Deathiversary Week 2017: Day 7

Dear Deathiversary Diary,

    Miss Kira made me sleep in the cage tonight, which was really fun but also a little cramped. We got the biggest one and it's pretty much perfect, not too small but just enough so you can be reasonably comfy and still feel trapped. Cost us 200 buxos, the poor lady at the checkout was so confused, it was wonderful. So after waking up to that we slept in later than usual and so by the time we finished the alien movie it was time for Kira to go to work. From there I tried to catch up on all my monster movie writing projects, finishing and posting the one for yesterday (two days ago now, again my usual schedule for posts is to get them up the day after the day they were written/viewed, checked 2014 and 2015 and you'll see the same thing), plus writing, recording, and editing as much of the backlogged alien stuff as I could get to. It was especially easy since, not ever having a reason to watch my digital version before now, I didn't realize my copies of GXM and GXMG weren't subtitled and GMK and GMMG had that fucking awful international dub. I don't know what the hell happened after Destroyah, although to be fair I've never seen the international version of G2k, but if you're like me and watched the Japanese versions Sony's DVD's first and exclusively ever after, you have no idea how bad it got. I mean in the 90's it wasn't great but it was at least passable, but there were times where actors would be barking orders and the looper would just sound mildly annoyed. Point is, they were easy to not pay much attention to.
    At any rate, things where going along fine until I hit a snag... pickle cravings. Obviously I can't get pregnant, so don't even start with the jokes, but I do get very real and very intense pickle cravings, it's almost like an addiction thing. I've since figured, since they first started that is, that they are the result of a lack of potassium, which results in awful leg cramps even when I'm not tied up. Problem: they don't have del dixi up here, and I'm NOT going to eat any of that fucking Vlassic BULLSHIT. I simply will not put up with it. It wouldn't fix it anwyas. Solution? Go to Sam's and grab three huge multi-gallon... well, barrels, practically, of del dixi, the best pickles on Earth, and shipped them with all of my stuff so I could last about a year before needing to resupply, So I'll just go and unpack my pickles and OH WAIT MY SHIT STILL ISN'T HERE IS IT?! At the time, the cravings were so intense that I had to do something to alleviate the pickle situation, and without the car my options were limited. However, there is a corner store I can walk to without much problem, and pick up a jar of just something there, and Kira could bring home something else on the way home. When I got there a new problem arose: no pickles available. Solution: they have a condiment bar. I don't really know how it's supposed to work, but what I did was grab one of their in-house burgs that was sitting in that shitty heat lamp thing since 10 am. Dry and hard as a rock. Not important, I grabbed it and stuffed as many pickles as I could possibly fit in the bag and then tried to act cool at the checkout. It worked. For all the non-pickle connoisseurs out there, "fixin's bar pickles" are about as close as you can come to del dixi, and for me at the time they were a marvelous substitute.
    That little adventure came in the middle of GMK, and when I got home I watched some more awful dubbing while eating some yummy pickles, finished yesterday's post, finished writing the vid for alien days 3 & 4, and when Kira came home she brought 10 McDonner's burgs, which I've often relied on when no pickles were available because their pickles are pretty great, with double xtra pickles (we split the burgs and she game me all her picks), while watching the fifth alien movie. It was after midnight so it was technically tomorrow, and we had to make some room. See.. tomorrow I'm going to revisit gino 2 for the first time in 3 years, and I have no intention of doing it alone. To do that I have to get through Final Wars, which is over 2 hours long, and AvP, which is over 100 minutes, and of course gino 2 itself is also two hours long. This leaves a very cramped schedule and if we were going to be getting up later then we ought to not rush things. So, we did alien 5 while enjoying double xtra pickleburgs and the next day, well... you have to wait for that post.

93/93

Malyssa, May 15th 2017

     

Deathiversary Week 2017: Day 6

Dear Deathiversary Diary,

    After day 3's hiccup, I feel more "normal" now. I feel kinda bad because the amount of time it takes to put a video together, even with my rushed style, has meant even though I have the first three 8LIEN videos written and the first two recorded, I haven't edited and published a single one yet, and it's day 4 of that week. Being the weekend, Kira was home the whole time, and it was nice to be totally surrounded by all of that stuff again. When she's gone, all I do is putter around the house and have fits and take too many pills. She can't stay home forever, either, sooner or later she'll leave me to my own devices, and so long as the moving company keeps fucking me over I won't be okay. It won't be until I get all my stuff, get unpacked, and get everything in order so we can have a nice little home that I'll really start to feel safe. I sometimes get to start worrying about money, but that's actually doing really well, which is such a relief. No bad people around, either. No pointless button pressing. No shitty moms.
    Speaking of moms, it was mothers day, huh? In the morning, Kira woke up and went to see her mom for brunch. Kira's mom is nice. She's almost literally just an older Kira, it's pretty incredible how similar their demeanor is, and because of it spending time with her is almost just as peaceful and nice of a time. Her dad, though, her dad isn't a bigot per se, but he's waaaaay to similar to mine to feel comfortable at all around him. He's an asshole. He thinks everything ought to be "just so" to fit his style. Anything, every little minor detail, he picks at, and it's never anything good. It's always "well that's a dumb way" or "why don't you do it right" or "why aren't you living up to my expectations?" Worst of all, he's a drag on the whole family. Kira can't speak for herself, she's spineless, a little soft and squishy wimp who lets people push her around. Those personalities don't mix well. It's caused her to shrivel up a bit and I hate it. More to the point, her dad has said stuff to and about me personally that's just straight up fucking insulting. Like, that's the thing you do to people you want to avoid you at all costs? So I do. Since he was there, I didn't go. And I'll never go so long as he's around.
    I watched Mechagodzilla II while she was away, well... sort of. Mostly I was keeping caught up on my writing, which is actually what I'm doing most of the time these days. After she got home, we watched Space Godzilla, Destroyah, and G2k together, and ordered some fun sushi. There's a place nearby that delivers, it's our favorite sushi place up here, and they have a roll called the "Godzilla roll." Naturally, I couldn't go through Deathiversary without my Godzilla roll. After G2k was over, we played some quake (3 and that champions beta... why don't they all it Quake V again? Because they're dumb?) and afterlife.
    It was a fun, lazy sunday. Godzilla movies, writing about Godzilla movies, Alien movies... writing about alien movies... sushi, video games, and two weird dorky lez transgirls goofing around. It was a nice time. I'm here with her because I want every day to be like this. I don't want to go back to the way things were. I'm trying to change things for the better. Frankly, I know that I won't pursue a lawsuit with the movers because I know that will just be more stress and anger and money... I just want it to be over. I just want my stuff back, please. Maybe then I'll feel safe, but for now, Kira's doing her best to help, but it's still a struggle every single day. After what happened with the pills, I still don't fully trust her, but she's all I've got right now. Well, her and Godzilla.

