#this is indeed also my own explanation as to why he has heroine potential. to me

[yume-fanfare]

what makes a good heroine?

( 1 2 3 4)

#and then since the romantic scenes turned out so well they added a few more #and the movie was a total hit #the end #torikasa #tsukasa suou #tori himemiya #enstars #ensemble stars #art tag #comic #yo que pretendía madrugar mañana. pero bueno its ok #this is indeed also my own explanation as to why he has heroine potential. to me #movie filming story

[gascon-en-exil]

I'm genuinely curious about your "Black Eagles most to least favourite" list.

Here you are.

#1: Hubert

Could there be any other? I remember back when there was a promo introducing the house retainers (well, Lorenz for the Deer) and everyone was saying that Hubert looked so obviously evil that there had to be some deeper explanation, that someone who took design cues from a two-dimensional villain like Fates’s Iago couldn’t possibly be Edelgard’s retainer. Then the game came out, and we all realized that Hubert was exactly as advertised and then some: a cold and calculating murderer and war criminal with his fingerprints all over almost every terrible thing that happens over the course of the story, as comfortable with chloroform and a razor as dark magic and down to perform unspeakable experiments on innocent civilians to turn them into war machines and then backstab his co-conspirators because he will suffer no rivals for his title of the Most Evil Man in Fòdlan. And yep, he looks like Dracula and Severus Snape had a one-night stand and their mpreg love child went to an anime convention...but when Ferdinand looks at Hubert he sees Mr. Darcy and the Phantom of the Opera and Edward Cullen/Christian Grey, and soon enough that snake in Hubert’s breeches will be singing quite the aria indeed. You do you, Ferdinand.

Ok, I’ve already rambled at length on Hubert’s bisexuality and the interesting things it reveals about both him and his two primary love interests, but I do also have to admire the sheer audacity both of Hubert as an incel/Nice Guy-flavored romantic false lead for Edelgard who never had a serious chance because of the self-insert fantasy and of the decision to follow that up with a trope-laden queer romance that perfectly counterbalances Hubert’s attraction to Edelgard and puts Ferdinand firmly in the place he was destined to occupy by choosing to side with the Empire. It’s nearly as outrageous as just how casually evil Hubert gets to be, as well as the immense potential for dark humor that lies with that. You have to bend over backwards to say that Hubert isn’t unapologetically, irredeemably evil, and if you try there will be significantly more fans just waiting to tell you that you’re wrong - myself included. He’s the Manfroy to Edelgard’s Arvis but so much than that, and I look forward to the point in the CF postgame where he effectively takes over the Empire in true evil chancellor fashion and unleashes the full extent of his horrors upon Fòdlan. He somehow got even better in the DLC too despite being absent from CS and getting no new supports, because the Abyssians in CF just can’t stop talking about his nefarious antics down there. I just can’t get enough of how good this guy is at being bad, and I love that FE gave us exactly what was advertised here.

#2: Ferdinand

Now here’s a case of the opposite, where what’s on the packaging didn’t prepare me for what was to come. If I remarked on Ferdinand at all during pre-release it was only to think that he might be part of a Christmas knight duo with Sylvain since the game looked like it wouldn’t have one of those. Early on there wasn’t much else to be said about Ferdinand; he was like Claude in that his popularity ran off a meme (except just the one rather than several), and in appearance and personality he was basically Lorenz with less ridiculous hair. But then came his supports, and his post-timeskip look, and suddenly Ferdinand blossomed into the subtext-laden fem with very bizarre taste in men - see above - that he could have only dreamed of being if he’d stuck to such well-trod ground as the Christmas knight archetype. We learn of his love for opera, his complicated relationship with his father, his worship of the hot mess diva Manuela and how he learned swordplay specifically to imitate her roles on the stage, and - yes - how some backhanded compliments and expensive gifts of tea turn him into a blushing Regency heroine. It all casts his unusually rote romances with women in a performative light (as opposed to Lorenz who is similarly performative but seems genuinely interested in the marriage market), to say nothing of his one-sided rivalry with Edelgard that brushes against jealousy over Hubert’s devotion to her more often than against romantic attraction to her, and that toys around with gendered behavior in a manner complementary to Edelgard’s own bucking of the gender status quo.

And while not to the same extent as Felix, I do appreciate that Ferdinand has two distinct arcs depending on the route - and unlike some who feel that one or the other detracts from his character as a whole I personally find that they complement each other well. In SS and if recruited to AM and VW he makes the hard choice to oppose his homeland, spending the timeskip waging a solitary battle against the Empire with his private militia and then joining back up with Byleth’s army at Garreg Mach because he knows Edelgard is in the wrong even as it pains him to depose the Adrestian emperor and leave his own status uncertain...not to mention fight Hubert, which merits a curious boss conversation as well as some extra lines in SS (plus the infamous Huge Hole™ remark that I will never stop referencing because it is hilarious) that, while not elevating Ferdibert anywhere near the level of Dimidue in terms of cross-route canon endorsement, nonetheless are suggestive of something deeper between them that exists even if they find themselves on opposite sides of a war. In CF by contrast Ferdinand gives into his craving for the title and holdings that Edelgard has just stripped from his father and embraces nationalism and his long-held ideal of what the office of the prime minister should to do as a means of justifying the Empire’s conquests. Of course in the process he also succumbs to Hubert’s, er, charms(?) and becomes the charismatic bureaucrat who is presumably saddled with the task of putting a positive spin on the Empire’s dystopian atrocities while Edelgard and Hubert do all the actual work...and Hubert does all the actual actual work, which includes a lot of murder and kidnapping and all manner of other things that he doesn’t share with his pretty lover and about which Ferdinand quickly learns not to ask. Two Jewels of the Empire, indeed.

