How many more introductions will allow us to trash the year that was 2016 while preserving our creative resources for the New Year? We don’t know, but while the sentiment remains unchanged let’s get to it, because 2016 was the year of the Villain.
The past year taught us what Men’s Rights Activists have long sworn to be true may actually be closer to real life than mail-order fiction: nice guys finish last. At least when that nice guy has an interventionist foreign policy and conflates the word “colonization” with a do-good strategy to protect artist’s spaces; you get the idea. We laughed, we cried, we practiced active-shooter drills and refused to vote, and we did it all with tequila and dark existential comedy in the form of shareable memes.
We here at Wussy believe that what doesn’t kill you will at least help you lose weight because of the stress. Since we all have New Year’s looks we purchased before the holidays, why not relive our collective trauma with a pithy play-by-play of the bad, the worse, and the unloved? This list includes national names and local adversaries.
Enjoy!
President of the Confederacy..ahem...United States, Donald J. Trump
I have nothing to say on the matter of Donald Trump; instead I offer you this glimpse into my current existential state following my acceptance of his win:
Kellyanne Conway
How anyone could draft a list of 2016’s most prominent villains and fail to include the living manifestation of the Nazi skin-lamp that is Ms. Conway is beyond me. Whatever Kellyanne (yes her name is one word, sort of like how Blitzkrieg is also one word) set out to prove, the world will never know. Did she want to show that she could strategize a win for a man who was once considered a white power pipe-dream? Did she want to prove that conservative values are the only true American values? Did she want to prove to her mother that rejecting blind-date after blind-date was all for some greater purpose other than familial spite? Truly, her motivations continue to escape me, and then again they don’t. If I know one thing, it’s that racists and isolationists love a weak nation. It’s easier to line pockets when everyone is looking at the Mexicans you know. It’s all economics, dear Watson… simple economics.
Luxury Condos/Eat-Play-Live Lifestyle
“Remember that house? Didn’t we fuck there when we weren’t supposed to? We obviously ate too much psilocybin that weekend but damn that was fun. Well guess what? They’re tearing it down! The building wasn’t up to code, and they’re building a Kroger compound 3 miles up the road..makes sense.”
Perhaps this inner monologue resonates with you because you too ate too many shrooms and fucked someone you don’t talk to anymore in a now destroyed building. Perhaps this inner monologue resonates with you because you have become acutely aware of just how innocuous “development” and “gentrification” seem to so many.
We don’t dislike gentrification because of a bunch of drug-soaked memories, at least when we first feel the anger rise in us in tandem with each newly erected stucco exterior. Gentrification has become such a buzzword that almost everyone forgot the real reason the term “yuppie” surged back into popular vernacular. Any growth you’ve seen in your city (in particular San Francisco, New York, and Atlanta) seems really nice and shiny, until the lack of equity in said development becomes apparent. As far as cities go, they don’t really give a damn so long as blight is eliminated, and as far as activists go, they’re running out of options to prevent the normalization of inequitable housing markets. Surprisingly, for some folks “gentrification” is a feel-good word, but there also a time when “The Secret” was considered a reasonable Christmas gift.
This too, shall pass.
Kasim Reed
He sold the city to some South Carolina conquistadors who consider Negro Removal a fair trade for an economically prosperous downtown, need I say more?
WRS
The Santa Maria, The Niña, and The Pinta of Atlanta’s urban center, WRS has done a lot to put the fear of White well-financed God in many a DIY disciple’s and potential homeowner’s heart. From their proposed buyout of Atl’s beloved burgeoning arts-district Broad Street, to their Machiavellian acquirement of historic Underground Atlanta and the public streets that surround it, they haven’t done much to quell local fears of a Charleston-based takeover. It’s likely they don’t give a shit because we will all shop at the new Five-Points Sephora anyway. Still, there are future possibilities for local pressure to keep the foreign and removed investors at WRS accountable because Kasim’s term ends next November!
Tomi Lahren
If you’ve ever doubted the power of pink pussy, you’ve probably never been a cis het black dude with a media platform (hey, Charlemagne and Trevor). Tomi Lahren has spent the past year basking in her newfound fame as Anne Coulter’s younger, more supple clone. She is a racist and there isn’t much to discuss there, but how she managed to play two cis-het black media personalities like simple fools who slid in her DMs instead of deliberately foolish wannabe do-gooders who failed to take her to task is astounding. I don’t want to give credit to a White woman who probably thinks the right to say “Merry Christmas” is more important than a Black life, but because it’s 2016 and I’ve already lost everything I will. Well done cunt…well done.
Cersei Lannister
Perhaps the only villain anyone actively rooted for, Cersei lived a double life. One as a pariah and sexual deviant (in King’s Landing), the other as an icon of what happens when you slut shame a bonafide Petty Labelle (the real world). Cersei didn’t just blow shit up and destroy the religious Zealot that was the so-called “High Sparrow”; she also sent an empowering message to femmes world-wide. She reminded every little girl out there that no matter what your peers may think of you, there is at least another world, dimension maybe, where fucking your brother is the ultimate form of patriarchal liberation. Of course, we use “brother” loosely to preserve the positive nature of this failed metaphor.
So, there you have it, Wussy's definitive list of 2016's best (worst?) villains. I'm going to go drink more now.
Zaida J. is the Associate Editor here at WUSSY and a self-described transgender loud mouth.