93/93

Malyssa, May 14th 2017

Deathiversary Week 2017: Day 5

Dear Deathiversary Diary,

    In 2014 Godzilla vs. Biollante, in truth the real reason I even did Deathiversary in the first place, and easily the most important day of the whole week, fell on day 5, May 13th, but not because of any special planning, in fact I barely planned that year at all. When it happened to fall on the same day in 2015, I figured I should keep May 13th as the traditional Biollante day for every year I managed to lazily cling to life thereafter. And so I followed suit in 2016, both with Deaithversary and with keeping Biollante on day 5 of "Rebirthiversary," and I made sure Biollante fell on the same date once again this year, even though the resulting day 4 was meager... but, then again, I was barely "there" on day 4.
    It's also part of the tradition that I eat lasagna on day 5. It's a little embarrassing, but I learned about lasagna from reading Garfield comics handed down from my big sister as a kid. I just thought Garfield was cool at the time (I was a dumb kid, w/e) so I was just like "lasagna's my favorite!," but, it ended up being actually the case. Italian is objectively the best "genre" of food anwyas, lasagna is basically pasta in cake form, and... idunno, maybe it's just a psychosomatic thing but lasagna just tastes better to me than any other pasta. So on day 5 I usually put a lasagna in the oven while watching Return of Godzilla if I haven't got to it already while enjoying some spiked Mss. Dr. Pepper, and then it's ready by the time Biollante starts. Combining three of my biggest sense memories, the littlest things that make me the happiest for various reasons, has a really... hmm... calming? effect on me. It's probably not in the books but for me at least it's pretty effective therapy. It used to be all I had, too. Not like there were any people around who gave a shit.
    Now, I've also got this alien thing going in the background. It's going slowly, I've decided I want to try doing videos but it's day three now and even though I've scripted out both days 1 & 2 so far, I've only recorded 1 and haven't edited it yet. But I bring that up because the "baking" video we watched wasn't Return of Godzilla or any Godzilla movie, but that shitty James Cameron movie ALIENS. Normally that piece of crap is at least good for a laugh and the power loader fight, but this time around it was Kira's first time, and, well, ALIENS is a children's movie for little boys, and Kira has a pretty juvenile demeanor, but it's strictly that of a little girl, and she had little patience for it. It wouldn't have been so bad if they showed the monster more... they show it more than ALIEN but good fucking night why don't they ever show the god damned ALIEN in this fucking ALIEN movie? That would be like calling a movie "Godzilla" and then having "Godzilla only appear for 8 minutes in a two hour movie and even then have him completely obscured in every shot. Oh wait... so, I lost my patience for it. I was just not in the mood for one of the worst alien films that day, I was trying to show Kira that alien movies are cool, and I've actually gone backwards in that process by showing her that awful, awful movie. It was not funny bad, we just... we were just annoyed.
    Now imagine coming off of seeing a James Cameron movie while you are in no mood for any of James Cameron's bullshit... and into the sensory overload of watching mankind's greatest work while eating mankind's greatest food. It's quite a shock. You know we started late because we had some shopping we needed to get done, so this is all coming at dinner time too, after a long day of running around... er, well I was being pulled around on a leash most of the day, actually, but you get it. The net effect here is that I've essentially been brought back to "normal," or at least close to it. I don't feel so angry or stressed out today, erm... yesterday, I'm writing this the next morning since there just wasn't time last night, and although it's still the same situation - I don't really trust Kira, not really - I at least managed to get my mind off of it for a while. Only time will tell if I can manage to keep this attitude throughout day 6... but, of course, today is also day 3 of my alien thing, which means not only are we getting into the GOOD alien movies finally, but we're starting it off with the best one of all, ALIEN 3.
    Other than Biollante, most of the day was a wash. Kira fell asleep in the middle of King Ghidorah, and I wasn't really paying attention because I had too much writing to do. I don't think today will be too different... erm, "tomorrow," I'm going to try and push through to GxM, but I want Kira to see both the theatrical and assembly cuts of ALIEN 3, because the story is different in each and neither is really telling the whole story, and you miss out on some of the monsters if you only see one version. So we'll see how that goes. I'm less excited than I was for 8LIEN after reading some of the spoilers and seeing how the reviews are shaping up, and so I've kinda got two initial reactions: 1.) the consensus seems to be that it has all the same problems the first movie does, that it's a shitty horror movie that looks really pretty and has aliens in it, and 2.) that allowing someone who knows absolutely nothing about any alien anything he didn't personally make to take a stab at the "origin" of the xenomorph was a pretty big mistake. If the alien wiki is to be believed, the "protomorphs" are a simply black goo mutation, this time applying the black goo to a kind of wasp native to Paradise, but the problem with that is I can't find any corroborating sources, and what most people are saying is simply "David did it by fucking around and they don't really explain the process." The life-cycle is such an important part of why people love alien movies that you really really can't do something that important "off-screen" as it were. I get that you could get in there with future scientists and just move some genes around and you'd never have to mess with any black goo or huggers or bursters of any kind, but this is a movie and that's exactly the kind of stuff the audience is expecting. Making the protomorphs black goo-d wasps is actually a pretty good idea since parasitic wasps are what inspired O'Bannon's story in the first place, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they at least explain how David made those things. Other than that? I can handle a bad alien movie. I've seen AvPR all the way through more than once, hell, I even actually used to like ALIENS. Half-assed script used as a lame excuse to get people killed by aliens? Love it. LOVE IT. I'm not going to see these shit-fests for the acting, obviously, I go to see monster movies for the fucking monsters and it would not be the first time I'm weathered a storm just to see Godzilla... or hell, listen to the King Kong videos from March, practically all I do is make excuses for the 5 not that great entries.
    Then again, Skull Island was fucking fantastic, Underworld 5 was a little flat but still really fun, the new Mummy is the first time I've ever actually wanted to see a mummy movie, Power Rangers was surprisingly well handled for something so dumb and we got our first gay ranger - who just so happened to be yellow, don't forget - and of course Godzilla's 30th is shaping up to be really awesome. So, if Covenant falls flat it'll be the only major monster movie that does so this year. I shouldn't be worried... it's just that AvPR was just like... very very bad? And PROMETHEUS was even fucking worse. It's hard to cling on to hope for me, but it's usually easier when it's applied to monster movies.

