#like maybe cite him if you’re talking about theory or people who have expanded upon his theories but

[nadiawrites14]

voice of gen z

word count: 2784

for english class. tw for school shooting and police brutality mention

AN INTRODUCTION.

“GEN Z is too afraid to ask a waiter for extra ketchup but will bodyslam a cop.”

Dated June 5th, on Twitter. Many of us sit holed up in our rooms, laptops resting in our crossed legs as we scroll through social media, or the blue light of a phone screen on our face as the world around us is sleeping. Many of us are also the ones organizing, the ones leading, the ones fighting. News spreads that in Dallas, Providence, and in many more cities, teenagers were the ones organizing, the ones fighting. Teenagers were the ones turning viral memes into protest signs, organizing protests and sharing methods of resistance through apps like TikTok and Instagram. It echoes the methods of the Hong Kong protestors, using technology to battle their government head-on. 

Teenagers who dance along to songs such as Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage”, as well as teens who live in the world of ‘deep-fried’ memes, whose bizarre absurdity reach ungodly levels of abstractism, are the ones leading in this young revolution. Teenagers are the ones who chant ‘no justice, no peace’ in filled city streets; teenagers are the ones working to create graphics and share information, a new form of armchair activism. K-pop fans fill conservative hashtags with videos of their favorite performers, burying rhetoric and dismissal of the protests with dances and songs. In hours, #BlackLivesMatter trends. It’s hard to believe that these new pioneers and leaders in activism and technology are children who are scared to give class presentations, share Juuls in bathrooms, and find humor in the most strange and ironic of places. While the old term goes that ‘the revolution will not be televised’ in many ways, this growing movement will be televised, publicized, expanded, through its own means and methods.

I.

We are the generation of school shootings. 

December 14th, 2012. My mom tells me, as I hobble out from the red doors of my elementary school in Stamford, Connecticut, that something very bad has happened. I don’t understand. Nobody does. I see the faces of startled adults. I don’t remember the rest of that evening, or the day that followed it. Every time I think about Sandy Hook, the senseless school shooting that left 28 dead, I think about the multicolored walls of my school’s hallway, my sneakers on the white linoleum, the fear in my mother’s voice and in her eyes. That day was the first day I began to accept that I was a child in the United States of America in the 21st century. That day, and the brutal and confusing months that followed it, solidified something in my peers and I. Not just in Stamford, or even Connecticut, but within all young American students. The people in power didn’t care that a gunman marched into a wealthy and predominantly white Connecticut neighborhood and slaughtered kindergarteners. Because as I grew older, I saw the patterns, the televisation of suffering and permitted slaughter among my peers, our youngest, our posterity. This was normalized to us, just another school shooting, another period of brief outrage followed by inaction. The slaughter of children, the preventable slaughter of children shouldn’t be normalized. But it was.

February 14th, 2018. A gunman kills 17 students in Florida. As I’m waiting in a doctor’s waiting room with my mother, I lean over and tell her, “On Monday, all my teachers will talk about is school shootings.” I was wrong. School was another silent funeral march, my teachers quiet and solemn as they assigned us our work and progressed with their work. At dinner with my dad, I tell him, “It’ll never change.”

That isn’t entirely true. Leaders are found in teenagers who now walk through haunted hallways with clear backpacks. They are the face of a new movement, a march for our lives. Many are summoned to Washington and elsewhere a month later to organize, to fight. On March 27th, a day meant for students to walkout and protest the preventable slaughter of students, my school barricades the doors.

No legislation is passed. Nothing changes. The resistance lulls and fades, despite a number of school shootings following the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Gen Z is a symbolic Sisyphus, haplessly pushing a boulder of pleas up a mountain of indifference.

II.

Suzanne Collins published the Hunger Games on September 14th, 2008. It finds its way into the hands of teenagers of all shapes and sizes years later, and it has its cult following. Maybe the televised murder of children strikes a chord within the audience of young adults, as does the story of a growing revolution and a coup against a selfish government.

