Africa is a large place and writing about it is often filled with even larger generalizations, this paper isn’t about that though. This paper is about a novelist from Kenya and LGBT rights, maybe you reader will learn something. Maybe you will not but the job of this paper is to tell you about an issue and why the author wants desperately for it to change across the world. A person’s existence should not be illegal.

Binyavanga Wainaina was a Kenyan novelist, known for humorous and thought provoking works. He was also a gay man before he passed but he could barely use the label to describe himself. Wainaina was loath to reveal himself due to the punishments and the fact that it is still considered illegal. Shortly after publishing the ‘lost’ chapter of his memoir, titled I am a homosexual man, he took the African LGBT community by storm. He was not blessed with a long life with his Nairobian fiance, 48 years is not what this country calls a long life after all. Nearly two decades from the life expectancy in Kenya is where his life was cut short. 

In this world it is illegal to be LGBT in 72 countries, 11 of these countries will use the death penalty for acting on it. Acting on it means being out examples of which are, wearing clothes of the a gender you were not assigned at birth, having relations with the same sex usually sexual, and being out as any identity other than cisgender heterosexual heteroromantic. In layman’s terms a straight person who identifies with their birth gender, something that is considered the norm in many places. 

That norm is false, in a place where one can be free to discard the shackles of heteronormativity, many find that they are attracted to more genders or even are not the gender they once thought they were. This phenomenon was seen heavily during the quarantine period in 2020, without the perceived norms many people began to present however they wished and many people realised they were trangender. I was among those who realised the gender they were assigned at birth was wrong and so during the quarantine period the trans community grew by a great deal. Other parts of the lgbt community grew as well and pride month was used for a protest of a different sort of protest in 2020 but that is simply history now. 

The aids crisis really happened because of how President Ronald Reagan didn’t care that as he put it the gays were dying, people only started to care once heterosexual or straight people began to have aids as well. The San Francisco gay mens choir can be used an example of this, in a very famous image you can see a few men in white, the survivors of the crisis. Now none are left and the members start each performance by saying, “I sing for two.”, because initially the choir was double the size it is now. Aids was preventable but homophobic leaders murdered hundreds of people.

March 13th 2020, the day before I turn seventeen, I am a bit excited at the idea of extra spring break. I exit the school with an armful of books and I don’t realize just how bad it will get, my friends and I all plan to see each other soon. If only we knew how bad it would get, April and May blend together in a haze of depression as I sleep hours and hours. I can’t tell you what those two months were like anymore, I barely passed my classes and became a senior. I continue through the year this ongoing little bit of numbness getting stronger and stronger. But then a glimmer of hope for me, I start to sing again. I sing out all of my emotions and use tik tok as the vector for my pain, I muddle through the months in this quiet dread and slow hatred. 

In June we went out to Montana to see my aunt and cousins, at this point I have tied all of my positive emotions to the mobile games ‘Pokemon Go’ and ‘Puella Magi Madoka Side Story: Magia Record’, the first game gives instant gratification and the second had some delicious darker themes. I already am realizing that my entire family is very poor, I got a dip pen and quill set at this point. I drew and drew. It was nice to create something once more. I let myself do more complicated things and became a much better artist, one of the few things I was able to always feel a positive emotion from at this point was animation. I have always loved animation and it’s just a wonderful medium for stories of all types. 

When I get back from Montana I learn of the protests going on and I become an observer from fear of this virus as I see innocent people brutalized. I always knew that the police were corrupt but I had never known the true extent but as I saw hundreds of thousands of people getting hurt during a peaceful protest all of the hope I had been storing in my body died. My mother did not understand why I cared so much, she thought that because George Floyd had been a criminal before he was killed that it was a bit of justice. I seem to be more into the ideas of forgiveness and rehabilitation than this so called devout christian woman. 

As the despair grows stronger I have to go back to school, it starts out fine albeit some people refuse to wear the masks all of the time and I rarely remove mine. In this bit of weakness I go through my apps and find a game I forgot I downloaded, this game called ‘Obey Me: Shall We Date?’ is an otome game or a dating sim type game. This game is not an average of the genre because the protagonist is not automatically a female who is shown to be dominated by the various datable male characters, the main character is actually shown as a pink sheep and has only neutral pronouns and the chosen name used to address them. This led to me finding a community of writers, artists, and theorists, I learn about so much and gain friends as well. 

These friends help me to become a better writer, I seem to have a talent for angsty writing. Writing full of pain and suffering, in my case often ending in death and open ended for more pain. I am not one for writing a happy ending where the main character gets to be happy. I make tales of extreme pain and a bit of gore but the community still likes me, I only write the most painful tropes and yet they support me going forward and writing more. I feel at home and learn more about myself as a writer and as a person at all. I get to feel happy for some of this time and I wish that I could have stayed in that blissful bit permanently but I can not. I am a senior and I have to graduate, I have to move on and get a job and every thought of that terrifies me because I am just a small broken person. I, Aeolus Dimension, am not a strong person, I am not a hero or a leader. I am a witchy, angsty, angry teenager who wanted to be a hero. Now I just want a home.