93/93

Malyssa, May 13th 2017

Deathiversary Week 2017: Day 4

Dear Deathiversary Diary,

    When I woke up, I felt the same as I usually do in these situations: weird. I was exhausted. The thing about being suicidal is that in order to die you still have to take action, usually actions that are directly against your programming as an Earthling, which is something of a problem. I can't ask anyone who overcame that particular roadblock what the trick is, because those people aren't around anymore. There's an innate cowardice to suicide that makes it ironically out of the grasp for the kind of people who just want out altogether. I'm not much different. It's not like I'm a complete failure - I've gotten very close - the problem is that I deliberately avoid methods that could potentially put me in a hospital if I fuck them up, which is why there's a need for "preperations" when I try the drowning thing: I have to sure I can't just climb out. My worst nightmare is being in a hospital with 1,000 more reasons to die and have the strongest push-back possible. It's so perfectly this, this system, this simulation. The closer I get to it the worse it gets, and if I mess up then they win. The reason I've stayed alive this long is because it's much easier to not do anything. I've got booze and pills... so why not use them? If it gets to be too much I'll just get drunk or go to sleep, then when I unfortunately wake back up, I can distract myself with reading. I'm self-taught in most things, I tend to not spend too much time with video games and even when I watch movies it's while I'm doing something else. Like right now, for instance, the last Godzilla movie of the day is just now ending.
    The complication now is Kira. There is no longer any doubt in my mind that she's against me. It used to be something of a toss-up between whether she had the best intentions but was fighting against the same forces to get me out of here, or if she was working with them and all of the hope was a false plant to trick me. When she betrayed me yesterday I realized which one it was. I now find myself doing something I hadn't had cause to do in many, many years: pretend.
    See, a long time ago, at the inception of this period of my life, as I began to hit on the idea of suicide as an option, I tried to hide this from everyone by instinct. The things that I had heard up until that point... friends reaching out to stop it, calling doctors in, the "it gets better" lines... I actually believed all that shit. I thought for sure the moment I let it slip that I was even thinking about considering any form of self-harm, the people who really cared would, you know, do something about it. Oh what a fool I was. 100% of suicides are preventable, if people actually loved one another, there wouldn't be any. If people really loved each other, half of all transwomen wouldn't be dead and the other half wouldn't be attempting. If people really loved me, they would have at least fucking tried. I realized very quickly that there were two kinds of reactions to the news: they thought I was joking or they encouraged it. I know now that your true friends are the ones who encourage it, those are ones who understand the only real answer is complete and total oblivion, those are the ones who get that life isn't for everyone. The others, the ones that don't believe you, are those that are incapable of empathy. Those are the plants, the programs, they're only there to give you more of a reason to care. It's only further down the road that they give the merest, least sincere bullshit I've ever heard, their lines that they copied out of an Oprah magazine without knowing what any of it means. "It gets better." How? What's the mechanism that will allow me some opportunity to change things? Describe it. Help me. Do something. Act. Think. Do. No thank you, I was just saying it because I thought it sounded nice. "People will be sad if you die." Then why aren't they helping me? If you didn't want me gone, you would put forth the minimum amount of effort to keep it from happening. Double-speak. Hypocrisy. Lies. Bullshit. There is no such thing as "love." The people who are truly on my side would be happy for me now that it's over. The people who care about me wouldn't be motivated by selfish desires, "but I want you to stick around so you can entertain me, you're a tool I use for my own end and it inconveniences me to lose you." Tough shit. Toys break. Either you get your shit together and do something about it, or you don't. Not my fucking problem. They're all liars. Monsters. Creatures. Inhuman programs designed to wittle me down to nothing.
    And now I live with the most persistent program I've yet encountered. I don't know if the system admins have figured out I'm onto their plan yet, but this one is shaping up to be something of a "final boss" for me. I have to pretend. I have to pretend to still love her as if I thought she was a human even though I know now what she really is. One of those things. A set of failsafes designed to keep the simulation running at all costs. "They" know how close they am to getting out, and it scares them. On the one hand, it's a little intimidating, but it's also promising. For the first time in 7 years, I'm starting to make them sweat. I'm actually winning. I'm going to win this. I just have to stay cool and keep my wits about me, and soon it'll all be over.
    As part of it, I'm going to now put together a video for day 1 of my Alien Week. I need a cool name for it, like how I called my Kong series "the 8th wonder" because it was the eighth King Kong movie. It's the 8th Alien movie, but there's no equivalent cool thing to call it. David 8 is the name of the series of synth the character in Prometheus belongs to, but how do I turn that into something clever? 8-LIEN? I actually like that one. 8LIEN. I like it. Just like King Kong keep the personal stuff limited to my personal history with the films, don't get into what's going on now. Stick to the films. Do the dork thing. I've done all this before, but I'm rusty. It should be okay, though, since I've practiced just not doing anything for long enough to distract myself. I was too scatterbrained today to focus on the movies much, although I did watch both 70's Mechagodzillas with Kira. Mostly I just complained about those classic shitty Toho extremely-bad-day-for-night shots that we all know and love. G84 I barely paid any attention to at all... I was writing the addendum to yesterday's post and this one as well while it was playing. Didn't really care enough to watch anything else, like the cartoons or w/e. Whatever. Let's just get this day over with.

93/93

Malyssa, May 12th 2017

Deathiversary Week 2017: Day 3

Dear Deathiversary Diary,

    This whole thing was just a joke, wasn't it? It was all planned out long before this simulation was turned on. Every part of this was meticulously planned. All of the false hope put at strategic points right where it hurts the most. You gave me subtitles for Zone Fighter, then you took my pills away right when the distractions stopped working. And where did you put them? In the place it would hurt the most. Nice trick there. You keep coming up with these cool jokes, and as I've gotten savvier over time you slowly but surely amped up your game, made hope feel more real, and in the process raised the stakes. I get it. I keep falling for it, too.
    But, the door is bolted from the inside, I've got enough booze to talk me into anything, and I've got a balcony, a bathtub, and plenty of razor blades. I may be a fuck up, but the cards are lining up for me, and I don't think I'm stupid enough to not take the chance.