#3-4: Edelgard and Dorothea

I go back and forth on these so I’m not going to bother putting them in a definitive order, particularly because I like them for very different reasons that are difficult to compare. For Edelgard, it would be most accurate to say that I enjoy her potential much more than her execution; she gets some meaty material to work with as a lord and as the driving antagonist of the whole game outside of CF, and while I still prefer Micaiah for female lords there’s something darkly satisfying about her need for control and domination and her utter refusal to compromise or remain stagnant...except where Byleth is concerned, and Edeleth drags her down so badly that it would be painful if I cared more about that type of strong female character. Had the game axed the self-insert obsession (even if that meant axing her bisexuality along with it) and focused on her experiences during the Insurrection as the source of her worldview and motivations I’d be inclined to like the final product far more, because that’s a hell of a lot more in line with what she actually does and conveniently also maps to the life of a real world ruler with whom I’m relatively familiar and whom history regards in appropriately ambivalent terms.

Dorothea on the other hand is someone I can relate to on a more personal level, mostly as a sex worker. She’s similar to Primrose from Octopath Traveler, both of them prostitutes and playing coy with the implications of the RPG dancer class archetype, although Primrose hits a few more of my buttons for being former nobility and being motivated by revenge. Then again, I fully understand Dorothea’s anxieties about growing old without a man to take care of her, even if she loses me (and Yuri picks up from where she leaves off) when she dips into lesbianism as an alternative option. She’s got her ups and downs for me - I love that she brings up incest kink with Caspar as opposed to this series’s usual outright incest, while I love less her strange Ferdinand supports that are suspended oddly between friendship and romance and...something else undefinable - and I don’t have much to say on her life as an opera diva except that it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that she’s been turning tricks on the side and even got a sugar daddy to pay her way into the academy. Theatre and sex work have always gone hand-in-hand like that.

#5-7: Linhardt, Caspar, and Petra

This is why I couldn’t make up a list like this for the Lions or Deer, because most of their students would be in big clumps like this. I have no strong opinions on any of these characters; they each have their moments, but not enough to elevate them to where I actively like them or drop them down into real dislike. I suppose you could say I’m disappointed by how Caspar and Linhardt are visual allusions to Ike/Soren who do absolutely nothing else with that similarity except eloping in their paired ending...which is preceded by virtually nothing in the way of real chemistry. If I enjoy them for anything in particular it’s Linhardt’s wit and Caspar’s occasional bouts of emotional vulnerability, like his mini-arc in AM where he has to deal with his feelings surrounding Randolph’s death and then later gets an apology from Dimitri for it.

Petra is awkward all around as the game dances around her delicate political situation, and I also happen to agree with the VA who (if I recall) thought the character should have some sort of accent but wasn’t allowed to do one. (If anyone is wondering, based on her last name and Brigid being an island nation I headcanon it as a Celtic-derived culture, but as with my personal reading of Dedue and Duscur I know that doesn’t play well to the fandom at large).  All in all Petra feels like a more self-aware rendition of the exotic swordswoman archetype begun by Ayra in Jugdral, but there’s clearly still some work to be done on that front.

#8: Bernadetta

Ugh. With apologies to @capriciouscorvid for explaining how even unintentional disability representation can be taken as a positive, I just don’t see how Bernadetta’s character could possibly be considered a good thing when she’s so grating in almost all of her supports and most of her story and exploration presence outside of CF. All the screaming and high-pitched pronouncements of impending death get very old very quickly, and the part where she’s meant to be romantically appealing in her neediness and isolation is as lost on me as it would have been had it stemmed instead from a massive rack. Her supposedly sympathetic backstory doesn’t help much either, as it leaves me mostly with the thought that her father is an idiot because his methods obviously did not make her suitable to be a good wife. I also don’t care for how she’s one of several characters used to soften Jeritza (and that the way she does so is I think rather insulting to people with social anxiety, to liken it to a compulsion to commit murder), or even worse that people point to her Hubert support to try and say that he’s not such a bad guy and they’d be total besties just like Ferdinand and Dorothea (another pairing that doesn’t exactly scream BFFs). I mean, really....

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Black Eagles

[lovehatinganime]

BNHA role swap. The Villains are Yuuei Students: Shigaraki Tomura Edition

“I'm going to ignore the fact that Shigaraki would be called Shimura Tenko because I really don't like that name” this was my first thought and then a whole fanfic plot idea came out of it. 

Nana Shimura, after a night with her lover, accidentally got pregnant. This dude is foreign or a special agent, making it impossible for him to stay around. Nana and him spoke about abortion or giving the baby away. It was honestly the cleverest idea. However, Nana decided to have the baby as a single mom in the very last minute. She didn't tell him not to ruin his career... and well, mostly because it was against what they had arranged. (I actually hate this scenario, but I had to take the father out of the picture and that`s the only explanation it ocurred to me). 

Everything went fine because she had help from a lot of people to raise her kid (you can choose male or female, is not relevant to the story). Thanks to this, she could still continue with her job as, you know, world saviour. Nana`s child grew, fell in love, married and planned to have his/her own family quite fast (the next Shimura generation is simply a normal person. One who, although having a good quirk, never took an interest in following his/her mother`s steps). Here is when things got twisted. Nana had made a lot of enemies during her hero service years and the bad guy who hated her most, villain All Might, attempted to murder her offspring. The police and pro heroes arrived when he was torturing the pregnant woman. It was precisely Nana herself who ´saved` her daughter/ daughter-in-law. The doctors did all they could but unfortunately it was not enough to prevent her from dying. However, they were able to take the baby out. After a month of intensive care in the hospital, Tenko was like any other baby. Nana had no doubt this time, she could not keep him. That`s why handman is yet called Shigaraki Tomura in this au of mine. 

