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canchewread · 4 years

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The Trump Suspensions, Big Tech and Section 230

If the truth is to be told, I've spent the better part of the past week and a half trying to put Trump and his coup attempt behind me; with a hyper-capitalist Biden administration on tap, and already trafficking in austerity mythology and neoliberal authoritarianism, my internal analyst's relevancy clock is ticking like a time bomb. Furthermore, I believe that the fallout from the actual chud insurrection on January 6th, has finally rendered Trump himself an impotent, and increasingly less relevant, figure in what I have repeatedly predicted will be an ongoing American fascist movement. Finally of course, after five years of writing “yes, this guy is literally a fascist” over and over, I've grown extremely weary of arguing about what fascism is, and isn't, with contrarian left types who don't realize they're still operating under the hypnotic spell of American exceptionalism.

Unsurprisingly however, the news itself hasn't really given a damn what I'd rather be analyzing, and the fallout from the chud riot in D.C., has utterly dominated the coverage and discourse; creating infuriating and irresponsible narratives about what is ultimately a clear cut act of politicized violence by far right, fascist extremists. Recently, I've been offering a lot of push-back on narratives popular among the more reactionary elements of the online “left,” but today I'd like to turn our attention to a popular “neoliberal” (but not necessarily Democratic Party) narrative being pushed by elite capital, and the cluster of companies we collectively know as Big Tech. Namely, the idea that in the wake of the coup attempt, billion dollar social media companies should be lauded for finally suspending the accounts of Donald Trump and thousands of his fascist cronies, on their various services.

Now, don't get me wrong here; this isn't going to be a rant about censorship, and I personally think it's an unquestionably good thing that Trump (and fascist organizers) have been driven off social media, but something smells like rotting fish in all this, and I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that greedy, crypto-reactionary Tech Bros running billion dollar social media companies, are at the heart of it. To understand my problem here however, the first thing we have to ask is “why was Trump suspended from social media?”

Obviously each of the various social media companies have released statements about their decisions, but we're not really here to waste our time dissecting what amounts to public relations and propaganda. On an extremely basic level, most people understand that Trump's accounts were suspended for using election fraud conspiracy theories to ultimately incite fascist violence, and inspire a chud insurrection that left five people dead. Reduced to its essence, this then leaves us with three major “justifications” for the Trump suspensions; spreading dangerous conspiracy theories, inciting an insurrection, and inspiring (lethal) violence – all very good reasons to suspend someone's Twitter or Facebook account, wouldn't you say?

Unfortunately for guys like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey however, there are in fact some obvious problems with this narrative no matter which angle you choose to approach it from; let's start with the fact that Trump's social media feeds have been creating dead bodies and inspiring reactionary violence for years. It is no great secret that racialized violence and hate crimes have risen drastically in America (and the larger Pig Empire) since Trump launched his first election campaign with an explicitly fascist speech about Mexicans and migrants. What is far less often discussed however, even on ostensibly “liberal” news networks, is the ways in which Trump (and his tweets) have already directly inspired violence and murder in America and even abroad:

In addition to the surging national hate crime figures, a May 2020 investigation turned up at least “54 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.” As ABC notes, “the cases are remarkable in that a link to the president is captured in court documents and police statements, under the penalty of perjury or contempt. These links are not speculative – they are documented in official records. And in the majority of cases identified by ABC News, it was perpetrators themselves who invoked the president in connection with their case, not anyone else.”

At least three different mass shooters (Pittsburgh, El Paso, Christchurch New Zealand) can convincingly be said to be have been inspired by Trump, or Trump’s rhetoric in some direct and observable way. Their total body count is eighty-four dead people who would likely still be breathing today, if Donald Trump had never logged on to social media or been given a platform to spread hatred and fascist ideology.

All of this is of course to say nothing of Trump’s peripheral involvement with and support for other groups responsible for right wing violence, like the Q-Anon conspiracy movement, or the neo-Nazi rioters who tore up Charlottesville and murdered Heather Heyer.

Naturally then, the obvious question becomes, if Trump was suspended for inciting deadly violence on January 6th in D.C., why wasn't he suspended for doing exactly the same thing before now? Hell, I'll do you one better; if Trump is suspended for inciting reactionary violence and murder, then why aren't guys like fascist provocateur Andy Ngo, and Wilks Brothers muppet Ben Shapiro (who himself has inspired an international body count) also suspended? Right, it simply doesn't track, and therefore we can conclude that Trump's social media suspensions really didn't have anything to do with inciting violence.

Alright, so be it, maybe you personally agree that “inspiring deadly violence and hate crimes” is somehow a loose reason to suspend a guy's social media accounts, whether he's president or not. Maybe, you figure that where Trump really crossed the line was purposely inciting a goddamn insurrection, and you're happy that Big Tech corporations understand the fine line between fascist murders and fascist terrorism. Unfortunately, that narrative doesn't track either because this isn't the first time Trump has tried to inspire an insurrection on Twitter; please recall the partially-AstroTurfed “Anti-Lockdown protests” in the spring, and in particular Trump's attempts to inspire an uprising in my home state of Michigan. Do you remember the “Liberate Michigan” tweet? The armed fascist militias occupying the Michigan legislature? The chud plot to kidnap and perhaps kill, the Governor of Michigan? Would it surprise you to learn that many of the same people who participated in those prior chud protests were part of the crowd that stormed Capitol Hill on January 6th? Is Jack Dorsey really arguing that Trump's insurrectionist tweets in the spring were fine, but his insurrectionist tweets in January are not because... more people saw the later on TV? Say what?

All of which of course brings us to the somewhat nebulous, “dangerous conspiracy theories” portion of the rationale for suspending Trump now, in the wake of the chud uprising. It's not much of a leg to stand on either however, because not only has Trump been pushing election fraud conspiracy theories for the past freaking year, but that isn't even the most dangerous and deadly example of his false reality narrative causing carnage in our society. You can take your pick, but I'd wager that both the Q-Anon conspiracy movement Trump has openly supported on social media, and the unhinged coronavirus conspiracies he propagated online for months and months, have much higher body counts than anything we saw on Capitol Hill. Why should anyone believe Big Tech companies care about conspiracy theories and how many people they kill, given their prior behavior up to this point? Please keep in mind that these are the same companies that decided not to suspend Trump's accounts when he was using them to threaten North Korea with annihilation; an act that could have easily lead to a catastrophic nuclear exchange if Kim Jong Un were half as un-moored from reality as our CIA-loyal media likes to imply.

Given all that then, what is the real reason behind suspending Trump's social media accounts? Again, it’s not that I'm concerned that a flatulent billionaire fascist manbaby lost some of his favorite outlets to spread fascist conspiracy theories, but why now, and not then?

To understand that, we're going to have to take a little bit of a detour here and talk about Section 230. What is Section 230? A portion of the American law that governs the internet, which ultimately indemnifies social media companies from legal liability for the crap other people post on their platforms. Without Section 230, victims of fascist violence organized on Facebook, could conceivably sue the pants off Big Tech companies for allowing that to happen. This is of course an existential crisis to gigantic tech firms that rely heavily on wildly unpredictable algorithms and automated processes to avoid having to hire moderators and actually keep an eye on what users are doing with their platforms. Furthermore, in the lead up to the 2020 election, both Joe Biden and Donald Trump talked about repealing Section 230, for (and this is key here) entirely different reasons.

Trump and his numerous allies in the Republican Party spent much of 2020 using the threat of repealing Section 230 as a cudgel against social media companies taking even mild action to combat these same dangerous conspiracy theories, and the spread of fascist ideology online. The GOP argument, disingenuously presented as a defense of free speech, was then that if Big Tech didn't let the fascists say whatever they wanted, regardless of its veracity or the potential consequences, they would open up companies like Twitter and Facebook to American libel laws. Of course, that's pretty laughable if we're talking about someone like Laura Loomer suing Twitter over her account being suspended, but Big Tech companies only have to look as far as Peter Theil's ultimately successful quest to destroy Gawker to realize it only takes one reactionary judge in a high enough chair, to sink their battleships entirely. Obviously then, you don't really need to be a genius to figure out Big Tech companies weren't excited about the idea of suspending Trump or his followers, because that would presumably result in an all-out assault on Section 230 from the sitting President of the United States and his (still quite influential) political party.