The Untamed is a drama about cultivators, it is part of the fantasy genre and uses an interesting magical system that I am excited to learn more about. There is a lot being set up in this first episode including the relationship between Wei Wexian and Lan Wangji, Wei Wexian is the main character so far and he is very in love with Lan Wangji. The pining is quite powerful and I can just see the way he wants to approach him but Wei Wexian is meant to be dead so he cannot. Imagine seeing the man you love after reawakening to your own identity and you can not even talk to him without risking his life. Is it not a tragedy akin to Romeo and Juliet? Just as in many cultures being a Homosexual is now looked down upon but in older societies it was fine so long as there were still heirs, this is two men who love each other more than life itself. Lahn Zhan even made certain that Wei Wexian would survive the battle that should have killed him, but he survived without his memories. This stygian tiger that was being fought over raises many questions but it seems like it will be explained more in depth later along with the system of magic being used. It seems that both Wei Wexian and Lan Wangji are master cultivators, better at the craft than all of the others shown in the first episode. Leading me to wonder if there are others better than the two or if they are truly masters of Cultivation.

This show was based on a novel called Mo Dao Zu Shi or The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, there are some key differences between the drama and the novel. Namely in the novel the two men are able to marry and kiss, whereas to pass the censors they are unable to do either in the show. Instead there are clever nods to what is happening off screen, two rabbits bumping noses to show a kiss, the giving of lucky money together, they even bow to an ancestor together. None of it is overtly romantic but if you know the subtext for somethings then it feels much more satisfying. Both the novel and the show are extremely popular worldwide, I first heard of the show from an Australian individual I follow on the social media website Tumblr. Having only seen an episode has me excited for the many things that haven’t happened quite yet on screen for me and I plan to find a copy of the novel, in part for the more romantic moments and in part because this is a wonderful story. I am honestly excited to sit down, watch and read this harrowing tale of love and monsters. Will it live up to the high expectations that have been set by both myself and the other fans or will I be left disappointed and feeling robbed as so many others have? Will this feel like another bit of queer baiting or will I be fulfilled when I finish this endeavor? 

From Bitter to Sweet

One must eat bitter to taste sweet, a Chinese proverb that the book To Live perfectly exemplifies. We see a family go from a life in high society to complete abject poverty, to mention a more crude saying without a pot to piss in. An immense change that few can come back from and fewer do in the other direction, but this isn’t about them this is about how the bitterness makes the sweetness sweeter. Now let us see how one can go from having the world as their oyster to being the oyster with a piece of sand in its mouth.

Fugui is born into nobility, those around the village bow to him and he can do anything he pleases. This of course does not last, he gambles away his land and money until he can no longer even live in his home. His father in law takes back his wife and he gets a taste of bitterness, his sweet daughter Fengxia is the sweetest thing during this period and she tells him that her mother will come back. When she does and he meets his son he finds a bit of sweetness not that it lasts, he is then taken into a war unwillingly, during which his mother dies and his daughter becomes mute. Another taste of the bitterness and the cycle continues until it is only him and the other Fugui and ox.

Fugui starts his life in comfort and with no cares, he needn’t even walk anywhere. Compared to others he lives like royalty and I have never known this feeling. When I was born it was much less like royalty that I lived, an oops baby, no matter how many times your family says God wanted you. The truth is that I was an accident and Fugui was wanted, a son for a family, and I, an accidental child meeting in suffering.  For our errors and emotions are what makes us human, the circumstances of our birth should be considered irrelevant for it is what we do with the gift of life that determines who we are, as the wise Mewtwo says. 

In my seventeen years of life very little of my suffering has actually been caused by myself, whereas we can trace Fugui’s life backwards and see the cause and effect of his actions. Since I am still a child I have not made many choices like Fugui has and the ones I have are still small. Choosing to audition for a play is miniscule compared to gambling away your family home after all. But the suffering I have caused myself was entirely mental, when I moved here I was very angry and depressed, I hid away and my life felt completely out of my control. I turned my pain inwards and caused myself harm but Fugui turned his suffering outwards and hurt his family. While both are bad, Fugui turning his rage outside is easier to see, if there are no obvious scars then it is easy to miss the storm under the skin. 

They say, to error is human but I believe a more accurate answer would be to suffer is human, we all meet with suffering and it shapes us. If you feel that you have never met with intense suffering then be prepared for a tidal wave.