Hey Wankerman!
I debated putting this on clairvoyantwank, but my list of links got so long, I deemed it just wanky enough to go on Fandom Wank proper. Feel free to tell me if I should move it.

Right, so as soon as I saw this week's Answerman, I knew there'd be wank aplenty. Fanartists are criminals? Check! Voice actor bitchery? Check! Poor oppressed Shonen anime fans? Check! And finally, the delicious Spooge Cherry atop the Wank Cake, religion in anime. I waited with bated breath, and was not disappointed in the forums. These are, naturally, the highlights. The entirety is a whole lotta, "I agree with so-and-so" and "My thoughts on religion."


First up (and not about religion yet!) is TestamentSaki, who had this to say about fanart:

The problem with people that actually THINK that drawing anime characters and winning some money for it is okay is just clear proof that they ignore the law (or at least never cared to check it). I'm not entirely sure how strict are copyright laws in Japan, or even the USA, but I'm pretty sure that if a manga author (Kishimoto Masashi, Takahashi Rumiko, Kubo Tite, Arakawa Hiromu [just to name a few]) decides to be aware of it and realizes someone is actually using their 'brainchildren' for personal benefit, it could be a pretty awful scandal.

Really? I'm pretty sure the Japanese are familiar with fanart and doujin. Guess he's never heard that CLAMP got their start as doujin artists.

Then we start a little circle of wank with teh*darkness, who wants you to get your Christianity terms straight, dammit! This is quickly argued by ikillchicken, who's sure Catholic = Christian (this argument, btw, pops up about 800 times in the course of the thread, so I hope you're not bored with it). abunai decides to be less nice about it, and whips out the "patronizing asshole" card.

Meanwhile, HeeroTX decides to take umbrage at Zac implying that Christians have no right to complain about how they're treated because they don't respect the constitution...or something like that. He wants to know:

Before I go off on some rant, I'm going to ask, are you Zac, one of those people. If so, I feel that is incredibly narrow-minded and ignorant, on par with people who say members of a minority CANNOT be racist. If you are NOT one of those people, then I feel you do yourself AND AnimeNewsNetwork a huge disservice by making that implication.

Won't someone think of the website? It thinks of you...clicking it's links. Oh yeah baby.

Unsurprisingly, Zac has a rebuttal.

Rebutt, Zac.

You know, every time I say something that you don't like you go off on these angry tirades and try and spout these platitudes about how everything I say somehow colors your opinion of this site as a whole, and it's getting pretty old. You're a good poster here but you need to turn the self-righteous anger down to about an 8. Right now you're at a 12.

Furthermore, I can engage in these debates with my personal opinion without you construing it to the rest of the site. I'm one person. My statements and opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of this site as a whole. Do you want me to start putting that disclaimer in front of everything I say? Would that make you feel better?

And if you don't stop it right now, he's gonna turn this column right around and go straight home, mister!

But that's not all! Someone ELSE decides to weigh in on the, "Is Zac an intolerant asswanker" issue, wherein Zac gets defensive yet again, and wants us to know we're interrogating this from the wrong perspective.

I said SOME PEOPLE FEEL THIS WAY. Not me. I even clarified that. NOT ME. I DO NOT FEEL THAT WAY.

Do I need to say it in all caps a few hundred more times so people will stop attempting to flay me alive for that comment?

Honestly, I don't know why he even looks at the forums, let alone posts in them. Especially in CAPS LOCK. Oh Zac. Don't you go anywhere on the internet to know that doesn't work?

Moving on, we have JeffreyR, who thinks that, Of all people who should surrender there right to get offended it should be Judeo-Christians. These people (my family, friends and aquaintances included) are shameful in the amount they trounce apon others beliefs and ways of life. Oh the shame you've all brought apon yourselves!

And just for a little spice, we have Simcha, who's Jewish. This becomes important in a moment, when she asserts that:

Being that i'm JEWISH and think that first and foremost, catholicism, and all its branches, Christianity, Lutheranism, Protestantism and so on so forth are all fake and should be revered as a cult, it becomes blatantly even more obnoxious having to deal with some people who feel the need to share their condolences and give a dead person of over 2000 years old, not to mention who came into light and became an important not during the time of his life, but some 300 years after his death a birthday.

[...]

Having seen parts of Hellsing, Chrono Cruisade, and various other anime with religious themes, I can honestly say that I can't stand them. If I want to see religious zealotry then all I need to do is turn the news on and watch the Republicans spew forth venomous rhetoric about morals and wanting to save unborn children while they half hazardly send grown men and woman to their deaths. (Iraq)

As for these various shows misrepresenting faith? Go look back in history at the Inquisition, Crusades, and other historic events of bloodshed and slaughtering of innocents in the name of some false mashiach and then tell me how unfairly your religions are portrayed. If you don't know what a mashiach is, go look it up.

Wow. Just wow. She gets some shit for this later on in the thread from Richard J., who'd like her to know she's RUINED his ideas of kindly Jews forever now! FOREVER!

I decided the best way to respond to you was to simply say that you have said far more that is offensive and venomous in your one post than any of we pro-Merry Christmas people have in all of this thread. You seem like quite the bigot and are obviously unaware of current Middle Eastern politics, otherwise you would understand that as a Jewish person, you don't exactly have clean hands yourself. You can't argue from the platform of group responsibility when your own group is killing people.

In terms of individuals, prior to you, I've never had an unpleasant encounter with a Jewish person and have in fact been wished a Merry Christmas by an ethnic Jew. This man was one of my college professors from several years ago and well-versed in the history of the mistreatment of his people.

Personally, I find your arguments tainted by so much rhetoric, I find it difficult to take them seriously. If you want all Christian religious symbols and holidays removed from the public square, lobby congress. If you hate Republicans, don't vote for them. If you can't stomach the fact that people with different view points than you exist, please seek some therapy.

And if you're offended by my comments, well sorry, but in my opinion you threw the first punch.

***Intermission***

Just to switch things up a bit, we have a tale of lost faith! Those're always fun!

My problem is I believed HARD-very, very very much what I was taught all my life so when I got into metal & then radio preachers lied outright about the lyrics (because I had several of the albums & knew the lyrics were butchered far too much to be an accident) I began to wonder about what else I'd been lied to by church leaders I had complete faith in? And if they're lying about something as trivial as the lyrics to Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast" what else are they lying about?

So wait, because the church lied to you about heavy metal, you lost faith completely? Okay!

And no wank's complete without defining the terms? Remember that wank way up there about Catholic/Christian? Mohawk52 quotes Ignatius of Antioch, while teh*darkness whips out Wikipedia (always a fine source to quote in the middle of a religious argument!).

From then on, aside from various invocations of Godwin's law, it's apparently died down. But man, wasn't it fun while it lasted?