Burn in hell, fuckers

Malyssa, May 11th 2017

Dear Deathiversary Diary.

    I found an article online about a girl who died after taking 20 parce... parcematol? Something like that. I looked it up and apparently it's just another name for acetominophin, which I'm also probably not spelling right, but I know what that is, at least. Originally I just started thinking about the moving company again and how the situation would never get resolved and would only get worse - it's not like getting a lawyer involved would make things LESS stressful - and that it was just another in a long and unceasing chain of catastrophes that were never going to stop, it's merely what's happening today, it's always something regardless of what. I couldn't take it anymore, so I wanted to take my benedryl and write yesterday's entry while they were kicking in, then I could be unconscious and it wouldn't matter. I love those pills. I searched the entire house and couldn't find them, and then found out Kira took them. I trusted her, and she betrayed me. Or should I say "it." That thing. That program. That trick to get me to trust it when really it was just another part of the system. The whole thing is rigged against me. I bolted the door and took every pill in the house.
    That amounted to 6 Excedrin, 8 Ibuprofen, and 6 Ibuprofen PMs, the kind with the benedryl in them. I told that thing I would unbolt the door if it brought home 14 more acetominophin, as I thought this would be the way out that has eluded me for so long. I may be a fuck up but I can take a bunch of pills no problem, in fact I've done it before, but the problem was I had no game plan and didn't know what I was doing. I took like 8-12 or something Ibuprofen and all it did was make me feel tingly and shake a little, it wasn't fun but it didn't kill me, obviously. Since then I've stuck with drowning but with the preparations that need to be made and the amount of drinking I need to do to psyche up for it I always fall asleep after getting black out drunk. It's not like it's actually difficuly in practice, but I'm just no good at it. So here we were and I was about to get the pill thing right. Only, that cocktail wasn't exactly "painless." With two hours to go before the rest of the pills got here, I was struck with the unique combination of being light headed and extremely tired, and having my heart beat faster than a strobe light. It was a nightmare. I hated that feeling more than I hated being alive. If I could just sleep and make it go away it would be fine. I called Kira and told her not to bother getting the rest of the pills because I didn't know what else to do to make it stop. She tried to get me to "breathe," something that has literally never worked in any situation, and I felt like a Silent Hill monster trying to bottle it out, occasionally convulsing involuntarily. You'd think the near-decade of self-harm and poor maintenance would culminate in something by now but my body - my oldest and most hated enemy - kept rattling on like an old car whose engines pops and stutters long after it knows it should have been dead.
    It was a real shame, too, because up until that point I was having a passably okay time. Kira really got a kick out of Godzilla's Revenge, I got to see DAM, Hedorah, and Gigan again, and best of all I found subtitles for Zone Fighter episodes 2, 4, 6, 13, and 25. That's the first and last Godzilla episodes that I got to fully understand for the very first time. You would think that would be a passable distraction, but it still wasn't enough. The problem is my Alien thing started today and... well, my stuff still isn't here. Do you know what that means? That means I had to torrent 7 movies that I have spent an unconscionable amount of money on getting the best available releases. And to get the same kind of quality? The theatrical versions of 1-4 are fucking 6.5 gigs each. SIX AND A HALF FUCKING GIGS. You could fit like 8 fucking movies into that amount of space, what the fucking christ is wrong with these assholes? And I had to take it, too, I couldn't find the theatrical cut for any less, and I really want to watch both versions of ALIEN 3. It's one thing to fuck up Deathiversary, at least I've got a million copies - and at least one digital version - of each of those. But Alien? I bought those fucking things three times over. Once in  a boxed set before the 5th movie came out of the first 4, once in a boxed set after the 5th movie came out with all 5, necessitating me selling my earlier copies to goodwill, and then again after the 6th movie came out in a set of all six, meaning once again I had to sell the current version of my collection. As it is now, I'm not aware of any set of all 7 movies, but I'm sure when Covenant gets a home video release there will be a set of all 8 eventually, it's just that Prometheus's release was... spiteful.
    Did I learn anything from the Zone Fighter subs I didn't already know, other than what they were saying specifically? Sort of. In episode 4, I learned that Peaceland was apparently located in a Nebula, and so is likely in the same star system as the Earth-Twin of the Nebulans, making it's relationship to planet Riser a little confusing, and when Hotaru confronts Sachio (that was his name, right?) at the end of the episode, she thinks it's really him and he's sided with the Garoga, and doesn't realize it's actually just a Garoga in disguise until she shoots him. In episode 25 I learned the name of Zone's girlfriend, which is Mina, although I don't really know anything more about her than that. Her trauma from seeing the monsters seemed totally pointless and there was nothing there that drove the plot... also it's never really explained how the Zone family stops the monster capsules from exploding, they just kind of... don't. Maybe they were all duds except for Kabutogirah? I still don't understand the logic behind that plan at all. Sending all you monsters at once? GOOD idea. Making it unnecessarily easy to stop the monsters from showing up? WHY?!
    I'm going to keep ticking a long as long as I can hold out for now. After Deathiversary and Alien Week are over, though, I don't know. But I'll try a little longer.