Gen Z gets its hands on theory at a young age, through Wikipedia and the uncensored vastness of the internet that we are handed. We are denoted as the generation born with the phones in our hands, but all I can remember is having a technology class from a young age, where we were measured on our abilities to type and memorize a keyboard. Our ability to cite and surf and stay safe in the face of danger. This wealth of information at our fingertips molds us.

Dystopian fiction is popular among young teens and young adults. Titles like Divergent the Giver, Harry Potter, the Maze Runner, all influence the devouring young readers. We are raised to see atrocity, in a place where atrocity is accessible to us in every way, shape and form. We are exposed and we are no longer innocent as we rise to 6th, 7th, 8th grade. Girls wear makeup for the first time and scream at the sight of bloodstained underwear. Boys become privy to the joy of video games and self-exploration. In this time, the internet truly consumes. There is no more script taught in classrooms, whiteboards have been replaced with Prometheans, and chromebooks are becoming normalcy.  

In 7th grade I receive my phone. The niches and underground media I discover shape me. I find acceptance, friends, in places where I had lacked them before. As my classmates begin to enter into weeklong flings that end in Instagrammed tragedy, I take a quiz online to find out if I’m gay. I begin to think for myself, and I find independence and a voice on internet circles.

By the time we are promoted to high school, something has shifted. Something is different. Something’s coming, something good. Gen Z keeps calm and carries on.

III.

Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20th, 2017, to much outrage, but also to much support. In my town, there is a protest around his building that overlooks much of our city center. It’s peaceful, energetic, and beautiful. A Planned Parenthood sticker is on my bedroom door, and I have accepted that maybe, just maybe, I’m into girls.

In 2018, we are in high school. Little fish in a big pond. I don’t have friends in my grade, but stick closer to my premade friends in the Class of 2021. My teachers are lovely, kind, and supportive, and I shine in this new environment. Politics is a force in my life as I begin to write, and as I begin to form opinions and do research. 

It’s easy to say that all of Gen Z is progressive, but this isn’t true. It’s actually very incorrect. The internet is a miraculous tool, one that can provide and produce and create new forms of communication and spread new ideas. But it is still an ocean that is widely uncharted, and young teenagers will fall into holes constructed by right-wing superstars. The racism and homophobia circulated by 4chan is on the internet for anybody to see. New popular figures and icons pledge their vote to Trump. Right-wing rhetoric overtakes in the forms of Ben Shapiro, Pewdiepie, 4chan, Reddit. There’s a neutrality to all things, but the dogwhistles and the normalization of prejudice are dangerously overbearing. As the 2016 election divided our country, it divides the new generation. A divided house cannot stand, and that is for certain. 

It is around this time, in my Freshman summer, where the politics makes a crescendo. I have broken 1K followers on my Instagram art account, where I draw fanart for a variety of musicals and plays. I discover Shakespeare, and lose myself in Hamlet. I am happy with my identity and with myself, and as the 2020 election nears, I stay informed on current events, common issues, the things that need changing.

Sophomore winter. My dad and I take two-hour drives spanning Connecticut, and we talk. He says, “You know, your generation’s fucked. You’re the ones who are going to have to cope with our mistakes.” I tell him I know. I tell him about my feelings towards racial injustice in America, the battle for a higher minimum wage against growing costs, issues in healthcare, housing, poverty, climate change, all thrown aside and discarded. Our generation, of course, when most of our white and male politicians are dead and buried, will have to deal with the repercussions of rising sea levels and global temperatures, volatile weather and crippling natural disasters, all overlooked due to blatant ignorance. “You guys are going to have to fix all of this.”

“I know.”

I’m sick of the battle being placed on the backs of teenagers. I’m sick of our faces being the fight for climate change, the faces of Greta Thunberg and Emma Gonzalez and young revolutionary congresswomen being mocked and heckled by throngs of keyboard warriors. I’m sick of the battle our leaders and representatives should be fighting being placed on our backs, when we are already our own Atlas. Ignorance is dangerous, biting, and overwhelming. We look back to the images and words we were raised upon, the story of the Hunger Games and the broadcasting of school shootings for us all to see. 

