Mr. Zack Snyder, visionary film director. I normally write my blog posts to my friend Wilson, but this one I am writing to you. I came to LA to contribute to the glory of the Snyderverse, but things are going slowly. Things are rough, in fact. Today I’m being destroyed for a t-shirt. I’ll tell you about that below.
I’ve been in LA since June and been living in a co-op apartment complex with 90 Angelinos since July. My goal was to write a book analyzing your DC movies and hopefully include some knowledge of their filming that I might get if I were to get lucky enough to get any interviews from any of your crew who made them, but as of now, at the end of October, I’ve only made a few phone calls and taken a few steps to get in contact with any of you guys. Distractions abound. Very strange ones. Horrible ones.
The first major catastrophe to afflict me since I’ve been in this city was that my dear Chloe, formerly my daughter’s best friend and a best friend to me also, someone like a niece or daughter to me, disappeared in June. I took it like a death in the family, and my June was completely darkened.
Ever since, I haven’t been able to shake the thinking about all of the things I did to contribute to her disappearance and all the things I could have done to prevent it. That reminded me things I read about parents who have children who pass away, and that made me think of you, Boss, and our Autumn. I hope you don’t mind my using that pronoun “our,” Zack.
You know a lot of us fans really take part in what happened back then, when we lost her. I’ve written that I don’t think what happened was just happenstance but was actually a sort of “attack of the forces of evil” to take you out of the fight because your art was just too much of a threat. I don’t want to say more. I know you’re famous, and you have to take what comes with that, but for me, this is just your personal space. So I won’t say more.
But when I lost Chloe, I felt like the same thing happened to me. You made the movies that will give the kids hope and ideals to model after for generations, and the evil of the universe just wasn’t going to let that happen. Now I have come to LA to explain your art, to the best of my ability, to show whatever spiritual and ethical concepts that I could pull from them so that those who may not notice things just by watching the movies would have something in the way of commentary and explanation to help them out. And the forces of darkness took my baby in order to take me out of the fight. June was a hard month, Boss. What am I saying? Until she turns up, it’s just not going to go away.
But it doesn’t end there. The battle continues. I’ll explain below. Just know that with Chloe’s disappearance, I felt a certain point in common with one of the makers of the Justice League Trilogy. The director, in fact.
Before explaining the rest, I want to let you know that I have post-traumatic stress disorder from two combat tours in Iraq. This has given me a certain kryptonite weakness, but not one in which you might think. I actually came back from war, in which I was indeed hit with IEDs and in firefights and combat, but I got divorced after returning. Also, I served in a rear unit where all the other officers were female, and with falling apart after combat and going through divorce, they basically lambasted me as a malevolent male and effectively destroyed my career. That’s ultimately what gave me PTSD, and so along with an aversion to violent video games and loud noises, my personal kryptonite is that being treated like a predatory male can send me into tailspins that can last up to a month.
Knowing this, let me continue the story. I hadn’t been the co-op but a few weeks before getting attacked as an ugly, creepy, weird, racist, misogynist, transphobic, racist. I wrote a lengthy post explaining how all of that went down. The whole thing wrecked me, of course. A thousand times since June I’d been tempted to just throw up my hands and head back to Arizona to track down my Chloe. I figured in the end that if it were doable, her dad Greg would have been able to handle it. But the feeling never leaves. And while going through that, I get hit with a missile of of kryptonite.
But it hit me that a lot of the Justice League actors have also been taken out of the fight for being evil males. Ezra Miller was lambasted in the media for being a pedophile for dating an 18-year old, and Henry Cavill was also treated harshly in the media for dating a 19-year old. Now I imagine you really hate Joss Whedon. But I do have to say that he wasn’t completely without merit. His “just save one person” and “hope is like a river that winds” as well as his joke about Aquaman sitting on the lasso of truth do prevent the Josstice League from being an utter loss. And he did give us the Avengers. Cap’s line “there’s only one God ma’am, and he doesn’t dress like that” have always been important to me. I hope you don’t lose respect for me for forgiving Joss and seeing his suffering, Boss. I’m sorry for what he did to you and the crew. But his entire career was destroyed in the media for being a predatory male. He was also taken out of the fight.
So three Justice League makers get wrecked for being men, if we don’t include Ben Affleck’s divorce and rehab. But get this, I don’t just get wrecked for being a man once. About a month after the ugly, creepy, weird incident, and just as I was starting to get my head together after the first one, I get nailed again for being a dude. By a Tengu, even.
