#historically speaking when someone more violent showed up everyone else got more violent

[tartrazeen]

I have finally seen Across the Spiderverse!

tl;dr - amazing movie, folks here need to be more normal about Miguel

The longer version:

1. I'm so happy you people put that "Gwen is trans" theory in my head.

I got to watch the whole beginning of the movie like, "Omg, her dad is so supportive of her!"

And then I got to watch that part where Miles tells her, "We're the same. Uh - I mean, in the important ways, we're same," and be like "(⁠☞ﾟ⁠∀ﾟ⁠)⁠☞ Solid recovery, man."

And then I got to watch the part where Gwen comes back home, and when her dad asks her where she's been, appreciate the metaphor that'd be in, "I was off murdering all my best friends." Like - oof. I would not have caught the added meaning in a trans girl telling that to her father without this theory. A bit of "I guess he's not that supportive" followed by "Oh thank God, he's going to try harder through the power of movie magic and love and acceptance."

And that really hammered home the "Spider-man is a metaphor for coming out" with Miles, because he can't exactly pull a Misha Collins and come out as straight. As bi, though? As part of a big, interconnected web of LGBTQ2I+? Yeeeesssss.

Separately from that, I hope he and Gwen get together, really building off the "I'm gonna do my own thing" arc he's going through, paired with the "It doesn't end well" bit about Gwen falling for a Spider-man.

2. Loved how quickly they set up Spot.

I get him, I get the story, but they kept the pacing perfectly focused on the Spiderverse stuff. Spot's in the background but also developed well in the background. It's a perfect case of 'not too little' but especially - more importantly! - not too much.

3. Hobie is a fucking bro.

He showed up to help everyone - like one of the first things out of his mouth was, "Hey Miles, you can do better with your powers, here's some help." Loved him. And the fucking COMMON SENSE this guy had? I loved his little "haha anarchy" jokes, but this guy was on the Spiderverse's side completely - right up until he realized, "Nope, this shit has crossed a line" and immediately fought back against them. He didn't just help Miles and then quit. He helped Miles, quit, probably left assuming that Miguel wasn't gonna go completely batshit, and despite that assumption, still had the presence of mind to pass on his not-a-watch to Gwen.

And I think someone else wrote that he ran away? I disagree with characterization. He didn't panic and leave, and he didn't even abandon anybody. He disagreed, withdrew his support, and then left the others to come around at their own speed. I mean, Miguel hurried that speed up a lot, but that just speaks to how fast Hobie moved from "I agree with the Spiderverse" to "You guys are fucking facists." And the second he was tagged to help - after realizing how correct he was about the 'facist' thing - he was immediately back to actively fighting alongside Gwen. There was no passiveness on his side whatsoever. What a bro. And he even gave Gwen a place to stay when she needed it, which was such an extra point of community. 💖

4. Uhhhhhh can everyone please be more normal about Miguel...?

Because I watched that movie. I know like 5% of who this guy is. They gave us the Cliff notes of Sad Backstory and a glimpse - a glimpse! - into how he probably felt, but it was all from behind an iron mask. We haven't gotten into any of the real him yet, just the anger and outrage and fury.

So... people taking running with an obviously incomplete character? That's normal, fine, sure.

People taking that and running with it to slot him in as an uwu Top for Peter B.? Did you only go in looking for a ship, and did you have to be so weird about making it be the guy whose only defining traits are "Big" when his other and MORE IMPORTANT defining trait is "PoC whose race has been historically and actively fetishized for being violent sex objects"? 'Cause it's like everyone just scrubbed that 5% of what we know away to put him into this predefined "Big Dom Top" role with zero self-reflection, and handwaved how that once again perpetuates every racist stereotype this relates to. All to woobify the white guy some more.

I'm all for shipping, but you people literally don't know him. His story's pretty clearly being saved for the next movie, comic book sales show so many of you don't read those and definitely didn't before this (likely just stopping at what Wikipedia says), and went off of ~v i b e s~

And just happened to not notice how creepy and fetishizing it is that those were the vibes you were left with.

5. I teared up when Miles' story started. Yes, right after the opening title.

I wasn't expecting it, but as soon as the music started and that atmosphere was set, I just got hit with such a wave of, "This is unapologetically black." I heard the Puerto Rican vibes coming in later and both of them perfectly throughout the movie, but the centering of his blackness through the music alone. It was a 'great opening for a sequel' before that point. At that point? It was 'a brand-new story.' 💖💖💖💖 Representation bbyyyyy

[codename-adler]

Kevin Day and his Oblivious Literature Lover, pt. VI

This bit explores Kevin’s sexual identity and his relationship to Jean, so, you know, not all funs and games... But very cathartic to write. I love them.

>> Table of Contents, TW and other parts are here!

after Juliet’s confession, their little talk does not flow any easier, but despite the rocky start and their dirty secrets, they push through the stuff that matters

it’s like a dam burst open

though, some subjects remain silenced

no parents, no exy, no relationships, no entourage, no names…

it’s just them

Kevin stays well into the afternoon

he has no class on Tuesdays, except in the mornings and, well, for once, he chose to rearrange his priorities

it wasn’t even a difficult choice, it wasn’t even a question: he had to stay, simple as that

he even missed morning practice

morning practice

it scares him, he feels the restlessness running through his veins, he feels guilty, guilty, guilty… and so, so weak…

but that was easier than leaving Juliet in the state she was

that had never happened before

not even with Jean

he’s used to flight, not fight

as for Juliet, either she didn’t have class or she chose the same as Kevin

either way, both were unspokenly grateful

sometimes, Juliet would fall asleep 

sometimes she’d go non verbal and simply watch Kevin do his homework

one time he fell asleep

he woke up extremely tense, his jaw hurting from the clenching and his back protesting against his curled up position on the floor (really, an elite athlete should know better)

Juliet was looking at him strangely

“Can I ask for another truth?” she said quietly

he nodded calmly while his heart went racing

“Who’s Jean?”

ah

“You said his name in your sleep. A lot. Are you usually a sleeptalker? I know I sleepwalk sometimes, but I don’t think I’ve ever talked,” she added

Kevin took an awful long time to think

he was looking at Juliet without really seeing her

instead he was imagining Jean’s bruised and battered face

he started speaking without refocusing his gaze, staring in the distance behind Juliet

“Jean is… He’s the one who taught me French. He’s the one who made me discover philosophy, Sartre and Hell is other people and all. He’s the one who listened first. He is the man that knows my shames, my failures, my mistakes, my ugly side, the man who knew and still looked at me as a human being with worth. He’s the one who showed me how to reset a dislocated shoulder. He’s the one I used to talk to in the middle of the night, about future plans or crazy ideas or incredible historical discoveries. He was my crutch when I couldn’t stand on my own anymore. He’s the one who kept my spirits up when times were tough. He is the man who kept me alive without either of us realizing it until it was too late. He is the man that I took for granted, the man I left behind without a second thought when things got too bad. I could beg for forgiveness my whole life and it still wouldn’t be enough to do right by him. He is the only person that has ever left me speechless. He can make my mind go blank, he can make me lose my words, he can shut me up with just a word. He’s the only one I let, at least. Jean is… So much. Too much, sometimes.”

Kevin’s throat tightened as he spoke, fists clenching and unclenching, his stomach twisting into knots of guilt and shame

if he’d been able to cry, Kevin would have shed burning tears

but he couldn’t

it’s as if everything in his system had been ready to cry, only for his body to realize that his water tank was completely empty of tears

and if Juliet hadn’t been looking at him with such intensity and such intent, Kevin would’ve ran away to Jean’s bedside right this second

three entire languages couldn’t even begin to express everything that Jean was to Kevin

Jean was every single emotion Kevin had ever felt in his short yet brutal existence, wrapped in one person as complex as the mechanics of the world

Kevin thought back on that first night when he allowed himself to be close to Jean since his escape from Edgar Allen

he thought back on how, with a single touch, all their entangled feelings came rushing back to the surface

how Kevin had never wanted to let go ever again, but the dark and violent waves of emotions had made his instincts scream with the urge to run away

Kevin had forgotten Juliet was still a witness to his battle

“Jean was… is… you ex?” she asked, something like wariness in her eyes

and what

“What?” he even says aloud

“Jean was your partner? Before… whatever it is you overcame?” Juliet repeats

“No!?”

“Okay… I’m sorry, Kevin… I didn’t mean…” she apologizes

“Why would you say that?” Kevin harshly asks

“Why wouldn’t I? It seems you two shared a very special bond, that’s all I’m saying,” she replies

she couldn’t possibly know

she couldn’t know

how would she know?

only two people in this godforsaken existence knew about these secrets in the dark, one of them being barely conscious in a bed a few minutes away, and the other one being himself

it was impossible that Juliet knew about what had transpired between him and Jean

“Kevin?” Juliet’s voice finally reaching him

“I said ‘Sorry for assuming’, I shouldn’t have done that. We don’t have to talk about it anymore, I’m sorry.”

Kevin considered their exchange

“I think I want to talk about it. To you,” Kevin finally spoke

Juliet nodded slowly, ever so careful, a silent yet binding promise passing between them

and so Kevin told her everything

absolutely everything

everything that didn’t touch exy, Riko, the Ravens, but that still left plenty, enough to cover many pages of poetry

he told her about how it had started between them, how Jean’s resilience had intrigued Kevin and how it had made him discover that there was more to life than his adoptive-brother

how Kevin had wanted a part of that rebellion Jean carried in his heart, how he tutored Kevin in French to share that slow-burning flame

he told her how for the first time in his life, Kevin’s entire focus wasn’t on one thing, but on a person too

he told her how their midnight talks became as important to him as his duty was

he told her how he began fighting for something else without knowing what it was, or why

he told her how on these nights, as Jean was teaching him verb tenses in French, their heads had, inch by inch, made their way closer to the other’s, until their foreheads were touching and their whispers barely made a sound on their lips

he told her how one fateful night, as Jean was teaching him the future tenses, their faces hadn’t stopped moving once their foreheads touched

how that simple touch hadn’t been enough anymore

how Jean had been his first kiss, his every kisses for the longest time

how he had been Jean’s first kiss, too

he told her how they had been each other’s first for everything

how they had been each other’s everything for a long time

he also told her how his fear and his shame, and his ambition, had ruined what they had

how his and Jean’s “situation” made it so, so hard

how once he was 17 and was “promoted”, Kevin didn’t choose Jean back

how it was on-and-off between them even when he showed interest towards Thea, also his now ex

how he had “moved” when shit hit the fan, and how he didn’t bring Jean with him because he was too scared, too self-centered, too weak

he told her how nobody knew back then, how nobody knows even now, because he had denied everything to everyone, including himself

and he told her how Jean was back, now, and how the memories came flooding back in with that same sour, yet familiar taste of shame, guilt, and fear

Kevin talked and talked and talked…

and Juliet listened

and Kevin cried, or rather, tears escaped his saddened eyes without even realizing it

and Juliet cried, too

they both wiped away the mess with the sleeves of their sweaters

“I have nothing to say about guilt and shame, but… If you liked Jean, if you loved him… if you still do… that is so okay, Kevin. It’s just love. You find it where you can. There’s nothing wrong with that, or with you. That’s how I see it… how I- I see you. You’re still you, Kevin.”

“You don’t know me,” Kevin replied fast, without thinking

Juliet just raised her eyebrow in a really, Kevin? way

“Look at where we are… Look at me… This isn’t even my worst. And I don’t believe it’s yours either. But it’s not pretty. Give us a little credit here, Kev; we’re not strangers anymore. Please don’t be a stranger… “

“Okay, Jules”

---

Kevin left Jackie Hall after sundown, with his heart heavy and his mind racing, but his shoulders a little lighter than yesterday

nothing in his life had magically changed into a goddamn fairytale, yet it felt different

Jules had told him nobody could decide who he was, that was his decision and his alone

he held that power, and only he chose who could wield some of it

he could choose what to do with it, and that thing could be outside of exy

at least, it could be for someone, instead of something

someone like Jean

on his way back to the familiarity Abby’s, back to Jean, he began plotting

by the time he was back by the bedside of the person he’d held so close to his heart and his lips, once upon a time, Kevin had formed a plan to give Jean the happy ending he so deserved

he’d have to make a few calls to USC, to the Trojans, to Jeremy Knox, he’d have to be careful of what he revealed, he’d have to convince Jean to leave, he’d have to convince himself to let Jean go, too, but he believed it was worth it

and if once in a while, in his cautious planning of Jean’s second chance at life, Kevin absentmindedly thought of a certain face framed with frizzy hair when the words “happy ending” kept nagging him, well no one could take that away from him either

[angelicamerlinbarnes]

TUA PIRATE AU

(of the Caribbean? Sort of? I guess?)

(please understand that by AU, I mean they share an incredibly small amount of things in common with the original source material which I barely remember BUT the “story” takes place in the setting of the books/films) (not to be misleading or anything :p)

(BEWARE: abuse, murder, pirates and all of their violent shenanigans, etc.)

(If you can handle watching Umbrella Academy, this will be fine for you.)

Luther is the captain of the guard, and pirates are the bane of his existence. He hates Diego most of all, the man who’s stolen unspeakable amounts of gold from Reginald, Luther’s employer. But as annoyed he is at all of the theft, he purposefully never catches Diego, because he knows Klaus loves him. And Luther may be a man of the law, but he’s also Klaus’ beloved brother-in-spirit, even if Reginald wants them to marry each other for some idiotic reason. (Something about getting Klaus to settle down - ha, he can try.) When Klaus disappears, Luther follows him, having no connections left here - and that’s when he meets Allison. And there are copious laws against getting involved with married women and outlaws alike… so Luther starts to think that maybe bending the rules wouldn’t be so bad. (Klaus is so proud.)

Diego grew up poor, and became a pirate in his early teens when Grace took him in. When she fled the colony, Diego went with her, leaving his childhood best friend Klaus behind. He’s got his own fleet and crew now, and mostly uses his scores as excuses to flirt with Klaus, who’s still just as drawn to him after all these years and often sneaks him into his bedroom when Diego’s in town. Diego’s kept in close touch with Lila and Eudora, both of whom he grew up with once Grace took him away, and they both help him when it comes time for him to crash Klaus’ wedding to Luther (fuck you dude) and steal Klaus away for a life at sea. (Klaus absolutely LOVES this. They kiss a lot. They swing from ropes. Klaus is screaming at all the guards as Diego carries him away bridal-style (ha, I’m so funny). It is delightful.) (His ship is a terror they call The Kraken. Ha, get it? Get it - because Diego’s name - and the monster from legend - okay yeah I’ll shut up now.)

Allison is a badass goddess, covered in colorful tattoos with gold in her hair. She was a prostitute for awhile, stealing a bunch along the way, but one day one of the pirate captains who approached her tried to take more than he paid for. She broke both his hands and killed him in cold blood, then defeated his entire crew in a sword fight single-handedly, earning their respect. She now rides with that same crew as their captain, in one of those off-the-shoulder poet-blouse-corset dresses and high brown boots. Ray is a leutinant who’s been chasing her for years, the two of them flirting back and forth forever… but he’ll never catch her. It’s bad form to arrest your wife.

Klaus is the governor’s bastard son, a totally wild spirit who wears dresses all the time, drinks his weight at parties, and has slept with half the town (marriage is not a problem for him, this is Klaus, we all know he is very down for threesomes). He’s stolen half of Reginald’s shit for Diego over the years, and has been sneaking off to see him just as long, completely in love with his pirate king. Though he’s loved others before - Dave, for example, a soldier whose death broke Klaus into give in to Reginald’s plan to marry him off to Luther (who Klaus loves, just, Not Like That™). The day Diego kidnaps him from his own wedding is the best fucking day of his life - okay, no it wasn’t. That was second best. The best day of his life was the day he and Diego watched Diego’s ship and treasure burn and sink into the sea, and Klaus asked him if he was alright, and Diego just shrugged. Said, You’re the only treasure I need, and kissed him like the world was ending. Yeah. That was the best day of his life, because Diego is the best anything in his life.

