does. But sometimes you pretend something long enough, you do it for real. Rogue is just easy to like…and then before he knew it, it was real.

That’s my guess as to why he didn’t get bored of it.

I mean think about it, she’s fun to tease, but any man who didn’t really like her would get tired of teasing a girl who he’s never going to be able to get in the you-know-whats of.

But no, it just goes on forever, apparently.

And one has to wonder what point Gambit sees in it, honestly.

I’m not sure he really thinks that hard about it, actually. He seems like a guy who acts more on impulse most of the time, and habit. I get the feeling that in his mind, he likes who he likes, and it don’t matter really what the obstacle or realistic expectations of it are.

But there are moments where he shows a bit more real emotion about Rogue, that indicate he’s not just kidding.

He’s quick to worry about her, quick to notice if anything is bothering her, and quick to get jealous.

Jealous of what, really, what can she do? She can’t cheat on him.

But he seems actually jealous of her affections and attention.

I think it’s interesting.

Rogue raises all kinds of issues about our own insecurity, if we pay attention to her character. And that’s cool, I really like that.

But Gambit raises the question of what really is and isn’t love. What are we really in a relationship for?

You know, the Bible doesn’t give sex as the first reason to institute marriage. That sounds kind of wrong, actually.

I mean, who gets married just so they can have sex.

I really hope no one reading this answered that in the affirmative…

Sure, sex is nice, and important…but it’d be a stupid thing to base your relationship off of.

Honestly, I think it’s great being a virgin and just not having the whole sexual compatibility thing on the table, I get to focus on what really matters, not just hormones.

I’m sure none of us believe Gambit is in that exact position.

But who knows, maybe he’s had enough of superficial relationships, and is realizing they just don’t make you happy, they aren’t real, they don’t satisfy.

Rogue is too much of a challenge to have it not be real, if your’e going to keep pursuing her. Maybe that’s the appeal.

Maybe he likes the idea that someone has his back. It’s rare to find any friends as devoted as the X-men, and Rogue in particular never would abandon a friend. Sometimes to her own detriment, but there it is.

We all like to feel special, Gambit may also find it flattering to be preferred by someone who has no reason to impress anyone. I mean, I can’t lie, it would make me feel pretty special too.

To be honest, I think what makes the ship so interesting is simply that’s it’s not that easy to figure out.

I think that it’s more real, because there’s probably so many factors that could go into it.

The thrill seeking aspect of it is balanced out by there also being a trust aspect.

One line Gambit does say to Rogue that’s interesting is early on when she reminds him, none too politely, that she put someone in a coma the last time she kissed them:

“Maybe it’s worth it, no?” He says, with a very punch-able face, I have to say.

I can’t really blame Rogue for going off in a huff after that.

Still, if you unpack it, isn’t that the question?

Rogue has no self worth whatsoever when it comes to love. She believes she’s not worth anything, no risk, nothing.

I have to wonder, even if she lost her power, would she accept herself? I think she’d still push people away. She’d find some new reason.

I did the same thing. Without my father around to bully me, I found other ways to look down on myself.

Gambit seems like the last person to take love seriously out of the team, but maybe, just maybe, he’s kind of hit on something.

Maybe it is worth it.

He might be cocky, arrogant at times, and often stubborn…but, love isn’t really about being perfect.

It’s not always the most innocent people who actually understand love the best, sometimes if you’re too nice, you can’t accept other people have flaws, and you don’t know how to love them.

Church people know this struggle.

But on the other hand, if you’ve hit the branches on the tree of poor life decisions…then maybe you’re a little easier on people.

I think the show raises the same question to the fans as Rogue has.

Can we really trust Gambit? Is he for real? Or is it just some joke.

Rogue seems convinced she’ll wake up from it one day, and will look foolish for ever trusting it.

Sure she likes him, but she doesn’t want to love him, because she gets hurt then.

But it also hurts to be strung along. Gambit is not one to complain, but…

Come on, it would bother anyone.

It’s sort of like Rogue is saying that just love is not good enough, she won’t be satisfied without the touch aspect being resolved. Though she claims to be okay wither herself, we all know it’s not true.

Like I said in her post, how important is touch to a romantic relationship?

After I wrote it, I was reminded of the stories I know about people who are paraplegic, some all over their body, and who are still married.

People who have cerebral palsy, or some other disease, often can’t move normally.

There was that famous guy who had no legs and no arms, but got married and had a kid.