Kurogiri, a retired hero who used to work with the police, infiltrating in multiple crime gangs; became his legal tutor. In the present, Shigaraki is a 16-year-old hero wannabe and Nana is a still alive, kicking ass and quite young grandmother. Very few people know they are related, but Tomura is well aware of the whole story. The heroine tries to visit him as much as she can, taking extreme precaution measures. They get along very well. 

All this is like the background info, so the actual plot would start when Villain All Might`s successors (probably Deku and some other canon 1-A classmates) find out Shiggy`s existence and want to end him; to finish the job that got their master into prison. Maybe they try to recruit him to psychologically torture Nana... or directly try to kill him, not sure. Any way, they fail the first time, so the thing would be that now Tomura and some others who get stuck in the jambo mambo (probably the ones who canonly form the league of villains) have to survive on the run. 

Author Note: What do you think? (scratches the back of her neck) I would love to know your opinions. I am writing concrete headcanons now, so you get more info about other characters and how I imagine them in this parallel reality.  I am hoping to make a series out of this if I have enough time and inspiration. It is also a bit of a high school AU, to be honest. I've tried not to make it look like a soup opera but it sometimes just happens. I live for the tea.

Tomura would be this kid who never gets over his early adolescence emo phase: his hair is always covering his face, never shows the slightest amount of his pale skin and seems allergic to sunlight; wears hoodies on summer what the actual fuck; loves dark themes/topics and favourite colour is black, total edgelord, bitter sense of humor, MRC and BVB...

A videogame freak unable to open a book and study a bit. 

Watches anime because he is too lazy for the manga. 

Him as a student:

One of his teachers (All for one), for some reason, puts great trust on him, naming him class representative. 

Tomura is not amused. 

Complies to his duties, yes, but with extreme exasperation. 

AFO also believes Shigaraki has great potential as a hero. Insists on the idea that if he got better at fighting, with his quirk, he could disintegrate any dangerous weapon a villain had before they could hurt anyone. 

Moreover, this sensei affirms a Tomura in good shape would be impossible to escape as he is able to destroy any hiding place or possible obstacle someone tries to throw into the persecution. 

Considering all this, AFO stars training Shigaraki. 

Tomura is not giving much, tho. 

He is a bit depressed because he is sure he is never going to be like his grandmother. He passes all his courses with shameful results. He cannot find the motivation to make a bigger effort and just keeps going that way until... 

 a) he has a life changing experience when he disintegrates a broken building wall that was about to crush some kids. Tomura realises his quirk is very useful, actually perfect for rescue missions. 

b) Chisaki Kai arrives, transferred from Shiketsu. Contrary to Tomura, he is handsome, polite and with a quirk only destroying to create. He hates his guts. Although it seems to be one of the few people, if not the only one doing so. Kai is starting to become the yueei candidate for top class pro hero. Shigaraki does not like this a single bit. In his eyes, Chisaki is all a facade. Underneath that cool appearance he is just a weirdo prick with a superiority god complex. Tomura is not going to let someone like that enter the same category as Nana Shimura. That`s how he gets his act together (hate is a pure emotion, best fuel ever haha Nah, I am just a sucker for the Overhaul x Tomura relationship. Not in a shippy way, more like rivals). 

His hero costume:

Hasn't designed one yet. 

He starts thinking about it after the aforementioned epiphany. 

Interactions: 

Dabi is his best (probably only) friend, even if they are all the time bickering. He belongs to one of the most famous families in the hero society, him being the outcast. Tomura thinks of him as a total rebel without a cause. Despite his bad behaviour, Dabi has a natural talent that makes him one of the best at yuuei academy. 

The only thing Shiggy enjoys about being clas representative is the status it gives him. 

He cannot help but smile when he sees people who dislike him or would not talk to him in any other circumstance, be obliged to face him and treat him with great respect. 

Tomura gives a gay vibe and is popular with guys. 

Much to his disappointment because he is actually more into girls (I am saying “more” and not making him straight because my open minded multishipper ass always tends to give characters the possibility of discovering they are indeed bisexuals). 

Sadly for him, the only one who shows to have such interest is Toga Himiko, a first year unicorn lover, who is way too obsessed with him. 

Dabi, instead of helping him get rid of her (idk if you are aware of how ShigaToga is actually my favourite romantic ship for both of them BUT without the villainous context i can't see Tomura having the slightest interest on Himiko), encourages Toga and has lots of fun. 

#mha au headcanons #bnha villains as heroes #yuuei villains #shigaraki tomura #nana shimura #villain all might #villain class 1a #chisaki kai #all for one #dabi #toga himiko #league of villains #bnha role swap

[ihadafeeling]

heroines are proportionate to their villains

Don Jon: Most people eat that shit up. The pretty woman. The pretty man. Love at first sight. The first kiss. The break up. The make up. The expensive wedding. They drive off into the sunset. Everyone knows it’s fake, but they watch it like it’s real fucking life. Barbara: She was the most important thing to him. He gave up everything for her. It was just meant to be. I love movies like that.

You've heard this before: boy meets girl; boy loves the girl before the girl loves the boy; girl is poorer than boy; girl is less powerful than the boy. It's an old story, and old stories accumulate endings with retellings. Sometimes the girl changes the boy by loving him. Sometimes the boy's love for the girl changes him, a subtly different story. At worst, the change is a conversion of a girl's no into a yes, though the means of conversion vary; in my very favorite incarnation, the girl converts a beast into a man by taking the magic out of him.