Now not even a month later, while still in all kinds of weird moods and exhibiting all sorts of strange behaviors due to the kryptonite effects from the PTSD, a third event hits me. Yeah, three Justice League makers get taken out for being men, and I get hit three times in under three months. This third one I haven’t blogged about before, so I will describe it here.
You’re probably aware that the Venice boardwalk has a number of places where one can have custom t-shirts made. At one point I thought of an old Eminem song with a famous line, “I am whatever you say I am,” and got a t-shirt memorializing my pain.
Now since hanging around all of these young Angelinos I had been messing around with an Instagram account that I created in Athens last December while taking a bicycle trip across Europe. Again, I was staying in a lot of hostels, and I was around a lot of the younger travelers. I went ahead and threw these pictures of this t-shirt on my feed. I honestly didn’t think it was a big deal given what I see people wear. Take this for example:
I know this one is blurry. I had to take it in secret at the gym. I couldn’t resist trying to get a shot of it. You know what it says? “Slut Nation Tour 2023” with a bunch of cities under it. Like a concert tour shirt. The front, which I don’t have a picture of, says “Lift heavy, be slutty.”
Now I don’t give anybody a hard time about what they wear. But can you imagine a seven-year old, just learning to read, saying to a parent, “daddy, what does ‘be slutty’ mean?” It’s not exactly responsible clothing, right? I don’t know what was going through her head. A lot of people check each other out at the gym, and maybe she was hoping to get picked up by a body builder for a hook up. But who knows? The only thing I know is that whether I approve of her clothing or not, if the chick asked me for a spot on the bench press, I would have given it to her. Keep that in mind as you read on, Zack.
So this new chick showed up at the co-op. One of those LA yoga pants blondes. Again, I don’t give anybody a hard time about what they wear. Half the time I am walking around in bicycle undies myself. But you know the type. We’ve had one of those tall, thin, blonde spandex girls in my house at the co-op for quite a while, though that one is a fashion genius and actually prefers pin stripe pants. I can say she is the most beautiful woman in North America.
This place is actually stuffed with beautiful young women, Boss. Due to all the ostracism at the place, I’d been desperate to make connections outside of the co-op, so one of the guys there took me up to the bars in Santa Monica for some fun, but as it turned out there were five thousand naked dudes on the streets together with a thousand lesbians, nobody particularly attractive. But on the way back to the car with our heads in our hands we bumped into a couple of girls from the co-op heading into a club, and I tell you, Zack, they were the most beautiful women on Santa Monica boulevard that night. Hands down. No competition in sight.
But I digress. This new LA spandex blonde showed up. I would say she was beautiful except for two things. First, I just can’t get into false breasts. But also, she is Russian. My ex-wife is Russian. I was actually a Russian linguist for US Army Military Intelligence, but I have this mental block, and I can barely remember any words of the language. Your average Texan knows more Spanish than I know Russian at this point. Russian women are not on the Jonathan Bailey menu, I promise. Not attractive.
But she gets on the co-op Slack channel and says she is going to film festivals and wants to know if anybody else wants to go. I of course respond that I do, as I am trying to connect with the film community and am a movie buff in general. She asks me for my Instagram, which I give her, and she ghosts me right off the bat. I find out later it’s because of the picture of that shirt.
Now you know this chick is going to be cool to millionaires and rock stars and nobody else. She is one of those types. So I don’t have too much expectation of civility from a person like that. But apparently the pictures of my shirt had been instantly circulated around the entirety of the co-op for the trash-talking gossip mafia.
Not long afterward, one of the on-site leaders at the co-op basically told me I needed to move out, and he would talk to the owner about making it happen. Yet another strike from Darkseid trying to take me out of the fight, Boss. Can you imagine someone going up to the chick at the gym with the “be slutty” t-shirt and telling her they were going to speak to the owner of the gym about getting her gym membership revoked? Can you imagine if I had instantly circulated that picture I took of her to all the other gym members to tell them how horrible her shirt was? Well, those are the kinds of things that these guys did to me, Zack.
I myself actually spoke to the owner about the issue, and he was sympathetic to me and offered to move me to a quieter facility with fewer, older people, an option that I am going to take him up on in order to end this travesty. So let me just recap that since moving to Los Angeles, I have lost a dear family member, similarly to you, and I have been attacked for being male three times in three months, just as three Justice League contributors were: Ezra Miller, Henry Cavill, and Joss Whedon.
