It's nothing new here or anywhere else, but my childhood was not a very happy one. All things considered, and after my biological father set off the events that would effectively remove himself from our lives forever, my family life was mostly stable. The problem came whenever I had to step outside and get involved with other people.
Being a witness to a murder at the age of five made me a social pariah. Parents actively discouraged their children from interacting with me in any capacity, people spread rumors about me, and effectively burdened me with his sins by the time I entered grade school. I ended up not having friends for pretty much the entirety of my childhood because of this, even after we moved across entire cities and even to another state.
I sought solace in entertainment, first with video games, and eventually anime when that was introduced into my life in my tween years. As I have said before, my long history with video games and anime is what led me to be a writer. It's what kept me sane as I was forced by outside influence onto dangerous, now-illegal medications that GSK had to pay out the ass for back in the early 2000s, and I was put into a school environment where Tony Montana was deified, Shawshank Redemption was an idealized future, and where I was highly concerned for my life every single day. Several times, I very nearly didn't return home.
The exact scenario of my life lies on the extreme end of the spectrum usually unseen outside of a warzone, but I'm not the only person who had a troubled childhood. The ever-growing anime community is full of people who latched onto the medium because it is escapist fantasy and gave them something to latch on and look forward to, especially in this ever-darkening era where it seems like everything is collapsing, between the economy, the government infrastructure, the social structure, the first world government as a whole, and the ecology. My generation and everyone else that comes after have inherited an unholy shitstorm of a planet and economy, then burdened with the bill for all the damages caused by a select handful of people who were allowed to freebase everything with absolute disregard for the consequences. Damages that may or may not be too late for everyone with responsibility and capability to undo.
We live in a time where our sociopolitical climate is mired with malicious figures who insist that everything is perfect, that this is the best that things could ever be, that things are or should be the exact same as they were 70 years ago, and that we should just toughen up and grin and bear it. We have effectively fostered a culture of domestic abuse in this country, where all the gains of the economy is excluded to only a select few while everyone else is burdened with the costs and are generally exploited. For a capitalistic society, we are actually closer to Great Leap Forward-era Maoism; the kind of regulatory, industrial, and economic philosophies that led to mass starvations, the destruction of China's environment, and ungainful forced labor that continues and is exploited by international corporations to this day. Ironically, we shun the ideals of conservationism of Theodore Roosevelt and the capitalism of Henry Ford in favor of a kind of Social Darwinism that we have been paying a heavy price for. Most people in this country will barely make enough to pay for rent or food, much less actually enjoy life, because of the kind of wage slavery we have been forced to adapt to and ordered to accept. And based on the current trajectory of our political climate, that reality will not change any time soon despite the growing movement to address income inequality.
As a result, anime has become a thing a lot of people have found solace in, and that includes myself. It's become an escapist fantasy that makes us, at least temporarily, forget the shitstorm going on in real life that we have next to zero control over. Even though they are merely voice actors, they are a face for this sect of the entertainment industry. That same nature has also been picked up by Hollywood actors who have found themselves cultural icons as a result of the international success of the MCU, and why Chris Evans is now seen as much a real life Captain America as his on-screen persona.
It is an unenviable position of social power and responsibility these people have, uniting people from different ideologies and walks of life under a banner of progression, inclusion, and hope for a better future. Yet despite the fact that we do see these people as being larger than life, it's important to remember that they are still human and just as prone to succumb to the same human temptations and flaws as the rest of us. The public stage makes their failures and shortcomings that much more obvious, and in this current sociopolitical climate full of supercharged emotions and outrage, forgiveness and redemption that much harder.
As a result of all this, a conflict and schism in the dubbing community among such prolific voice actors has caused a lot of tumultuous feelings in the fandom. People are right now various degrees of angry, confused, scared, and concerned, as a community they have been in for years has suddenly been set on fire. The social warriors constantly at each others' throats don't care; this is just another battleground for them to fight in, and there will be another place to fight in next week. What matters to us is that no matter whether or not Vic is found innocent or guilty, the conduct of his colleagues who have reinforced those accusations has been abysmal, and they will not come clean out of this, either. People have already sworn off dubs because of the vitriol on social media over this, and there has been some effort by a few other voice actors to be as civil about the issue as possible, and kudos to them. God knows what will happen going forward, but there will be a lot of burned bridges after this is over.