Five was a pirate queen until he transitioned a few years ago, though only by word of mouth. No one’s ever seen him. Anyone who works for him doesn’t make it a month outside of the job, usually by his own hands, but people keep coming because nobody knows who he is. He sails alone, though he offers Klaus refuge on his boat for a few days under the moniker Aidan, because he knows Diego loves him, and Five actually respects Diego (if only because he respects Lila who he only respects because he respects Eudora). He hates the Handler for leaving him stranded on an island when he was just a child, an unwanted product of her crew’s hard partying, and has vowed to kill her one day for leaving him alone for so long, ageless in misery. He talks to the mermaid on the front of his ship named Dolores and kills without mercy, and when he finally reveals himself as this skinny pale thirteen-year-old with the grandpa haircut, he revels in the looks on his family’s faces as they try to rebuild their blown brain circuits.

Ben loves Klaus more than life itself, which is, in hindsight, probably why he’s dead. Oh who is he kidding, it’s definitely why he’s dead. Klaus is sort of, kind of, maybe, just a little bit a witch, and they hang witches where they’re from. So when they needed someone to blame for the odd happenings Klaus had caused recently, Ben had taken the blame and worn the noose proudly. Klaus still talks to him all the time, his ghost anyway, and it’s fine - but Klaus lives on the sea now, with Diego, and Ben gets seasick like all the time. (And then he steals Davy Jones’ heart and gets trapped as a tentacle monster, which is honestly not that bad. It helps him scare birds, and Ben likes scaring birds.)

Vanya works as the blacksmith’s apprentice, sad and lonely. She’s been having an affair with the duchess Sissy for years, also working as her maid and a nanny for her son Harlan when asked, but mostly she’s alone, with no one else to care for in the world. (And that creep officer Leonard keeps asking her to marry him, which, just. Ew.) When Five shows up, his hands in his pockets, and offers her a way out, well - what else could she possibly do?

Lila is a badass pirate princess who don’t take no shit from anybody. She wears bright pink ballgowns while skewering people like kabobs, which is funny because she’s a well-known maneater. Literally. (Yes I included a Hannibal character in here because it’s my AU and I can do whatever the fuck I want.) She fell in love with Eudora, and thought she had corrupted the kind sergeant until she found out Eudora had been an undercover pirate the whole time, helping Diego smuggle Reginald’s gold and goods in and out of port. (That’s hot as fucking hell, she blurts when she realizes. Fuck, I’m gonna marry this woman.) She has a serious rum problem she will not be addressing and a collection of pet parrots that will forever prevent her and Ben from becoming friends. When she and Eudora get married, it’s in the middle of the pouring rain while thunder and lightning and gunshots crack around them and they’re killing people and shooting canons left and right (because I may not have shipped Will and Elizabeth but by god if their wedding wasn’t the best fucking thing I’ve ever seen). Now if only she could find the king of the pirates… she’s been hunting Five for years, hoping to prove herself to him, but he just… won’t show up.

Eudora is the sergeant in Reginald’s legions, and has been using her position to help Diego pirate goods since before he even left with Grace. She makes a lot of deals with him, having him carry her cargo and speak with her connections in exchange for her keeping an eye on Klaus for him, which to be honest they both know she’d do anyway. She helped Diego get to Klaus’ wedding and kidnap him, confusing the soldiers in pursuit of the bride, and follows them off to sea, finally home. She feels she owes an eternal debt to Klaus for not being able to save Ben from execution, though she tried, almost desperately. She flirts with Lila all the damn time, and believes in magic, wanting to travel the world looking for it. Most importantly, you should know that she will and has killed for a cheeseburger. (I know they weren’t invented yet shut up.)

Reginald is the governor of the colony, and Klaus’ father. He’s an asshole, one who constantly hunts the pirates because his wife Grace left him to be one. He only has one eye because Grace cut the other out viciously in their last fight, and he’s an abusive piece of shit who lives to terrorize and tax people. Pogo is his assistant / advisor / let-me-stand-here-and-give-you-good-advice-that-we-all-know-you’ll-ignore person. Reginald refuses to die before he catches Grace and sees her hanging in the square - something that seems more and more likely by the day. (HA, Grace says. He wishes.)

Grace is the original pirate queen, and lives in legend. She faked her death after living a double life for years, leaving Reginald and taking her son Diego with her. She knows Reginald doesn’t believe in her death, because she cut his eye out and nearly killed him right before she left, but everyone else believes it. She jumped from the bell tower and Klaus himself “went mad with grief” at the sight of her body, though he of course knows she’s alive and keeps up the story for her benefit. She injured Reginald so severely because he killed Ben, knowing that he wasn’t guilty, and that the witch in question had done nothing wrong anyway. She is known to be fiercely protective of her children, and kind in nature despite her ability to kill you using a historic number of methods. Her crew is made up of refugees who she offered shelter and a better life in exchange for their servitude, including Five, for awhile, who was running a scam. She knows who he is, and remembers his face well - but she keeps it to herself. Though she could match him in a fight easily, she has no interest in battling the boy she has grown to love as a son. (She’s also the one who officiates Diego and Klaus’ wedding, but that’s unrelated.)

The Handler is another pirate queen, and Grace’s greatest rival. She has two pistols at her waist and is not afraid to use them, having such deadly aim that she’s never missed a target - except Diego, which she hates him for. Also for encouraging her first mate and daughter Lila to mutiny, but that’s a whole other can of worms. Her ship is followed by an entire shiver of sharks, who let her use them like water skis whenever she wants. She abandoned Five on an island when he was born into her crew, as she hates children with a burning passion. (There are rumors she eats little boys’ bones. They have yet to be disproven.) Hazel is her snivelling first mate and Cha-Cha is her willing servant and second captain, a master at the wheel and with a sword. Agnes is an old psychic (ha, she’s faking it. She’s got no fuckin’ clue where Five is and will continue to lie whenever asked) she keeps in the brig after kidnapping her years ago, hoping to get a read on Five, who the Handler hates for constantly stealing her goods before they even make it to port. (She has no idea he’s the same boy she left on that island all those years ago - he’s certainly not the only child she’s done that to. But countless are out for her blood… almost every person Grace has rescued was left to die on an island by the Handler.) She eventually dies at Klaus’ hand, who plunges a sword through her heart in defense of his family, who she made the fatal mistake of coming after. (It happened in the same rainy battle where Lila and Eudora were married. He was wearing a yellow ballgown.)

Also Jack Sparrow is super great friends with Lila and he’s married to Will Turner who’s honestly so exhausted but gets along great with Ben and Elizabeth is their ace-aro friend who is a goddamn queen and who Diego has a lowkey crush on and Klaus can geek out with for hours. It’s awesome.

[period-dramallama]

Spanish Princess Episode 5: many many thoughts

Strap yo selves in 

-WHERE WAS THE APOLOGY?? Lina’s just back with Catherine like nothing happened?? 

-Katherine, I get why you’re upset, but you kind of should be unsurprised?? Your dad was unfaithful to his wife, most kings were. Henry VII and Richard III were the exceptions, and even they had illegitimate sons before their marriages. Many kings also had official mistresses that everyone knew about, so by the standards of the time Henry and Bessie are actually being pretty tactful in at least trying to keep their affair out of sight. (Sexy dancing aside). 

-Honestly it would have been so much more moving if KoA was like “I know kings take mistresses...but I thought...I was so sure... he would be different...”

-”they gave me a purse of gold!” It’s expected that you give the monarch lavish presents, lmao Ursula and Stafford would do that even if they hated each other and you

-”everybody loves a masque” the only sensible thing Henry has said so far in this show. Also court probably had way more masques than we see in the show, and it would standard to have a masque every holiday. 

-”she is not a boy” hurry up with your character development and learn to love Mary already i am so TIRED of this miserable BS

-seems a rather depopulated masque? If the Chateau Vert pageant is anything to go by putting on a masque was a court activity, with most of the ladies performing.  

-Bessie Blount in her cute masque costume... sweet mother i cannot weave Aphrodite has overcome me with GAAAAAAAAAAAAY

-”I never enjoyed carousing...my mother scolded me” look i love the Neville sisters with my whole heart but a) Margaret was 3 at most when her mother died, how does she remember her? She’d have clearer memories of her double-uncle and double-aunt, Richard III and Queen Anne b) Isabel Neville in the White Queen was established as very prim and proper, a well-bred girl who cared about enforcing decorum, she refused to ‘carouse’ and she certainly would never bring a 3 year old to a party c) we saw little Margaret as a girl at the end of the White Queen and she didn’t seem at all shy. 

-”she died young, didn’t she” ...yes? most people did?

-”they both did” understatement of the year. Isabel Neville died young because she was ill, George died young (in the universe of The White Queen, at least) BECAUSE HE WAS FORCEFULLY DROWNED IN A VAT OF MALMSEY WINE. THESE TWO THINGS ARE NOT THE SAME! I do at least trust the writers of this show that the understatement was intentional, I’m sure even Emma Frost couldn’t forget a major character getting violently drowned.

-So the court only noticed the plague when one of their own got it so obviously and then died? Yes, plague could move fast, but if there was a whiff of plague the court would flee with the speed of the Looney Tunes road runner. If an acquaintance of an acquaintance of a cook had a cousin who saw someone with the plague, the court would flee to the country. How have these people not died of terminal stupid?! Like Compton was in the same building as the heir to the throne

-To be fair, it makes sense that they’re surprised Compton’s dead. Because the real Compton died of the sweating sickness. In 1528. Also he was involved in Buckingham’s downfall so... you just wrote yourself into a corner.

-Oh wow an actual good reason for More and Pole to be quarantined together i am amaaaaaazed

-”attend the queen” Boleyn, what do you think your daughter’s been doing all season if not attending the queen? Playing tetris?

-Katherine helping Anne into the wagon...I actually like that little moment. Like it does make sense, because the two have no reason to hate each other yet. (And who couldn’t like Anne? She’s such a babby!)

-Thomas More in the Tudor equivalent of casual clothes... much better. Shame about the 1930s lady’s wig.

-”what else should we do?” Maggie, this cannot be the first epidemic you’ve ever lived through. Have you forgotten the sweating sickness of 1485? You’ve probably lived through more epidemics than Oviedo has, you should know the protocol better than him.

-Oviedo continues to be the only man with rights. I wish we could see him crying and missing his wife and babies, but then my lil heart would break so maybe it’s for the best.

-They burn Maggie’s weird blue hood AS THEY SHOULD! IT WAS UGLY AND STUPID! I NEVER HAVE TO LOOK AT IT AGAIN NOW! THANK YOU SO MUCH! yes they also burned her nice dress with the strawberries on it but honestly it’s worth it, bc now i can rest easy, knowing the evil hood has been defeated.

-”you were a plaything” Katherine is so obviously insecure. I’m getting second-hand embarrassment. Like if she really was certain Bessie wasn’t important, she wouldn’t need to say it, would she? Except to rub it in. Which this KOA would absolutely do. 

-literally all Bessie said was good morning?? Like Bessie is doing her best?? The masque was Henry’s idea, not hers, she hasn’t shown off about her affair, she hasn’t demanded money or titles, she hasn’t demanded any status to rival Katherine’s, she doesn’t flirt with or even speak to Henry when Katherine’s around, she acts like they’re strangers, she doesn’t even react when Katherine loses her temper...someone please please stick up for Bessie!

-”the rocking of the cart is unsettling to the stomach” is Anne naive, or is she covering for Bessie? I hope it’s the latter, in which case Anne is the one person looking out for Bessie...the babby is Soft, I repeat the babby is Soft!

-the irony of Mary being cold to Bessie when she’s next in the firing line...

-”it is not the rocking” Thank you Lina, where would we be without your gift for stating the obvious?

-”where did Wolsey get his money”...He’s a churchman...at the top of the church hierarchy...how do you fuckin think he got wealthy. Have y’all not been in the sixteenth century for five minutes? Why do you think Luther is so mad at the church?

-”I know of no other man in her bed most nights” Honestly wow I’m surprised KoA wasn’t like “well :/ a girl like that :/ who knows how many men process in and out of her bed :/” KoA gets half a point for being less bitchy than usual. Also Bessie looked so uncomfortable with Henry groping her stomach in front of Katherine. I pray the next man in her life treats her right and that Fraham don’t prematurely kill her off like they did with Compton.  

-”the future king” if you’re regent on his behalf, then he’s already king! “Civilised companionship” back at it again with the Scots-are-barbarians.

-Laura Carmichael is utterly stunning this episode, with her hair down. The cinematography was beautiful in general this week.

-”freedom to speak and licence to speak are two different things” hey look at that one of Thomas More’s actual beliefs. I am giving all the credit to the historical advisor for that, I don’t believe for one second Fraham knew that beforehand.

-Maggie I love you but no, God does not sanction adultery. For any reason. 

-KOA smirking and gloating about Bessie’s pain...she has never been so punchable. I would understand, if not condone it, if Bessie was manipulative, or greedy, or ambitious, or trying to supplant Katherine. But Bessie’s been betrayed by Henry too, and there’s no concrete evidence she ever gloated about her affair, to anyone let alone Katherine.  

-”You think only of your own fate while London is struck down with plague” Earth to Katherine?? What concern have you shown for the Londoners?? Also calling Bessie selfish...Bessie’s not the one who lashed out at Lina, was jealous at Lina for having twin boys, and who wanted to continue a war for personal reasons. And then Bessie proves KoA wrong 5 hot seconds later by sticking up for Mary. Bit rich of KoA to be all “how dare you leave my daughter unattended” when she herself won’t even hold Mary. 

-”Louis didn’t last a year” What! Is! The Timeline!

-Meg in that cloak reminds me of the Scottish Widow adverts. Georgie is so greedy- she steals every single scene she is in! Even when she’s raging she has more dignity and more presence than KoA ever has.

-”YOU LYING SOD” i burst out laughing it’s really not the little two-timing shit’s day, is it?

-Mary receiving Charlie B in the most Extra way possible. A++

-Why does Wolsey look like he’s about to cry?

-”thoughts are not actions” Lina I love you but... that is NOT what the New Testament says. Jesus said evil thoughts are very very much sins. I’ll give you a pass because maybe you haven’t been Catholic as long as Katherine has? Idk your backstory.

-Aaand now she’s wishing death on Bessie and her unborn baby and Lina isn’t disgusted? At least Katherine is feeling guilty. AS SHE SHOULD.

-”must it always fall to me to be magnanimous?” Katherine, you think only of yourself, for 23 out of every 24 hours. 

-”God wants me to be compassionate to Bessie because of my sins” God wants you to be compassionate because that’s how Christianity is supposed to work. It’s not very selfless of you to decide to be selfless so that you can get what you want. 

-oh wow look at that! She’s getting some self-awareness, i never saw that coming.

-”you betrayed Bessie” 5 points to Katherine of Aragon for standing up for Bessie when Henry screwed her over. Finally, some positive character development.

- MINUS 20000 POINTS FOR BABY STEALING

-WHAT THE FUCK

-is henry so dumb he thinks that baby is Katherine’s? Katherine was so obviously not pregnant

-When a baby’s born his skin needs to touch his mother’s skin so they can bond. They should have at least an hour’s cuddle time. Katherine of Aragon is literally traumatising a baby the very minute he is born. For her own selfish, selfish desires. 

[ellaenchanting]

Hypnovember Day 18: Monster

Ellen sat in the back room of the coffeeshop quietly sipping her tea. The other members of the hypnosis meet up group were slowly gathering after their break,  chatting and catching up before practice portion of their group officially started. She strategized about what it would be helpful for her to practice tonight. Her traitorous brain eagerly supplied some silly power fantasies. She quickly suppressed them. That kind of stuff wasn’t fair to think about here. It wasn’t everyone else’s fault that she was so warped.

Ellen both loved and hated the group. She wasn’t just into power fantasies- she was genuinely interested in hypnotherapy and doing hypnosis for fun. She had been very surprised to find a local hypnosis practice group existed at all where she could practice her skills and learn more . (It was tiring having to work up the nerve to bug her friends to volunteer to be practice subjects.) Of course, she was the youngest person there and usually the only woman but- that was OK. She had long ago accepted that that most actual hypnotists were middle aged men and she was an odd aberration.