Now throughout all of these experiences I have felt a huge sense of being ostracized by very many of the people around me at the co-op. I am certain that there is a very large contingent of women who are desperate to get rid of me. At various points various members have gotten wind of the blog posts that I have written about them, and they are very uncomfortable with that. Then certain numbers of the males are going to want to be accepted by the females. However, I fully acknowledge here that a large part of this feeling of ostracism comes from me alone, in some sort of delusory sense. Not being in communication with really anyone whatsoever, I have looked at people with suspicion, wondering if they arte out to get me, succumbing to what must certainly be a strong paranoia. In other words, as things got weird and collapsed around me, and as people were hostile toward me, I got weird, collapsed, and was hostile. A self-fulfilling prophecy took shape, and since there was so much discomfort within me and around me, where there was no discomfort, I manufactured it.
Yeah, Boss, I’m sure you’re wondering what this has to do anything. Let’s just say I got cancelled. I got cancelled by a number of people around me, but to finish everything off, I got myself cancelled in my own mind. Zack, I’m sure you remember the big blowout between Ray Fisher and Robert Hamada that got Ray, at least partially, at least temporarily, cancelled. Yes, Ray is doing brilliantly in theater and still has film projects in development, including your Rebel Moon, which I am dying to see, but his output is, at least currently, a few years after Justice League was shot, far less than than in his prolific television career before becoming Cyborg.
So in addition to losing a family member as one of the Justice League filmmakers, and getting attacked for being male three times as three of the Justice League filmmakers, I also got cancelled, as one of the Justice League filmmakers.
Boss, the only thing that hasn’t happened to me yet is that I haven’t been sued for defamation like Amber Heard, who played Mera in the Justice League. But Zack, I write flamboyant and intense interpretations of events that have actually happened in my real life, and unless I am forced to, I don’t bother changing people’s real names. Now memoirs are incredibly difficult to succeed in a defamation case with, but I am sure that at some point someone will get mad enough at a guy like me to at least try to sue me.
I could then finally say that the over use of medical marijuana to calm my stress (and unfortunately probably create paranoia to exacerbate my cancellation) during this period could be compared to Ben Affleck falling off the wagon and needing to go to rehab. If we do so, then it seems like I am living all of the trials and tribulations of the Justice League filmmakers in these few months that I have been in Los Angeles. I have barely scratched the surface of the work I need to do in order to provide the explanations of the Justice League movies, but I seemed to have tasted a bit of you guys’ lives. This time in Los Angeles looks to be forming a kind of a synchronistic event on its own.
So just as you and your crew were torn to pieces for making movies about superheroes that have profound spiritual value, I likewise am being torn to pieces for attempting to explain the spiritual value of those movies. There are a great many things I would like to ask you about the movies in order to make my explanations better. Just to give an example, I was wondering if you could tell me if something that many of the fans have noticed in the films was intentional or not.
In Batman vs Superman (BvS), Superman dies saving the world, and in Zack Snyder’s Justice League (ZSJL), Superman is resurrected. This makes Superman very messianic, and very much like Jesus. The fans have noticed this for a while, Boss. But it’s interesting that these scenes, the death and resurrection of Superman, take place at the exact same time count. Did you plan that, Zack? Did one of your editors? If not, then perhaps there is something that guided the making of these films. Maybe the hand of God? Was this just random chance, Boss? I’d love to know.
I am a spiritual guy, Zack, as well as a superhero fan and a fan of your movies in general. As I try to promote the spiritual value of your films, the forces of evil try to destroy me. And they seem to be doing it in the exact same way they tried to destroy you as you made the movies. Right now they are trying to destroy my ability to interact with and enjoy women, half of the human race, and they are trying to destroy my comfort in my home, so that I have nowhere to live, so that I can only tackle this project from far away or at great expense.
Boss, I’d love to get in touch with someone from your crew. I am all alone here in Venice, and I am under attack. I literally have one friend and a few acquaintances in this state. I don’t think anyone at all really understands what I am up against or how difficult it is for me. The only thing I can say is that I will keep going as long as I can and do whatever I can. From there, though, the last thing I’ll say is that I would love not to be alone. And I would love to win this fight and tell this story.