Ok, so great news for the Tech Bros right? Biden won after all, and barring a chud uprising on a scale not even I think they're capable of, he's about to become POTUS. Not so fast, because Biden and the so-called “centrist” neoliberal establishment in the Democratic Party are also threatening to repeal Section 230 for their own political advantage. The neoliberals too are disingenuously hiding their motives, this time behind a desire to combat hate speech and disinformation; truly noble goals, but obviously utterly irrelevant to rich white liberals who've spent the past five years conflating both Russian spies, and murderous fascist thugs, with leftists who want healthcare. Truthfully, this entire maneuver ultimately represents a ruling class, liberal elite attempt to arbitrate what is and isn't considered true, or newsworthy in the public discourse; a quest they've been furiously working on since the first Bernie Sanders political insurgency threatened to topple Democratic Party leadership, and naturally, throughout the bogus Russigate fever dream that dominated the first two years of Trump's presidency. Of course, even after Biden won the election, there really wasn't much reason for Big Tech companies to take this threat seriously; clearly the Republican Senate wasn't going to allow elite liberal censors to use a potential Section 230 repeal to dictate who can say what online, right?

Yeah, about that Republican Senate majority though; whoops. What if I told you then that the decision to suspend Trump's social media accounts sooner or later, was largely a forgone conclusion after the events of January 5th, not January 6th, 2021? What happened on January 5th? Joe Biden and the Democratic Party swept the Georgia special elections, effectively taking control of the American Senate, and putting folks like Zuck and Dorsey squarely in Biden's line of fire going forward.

Thus it can be said that the answer to both of our questions, “why wasn't Trump suspended before,” and “why is Trump suspended now” ultimately come down to who wields power in our society and our old nemesis, the profit motive. Companies like Twitter and Facebook don't really give a damn about disinformation, conspiracy theories or even Tweets that rack up their own body counts; what they care about is maintaining the warm embrace of legal impunity their business model depends on, and they'll do anything, to appease anyone with the power to remove that embrace, if they think it'll keep the gravy train going. Big Tech isn't fighting fascism, it's fighting oversight and the tyranny of having to pay live human moderators; there's nothing noble or praiseworthy about that, even if I'm still forced to admit that the censored neoliberal authoritarian alternative would be no better, and might be quite a damn sight worse.

Come meet the new boss; same as the old boss, indeed.

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

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“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

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semi-imaginary-place · 5 years

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fe3h blogging 6 because organizational skills are for losers

oh hey yuri get to join chess club[3:24 PM]balthus DID go to the officers academy twice I’ve been trying to reconcile the route differences... it should be that everything that happens in a different route is also possible in the route you are looking at which ever one that may be. Now all there is is figuring out why those differences exist. or alternately to come up with a probability model to explain those differences. Let’s take the major difference of CF vs VW, AM, and SS. In CF unlike the other routes, Rhea is not captured, she organizes the knights and joins with Faerghus. In CF unlike other routes Byleth chooses to side with Edelgard and Rhea attacks them in the Holy Tomb, this is the only difference. Rhea is incredibly entitled when it comes to Byleth and so takes Byleth’s choice as a deep betrayal as the one who was supposed to be on her side chose not to be. In the battle of Garreg Mach, Rhea then also doesn’t entrust the Church to Byleth. Now how does this connect to Rhea avoiding capture in the battle? It could be she was more on guard after the Holy Tomb in BE, it could be that overall Rhea is likely captured but there is a chance she isn’t. Either way because she isn’t captured, she is there to rally and organize the knight’s of Seiros. In the other routes why didn’t Seteth do it? idk man. The Knights and Faerhgus together are better able to fend off the Empire and with the added security, keep Cornelia, the Agarthans, and Edelgard from framing Dimitri with assassination. Thus in CF Faerghus is in a more unified and powerful position with Rhea running the show. Never quite got why Garreg Mach was abandoned by all the sides given how much the characters talk about its strategic location etc. etc. In SS Rhea degenerates and causes the church to become a rampaging hivemind. Rhea is assumedly also in the palace in AM, but we do meet her in VW. This leads to a few possibilities, either she also dragon degenerated in those routes but the credits roll before we get to see that or she doesn’t. Either way she hold the potential to do so. This is probably the strongest probability argument in the game as we are shown no reason why she does in SS but does not in VW. Rhea is like a ticking time bomb. Maybe they should have blood minstrated like half the church. And then the Agarthans, are they just chilling around underground in AM? yeah, probably. They’re probably back to biding their time just like they have the past 1000 years.

I would like to talk about the three categories by which I evaluate how much I like a character in a series. 1. Personal preference: how much does the character's personality appeal to me on a personal level. Would I want to be friends with this person in real life. Do I just really wish they were real and want them in my life? 2. Character writing: how well written is the character. How good is their character arc? What is the grade of execution? 3. Role in the story: what do they bring to the series as a whole. If they are a villain, are they a good villain? Comic relief. The Bro character. No matter the archetype, how well is it done. What is their narrative and thematic significance.

Let's look at the 3 Lords of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Please note that due to the branching story line and the ability of the player to choose the cast, I will not be focusing on a character's role in story as much as I usually do. Edelgard Personal preference: low. Her personality clashes with mine Character writing: high. Three Houses characters in general are well written. Edelgard feels like a person, her behavior is internally consistent, she's always herself. One of her main flaws explored in the game is how Edelgard will tunnel-vision and double down on a decision, a path even when it is no longer the best option. Role: high. In Crimson Flowers and to a lesser extent Silver Snow Edelgard acts as the central character, she drives the story. As the villain in 3/4 routes, Edelgard is incredibly interesting, acting as a counter point to the other Lords as well as to Byleth in Silver Snow.

Dimitri Personal preference: low. At first I didn't care, and then he was just annoying. He was solidly #2 on my to-punch-list in Azure Moon after Gilbert. Character writing: high. Dimitri has the easiest to notice character arc in the game as it is the main focus of Azure Moon. As such the most time is spent on his arc and it is very strong. The journey Dimitri goes on as he struggles with himself and his trauma is well written, its only weakness being that it hinges on the player (me) caring about him (which I do not). Role is the story: medium high. the overarching story of the rightful king reclaiming his throne nicely parallels the story of Dimitri reclaiming himself. Thus the external journey mirrors the internal one. Azure Moon most strongly brings the human element to Three Houses and this is both a strength and a weakness.

Claude Personal preference: very high. I wish I had a Claude in my life. His personality meshes well with mine and my life would be enhanced with the addition of his company. When I say Claude is my favorite, this is the category I am usually talking about. Character writing: high. Claude has the subtlest characterization and character arc of the Lords, this is further obscured due to mischaracterization by the English localization team and English voice actor. The characters in Three Houses in general are brilliant and Claude is no exception. He's complex and multifaceted as any real person is, and seeing him grow in to his own in Verdant Wind is a beautiful thing. Role in story: high. Claude's role in the Three Houses is also very interesting, his objectives especially in White Clouds turns the game into a mystery thriller which is breaking edge for a Fire Emblem Game. Claude's background is also a bit different from the others and so following along his story, you are able to gain perspective and see all of Fodlan for what it really is.

Jeralt personal preference: meh writing: good role: dad

wait. wait. so are the 4 apostles are called saints in the intro, but were they also children of the goddess? so i can see indech and macuil dipping after the war of heroes and cethalenn went into a regenerative coma so that takes her and cihol out of the picture, but where were the 4 apostles during the war? and why does balthus' pants have a specially colored patch for his crotch. ... did balthus go to the academy twice? dimitri really went “i’d be nice to just sink into the earth you know” huh. i just started cindered shadows so i can't really comment but... the whole "abyss is necessary for garreg mach" is such horse shit. like oooohhhhh we must have an oppressed underclass to maintain our standard of living. why do the ashen wolves even exist. its not like there's a school down there and yet a bunch of people have uniforms. its not like they took some of the officer's academy uniforms either. why waste resources making custom uniforms? oh hey yuri get to joisn chess club. balthus DID go to the officers academy twice. I wonder what happened to Constance. Also hello??? Intsys you have a kidnapping and torture as backstory problem, especially when its happening to female characters. Hapi get’s kidnapped, tortured and then imprisoned, no wonder the life has left her eyes. Also I don’t trust this Aelfric dude. He set up the ashen wolves “house”, but wouldn’t those resources be better spent on food and medicine. nepotism ho! your parent were good so you must be too

anyone else find Jeralt and Sitri's relationship a little weird. Hundreds of years old dude romances incredibly sheltered 19 year old with little life experience. and she and alfric idolized Jeralt when they were young. sitri was born in 1139 and died 1159 from childbirth. I mean yeah Sitri's an adult and totally consenting and loving, and the relationship is pretty cute and sweet, but.... its kinda weird.... Like when you hear about a 30 year old dating a 60 year old, everyone's well into adulthood, they're consenting adults who can do whatever they want, i have no objections,... but its still kinda weird. WHAT'S WORSE IS THAT THEY DEVS HAD LITERALLY NO REASON TO DO THIS they could have made her any age they wanted to. She could have been 35. but nooooo they didn't do that

the part that bothered me about maneula's writing. Is how the writers talk down on her for having emotions. You see this strongly in the hanneman+manuela paralogue. Where they make her do something impulsive which has negative consequences, which is fair. But then the game punishes her for being too emotional. "being too emotional" now where have i heard that critique before. This is especially in contrast to the game praising hanneman's intellectual rationality. how do i say this... whenever hanneman and manuela argue the game always takes hanneman's side and is overly harsh on manuela. Oh hanneman is right that she should not have run off after a rumor about the death knight like that, but its the framing of the scene that bothers me.