93/93

Malyssa, May 12th 2017

Deathiversary Week 2017: Day 2

Dear Deathiversary Diary,

    In the morning, Kira called A1A again. That fucking bitch Stephanie said she left a message for the manager with our number for him to call us back. He didn't. It slipped my mind to keep harping on it, though. Yesterday I barely paid attention to any of the movies, and of course I've seen them before. A lot. The more I think about it, the worse it gets, and I need the distraction, but every second I waste dicking around watching Godzilla movies is another I'll lose putting the hammer to these fucking horrible unscrupulous monsters. I hate them. I hate them so much it is scaring me. I just want my stuff so everything can be normal, and if it's not here by the 12th, then we can kiss my "Alien Week" plans goodbye.
    Kira hadn't seen any Godzilla movies before me. Or Alien movies. Only a few werewolf movies. She saw the '76 King Kong at some point but didn't really remember it. She had never seen Zeram, Tetsuo, any non-Godzilla Toho monster movies, including House, nothing with Kato Yasunori in it, no good Draculas or Frankensteins, none of the scattered Yog-Sothothery flicks, no Full Moon Video things (nope, not even the one where the girls get shrunk down and trapped in little bottles), no nothing. She had never played Primal Rage and never even heard of SMT, never listened to neo-folk or goth rock or industrial or anything like that, etc. etc.. This is always my least favorite part of getting into a new relationship. It's boring and tedious. It's so annoying going along like normal and you drop one reference and it's like "oh, I gotta catch you up on all of THAT too." What makes it more of a chore is our age, we're 30, the point where we're pretty much set in what kind of entertainment we're comfortable with. But the worst part of all? She never really says "no." Normally people, you know, the ones with a spine, will have strong preferences developed already and will cut you off if they're not having it. Kira doesn't do that. I've done it to her, I'm no weeaboo and I'm not going to sit around and watch 400 episodes of cartoon girls meowing, but she's always ready for more. I know on paper it sounds cool that, even though she wasn't before, it's nice to have a girlfriend who is receptive to your interests, but think about how many Godzilla movies there are, and think about how much time we have left until we die. It takes me a week to get through all these damn movies and that's with little wiggle room. Now add in all the other good monster movies, etc., it's a chore to get caught up with someone who's not just a grown woman, but someone who has already gone through their wishy washy confused 20-something period and knows who they are better than they have ever in their life. We're not teenagers trading tapes, we're adults trading two entire lifetimes. It's exhausting.
    Because of my "make-up Deathiversary," or "Rebirthiversary," Kira is mostly caught up with Godzilla and I intend to finish the job here. Ephemeral things like music, movies, video games, fashion sense, kinks, favorite food, that stuff doesn't really matter. It's nice when you sync up with someone in those ways, but it's ultimately not the important part of the relationship. Godzilla, for me, is not optional. I don't expect anyone to be like me, especially not this late in life, but if you can't put up with that, if you can't deal with Godzilla, you can't deal with me. I am, more or less, Godzilla, I always say I'm one of his human avatars. It was heartening back in October of last year to see her reactions. Her incredibly genuine reaction to Godzilla, as if Honda was right there with me, her child-like joy from the juvenile end of the 60's, her being awestruck by the image of a giant rose growing out of Lake Ashino, Junior, her devastation at Destroyah (I stupidly forgot to warn her... she didn't handle it well), the wild ideas of the "alternate universe trilogy," her instant love of the GxMG main cast, her understanding of the incredibly sincere GMMG, and of course the fun of GFW. It's because she's held onto her innocence that she's able to get this much joy out of everything. Despite everything, she's still so bubbly and sweet and it's so incredibly adorable. She makes faces in her food. She plays with dolls and pretends they're her friends. My favorite part? She plays with me and we can keep it asexual. For so long I have been made to feel like a fucking mutant because I just so happen to ace and kinky, but not Mistress Kira. For her, joy is it's own reward, it's not part of some scheme, it's not foreplay, it's real and it's pure in a way that I've bemoaned losing ever since Hollywood killed Godzilla the first time.
    During Rebirthiversary, she saw the original Godzilla before work, while I stayed home to watch the next three. The next day, when technical problems made me freak out, she stayed home from work with me to help me through it, and as a result we watched #4-8 together. Aside from Godzilla vs. Hedorah, which I made it a point she had to see, we didn't see anymore until the weekend, and because we blazed through everything so quickly, we ended up seeing every Heisei era film as well as the one "Heisei" era film together. And, though we saw it on different sides of the continent, we both saw Shin Godzilla the next day. Later on, we caught up with the MST3k version of Megalon then King Kong vs. Godzilla twice, once just because and again for my Kong Week back in March. That leaves us with 7 left she hasn't seen. That's the entire Alien franchise up until next Friday. Yesterday we managed to catch half of GRA and this morning she saw Mothra vs. Godzilla for the first time, and of course really enjoyed it. She kinda has a thing for Mothra, it's really cute. We got a blu-ray with the "international" versions (typical Sony DVD stuff, international version but with the original Japanese audio track available) of the Rebirth of Mothra trilogy, and she's already seen the first (of her volition, of course) and she had almost exactly the same reaction to it as I did the first time I saw it on that subtitled VHS from the indie-video store near the film college in Austin. She loved it. She also stuck around to enjoy some Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster again, and we had an awful lot of fun making voices for Godzilla and Rodan as they goofed around.
    After she left, I took a shower and watched #6-8 as I finished my entry for yesterday, talked to my mom (for like A WHILE), ate some yummy hot dogs, and made a little "banner" picture for my day 1 post. I haven't really been paying attention. I can't shake the constant fear of every little thing that could go wrong. I feel worn out, sore, like the only thing left for me to do is lay down and die. I keep wondering what I'll do when everything inevitably falls apart and I can't continue my monster movie plans. Because I'm being forced to use my digital copies since my, well, everything is still in limbo, I had to go with the Americanization of Monster Zero and Sea Monster (although those versions only contain minor edits with the exception of the Titra dub of GvstSM featuring a cobbled together cold open) and international version (a DVD rip) of Son of Godzilla. This is less than ideal. My digi-goji collection is kind of a hodge podge, so the quality runs the gamut, but it was quite fun to see the crummy recordings as it sort of feels like we're watching VHS tapes as was the original plan. Anwyas, point is that not having to read subtitles makes a movie way easier to drown out, it turns into a sort of podcast while playing in the corner of your eye, but after seeing these movies for the thousandth time even that sort of plays out on automatic and then it fades altogether.
    But it's weird... it doesn't feel like chore like it has at points in years past. It's not that, it's just that it feels... too normal. Double-clicking godzilla.mp4 is not a special occassion for me. I've made playlists of digital-goji-flicks and just let it run in the background while working on other things, this is just business as usual for me. My connection with Godzilla makes it all feel so normal and homey, and as I've discovered since the first Deathiversary, I don't even really NEED to watch these things anymore. It's like I've absorbed them into me and projecting them back onto a monitor just seems so... simple. Deathiversary is supposed to have more OOMPH to it. This is my week to reflect on... well, everything, this is the week I really go at it. But this year? Eh.
    No, this year it's not an event. Because this year Godzilla is not dead. He's back. The big 3-0 comes out this year, next year is 31, then 32, and then? Once the cartoon trilogy is over, I'm sure Anno will be ready for Shin Godzilla 2. Then who knows. Toho is being much more savy with their marketing this time around, and they have to in order to beat Hollywood at their own game, meaning the "Godzilla X Evangelion" stuff is only the tip of the iceberg, and we're already starting to see that. I've been saying for over a decade now that with the zeitgeist so heavily wrapped up in "anime," and what with Toho being a, you know, Japanese company and all, putting Godzilla out into that world chock full of weeaboos who will eat up anything introduces the Godzilla "brand" to an audience that, let's face it, couldn't possibly give less of a shit about Japanese film. It's so simple and obvious and it's honestly shocking to me we have had to wait until the thirtieth Godzilla movie to get one. Oh sure, there is a Godzilla cartoon, but that doesn't count because it's not Japanese. Ugh. I have proof the Godzilla anime works, too: remember when I mentioned Kira is a weeaboo? She loves Madoka Magica. It's not hard to see why after watching the series with with her. An incredibly genuine love story that meanders its way through a bunch of plot twists before it gets to the good part: Homura breaking down in Madoka's arms. I loved the witches so much, the girls are just adorable, the plot twists were inspired but felt natural (up to a point...), but that little moment where Homura says that she feels like she's losing herself, that's what made it work. Because the best art is built from scratch as a way to tell an ultimately mundane story. The best monsters are those who are creative, fantastic ways to tell stories about the real world, and the best "animes" are those that create a self-sufficient comic-book universe just to show how far people will go for love. I've jumped ships at least three times in the paragraph, but the point is, Gen Urobuchi is writing the next Godzilla movie, and it's being directed by those guys from Knights of Sidonia a.k.a. Everyone Blushes a Lot and We Make Up a Sci-Fi Excuse to Have a Transwoman Character Plus The Thing is in it. My weeaboo waifu would have been sold without me around, so it's clear this angle is going to work really well and best of all it's approaching marketing from an angle Hollywood - by definition - can't even fucking touch. Suck on THAT gino 2 2 and gino 2 vs. the actual real King Kong.
    So in effect going through all the Godzilla movies this year is not honing in on the source of my problems, it's not about saying goodbye to... myself... forever... it's the complete opposite. For the next week, my Deathiversary marathon will be my escape from the stress of moving, the stress of (potentially) lawyering up, and the stress of whatever other things will inevitably go wrong in the very near future.  In 2014 what I was writing was legitimate intended to be a suicide note, in 2015 I transcribed half-remembered anecdotes from drunken scrawl written by an angry, sick, miserable bitch who should have been dead for a year, in 2016 it was all I could do to keep it together while my babies died off one by one... but, in October of that same year, leading up to the domestic release of Shin Godzilla, I was... let's say "cautiously optimistic." I was wrong, of course, optimism is not realism, but the 29th Godzilla movie was very very good and I got to see it alongside someone who was actively trying to save me. But that week in early October was still with some purpose... Kira hadn't seen any of them, and I wanted to get at Shin Godzilla fresh not as the first Godzilla movie in 12 years, but as the movie that's going to have its poster placed side by side with Final Wars as if no time has passed at all. Because in the future when we see collages of Godzilla posters and faces and all the rest, they won't depict those long, long 12 years where everything fell apart, where the Zilla apologists became the new "G-Fans," with the BP Oil Spill and 3/11 and Trump, where one of his avatars shriveled up, nursing herself on booze trying to stay unconscious for days at a time. None of that darkness is going to be on wikipedia's list of Godzilla movies, you won't find it on lists of Godzilla suits (well, Shin-Goji was a puppet/CGI deal but you get it) or on fact sheets of run times or directors or Godzilla's opponents. No, when we look at those things, we will only see Shin Godzilla right below Final Wars, in it's proper place on the list, as if those 12 horrible years had simply never happened. I wanted to go into Shin Godzilla with that mindset, not thinking about it as his reincarnation, but as just another chain in his long history, no less, no more. Granted, it was a tall order, but here we are in 2017 and Shin Godzilla is already old hat, and I'm waaaaay more interested in the new Godzilla movie, which we will now once again be getting annually.
    Just like it was before. It's starting to go back to how it should be. For me, this year's Deathiversary isn't some grand festival where I re-examine everything I know about the beast and preach about war metaphors and how we didn't listen. It's about coming home. To get away from the stress, and come home to a no-longer-absent Godzilla, to be so comfortable it doesn't even really matter if the movie's playing or not. Since I first did this three years ago, we have come full circle, and at last I can watch Godzilla movies... almost as if they were nothing more than just movies. And after everything that's happened, that really makes all the difference.