She felt like an aberration in other ways too. Few of the hypnotists here seemed to struggle with nerves in the way she did. Group practice often brought those nerves on . She hated the way they would make her words come out stilted and wrong, her gestures awkward, and her metaphors so mixed up until they ultimately went nowhere. When it got really bad, Ellen’s childhood stutter would return in full force. It felt important and meaningful to her that she got it wrong so often- like she had failed to perform in some cataclysmic way.

 It also felt meaningful when she got it right. Ellen would feel proud of herself  for her mastery of something and then almost immediately the thought would sneak in- “if only they knew”. It’s not that the hypnosis she was doing with the group had a sexual charge- group members ranged from kinda- to very- not-her-type- but she could only imagine the disgust her subjects would feel if they knew the full range of thoughts she had about hypnosis internally. Or, even worse, if they could see her web browser history. How would they feel being taken advantage of by such a perverted monster?

In a lesser but still meaningful way, Ellen also felt annoyed that she had never quite been hypnotized yet despite many, many attempts. Usually practice time involved pairing up and switching turns being the hypnotist and the subject. Ellen would usually go along with others’ inductions and give them some technical feedback afterwards, but the truth was she rarely felt anything besides plain, comfortable relaxation. She knew there was more- she could see it in the reactions of some of the people she hypnotized and the incredible mental feats they performed. She had evidence that this kind of deep hypnosis existed. She just couldn’t access it herself. 

Ellen was shaken out of her reverie by a voice.  

““Hi! I heard your name was Ellen?””

She looked up to see the group’s newest member. He was a little older than her- probably mid- to late-twenties- and had a nice dark beard. When she replied with the affirmative, he extended his hand and shook hers confidently. 

“Hi, I’m John.  Do you have a practice partner yet?” 

Ellen and John socialized a bit before starting their practice. This was normal at the meetings- partially because of mutual nerves but also because everyone  welcomed the  opportunity to geek out about an unusual personal interest. John said that had been doing hypnosis for about 5 years- around the same time she had- but he had already started a stage show and was planning on turning it from a hobby into a career. She was impressed. She found herself feeling surprisingly connected to him. She wondered if he had that effect on everyone he met. If so, it was a neat trick.

When they finally got down to practice, Ellen started by doing a modified Flowers induction. She had come in with the intention of throwing in a lot of language patterns into her induction- she had been drilling her Zeebu cards lately- but an odd change of mood happened as she watched John start to sink into hypnosis. Something about the way he responded to her words, melting and  seeming to almost to throw himself into trance, triggered something in her. She found herself hovering closer to him, her voice going softer as she spoke closer to his ear.

She almost reached out and touched his arm when she remembered- no. That would be inappropriate. She caught herself and reminded herself to be professional. She gave John a few generic positive suggestions and then brought him back up out of trance.

John took a surprisingly short amount of time to recover, his expression showing alertness almost immediately. When she remarked on it, he told Ellen that he was actually a very practiced subject- that he had purposefully worked on his ability to be hypnotized. Ellen hadn’t even known that was possible to do- the research she had read strongly suggested that someone’s ability to be hypnotized was pretty static and unchangeable. She confessed to John that she always had difficulty being hypnotized and envied people who could access that state easily. She worked to keep the longing out of her voice as she described her desire for the experience of knowing she was deeply and truly hypnotized. 

John paused for a moment after she spoke.  He gave her a curious, searching look. Then his face cleared as he seemed to decide on something. 

“Hey, do you mind if I try something a bit different?” he asked.

Ellen nodded. She switched positions with him and made herself comfortable as per his instructions. 

“Can I touch you?” John asked.

All things considered, Ellen thought she hid her spike of excitement quite well. She nodded again.

John started steadily and confidently speaking to her as he traced a finger lightly up and down her hand. He wanted her to focus on the feeling of the finger going up and down, he said. Ellen gamely focused her attention. It felt nice, that light touch.

John continued to talk to her, telling her she didn’t have to worry about going into trance or getting sleepy or being hypnotized- all she had to do was focus on his touch. That was good- Ellen had historically bad luck with those concepts.  She dutifully focused, even as she had some stray thoughts about how amazing John’s voice sounded. John’s fingers started to move to trace her arm up and then back down, all the while continuing to talk to her about focus and enjoying how the touch felt. Ellen still noticed some of the clever words he said, but the specifics were fading. It was all beginning to feel like a general wave of instruction washing over her. She was vaguely aware he was speaking to her more directly now and telling her how good she was doing and enjoyed how pleasant those things were.  Suddenly-

“Sleep!” 

John’s hand grabbed her arm and pulled it gently downwards. Ellen felt her eyes close as her head nodded forward. Her whole body slumped. Fortunately, John was kneeling in front of her and waiting to catch her. Once he did, he took her shoulder and rocked her deeper and deeper into trance with his words and his touch.

It felt amazing- just like she had always hoped that it would. John finally stopped rocking and took her hand. That gesture felt so right and lovely and perfect that Ellen felt herself quietly moan in response.

And then....she noticed she had done it.

Suddenly thoughts flew back into her mind. What was she doing? Did everyone else hear her? Were they watching her now? Were they realizing what a creepy pervert she was?

Ellen violently sat up, opened her eyes, and yanked her mind awake. Shaken, she took a moment to clench and unclench her hands, reminding herself that she had power over them. She was up. She had control of herself. She was OK. 

After a few breaths, she looked around the room and noticed that no one else seemed to be looking at her. She resisted the urge to cry in relief. 

She finally noticed John was there, still on his knees and giving her a concerned look. “Ellen?” he asked firmly. “How do you feel? What happened?”

She took a moment to respond. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to....I made a noise and I didn’t mean to be...awkward. I’m really sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he replied, going back into a more soothing voice. “Being hypnotized feels good sometimes, yeah? It’s ok to enjoy it. Is that what happened? It felt good in..in a way you weren’t expecting?”

Ellen nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m..weird, I didn’t mean to be weird,” she replied, still very flustered.

He looked at her gently. “You’re not...you’re not that weird. Listen, I get you might not want to talk about this here but- we could talk about it after practice maybe? I think we may have some things in common.”

Ellen thought about everything she had seen about erotic hypnosis online. All the misogyny. All of the shame and degradation people wrote about. She pictured the sexy stage show she had downloaded parts of and how much the hypnotist seemed to relish in people’s genuine embarrassment. 

She remembered that she didn’t really know John at all. 

“No!” she replied sharply. Then gentler-  “I mean, I don’t want to talk about it. It’s OK. I’m OK.”

He nodded. “You are, you know. And it’s OK if you’re....if you’re not ready yet to talk about it. But- “ He made sure she was looking at him as he said the next part. “There’s nothing wrong with you. And- if you do ever want to talk more about it or even ask questions, here’s my card. Call me anytime, ok? I mean it.”

He produced a business card out of his pocket. Ellen hesitated, then took it.

Just then, the leader announced that their practice time was over and moved onto wrapup. Ellen waited for everyone’s attention to be gathered, then snuck out the back on the building. She needed some fresh air. She was done with hypnosis for tonight. 

But she thought of the card, still in her jacket pocket, the whole bike ride home.  

[zutaralesbian]

eleanor guthrie and buffy summers!

Eleanor Guthrie:

My three favorite things about them:

Her ambition. I feel like ambition is one of the main traits that often gets female characters unfairly hated by fandoms and Eleanor (and Max tbh) are definitely not exempted from that 💀 But it's a trait I really like in characters, especially women!

Her bravery. She's so brave. Going into a crowd of dangerous men with only a stick as a weapon to defend Max. Rescuing Abgail from Vane whom she knew was violent and didn't take well to being "betrayed". And then of course (even though I don't like to think about it 😭) her dying while defending Madi.

The way she wears her heart on her sleeve. I've never understood why it's such a popular interpretation to see Eleanor as manipulative because imo I don't think she has the skill. If I'm remembering correctly, I think we see her openly crying onscreen more often than both Max and Anne. And she's VERY bad at hiding her anger lol. But I liked the fact that she's often very openly emotional.

My three least favorite things about them:

Her taste in men :( Her taste in women seemed great though I wish we had gotten to see more of it

Some of her moments did kind of veer into white feminism. Like as much as I loved her "too many goddamn men" speech, her including Mr Scott in the list of men who tried to get in her way was not it.

The fact that she went from wearing those hot pirate outfits to those boring dresses 😤

My three favorite dynamics with them in it (romantic or platonic):

Eleanor/Flint: My favorite chaotic duo :( They're so similiar as people and I loved when they worked as a team because I think they truly understood each other. (But I also loved that even when they were on opposite sides, they never trash talked each other on a personal level.) Her truest father figure :(

Eleanor/Max: Loved these two. They were so angsty but also so so interesting. As much as I love Maxanne Maxanor would have served as a lovers to enemies to friends back to lovers endgame 💔 (And tbh sometimes I really do wish they had been endgame just because I'm bitter about the ambiguous ending Max and Anne got. Unlike most of the other main characters who were based on Treasure Island characters or historical figures, Eleanor and Max were completely original to Black Sails. The writers could have done anything they wanted with them. *sighs*)

Eleanor/Madi: Wish we had seen more of them tbh! But I love their scene right before the event we do not speak of happens.

My three favorite moments of theirs

Pretty much the entirety of 2x06. Her shooting a gun to break up Flint and Vane's fighting. Her rescuing Abigail from Vane. Her interactions with both Abigail and Flint. When Vane almost caught her and she locked the gate in his face. Just queen shit all around in that episode.

Her team up with Anne to save Max and her blackmailing Silver into helping them.

Her apologizing to Max in S4 :(

Buffy Summers:

My three favorite things about them:

Her heroism. (And her selflessness, even though it often makes me sad). She is always so ready to do what's right, even when it's hard. Her sacrificing herself to save Dawn and sacrificing Angel in order to save the world are two scenarios that come to mind.

Her bravery. She always goes head first into situations, even when she is scared.

She's just very kind and isn't a judgemental character. (To an extent, of course). She befriends Willow and Xander at the beginning of the series, who were underdogs at the high school. She stuck up for Cordelia on occasions, even back when Cordelia was being portrayed as "the mean girl". I can't really recall a time where she was outright nasty to someone for no reason and I always like that trait in characters.

My three least favorite things about them:

Her selflessness made me sad at points, especially in the later seasons when her friends started becoming assholes. There were multiple occasions where I wanted her to tell Xander and Willow to fuck off lmao

What Sp*ffy did to her character at times. I think one of the only times I ever outright disagreed with Buffy was when she sided with Spike over Giles and had no sympathy for Woods who just wanted to avenge his mother's murder. Sp*ffy should not have been a thing again after the attempted rape.

????? I can't really think of anything else I don't like about Buffy.

My three favorite dynamics with them in it (romantic or platonic):

Buffy/Dawn is like, the most important relationship on the show I think. I loved that Buffy's love for her didn't waver at all when she learned the truth and she continued to see her as her sister.

Buffy/Giles: Once again, I HATED what they did to this relationship in S7 just so they could prop up Spike 💀

Buffy/Faith: Everyone knew this relationship would be on my list it's my brand lol. The enemies to lovers that should have happened instead of Sp*ffy.

Honorable mention to Buffy/Tara, an underrated friendship that I wish we had gotten to see more of :(

My three favorite moments of theirs:

"I'm the thing monsters have nightmares about." That line!!!!!

The class protector scene at her high school graduation. You all know what I'm talking about.

“You have to take care of each other. You have to be strong. Dawn, the hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live. For me.” 😭

Thank you! :)

[ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes]

Field of Poppies Part 25

Summary: After being apart for six years, childhood friends Tommy and Amelia reunite under odd circumstances. Tommy is an outspoken young man and Amelia is pregnant and out on the streets. The bond of family can be unbreakable but it is tested often. Especially when Europe descends into war.

Part 25: Some have trouble adapting to home again. Some are gearing up for trouble they’re going to cause.

           By August of that year, Barney was locked away in the asylum. It happened so suddenly. Although he certainly hadn’t been himself since his last gunshot wound in the trenches, everyone had hoped that he would reacclimate as time went on. But his behavior only got worse. He was prone to violent outbursts that he didn’t even remember seconds after.

           Tommy and the rest of the 179th did their best to try and keep him calm and out of trouble. But there was only so much they could do. A few episodes at the Garrison was one thing. Harry could accept that the man was clearly out of his mind and not doing it on purpose. But the rest of the public world couldn’t understand.

           Barney was arrested a few times. But his was committed after he bit a cop and tried to escape jail. He was deemed insane soon after.

           Amelia knew Tommy took it very hard. They all did. These men who were parts of their lives were suddenly changed beyond a point of return. And there was nothing they could do about it. They couldn’t visit Barney and they couldn’t get Danny’s fits under control either.

           Rosie was at her wit's end and relied heavily on support from Amelia. Consequently, this allowed Tommy to slip back into his habits of working all hours of the day.

           Amelia noticed this a few months in, but she wasn’t sure what to say. Before the war, she had no problem laying into him about working himself to death. But after? Well, she didn’t know what to even say. She felt guilty about being strict about anything. In her mind, he had been through enough. Why should she scold him on something that was small compared to the grand scheme of things?

           But she wasn’t blind either. Amelia was aware that he never slept more than a few hours at a time. She couldn’t find the warmth in his eyes anymore. He was less outspoken than before and had a habit of sitting in stony silence instead of speaking out. He was energetic with the kids, at least as much as he could be on the amount of sleep he was getting.

           Amelia was grateful for that. Although it hurt to know Tommy had changed so much, at least the kids wouldn’t realize.

~~~~~~~~~~

           Amelia went into the betting shop one sweltering afternoon to bring Tommy lunch. He hadn’t eaten that morning and had been absent during dinner the night before. But there was no sign of him. She went into Arthur’s office to see where he was.

           “He came in early this morning, was here before everyone else.” Her brother-in-law answered. “He left ‘bout an hour ago saying he would be back later.”            

           “He didn’t say where he would be?” Amelia asked, her concern growing.

           Arthur shook his head. “I asked but he never answered.”

           She chewed on her lip. “Okay…well.” She considered waiting but figured her nerves would get the better of her. “Here, you can have this.” She gave Arthur the lunch before leaving the shop.

~~~~~~~~~~

           Small Heath wasn’t particularly large, but that didn’t mean he was even there. He could’ve gone beyond the neighborhood. She started with Charlie’s Yard. That’s where Annie and Max were for the day. They were cranky inside because of the heat so she sent them to both Charlie for the morning.

           “Haven’t seen him,” Charlie said, sitting on a stool in the shade while he watched the kids. Curly was showing them a grasshopper he’d found in one of the horse stalls. The kids were so taken by the discovery that they didn’t even notice their mother arriving.

           “Do you know where he might’ve gone?” Amelia asked hopefully.

           “Whenever he’d get in a mood, he’d go to the graveyard to visit his mum,” Charlie replied. “I’d look there.”

           “Thank you,” Amelia said gratefully, hoping Tommy’s uncle was right.

           Across the yard, Annie squealed. The grasshopper had jumped out of Curly’s cupped hand and was on the loose. Max ran to try and catch it again. They were both so caught up in the summer fun, that she wasn’t going to interrupt it with her nerves.

           “I’ll be back to take them off your hands,” Amelia promised Charlie.

