My Interview With !Viva Hate!

Revered and reviled on this forum in equal measure. Alternately despicable and delightful from post to post. Deceptive and brutally honest depending on who's asking and what it is they're asking for.

Of course it's the legendary !Viva Hate!.

In her incredible decade and a half as a poster here she has seen busloads of mods and fellow members both reign and fall by the wayside. Arguably (is it arguable?) the flagship member of Morrissey-solo, it's always a far more desolate place when she is banned or takes a break.

I have known Viva on and off these boards for about 13 years now and it's always been a delight to converse with her, even when we haven't seen eye to eye. I recently asked her for an interview and to my surprise she consented. We discuss the state of Morrissey-solo in 2020 and that of the alternative pop icon it is devoted to. We delve into Viva's decision to transition and how, if at all, it has changed her life. We find out where she stands on President Trump and where she falls as a conservative-leaning trans woman in the midst of the ever-escalating social justice wars.

Without further adieu, I present my interview with the one and only !Viva Hate!.
Enjoy.
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Is that a Fangoria shirt you've got on in your avatar?
Yes it is. I grew up reading Fangoria and Starlog and Famous Monsters of Filmland. I’d read current issues and also I would go to a shop called Merlin Books and go through all the old back issues and buy them. I haven’t read it in awhile. My understanding is that they just recently came back after being out of print for many years. But horror movies aren’t what they used to be so I don’t think I’ll be reading anytime soon. I don’t know if you were aware or not but horror movies are pretty much my favorite thing in the world. My greatest obsession. Horror, Batman, Twin Peaks, WWF. In that order.

You have mentioned innumerable times your love of cinema. What was the last great modern film you saw?
I like a lot of stuff. Love a lot of stuff even...but I’m not going to pretend that a lot of what I love can truly be looked at as “great”. The last “great” film I saw was in 2014 - Whiplash. That movie almost feels like it was about my childhood. J.K. Simmons is amazing in it. I’m sure you’ve seen it. If not, you should watch it.
Tell me how you got into Morrissey's music. How old were you and how did you find him?
I may be a year or two off but I believe I was four at the time. My father used to work out a lot in the garage. He tried to instill in me a passion for fitness (that never quite caught on as much as he hoped) so I was there, essentially against my will, lifting weights. He always played records and one that stood out was ‘Meat Is Murder’. It was more the music than the vocals or lyrics that reeled me in. I was too young to really comprehend the lyrics but my initial reaction to The Smiths is one I generally still have with a Morrissey album; I’m initially turned off by his voice or what he has to say but I can’t stop listening to it until eventually I find worth.

What do you think is Morrissey's peak period artistically and what post-peak songs do you feel indicate he is still able to tap into that level of magic?
I think there are different peaks for Morrissey. Overall, peak Morrissey is the Meat Is Murder Morrissey for me. Vocally, lyrically...it’s the best of him. Peak solo Morrissey is Viva Hate and the singles and b-sides from that period. Vocally, he’s been declining since Ringleader and lyrically he’s been declining since Maladjusted. I’ve always said and still believe that the last time you heard the same Morrissey that was in The Smiths was on Maladjusted. In my mind I have to separate him as two different people because I can’t reconcile his post 1997 output with what came before. I don’t think there is anything that really stands up to his peak. Not full songs at least. Certain bits and pieces maybe. The most recently he sounded like the old Morrissey was on “Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets” and the outro of “I Bury The Living”...there’s almost a playfulness to those that he lost somewhere along the way. He’s too old and bitter to ever truly be great again and that bothers me a lot because I so desperately want him to be great again...but few artists ever really put out amazing work this late in their career. The list is incredibly short.

What musicians do you invest the same degree of time and analysis to as you do with Morrissey?
Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Weezer, Elton John and Roxy Music.