93/93

Malyssa, May 10th 2017

Deathiversary Week 2017: Day 1

Dear Deathiversary Diary,

    Three years ago today I hit rock bottom. I lost everything. In 2009 a DUI took me out of school only two semesters from graduating. Had I finished I would have started a paid internship in the film industry and would that much closer to living the dream I had since I can remember: making monster movies. A lot of job hunting followed and, when that turned up nothing, there was lots of introspection. Then an extremely messy, confused, and turbulent transition period, none of which I saw a doctor for because in this country you simply can't go to a doctor if you're not independently wealthy. My parents weren't much help, my biological father ended up being a bigot and the extent to which my mom supported me was telling me I was stupid. As the years rolled by, I lost friends, too. All of them. Every friend I ever had. My depression spiraled out of control and my emotions along with it, being unbearably clingy, scaring people away, lashing out for no reason, and with each person I lost I grew more and more unbalanced, the whole time lacking any sort of medical help, either for my trans issues or the prolonged 7-year depression. No living thing would help me. There was no way out. I couldn't get a job because the last one was in 2007, without money I couldn't get a doctor, without stable friendship and love I couldn't even stand still.

    And then they took Godzilla from me. The most important thing in my life, and, three years ago on this day, I settled in and prepared to write a week-long suicide note as I watched every Godzilla movie in a row. My one friend at the time seemed to get something out of it, but there's no telling where he is now. No one reads these, no one ever will. It doesn't matter. This is for me. Following seeing gino 2 on opening day, my planned attempt on my life was cut short by being completely black out drunk to the point of not really being able to remember if I actually attempted it or not. I lived by doing the same thing I always had - booze and pills - and eventually a year had passed. I had reached Godzilla's "deathiversary."