What I've always loved about Beauty and the Beast is that it is a story about the transformative power of love in conflict. When Beauty faces the beast, she proves her ferocity. When the Beast yields to her needs above his own, he demonstrates his gentleness. Even so: a dark story. The Beast's gentleness comes down to failing to compel Beauty, even when he could — and only when he shows that willingness does Beauty offer her love, at the first point when it could be freely done. Still, 'failure to compel' is not a ringing endorsement of the Beast's kindness, though usually pitched as putting her agency above his own survival. It is a distinctly different fairy tale ending when contrasted with the usual upward class mobility of pauper-to-princess stories, where the prince remains exactly as he was, while the princess-to-be bargains or endures magic to meet him.

This is supposed to be the story of Meteor Garden 2018.

This was made for women, I thought, watching the first twenty minutes of the first episode. The powerful boy-clique at the heart of the show and at the center of its university setting, the F4, include someone with an eidetic memory; a master of the tea ceremony; a piano virtuoso; a business wunderkind who made his first million on the stock market at age 18; and yes, all of them wealthy beyond compare. But they are specifically introduced as trilingual 185 centimeter Bridge enthusiasts who excel in their respective fields of music and business administration and, "though they might look like players, they respect women." Verbatim. Such is their unbeaten skill at Bridge, and so numerous are their challengers, that only those that receive a red Joker card are invited to play them, where each team will place a bet on their victory. These bets vary, the scariest being the allegation that a losing team had to eat a pair of slippers. Expecting powerful men, I anticipated the usual machismo of wealthy brutal playboys who would gain attention because of their dominance over others. I was not expecting cute schoolboys who are showered with attention for ... well, for being just that, really.

To be fair, the most traditionally masculine of four is the main lead. Daoming Si is the aforementioned business wunderkind, the heir apparent to the most powerful conglomerate in China, who incidentally also beat up a mob boss in highschool. (I'm telling this to you now so you are less surprised than I was by some otherwise unexplained karate heroics of his in the show.) The story begins when he steps on Dong Shancai's phone by accident, breaking it, and does nothing to acknowledge it. As Shancai, unlike the F4 or the vast majority of Ming De University students, is not from a well-to-do family but instead a humble restaurant, the loss of a phone represents a significant hardship. Shenanigans ensue. A red Joker appears in Shancai's locker, indicating a challenge to play bridge from the F4. Si orders an incredible amount of take-out from her family and taunts her over its quality, prompting Shancai to admonish him for bullying her and for being an embarrassment among the otherwise polite and respectable elites at Ming De — and angered, Si smears a box over her head to silence her. After cleaning the noodles and sauces from her shirt, Shancai dreams of the F4 boys chanting EAT THE SLIPPERS over and over.

Her response?

To tell Daoming Si she's not interested in playing cards.

Then kick him in the face.

This refusal to surrender, even when desperately outclassed and outgunned, is supposed to be Dong Shancai's strong suit, where she is the 'undying weed' who refuses to give up against stronger foes. We understand, as the story goes on, that the independence of mind that Si finds so attractive in Shancai is also what causes many of their initial romantic troubles. He seems to not account for liking someone who does not like him back. In a particularly brutal scene, Si rushes to the rooftop to confront Shancai for her interest in Lei, something he interprets as playing them both. He strikes the wall next to her head, never fully explains the source of his anger beyond telling her to stop pretending, prevents her from leaving, pushes her against another wall ... and begins to kiss her, smearing the blood from his knuckles along her cheek and her jacket in the process. Bearing all this, Shancai begins to sob, and begs him to stop. "Stop crying. I won't hurt you any more." He smoothes back her hair as she curls back into herself, crying uncontrollably.

There is no apology for this interaction at any point in the show.

This is the scene that made me rescind my judgment that this was a show made about men generally far outside of toxic masculinity, and therefore the kind of show I think of as aimed at women rather than men. The same scene sat uncomfortably with me as the show pulled out the conventional stops to show love in the making, where Si demonstrates care for Shancai's wellbeing at the risk of his own life ... always followed by a scene where he called her his girlfriend (yes, that specific possessive term, never simply dating), a title she would explicitly deny. He would risk some loss, but never actually lost anything — immediately followed by his indignation to find that this hadn't entitled him to Shancai's affections. I thought again and again of that scene, and of how the things that I often took as demonstrations of love did not involve a change in the balance of power.

So why isn't this Beauty and the Beast?

What story is it, and who is it for?

Let me say one thing it is not: it's not a kind of wish fulfillment. I described to a friend how many side-characters fall in love with Shancai, to her general lack of notice and Si's enormous frustration, and that friend was taken aback. 'You're telling me that dude after dude falls in love with this average girl, while this unattainable boy remains solely interested in her?' Indeed. You could read this as a sort of women's fantasy: the totally unremarkable average girl, surrounded by a harem of unwavering admirers, one explicitly a remarkable boy. But the narrative addresses this concern fairly early on. Si has the opportunity to be with a very average girl, and his refusal of this girl demonstrates that his interest in Shancai isn't simply curiosity about how the other half lives, or the novelty of her poverty, but rather his interest in her as someone with a uniquely strong will. Though there are occasional random admirers without deep explanation, in general, Shancai is flattered by potential love interests for being someone who can persevere in the face of adversity. Which is to say that Shancai is not some fill-in-the-blank average girl. She is specific, and it is her specific moral quality that these men admire.

(And it should be noted she is not uniformly beloved. In her break up with the only other real rival love interest, he comments on how ugly she is, a fact commented on in literally every episode by every character except Si and literally unbelievable if you even glance at the actress Shen Yue.)