It is 2020. Happy new year! I watch from my living room as the ball drops. A brief Twitter moment about a newly discovered disease pops up in my recommended, I brush over it. Photographs of Australian fires are surfaced, and we joke about what a fantastic start it is to the year. 

Sisyphus reaches a fork in the road.

MMXX.

At around 11PM on Wednesday, March 11th, I send a strongly worded letter to the principal and local superintendent. The coronavirus has picked up worldwide, and has made its way into the states. Johns Hopkins has an interactive map that shows bubbles above cities where cases have been reported. Stamford, Connecticut Dead: 0

Recovered: 0 Active: 3.

New York’s cases are on the rise. On that same day, I began to realize the severity that would soon overtake us. I spent the afternoon first at what would be our last rehearsal for our school musical, James and the Giant Peach, and then I went to the library. I did my homework, read The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh, then bought a Subway cookie from the mall. I always keep a copy of King Lear in my backpack, and as my dad pulls up to the sidewalk I gloss over Edmund’s first monologue.

It’s the last normal day for a while.

March 12th comes in like a lion. In my first period class, civics, a classmate yells out, “Trump 2020!” A period later, my friend pulls me aside in the hallways, and asks if I heard that school was closing. 

“It can’t be true,” I said.

“Schadlich just showed us.”

I take my route to my next class, and find the hallway a chaotic mess of energy and camaraderie. What was meant to be kept under wraps has been instantly transferred across the student body over Snapchat stories and texts. People dance, sing, hug. It’s branded as a “Coronacation.” Broadway announces its closure, and I walk out of the front doors for the final time in my sophomore year.

Once again, ignorance overtakes. Within months, the death toll skyrockets, spikes, as we stay holed up in our online classes. My focus wavers, but I press on. Many other students resort to simply neglecting their work, choosing to take this time to focus on their own health or fill up their new time with their own hobbies. Teenagers find solace in each other, through social media and through the connections we’ve built online. As ignorance mounts among our leaders, teenagers jokingly refer to Covid-19 as the famous “Boomer Remover”. It trends on Twitter. Graduation, prom, is cancelled. The generation whose childhood began with 9/11 is once again cut short by a tragedy of preventable errors. Gen Z is subject to adapting once again to an unfamiliar environment, and we undertake.

Protests take over the streets, screaming against government tyranny. The deaths crescendo to nearly 100,000. A video surfaces of a young black man, Ahmaud Aubery, being publicly killed on a road while jogging. Ignorance continues as cases spike, and the political climate is ripe for change. On May 25th, a black man from Minneapolis named George Floyd is killed in a brutal act of suffocation by a policeman. More names resurface -- Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Joao Pedro. Names neglected to injustice are once again in the limelight -- Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Terence Crutcher, Atatiana Jefferson, and more. 

Sisyphus has had enough of pushing the boulder, and Sisyphus takes to the streets. It is the perfect storm. A storm fueled by ignorance and the preventable death of thousands, by decades of injustice, by the mere political climate in the United States of America. Gen Z, our generation, my generation, has lived the darkest hour. We were born at the cusp of a millenia, in an awkward position where society has begun to find its footing in an unfamiliar time. A time of domestic and overseas terrorism, shaped by 9/11 and a countless number of school shootings and slaughtered people of color. Where the new generation has accessibility to the injustice and wrongs committed by those before and those above, right at our fingertips. We have new ways to organize, new ways to televise, new ways to fight. In our armchairs and in our streets, wearing masks as we hold up our hands in surrender.

Generation Z marches. They lead. They throw tear gas back at officers with no hesitation. They create chants, organize through grassroots, and find a chorus of support online. 

Generation Z leads. As politicians and leaders sit in ivory towers, like President Snow in Panem, our generation cries for change. We witness and feel the repercussions of their ignorance in our daily lives, from cuts to education to the publication of school shootings to the absence of American atrocity in our history textbooks to a pipeline that directs BIPOC and low-income students to prison or the military as they step off the graduation stage. Each year, our winters get warmer as our summers turn boiling. The preventable pile of corpses rises in front of us, and we have been taught to sit by and let it occur while the world burns. 

No longer.