    Starting on May 9th I made something of a drinking game out of it, then I got really sick, which has been happening with increasing regularity in addition to me feeling tired most of the time, and when I came out of my delirium I came to realize that my inability to keep track of what day it was, combined with my computer which just outright lied to me resulted in me actually starting on May 10th and, with being sick slowing down my pace through the VS series considerably, when I realized it was already the 16th it was all I could do to get through Godzilla vs. Destroyah. I thought, one year out, I would get to face down gino 2 once more, but such was not the case.

    In late 2015 I finally managed to land a job the same way I had back in college, show up to a kind of "hiring event" where literally everyone who walked through the door got in. Think this will end well? Wait 'till I tell you where I was working: Kroger. Yes, them. But at the time I didn't know they were one of the worst ranked companies to work for on the continent, I didn't know they actively worked to keep their employees in a perpetual state of poverty, I didn't know they treated trans people like they aren't even people, all I knew is I had an open to self-medicate with black market hormones as well booze and pills. I couldn't afford anything else. I was still dependent on my mom for rent and food, as getting a month's supply of pills to be delivered on time cost me my ENTIRE PAYCHECK AND THEN SOME. We're talking about half of my monthly income here, the rest went to booze. I drank constantly. The stress was unbearable, I couldn't function without alcohol, I went to the bar next door for a pint of Guiness and a shot of this wonderful flavored vodka that was bright pink and called "Kinky" for lunch everyday and was barely breaking even. It took everything I had to drive home without crashing on purpose. And it was hot... it was always hot. Too hot. So hot that carbon-based life forms start to be cooked alive, so hot that molecules begin to break down, so hot I couldn't think, which is just as well because all I really wanted was oblivion. I walked out in early 2016 because the manager thought it was up to them to decide which bathroom I was allowed to use. Every friend I'd made in the process abandoned me, and I was back to where I was before Kroger: the place where bigots go to shop.

    Only there was a difference this time: Godzilla was coming back. Two years earlier I thought that with the way things were going, gino 2 would be the final nail in the coffin that started to be built in the late 70's. But Hell couldn't contain Godzilla. He came right out on the other end and the 29th Godzilla film would be out shortly after deathiversary that year. Deathiversary 2016 was a disaster. I wanted to do something different, so I decided on doing a sort of video diary for each entry in the series. Truth be told I was tired in every sense, and I was beginning to feel that I had nothing left to say after my written posts for 2014 and 2015. I figured I could get by more simply this time, and at the end of it? I would finally face down gino 2 once again with the knowledge that Godzilla would survive this and I could die knowing he would outlive me. My mom, the crazy cat lady, has been drowning in cats for many years now, but some of those little rascals were very dear to me, and at the time of Deathiversary that year I had two little batches of kittens, one from my slightly orange cat velvet and one from her mother. Velvet's little sisters (all cats are girls and all dogs are boys) and Bella's grandkittens co-mingled on the floor of my bedroom, mewing at all hours of the night. It was irritating as hell, but at least they would never abandon me, not like humans, not like lying, untrustworthy, war-mongering, bigoted, violent, horrible humans. Still, mom cats sometimes act weird and eventually I had to split them up and move one batch downstairs. So it was that on the morning of Deathiversary day 3, on May 11th 2016, that I went downstairs to grab a soda, only to find one of my babies dead, drowned in a water bowl bigger than it, just floating there. Mocking me. Mocking Godzilla. Mocking every effort I ever made to get better. Force-feeding me the past seven years to me all over again. Reminding me that I was a fool for not ending it two years ago, for not crashing on purpose when I worked for the grocery store run by Trump supporters, for being a weak coward too afraid and too inept to even kill myself. John had a gun. I could have just shot myself. I could have blown my brains out long ago and I would have never had to wake up and see this. But I was stupid, and rather than "decide" to keep living, I just... sat there.

    I stopped posting videos, though I made a few more, and posted one or two. As the week wore on, all of my kittens dropped like flies one by one. I don't know why. It was some sort of illness or genetic defect, no doubt a result of the inbreeding my mom's menagerie of cats creates. They were umpteenth generation Hapsburgs, doomed from birth, and I watched them all die, one by one, helpless to do anything to stop it. I didn't get to gino 2 that year. It was all I could do to finish Final Wars. It didn't matter anyhow. John had that gun. I would make it until Shin Godzilla was out, then I would blow my brains out, and I wouldn't have to think about any of this ever again. I wouldn't think at all, I wouldn't be anymore. It was what I wanted more than anything.

    I occupied my time with this game called Second Life. It's weird. It's full of weird people and weird things and it's great. Ellie disappeared, I still don't know where she went, but I continued to tell people I had a girlfriend so that I wouldn't have to face the truth. I met Kira, essentially the reincarnation of Ishiro Honda but prettier and way dorkier, there, proving once and for all that all the "we met online" jokes are absolute fucking horseshit. Kira did all of the things for me I did for people when I still had an income, she ordered me pizzas, bought my ticket to Shin Godzilla (and my moms to boot!), sent me presents from sub-shop, but most importantly she did something no other human I've ever known has ever done: be human. When I flipped out for no discernable reason, she didn't abandon me, she stuck with me. She rode it out with me, she tried to fix things to calm me down, she actually tried to fucking help me, something no one in my life has ever done. Offered, of course, but human beings are nothing if not compulsive engines of deceit, spite, and hatred. With the 29th Godzilla film, the first in 12 years, had its US premiere set, I decided to do a "make-up" deathiversary. I would do video entries for each one, like I wanted to do, and what's more, I would share this with someone. For the first time, I wouldn't be doing this alone. "Rebirthiversary," as I ended up calling it, was everything the past three Deathiversaries were not and, for the first time since 2009, I was... optimistic.

    It didn't stay that way, of course. Getting a new girlfriend doesn't just fix everything that's wrong with me that's been building up over the past seven years, nor was it like everything just started "working." But at least there was hope. Godzilla was back, and there was hope. Or, that's what I thought for about a month, anwyas. The United States, the grand experiment, came down kicking and screaming when the Russian government turned it into a puppet state and installed their handpicked fuhrer in November of 2016. Problem: the place I live is about a year away from death squads roaming the streets and executing trans people. Solution: Kira's family partly comes from Canada with a little help it would be finally possible to live in a country of my own choosing rather than circumstance. You see, unlike the popular meme, Canada isn't simply a "reaction," I've ALWAYS HATED the United States with every fiber of my being, and would take ANY measure to sabotage it. Treason is apparently legal now anwyas. The United States is easily one of the worst, most vile, disgusting places on Earth and my HATE for it is inconceivable. I have wanted to live in Canada, a land of hope, peace, safety, and opportunity since I was 11... around the same time I settled on my name, Tracy, long before I told anyone or even really admitted to myself what, deep down, I've always known. It was possible and it was going to happen. Eventually, not yet. For now, we made plans for a home in the immediate future where we could plan the rest of our lives and be together while things are in flux. I moved up to her, rather than the other way around, because it's almost never hot up here and Houston is no place for human beings.