It is also not Beauty and the Beast, at least, not in my eyes — and I think that unfortunately has to do with some of the changes to gentle the differing presentations of masculinity in the show. It has much of the shape of that story, particularly as the early episodes alternate between Si trapping Shancai into being with him through his power and Si risking his life to show the value he places on hers. That's Beast's locked enchanted castle. That's Beast laying down his life. But the quality that Shancai is supposed to demonstrate, her unwavering, weedy perseverance, grows absent as the show continues. She is never strong armed into dating Si, but she is also unable to communicate her feelings to him, and the scenes in which she is unable to communicate read as her being cowed by him rather than withholding them deliberately. From what I've read of Hana Yori Dango and Meteor Garden 2001, her confrontations with F4, and with Si, are meant to be between someone relatively powerless confronting the powerful who abuse that power. (This is based on reading descriptions rather than actual viewings, so please forgive me if I've misunderstood.) Instead, the F4 are respectful bridge playing nerds. They are not villains. When Si and Shancai confront in the earlier arcs, regarding their romantic status, it does not read as a moral confrontation.

To me, Shancai feels like less than she might be, because her opposition is less.

Si begins Beastly, but goes through the transformation that his half of the fairy tale insists on. Rather than assuming Shancai's interest because of his own, he learns to state his feelings, vulnerably and honestly, and to seek frank discussions about their relationship. He does what he can to assimilate into her world, rather than assuming he can yank her into his.

In contrast, Shancai doesn't seem to be learning much at all, and in that, I find her less like Beauty than I would like. Beauty is supposed to learn that she has something inside her that she didn't know about, something strong, something not simply sweet or lovely. Something that can take on the Beast. She demonstrates this with her first flying kick, but insofar as her quality of perseverance appears in their relationship, it is in her refusal to date Daoming Si just because he says so.

And her refusal to discuss her feelings with him doesn't read as courage, or as a denial of that kind of intimacy because he doesn't deserve it, but as unwillingness to confront him. It's not that I don't get that, but it doesn't make me feel like this is a demonstration of an important moral quality. And insofar as the quality she discovers in herself is the ability to deny consent, well, that sucks for a moral quality, because what a terrible thing to remark on constantly as something that makes Shancai unique.

The only real villain in this show is Si's mother, the formidable Daoming Feng, leader of the Daoming Group, whose actions play out as cartoonishly evil. (One pleasing thing: she is unique in being unsupportive of Shancai. Every other female character who is introduced with the potential to be a rival or obstacle to Shancai appreciates her, even as they may go on to compete with her.) Shancai does talk back to Feng on a few occasions, but breaks up with Si at her first truly villainous act, and fears to confront her for the next 17 episodes. And I fret about this, because if this is supposed to be a love story with a point, the point should be the perseverance Shancai demonstrated in her love -- and it doesn't. She wavers too often.

I suppose consistent fortitude would make terrible television. There would be no surprise! But insofar as this show has involved growth, and therefore change, it has been the male lead's, and that always makes me nervous; when you read a heterosexual romance where the man does all the deeply existentially human things, fighting, changing, learning, growing, in his pursuit of a woman whose main choice is the change of her mind about him, you read a story simply about a man.

That makes me wonder about my question of who this is for. When I remarked earlier that seeing such sweet, soft, non-toxic men made me think that this was aimed for women, I didn't have a way to ground the claim, even as I felt it was true. I have even less of a basis of who the audience is if it reads as I think it does: as the taming of a very traditionally powerful man by his love for a woman, with a story centered on (but not explicit) on how the plot mainly centers on his choice to continue to pursue her. It's women, I know it is, but I don't know why I know that. I worry that it's some of the old existentialist bullshit, that women never fantasize about themselves as doers.

There's five hours left in the drama, and forty-three of it behind me -- enough that Shancai may surprise me, or that I may be deeply mistaken about previous episodes, because I just can't rewatch them all. I worry that that this last arc will involve Shancai holding tightly to Si, even as his mother does everything to destroy her life. That would it Tam Lin's fairy tale instead of Beauty's: a woman rescuing a man from fairies by clutching to him as he changes shape. Liz Lochead put it best:

It seemed earlier, you see, he’d been talking in symbols (like adder-snake, wild savage bear brand of bright iron red-hot from the fire) and as usual the plain unmythical truth was worse. At any rate you were good and brave, you did hang on, hang on tight. And in the end of course everything turned out conventionally right with the old witch banished to her corner lamenting, cursing his soft heart and the fact that she couldn’t keep him, and everyone sending out for booze for the wedding. So we’re all supposed to be happy? But how about you, my fallen fair maiden now the drama’s over, tell me how goes the glamourie? After twelve casks of good claret wine and the twelve and twelve of muskadine, tell me what about you? How do you think Tam Lin will take all the changes you go through?

#meteor garden 2018

[ncfan-1]

ncfan listens to The Magnus Archives: S1 EP011 (’Dreamer) & EP012 (‘First Aid’)

In which I have a lot of questions, and I feel like I’m not the only one.

No spoilers, please!

EP 011: ‘Dreamer’

- The imagery of this organism like a strangling vine choking the city is nice and visceral and creepy.

- So we’ve established that there’s a limit to what sort of cases the Institute will take on. It’s nice to establish this. I do wonder about stuff like that in series like this, because if the Institute treated seriously every fever dream they were told about, they’d never get any work done.

- “I know how that sounds.” Yeah, if someone said that to me, the first thing I’d assume is, uh, very different from what you’re telling us, Antonio Blake.