You consider Meat Is Murder to be the greatest Smiths album and you consider The Queen Is Dead overrated. Can you elucidate a little more regarding those opinions?
To me The Queen Is Dead is more like a comedy album. And I’m not a terribly big fan of Morrissey being comedic. I don’t generally find him funny. ‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’ and ‘Vicar in a Tutu’ are some of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. He single-handedly ruins ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’ which is baffling considering how amazing the music is and how great his vocals and his melody are on it. ‘Never Had No One Ever’ is just boring and shitty. I don’t even terribly like the title track. In fact, thinking about it now the only song that I truly like on the album is ‘I Know It’s Over’. Everything else is either overrated or trash. I don’t think any other album fully encompasses what the Smiths were and all of their strengths as a band better than Meat Is Murder. Morrissey treats this album with a bit more seriousness. I don’t find any of the lyrics to be ridiculous vaudeville humor nonsense. And it is some Marr’s best compositions and playing. There isn’t one bad song on there in my opinion. Nothing feels like filler. I know some people have a problem with the title track but I’ve always loved it. And arguably their best song is on there - ‘Well I Wonder’. Also, my personal favorite of their songs is on there - ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’. It’s probably my favorite album of all time. It’s perfect...and there are very few albums I think are perfect back to front.

Do you feel that the current anti-Morrissey SJW zeitgeist is merited?
No. I think people need to get a life and quit worrying about politics so much. The mob mentality is very embarrassing. I often get the impression that many of the people who are very rah-rah about social issues online are just wanting to fit in and be seen and validated. Honestly, I really don’t see much difference between them and Bigfoot hoaxers. The best ones though are the people with questionable pasts now wanting to be on record as being “on the right side of history”. It’s like look at the whole #metoo thing. Why are some people using that hashtag who willingly had sex to further their career being called brave and mentioned in the same breath as people who were unwillingly assaulted? If you agreed to do something you didn’t really want to do and did it for personal gain, that doesn’t make you a victim...it makes you a prostitute.

When did you start posting on Morrissey-solo? What can you tell me about the site as it was in those days?
I started posting on May 15th, 2006. It really wasn’t much different than it is now...just larger numbers of the same type of people. The overly nice, the overly sensitive, the overbearing, the narcissists, the superfans, the haters, the elitists, the collectors, the spinsters, the crazies, the trolls, the assholes. Same shit. It was easier to enjoy the forum back then when it wasn’t just the same three people posting anonymously.

Talk to me about the inception of the Solo Wiki (a Morrissey-solo-centric database offering detailed, impartial info on Morrissey's legacy including tours, albums, band members, bootlegs, etc). You were heavily involved in that, right?
I was in the beginning. I was also heavily involved in general on the Wikipedia articles on The Smiths and Morrissey for a very long time. Ok, the genesis of that and I’m going to be blunt is that I’ve always had a great dislike of Stephane and PJLM. I’ve always viewed them essentially as a Solo content Hoover. Just sucking up other people’s work and words and reappropriating it as their own. There’s very little on that site that wasn’t lifted in some way or another from Solo and it’s members...and Stephane was always very pompous and critical of this place all the while stealing from it. So, after noticing that Stephane had used my words and experiences from concerts I attended and reposted them without any credit on their site as if they had experienced the same event as me, I got pissed and I threw the idea out there to David, who was from my understanding also looking into the viability of a Wiki. Why wait for someone to lift our member’s info when you can make an in house Wiki that serves 80% of the function that PJLM did? Unfortunately, by the time all this occurred most of the userbase was gone and no one wanted to populate future articles. They would just complain on the forum about something not being there or needing to be changed instead of doing it themselves. I can’t stand helplessness and it really turned me off of populating the articles with the content they would have been.

You still post here after 13 years of membership despite being banned (and unbanned) multiple times, despite recidivism, and despite being reviled by as many fellow members as adore you. How do you account for the love/hate relationship that the forum here holds for you?
I think some people have a sense of humor slightly in tune with my own and can understand when I’m serious and when I’m not...others, it’s not so easy. I don’t really devote much thought to it. I’m not now nor have I ever been terribly concerned with what people think of me here. One thing I do find amusing though is a lot of people who were very nasty to me publicly are super nice and flirtatious with me now in private. Which really makes you wonder what some of the true motivations are of people who start gunning for you.

Are there any formerly regular posters that you miss hearing from, and why?
A lot of them. Here is a list of the ones I liked because they were fun and funny and just great easy going people to talk to: Nugz, virtually dead, Cassius, Iona mink, the more you explore me, bogdana, troubleluvsme, buzzetta, dann coulter, cornelius blaze, slum mum 1974 to name a few.
But you know, as do most people, that Kuiper was the boardie for me. I was legitimately in love with him. I can’t even convey how happy I would be if he came back into my life. Most of the reason I’m even still on this site is because I hope someday he’ll decide to take a walk down memory lane and view the forum again and see that I’m here and reach out to me.