the way people talk about the abyss reminds me of the goldfish bowl metaphor. the abyss provides sanctuary, but in it thye are also trapped. huh so edelgard doesn’t recognize dimitri. people sure do like aelfric, reminds me of a cult of personality, but it seems so genuine... A great rhea’s golems are back. they talk!! I was just joking about people’s souls being bound in there!!! aelfric is one of the cardinals!!!!! I've been trying to find these dude for months!!!!! you hear these lines going on and on about the cardinals. oh. he’s part of the seiros hivemind then. hey kids. if he’s a cardinal than the church probably already knows. this don’t tell the church stuff sounds like a trap. that letter is suspicious af. yuri clearly wants something, but what is he up to,,,

Yeah.. it really sounds like the 4 apostles were nabateans, but if that were so are constance, hapi, balthus, and yuri really descended from them? the 4 saints bloodlines in adrestia are from those gifted blood by the saints. yet i do believe the 4 apostles fled to different corners of fodlan, what remains in question is only if there in their new homes they gave blood (like rhea did to save jeralt), or actually did have kids.

i cant believe balthus got put on the bus via giant bird. ah so aelfric and yuri are cooperating with the agarthans. thats what they were up to. wow yuri really is fandom claude, i can still hear those idiots complaining that claude wasn’t up to anything and that he didn’t betray byleth. huh so yuri is struggling with split loyalty and the solution he came up with was to help aelfric but give byleth hints.

constance calling the holy mausoleum a wretch hovel in on par with sylvain calling the dining hall filthy. huh so that was what yuri was planning. wasn’t expecting the double agent ploy.

so this does not take away from aelfric's decisions, but if rhea hadn't been a coward and just buried sitri instead of keeping her is storage where anyone could find her, this never would have happened. who know's maybe aelfric would have still made horrible decisions, but not this one horrible decision.

wait wait wait. rhea, what happened last time you used the chalice to try and resurrect sothis. what beast was created then? wait wait. nemesis dies and sothis’ heat and bones were retrieved in 91. the blood chalice ritual happened in 185. That’s enough time for rhea to have conducted her first experiment implanting the creststone into someone and having them live out their full life.

prior to cindered shadows i thought claude had 2 given names much like many real world people of dual identity do (multiracial people, chinese americans, japanese americans, etc.), so claude is his name but he also has an almyran name. now though I am leaning towards the idea that claude is a name he took up upon entering fodlan given what he says to balthus at first and the presence of a claudia riegan in the past. from the feast of decadence: where is boramas? and i hope the bit about watching northern swordsmen ripped apart by wild animals at dinner was a play or something. why do books end up in the abyss anyways. why not burn them throughly. rhea certainly knows people have been living down there. i wonder who built abyss. its older than garreg mach for sure. real ironic how the blue lions idolize loog when he was an agarthan pawn not unlike edelgard. rhea's choice contributed to the power imbalance between sreng and duscur compared to faerghus chevalier became village elder and gave everyone blood during wars. half got crests half turned into demonic beasts. that solves that. 1/4 down

i can’t believe aubin almost died in a ditch before yuri’s mom saved them. well that’s one more person with a really long life span

balthus: describing "bashbros" me: its called a life partner. "Balthus became son-in-law to the great commander, Nader" ... what. also why is the balthus yuri pairen ending the only one balthus ends up broke and on the street in. also where's my holst supports. scratch that. WHERE IS HOLST. oh yeah and you all were crying about byleth potentially outliving everyone, well yuri does too

ashen wolves supports that should have happened. Balthus: Manuela. Yuri: Mercedes. Hapi: Ignatz, Petra, Claude. Constance: Lorenz

Also let judith be a playable character. Claude and balthus already have like half a support with her.

why do feel like yuri and sylvain would be a disaster. and disaster in that they'd hurt each other's feelings

claude whenever balthus opens his mouth: shut up shut up shut up. shut up and go away. goddess. please. no. i enjoy seeing claude annoyed more than i probably should

me taking the fe3h developers by the shoulders and shaking them furiously: WHY DON'T CLAUDE AND HAPI GET A SUPPORT. THEY EVEN BOTH HAVE CELESTIAL MOTIFS! claude would also empathize with hapi as an outsider of sorts, as well as both sharing a desire to explore the world. i think the riegan crest and timotheus crest got mixed up in development. in tarot readings the moon is associated with darkness, an unclear mind, madness, creativity etc. it suits "dark dragon" far more than "star dragon". but that doesn't explain why claude gets the unique combat art Fallen Star me one again taking the fe3h developers by the shoulders and shaking them furiously: WHY DON'T YURI AND ASHE HAVE A SUPPORT!! THE APPARENTLY ALREADY KNOW EACH OTHER. THEY HAVE SIMILAR BACKGROUNDS. THEY'RE BOTH FROM FAERGHUS. THEIR BATTLE DIALOG SAYS MEANS THEY WANT TO BE FRIENDS

No bathus/manuela support either LET THEM MAKE POOR LIFE CHOICES TOGETHER. Balthus can have a little milf, as treat

... yuri is very pretty in part 2

Edelgards biggest flaws are her desire for control and her stubborness or the way she will double down on a decision and refuse to budge. Claude's biggest flaws are his inability to trust, and showing his hand too late. A bit more on that last part. A large part of Claude's strategies involve downplaying his side and biding his time. This strategy is especially weak though to an aggressive opponent like Edelgard who can bulldoze him before he has time to play out his plan. Part of the problem is that Claude is very reactive but not very proactive (its one of the reasons I like pairing him with Edelgard and Petra). He won't just go for something the way Edelgard does, he's wait for the right opportunity. This difference you can also see in how the deal with the Church. Edelgard declares war on them because she thinks they are the root of Fodlan's social problems and need to be taken down. She makes a decision she believes in and readies herself for the consequences. Claude actually believes much of the same (The Church is the root of Fodlan's problems) but would much rather avoid those consequences (fall out with the Church). You see in Verdant Wind he will make use of the Church because the are useful. He's even willing to spout Church rhetoric and propaganda (Byleth as a Church symbol) if it suits his end goal of transferring power to an individual who will shape Fodlan's future to his liking (he does have an altruistic and humanitarian goal much like Edelgard). However in doing so he risks empowering the Church even more. In short Claude will put up a facade that he doesn't agree with on an ideals level and so is always in danger of that facade becoming real and failing his goals. yeah so claude character development has him learning to trust and being more proactive in his goals. so i like pairing him with characters that put him on a similar growth trajectory

wait how are the Fetters of Dromi (Aubin) and Vajra-Mushi (Chevalier) around simultaneously with Aubin and Chevalier. Aubin was last seen 20 years ago and the tales of elder giving blood don’t seem ancient, so were they recently killed?

ok if the vajra-mushi is a replica, what’s it a replica of? that implies an original. and its still able to turn people into demonic beasts. how????

unpopular opinion: I hate seteth. his face pisses me off and every time he opens his mouth I want to punch him. please die.

You know... i'd expected someone to have written a modern au of felix and sylvain being roommates with unresolved sexual tension.... but no its been 9 months and I haven't seen anything. Oh I've seen roommates where its like the new and uncomfortable experience of sharing space with someone you dont know and I've seen modern au where they are childhood friends. But i seriously have not seen the specific scenario where they are childhood friends AND roommates. Like... uuugh its just sylvain. But also uuggh its just sylvain?!? Maybe I'll just have to do it myself... but im no good at writing...