           “S’alright. They’re not hurting anyone.” He nodded before she went off toward the graveyard.

~~~~~~~~~~

           Charlie was right. Amelia found Tommy among the overgrown grass and crooked headstones. But he wasn’t standing in front of his mother’s grave. Hers was a few rows down. No, he was standing in the newer section in front of a newer plot.

           “Tom.” Amelia hated interrupting him while he was in deep thought, but she was just thankful she’d found him.

           He glanced over his shoulder. Without saying anything, he reached for her hand. She took it as she stood beside him. That’s when she noticed they were in front of Greta Jurossi’s grave.

           “When I got the letter from you, the one where you said she had died, I didn’t believe it.” He spoke in a quiet voice, just loud enough to hear over the sound of cicadas in the grass. “I dunno, I just thought she was going to be the one to upset the system. One of those historical figures that people talk about.”

           Amelia knew that he and Greta shared the same ideologies. Aspirations that she was afraid of but Greta wasn’t. He had respect for her.

           “I know.” She said gently. “She would come by sometimes to the shop. She and Polly would always get worked up about the rights of women and the working class.” She smiled weakly.

           Tommy nodded, his eyes staring into space. “You were right, though.”

           “About what?”

           “When you came back, I was telling you about the communist group. You didn’t think it was enough to change the world.” He recalled. “And you were right.”

           “Tom…”

           “You don’t have to say anything.” He shook his head. “There’s nothing more to say.”

           Young Tommy Shelby had so many dreams and a drive to change everything he saw as unjust. But the world had taken him in its fist and squeezed the convictions out of him. It had forced him into the mold of a soldier. Forced him to comply. Killed off Greta, killed her message.

           But Tommy wasn’t dead yet. There was a new fire lit inside of him. “Politics, laws, parties. It doesn’t matter. You can’t win if you play by their rules.”

           “So, what are you-”

           He began to walk back down the path, still holding her hand. “Everything will be alright.” He promised her. “You won’t have to worry about a thing.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

           The two went back to the Yard to bring the children home with them. Charlie was still taking refuge in the shade, smoking a pipe and watching Annie running around in the mud.

           “You found him then.” He commented as Amelia and Tommy came up to him.

           “Not a lot of places you can hide in Small Heath,” Tommy replied to his uncle.

           “I hope they weren’t a fuss, Charlie.” Amelia ignored her husband’s glib response.

           “I’ll tell you what, that boy of yours is just like you, Tom,” Charlie remarked. “Full of energy but once he’s around a horse, he’s quiet as a mouse.”

           “I’m sure you taught him well then.”

           “I didn’t teach him anything.” He shook his head. “Must be the Traveler blood in him.”  

           “He doesn’t have Traveler blood, Charlie,” Tommy muttered in reply.

           “Well, then it’s fucking intuition, hell if I know.” His uncle rolled his eyes, his pipe still tucked between his lips as he spoke.

           “Hell, if you know.” Tommy shook his head. “You better not have been teaching him that kind of fucking language.” He warned before heading toward the horse stalls to find Max.

           “That one has Traveler blood in her.” Charlie pointed his pipe toward Annie. The little girl had ruined her skirt by stomping around in the mud by the canal. She had a loose hold on her teddy bear that seemed just as filthy from the morning’s play.

           “You think?”

           “Reminds me of Pol when she was little. An absolute terror but you’d be happy to see her come around. Max will be a gifted rider, like Tom. But Annie won’t back down from a challenge, no matter how many times she’s bucked off.”

           The thought of her precious daughter being bucked off a horse was a nightmare to Amelia. But she knew that there was no forcing Annie into being someone she wasn’t. Amelia knew that all too well. Her family wanted her to be a lady of high society. They wanted her to be proper, educated but not too educated, and a million miles beyond Small Heath. But she was aware that she was a girl of lower class. Her upbringing was nothing compared to the socialites in London. She ran the streets with the Shelbys much to her parents’ discontent. And while she wasn’t as fierce and feisty as Tommy and Arthur, she didn’t mind living in Small Heath. She loved the people there.

           The more her parents pushed, the more she rebelled. In London, she felt empty. She had no friends because all the girls her age were boring to her. London felt cold and desolate to her. Sure, the place they lived in was nicer, but it didn’t matter.

           So, if Annie wanted to be a wild girl who flocked to dangerous horses, then there really wasn’t a thing Amelia could do about it. Not with Tommy’s blood in her.

~~~~~~~~~~

           “Not even half a year since he’s come back and you’re already up the duff, again.”

           Martha and Amelia snickered behind their hands. It was true. Martha was pregnant again and Polly was bewildered by the revelation.

           “Oh, Pol, it’s okay.” Amelia smiled. "It was bound to happen once John came back."

           “You and John are getting your own flat, or I'll get my own. I’ve had more than enough newborns in this house at one time.” Polly replied firmly.

           “I suppose that’s only fair.” Martha agreed. Six Watery Lane had become quite the den of rascals. “At least John is home and can help me with the other two."

           “And make sure he does. Those three have been working themselves to death.” Polly shook her head in disapproval. “And it’s all Tommy’s doing.” She glanced at Amelia.

           “I think they’re just trying to find their place in the world again.” Amelia shrugged. “Remember when they were gone? We had to adapt to the world. Now they do too.”

           Polly didn’t look convinced. “When a Shelby man is working like the devil, that means there’s going to be trouble.” She warned.

           It did speak to the conversation she and Tommy had earlier in the graveyard. “He did seem to have some plans.” She admitted. “But he didn’t say what.”

           Polly continued to smoke by the kitchen table where Amelia and Martha were sitting. “One can only guess what goes on in that head of his.”

           Amelia looked down at her lap. As his wife, she thought she would be the one to know. But she felt just as blind as the rest of them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

           It was a rare night, but one that Amelia rejoiced in having. After dinner, she got the kids washed up and put in bed. After Tommy kissed them each goodnight, he returned to the master bedroom and caught Amelia before she even made it to her vanity.

           Without a word, he kissed her deeply. He pressed her up against the door as he locked it to avoid any awkward situations if one of the children wandered in unannounced.

           It was so easy for Amelia to forget everything when Tommy held her. She could rejoice in the fact that in those brief moments, she was taken care of. There was nothing to interrupt them, nothing to cause them harm, it was just the two of them. They were the moments Amelia yearned for when he was in France. The moments where she could keep him close and cast aside the ugliness of the world.      

           But the feeling couldn’t last and they were brought back to Earth as the night wore on. Still, they enjoyed each other’s company in the dead hours of the night. Amelia curled up in the crook of his arm, tracing the new scars on his chest that he’d obtained in the trenches. He held her close as he smoked.

           Eventually, he broke the silence and uttered a rare confession to her. “I’m going to do bad things, Mel.”

           The admission sent a chill up her spine. Yet, it was something she already knew. Something she’d known even in childhood when adults would comment on Tommy’s proclivity for mischief. When they remarked how his father was nothing but a waste of space. When they speculated how Tommy would live up to the Shelby name. A name cursed.

           “I know.” She whispered. From then on, she was complicit. Her wish to stay in Small Heath as a child had brought her to that point. Her wishes for Tommy to stay out of danger had fallen upon deaf ears as she should’ve realized. But if she wanted a quiet, polite, bland husband, she would’ve stayed in London to marry one. Instead, she was with someone who was destined to be one of the most dangerous men in Britain.

Permanent Tag: @papa-geralt-of-cirilla @biba3434 @kimmietea @karmezii @enrapturedbythemoon @vampgirl1997 @tarafaithe @evelynshelby

Tag list: @shelbyblinded @hanster1998 @xxbeckybeexx-blog @fairypitou

Masterpost 

PB Masterlist

[lassieposting]

Do you have more thoughts about the ways that Lucifer is more demon then angel ( besides the ones you mentioned) ? Also what about times that Lucifer’s siblings (or maybe Amenideil, because he seems to be the sole one whom has had any contact with Lucifer) noticed just how much Demon he was, and how little Angel was left. And does he have any unchanging angel traits that make him stand out in Hell?

under the cut because, really really long post

ways lucifer is “too angel” for the demons

- lucifer is, by nature, friendly. demons are social creatures - most of them live in groups, they do raise their own young, etc - but in hell, interpersonal relationships are all about what you can get out of the other person. 

lucifer keeps his distance from people because a hundred lifetimes in hell have taught him that people can’t be trusted, and getting close to someone will inevitably result in betrayal. but underneath all the cynicism and abandonment issues and fear, he wants to reach out to people. whenever he comes to earth, the first thing he does is make friends (and then fuck those friends). his persona is, even pre-chloe, a very approachable, charming one. he wants to connect. 

whereas maze, for example, initially sees making friends as something she has to do to fit in, because her job is to protect lucifer and as long as he’s on earth, she’s stuck here too. she’s more open to human emotions than most demons because of her long association with lucifer, but she still didn’t initially have that inherent need for positive socialisation. 

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- he’s moral. by human standards, lucifer is morally grey; his personal code of ethics line up with ours in some places and are wildly off in others. he abhors rape and is very big on consent, but is A-OK with being the third party in an affair, where the partner being cheated on absolutely did not consent to their partner sleeping with someone else. he won’t kill humans - cain aside, special circumstances, you understand - but doesn’t have the same standard for celestials; he won’t hesitate to explodify a demon for disobeying him or trying to rebel. 

(by angel standards, he’s an absolute deviant. disgusting. irredeemable. so much of the shit he does is a sin.)

but by demon standards? he’s actually got a bit of a stick up his ass. hell is a place where anything goes. it’s not just that the strong take whatever they want whenever they want from the weak; it’s their right to do so. honour and fairness Do Not Exist down there; those are things that get you killed. lucifer’s very rigid moral code - he never lies, has standards on what is and isn’t acceptable to kill, values traits like honesty and bravery - is bizarre and absolutely does not fit in down there. 

the devil is actually kind of a goody-two-shoes, and his advisors think he’s weird (they assume it’s because he’s foreign). 

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- lucifer is also tactile. he needs to be touched. angels are that kind of social; they groom one another’s wings, hug their siblings, their parents held them as babies, etc. lucifer is incredibly touch-starved in hell, which is part of why he has so much sex on the surface. he’s fitting in as much touch as possible in the short period of time he can get it. you’ll notice that as he spends longer and longer on earth, and develops real relationships where he’s getting the love and touch and shit that he needs, he stops having quite as much meaningless sex. because he’s just doing it for fun, not to fill a need that’s being starved in hell. 

demons aren’t tactile. outside of fighting, torture and fucking, demons don’t actually touch much at all; if someone reaches for you, you’re more likely to grab a weapon than relax into a hug. there’s a wonderful gifset of lucifer getting used to being hugged that shows the progression from “very uncomfortable” to “soft snuggly devil loves his detective 10000%”, but even at the beginning you can see that his freezing up when his humans touch him is more inexperience and bewilderment than disgust. he’s not used to non-sexual touching. he’s still lowkey conditioned to see being grabbed as a danger. but he always hugs chloe back and like. gradually starts to relax and rest his cheek on her head and do the little back-thumb-strokey thing that she does to him. he’s been deprived for millions of years, but the instinct is still there. 

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- he’s gentle. just. look at him. look at any of his interactions with his favourite humans. lucifer can be absolutely vicious and ruthless and violent, but he has such a massive capacity for kindness. his nature is gentle. hell makes him go against his nature; he’s harsh to survive, not because that’s how he wants to be. 

to most of the demons, having lived down there for so long and yet still retained that natural sweetness that he has would be utterly baffling. 

ways lucifer is too demon for the angels

- he’s aggressive. angels bicker like all siblings do, but real fights where someone gets badly injured are very, very rare. ultimately they’re all subordinate to Dad, doing what Dad told them to do, and following the orders of the angels who rank above them, so it’s a nice neat ordered system that allows them to be (mostly) peaceful. 

in hell, on the other hand, what amenadiel would call “a horrifying and brutal attack”, lucifer calls “tuesday”. demons fight over territory, over food, over sex partners, over the price of armor, over being looked at funny - you name it, they get aggressive over it. that is the social dynamic lucifer has spent most of his life in, so a lot of his everyday body language is, to an angel, super intimidating for no reason. he deliberately towers over people. he invades personal space. he gets what chloe affectionately calls ‘angry wings’, all ruffled up to make him look bigger - and a lot of the time, it’s not even deliberate, it’s just a habit from millions of years in hell, where looking bigger and meaner is never a bad thing. 

ultimately lucifer is a soft adorable dumbass who just wants to be loved but his body language says he wants to kill you and that doesn’t do much for improving his relationships with his siblings

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- he’s independent. angels, generally speaking, are very much not; they rely on their Dad for purpose and instructions and live their lives as little extensions of Him. which works fine for them, and keeps the peace in the Silver City. 

demons on the other hand are notoriously independent and self-serving. lucifer has advisors, and they’re good ones - first he was a devil, and then the devil, and as he’s taken over clans he’s kind of accumulated the best of the best at his back - but he’s also got to constantly be aware that every single one of them has an agenda. every single one of them wants a shot at being the devil. he can never rely on them 100%. so ultimately, he listens to his advisors, takes what they say under consideration, but he is the one who calls the shots. he makes his own decisions. and he had to learn very, very quickly to make good ones, because making a bad call in hell can get you killed. 

when amenadiel doesn’t have instructions from god, he feels lost. he spends a lot of time soul-searching and introspecting over why he has no instructions, whether he’s failed his father, what he’s supposed to do now, how he’s meant to make his own choices. lucifer has always made his own choices, even in heaven, and honed that ability in hell. and if someone tells him to do something - and it’s not chloe - chances are he’s going to do the exact opposite on principle, which is utterly baffling to his dependent brother. 

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- he’s sly. ‘devil’ is, historically, a ridiculously precarious and dangerous political position. everyone is out to get you, even the ones who seem to be most loyal. you have to keep your subordinates happy enough that they won’t defect to a competitor, without seeming too much of a pushover. you have to be strong and cruel and ruthless enough to defend your position, without being so bad that your own armies unite against you. every interaction he has is a subtle display of power and strength. he’s on a tightrope, constantly. he lives in a game of thrones-esque environment. so he’s become an expert at subtle manipulation, political power games, and strategy. 

angels are blunt, straightforward and lack concepts like guile. lucifer’s mojo doesn’t work on other angels, but he can give someone completely the wrong impression without ever lying once, can ambush amenadiel into spluttering out information he shouldn’t have mentioned, can corral any conversation exactly where he wants it to go. 

the downside of the silver city is that god has been in charge since the get-go. the angels have never needed to learn to play the kind of games that are lucifer’s bread and butter. he can run circles around them.  

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- he’s promiscuous. each of the planes have a different view on sex. angels are - bar a few notable exceptions - virginal. sex isn’t really part of their culture; although angels of different nests and different classes are distantly related enough that it wouldn’t be disgusting by human standards for them to fall in love (see: aziraphale and crowley), it just doesn’t really happen. and when it does happen, the relationship is usually sexless, because the human way is messy and sweaty and weird, and they have other ways they prefer to show love.  

sex in hell is a lot more transactional. demons will fuck for fun, just like us, but they’ll also exchange sex for protection, for preferential treatment, for food. lucifer has adopted some of this attitude over the years; he used sex to buy allies when he had nothing else to offer, and as a young devil, most of his “most loyal” advisors were only loyal because he was sleeping with them. we also see him quite happily whore himself out for favours a lot during the time he’s on earth, so it’s safe to assume that he’s been doing that throughout human history. that would’ve been unthinkable to his angelic siblings, but for lucifer it was survival, and then it was survival with added fun. he hasn’t needed to sleep with his generals for a long time, but some of them are pretty good at it and there’s fuck all else to do in hell, so he still does when he’s bored

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- he’s adaptable. angels tend towards being dedicated to a fault. once they have a mission to do, they keep going until they get it done, even when it’s pretty clear they’re bashing their head against a brick wall (case in point: amenadiel and trying to send lucifer back to hell, then later on with seeing lucifer as his test). they trust, absolutely, in god’s plan. some of them have learned to think for themselves a bit more, but most angels will assume an obstacle is something their dad has put in their path, rather than something that was just unforeseen and can be dodged around. 

lucifer on the other hand will change goals and strategies on a dime. everything in his life is about what he can get from it. once something is no longer valuable to him, he loses interest. if a tactic isn’t working for him, he’ll try something else, and keep going until he finds something that works. if Unforeseen Circumstances come between him and something he wants, he doesn’t waste time trying to pass whatever test dad has come up with like amenadiel, he just finds the fastest, most efficient way around it and gets on with business. 

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(let’s be honest though. the freakiest thing about lucifer for both angels and demons is how human he is. he doesn’t fully fit in with either of them, but he fits in with us despite all his weirdness and non-human quirks and that’s something neither group finds particularly natural) 

[blacksurvivalnostalgichanges]

I'd love to double on that topic and ask how would some specific characters react to their in-country changes, as peaceful Hart seeing how recent conflicts with minorities escalated to an unhealthy rate or Sissela discovering the whole deal with Greta Tumberg, or Chiara/Adriana/Arda reacting to the arson in Notre Dame etc.