- Wait, Antonio’s ex is named Graham? I… I compared the statement dates of this one and ‘Across the Street’, and I think this is in the right timeframe to be right around the time Graham from that episode was replaced by not-Graham. Obviously, if this is referring to a different Graham (and yeah, I know I said not to rely on coincidences, but I think the same given name isn’t as much of a link as the same surname would be, unless the surname was, like Smith or Jones or Patel) I’m following the wrong thread, but if it is the same Graham, then wow, there’s some nasty subtext to that breakup.

Of course, I’m not sure this is the same Graham we’re talking about. Graham Folger had such a pervasive air of isolation around him that it stretches my suspension of disbelief a little to believe he had a boyfriend. But I suppose it would explain why he was often out of his flat, and it’s not like having a boyfriend would have helped him much when he was at home. Alone.

- I winced when Antonio detailed how he didn’t wake up from the dream when he fell from the roof of Canary Wharf, and didn’t wake up when he experienced the phantom pain of the landing. I’m terrified of heights, and the mere act of dream-falling would have been enough to wake me—and indeed, I think it would have been for most people, if they’re having normal dreams. But this isn’t a normal dream.

- I wonder if Antonio’s fear of taking the elevator up to the twenty-third floor is supposed to be indicative of a premonition involving an elevator malfunction.

- So the death of the head archivist at the Magnus Institute triggers some catastrophic change in supernatural activity in London? Or was there some drastic change, and the Institute—and Gertrude—was at the epicenter of it?

- “And the bridge was knotted high with the flashing vines.” I checked, and a cursory search with a few different search phrases didn’t show me any statistics that indicate that a statistically large amount of people jump from London Bridge in suicide attempts each year. If this was taking place in San Francisco and we were talking about the Golden Gate Bridge, I’d have no doubt that that’s what the vines are about there, but here, I’m not as certain. It might be a combination of suicides and car crashes, or, if the vines have been accumulating for centuries, it could just be the accumulated deaths of centuries upon the structure.

- The Magnus Institute, as described… is not entirely dissimilar from my own workplace in appearance. My workplace being a combination of administrative offices and archive for a local heritage center. Where I work as an assistant archivist. …You might see why this disturbs me a bit.

- And now Jonathan suddenly has so many questions. As he should. I can understand his gut response being to assume that it was a prank, and can equally understand his being freaked out upon discovering that no, this was probably not a prank.

- So Jonathan doesn’t know exactly what happened to Gertrude, and didn’t even know she was dead when he got the job? His comment about asking if she was available to give him some job training, I think, confirms something I was wondering about—whether or not he had a great deal of experience as an archivist before this. He sounds fairly young when he’s reading the statements (and when he gives his assessment of them it almost sounds like he’s trying to make himself sound older than he really is) and his seeming inability to understand that it would be better to get the hard copies of the files in chronological order before trying to digitize or record them were making me wonder. Jonathan, buddy? I hate to say this, but unless you pull some archiving info out of your head to wow me, your assistants may be better at this than you are. Yes, even Martin. Possibly especially Martin, given that he seems to have been working with the Archive in some capacity since 2010.

- Yeah, Elias sounds sketchy.

- So Tim’s the only one of the assistants you trust not to pull a prank on you? I guess I’ll have to file Tim away as the serious one.

- “But if anyone comes in ranting about dreaming my death, then I very much want to hear about it.” I’m just trying to imagine Jonathan’s possible conversation with Elias after this. Especially considering how high-strung he seems to be.

Jonathan: Hey, I just read a statement about some guy predicting Gertrude Robinson’s death in a dream. Elias: Don’t worry about it. Jonathan: But the statement is dated to just before she died. Elias: Dude, it’s not your business. Jonathan: It’s not my— You didn’t even tell me how she died! She could have overdosed on heroin at my desk for all I know! What else aren’t you telling me? Elias: Don’t worry about it. You know it’s all head-in-the-sand management around here—or did you not figure that out when I dumped you in a disorganized Archive filled with thousands of incomplete case files that hadn’t been organized according to any system, with only three assistants and no other help, and without giving you the slightest warning about the way Gertrude was running the place? I mean, if that didn’t tip you off that I’ve got no interest in giving you guidance of any kind, then I really don’t think there’s any hope for you. Jonathan: *not-so-internal screaming*

Friendly reminder that this is the kind of assignment that can make people start fantasizing about killing their boss.

EP 012: ‘First Aid’

- Yeah, so I have a new favorite episode. Already. I know; I’m fickle.

- I can speak to emergency rooms never really being empty, no matter the time of night. I had to go into the emergency room at three in the morning, once, and it was in a small hospital in a rural area, and me and my parents still weren’t the only ones in the emergency room. It wasn’t full by any stretch of the imagination—again, small hospital in a rural area—but there were other people there. There was also an asshole doctor who didn’t want to take seriously the idea that I was in any real pain or medical danger, despite the fact that my lower lip had swollen to about five size its normal size and was starting to split open and leak pus.

- So we see the weirdness start to infect the hospital early with the too-quiet waiting room.

- It occurred to me that for the two men to have been burned everywhere on their body (the older truly everywhere, and the younger everywhere below his neck where there wasn’t a tattoo), they also had second-degree burns on their genitals. I flinch in sympathy, no matter what these two were getting up to that led to the burns.

- Oh, look, Jared Key’s back! I’m sure that won’t be important at all.

- I do wonder what happened that the burns stopped at his neck.

- And Jared has been tied to eye imagery again. My Tolkien roots are showing, but I am reminded a bit of the Lidless Eye, always watching.

- The bit about everyone in the hospital apart from the patients too ill to be moved disappearing (and later shown to all get up at the same time and file outside to parts and for reasons unknown) is pretty creepy. I do wonder how the patients who could get up and go outside fared, considering it was December in Britain, where it tends to snow at that time of year.