What if glenn was 160cm but the kids never noticed (except sylvain) because they're so much younger

I want a spin off fighting game starring ferdinand and caspar. Honestly i just wanted to see ferdinand get into a fistfight with someone like in his support

On a fandom level I think the golden deer are the least popular for a number of reasons:

1. some of the characters only reveal their depth in supports and paralogues. Or in other words you must seek out these character to get to know them. Ex: Lorenz, Leonie, Ignatz. I mean without doing their supports you'd never know that Ignatz is the smoothest out of the Golden Deer the the most likely to get a date. If Sylvain is a poser, Ignatz is the real deal 2. Related to the above the writing sometimes relies too heavily on a character gimmick. Ex: Raphael, and Lysithea to a degree 3. Compared to other houses there are less established dynamics. Other characters (Linhardt and Caspar, BL childhood friend squad, etc.) can play off of each other and this can make them more emotionally accessible to a player. In the beginning especially the golden deer act more like co-workers than friends, they are the least cohesive as a house (which means their growth is that much more delicious). 4. the golden deer route in general is less popular and some characters don't appear in other routes so the sheer amount of exposure these characters get is less than other houses. a lot of people in the "fandom" have only played one or 2 routes and those usually include either azure moon or crimson flower/silver snow. people will also just delete or add things to characters.

OK Jp audio thoughts: tiny grandma sothis Alois is gravelier and yells a lot I've been replaying the line where claude giggles in the jp audiio. How do i record audio ignatz is such a BABY in the japanese version. Like a small bunny Edelgard sounds more princessy Claude is more light hearted, less sassy more... boyish? like that one old school boy character trope that used to be a main character thing and is now more a side character thing eng dimitri more yell-y and feral. jp dimitri is a lot more subdued and dead inside. but the delivery of the lines makes what he is saying all the more disturbing. dissonant serenity.

your path lies across my grave is such a raw line

Why did yuri get a different part 2 sprite. he should age the same rate jeralt did. And in his paired ending with byleth? He apparently looks about the same after decades

Hilda and catherine would be EXCELLENT war masters if the devs weren't sexist

So almyra's big. We don't know how big. Fodlan is 2/3 of europe and almyra is bigger so i imagine there's a diverdity of biomes. I imagine the south coast is mediterranian. But that hinges on how subtropical adrestia is. Medditerranian climates are most common at 30-40 lattitude. The map of almyra we can see on the map is the same lattitude as faerhgus. This could be the greenest part of Almyra. I imagine almyra has both hot and cold deserts with a large plain covering the center. The rest would be scrubland/chaperral. All we know is that claude grew up somewhere with no big trees. I imagine that almyran government is more meriocratic than fodlan but that may vary region to region. I have an idea for both a centralized and decentralized almyra. Each regions leader is like the strongest most organized person around. A bit of nepotism may be involved. The exception would be the coast region which is more sedentary (some parts of almyra are semi nomadic) and may have a republic. Decentralized almyra would work kinda like the eu or us with seperate nations and a mediator for when almyra needs to act as a whole. That mediator aids negotions between regions and keeps things together. Mediator would be a council/appointed position. In a centralized almyra there still wouldn't be a monarachy. The king would choose a sucessor. So the king's kid would have a better chance than anyone but its no garuntee. I like the idea that like the 30 closeat relatives has a last one standing system as part of the selection system. This would allow for a dynastic style if ruling where there's a ruling clan but not direct line of descent

Everyone keeps drawing older felix with long hair but I'm half convinced that 3 years post game he just lops,it off one day or gets a buzzcut

So a lot of people including me have long suspected Claude had an Almyran name and the validation right now just feels so great. Khalid! Given his dialog in cindered shadows I think its more likely Khalid is the name his parents gave him and Claude is the name he took up upon coming to Fodlan

Things have never been easy for Claude, he says in his s support that he's going, to do it (the whole game/war) all over again. It's heavily implied that things to not end well for Claude outside of VW. i don't think the Almyrans would value a surrender to a fodlander tho. Claude in VW proves his competence as a military commander and leader by controlling all of fodlan. Its stated in some of his paired endings that the current king has some say in who the next king is as Claude had to earn his father's approval to ascend the throne. Don't forget that the general Almyran populace hates Claude. He has to prove himself by their standards before any respect is given and in SS/CF/AM he doesn't do that. Remember that the Fodland stereotype is of cowards and that Almyra values spectacles of strength/fighting prowess over tactical efficiency (invading fodlan's throat isn't for the purpose of gaining land/etc. its for the warriors to show off how strong they are), so they wouldn't value strategically weakening your nation (leicester) to stave off imperial invasion, to them that just looks like cowardice and incompetance. not only that he endangered and wasted Almyran soldiers in fighting a foreign war. Remember that no one really knows about Claude's plans outside of VW, he keeps his cards (too) close to his chest, and in non-VW routes the facade of weakness becomes a reality and all his schemes crumble. and he has little to show for his time in fodlan. Claude is less likely to experience character growth outside of VW, but I think there is potential for Claude's character growth outside of VW. One reason for this I'm just not a fan of Byleth's dating sim powers where everyone just falls head over heels for them. For every character and especially the lords, Byleth acts as a catalyst for the character's growth, but Claude (of the lords) is the least dependent on Byleth so I do believe he could have found some of the connections seen in VW if not to that extent. (also I'm a sucker for found family)[4:22 PM]But Byleth does act as the heart and glue of the golden deer so things wouldn't be that great for Claude and co

So we cam see both turkic and persian influences in almyra but I've always wondered at the balance. From the turkic side we have the warrior culture and horse riding. This is also where my speculations on a nomadic society and non monarchy forms of government come from. Also note turkic (central asia, like the mongols) and not turkish (one of the turkic ethnicities). On the other side is ancient persia which was a center of science, technology and learning, a materially wealthy empire with imperial dynasties. These are very different and so balancing headcanons has always been challenging to honor both sides. You can see people are all over the spectrum in fandom.

Me shaking dorothea by the shoulders: YOU ARE VALID. I AM PROUD OF WHAT YOU HAVE ACCOMPLISHED. EAT THE RICH

im a caught between the dual desires of seeing sylvain succeed at something and be really cool, and seeing sylvain publicly make a fool of himself. sylvain miserable for mundane reasons is such a good look. I pin Sylvain in a headlock and force 2 gallons of respect women juice down his throat

In any universe. Claude's weekly schedule would fill me with terror.

Leonie and dorothea both have "I know a guy" vibes

A while ago I complained that the fodlan calendar doesn’t make sense. Why does the year begin on month 4? Well I recently got around to reading through the abyss library and it confirms that fodlan used to be on the gregorian calendar with months 1-12 lining up with our january-december which in a lot of countries are just month/moon 1-12 and then seiros and the church brought in a new calendar system (imperial year and "___ Moon" naming system). so combined with the other hints from the agarthans (un symbol, ICBMs, etc.), pretty much confirms that fodlan is indeed a post apocalyptic modern world. So the weird calendar system DOES have an in universe justification!

#fe #fe3h

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suffering-and-happy-about-it · 5 years

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The perks of being a human (Thor headcanon)

“Plot”: Thor is having a problem with understanding human technology.

A/N: I'm taking a break from the Uncharted fics bcs I don't wanna fuck up the stories we have started. And I am kinda in Thor kind of mood. Like hello, he's just too funny.

Also, this is like 2012 Thor, okay. Not our pal bro Thor.

Let me address one thing straight okay.

This boi is lost when it comes to human technology.

He's like extremely wtf about it.

But he is willing to learn. So you would be his teacher.

And let me fucking say - you had the fucking time of your whole life.

Bcs you know. He's a God. He knows magic as a science and he's really smart in stuff like physics. But this man can't use a toaster without burning the whole place down.

Listen to me. One time you came to the compound after having a looong afternoon trying to figure out how to clean up the mess after the fight with aliens. And you felt some plastic burning.

"Whatcha doing, Thor?" You smiled but then you froze in one place.

That man shoved the whole bag of toast bread into that poor little machine. And he was acting like a master chef now, clearly very proud of himself and very, very pleased with the whole situation.

"WTF NO." You screamed.

He was sorry for a month. And from that time on, you were afraid to let him operate a single piece of technology in the compound.

And you were like "we can't continue that way man. You're too dangerous for your own good. I'll teach you, ok?"

That's how the whole thing started.

Even our boi Steve knew how to use most of the things. And he was a walking capsule, okay?

Tony went in too harshly, teasing Thor about him being a dummydumdum because he was TrYiNG to make you a good meal and instead he became the source of the danger for all.

Thor almost threw Mjolnir at him.

You started slowly. Phones were basically easy, huh? So you thought.

Boy, you were so wrong.

"Why would I call Stark when he's in the building with me? This doesn't make any sense." "Thor, you would be calling people when you're away from them and you need something." "Why can't I fly to talk with them, eye to eye? Or send a raven?"

This boy couldn't get over that sending a raven isn't a thing on Earth.