I’ve heard that Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife weren’t able to be intimate after a point because of his disease, and Eleanor said that there was still love even without that.

Hormone driven fans are often obsessed with sex and kissing and touching in shipping. Rogues’ a real challenge, most people probably just prefer to fix her problem, in fan fiction, and not deal with it.

I think that her problem is probably fixable, based on the show’s logistics.

But I think that’s not really the point.

Rogue is not going to get love just because she can be touched. If someone can’t love you without that, they don’t really love you. That’s the hard truth.

Sure, they might like you and want to get with you, but that’s not love.

In our over-sexualized, lonely culture, it’s hard to imagine any love without sex.

Or some form of touch.

Anime kind of has this stigma both about kissing and being intimate until the relationship is further along, and also about even using the words “love” and showing care for someone.

We’re left starved both emotionally and physically from watching it. I think that’s why fans rush to the perverted side of it so quickly.

Where you have no emotional connection, the sexual seems like an appealing substitute…but it’s empty too.

Love is not about sex, and it’s not about giddy feelings. That’s a nice part of it, sure.

But I kind of like that with Gambit and Rogue, it really can’t be about that. Even if, someday, her problem was resolved, it still couldn’t have been about that.

If Gambit showed hesitancy, we’d all have to hate him, even if we understood it. Not many men, or women, would want a part of that.

And it is sad…but, as I said, real life couples have to forego physical intimacy sometimes.

It’s almost a crime in people’s eyes now to suggest that maybe, just maybe, it’d be okay not to have that.

I mean, if you met the love of your life, they suited your personality, they were loyal, caring, and funny…but they just couldn’t have sex…or touch you…would you abandon them?

I remember story I heard on reddit of a guy who married a woman who was asexual…that is, she could have sex, but didn’t enjoy it the way other people do.

He said it was almost a deal-breaker, but he was glad he stuck with her. They had a great relationship, and she’s a loving wife…that aspect is just not as prevalent, but he’s learned to live with it. She has to make sacrifices too.

I’m not saying I’d choose it on purpose, but you know, maybe it’s is worth it.

It would be weird to want that, upfront, but it’s not weird to accept it, if you love them.

I’m not sure I can say for sure if Gambit is deep enough to think that out, but he does hint at it.

The guy who does’t trust anyone is still willing to gamble with love.

I feel like he’d be the most shocked if it ever worked out.

In the end, Gambit and Rogue are too similar. They are drawn to each other because they both think no one will love them.

What keeps them hooked is that the other person never quite ruins it. They rebuff, and argue, but they stick together, and drop hints, and there’s something deeper there.

It’s not really the tease of romance so much as it’s the draw of being loved itself that has these two caught.

It’s like “what if they did love me?”

It seems like a 10 to 1 chance against it, that it would end well.

But Gambit is willing to roll those dice, because really, what does he have to lose? The X-men only get a few chances in life for some things, you’d better take them.

Rogue maybe doesn’t see it that clearly, but she’s still pulled in by it.

They are also opposites, Gambit is willing to risk it all because he sets little value in his own safety, Rogue is not wiling to risk anything because she exaggerates the importance of her own danger to others, and thinks she’s worse than other people.

Sticking them together was a crazy idea because they repel with their hangups, but they also attract.

And, it’s a gamble, really, trying to see how it would end.

I tend to always think erring on the side of love is better. If we don’t have love, our lives are empty anyway. Love is risk, but it’s more of risk not to have it.

But some people don’t feel that way.

I think the show itself couldn’t commit for that reason, and I don’t know if the comics ever did.

Superhero fiction tends to be afraid of committed love, something about it seems alien to superheroes, their lives are dual, masked in deception, usually.

The X-Men were always an oddity in Marvel, because they didn’t hide their identities, and live regular lives managing their powers. I don’t think there’s a DC parallel to it.

The X-Men could have relationships because they acted more human. Superman needs no one, Batman refuses to need anyone, and many others just have too many issues and bad luck.

X-men can have diversity in how tragic their stories are and how hopeless they seem, so you can root for them with more hope.

But in the end, it’s still a superhero show.

The main thing is how we’d answer the question ourselves.

What part of love do we value the most? Why do we want companionship?

How we answer that is what makes for a good foundation for romance.

Less of a buzz maybe, if you pick true companionship, but it lasts longer. And it helps more.

And with that thought, I think I’ll end this, until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

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