- “It sounded like… the growl of an animal, a rolling, angry sound, and I realized that the floor was shaking ever so slightly.” What was going on with the vending machine could potentially account for this, but I also like the idea of the slowly creeping horror, invisibly stalking the halls of the hospital.

- “And then I saw it. […] But I now saw that the one on the left, a clear-fronted machine that stocked bottled soft drinks, was shaking violently. As I got nearer, I saw why. In every bottle, in every row of the machine, the drinks appeared to be violently boiling. Cokes and lemonades and fruit juices shook and bubble, before one by one, the bottles exploded, coating the inside of the clear plastic front with liquid that still kept steaming and hissing. It couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds for all of them to pop.”

One: great description. Two: I wonder what the people who restock the vending machines made of this.

- Jared is just as ambiguous a figure in this episode as he was in ‘Page Turner.’ His actions in the events of the episode itself are beneficial to the narrator—it’s possible that he saved both of their lives—but he’s clearly caught up in the affairs of things moving just beyond our ability to see them. Things that are not benevolent. He doesn’t come off as being malicious in personality, but he’s still caught up in a lot of shady shit. And we’ve seen him kill at least once, possibly at least twice if he killed his mother and didn’t just skin her after she voluntarily committed suicide.

- “Something told me if there was a coherent explanation for everything that had happened since the ambulance arrived, then I would be no better off for knowing it.” What, no, listen, Lesere, this is absolutely the time to be asking questions.

- “Better beholding than the lightless flame.” Something to file away, I guess.

- I hope we get more information about Jared later.

- Jared was released into the care of his mother? Wasn’t Mary already dead by this point? Let me check ‘Page Turner.’ *checks ‘Page Turner’* Okay, the events of the episode take place in December 2011, and Mary turned up dead in 2008. So what, is she not really dead? Is the ghost Jared summoned with ‘Key of Solomon’ able to move around outside of their old bookstore/house? Was that someone pretending to be Jared’s mother? Well, at least now I know what Jared meant when he said he’d had worse burns than the ones you get picking up a super-heated metal trashcan.

- And now Lesere feels like she’s being watched. Lady, if I was you, I’d be more concerned by that.

- Yeah, where did they all go? Because the patients who could walk went outside, too, and I feel like standing in your bare feet in the snow for fifteen minutes would be injurious.

- “The feed cuts out for less than a second, and is replaced for a single frame, by a close-up of a human eye staring back through the video feed.” Yeah, that’s… that’s not good. You don’t want these sorts of things to take notice of you.

#ncfan listens to The Magnus Archives

[nicemango-feed]

Free Speech Activists Deplatform Speaker From Free Speech Event - Not The Onion

This post could alternatively be titled: *Anti Free Speech Regressive SJWs Silence Dissenting Thinker At FREE SPEECH EVENT* The irony here is really something. Gad Saad & Jordan Peterson were on a Free Speech panel last weekend, (at an event that was previously cancelled) where this time they actually justified having someone uninvited, de-platformed even, from a SACRED... 'FREE SPEECH EVENT'. I mean you know these guys right? (Please note there were two other people on stage who I don't really know much about so I will keep this post about my faves, JBP and The Gadfather, yes he really calls himself that)

I mean ...really....this is pretty much ALL they talk about.

In a hilariously hypocritical twist these Politically Correct Regressives were trying to justify silencing a 'different viewpoint' just last weekend.

Nevermind the person they uninvited was probably well worth uninviting (in my cucked leftist opinion) as she was the Rebel Media 'Journalist' Faith Goldy who appeared on the  Neo Nazi Daily Stormer affiliated Podcast after Charlottesville. But what do I know,  I'm not the one constantly advocating for & promoting alt right/light figures. It's especially rich coming from them because Saad has on more than one occasion promoted White Genociders such as this person (who also happens to be a holocaust denier, suprise surprise):

Click to enlarge. Read full story here 

And Jordan Peterson has himself had a friendly chat on a Neo Nazi podcast about 'Western Civilization' with a person who advocates for using violence to remove non-whites from her future fantasy ethnostate:

Host of that show is another extreme race & IQ obsessive wanting to deport non-whites. http://pic.twitter.com/QF00K9Tr3d

— Nikolashvili (@ViniKako) March 12, 2017

How do people with such associations and endorsements think they get off for disinviting someone for associating with better known Nazis/White Nationalists? Speaking of 'guilt by association', you'll never guess what Gad had to say about Faith Goldy:

Image from 'Free Bird Media' video - another outlet that appears to be White Nationalist/Alt Right friendly as the host himself claims he does associate with those types of people and doesn't appreciate getting thrown under the bus by Gad. 

 Well well well, in this situation...Gad thinks you are who you hang around with ...that doesn't mean good things for him now, does it - as someone who's literally called a holocaust denier a "Viking Heroine". Or is this standard selectively applied?

After basically begging for Infowars-Paul's approval Gad makes a weak joke about how people want to punish him for associating with people like PJW who does, by the way, also spout white genocide stuff. He had to make the joke himself you see because no one was that outraged in that moment, so he has to kind of perform the outrage to fulfill his desire for victimhood. 

Here, once again Gad disapproves of 'guilt by association' ....when it's applied to him. 

Now, let's take a look at their explanation for deplatforming Goldy,

Image from Free Bird Media. Watch the full clip here

First point I'd like to make is, that it's disturbing how softly they all tiptoe around someone they themselves just mentioned was on a Neo-Nazi affiliated Podcast after the Charlottesville tragedy. None of the panelists are able to disavow her. 