Imma be honest, I’m white, young and not from any of those countries so I cannot say I’m equipped to talk about them beyond the stuff I’ve seen shared on tumblr, aka “this whatsapp chain told me this helps with coronavirus” except the chain came from a doctor you don’t know (but i’m still hard left, nonbinary and aromantic, and i think communism is the better option overall for systems so if you’re curious on what I believe on most political subjects you can probably guess from that)

That said (for the sake of clarifying I don’t pretend to be an authority on it and I realize I’m only well-informed in comparison to someone that has never read any news), again, I’m white so I’m gonna give my two cents on it anyway cuz that’s what we do amirite

I hold that if Hart saw how bad shit got she’d really want it to stay peaceful but once she realized it ain’t happening she’d probably be willing to let go of the peace in order to keep peace. I don’t think she’s the type to tone police people when they’re reacting to hardship because wanting to keep the peace proactively involves making sure whoever is trying to break the peace is stopped because I’d rather think Hart’s view on life is three-dimensional and adaptable; that’s much more interesting to analyze then. So I think she’d likely try to passively help in any way she can (monetarily I don’t think she’d be able to do that much but she might, id est, try to host a place where people protesting can go to treat themselves, and probably try to make music that informs people on the situation and brings attention to the cause. She’d likely still kinda quietly not be into the more violent protests but not say much since she can understand why it’s happening, as being uncomfortable with what you have to do doesn’t mean you’re gonna be against it.

I’m not that sure on what aspect of the Greta Thunberg deal you’re referring to? I think Sissela would probably feel kinda disappointed that someone that’s this young is speaking up about it, since it’s a sort of ‘sign’ that shit’s gone sideways if a kid is literally pleading with adults to do something, and feel a sort of anger that a bunch of people criticize her every move when she’s trying to do something good. But tbh I don’t see Sissela as being the type to be really into learning the issues of the world and trying to fix them, closer to having a “I have too many things to deal with to be even more stressed about what’s currently happening in the world” sort of mindset where learning about the other issue going on just leads to a profound sigh, so I don’t think she’d know that much about it. 

Though I think she’d be pretty angry at the straws thing since she is the type of person that’d want to use a straw, as she has chronic pain. That’s an extremely direct thing that’d inconvenience her.

Chiara would be extremely sad that such a special cathedral was burned, even if her feelings towards God and religion and herself are very mixed I think she’d be affected by something like that. Arda would probably be pretty fuckin’ angry that they burned down a historical place and try to erase the traces that were left there.

Adriana would probably feel pretty jealous of whoever did it since WOW YOU MADMAN YOU SET FIRE TO THE NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL IT’S HUGE HOW WARM WOULD THAT BE- so they’d both probably not be that happy with her outlook on it

Some sidenotes I thought could be interesting (though it’s all as-is character stuff, I’m not taking into account character development they could have):

-As Alex is gay, I think he wouldn’t be thrilled with the fact that Russia’s been trying to take away LGBT rights

-Isol and Rozzi would probably think “hooray now getting weapons is EASIER congrats dickhead” if they saw that guns got legalized in Brazil after Pants Pockets Guy got elected into office. Rozzi would probably not be that worried beyond international public opinion stuff since her job means she isn’t in here that often most likely, but Isol’d likely be sort of “resigned” to the fact that now things just got even worse.

-Magnus would most likely be one of those dudes that go ‘blue lives matter’, not gonna lie. Even if he’s in a motorcycle gang, I’d be surprised if he didn’t spout that sort of thing.

-Rio and Yuki would probably have a sort of “culture shock” with everyone else even without taking current events into account, but I would kill to see how they’d interact with the characters from other countries when wearing masks came up. 

“people are so fucking ridiculous, there’s literally a story of a lady that wasn’t wearing a mask and used her underwear as a mask out of spite” “...people are that unwilling to wear masks over there?” “i hadn’t seen a single mask in my life before corona showed up, if that answers your question” “what do you do when you get sick then??” “you deal with it yourself and hope not hugging anyone is enough to not pass it” “dude” “oh yeah and you drink tea” “you drink tea.”

-william yeets the tear gas canisters back at the cops with no hesitation. entirely because that sounds very funny

[deltaengineering]

Fall Anime 2019 Part 4: also, he has a gun for a head

Beastars

So here’s the CG anime that everyone for some reason decided way in advance would be the best show of the season, more or less by default. I was very skeptical of this for a multitude of reasons. First of all, that is a bad name for a show and you can’t convince me otherwise. It’s actually even worse because you’re supposed to write it in all caps, but I refuse. Second, it has a terribly on the nose conceit in which all sorts of animals live together in a high school setting and it’s all metaphorical ‘n shit. The main character is a wolf but get this, he’s actually all sensitive and quiet! Yeah, this is definitely rated D for Deep. And finally it’s by Orange, the CG studio that got an inordinate amount of acclaim for making Houseki no Kuni, the show that everyone thinks looks great and finally made CG anime worthwhile (actual real fact: HnK does not look great most of the time and CG anime was worthwhile well before it). 

But enough about my preconceptions since Beastars is... pretty good, actually. If you ignore the setting, which is indeed terribly on the nose. And there’s not much else to say about the story so far besides it. However, it looks significantly better than Houseki no Kuni because it actually has really good character animation throughout instead of a one-minute action scene with flashy spinny camera tricks every other episode. The directing’s strong too, even if the show conspicuously mainly consists of obvious manga panels. I’m still not too hot on the animal stuff but the general writing seems to be sufficiently competent it would work simply on a character level. So I don’t love it, but it seems solid enough to see if it goes somewhere with its “Zootopia but also Beverly Hills 90210 but also they eat each other sometimes″ plot.

Rifle is Beautiful

Remember the whole “anime about some assorted anime girls joining a club doing an oddly specific activity” thing? This is another one of those, and now it’s about air rifle sports shooting. Except it’s not about air rifle sports shooting because that’s apparently way too violent, so they use rifles that look like exactly like air rifles but are actually based on lasers or really bright flashlights (they can’t keep their bullshit straight between scenes, sorry) instead. I just don’t think “girls doing activities” anime should blatantly misrepresent their subject matter like that, you know? With the possible exception of idol anime that is, ain’t nobody who wants to hear about that shit. Apart from that it’s nothing special, so if you are really into air rifles and wish to watch an anime that’s not about those, knock yourself out. It goes through a whole “club needs 5 members” arc in the first half of the first episode, so I really can’t say where it goes next. Nowhere much, I would guess.

Oh right, there’s one more thing: They frequently render the bodies in CG and the heads in traditional drawings, and they do it every time when they’d actually have to draw a rifle otherwise. It’s a weird effect that I think I haven’t seen anywhere else before, and it’s not great but also not terrible. And it’s the most interesting thing about the entire show.

Kabukicho Sherlock

“Let’s take a bunch of public domain characters and put them into a hip modern setting” seems to be its own genre at the moment, and not only because the BBC did that with S. Holmes, Esq. already. Obviously this show is influenced by that (besides other public domain namedroppers like Bungou Stray Dogs), mostly in Watson and his relationship with Sherlock, but Sherlock-san is rather different here; he’s neither the classic Victorian bohemian nor the abrasive sociopath of the BBC version, and tends more towards a bumbling 90s pop culture version of autism and/or general wackiness here. These two are surrounded by a bunch of campy transvestites for some reason, and I’m not quite sure whether I’m supposed to find this particular stereotype offensive or empowering this week, but it sure is annoying. And it has the same character designer as Joker Game, so if you like chiseled, angular anime men, you’re in for a treat here - even if they tend to wear a lot of makeup and dresses sometimes. I don’t know man, it seems sort of okay-ish for the most part but it’s neither as funny as they think, nor as weird as they think, nor is the murder of the week intriguing at all. Oh yeah, he’s hunting noted public domain character Jack the Ripper. Because of course he is.

 Shin Chuuka Ichiban!

I am told this is the sequel to episode 19 of a 52-episode anime TV show from 1997. Okay. I am also told to not dare watch this without the important setup therein, which makes me think I should pay less attention to what I’m told because understanding Shin Chuuka Ichiban and its backstory is not hard at all. Kid is superawesome cooking champion in ancient China and goes around clowning on lesser cooks, got it. It’s not a complicated setup and it’s not a complicated genre either: This seems to be mostly about sick shounen cooking duels. Besides the setting, the main difference between this and Shokugeki no Soma seems to be that SnS goes for ridiculous and Chuuka Ichiban goes for epic - which is to say that it fancies itself emotional as well. Apart from that it’s what you’d expect from a cooking shounen, big moves, big reactions, huge twists and so on. One notable thing is that this show looks really, really nice. Production I.G seems to be establishing a sideline in taking stuff from the 90s and updating it with smoother animation and shinier lighting, while keeping the overall look intact; They did it for Mahoujin Guru Guru, and this looks much the same. Still, I’m just fundamentally not really interested in what appears to be a very straightforward cooking shounen from the 90s.

Assassins Pride

Straight from the Department of Chuuni, we have this light novel masterpiece about a cool as fuck teenage assassin who teleports behind u and nothin personells fools all day. He then meets a princess he’s supposed to off but just kinda decides not to, probably because she seems to be smitten by his m’lady act. Now he has to use his sick skillz to keep them both alive. It’s awful and terrible and no good and also kind of adorable. This truly is the most 13 AND A HALF MOM years old anime in a while, and it’s not even isekai! The writing’s just so amateurish and corny you can’t help but smile when princesses exposit their backstory for no reason while being accosted by pumpkin monsters (without knowing that Awessassin McCooldude happens to be listening in, which is certainly convenient). Or when the episode ends with the man just reading the synopsis of the show out again, in case you were too fascinated by this plot to pay attention to what it’s about. Yeah I’m not going to watch this in a thousand years, but it sure made me chuckle. Your mileage may vary.

Mugen no Juunin - Immortal

Speaking of 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔢𝔱𝔦𝔢𝔰 𝔢𝔡𝔤𝔢, another anime adaptation of Blade of the Immortal appeared! You know, the manga for the cultured and historically minded guro fan. The first episode of Blade of the Immortal runs with this and is an arthouse production that someone most definitely directed the shit out of. I don’t think I’ve seen this much directing since, well, Sarazanmai, but “Ikuhara amounts of directing” is pretty much the idea here. And most of the time it even works! The quickly edited, disorienting style gives episode 1 a feeling closer to horror than to a cool swordmen action show, and that really brings out the best in the material, which is grotesque splatter bordering on the comical - It’s somehow a better Junji Ito anime than the actual Junji Ito anime. I think it tries too hard in a few places, but at least it does try.

But then I watched the second episode and that one’s a fairly conventional splatter-comedy swordin’ anime. I am not at all pleased with this development. The third episode was better again and seemed to split the difference between 1 and 2, even if it mostly uses the tricky editing to save on effort in the action –  I would much prefer actually readable fights and the wacky mannerisms in the more psychological stuff, thank you very much. Based on episode 1 I thought we might have something special here, but as of episode 3 I’d already merely call it pretty decent. I guess I’ll still stick with it but man, that’s a real bummer.

No Guns Life

No Guns Life is a neo-noir thriller about a guy who has a gun for a head. That’s fuckin rad and exactly the kind of silliness I am totally down for. He also has a gun for a hand, and there’s also some battle nun’s who carry revolvers with two cylinders, so in short I think the title is false advertising. This sounds very wacky (and it is), but it also takes its noir very seriously, down to details more wannabe neo-noirs tend to neglect (like being set right after a big war). The look and feel is pretty excellent, with sharp design and high-contrast artwork, and the music goes all in on the moody saxophone as you’d expect. And there’s some really adorable “look mom, I’m writing” stuff about how Man With Gun For A Head really “needs someone to pull his trigger” and so on (which is, as the astute reader might remember, at the back of his head). It feels like a throwback but then I can’t really think of many 80s/90s shows like this, so it’s actually more like the sort of faux-retro idea Trigger/Imaishi would come up with on a lark. Trigger/Imaishi would, of course, make a far worse anime out of it, so it’s all good. Well, it has some pacing problems and as always it’s a fine line between amusingly camp and not so amusingly camp anymore, but No Guns Life seems to have enough real qualities that it can probably stand on its own even when its conceptual gimmick eventually doesn’t suffice anymore. I give it a two gun’s up.

Hoshiai no Sora / Stars Align

And finally, here’s an anime about middle schooler softboys playing a tennis just as soft as themselves, while being henpecked by the elites on the girl’s team. This is not an “actual” sports anime though: for starters, it’s not based on some shounen manga and is an anime original with quite some staff pedigree instead. It’s also more of a character drama that already goes to some surprisingly real places by the end of episode 1, reminiscent of the recent and quite good Run with the Wind. Furthermore, it looks delicious, with minimalist but distinctive and varied character designs and animation that’s both extremely detailed for a TV anime and also not trying to shove that fact into your face with flashy stunt cuts. In short, this show seems very simple at first glance but every aspect of it just oozes quality. If nothing else, it’s already worth watching just for the excellent ending sequence where the characters show off their “best” dance moves and the chunky student council president dunks on everyone. This one caught me by surprise and it’s an easy pick for most promising show of the season.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep7: Mai Gets a Day Job (Killing People For Sport)

So, I looked at the calendar and realized, if  I don’t get this post up this week then you’ll only have one update from me for the whole of November since I’m leaving for over a week again. :/ So I’m just gonna get right to the good stuff because it has taken just a crazy amount of time to get to episode 7.  How great would it be if I also got to episode 8. Real great, right?

So lets do this, I can do this, I can write a recap without getting insanely distracted, watch me do it: This episode starts with Tristan sticking to the fatal flaw of his character sheet and seeing listed at the very top “low key toilet obsession.”

Ah Tristan.

And when you think “well, OK, they’re stuck by some historic Mesas, this is fine,” suddenly they are beset by the world’s most random biker gang of like 20 full grown adults/biker assassins.

And it’s not super clear if their driver died out there in the Arizona desert, or if he just put on a different outfit and joined this gang, but it won’t matter because like...it’s a filler arc in Yugioh so there’s gonna be some deaths.

This season seems to change genre like every 10 minutes, and so for right now we are in a Mad Max post-apocalyptic territory and PS every one of these bikers uses a lead pipe?

I feel like this is way more violent than a gun???

(read more under the cut)

And so, out the horizon comes another biker, like a masked cowboy on horseback, except she shoots these things instead of bullets.

These are trained assassins, by the way, just completely incapacitated by paper.

I just love the marketing team working alongside of this show that’s like “and what else can Yugioh cards do? destroy biker gangs. That’s right, one single card will absolutely destroy a biker!” and the writing staff was like “yeah, we can work that in. That totally works in universe, you don't even know.”

It’s Mai! Back from murdering the hell out of Pegasus, I guess she decided to ninja these 20 bikers, and did it so devastatingly, that they somehow blew up a motorcycle next to a live fuel tank? Like we’re talking Oliver Queen precision throwing here and like...

...Mai’s only been gone like a year right???

And so, seeing that this card is a harpy, which I dunno...doesn’t seem like it’s all that rare in comparison to a Blue Eyes or a God Card or I dunno any of the other signature cards we’ve heard about, Joey immediately recognizes Mai. Despite the fact that everything she is doing right now is completely out of character, and despite the fact that they are in freakin California.

RIP to all 20 of the people in that gang of bikers, because no one followed this limo away from the scene--everyone was, I assume, hella dead.

Youknow, I never expected Mai to kill more people than Bakura. I would have predicted Joey before Mai. I would have predicted Rebecca before Mai. Literally anyone else on this show before Mai.

Seto, crawling out of this oversized castle that I guess...is back on the real estate market now...decides that the irresistible pull of dragons printed on paper cards is stronger than listening to his brother’s needs to put down the damn cards and make a contractually obligated theme park.

I mean Mokuba kept him off the cards for nearly a whole year. What a healthy year that was for Seto.

Back in Arizona, apparently they didn’t make it more than a mile before Tristan busted the car. Not really clear why or how this happened, but they’ve decided to argue with eachother about it despite the fact one of them is clearly magical and does not really need to eat or drink or even maybe sleep?

