Tag: writing

Analysis: Humans Are the Real Monsters in Shotgun Boy

*spoilers*

Carnby Kim’s work explores various themes of revenge and redemption; the latter is explored even for those who are da worst of the worst.

Kim’s first work, Pigpen, poses the question of whether or not a murderer (the MC with remarkably few survivor subtly skills) can be redeemed, but the answer is left up to readers to determine. This idea is followed up in Bastard, where Jin is an actual murderer albeit mostly because of his terrible, serial killer father. Ultimately, Jin too is redeemed in the sense of both forgiving his father and going to prison to atone for his own sins. Though this redemption doesn’t come without a little bit of outside help.

Sweet Home deals with redemption more loosely with Hyun going from a bullied, bitter trash-talker to a literal knight in not-so-shining amour who saves everyone, eventually laying down his life for his friends. His monstrous form resembles a knight because Hyun’s greatest desire was to protect those closest to him (and see Maria in The Sky lol).

Shotgun Boy is the perfect follow up to Sweet Home, focusing on the terribly bullied Gyuhwan. Being it’s prequel, it centers around a bunch of kids sent to a woodland retreat who are attacked by tentacle monsters (not that way, you heathen). Monsters that seemed to have escaped a government laboratory.

Gyuhwan is bullied relentlessly by HBIC Seongbin, who has negative zero redeemable traits and is actually unhinged even before his slow descent into a monsterhood. Almost, because Seongbin does show occasional shades of being not utterly awful, such as not sacrificing his ride-or-die. Alas, of all the monsters in Shotgun Boy, he proves to be the most troublesome.

Shotgun Boy is full of literal monsters out to kill the main characters. Why? In part, because humans treated them terribly via experiments and other torture for dubious reasons. In a way, it was the monstrosity of humanity that led to the monster’s current behavior and their desire to instill terror in humanity simply for the sake of it. This monstrosity exists in the form of Seongbin’s violence towards Gyuhwan and everyone who doesn’t do what he says, but also in the indifference of the teachers, and others, who are simply glad they aren’t on the receiving end of Seongbin’s bullying.

This is probably best illustrated in the form of Zero, the HBIC of monsters. Zero is out to eliminate what he sees as a disease of humanity, something that manifests in the story as a blackness over the human heart. Yet, it’s only after observing Gyuhwan, and the complexity of humanity, does he change his tune. Even going so far as to sacrifice himself in order to save the others.

Horror stories never end happily. However, Shotgun Boy does see the majority of our main characters live to see the apocalypse in which monsters slowly take over humans, feeding off their true desires, and turning them into the things they’ve always desired.

Desire can be monstrous, quite literally. However, the achievement of it can lead to a rebirth or metanoia of sorts in which a persons true nature, for better or worst, is revealed. In Shotgun Boy, Gyuhwan becomes the very thing he dreamed of at the start of the story – a kid with a shotgun; the one with all the power.

Initially, he desired to use this weapon to off Seongbin and all those that looked the other way during his bullying. But when he gets the very thing he wanted, he uses it to protect even those who harmed him from the monsters. When given the chance, Gyuhwan doesn’t immediately put a bullet through Seongbin’s skill but opts to fight him one-on-one. It’s this selfless attitude that ultimately helps Zero realize that humans aren’t all bad, all the time. Rather, they’re complex creatures with the potential for both good and bad.

Shotgun Boy Rating: 9.2/10

Biblical Masculinity Hack: Don’t Play Video Games

Bernadine generally posts lots of pick me nonsense, because 90% of the time there’s nay a Scripture in sight backing a single thing she says rendering it nonsense.

By pick-me, I don’t mean women who want to be loved. Many of these SAHwifey influencers claim those criticizing pick-mes are criticizing women who want to generally be in a relationship, or get married, both of which no one is criticizing. Like 95% of humans wants to be in a relationship. A pick-me is a woman who vies for male attention/general praise by putting others (usually women) down in order to do achieve that. It’s not that these pick-mes want a relationship, but their means of gaining one involves being generally shady towards and criticizing women who don’t behave the way they do, or like the things they like.

Anyway apparently peak Biblical masculinity = not liking anime and video games. I suppose she prefers men partake in activities like watching football and posting constantly on social media about Harry Styles outfits? Ya know, all the extremely masculine activities Jesus and His twelve disciples participated in when they weren’t busy being stoned, whipped, and imprisoned.