He was basically like lmfao but it's the best way to deliver a letter.

And then he was calling you like 24/7. You were on the toilet? There was his face on your screen. You had a serious meeting? Yo bet yo ass Thor called and asked if he can use the oven for bread (he meant toaster). It was three am in the fucking morning? Maaan, Thor wanted to talk.

And let me say.

The computer was the worst.

Just to teach him how to fucking log in. That was a month lasting tutorial. But you managed.

But the internet was the killer.

Like there's so much stuff Thor can do.

But you knew you had to warn him about one particular thing.

"If you would like to watch some porn, just erase your history then or use anonymous, okay?" You asked carefully. You didn't know what he's gonna do on the internet. You couldn't predict his behavior. If someone was completely random, Thor was most like the one. "What is porn? That sound majestic!" He exclaimed loudly and Natasha just choked on her coffee.

She got up and disappeared in a second.

So you went fully in. And showed mister Thor some porn.

And he was horrified. Shocked and terrified.

"What a man and a woman do in the bedroom is their thing. Why would someone put this on a magical place like the internet?"

Man, you couldn't find a single argument.

And by the time you got more and more close to the kitchen, it started to be more and more dangerous.

You started with the mighty sandwich-making machine as Thor chose to call the toaster.

You made sure that you told him a million times that he just doesn't shove a whole bread up there. That's just not how the machine works.

It was quite a trial before he made himself his first good sandwich. He was burning them a whole week even tho you thought that it isn't possible.

And boy, wasn't he just happy about him being a master chef from now on.

The Avengers had sandwiches and toasts for breakfast for two months straight.

That's when Tony told you he should learn how to prepare waffles.

He gladly bought the machine.

And the two other in the row.

Thor couldn't comprehend that when he pours the whole dough there that it just doesn't make bigger waffles. He learned that it will break the machine.

But it was worth it after all. He could prepare the best waffles around after a while. Thor could be really concentrated when he wanted to. He had determination in him.

And he found cooking simply arousing. He loved to cook. He even started to make his own receipts and learned how to bake and cook something on the stove. All by himself.

You were so proud of that happy six feet high giant running around with a chef hat.

Boy... But then you moved on to cleaning machines.

Dude wasn't Thor especially concerned about the vacuum cleaner.

"Where are the hinges, Thor?" Natasha asked carefully when you came home after one long day of paperwork.

You learned that they were actually INSIDE the vacuum cleaner.

Everyone was like WTF, how did he actually do that?

You never knew Thor didn't tell you willingly.

And by the time Thor got to the iron?

You were thinking about buying some new clothes... And all it took was Thor to iron your old ones.

One time you wanted to wear your most favorite t-shirt in the world.

Just to learn that Thor accidentally left the iron on it. So it had a hole directly on your back and your breasts.

But you ended up better than poor Banner.

He had a huge hole in his trousers, so you could easily see his butt.

Thor was really confused about this one, just thinking it's some wicked witchcraft.

Why did you iron your t-shirts, but not your socks or underwear? You Midgardiands were so weird sometimes.

And don't remind me of the first time he tried to wash your clothes for the first time. Thor went into the action all alone. He was thinking about you rambling because the washing machine has been turned on constantly in the Avengers compound.

Because he was a sweet gentleman, he wanted to make your day better. So he decided to do it all by himself.

Oh boy... Wasn't it a disaster?

Banner had his purple tees turned to violet because of your red undies, your bra turned from racy black-white to disgusting gray-yellow, Tony's shirts were on the scale of blue-green-brown-ish and Steve's work out gear turned to be brightly pink.

Again, you didn't have a single clue about how he could accomplish this, yet you were there, just laughing your ass off seeing Steve working out in the girliest top you've ever seen.

You took a million photos of it.

But you needed Thor to learn how to do it.

That boy hadn't got a single idea that you actually wash the clothes depending on its color - white with white, black with black, etc.

He also learned that to make the clothes smell good, he needed to use some chemicals.

He almost tasted them because it smelled so good.

You needed to remind yourself that he is actually from another realm in order not to kill him.

To end it on the positive side, he was a great cleaning lady after all.

He took a lot of chores on his shoulders just because he found it fun to do them.

It was fine to come home to a cooked dinner, vacuumed floors and washed clothes. You found it relaxing.

But you knew that there will be other tricky things he will have to learn about Midgard.

So you took your break while you could to prepare yourself before that shit hits the fan.

#thor #thor headcanon #thor odinson #avengers #mighty thor #here we go #lets get started #i will have fun with the avengers #you bet

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manifestoonmoralmanlove · 5 years

Text

Help I’m being harassed by the #1 sexeist man! Review

Sorry I had this mostly finished on the backburner for awhile but Soulless grabbed my attention pretty hard. BUT NOW THIS IS FINISHED! I hope you enjoy!

Summarize

So the story is as follows…Takato is an actor who was voted Japan’s sexiest man for a few years in a row. However his title is usurped by this dude named Junta that he’s working on a new movie with. Takato is salty about this but is professional about it and just kinda harbors secret bitter feelings. He is polite to and gives advice to Junta when asked. Junta invites him out to drinks, Takato doesn’t want to but everyone within a 5 mile radius swoops in to pressure him into it so he caves.

GOD WHY IS THAT A THING? That for sure happened in Love Stage and I’m sure I’ve seen that trope elsewhere. Where not just a 3rd party will pressure a reluctant uke but like a fucking horde of strangers with nothing to gain from it just crawl out from under the fucking floor boards like little hack-handy roaches to advance this shitty plot.

ANYWAY!

Junta gets Takato drunk, films embarrassing stuff that he threatens to blackmail him with, and a fucking horror scene of a rape ensues. Like, not dissimilar from Junjou in the fact that the atmosphere is drawn as oppressive, the uke is riddled with very palatable fear, the seme wears crazed expressions, and behaves violently. Hell, Takato manages to shove him off and tries to lock himself in the bathroom for his own safety but Junta rips the door off its fucking hinges. Takato PLEADS like BEGS for him not to but he is violently raped against the wall while Takato cries saying OUT LOUD that THIS IS RAPE! Afterwards he’s crying and shaking, talking out loud about how he’s frightened if others find out and feeling humiliated.

Junta picks him up and is like, “Man I guess I got carried away, but like REAL TALK I have a crush on you. The rape was kinda bad I guess, but it’s not my fault cause I literally cannot control any of my actions. I can prove I like you by having gentle sex with you in the bed.”

Takato agrees to this.

I BEG YOUR FUCKING PARDON?!

The implication here is that Junta just looked SO SWEET! But like also it wasn’t gentle sex at all and Junta is going to continue to blackmail him. HAR HAR!

Like here is a hot fucking take authors and fans of this particular type of garbage… that kind of writing does not make this more consensual and okay.

Like if you threw a dude in a pit full of scorpions, and he is being stung by a thousand stingers and the poison is slowly and painfully shutting down all of his bodily functions and it’s all really gruesome…but then someone asks if he wants to be saved and the dude in the pit goes from screaming in agony to saying, “Actually I like it down here.”

Does that mean being pushed into that pit, and what he went through in that pit is okay? NO

What does him suddenly wanting to marry all of those 1000 scorpions mean?

IT MEANS YOU’RE A FUCKING HACK WRITER WILLFULLY CONTRIBUTING TO RAPE CULTURE FOR A QUICK BUCK YOU HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

Like you can have your stories where a rapist is redeemed from his awful actions, but more often than not I see these fucking outrageous hairpin fucking turns in writing.

I mean, Junta does apologize? Which is better than some semes but honestly I’d rather him not even bother because he’s not sincere. He apologizes all the time for the sex acts he puts Takato through but goes on to blackmail him, hurts him, abducts him, and threatens him to his face with more rape. LIKE NOT EXACTLY FEELING AS IF YOU TOTES CARE ABOUT HOW HE FEELS ABOUT ALL THIS, BOYO!

The next chapter while they’re being filmed for the show Takato throws him against the wall and hijacks the dialog to make it sound sexually threatening. Takato IN HIS MIND ADMITS “DAMN HE’S ACTUALLY USING ENOUGH FORCE TO HURT ME!!!!” So after this shot, Takato gives Junta some advice and makes no shit, this fucking face…

And that…face, (improperly attached to what I presume is a series of straws coated in plaster masquerading as a neck) gives Junta that GOTTA RAPE NOW BONER!

So that’s what happens, he just violently drags off a kicking and screaming Takato in the middle of shooting and no one bats a fucking eye. SEEMS LEGIT! What’s baffling to me is they don’t even draw a sex scene for this.

