Letting Go

On July 14, 2015, Harper Lee's novel Go Set a Watchman, sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, was published to significant acclaim and controversy. The plot of the story concerns Jean Louise Finch (known to most as Scout) coming home and making the discovery that it is a place rife with bigotry and hatred. It is a realization that shakes her to her core, makes her feel unsafe around her own family and childhood hometown. This of course is a sentiment which is likely to be shared by many of the readers, who have been familiar with this story and its setting for decades. Atticus Finch in particular is idolized as one of the great characters of American fiction, between the original book and his iconic portrayal in the movie adaptation.

There has been an argument about whether this book should have been published at all, whether Harper Lee, who is understood to have written it before its more famous predecessor and then shelved it indefinitely, was taken advantage of in her old age. I think, however, that it is extremely important to get this recontextualization of the story, and perhaps it was even for the best that it be published so many decades later instead of following shortly on the heels of the original. The world needed time to grow up, to reach a more mature understanding, just like Jean Louise did. The cruel reality is that, where To Kill a Mockingbird represented an idealized reflection of childhood, Go Set a Watchman presents the understanding that comes with adulthood, and with it the shattering of memories that were once precious to us. Innocence, once lost, cannot easily be reclaimed.

...Yes I know Lindsay Ellis basically did this exact introduction in her Hobbit trilogy, but since I've been reading these books recently it's hard not to think of them.

= = = = =

On July 30, 2019, I left home to go to BronyCon, a trip that would last nearly a week. It was my fourth time going to the event, and it was shaping up to be a big deal since this was the last year it would be taking place. Over the course of all my visits, I'd gotten to meet a lot of people in-person, people whom before I had only known as names and pictures on a screen, and with the significance of the event bringing in so many more people I would be getting a chance to meet more than ever. We had a big dinner together the night before the start of the convention. We had a party in a hotel room where I brought movies for everyone to watch. Those were some of the best days of my life.

It was a simpler time. MLP G4 had not quite ended yet. My sister hadn't transitioned. The dog we had at the time hadn't been stolen and then miraculously recovered. I was still playing Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled. My mother's parents were living in a house in a gully a couple counties over. The scourge that is MLP G5 had not yet been inflicted upon the world.

I had plans to go to Trotcon next year; Columbus isn't too far away, I could conceivably drive there if I didn't want to deal with a plane. But then, you know, certain things happened, traveling plans had to be scuttled, it was a big deal, I'm sure you were there. Any and all convention trips were put on indefinite hold. I would have to wait some time for the next opportunity to go to Trotcon, or Anthrocon, or Midwest Furfest, or anywhere else.

And over the years, things...changed. Circumstances changed. Perspectives changed. I changed.

It is common to experience bouts of depression following a convention, the vacuum that comes after so much socialization. Life seemed mundane in the days following BronyCon, everyone so much farther away than they had once been. As time went on, however, I felt that that distance in my relationships was steadily increasing yet further. As I tried earnestly to better myself, it was getting harder to ignore certain aspects of the peers in my social circles. Complacency. Ignorance. Hatefulness. It certainly didn't help that events in the world around us were making it so much easier to root out that behavior. I for one reveled when a certain shithead who had been the plague of my circles for years finally got suspended for good because he just couldn't keep from crowing about antivax hoaxes. I have heard the argument that we should treat these people with some modicum of respect, that we should acknowledge that they are people just like us, but this argument does not hold water because I believe that if you were to turn it around, they would not offer that same courtesy. The imageboard-bred authors of That Thing You Like would never agree that I am a person just like them because they believe that I am inherently lesser to them and not worthy of respect because we don't hold the same ideals.

"Something has happened to me," Jean Louise thinks to herself, trying to rationalize how she can suddenly be aware of the vileness of her hometown peers, how she can think of this behavior as cause for alarm when she grew up under the same circumstances, when she ought to be the same way. "Something has happened to me." is also the secret phrase to include in your response so that I know you actually read this whole thing, by the way. It is this notion which I ponder when I feel that I am no longer comfortable in the presence of the people I was once all too happy to laugh about pony tits with. Some of it was glaring, some of them just couldn't resist showing their ass when it came to swastika-emblazoned horses or algorithm-based art theft. A lot of it, though, was always there. There was always dishonesty, there was always apathy, there was always ignorance, there was always edginess. I don't think I can say what exactly the turning point was for me realizing this. Maybe it was my sister's transition, making me feel definitively that the subject of LGBT politics was something I could no longer be a mere passive observer on, dovetailing into the start of the pandemic a month later and the uproar which would ensue. Maybe it was before that, when I realized that I really ought to phase out "trap" and its connotations from my lexicon due to the implications involved. Maybe it was when I decided that I liked bimbos for the idea of being free to be oneself. It could have been any number of factors.