Everything else aside, this post insinuates feminine, Christian women couldn’t possibly like video games or anime themselves which as a gamer who loves anime an cottage core that is actually what I find deeply offensive. Last year I played Spiderman, Horizon Forbidden West, and Jedi: Fallen Order. I re-watched HunterxHunter, and watched Chainsaw Man and Attack On Titan. I enjoy anime and video games, and most importantly I love Jesus. Many of my friends enjoy anime and/or video games and go to church every week, pray, read their Bibles, fast, and sing on their worship teams. And on Wednesdays we wear pink.

Now, I’m not saying Christians should go out and watch, or play, any old thing (I wouldn’t rec. Chainsaw Man tbh lol). However, there’s no difference between spending an hour playing video games each day vs. spending an hour on social media, or watching TV. Gaming is a hobby. Biblically, “everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial,” which is the attitude Christians should adopt when considering what activities to participate in, or not (barring anything that’s explicitly forbidden in the Bible).

I’ve come to accept social media is all about clickbait and whatnot to get people’s attention and Bernadine does go into a bit further detail on what she means and it’s like 10% deeper than this screenshot. That said, I don’t like seeing “Christians” post low-effort content that lacks any Scripture anywhere. Ya know, the part that makes it Christian and not just an opinion.

As Christians, our opinions should be formed by the Bible, not tradition, not cultural concepts of femininity and masculinity, but by the Word of God. Many of these influencers like Bernadine have large Christian followings of young people, so spouting off inane takes like these are only going to result in a bunch of young Christian girls thinking their partners aren’t masculine enough because they play Mario Cart, which is stupid.

The question isn’t whether or not anime and video games are inherently unmasculine, it’s whether or not those things are hindering one’s walk with God, or not. If you find yourself constantly skipping out on social events, time with family, or time with God to play video games, then yeah you gotta a problem.

However, playing video games as time permits isn’t unmasculine and Biblically this falls under the “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” umbrella.

Also gaming isn’t gendered. #bye

Dale Partridge Advocates For The Bare Minimum (In Jesus Name)

Dale Partridge has adopted or fostered approximately zero children as far as I’m aware so… faith without works is dead, brother. Funny how Christians who do nothing are the loudest online about everything Christians supposedly do.

Tweeting this does nothing to change the reality that there are indeed many unwanted children today in the foster care system and Dale is doing nothing to change this fact. It’s the equivalent of the man with leprosy approaching Jesus and being like, “Lord, if you’re willing please heal me….” And Jesus being like “yeah, I came here to heal you,” and then walking away.

My main issue though is this basically applauds Christians for doing the upmost bare minimum. James said “religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to take care of widow and orphans.” So like the base minimum for being a decent religious person (not even Christian) is to care about orphaned children. That’s literally the absolute bare minimum, which is funny as most modern, Evangelical Christians care about neither orphans nor widows – just look at how underfunded and corrupt our foster care system is and then look at what the majority of conservative, “Christian” politicians and pundits build their platforms on. It ain’t children or widows.

Advocating that Christians do something that should be a no-brainer is why American Christianity is dying and why the secular world laughs in our faces whenever Christians try to hold some moral high-ground over various issues.

Unfortunately, Dale is exactly like most American Christians, more concerned with getting likes and retweets online than doing anything useful, let alone doing anything Jesus would actually do. Patting yourself on the back for doing the bare minimum isn’t the flex he thinks it is. It should be a given that Christians were and are at the forefront of hospitals, adoptions, women’s shelters, etc. (if his stat is even true) not something to brag about. In fact, the Bible even tells us that our giving should be done in secret which makes this tweet doubly in poor taste.

A proper response would be that yes, the church could and should do more for expectant mothers. We could be advocating for 6 months minimum of paid maternity leave so that new mothers can bond with their children and not have to worry about losing their jobs, we could be advocating for better healthcare so new mothers don’t go bankrupt having kids, we could be advocating for better sex education and better access to birth control to limit the amount of unwanted pregnancies, and Dale could put his money where his mouth is and foster or adopt a child to prove he isn’t full of air.

But of course, that would mean actually following the Bible on which his faith is built upon and not just tweeting hot takes.