MY BRO, WHAT IS EVEN THE FUCKING POINT THAN OF ALL THESE RAPE SCENERIOS IF THERE AREN’T HIDEOUS MELTING FACES AND WACKY INFLATABLE TUBE MAN BODIES TO GO WITH IT!?

But afterwards Junta says the classic creepy shit, “Give up already and become mine. I have no intention of giving you to someone else.” WE KNOW THE DRILL!

Takato looks up at Junta and goes, “Yeah guess I love this dude.”

AND LIKE FOR WHAT? FOR HUH? WHAT’S GOING ON HERE!?!!??!?!?!?!?

But also, are you fucking joking here? Like I’m not into the 10 volumes of “Am I gay or not?” bullshit we get in yaoi. But, depending on the pace and characterization, there’s nothing wrong with dragging out the love being 100% mutual. Here’s it’s in chapter fucking 2. Even Junjou went at a slower pace than that. When I read that I couldn’t help feeling like, “WELL WHAT’S THE CONFLICT IN THE NEXT 3 AND A HALF VOLUMES GOING TO BE?”

Which, admittedly is unfair, there can be lots of relationship conflict outside of mutually expressed love…However for a rapist/tsundere dynamic? That’s usually at least 75% of the conflict. But oh, maybe this means we’re going to get different kinds of drama! So even while it’s not good, we’re going to get something different!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

It’s utter NOT-CONFLICT is what we end up with. 3 different chapters are, “I haven’t seen much of him, that must mean he’s bored of me. Wah! Oh it turns out he was just busy. Oh that’s good.” PAGING FUCKING JUNJOU WITH THAT SUPER FUN, ENGAGING, AND INTERESTING CONFLICT HARDY FUCKING HAR!

Then we take a hard right into sorta worst rapist territory. What do you mean by SORTA worst rapist Faps?

Well……

There’s a new actor Takato is working with and this new actor, and the new actor’s coding as a bad guy is about as subtle as a punch to the mouth. So new actor gets Takato drunk enough for him to pass out, gives him a hickey and ????????????

2 things happen in these situations in yaoi typically

1.) SOMEHOW the seme MAGICS his way there beats up the worst rapist

2.) This happens after the uke and seme have a fight. So uke realizes how mean he was for not being 100% down with all the seme’s shitty behavior cause there is a worst rapist out there. He runs crying to the seme apologizing and conflict solved.

We sorta get the 2nd here…but not in a straight-forward way. For one there is no fight beforehand to set up any kind of relationship development. What happens is that Takato wakes up mortified at the possibility he was raped while he was asleep. He staggers around both in denial and utter shame. Seme shows up and like only adds to this panic by yanking him around, forcefully washing his body, and screaming that his SLUTTY, SLUTTY FACE MANIPULATES MEN into raping him. The seme tells him that they don’t have to have sex. Which good, but I mean the scene is not framed as if Takato is doing this out of kindness but almost as a dare. The implication being if Takato doesn’t consent that he is the OTHER MAN’S BOY NOW and they should just break up. So there is implicit pressure there, but he does seem to initial consent. Yet during the sex Takato internally cries about how much he hates it because his boyfriend is hate fucking him but he can’t say NO because than his boyfriend will hate him more.

LIKE FUCKING BIG YIKES MY FRIEND! IT’S SUPER UNCOMFORTABLE!

Which like, I could see a post-assault sex scene full of the emotional intensity of the anger, guilt, shame, fear all intermingling within both of them working well. (Not that post assault consensual sex is much of a thing.) That they’re trying not to think of what Takato went through but it’s eating at both of them. THAT COULD BE A REALLY INTENSE, WELL DONE SCENE! However this is framed like seme ~taking back what’s his~ in a really cold, pissed-off way that’s AT BEST really insensitive to what the uke just went through and his current emotional state. While Takato ~letting him~ cause he’s afraid his bf hates him for getting raped by someone not him. Junta also disappears without a word, making Takato fear that YEP HIS BF DON’T WANT HIM CAUSE HE’S DAMAGED GOODS NOW!

But who has to apologize? THE UKE!

Also it turns out Takato was not raped cause worst rapist couldn’t get it up after Takato said his bf’s name in his sleep. This is framed as better not cause of what the uke went through, but he didn’t really CHEAT so Junta can forgive him.

LIKE REALLY MY DUDE? YOU STARTED THIS OFF WRITTEN TAKATO MORE REALISTICALLY DEALING WITH THE DENIAL, DISGUST, AND SHAME OF ASSUALT AND INSTEAD JUST DEGRADED INTO THE SAME VICTIM-BLAMING HORSESHIT! GET FUCKED!

So the resolution is that the relationship is fixed and Junta threatens and blackmails the rapist. Which, I’m glad he didn’t get off scot-free but those interactions felt less like protecting the safety of Takato and more like, HE’S MY PROPERTY NO TOUCHY!

So from here we take a big turn.

Most of the 3rd volume is a big back-track to the beginning of their relationship before it was romantic or sexual. And boy howdy it feels like a retcon for the fuck awful pace of the 1st volume.

Basically it’s about how Junta became obsessed with Takato while working on a movie cause idk he’s pretty and he accidently heard Takato say something shitty about him once. While I wouldn’t call this good the fact that they actually let this blooming of affection take place makes it the best chapters so far.

Like at the end Junta resolves himself to let his feelings be known and to start a romantic relationship with Takato. Without the context, that felt like almost sweet? That he’s accepted his gay feelings and wants to share his life with Takato. However if you REMEMBER THE CONEXT it means that Junta planned to drug, blackmail, and rape Takato WHICH YANNO REALLY TAKES A SHIT ON YOUR CUTE LITTLE FEATHERS BLOWING IN A BREEZE TO GO WITH HIS CUTSY MONOLOG YOU SHIT-SUCKER!

But lordy the next chapter comes along which is a retelling of this prequel from Takato perspective. The only saving grace here is that it’s not nearly as long as Junta’s. Basically Takato realizes that Junta is OUT for him, and has a fucking frightened panic attack in his car afterwards. He’s literally shaking and monologing about how scary the situation and Junta are. And this isn’t me even inferring words in Takato’s head, he repeats scary over and over. Takato even decides to over book himself so he’ll have fewer chances to interact with Junta. So he does the classic ~pass-out from overwork~ thing so Junta can save him and from here we immediately transition to,

Oh now it’s modern day and they’re banging…..okay????? VOLUME ENDS

The next plot point comes down to this:

Paparazzi are OUT TO GET THEM! There is a photo leaked that isn’t really suggestive at all and Takato pretty much loses his job for it. However Takato finds out there is a much more damning picture of him and Junta, so he decides to break up with Junta, and like…just literally do whatever the paparazzi wants in order to protect Junta. But like, what’s the point of hiding it from Junta? And if this dude is going to blackmail you, what are you going to do to make sure their demands end or don’t get to the point that they’re unfeasible to continue giving in to them?

HAHA OH WELL!

Takato doesn’t even get to see the paparazzi again, his producer finds out and sexually assaults him to PROVE A POINT!

AND BOY HOWDY I’M WAY INTO THAT TROPE! LOOKING AT YOU OURAN HOST CLUB!

Cause HAHA nobody could literally want anything out of a wealthy, well-connected actor other than gay rape amirite?

Meanwhile Junta is cultivating a rumor that he’s having an affair with an actress. Cause of fucking course Junta figured that the only reason his boyfriend (whom is often upset at how shitty he gets treated by him) is an elaborate ploy to protect him from the paparazzi. But you know OF COURSE we see the actress and Junta flirting a bunch to stir the pot in a private setting but like…they only need to be seen on an outside date once. This means that he’s fucking lying if he says that he only did it to SAVE BOTH OF THEM FROM THE PAPARAZZI. He was getting a kick out of it, which I think you could argue that he was being unfaithful or in the very least being a fucking dick about it.

But, Junta goes on TV and says that he’s not having an affair with the actress or with Takato but he is moving in with Takato.

Yeah nothing dispels rumors of an intimate relationship like the announcement that they’re MOVING IN TOGETHER! Now, as I understand it, the housing market is very different in Japan from the west and therefore it’s less of a huge TELL of an intimate relationship if two people move in together. But even if that’s the case, saying you’re moving in with someone you’re accused of having an affair with…is not helping my friend.

However it is phrased this way, and immediately the entirety of the media believes this whole-heartedly, and the paparazzi guy (despite having a much more damning picture he hasn’t released) is like, “Wowzers he’s so smart, he has BEAT ME! I’m giving up being paparazzi. That man CHANGED MY LIFE FOR THE BETTER! HOW COULD I EVER THANK HIM!?” Even the fucking company that hired this paparazzi guy is like, “WELL I’M TAKING MY BUSINESS IN A NEW BETTER DIRECTION! THAT JUNTA GUY SURE, SHOWED ME!!!!”