Sisyphus steps aside and allows the boulder to descend down the mountain. They are bruised, bloodied, their palms calloused and scuffed and their feet lacerated and sore. Up ahead, shrouded by clouds, is the mountaintop. Sisyphus wipes their mouth, finds their footing, and begins the march.

A CONCLUSION.

We have a future.

It’s awfully dim right now. Barely a light at the end of the tunnel. We began a dead march towards it from the moment we were born into this decaying way of life, held together with glue and string by leaders with fumbling hands and staunch indifference. Our backs are tired, and we are barely adults. Generation Z is tired of fighting a fight that shouldn’t be theirs. How desperately we still crave childhood joy and humor and innocence. 

Change is necessary. It is something that is especially necessary in our time. We can no longer let people die because they can’t afford food or medicine or housing. Students cannot go into school wondering if it will be their last day. Black people should not fear for their lives while wearing a hoodie, driving, jogging in their neighborhood, shopping, or sleeping in their own homes. Elderly white men which encompass most of our political elite can no longer sit on their hands as their population suffers.

The voice of Generation Z screams louder than anything else. It screams in its silence, its activism, its useless martyrdom and battle. Change belies itself within our voice, and it has gone unheard for too long.

Change is the voice of Generation Z.

#writing #writeblr #essay #english #how else do i tag this #my writes #gen z #ashbfkbskdk #i just wanted to put this out into the world for eyes other than my english teacher #xoxo at the 2 ppl who follow my account

[awjeezohman]

WHAT'S GOING ON WITH YAMAMOTO CHIE

Hey so http://www.sakana-comic.com/ by Mad Rupert (@mynameismad) is a really fantastic comic strip and I was rereading it tonight and accidentally went temporarily insane. I came out of my bout of psychosis to find I’d written a, I shit you not, two thousand word essay about what’s going on with Chie Yamamoto. Chie is one of the main supporting characters and is interesting and mysterious and so naturally I wrote a heavily cited, vaguely academic, very dumb essay on my theory about what exactly is up with her. I sent it to a friend and they said I should post it to social media to “get the recognition [I] deserve” so, without further ado: 

This is my theory about WHAT'S GOING ON WITH YAMAMOTO CHIE

_________________________________________________

PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE

First I want to show that anything at all is in fact going on with one Ms. Chie Yamamoto. I find this to be fairly self-evident upon a reread of the comic but I understand the burden of proof rests upon my shoulders.

I provide five pieces of evidence. The first: Chie's Chapter IX feature (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/chapter-9). Note the phrase "Keeps everybody guessing." The second: Chie's character bio (http://www.sakana-comic.com/cast). She not only "Keeps [people] guessing" but also "...is deeply mysterious, and is never caught off guard." The third: I talked to Mad Rupert at SPX 2017, and she said something weird was going on with Chie. She didn't say what, but she said it was something. I admit the evidence so far has been fairly Word-of-God; if you were a person who embraced Death of the Author strictly, it would not be very convincing. As such, I present the fourth and fifth pieces of evidence: in strip 139 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/139), Chie hesitates for a panel when describing her dog-training job. In the next panel she says, "Companionship, of course!" with a smile, but the sweat drops flying off her face imply she is somehow nervous--perhaps she is lying, or omitting pieces of the truth. In strip 322 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/322) Taro catches Chie at the stall and asks, suspicious, "Why were you behind the register?" to which she replies, grinning and surrounded by sparkles, her speech bubble's tail winding back and forth, "I dropped something." Upon further questioning, she calmly elaborates, "My cellphone fell out of my pocket and slid underneath [the register]." Taro remains suspicious. In the following panels she is delighted by a distracting loud noise coming from the back of the stall and rushes off to check it out. Chie's reaction and the portrayal of said reaction lead me to believe that she is lying here as well.

These pieces of evidence are small by themselves. But their synthesis indicates that something, indeed, is going on with Chie.