If you could change this forum, how would you do it? What do you think would make this website a better place in 2020?
Nothing is going to fix the damage that Morrissey has done or undo the period of time Kewpie banned/drove 70% of the active members away. The first thing I’d do is get rid of anonymous posting. The second is buy a new theme and redesign the layout of this site. New color scheme, new banner, redo the emojis and ratings system, increase the file size limit on images, maybe allow animated gifs as avatars. Some of these features could be hidden behind the subscriber paywall and at the very least David wouldn’t be paying completely out of pocket for everything. I don’t know how well it would go over with this crowd but maybe create a site Discord server. It would essentially bring chat back which was kinda popular at one time. I’m not sure if I’d upgrade to Xenforo 2 or 2.1 or not. There isn’t nearly enough support or add-ons to warrant it. Also, I’d be more picky about what gets promoted to the main page as “news”. Like, a blogger making Top 10 lists and a Satanist baker or whatever mentioning Morrissey isn’t really front page news in my opinion. David has done a great job but he needs to trust some more control to members of his staff. He can’t and shouldn’t be in this alone. Make this a team effort.

You've cultivated a personality, in your tens of thousands of posts here over the years, of someone who is very brazen and unapologetic. Have you ever regretted a negative exchange with a poster here? Have you ever rethought or wanted to redact a post?
I can’t recall anything off the top of my head that I’ve ever really regretted saying here. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. There was some drama with Kuiper that I started after I had been banned that I think really turned him against me. Turned a lot of people against me, actually. I was behaving very unhinged. I was very angry at a perceived betrayal and was scared of being abandoned and I reacted in a way that ensured I fulfilled my own prophecy. And there’s also all the shit that I went through with you that I regret. But that’s water under the bridge. No reason to bring up the Viva Hate cockblock ever again.
 
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PT.2

You met someone on here some years back that became a significant part of your personal life. Without betraying confidential details, what can you tell me about that period of your life? Did it affect the way you view this website?

It had its ups and downs. I wasn’t perfect but neither was she. I tried very hard to make things work but in the end I knew it was a lie and I couldn’t fully commit to it anymore. I was very unhappy and unfulfilled and exhausted for more reasons than just wanting to finally start presenting as female. It ended as everything does.

It made it very awkward for me to be here and enjoy the site. I was always very protective of myself online but her being her that just went out the window and my privacy just didn’t exist anymore because of her bad choices. That can never be undone. Now, I’ve come to terms with it and embraced it to the point I just so matter of factly put all this private stuff out there. People now know about my life and history and views and sex life and what I look like. It feels very great to just not care anymore.

What is the most misunderstood thing about you in your personal life and what do you think is the most misunderstood thing about you as the Viva Hate persona?
I would guess that the most misunderstood thing about my personal life is that people don’t often believe that I’m very shy. People always seem to view me as being cocky and arrogant and I think because of that they think I’m very secure with myself but I’m not. I don’t feel comfortable around people because very few people see the world the way I do and being myself around them would not end well, or at least that is my assumption. There’s very little difference between me and !Viva Hate!. Sure, it is it’s own entity and doesn’t necessarily reflect everything I truly believe and feel but for the most part what you see is what you get. My ex will tell you that the on/off switch doesn’t work most of the time. I say things in jest that are taken seriously or are considered hurtful. If anything, I’m probably more reserved as !Viva Hate! because I don’t always react to everything or blurt out whatever thought has entered my mind whereas I generally do in real life. I can’t really help it. Something pops in my head that I find funny and I have to share it. For example, last night I think I may have disturbed a friend of mine by telling them that I’d like to see a Gilligan’s Island/Hogan’s Heroes-like sitcom about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex island and have it star Ron Perlman (this led into the Ron Perlman divorce hole I told you about). Children in cages trying every episode to escape but their plan is foiled in some lighthearted way every time. The notion was hilarious to me but I think they thought I was crazy. I don’t know, maybe I am.