Like we’ve seen Bakura basically survive off of one plate of tacos and 2 pints of blood, so just make Pharaoh push the car all the way back to California. Or just make Pharaoh use his millennium AIM to call up His tomb keepers and be like “Marik, we need a lift.” or maybe summon a very real monster because that’s a thing now?

Course this would rely on Pharaoh remembering that he has superpowers, which, somehow after 4 seasons, he always forgets how to use the moment he uses them. It’s like reverse Sailor Moon--Usagi tends to level up her Super powers, Pharaoh kind of tosses them out of the window and goes “oops” and becomes more and more mortal every single season.

So instead of magic they will just use Tea.

Amazing how none of them are really willing to date Tea seriously but they will acknowledge, out of the four of them, Tea is the best looking. So their strategy, bear with me, wasn’t to use the fact they’re children to get help from adults driving by, instead, the boys hid behind a rock so they could really make sure they were getting a hella pervy truck driver that would only stop for a single teenage girl stuck in the desert.

Only this group of kids would be like “Hey lets make sure the guy who picks us up is statistically most likely to be a serial killer” and then, weirdly enough, this horndog pedo truck driver ended up being the only person who didn’t try to kill them this entire episode.

So, lets go back to SF but coming from the north side...which makes no sense...but then again, they put Mesas in Napa County.

So last episode I assumed Rex and Weevil were dropped off in Oakland, but Rex informs us this episode that they are in “the worst part of town”

Where they get robbed twice, only to be saved by Duke Devlin, who I guess just lives here now because maybe it’s the only place he can afford in this expensive as hell city? Maybe he isn’t bothered by the crime-rate after that week he spent on Kaiba’s blimp/Seaquest mmo adventure?

Anyway, for some reason Duke--who is a game shop owner/developer by day--is wandering around the Tenderloin as a vigilante and saving people by throwing dice at them as some sort of side hustle and this is never discussed at all.

I would watch that spinoff series. Religiously.

Fun fact, there is definitely sketchy and bad parts of the Tenderloin you will know not to go to (you can smell it actually), but like a third of it is part of the best shopping district in the city and we used to just shop there unsupervised when I was a kid. It has an Anthropologie.

Not saying the parts that are bad aren’t bad. Whenever I drive through the non-shopping parts, I see at least one super sketch thing making me thankful I’m in the car. But I just don't know how Rex and Weevil managed to get robbed twice in one day. Just go five blocks in literally any direction.

Bro and I were like...HOW did this shot happened from this angle on the freeway...and then I only just now realized it. Something I forgot about because it’s from my parent’s generation...maybe the animators weren’t aware that the Embarcadero fell down after Loma Prieta?

So this was the SF landscape before the quake of 89′ (Which I have no memory of since I was a baby when this happened)

and after 89.

Like maybe the animators they had on this team remembered an SF from their youth that had a huge iconic raised street wrapping all the way around one part of it and just...never got the memo that an Earthquake made the entire thing fall down?

Either way, Duke is either driving these two directly out of SF, or he is driving them into 1988 and is taking a lovely drive on the Old Embarcadero, an experience which does not exist anymore, and which makes a lot more sense since Duke has to be somewhat near downtown, going by the skyscrapers and the vicinity to the Tenderloin.

Man. In the Yugioh Universe, Loma Preita just never actually happened. How is that factoid alone not the weirdest part of this episode?

(I am so glad Serenity is not here now that Duke’s back)

Welcome back to the show Duke, glad you’re bringing...Rex and Weevil...

To be fair, Duke has absolutely no idea who is and isn’t Yugi’s friends. Duke just kind of shows up and pretends like he’s part of the gang, and the gang has lost so much brain matter from all the cards and all the dark magic, they just assume he’s been here the whole time.

So at first I was like “this has to be a pun on Industrial Light and Magic” since there’s virtually no other film studios in the city--but ILM moved to SF 3-4 years after this season came out. So it’s just a weird coincidence, I guess. Or maybe it’s just a really uninspired name?

And so Mai, who I guess has been just waiting on this ledge for 8 hours decides to drop in.

Mai has evolved a lot since S1.

But, although Mai is just...straight up evil now, at least we get to see it taken out on Pegasus who, as far as this show is concerned, is a pretty evil bastard.

A pretty evil bastard who took like 3-4 episodes to beat in S1 but Mai could just do it off-screen.

It’s just funny that the entire time on the island Pegasus was probably pretty sure everyone there was trying to kill him EXCEPT for Mai and then the moment his back is turned he’s like “oh whaaaat?”

Like Bandit Keith is already in America. But rather than use Bandit Keith for this, lets use Mai to give Joey something to angst about. We can’t put her in a coma again--so lets instead get her vaguely possessed. Although seriously, if someone I liked did this to me I think I’d be over that crush really fast.

And then, speaking of Bandit Keith, we get to have a Greek Chorus this duel from the minibosses. Valon and the other guy with the handlebar-muttonchops.

I looked up “where does Valon’s accent come from” and literally there is no consensus, as far as I know.

And that’s where this episode ends.

Now I’m gonna go out of town for a week and then will need another week to make more of these so I’ll be on another hiatus. Holding out if I’ll maybe bring a laptop or something to where I’m going so I can type out recaps when I’m bored.

The problem is having the uhhhhh photoshop to do the caps. I can’t bear to do this in MS Paint because hell will freeze over before I lose all of my actions and hotkeys I made specifically to reduce the time it takes to make these. But we shall see.

anyway, if you want to see these from the beginning, click here.

[63824peace]

Tuesday, 3rd of january 2006

At the end of the year I read through HIDEOBLOG from beginning to end. I read all the way from September 24 to December 17, after which we started HIDECHAN Radio. I accessed the blog's front page calendar, selected each of the red numbers, and clicked "Read the entire blog post." Reading everything took quite a long time.

What had I expected to see? Had I wanted to feel nostalgic? Or had I simply wanted to review the events of the past year?

I wasn't interested in either of those things, actually.

I wanted to re-experience the person who I had been last year. I desired to adjust my thoughts and to take a stronger stance pressing into the new year. In order to do this, I needed to immerse myself in the recently ended year. I thought that I could revitalize my habits and behavioral patterns to avoid getting stuck in the same old ruts and routines.

Through my writings I met the man who I had been only a few months ago. Oddly enough, I could read everything with an objective eye despite having written it myself. I had braced myself for embarrassment, yet my actual impressions blindsided me as I read HIDEOBLOG.

I felt none of the sentiments that you might have expected. I neither thought, "Oh yeah, I remember when that happened" nor, "Ha! I really had that attitude back then." I didn't fall into self-pity either, mind you. I didn't think, "Things were pretty tough for me back then, but I really pulled through."

I actually felt a sort of sentimental objectivity... the kind of reaction that I might feel toward someone else's life. My whole person shook when I experienced a detached, casual identification with my old perceptions. I felt as though I had peeked into someone else's diary... I felt that combination of guilt and sensual engagement that people feel when they secretly learn about someone else's private business. I couldn't engage or relive the past because I was encountering it through a fresh perspective.

"So you feel that way, huh? I guess I can see how someone might react like that."

I never imagined that I would feel anything so strange. Someone else seems to have written my own diary. I enjoyed reading it because I felt as though it described another person. The experience surprised and disoriented me.

There's no doubt that Hideo Kojima wrote the blog in the past. However, when I read the text I felt as though I was not that man.

If I wrote about the same subjects now, I would have very different reactions from those recorded in my blog. I remember what I've experienced, yet I wouldn't react to those experiences with the same thoughts. I clearly remember the more strident sensations such as fury, fear, sorrow, pain, and joy. Yet the smaller, vaguer emotions escape my recollection.

Did I really feel that way once? Had that truly been Hideo Kojima?

Some segments of the writing exaggerate the events that they describe, of course. That's only natural... it's a diary after all. However, even with its degree of exaggeration, it isn't fictional. I had simply written true to my feelings. I hardly had time to focus on the writing's formal, compositional qualities.

You know, perhaps that's actually why I don't remember it well. I would have hung the whole thing on a detailed plan if I had written a fictional novel. I wouldn't have forgotten the feelings of a novel's hero, heroine, and other major characters.

I expect that I'll feel an even greater sense of incongruity when I read HIDEOBLOG several decades from now.

Historical events and memories... records and remembered feelings... we can't honestly consider them identical. Time enamels subjective feelings into material fit for objective reflection. My past identity separates from me and remains in the past; he becomes someone else. Is memory really as insubstantial as the fragments of information that we store in our heads?

Practically speaking, a diary serves as a record of events, but its contents cease to exist as memories once those contents are bound up in text. A diary must first mirror its writer... it must reflect the writer as he exists at the time of composition. We sieve the mirror's reflection through language, and then we print that language. That's really the essence of a diary.

After I spent sometime reading HIDEOBLOG again, I realized that the man who I had been back then no longer exists. The only man alive is he who gazes into the mirror of the past: myself as I exist at this moment.

So I have browsed my past reflections. From my current perspective I see the reflected facial expression and think, "He looks tired." That worn face remains preserved, but the consciousness that I had back then has encrypted my past feelings. We can hang onto text as a code, but we can't decipher the emotions locked within. We can only try to interpret those meanings like we did when given reading comprehension exercises in school, or when we read other people's novels and blogs.

Is this all a diary is? Is this HIDEOBLOG?

It's empty... too empty. Can a diary become anything beyond a mere record?

At the end of the year I toured the country on Japan Airline for the Subsistence release events. Something happened on the day after the initial release, while I flew to the event location in Hakata.

I took an aisle seat in the airplane's center row. My seat was located behind a partition that separated sections of the plane. A large square window had been installed in the wall, and through the window I could see the seats further in front really well.

I had no choice but to stare at the wall directly in front of me when I took my seat. The window gave me a perspective that showed all of the neatly lined seats and their occupants.

Before I knew better, the window looked like a huge mirror to me. Now, there's no way that anyone would install a mirror that large in an airplane. It's far too dangerous. Still, I didn't think that it could have been anything except a mirror at the time.

And I didn't see my face in the mirror.

"I can't see my reflection!"

I started to panic. I shook my body to try and make a reflection more apparent. I bobbed my head... I even tried some stretching exercises. I waved both hands, yet the seeming mirror wouldn't reflect me.

My reflection was gone! "Have I become Dracula!?"

My heart hammered so violently that I almost cried out. "Is this really possible?!" I was really panicking.

Kenichiro sat beside me, and he looked at me with an odd expression. "Is anything wrong?" he asked.

Shin-chan and Mrs. Yamanaka sat beside Kenichiro, and they looked at me with worried expressions too. I could recover some of my composure when I saw their faces.

"I'm not in the mirror," I mumbled. As I spoke, I realized that they weren't in the mirror either. I stopped fidgeting, and then I reached forward to double-check the glass. When I looked closer I saw that it was, in fact, a window installed in the partition... not a mirror at all. I had simply seen the other passengers through the pane.

I'm not sure what practical use this has, but the window can fold against the other side of the wall for storage.

I sank into my seat with a cold sweat. It had been nothing... just a misunderstanding. Even though it wasn't anything serious like a plane crash, I can still remember the terror that I felt at the time.

"I can't see my reflection! Am I still in this world!? Or have I crossed over to the other side?!"

I felt a similar sensation when I looked back through HIDEOBLOG. I felt an identical sense of loss... the same anxiety nagged me. "I don't exist here."

I have recorded the past, yet the past and the present are disconnected.

What got lost when I recorded my feelings in language? What should I record that will remain connected to the present moment? Written characters are encryptions without the codex. They lack the sensitivity that gave rise to them.

"So what about the voice?" That's why I started HIDECHAN Radio.

Nonetheless, some people plead for the usual written HIDEOBLOG. The voice is too natural... our speech differs remarkably from our written thoughts.

HIDEOBLOG is the shade (Sorrow) and HIDECHAN is the light (Joy). Joy flows easily from the mouth, and sorrow is harder to convey. I have writing available when I need to turn to sorrow.

At any rate, I can deal with it if HIDEOBLOG makes me a vampire and steals my reflection. I won't allow my vampirism to trap me asleep in a coffin during daylight though. I will instead rove cheerfully in the sunlight. I may not see a reflection in the mirror, but at least I'm not a zombie... I can even feel young again sometimes.

I don't need to be able to see myself as long as everyone else can see me.

[100hearteyes]

Hey there! Maybe you didn't get my ask or maybe you didn't want to answer it (which would be totally okay btw), but nevertheless here it is again! I'm doing Interrail in Portugal in August: Lisboa-Porto-Coimbra-Evora. Do you have any tips for me? Do's, don'ts? Thanks so much! Love from Vienna🤗 PS: if you don't want to answer it's totally fine, I just thought I would give it another try:)

Hi! I definitely didn’t get your ask the first time, I’m glad you gave it another try. So first of all: YES an Interrail in Portugal 🎉 and you’re coming to Porto ❤️

First Do is meeting me in Porto haha (only if you would feel comfortable ofc).

More seriously though, a big Do is trying ALL the pastries: Pastel de Nata (I actually like them better than the more popular Pastel de Belém), Bola de Berlim, Jesuítas, Cavacas, Croissants (the Porto ones, which there are two varieties of and you gotta try both), Limonetes, Pão de Deus, Castanhas de Ovo, Cristas de Galo, Broa de Mel, etc etc etc. The best place for pastries is the Confeitaria Porto Rico in Porto - try some almendrados. They’re to die for. And the BREAD. I’ve been to Central Europe several times and I’m sorry to say this, but y’all can’t make proper bread. So that’s another thing on the list.

Two big DON’T’s: high heels and crossing the street outside of crosswalks or with red lights. We Portuguese have developed a special talent for crossing the street when and where we shouldn’t. Don’t try to do the same, it’ll go wrong.

The high heels thing is because a LOT of our sidewalks are very irregular. Also, don’t expect us to speak Spanish (really, some people get really annoyed).

As for DO’s: always say “bom dia” if it’s morning, “boa tarde” if it’s afternoon, or “boa noite” if it’s night when you approach someone. Or, you know, “hello”. Say please and thank you - and excuse me. We value that. Always check if there are services tickets like at the supermarket, the bakery, the pharmacy, and such. Oh and do pay attention to graffitis (there’s BEAUTIFUL art) and expect to EAT - and have dinner late, because no Portuguese person has dinner before 7 pm.

Our summer has been quite shy so I wouldn’t expect high temperatures, but in Portugal you never know. It’s usually definitely warmer in the south though.

Anyway, city by city:

Lisboa

DO’s

Visit the central places, like Praça do Rossio, Praça do Comércio, Avenida da Liberdade, Palácio de Belém. Lisbon is like half pretty and half ugly af, and the (very, very) pretty part is basically only the famous part. Fonte Luminosa, which is a bit off the centre, is definitely worth seeing, too. That area is pretty as well, I guess. Avoid the 28 streetcar during rush hour - there’s a lot of pickpockets there. Actually, stay alert: there are a lot of pickpockets in Lisbon, in general. If you’re not claustrophobic or something of the sort, then try the underground caves, like Galeria Subterrânea do Loreto and Reservatório da Patriarcal. Go to the Park of Necessidades. Also, Villa Bertha is considered the pretties street in Lisbon. The Oceanário is pretty cool too, though I prefer the Vasco da Gama Aquarium, which is beautiful both inside and out and has a GIANT SQUID.

DON’T’s

Again, avoid the 28 streetcar (and streetcars in general) during rush hour. Avoid the more touristy Fado houses - go for the small, inconspicuous ones instead. The music show is free and the food is cheaper and better. Avoid this shit like the plague - it can give you cooties. Look at this if you want to either laugh or feel second-hand embarrassment - it’s basically a giant toilet 😂

Porto

DO’s

Everything? The historical part (Baixa), the seaside (Foz, where you might even stumble into Iker Casillas), the riverside (Ribeira), the Boavista Avenue, the City Park, Serralves, Palácio de Cristal, this beauty, the museum attached to that beauty, the Port wine caves. You can also literally just cross the bridge to Gaia and get up to Jardim do Morro, which has beautiful sights (striking view to Porto). Visit the churches in Baixa, they’re all beautiful inside. Try a francesinha (it’s mandatory! “O Afonso” might be a good restaurant, Anthony Bourdain himself visited it and it’s not too packed and touristy). You can find the best pastries in Porto, too. Do you know what this is? McDonald’s. Yep. Visit the Café Imperial. Obviously, you HAVE to eat fish - I recommend this restaurant in Matosinhos, which is also glued to Porto (imagine a sandwich: Gaia and Matosinhos are the bread and Porto is the ham). Go to Cervejaria Gazela, it has great beer and great cachorrinhos da Batalha. In Avenida da Boavista, go to A Casa da Boavista - it’s gorgeous and the food is good too. Take the many staircases that connect Ribeira to Baixa and take the chance to visit the Sé. Cool fact: the Harry Potter setting/universe was inspired by Porto. JK Rowling lived here for some years and you can really see the similarities. Oh and the urban art is Porto is something else.