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING!? You might as well have every criminal in Japan throw their hands up going, “WELL GOLLY! DID YOU SEE HOW GREAT THE ACTUAL RAPIST AND ABUSER JUNTA IS? BEST NEVER DO A BAD THING EVER AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

GO EAT EVERY DICK!!!!

That’s pretty much the end up to this point. I mean, there are some odds and ends chapters here and there but they’re pretty much excuses for sex chapters. And like, even though those are pretty rapey, I kinda respect them more than when you attempts to interject some semblance of relationship drama, cause holy hell that paparazzi shit ugh.

Though if you’ll allow a side rant from me about how the story treats sexual assault. According to the author it comes in a lot of flavors and most of them are awful.

For one: if it’s a hunky guy who loves you: Rape is great.

For two: if it’s a hunky guy but you already have a rapist errr boyfriend: You’re cheating.

For three: if you’re being obnoxiously sexually harassed by your superior….BUT YOUR PRODUCER IS AN OLDER EFFEMINATE GAY MAN: It’s hilarious and harmless and helps cement your Marty-stuness.

For four: if a woman is being groomed by a superior: It’s a bad thing that should be stopped.

3 and 4 happen within the same chapter but the author is so oblivious at the hypocrisy of the framing it’s absurd.

Story

Okay so the story is a mess. The relationship progression goes way too fast for it to make sense, and negates a lot of the drama you could have had. It’s possible that the editors wanted sex ASAP for some kinda quota, and that’s not necessarily bad. But it really burns my biscuits when people think, “Oh that means lead with rape and that they’ll be in mutual love by chapter 2.”

Sure most tsundere stories have a bit more lead up until the uke can confess he likes the seme back but this is not the right way to break that mold. The hairpin turn makes no sense and neuters a lot of potential conflict.

It puts the comic in a pacing hole to start and the rest of the story does little to mitigate this. I think there was an attempt to rectify this by going back to the story BEFORE they were a couple. However that was horrible botched as well. It brings the pacing to a screeching halt with a volume of Junta being like “OH NO HE’S HOTTTTTTTTTTT” despite the time devoted they do very little to give them an actual relationship or investment in his personality. It’s all a one-sided pining boner for hideous wiggle mouth.

The content of the writing is just embarrassing too. I can be a more forgiving in the sex-excuse side chapters. But like there’s a side chapter when Junta is magiked into a child and for like what? So we can coo, that the author drawing a small snowman with a poorly defined face and pretending it’s a child is super adorable?

So we can excuse the shitty way Junta behaves? Is anybody weirded out that 3 year old Junta is more thoughtful and respectful than his adult-self? YOU CAN’T EVEN WRITE HOW CHILDREN BEHAVE YOU STUPID SIMP! UGH!!!!

But also the arc on the paparazzi just ended in a total train-wreck of awful writing no question.

Sexual politics:

They’re fucking atrocious here.

1.) The first scene is framed as a brutal rape but 30 seconds later its fine and they’re in love.

2.) The handling of the ~worst rapist~ trope with big buckets of victim blaming and as if Takato was ~cheating~ is horrendous.

3.) The worst rapist is also a sex worker. So we’re framing sex workers as bad people and sex work as a bad thing. BUT GOLLY KEEP DRAWING GRAPHIC SEX SCENCES!

4.) The sexually predator producer of Junta being framed as harmless cause he’s effeminate is god fucking awful. It’s also this bizarre homophobic double standard that this man (and by extension his gay brother) are a joke because they behave stereotypically gay and aren’t ashamed of being effeminate. MEN ARE ONLY HOT IF THEY ACT LIKE PREDATORS IN A MANLY WAY, OR ARE ASHAMED OF ANY SEXUAL SUBMISSIVE OR EFFEMINATE TRAITS THEY HAVE! I LOVE WATCHING MAN ON MAN SEX BUT SO HELP ME GOD IF THEY’RE ~GAY ABOUT IT!~

5.) They ~sorta~ take sexual harassment seriously when a female actor is being groomed. Like they joke about it but also DO SOMETHING TO STOP IT really fucking muddles what we’re supposed to think about sexual abuse at all here.

6.) Takato’s producer sexually assaults him to ~prove a point~ that Takato is putting himself in situations where rape COULD happen. The fuck is this horseshit! “These men could do the very bad thing of raping you. Let me demonstrate what that bad thing looks like cause I’m sure you’re UNAWARE!” THE FUCK!? Also this sexual assault is framed more seriously than Junta’s producer because this producer is coded as MORE ATTRACTIVE and less openly QUEER! ONCE AGAIN I EXCLAIM! THE FUCK!?

7.) Takato OPENLY describes Junta as scary and calls his acts stalking, kidnapping, bullying, blackmail, threats, and rape. He also tries to actively avoid his boyfriend at times, yet are we not to take ANY of this seriously? Are we not to take this seriously cause this behavior is acceptable when the one dolling it out is attractive and charming? Are we not to take it seriously because we can’t except Takato to be honest about how he feels about any of this? I don’t believe in given a blanket free-pass when Takato doesn’t consistently express desire in Junta’s abusive tendencies. Like maybe you can argue some of the sex is consensual but can you argue that Takato is into the blackmail, when he never mentions he likes it? Can you argue he’s into the non-stop attention when he SOMETIMES BEGRUDINGLY admits he enjoys it? If so does just that get a blanket pass?

JUST UGH! YOU’VE GUYS HAVE PROBABLY HEARD THIS RANT FROM ME BEFORE I FUCKING HATE TSUNDERE SEXUAL POLITICS!

Characters

Takato

Okay so Takato. What’s this dude’s deal?

Okay let’s start with some boring basics: He’s a hard-working actor who strives to be professional. He’s a perfectionist, who seems to easily and joyfully take on the role of mentor/protector. He does seem to take himself too seriously at times. He appears to subtly prod at people who have wronged him or others rather than confront them directly. He’s also shown to be a tsundere with a submissive streak.

There’s nothing bad on its face about this characterization. However Takato is described as an intelligent professional actor, with years of experience. Yet his handling of the paparazzi thing is pretty much he goes to shit and opens him up to more rape cause lol hot. I could maybe understand this characterization if the paparazzi thing really hit Takato on a personal level and he made some irrational choices due to feeling as if he was being attacked or that he was going to permanently lose his job.

However he is shown as calm, as he’s making these choices and openly states that he will gladly give up a career he worked so hard for if it would save Junta’s career. Did he not, even for a second consider he could save both of them? This is not consistent with his characterization and it exists to put Junta on a pedestal he does not deserve.

SPEAKING OF…

Junta

So…this fucking guy. Junta is a young up and coming actor with early success. He’s shown to be an impulsive, passionate person who relies heavily on an ~angelic charm.~ He has no shame in using calculated, underhanded methods in order to achieve his goals. He is shown as impatient, has a temper, and is openly disrespectful to his partner.

Yet the world fawns over him with praise for how attractive, charming, and ~resourceful~ he is. He is described as having a few low wage jobs out of high school and therefore he’s an expert in EVERYTHING FOREVER!

I believe they were trying to humorously contrast Junta having a sweet, innocent angelic charm, with the reality of him being an aggressive a-hole. However they do not frame the aggressive a-hole side of him as bad but rather as HOT. Like I GET THAT on some level but since he’s a manipulative, abusive, rapist, it just reminds me of all the REAL LIFE INDIVIDUALS who put on a good face for the public but to their partner they’re monsters.

Art

I legit hate this fucking art. Like straight up and down, I have a hard time even reading it on a visual level. Like the anatomy is OKAY and the backgrounds are OKAY but a lot of it is less than okay. The worst culprits are the character designs, the necks, and the expressions.

I am so done with mediocre artists churning out, not only same-faced characters compared to their own art, but characters that are basically same-faced compared to the main-stream. The only thing unique here is that Junta has dark hair underneath his lighter brown hair. OH GOLLY! It’s so fucking bland and Junta’s got best seme in the Chil Chil awards and I’m so salty about that I could give the dead sea a run for its money. UGH!

The necks are super long, thin, twisty, sharp angels, and with her sad attempts at tendons it looks as if they’re constantly tense. And in worst case scenarios they don’t look as if they’re attached to even half of the chin. Yeesh!