    Scheduling was tight. Deathiversary isn't going anywhere - no matter what happens to Godzilla now I never want to forget what happened that week in 2014 when I thought it was all over - and to top it off I wanted to do a similar thing leading up to the 8th Alien film in the same way I prepared for the 8th King Kong film, both of which came out this year in addition to Godzilla's big 3-0, the first time in history the three monsters who changed monster movies forever all had an installment released the same year. That's to start on May 12th, or day 4 of Deathiversary, meaning for 5 days I'll be pulling double duty. Therefore, it is extremely important that the movers arrive on time. FINDING a fucking apartment was already so stressful I began to doubt whether reality was even real or if Kira was just another program sent to torture me with false hope, but now I have to deal with this.

    We found a company that does expedited moving, A1A, that promised us they would pick up our things on May 2nd and get it there by May 8th, giving us just enough time to unpack the Godzilla and Alien boxes. The payment came in three installments, one up front, one when the movers arrived to load up the stuff, and the final when they arrived and our new home. The welched on the pick-up date almost immediately, saying they wouldn't come until the 3rd, which was too late, then the 1st, which was too early, before finally settling on the exact time we had agreed to beforehand. Pointless stress for nothing. I should make it clear that having Kira around hasn't dampened my fits any, in fact the optimism I've been feeling actually seems to be exacerbating them. At this point, I either go into full-on werewolf mode or I drink and take pills prematurely, essentially leaving Kira out to dry. I would have chased away anyone else. Kira still sticks by me, through all of it. She has seen me at my absolute worst... which was... well, to peel back the curtain a bit, I'm actually writing this on the 10th as I'm watching day 2's line up of films, and I'm currently on Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. Why didn't I write anything yesterday? I couldn't function. Physically.

    On Monday, May 8th, we called the moving company to ask what time they would be here, as promised, and they said "fuck you." Well, they said they would call tomorrow and tell us when. Tomorrow. For those of you keeping track, that would be day 1 of Deathiversary 2017. That's too late. I had a very specific plan for this year, I wanted to watch as many films as I could on the old VHS copies I used to watch as a child. I wanted to share that with Kira. Godzilla is the most important thing in the world and Deathiversary is my time to reflect on that and how I almost lost everything, including myself, and it is very very important to me that the person who literally saved my life on multiple occassions be able to share this experience with me in a special way as this was to be our first week together in our home. And a fucking moving company fucked all of that up.

    I started this off by saying that the original Deathiversary from 2014 was my "rock bottom." Well... that's not really true as of day 1 of Deathiversary 2017. I'll just cut straight to it: I didn't know I could even be that loud. Everything... EVERYTHING bottled up inside me from the past seven years tried to come out of me all at once. Here I was, finally safe, finally where I belonged, finally surrounded by people who were good for me, with weather that wouldn't kill me if I stood still, and a very real means to get very real medical help, and these lying, thieving monsters were STILL trying to take it away from me. They stole 2,600 dollars from our savings and literally everything I own and in that moment I couldn't even walk to reach the pills in time. I collapsed and started twitching erratically. I made noises. I vaguely remember hearing Kira call out to me, but I was totally out of control, I was completely numb, fidgeting, choking, spasming involuntarily. I couldn't talk, I couldn't move, and it's not in the hawt way. In the past I have referred to my violent mood swings, outbursts, and suicidal actions as "fits," but what I just went through put all of that to shame. I've never gotten a diagnosis, but that was not mere depression. My way out is finally here, and I'm scared it's already too late. If I don't kill myself first, whatever is wrong with me is going to choke the life out of me.

    When I came too, I felt... empty. Not knowing what else to do, Kira put on my digital copy of Godzilla although I didn't pay any attention to it. She spent the better part of an hour conducting suicide watch for me. At the time all I could think about was all my dismal failures for all of my "attempts" and what it would take to finally get out. All I could think about was wanting out. I had to get out. I tried to jump off the balcony, but she stopped me. I tried to bash my head open on a variety of objects. I walked around zombie like looking for anything I could use to cause enough physical trauma to end it immediately, something I could get to before Kira stopped me. Physically, I was in absolutely no condition to fight her, and probably I was in no condition to exert the kind of needed to break the skin, let alone inflict a fatal injury. Running out of options, I relied on Kira's stupidity (I love her for her innocence, the rest of the world just takes advantage of it, but let's not pretend here... she's no Maly) to let her leave me in the bathroom with a rope. I would try the same thing I always had, drowning in the tub. I was about halfway done with the ropework when she unlocked the door after hearing the water running and, distracted by the fact that I was still wearing that pleated mini from earlier in the day and had my legs already tied, she... well, loved me.

    As I lay against the side of the cage she bought for me (that poor, sweet old lady at the Petsmart, she was so confused...) while Kira both literally and figuratively propped me up, I sat and watched a chorus of Japanese school-children morn the death of humanity's innocence. Maybe that's a little flowery, but you can excuse me for getting a little emotional about the situation. With the seizure and the sub-drop, I was completely devastated both mentally and physically. Kira ordered me a pizza, and we spent the rest of the evening watching the boring half of Godzilla Raids Again and King Kong vs. Godzilla, eating pizza, being affectionate, and just enjoying some damn Godzilla movies.

   I don't know if I'll be okay. I don't think I will. Optimism isn't realism, it's still lying to yourself even if it is a white lie. The reality is that my chances are slim. It is still everything I can do to make it through a day. Every single day is a struggle. I'm still self-medicating with booze and pills. I'm still lashing out. I'm still not okay. I'm really really not okay. The only difference is that now I'm not alone. I found someone on Second Life and now everything is different. It's hard to be optimistic, especially in light of my... whatever that was, but there is hope. Real hope. I have a way out now, the only question is if I can survive long enough to get there.

93/93

Malyssa, May 9th 2017