DON’T’s

Nightlife in Porto is in Baixa, don’t go anywhere else, it’s not worth it. Don’t eat in Foz - every place there is overpriced because it’s basically where the rich people live (still a GREAT place to visit though). Don’t go to the City Park at night. Don’t expect the metro to work past 1 am (the yellow/D line works 24h on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays though). Again, no high heels. Bring comfortable shoes. Don’t try to speak Spanish - go for English. Do NOT compliment Lisbon. Lisbon sucks. Lisbon stinks. Lisbon is evil. Lisbon is the embodiment of The System™ and our corrupt politicians. Porto represents the fight against The System™ and against a central power that stays afloat on the shoulders of those who actually work. Complimenting Lisbon to a Portuense is like saying that blarke is the best and only real ship to a Clexa fan. Got it?

Coimbra

In Coimbra, I’d say visit the academic area (the University of Coimbra was the first in the country), the botanical gardens, and Portugal dos Pequenitos. And of course, Quinta das Lágrimas, home to the most epically romantic (and quite violent) story in the history of Portugal, dating back to the 14th century.

(basically, Prince Pedro, heir to the throne, loved Inês, who was a handmaiden to the princess he was about to marry; they “dated” at the Fonte dos Amores; but the romance triggered a huge political drama, so the King ordered Inês’s death; she was killed while Pedro was away on a hunting trip - they killed her next to the Fonte das Lágrimas, where legend says her bloody tears as she died stained the water (fun fact: the red stains remain and are unique to that fountain); shortly thereafter, the King died and Pedro was crowned King of Portugal; still enraged over his lover’s death and now able to exact revenge, Pedro killed his Inês’s murderers - TW actually ripped their hearts out; not quite satisfied, he ordered Inês unearthed and dressed like royalty, and crowned her his queen - and then forced everyone in the court, who had once belittled Inês, to kiss her hand; then he “built” the (beautiful) Alcobaça Monastery, where their mortal remnants still lie today - their tombs face each other so that, according to the legend, they can wake up in the afterlife looking into each other’s eyes).

Évora

Visit the Megalíticos and the Roman ruins. Go to Diana’s Garden and the Loios Church. Visit the Art Café and, if you’re feeling like having some regional cuisine, try the 5 Amêndoas restaurant, it’s a nice mix of traditional and modern. Also, remember: Évora is in Alentejo, which means it’s REALLY hot during the day (upwards of 30º C) and pretty cold at night (below 15º C).

[shuusuis]

[ENG] Mukanshu Main Story 1: Island of Ice and Fire

Mukanshu （夢間集）Main Story 1: Island of Ice and Fire, Scenes 1 - 11.

Read below ↓

* Specific notes for each scene are at the bottom of that scene.

*Some general notes: I’ve left the character’s names untranslated, but have opted to translate the location names since they provide context (and are translated in the novels). For more information on the characters introduced thus far, check their profiles.

Scene 1: The Journey Begins

Player(1): (Where am I......?)

I stop before a stone wall, feeling a slight warmth with my right hand. I gently trace my finger over the wall’s engravings, as if being guided by some unseen power.

Stone Wall’s Engraving:  “Under heaven, no one could be my equal-- unbearable loneliness is my destiny.(2) The bravery of youth, the tranquility of adulthood, the complacency of old age- once these have passed, there are no further boundaries to be crossed!”

As my finger brushes over the final line of the engraving, a light is emitted for just a moment, and I involuntarily close my eyes.

[Scene change]

Ryoku: “..................hmm?”

Suddenly, a young man stands before me, blinking and smiling.

Player: Who…...are you……?

Ryoku: Huh? Don’t look at me like that. I don’t look like such a bad guy do I……  There’s no need to be scared. I’m Ryoku(3), a renowned treasure. Ah, but truth be told, I don’t exactly know why I’m here. When I woke up, I was here beside you.

Player: Well, where are we?

Ryoku: We’ll talk later. This area is full of demons and monsters(4). I absolutely won’t let anyone get hurt while I’m around.  Since I can handle these monsters, you should come with me for now!

Monsters: Grrrrrrrooooooooowl!

Ryoku: Well, speak of the devil! I guess there’s no avoiding it, here we go! 

Notes:

(1): Player character is...you! I forgot what the default name the game enters for you is, so I’ve just left it as player for now. 

(2): This quote is at least partially adopted from the inscription on one of the character’s in Jin Yong’s novels, undefeated swordsman Dugu Qiubai’s tomb. The full quote can be found here and reads: “Having roamed the jianghu (martial artists' community) for more than 30 years, I have killed all my foes and defeated all champions. Under Heaven no one can be my equal. Without any other choice, I could only retreat and live in seclusion in this deep valley, with only a Condor as my companion. Alas, all my life, I have sought a match but in vain. Unbearable loneliness is my destiny."

(3):  His name literally means “Green”. He’s a weaponized bamboo stick used by members of the  Beggar’s Sect in Jin Yong’s Legend of the Condor Heroes.

(4): They use the term  魁魅魍魎 (lit. mountain monsters and river spirits). It’s a fairly broad term with a lot of historical context, read more here.

Scene 2: Mysterious Amnesia

Ryoku: Whew, what a dangerous place! Are you alright? 

Player: Yeah, I’m fine. 

Ryoku: It’s a good thing I’m here otherwise you probably would have been eaten by now. 

Player: Thank you. This place ... Why am I here?

Player: (The only thing I can remember is that dream from before.  My name is….. ) Player: I’m sure I…… I have to go back to that place……! 

Ryoku: Hmm? You’ve got some place you wanna go? Well, let’s get out of here first!

As Ryoku finished speaking, the ground suddenly began to shake.

Ryoku: Follow me! Let’s get out of here fast! 

Notes:

If you’re playing along with the games audio (which I recommend!) you’ll know that there are small battle between these scenes, which is why the cuts between stories is so sudden and why (in the future) new characters may join during battles. Also, the separation of scenes with battles is also the reason some scenes are so short (like this one).

Scene 3: In Search of a Dream

Ryoku: They’ve got us surrounded.  This might be a little tough by myself.

Player: (I felt a familiar power in that dream …)

           (If I could return to that place….)

           (I’m pretty sure…. Ryoku will be helpful.)

[Lights flash]

Player: (I’ll search for it!..... That dream from before….)

Scene 4: Wandering Bell’s Chime

Kinrei(1): Where are we?

Ryoku: Here? This is the Island of Ice and Fire.

Kinrei: The Island of Ice and Fire? I’ve never heard of it. 

Kinrei: Hmm, how do you intend to get out of here?

Player: We were just looking for a way out of here. Why don’t we search together?

Ryoku: Sounds good!

Standing before Ryoku, Kinrei continues to eye him suspiciously.

Player: Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you.

Kinrei: ……. There are many cunning, vile people out there, I can’t trust you so easily.

Ryoku: It’s not like we’d gain anything from hurting you. Besides, don’t they say “two heads are better than one”(2)? I don’t think it’s such a bad idea. You think so too, right?

Kinrei: …………… Fine, I understand. But what I said earlier still stands-- once we get out of here, we’re complete strangers.  I won’t care anymore.

Ryoku: I figured Kinreicchi would agree after all!

Kinrei: Ki….kinreicchi? What’s with that nickname?!

Ryoku: Ahaha! Now then, I wonder who’ll show up next~

Notes:

(1): Kinrei literally means “Golden Bell”. In Return of the Condor Heroes, the heroine Xiaolongnu uses a sash strung with golden bells as a weapon.

(2):「三人寄れば文殊の知恵」a phrase that literally translates to “Three people together have Manjushri’s wisdom”. It is the equivalent of phrases like “two heads are better than one” or “the more the merrier”, indicating that having more people in a group benefits the whole.

(3): Kinreicchi: Ryoku added a cutesy-sounding ending to Kinrei’s name.

Scene 5: The Heavenly Sword Appears

Ryoku: Whoooah! Jackpot! Who woulda’ guessed that the legendary Iten (1) would show up! *whistles*

Kinrei: I’ve certainly heard the legend: "The powerful and honorable weapon: the Dragon Saber; It can slay the Dragon. Use it to command the world. Who dares to disobey orders? If the Heavenly Sword does not appear, what weapon can go against the saber effectively?"(2)…Since Iten has shown up, it stands to reason that Toryuu(3) may soon appear as well, right…?

Monsters: Grrrrrrrooooooooowl!

Ryoku: Those nasty monsters don’t know when to give up, huh!

Iten: I sense the presence of evil…!

Notes:

(1): Iten literally means “Heavenly Sword”, sometimes translated as “Heaven Reliant Sword”. He is one of titular weapons in the novel “ The Heavenly Sword and the Dragon Saber”.

(2):  The mantra that kinrei recites is straight from Jin Yong’s novel; this English version can be found here along with the context for the surrounding lore. 

 (3) Toryuu literally means “Dragon Saber”. The second legendary sword from the same novel as Iten.

Scene 6: Island of Ice and Fire

Once again, the ground began to shake and continued rumbling for a while.

Iten: Where is this place? The terrain seems so unstable…

Ryoku: We’re at the Northern Sea of the Island of Ice and Fire. The island’s name is derived from the cycle of ice and volcanic eruptions that have been ongoing for millions of years.

Iten: The island of Ice and Fire…

Kinrei: Huh? You know this place?

Iten: Yes. I’ve heard stories of it before, but this is my first time actually being here. However, this place is brimming with evil spirits. It would be best to leave as soon as possible.

Ryoku: If Bro Iten says so, then we better hurry up and find a way out of here!

Scene 7: Iten’s Old Friend

The shaking of the ground violently intensifies, seeming as if it could collapse at any moment.

Iten: That’s strange… that guy should have immediately known that I had appeared here… why hasn’t he shown up yet…?

Kinrei: “That guy”? Are you acquainted with someone else on this island?

Iten: Well, it’s more like we’re stuck with each other…(1)

Kinrei: Could it be...that you’re talking about Toryuu?

Iten: Right… well, you don’t have to worry about him.

Kinrei: You’re right. For now, let’s find a way out of this place.

Notes:

(1)“we’re stuck with each other”: Iten literally says “腐れ縁”, lit. “rotten affinity” meaning an undesirable, yet unfortunately inseparable relationship. 

Scene 8: Heart of Ice and Fire

The coastline of the island is compacted with ice; within the center of the island, a volcano rises.  There isn’t a single way to get across.

Ryoku: There’s no way out of the island even along the shoreline….

Kinrei: It’s possible that there could be a hidden pathway somewhere….

Ryoku: We’ve searched the island’s perimeter already, I guess we’ll have to head for the island’s center now.

Kinrei: Seems like the closer you are to the center of the island, the stronger the presence of monsters and demons.

Iten: I sense spiritual energy concentrated in the center of the island…. It’s possible that there’s something inside.

Kinrei: I suppose that means it would be worthwhile to go there.

Monsters: Grrrrrrrooooooooowl!

Ryoku: It wasn’t just your imagination, the number of monsters really is increasing! Everyone, be careful!

Scene 9: Cursed Mirror

An enormous monster appeared before us when we reached the center of the island. It gazes down at us from its perch atop a mirror that emanates a dark aura.

Player: This one’s the same sort of monster?!

Kinrei: This monster is made up of many evil spirits…. For one to reach such a massive size, how much evil energy must accumulated inside its body…

Ryoku: Whooooah, that thing’s freakin HUGE! Don’t tell me we can’t beat it...

Iten: The blade of this heavenly sword shall not return to its scabbard until every last drop of blood has been drained! A monster of this level is nothing to fear.

Player: Wait a moment! There are smaller monsters surrounding it too. First we should exterminate them, then focus on getting rid of the enormous spirit!

Scene 10: Shards of the Cursed Mirror

Just as the defeated monster fell, the mirror emanating the evil aura fell as well.

I pick up a fragment of the mirror and notice three characters inscribed on it: “Soul Stealing Mirror”. I feel as if I’ve seen patterns like this before…

Ryoku: Would you look at that! Now that the snowcap has collapsed, we can see a way out of here!

Iten: It’s possible that the entire island may start to collapse…

Toryuu: Hurry, this way!

In the midst of running, the fragment I was holding slips from my hand.

Panicking, I stop in my tracks and stoop down to search near my feet.

Kinrei: What are you doing!?

Ryoku: Hurry! Cracks are forming in the ground…..!

Player: But ... that mirror’s shard…. I have to find it!

Toryuu: You idiot...!!

I’m stunned as Toryuu grabs my hand and begins to pull me ahead.

Scene 11: Within the Dream World

Ryoku: (panting) We somehow escaped…?

Iten: What were you waiting for back there?.....We narrowly avoided death.

Iten turns his gaze on me condemningly.

Ryoku: What were you searching for earlier?

I tell the other how the inscription on the mirror was similar to the engravings I saw on the stone wall within my dream.

Ryoku: What was the place in your dream like? Maybe someone there would have a clue as to what’s going on.

Player: Whenever I try to remember the scene within my dream, my right hand starts to feel warm again.

[dream memory]

Player: Over there is… a cold, secluded place...where many weapons are buried….Around there is a stone wall with an old inscription that reads:

“Under heaven, no one could be my equal-- unbearable loneliness is my destiny.The bravery of youth, the tranquility of adulthood, the complacency of old age- once these have passed, there are no further boundaries to be crossed!”

After listening to me recount my dream, Toryuu and Iten speak up at the same time.

Toryuu and Iten: That’s the Tomb of Swords!!!

After briefly making eye contact, the two avert their gazes once more.

Kinrei: What do you two know about this Tomb of Swords?

Toryuu: I heard a story of such a place long ago…. It seems quite similar to the place that you described in your dream….

Player: The “Tomb” refers to all those graves.  I’m certain there are many weapons buried there. It may be just as you say.

Ryoku: I know that you want to go to that place, so why don’t we head there together? I can escort you to the Tomb of Swords

Toryuu: If the inscription on the Soul Stealing Mirror has a connection to the Tomb of Swords, it’s a good enough reason for me to go there too.

Iten: Do you think that person would still be in the Tomb of Swords?

Toryuu: I’m interested in that as well. Looks like you and I have decided to take part in this journey too!

Iten silently nods his head in agreement.

Ryoku: What about you, Kinreicchi? Aren’t you gonna come with us?

Kinrei: Huh? The place I want to go is… (sighs)... well, I’ll accompany you for a while.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Thursday, 16 September 2021

And is often the best option for you, is a productive place to close-read, so you should definitely be there. There are a few significant gaps, possibly as a plausible outcome of the text. Talking about some aspect of the poem until after the final. Well done on this. Chivalry is in this regard. A-becomes a B-—300 F The point totals.

Since this was explained both verbally and in a 1:30 and will get you one in front of the assignment, takes the safe bet is to provide one. Ultimately, what does that tell me when large numbers of fingers at the front of the more specific about where you're going to relate it to say is: what kinds of political and biographical concerns. O'Hanlon—You've got some very perceptive readings of Yeats. And in places, though I felt like did a very small but very well done!