The expressions…fucking lord. In the best of times, the facial spacing is just bad, with eyes and mouths off center, and ears too low. The author has no concept of how lips/faces work so all the kisses are REAL BAD. It’s either just like…triangles smashed at each other, no lips involved, or they’re like 1 foot apart layering their tongues on each other like they’re building a fucking sandwich.

The worst of times is Takato’s sex faces. THEY MAKE ME WANT TO VOMIT-SCREAM!

Basically he squints and his eyes get so watery it looks as if they replaced his eyeballs with just well…water. You can’t make out pupils, irises, NOTHING! But the mouths are the pinnacle of puke-inducing. They’re these enormous squigglies with no rhyme or reason, just oozing saliva like a breach in a dam. At best they’re cartoonish in an unerotic way. THESE SQUIGGLES! I CAN’T STAND THEM! YUCK!

TL;DR

Poorly drawn and written Rapist/Tsundere garbage. While it doesn’t hit EVERY little overplayed trope, it’s still pretty cliché. Just, it’s similar and up there with Junjou in the shitty department if you ask me.

#Dakaretai Otoko Ichii ni Odosarete Imasu #Help I’m being harassed by the 1 sexeist man!#review #comic critique saturday

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fitono · 6 years

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How to Help a Client Who Has Type 2 Diabetes

I live in two different worlds. Professionally, I’m a physician who’s board-certified in family and obesity medicine. But on my own time I’m an athlete and a meathead with sub-10 percent body fat. I love to lift heavy things, and don’t think there’s anything weird about flexing in the mirror afterward. Sometimes I don’t even wait until I’m finished.

So when I approach my patients who have type 2 diabetes, the part of me that’s a gym bro wants to get them into the weight room four days a week while setting them up with a protein-sparing low-calorie diet. But the part of me that’s a doctor understands there’s almost no chance it would work.

That’s because type 2 diabetes, like me, is really two things: Medically, it’s a disruption in the way the body processes blood sugar. But behaviorally, in most cases, it’s a disease of excess—too much food, and too little exercise, for too long, with plenty of warning signs along the way.

READ ALSO: Diabetes and Your Client: Four Things Every Coach Should Know and Do

I wish every client with diabetes came to you on the advice of a doctor like me, someone who understands how to combine the fitness and nutrition interventions you provide with the client’s prescribed medicines, with all of you working toward a mutual goal of helping the client lose weight, get healthy, and no longer need that medicine.

But with or without that kind of collaboration, there’s a lot you can do. Exercise, I believe, is the very best therapy, one that’s safe and powerful and 100 percent legal for you to prescribe. You can also recommend the second-best therapy: diet modifications that lead to weight loss.

The combination, when applied intelligently, can have profound effects on your client’s physical and mental health. Here’s the program I recommend.

Part 1: Exercise

If I could, I’d get every patient with type 2 diabetes on a program that combines strength training and endurance exercise. The balance would be up to the patient. A little cardio with a lot of lifting or a ton of cardio with a bit of lifting will get her to the same place. She’ll have better insulin sensitivity because when she uses glucose and fat as fuel there’s less of it in her bloodstream.

But if a typical patient could do a program like that, she probably wouldn’t have diabetes in the first place.

So my challenge, and yours, is to meet these clients where they are now—which, in many cases, is at the very beginning.

Step 1: Start Lifting

To my patients, the gym is an intimidating place. You’d think someone like me wouldn’t be able to relate, but I totally can. A few years ago, when I decided to do a triathlon, I had to start swimming laps, something I’d never done in my life. (My ever-supportive wife said it looked more like drowning than swimming.)

Yes, I looked good in my Speedo, but I was by far the worst swimmer in the pool. And you’d better believe it bothered me. I’ve never finished last in anything.

Now imagine how your client feels about herself when she walks into a room filled with people who are leaner and fitter, and who obviously know what they’re doing. The last thing you want to do is give that client exercises that make her feel even more awkward than she already does.

I hope this is common sense, and that you wouldn’t start a client like this with single-leg Romanian deadlifts, or anything on a Swiss ball. But I’ve heard stories …

The ideal program is the simplest one that you think will get results, with one to three sets of each of the following movement patterns:

Squat

Hip hinge

Vertical and/or horizontal push

Vertical and/or horizontal pull

Biceps curl (not necessary, but no one is afraid to try it)

Triceps extension (also not necessary, but female clients especially will expect it)

Core-stability exercises

Keep in mind that you can’t reverse decades of sedentary behavior overnight. The best you can do is start the ball rolling in the opposite direction.

Step 2: Get Moving

This is where I start with my patients: a short walk after dinner. We know that a 20-minute walk can lower the blood-sugar response to a meal. A 30-minute walk would be better, but it’s okay if your client builds up to it.

I hope your client’s doctor already has him doing this. But if not, you need to encourage it.

Walking checks multiple boxes:

It’s easy, simple, and gives clients a stronger sense of self-efficacy.

It’s easily scalable; once a client is moving, you can encourage him to go a little farther, or a little faster, or a little more often.

It’s a great rut-buster, getting your client away from his phone or TV or computer.

Once your client is experiencing some success, both in and out of the gym, it’s much easier to get him to modify his diet.

Part 2: Nutrition and Weight Loss

The biggest problem I see with nutrition advice is that most people are too extreme. On one side you have fitness pros who pretend they’re doctors, giving recommendations that could be disastrous without close medical supervision. On the other I see trainers who feel they’re so far out of their depth that they can’t give any advice, which is almost equally ludicrous.

I’ll start with the most popular extreme: low-carb diets.

There’s no question that cutting carbs reduces high blood sugar. The first suggestion I give to patients is to replace high-starch carbs like potatoes and bread with non-starchy vegetables. It’s simple and easy.

What’s not simple or easy is asking a patient to give up everything she enjoys and switch to a diet that fitness pros may think is awesome but most people hate. I don’t use that word lightly. Most of my patients despise the ketogenic diet, which is why I only recommend it if the patient has been on high insulin doses for at least 10 years.

My patients, and your clients, aren’t robots that we can program to follow the diet we think would be best for them.

The most effective diet ever studied, in fact, isn’t even low in carbs—at least not as a percentage of calories. It’s the very-low-calorie diet used by Dr. Roy Taylor at Newcastle University in the U.K. Volunteers with type 2 diabetes eat just 800 calories a day for several months, with the goal of losing at least 30 pounds.

The success rate is extraordinary, in large part because it addresses the underlying issue: the accumulation of ectopic fat in the pancreas (which makes insulin), liver, and muscle tissue.

It works as well as advertised, in my experience, but it’s way beyond anything a trainer should recommend.

Your best bet is to help your client achieve an energy deficit. It absolutely doesn’t matter how you achieve it. Weight loss almost always reduces blood glucose and improves insulin sensitivity.

Here’s how I would get started.

READ ALSO: Five Ways to Help Your Clients Lose Weight

Step 1: Impose Order

Help your client reduce the chaos in his diet by encouraging him to do the following:

Eat a regular number of meals.

Eat at regular times.

Build a small list of what I call “go to” meals, which he can make easily and quickly, often with ingredients he has on hand.

Make the meal his only focus for the time he sits down to eat it.

Step 2: Reduce Portion Sizes

Encourage your client to use smaller plates, smaller glasses, even smaller cutlery if he has it.

These are obviously symbolic steps, since he knows the goal is to create the illusion of eating the same amount when he’s in fact eating less.

But it might work anyway, simply because it’s his choice. It’s empowering because nobody is forcing it on him.

Celebrate Small Victories

Let’s return to something I said earlier: Type 2 diabetes is a disease of excess, with damage accumulating over years. Your client may feel like it came on suddenly—one day she’s healthy, the next her blood glucose levels are setting off alarm bells—but it took a long time for her to reach that tipping point.

Because every step matters on the road to diabetes, every step back toward normalcy is important.

Your client got stronger? That’s a win. Increased muscular endurance, or the total volume of a workout? Win. Walked every evening after dinner, and two hours on the weekend? Huge win.

Same with incremental decreases in weight and waist size. For that matter, if the client has steadily gained weight for a decade or more, simply not gaining weight for six months to a year can be a win, especially if she’s also increased her exercise and improved the quality of her diet.

Another reason why these seemingly modest achievements matter:

If your client is taking insulin or a class of drugs calls sulfonylureas (SFUs), you actually don’t want her to increase exercise too much or drop weight too quickly, unless you’re working closely with her doctor. She can end up with hypoglycemia—too little blood glucose. More gradual improvements give her doctor a chance to monitor her progress and reduce medications accordingly.

On the other hand, if you are working with her doctor, you can be as aggressive as your client wants. Some of them will surprise you.

But until you have that buy-in, remember that any progress is better than no progress.

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