As you have recently publicly embraced a trans lifestyle, what would you say have been the most positive and the most negative repercussions on your day to day life?
Well, I’m much happier. So I guess that is a positive. I get hit on a lot more and that could go either way. The negative aspects have more to do with the waiting game. My hair isn’t long enough yet. It’s currently shoulder length and it will probably take another two months to get it the length I want before I can dye it again. Another negative aspect is that that I don’t present all the time out of convenience and peace of mind and I’m not sure how long it is going to take me to have the courage to go grocery shopping or just out in the general public in a normal setting as a female. I spent an awfully long time building myself up and now I feel like I have to start all over again. On top of all this, I have to regularly shave my entire body which is such a pain because I’m a few degrees away from being Robin Williams hairy and my skin is sensitive and can’t take daily shaves. I’ve been using Veet lately but it smells horrible and doesn’t work every time. AND now I have horrible allergies where I’m sensitive to certain ingredients and also heat, so I can only take cold showers and regularly am dealing with allergic reactions that can make my eyes, hands and lips swell and make hives appear. It’s like, so hard to keep looking pretty. It can be daunting.

So when and in what settings DO you feel comfortable as this new self? And surely, although your transitioning is still a work in progress, enough has changed so that even when you're not “presenting” as a woman per se, you look noticeably different to other people than you used to...or is that a naive assumption?
Settings I feel comfortable in currently are limited to my home, someone else’s residence or a bar/club/theater. That’s about it. In these places, I have some control over who I’m around and who I interact with. If I can’t control the situation, I’m not going to risk it at this juncture. One bad experience could set me back big time. In the last year I’ve been depressed by things that have happened and gone off my medication for periods of time. Well, the thing is, you go off it and you’re pretty much guaranteed to undo your progress. I can’t keep having experiences that make me so upset that I don’t progress because then the lack of progression or the reversal of progression leads to more depression which leads us back where we were again.

I mean, I don’t just take my pills and become a woman. I take two kinds of pills. One to stifle the testosterone and one that is essentially estrogen. I started this too late for there to be a radical difference with pills alone. At this juncture in my life, what it’s going to do is essentially limited to weight redistribution, slowed hair loss, breast development and softer skin. Potentially I run the risk of my dick and/or balls shrinking too. I stay mostly covered up in my day to day life. For the last 20 years, I’ve never gone in public without a jacket and I have never worn shorts in my adult life. Eventually my breasts may have to be taped down but I’m not to the point where it’s very obvious when I have a jacket on. It’s not really a big deal to do that as I’ve been subconsciously tucking and peeing sitting down for like the last 15 years anyway.

Do you feel any different, now having been going through this process for awhile, than you did at the outset? What remains for you on this journey?
Ha. No, I don’t feel any different. I feel happier and more at peace and I lose my temper far less. But not really any different in a significant way. I’ve been told I always had a “very feminine energy” to me. I think that’s just a nice way of saying “you’re a catty bitch and I always knew you liked men”. There is a lot left to do. My breasts have like another year and a half of developing to go. Various procedures that I would like as well. Electrolysis, dermabrasion and microdermabrasion, Lasik, Invisalign, bleaching, hair transplant to feminize my hairline...I have a widow’s peak and don’t like it. I think once all that is done, I’ll be very comfortable in my own skin. I’m very grateful that I’m not dysphoric to the extent that I want facial feminization surgery...I might get there some day though, and that scares me. Other than that, just presenting publicly with confidence is what I want most. The rest doesn’t really matter as much to me.

How do you juxtapose your shyness against something as bold and potentially publicly contentious as transitioning?
Honestly, I have almost zero support and I know I’m not going to be able to have any of my desired procedures done anytime soon so I’m using things like this site and 4chan and Grindr as ways to validate myself. It’s the foundation I need to be able to cope with the shyness.

In the past, you've implied if not outright stated a support for the Trump administration; not exactly a haven of safety and acceptance for the LGBTQ community. If you still have a positive assessment of President Trump, how do you reconcile that with your lifestyle? Do you feel a disconnect between yourself and the bulk of his fanbase?
I mean, I am a Trump supporter in the sense that I have traditionally been conservative all my life and the only other option was Clinton at the time. Had there been a better choice, like Sanders, I would’ve voted for the first time in my life for a Democrat. For some reason though they f***ed Bernie over and it looks like they’re going to do it again. But that’s the media for you. I have no idea what Trump’s fanbase is actually like. I don’t follow it. I’m not entrenched in it. I don’t really care either. I know what people say it is like, but you also have to consider the source on these things. None of his policies have affected me in any manner whatsoever so I guess that’s how I reconcile it.

I think people in general tend to overreact to things. I really don’t think he’s that bad. I mean he’s not Bush levels of bad, yet. Generally, I’m just very amused by him. He’s such a f***ing troll and it just pisses everybody off. Like that picture where he photoshopped his head on Rocky’s body the day before Thanksgiving. It was brilliant.