_________________________________________________

THESIS

Sakana, as described by the author, is a sli-li-rom-com. But it is not a slice of life of some innocent, sanitized place. There may not be supervillains or eldritch monsters in the world surrounding the Tsukiji fish market but there is violence, abuse, and organized crime. However, besides a single police officer in strip 169 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/169) and several mentions of "market security" (e.g. http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/286) there is little police presence. Yet... what if it were hiding in plain sight? What if the underground forces of crime and deviance were combated by law enforcement that was equally secretive?

I present the theory that Chie Yamamoto is not merely a dog trainer, but, in fact, an officer of the law. She trains dogs not for mere companionship but to be canine weapons--K9 units to protect and serve at her side.

_________________________________________________

CHARACTERISTICS OF YAMAMOTO CHIE

I should clarify that Japanese names put the surname before the given name. E.g. Shotaro Kaneda, Kageyama Shigeo, etc. So in Japan, Chie's full name would go Yamamoto Chie, whereas in the US you'd say Chie Yamamoto. I'm suddenly realizing that this makes me sound like a huge weeb so I'm gonna stop.

Chie has shown herself to be very resourceful, especially in regards to subterfuge and conflict. That may not by itself show that she is a trained policewoman or government agent, but it does lend support to my theory.

This characteristic does not show up much in the first volume, where she is essentially a background character. But in the second volume, when the audience and Jiro himself get to know her a little better, she shows her hand. The strips 260 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/260) and 262 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/262) serve up some good examples. She sends her friend to distract Yuudai so she can talk to Jiro without being bothered. She couches a social situation in terms of a firefight, and responds to Jiro's "Is this a date or a war??" by treating him as naive for even assuming they were two different things: "Oh, Jiro! You're so cute." Upon being told that Jiro can't talk with her because "Yuudai would kill [him]!" she takes it literally and implies she could take Yuudai in a fight: "Takana? Please, he weighs less than I do!"

If I may be allowed a digression: the first four panels of strip 261 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/261) give vitality to my crusty, seaweed-covered soul.

Anyway! In strip 330 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/330) she calmly, confidently stands up to the very intimidating Taro. When Taro objects to Mori coming along on the second date, he says, "She caused enough trouble last time!" to which she responds, smiling, "And you didn't?" Strips 287 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/287), 288 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/288), and 291 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/291), where Chie encounters Arata, also provide supporting evidence. She gives Arata an evil, evil eye when he tries to manipulate her into badmouthing the shop--clearly recognizing him for what he is and not standing for it. She's not only confident but forceful in her own manipulation, going so far as to threaten to call the manager not on Arata but on the boys in the shop. Finally, in what is possibly the most honest admission that she knows her way around a weapon or two, she responds to Jiro's thanks, "No prob! I'm VERY good at spotting trouble-makers." The capitalized word in my quotation is instead enlarged in the actual text.

I think I've presented fairly well why Chie's behavior does not contradict, and in fact supports, the idea that she is some sort of government agent or policewoman. I will now take a bit of a detour into things going on in the fish market. Be assured it will dovetail nicely with this discussion.

_________________________________________________

CRIME AT THE TSUKIJI FISH MARKET

As I've stated, the fish market where Chie and Jiro work is a hive of scum and villainy. Well, maybe that's going a little far, especially considering it’s a real place and I don’t want to give it a bad name. But, at least in the world of the comic, there's some shady stuff going on. Shigeru brings it up multiple times. In strip 99 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/099), he says to Taro, "I been seein' sum shady lookin' guys round 'ere lately [sic]." Then in strip 214 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/214), he says to Taro, "You ain't noticed all th'thugs snoopin' 'round th'market lately [sic]?" At that point, he's talking about Genji Sakana and how he thinks Genji's been caught up in something bad. And as we found out between those comics, in strip 191 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/191), Genji owes a bunch of money to a very scary man who wants his father's fish stall because "Tsukiji's one of the largest markets in the world! Merch from every corner of the globe going in and out every day... A businessman like [him] could use a hub like that." Not only is organized crime present in the fish market, it is also angling to expand its operations there.

