Pet Peeves

Originally this was meant to be a Thursday Thirteen post, of which I'd learned from Ragnell's Written Word, but after I finished I realized that A) the point was to come up with your own list of thirteen items, not copy the same theme from someone else (I have a history of leaping before I look), and B) it wasn't Thursday anymore. So I'm just posting this as is without the Thu13 code/formatting.

I may get in on the Thursday Thirteen meme when Thursday next rolls around, though. Might be good for me, giving me something to write about every week. Now that I'm back in English class after a year's absence, I need all the practice I can get.

Anyway. In no particular order, just as they popped into my head...

Thirteen Things that Bug the Crap Out of Me

1. Moe. Fucking moe. Er, the Japanese artistic aesthetic, that is. Not Moe Howard. For those not familiar, moe is an aesthetic that has been gaining ground in anime and manga over the last five or six years. The exact definition is debated, but for the most part moe seems to be about catering to (usually male) viewers' preferences or fetishes using (usually female) characters; often, the moe character is young, cute, innocent, nonthreatening, and designed to make the audience want to nurture her or cheer her on. Add on various fetishistic personality or physical traits, such as clumsiness, stubbornness, glasses, schoolgirl or maid uniform, and so on. Typically, a manga or anime series that relies on the moe aesthetic includes many different such characters with different traits, so as to attract as wide an audience as possible. Moe is ostensibly non-sexual on the creators' part by definition, though creepy otaku pedophiles always find a way to sexualize it.

In summary: Underage females who exist for no reason but to attract a male audience. I don't need to explain why that's so wrong.

2. Ken Akamatsu. Filthy pedophile. In fact, I might as well file all lolicon and shotacon under this heading. Akamatsu just stands out because he's so high-profile.

3. Whiny comic book fans. Look, people, I'm just as sad as you are that Blue Beetle is dead, but it's been three fucking years so shut your yaps and find something else to bitch about.

4. While I'm bashing Scans Daily -- rabid slashers. OMG BATMAN IS STANDING THREE FEET FROM TAHT GUY THEY ARE TEH GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!1111one!!!SQUEEEEEE Shut the hell up. Nothing against slash -- hell, I think Booster Gold and the Blue Beetle make a damn cute couple -- but come. on.

5. Any and all outdoors work, but especially raking leaves and shovelling snow.

6. John Byrne. 'Nuff said.

7. Otaku who think that Neon Genesis Evangelion is the greatest anime series of all time. Yes it was very well-written (at times) and yes Hideaki Anno is a very good director (at times), but the quality of the animation was sub-par, the characters all grate, and at times it was utterly obtuse. Evangelion is not the end-all be-all of world animation.

Patlabor is.

8. Hell, can I just list otaku in general? Anybody who willingly takes that label upon him- or herself has to have something wrong with them.

9. Ranma 1/2. I still can't believe I sat through nine seasons of that garbage.

10. Die-hard video gamers. I hate them. The ones who call you a "n00b" if your high score is just 3 less than theirs. The ones who think Penny Arcade is the funniest thing of all time. The ones who won't stop quoting that lame-ass "All your base are belong to us" shit. I hate them. They need to die. I want to kill them with fire.

11. Gratuitous Japanese used by American otaku (Baka kawaii snorlax!!!), and gratuitous English used in Japanese media. The superficial overuse of two beautiful languages by people who don't fully understand them irks me. I'm willing to give the Japanese a tad more leeway though, given how their culture was totally overshadowed by America's for decades. But it's still annoying.

12. Political pundits. Bill O'Reilly, Al Franken, Ann Coulter, Jon Stewart, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore... I don't care if they swing left, right, up, down, or all around -- these are the kind of obnoxious self-aggrandizing assholes whom we avoid like the plague at cocktail parties, so why should we have to tolerate them on our mass media?

Except for Stephen Colbert. He plays D&D. That makes him cool. "What's a 23rd-level magic-user? Just somebody you don't wanna mess with."

13. They Might Be Giants. I don't care how clever or meaningful their lyrics are, I don't care how quirky they are, I don't care that they teamed up with Homestar Runner once, and no offense to those who do like them -- I'm just not into them. You can take away my geek card now.

~~~

So there ya go.

(Still hoping to do that 52-meets-Evangelion post... if I can muster up the energy...)