It’s absolutely hilarious that this is what the world has become; the president is sitting around making memes and everyone is losing their mind over it. Like, who cares? Really? How can you take people seriously that are losing their minds over this shit? These are the same people that tossed Obama’s salad for 8 years and he did absolutely nothing of any lasting worth. The entire cult of personality with Obama reached absurd levels. How exactly does someone win the Nobel peace prize before they’ve actually done anything? Lol. How do you win an award for what you’re supposedly gonna do? He didn’t bring peace...so, do they take the award back like he’s Jim Thorpe or some shit? They should give me the Nobel prize for literature for the great book that I will write someday because, apparently, it doesn’t matter if I ever actually write it or not...you just gotta believe. Like Peter Pan. Hey, did you know Trump is executing dozens of children at this very moment on the border? See? This type of nonsense is why I don’t take any of these people whining seriously. The world is a sad and stupid place and it gets more sad and stupid with every generation.

What is it about Sanders that appeals to you? He seems to be the white knight of the sort of demographic that you strike me as being very cynical of. Do you divorce him from the bulk of his supporters?
I like the idea of a lot of his policies. Others I absolutely hate. I’m not a fan of giving blanket citizenship to illegal immigrants. By the way, ever notice they don’t call them that anymore? They’ve gone through about 4 different changes on how they chose to present the situation through the media. Gee, I wonder why they’re doing that? Lol. I like his stances on fair elections, Medicare, LGBT insurance coverage, raising the minimum wage, college, forgiveness of medical and student loan debt, housing and rent control, tax increase for wealthy, social security, and a marijuana legalization that includes expunging records for past offenses.

I pretty much divorce everyone from everything. I have family members who are constantly saying “oh, I’ll never watch another one of his movies again” when they find out they disagree with an actor on some issue or live in a way not approved of by them. I’m not really like that. I generally think everyone should mind their own business and leave everyone alone. So, honestly, I can’t say I know much about his supporters. I’m assuming they are like douchebag millennials or something that want everything given to them and blaming the last generation for all their failures? I mean, it’s a shitty movie but I can’t think of a better comparison at the moment...think of Luke in The Last Jedi. That’s pretty much me as far as this stuff goes. I’m on my own island cut off from it all by choice.




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Ladies and Gentlemen you have entered the #CringeCorner of morrissey-solo.com.
 
Trump really making me regret that answer. :tearsofjoy:
 
Trump really making me regret that answer. :tearsofjoy:
Don't buy into left-wing propaganda and disinformation. Yes, Donald Trump is a Zionist retard who made the wrong decision, but we're not about to enter a war - let alone World War 3. Compared to the other side who want to turn America into Mexico because the native citizenry doesn't vote for them, he's pretty based.
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Fell asleep thru pt.1..TLDR...ffs keep your answers brief...i know you girls like to prattle on, but I don't need inside leg measurements, or yawnorama. Sorry, am sure there's sm good content Viva, but I'll need to revisit when I've had less than 2 beers.
 


That motherf***er fired Dennis Rodman for spelling his ho ass wife's name wrong. Ain't no M in Prostitute!

I'll take Melania over Big Mike any day of the week.
 
Fell asleep thru pt.1..TLDR...ffs keep your answers brief...i know you girls like to prattle on, but I don't need inside leg measurements, or yawnorama. Sorry, am sure there's sm good content Viva, but I'll need to revisit when I've had less than 2 beers.

I will record a books on tape version just for you. Not even joking. :blush:
 
Don't buy into left-wing propaganda and disinformation. Yes, Donald Trump is a Zionist retard who made the wrong decision, but we're not about to enter a war - let alone World War 3. Compared to the other side who want to turn America into Mexico because the native citizenry doesn't vote for them, he's pretty based.
4688123f-5b80-4861-8c26-b2885be9c1cc.png

I really enjoy you. You should register here with a proxy so I can chat with you in PM’s! :tongueout:
 
I really enjoy you. You should register here with a proxy so I can chat with you in PM’s! :tongueout:
Thank you! I believe that's the first time anybody's ever said that to me. The offer does sound intriguing. What would we discuss in PM's?
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Thank you! I believe that's the first time anybody's ever said that to me. The offer does sound intriguing. What would we discuss in PM's?
1525268786652.jpg
I'm guessing fren stuff.
 
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