And there is a part of me which wishes this wasn't the case. It would be nice if I could just not have to fret about any of this. I desperately want to be able to go to a convention again, I want to talk to people, I want to hold their hands, I want to breathe the same air as them (through a facemask or fursuit, hopefully). This is made unavoidably difficult, however, when so many of the people I would like to meet with are still in the gravity of those whom I would rather hold at arm's length. I don't want to go to a social gathering just so I can dodge the people who have shown the ugly they bear underneath. I get enough stress by having to share a house with a father who can't stop being racist on a daily basis.

There is a certain problem in the furry and brony fandoms wherein they are spaces which are built around a community of acceptance. These are the underdogs, the punching bags of the internet, those who are used to being mocked for their interests and identities, and so they feel the need to band together. Many would prefer to avoid conflict at all costs. They all just want to be friends, after all.

To be blunt, though, this is a dangerous outlook to have on one's social environment. Blind acceptance invariably attracts those who would take advantage of that acceptance. This is how the fandom becomes infested with bigots, MAGA supporters, the alt-right, edgy channers, deranged conspiracy theorists, sexual offenders, and more. And those who would communicate and do business with those sorts, while certainly not guilty by association of the same faults, are implicitly permitting them to maintain their foothold in the community. Trying to avoid "politics" only means that you are blinding yourself to the rhetoric which would be used to insert those politics into your everyday life. To say nothing of the fact that appeals to neutrality, pleas to maintain the status quo, are a common tactic of the far-right to make others believe that they are unassuming.

You are not a neutral party and you never were. If you are following this account, I can guarantee that you are of an identity that is deviant to societal norms in some fashion. Maybe you aren't a person of color, maybe you aren't gender-nonconforming, maybe you aren't queer, maybe you aren't overweight, maybe you aren't even neurodivergent. If you liked when I wrote about a funny horse gaining hundreds of pounds, about breasts bigger than weather balloons, about face-smothering smooches, about anatomy-destroying insertions, then you are intrinsically atypical. You are a furry, you are the punching bag of the internet, you are an object for mockery, somewhere on 4chan or Kiwifarms or Something Awful there is a post about you or something you enjoy. You are outside the realm of what is considered commonly acceptable, and these infiltrating dissidents, who would have all that displeases them destroyed, absolutely will throw you to the wolves if it is ever convenient for them.

And in case any such people are reading this right now, just a reminder:

Stains is about depression and trauma and prominently features a character contending with their gender and ultimately deciding to transition.

Rising Tide is about the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and is presented through the lens of an explicitly left-leaning protagonist.

You and Me, Always Forever is about my personal struggles with identity.

And there are plenty of stories to come which contend with similar subjects.

If that's a problem, then you're free to either walk away or expose yourself so I can be rid of you.

I'm tired of this. I'm tired of people who aren't interested in thinking. I'm tired of the idea that wanting to examine an idea critically is pretentious snobbery. I'm tired of being made to feel ashamed for wanting to interrogate hateful and ignorant rhetoric.

And I'm most tired of all of not knowing how to handle any of this. I feel all of this anger festering in me, it's poisonous. What am I supposed to do? Lower my standards enough to be okay with the people who relentlessly chant "bigger" and decry any kind of complaint as alarmism?

As of this writing, I have not finished reading Go Set a Watchman. Jean Louise's uncle is telling her about how people aren't so different--sound familiar? I heard previously that the resolution is "Atticus isn't too racist actually so it's fine" and I really hope that's a gross understatement because I have a hard time imagining it being a satisfactory ending. If I were in her shoes, I would book it out of there and never look back, that side of the family is just better off forgotten. That's what I wake up wishing I could do every day, just so I could get away from my own aforementioned racist father. The idea of just blithely accepting that one's family or friends might hold beliefs that you can't reconcile with is...unthinkable to me.

What does it mean to let go of a grudge? I'm not sure that I've ever been able to do that in my life and I don't know how to start that now.