Is this not something that would warrant attention by law enforcement? Surely they would have some awareness of the global nature of the goods flowing through the market. With that awareness comes the need for police presence to catch any illicit goods hidden between all the seafood. Of course, if you're looking to stop crime organized enough to trade illegal goods on a global scale, you can't really nip it in the bud. The bud has long since bloomed. Instead you have to eliminate the high- and mid-level members of the organization from their positions of authority. So it might make sense to install law enforcement covertly rather than overtly. Perhaps it would be best to have the installed individuals bide their time, investigate and survey and gather information so as to make the most extensive case against the criminal organization--or even to find the organization in the first place.

I hope the reader has begun to pick up on what I am suggesting.

_________________________________________________

CHIE'S ROLE

I want to go back to something I presented in preliminary evidence. In strip 322, Taro catches Chie behind the register. He is suspicious but she feigns innocence. I recognize that this could be another instance of her spying on Jiro and Yuudai's conversations, like the flashback in strip 461 (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/461). But I also think it's possible that the antics of Jiro and Yuudai are not the only thing she's keeping an eye on. I think she knows that some sketchy guys have been hanging around Ren Sakana's sushi stall. I think in her role as an agent of peace and justice she has decided to check out what's going on at the register, just ever so briefly, to make sure nothing is obviously shady.

I should elaborate more on exactly what I believe Chie does and her relationship to the other characters. I especially want to emphasize this: Chie is not a sociopath, and her job and relationships at the market are not purely utilitarian. She has worked at the market for two years (http://www.sakana-comic.com/comic/124). I'm not sure on the exact timeline of Chie's career, whether (in the world of this theory) she became involved with law enforcement before or after she started working at the market, or where she is in the organizational structure--whether she's with the police or some national investigative group like the United States's FBI. I don't think she's very senior in any organization, which would explain why she's working two jobs and spending her time investigating a fish market rather than something more interesting and/or easy. But I also think (and know, because I talked to Mad Rupert about this, too) that she genuinely likes Jiro and is invested in her relationships with Sango, Yuudai, etc. She spends her days selling seafood, working the register, talking with her friends and boyfriend, and occasionally making notes of goings-on in the market. Yes, I believe she is keeping things hidden, but only because it is required of her. She doesn't necessarily feel comfortable doing so. 

I believe there is also a degree of discomfort in her mind about dating Jiro, knowing she may end up contributing to the arrest of people close to him. If anything, that angle represents the biggest flaw in my theory: Chie hasn't shown more hesitance about dating Jiro. Maybe she was behind the register merely because she was spying on Jiro and Yuudai, and she isn't aware of any criminal activity particular to the Sakanas. Maybe she likes Jiro enough to date him despite how he or someone he knows might be implicated, and she's checking the register not out of duty or suspicion, but out of desperate hope that everything is on the up-and-up and she won't have to do anything untoward to anyone in Jiro's circle. Maybe she's actually on the opposite side of the cops/robbers divide and she's either involved with the people harrassing Genji or a different group of criminals, neither of whom would be as concerned about playing favorites as law enforcement would be. I dunno! I think that given Chie's personality and genuine good intentions for the wellbeing of people around her, it's more likely that she would be on the side of law enforcement. But at this point I'm blathering.

__________________________________________________

CONCLUSION

I believe Chie Yamamoto is secretly a K9 trainer and undercover cop and that she uses her access to the Tsukiji Fish Market to gather evidence against a criminal organization attempting to use the market to trade illegal goods on a global scale. I believe the relationships she forms at the market, including her budding romance with Jiro, are real, but I believe she is keeping secrets. I believe she knows more than she lets on about deescalation, manipulation, subterfuge, and conflict of all sorts--because she was educated about those things at the academy. I believe Chie can fight and knows her way around knives, batons, guns, her own fists, etc.

And really that's why I feel this theory is important. It suggests a future moment when Chie is confronted by one of Nishimura's goons and just takes them DOWN. Like, she sweeps the leg, pulls a gun out of her jeans, flashes a badge, and tells them they have the right to remain silent.

And then, like, right after, Chie and Jiro KISS and it's amazing and then Taisei and Yuudai ALSO KISS and everyone kisses someone else and it's great.

#sakana #sakana comic #webcomics #comics #chie yamamoto