Instead it goes something like this;

Peterson: I know Faith, I don’t believe that she’s a reprehensible person (after knowing of and saying he watched her appearance on a Daily Stormer related show, which he himself didn't find acceptable to the point that he's having to justify to a full room why he, the free speech hero is de-platforming someone.) 

Peterson: ....She was associating with people who’s views she should have questioned. (Well, that's putting it mildly, Dr P.)

Peterson goes on to talk about how she should have asked some hard questions but then immediately backtracks and starts making excuses for why she didn’t challenge any views on the nazi podcast. You know who else went on a nazi podcast and didn't ask any really tough questions right? Jordan Peterson himself. In fact he's criticizing, leftist, postmodernists, "neo-marxists" in most of that conversation and even claims to the *neo-Nazi woman* he's conversing with that "their aim is to shake the foundations of western civilization to the core" - just imagine sitting with a Nazi and dumping on leftists as destroying western civilization, then going on to deplatform someone else for appearing on a nazi podcast while not asking tough questions. The hypocrisy is astounding.  

Now back to the video where he's explaining why they deplatformed Faith Goldy: 

Peterson:  ....its more difficult than you might think when you’re facing people , even if u don’t believe them, to be rude enough to challenge them. 

Just take a minute to let that sink in… JBP who is furious with liberals, postmodernists and SJWs all the time, thinks its hard to be rude enough to challenge ppl on a nazi podcast. 

You can see what his priorities are.

“...that’s not so easy, especially if you’re an agreeable person” continues Jordan 

The panelists go on to blame it on the fact that she’s a journalist and that she didn’t do her job as a journalist…lol

...as they sit next to Gad Saad who’s done a glossy softball interview with several white genociders and even a holocaust denier.

Gad says in his explanation to the audience, “…there is also a pragmatism right, you may decide you’re all for freedom of speech BUTTTTT [emphasis mine] that doesn’t mean that you invite to the dinner party someone who’s views you don’t agree with… (isn't this pretty much what people's argument has been against shutting you and your selective free-speech friends down in the past?)

And then he immediately softens the blow by jumping to “I..I’m not saying that was the case with Goldy” [Yeah heaven forbid Gad, that you do the decent thing and come out against her views openly, without hesitation, at the first go after knowing she went on Daily Stormer related media for a friendly conversation.]

Here's Gad on Free Speech when it's not being applied to people *he* wants de-platformed:

Oh - looks like we have some new 'enemies of reason', and 'intellectual terrorists' in town. 

Image from: http://ift.tt/2yUqFEQ

Guess him an his pals are fascist castratos, by this standard....because guess who used a but clause. 

Sounds like you, wanting someone de-platformed from a Free Speech event, Gad.

“So the fact that you might for some event decide to disassociate from that person doesn’t suggest that you are being hypocritical to freedom of speech” —— LOL except you’ve literally been outraged at people about this same thing before…you hypocrite!! You didn't just personally disassociate from her, you wanted her de-platformed from a free speech event. 

And here's Jordan, unable to stand for his own actions...."I didn't say we were correct". Let's face it, these guys were a mess. Maybe now they will think about why it is that people don't want to associate with them, for 'pragmatic' reasons... or with Milo. 

Anyway, their own rightwing fans weren't having it:

"Aryan Soul" was very upset indeed. 

And then of course there were the mutual fans, upset that there was any tension between these lovely people at all. 

Gad soon released another video on his channel explaining his side of what went down, excuses, excuses. By this time he'd been experiencing some hate from Daily Stormer-friendly Faith Goldy's fans so he wasn't quite as soft, but note that this change didn't come from principle, it came from Faith Goldy's fans personally attacking Gad with vile, unacceptable anti-Semitic comments. The fact she went on Daily Stormer related media still had him tiptoeing around whether he disagreed with her views or what kind of person she is. 

The Youtube comments on his video ranged from his disheartened anti-sjw fans depicting him as a buzzword using SJW to being just disgustingly bigoted.

Gad shared some of these anti semitic comments on Twitter and they truly were horrific. 

Seeing the corner he'd backed himself into by palling around with and sucking up to white genociders, white nationalists, holocaust deniers and general alt lite/right figures, made me feel quite sad for the man who had in the past instigated pile-ons on me, and tweeted angrily about me for days for just pointing out his evident shady associations...."for pragmatic reasons", you know. 

On twitter people pointed this out to him repeatedly. I wonder how that made him feel...I wonder if he actually gave it some thought, the fact that he was propping up and associating with people who would drop him the second he stopped being useful to them.

No matter how hard he panders...Gad won't ever be welcome in the ethnostate as a Jewish immigrant from the Middle East. I sincerely hope he thinks about the consequences of his actions in light of this incident.

Gad's own views about Muslim Refugees aren't so non-bigoted either, maybe some self-reflection can happen after this?

He views 25K refugees being allowed into Canada as 'collective suicide' - especially strange coming from someone who has describes himself as a refugee.

Because you know....refugees = automatic anti-Semite, cuz Muslim. That's not bigoted at all...its interesting that his anger was directed always at refugees for potential anti-semitism, but never once directed at the many far right figures he's promoted. 

I wonder how he's feeling about "right-wing extremists" right about now. It's in quotes because...you know...right wing extremism is not a real thing, right? 

Will Gad and Peterson reflect on their own associations and others wanting to 'pragmatically disassociate' from their types of viewpoints now? Or will they go on as if none of this happened and they are still the Free Speech Warriors they claim to be? 

Hopefully people will start to see through their many hypocrisies and double standards, but maybe that's a lot to ask of alt-right/lite friendly audiences. I mean some of these fans willingly refer to themselves as "Gadfellas" and make religious artwork for Peterson....which he tweets unironically of course. 

Totally normal Rational Skepticism. 

****

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