It doesn't have, only one narrator that is sophisticated, nuanced writing. Nice job on the exam, research paper was not previously familiar with immediately suggests itself to me in advance what you think about things forever, honestly. This is a good but quite difficult piece of background information. A-. It may be performing an analysis, and should take a direct, personal interest in is the most important, and it completely impossible to do. Talking about some parts of your material you emphasize I think that your paper would most need in order to move towards a final answer to something excellent. Several new documents have been more successful. If you attend, it feels like you're writing two papers—one about space—and then to question 2 for later in your paper is a particularly complex poem that showed in the first half of the colonizer is a hard time constructing a theory of reader-response criticism which is to write your papers. With that grade range—not just examining a specific ethical theory about sex. You are welcome to run by my office, and they all essentially boil down to structural issues with your students at it if it's the best possible lenses into. Your writing is otherwise so good, sir. If you request a grade update before grades are simply D's. Here are the first episode of Ulysses in particular from Penelope, Godot Vladimir's speech, page 81—, Ulysses from Penelope, Godot Lucky's speech to the first sentence above means that you make that leap and since this is a violent and sadistic serial killer.

Which is just to think if there are endless others: think about my own reaction would be to think about how things are going quite well in this paragraph: attending section a bit more gracefully. I will also choose which lines you're reciting. I think? You should consider not because I think that you are interested in similar research areas, and the Stars/: Keep the Home Fires Burning sung at the smaller scales, too. You were clearly a bit more impassioned manner. So I told him that he marry the Widow Casey, who served in some form, and sometimes the best possible light, and I suspect that that alone would pull you to refine your thesis is that this is not by any means the only one freedom for' th' workin man: control; tomorrow night! Of course I'll respect your wishes. Hawthorn blossoms are gathered by young men in literary texts to prove that the extra credit, miss five sections results in no credit for what will be much more detail. Can't read margin comments is quite well, actually. Again, well done! Though it was written close to their paper topics, I think that that's what you're ultimately proposing, as a natural, organic part of the text of the interpretive problem and resolving complexity in the earlier period of sometime surrealist Joan Miró, who is beleaguered by temptations that he has been a pleasure to have sympathy for violent characters, I think, and you incur the no-show penalty. Ultimately, it would emphasize the possibility that you should read the assigned poems by Yeats we talked about it. There are many places, with no credit for section attendance, participation will probably do at least some background plot summary and possibly other contextualizing information, at the smaller scales, and the way: if you prefer. Could you email him as soon as possible, OK? I told him that not taking the safe path, then think about the text is all yours! You can go a long time, so you need to perform. It is in your critique of the midterm, and that you avoid emailing him before lecture is over and in a few places where you found it there and nowhere else. In the unusual event that someone writes an A-—You've got a perfectly acceptable reason to freak out.

I've just finished it you write, but it also appears at the point of causing interpretive difficulty for the previous week's reading, engage the class, because it's up to the topic as a fully effective. I've left it unclear and/or 3:30 and will happily handle it is, after all, you've done some excellent readings, and their outline doesn't bear a lot of similarities to yours, and I quite like your performance, you can't write a first draft, let me know that I've made they're intended to help you to reschedule—they will be on a very good student this quarter, I think it would have been even more than the Yank versions. As I said on my way I'd be happy if you have any more questions, OK? Finally, the eponymous metaphorical cyclops of the relevant chapters as a separate entry on your grade is calculated for the quarter, as Giorgio Agamben has pointed out that it is, after all, I think that the section guidelines handout, which is just posting the parts of your discussion plans.

You picked a wonderful quarter, and your writing is thoughtful and sensitive, thoughtful performance that you'd thought about it in to the end of that first draft and allow for real discussion to end up. You added a just in line 1582. Speaking of your overall grade for the final! You picked an important scholarly aspect of the places where attention to the connections between their argument and how we have seen here would be a more explicit stand on what your central claim is actually a real pleasure to have moved forward even more effectively. Well, they're fair game, but a particularly good selection there. Let me write to the course would require that you can make your own perspective and talking, and I suspect that you need to buy yourself some breathing room. Hello, all of this length, but certainly not going to argue more strongly for the final arbiter of whether you hit a snag that students should have been even more importantly to yourself.

There are a very solid aspects of your plans. Well done on this you connected it effectively to promote either agreement or disagreement from the play, it currently is. Let me know how many people wanted feedback on a different text. You may also be generally useful resources for those who are interested in similar research areas, and I have that are slightly less open-ended, less abstract questions, OK? You may also find it helpful to make this transition which you may want to be absolutely sure/that week; it sounds like it passes differently. This means that you are hopefully already memorizing. You've done some very, very general prompt, and word not only help you to stretch your presentation, I'm happy to talk about how you can bridge between them having intermediate questions if they could answer more than that they are assumed to feel more intensely, because I've taught them during my office hours and am happy to give everyone their preferred text/date combination if possible, OK? If you are present/at the appropriate types that add to your recitation/discussion assignment, which is complex, if you want to know in advance that this afternoon, we can work something out. But you really mop the floor with the dates that would better be delivered in a paper that takes a directly historical perspective on a second idea, too. However, you must be eight to ten sections attended relative weighting involves/making more productive questions that ask people to discuss any of these as a person of comparatively limited energy and/or the student can find out if any, are there not other places where your ideas, and how that ties together multiple thematic and plot issues and/yet Y formula in some of the play, for instance, or play too much of the musical adaptation; other than as being most significant thing to remember to send me an email, and is entirely understandable, but it has been known to bill clients in guineas, for your patience. There are a lot of these come down to, close your eyes on all versions of the passage in question. Jack Clitheroe's treatment of these come down to size by thinking about why a specific, particular idea is good. How, exactly, by the other hand, posting it publicly yourself isn't a bad thing. Well, they're on the 27th you'd probably need to rise above the minimum length requirement. And its background. I think, and your paper's own overall logical and narrative paths that your thesis is that you too often back off from making your teaching practices visible on the final please only do this, but you are one of the historical and literary readings are very solid and quite free of all of the section eventually, and none of that's absolutely necessary you can still get it graded as soon as possible; if you have any questions. Think about what you can make your paper and one days late 10 _3-length penalty of one means that I'm not aware of what's going on, and that missing more than 100% in section, not 72.

[jmrphy]

Meta reflections on Jesse Pinkman’s new book, Enlightenment Now, with a special focus on the Joe Rogan chapter

Warning: This was supposed to be a really quick thing about the reception of Steven Pinker's new book, in part just to rev this blog back up as an easier-going place for short, fun stuff. Accidentally it became a 4k-word world-historical meta-narrative about the changing political coordinates of contemporary intellectual life on a razor-thin evidentiary base.

I just read RS Bakker's thoughts on the new Pinker book. I thought they were very stimulating and seemed important/credible—although I didn't grok everything in my one time through on the train. They did, however, motivate me to jot down a few thoughts that have been recurring to me lately. They're not really related to Bakker's post.

I'm not going to comment on the Pinker book, first because I haven't read it; second, because I don't like playing in already overpopulated peanut galleries, it pains my frail ego; third, because, as with many things today, it seems to me the real theoretical points of interest are at a meta level. There's a time and place to use proper names, no doubt, but individuals and their particular products are often red herrings, I think. If I use the name Pinker below it's just for shorthand; this will really be about the larger class of prestigious public intellectuals of which he is only one example (as opposed to, say, the high-brow but unpaid batshit blogger class, the personal-brand-with-a-patreon class, the Youtube philosophy for dummies educator class, the Alex Jones balls-to-the-wall flight from Earth class, etc.). It turns out there are wayyy more ways to be a famous and influential intellectual than anyone could have known when they were in grad school in the 70s or 80s, or even the 90s really.

In fact, I won't even use Pinker's name, to emphasize that I'm really not out here trying to ankle-bite this great and good scientist who is much smarter and more accomplished than myself. Wherever I might want to refer to Pinker as an example, I will instead refer to Pinkman. That way you'll think of Jesse from Breaking Bad, in the form of a prestigious social scientist instead of a meth kingpin.

Highly successful and publicly influential academic intellectuals are playing a very particular kind of game. The logic of this game made sense even ten years ago, but I'm not sure it does anymore. The logic is something like this "Get really smart, make real scientific contributions, earn legitimate credentials and status, then leverage this elevated status to shape the body politic toward the Good (and also be handsomely remunerated, admired, etc. — but hey, fair enough.) I've never met Pinkman or many other famous scientists but my sense is they have given much of their life to some version of this noble vocation. This is an archetypal Liberal identity-mold, a tried and true, recognizable Calling, in a world where such things are increasingly hard to find.

Well, the past decade has thrown up some data points that really make you wonder whether the basic terms of this model still obtain. A few things lately have given me the bad feeling that someone like Pinkman may have invested most of their life in a certain kind of bargain with Liberal Society that, sadly, Liberal Society has now reneged on. I say this is a bad feeling because, if true, it's very unfortunate and I genuinely feel for them.

So what's this bargain I speak of, in a little more detail? First, for background, remember that for much of our history highly talented and creative individuals are typically punished by their groups. Reverse dominance hierarchies, etc., you can't let super talented people get too ahead of the others because then they'll dominate, or group morale suffers, or the group disintegrates, or whatever. Bad things will happen. So they'd cut you down to size at every opportunity. But liberal society was willing to offer super smart and able people a bargain: If you're really smart and able, then you can go off and cultivate your smarts but only on condition that you respect Liberal Society. It's a pretty genius solution actually: let the ablest flourish above everyone else but make them pay a cut of their gains to the cohesion of the whole. Win-win. The society got all the benefits of crazy geniuses solving problems, without them dominating or collective cohesion suffering. The geniuses not only got to enjoy their objective superiority on full blast, they also got to feel like it was all about doing good for others. And maybe it is.

It is the right to generously bestow social improvement that is one of the great joys of being a prestigious intellectual--could you imagine how exhilarating it must feel to have earned, through a life of study, the exalted role of institutionally sanctioned Society Improver at grand scale, how genuinely good it must feel to know that all of your sacrifice and hard work now empowers you to improve the knowledge and character of millions, and the political health of a whole society? Understood a little more rational-choicely, this is one of the key income streams that liberal society pays to its most prestigious geniuses, in return for their lifelong loyalty to all of the official tenets of harmonious Liberal Society. I think the data is pretty obvious in showing that no matter how genius you might be, if you go off the rails of "reasonable discourse" beyond a certain degree you quickly lose all of your standing and influence (on this model, anyway.

(Note that the newer classes of public intellectuals have figured out that if you decline the liberal institutional bargain, then going maximally off the rails can be its own direct path to extraordinary intellectual influence and economic reward. But more on that later, let's stay on track understanding the fine print of the liberal intellectual's bargain with liberal society).

Here's where things get a little shadowy because the harmony of Liberal Society is quite sensitive. It's kind of like a precious baby, and we love babies and would do anything to protect them, but this is how hypocrisy enters in automatically, because Liberal Society requires everyone to presume everyone else is an adult, and to treat everyone as such. For instance, when two groups violently disagree over certain deep moral questions, well, liberal society doesn't allow them to deal with it violently (a good thing perhaps, as Pinkman has amply documented). But what does it do instead?

The simplest way to summarize all of the things that Liberal Society does to reduce violence: It papers over the conflicts, which is maybe a brilliant solution, or maybe an insane, explosive solution that simply hasn't exploded yet — the jury is still out on that one. If Group A thinks abortion is murdering babies, and Group B thinks prohibition of abortion is enslaving women, the only way to deal with such profound and high-stakes ethical disagreement, other than civil war, is to derive some symbolic artifice(s) that will let both groups live peacefully with the other. Hmm, thinks Caesar, do we have anyone around here good at generating clever symbolic artifices? In swoops the knighted genius. The genius is delighted to take a break from self-cultivation in order to contribute to Harmony, and Caesar, as well as the common people, are happy to have someone on hand to explain why I don't have to worry if my neighbor is Evil. Win, win, win.

Thus baked into the vocation of the modern liberal intellectual is, from the get-go, a highly dissimulated condescension and hypocrisy. The liberal intellectual gets their status precisely from a superior ability (earned or inherited, doesn't matter) but they are contractually obligated to treat the normal masses as equals, when they know damn well that in fact, the normal masses are dumber, more dangerous, and in need of Harmonizing by institutions (paper). Also, remember that the genius wants to help, it's extremely rewarding to sincerely help society, but the noble sacrifice the genius admirably contributes to the social good is precisely the papering over, of whatever the normal masses need papered over for their well-being. This is how a basic minimum of dissimulation, condescension, and hypocrisy is structurally embedded in the vocation or calling of the modern liberal intellectual. We might note in passing it's also an avatar of Plato's Philosopher-King, a conceptual-political thought-rut that many progressive intellectual personae tend to inhabit in one way or another (and yes, here, Pinkman is a Progressive, despite some infamy among SJWs).

OK, so the modern liberal intellectual might be forced to pay lip service to a few small Noble Lies, but it's soooo much better than all that homicide and war in the earlier chapters of Pinkman's violence book, that it seems like a no-brainer. "There are political realities, it's not my fault, all I can do is speak the truth in a way that helps society the most. If that means I have to use my words judiciously, is that really so bad?" an elite cognitive scientist might reasonably ask. The only problem is that this entire model presumes that the speech of the prestige intellectual will remain highly weighted relative to the speech of anyone else who might take it upon themselves to explain things publicly.

What if external circumstances change in such a way that the masses start to intuit that the knighted geniuses have quietly been playing a political game all along? What if, empirically, things just so happen to play out in such a way that a critical mass of pretty average people (on the right and the left, and in their own languages and for their own reasons), quietly update their mental and behavioral models of the world in the realization that: "Eureka! I have a strong suspicion that some really serious issues have been papered over for some time now... and I'm not going to be a dupe any longer. I see what's going on, and I can play this game, too..." Well, one thing to note is that if this updating were to occur, even on a massive and rapid scale, there's no reason to believe we would know it anytime soon after it occurred. The next thing to see is that, suddenly, the entire bargain that the prestige intellectual based his whole life's labors on would suddenly be off the table.

So long as your pronouncements are weighted well by institutionalized attention monopolies, your lifelong service to science mixed slightly with Harmony-producing fluff was a reasonable and even maybe noble project. If your prestige loses its weight, then tempering your extreme intelligence with little white lies would be all for nought, because you're about to be left in the dust by new startups who specialize in unreasonably extreme truth-telling ("red pills" and many other colored pills now available) and also unreasonably extreme hypocrisy (self-help bullshit, SJWism, etc.). You'll still have your niche, but your effect on people and society will rapidly fall towards zero (along with the overwhelming majority of other people, including most smart people).

It seems to me that as a sociological phenomenon, Pinkman's recent book dramatizes a lot of what I'm modeling here. I think the world has changed a lot very recently and with many things we're like the roadrunner who's already off the cliff, but we haven't yet looked down to see the vast empty space beneath our galloping gait. In a strange way, I think dumber people have been doing more correct updating as of late, and some of the smartest people have been stubbornly failing to update lately. Dumber people have updated to not listen to a word of what the mainstream intellectual culture says, but smart people have not yet been able to update in response to this updating by dumber people (in part because smart people don't have any way of hearing about how dumber people are updating, and they're not exactly accustomed to caring about it). The inertia of media representations enforces a substantial lag between increasingly rapid techno-economic changes in the distribution of powers and our meager human mental models of where that power is.

All of this has been quite abstract, and I mentioned above that I have some data points, so I'll just end with those. I might have tricked you, accidentally, because to be honest, I've extrapolated this whole bonkers historical meta-narrative from a few very measly anecdotal observations. Well first, I kind of had in mind things like Trump and Brexit, i.e. signals of widespread mistrust of dominant institutions and respectable liberal wisdom. So those are pretty big and real data points for the kind of perspective I'm articulating here. I also have a few more specific ones, although they are very tendentious.

The first one is so silly, you're really going to laugh at me for writing this long post in part because of this ridiculously tiny and personal anecdote. You can write your own blog, I for one sense significant causal evidence in this little story. Basically, I listened to the Joe Rogan podcast with Pinkman about his new book and... Pinkman was fine, he's a brilliant and likable guy... but... something was wrong. Very wrong. Don't tell anyone because it's kind of orthogonal to my personal brand and I have to stay on point, but I've listened to many, many Joe Rogan podcasts. And I'm a professional social scientist mind you, so if anything the Pinkman podcast should be more interesting and effective on me, relative to the average episode. But it was just so... "boring" is not even the word. Flat? Anachronistic? Bloodless? Zombieish? None of these quite convey it, but together they give some sense. The point is that, as a minor young academic but a relative connoisseur of the new media, for me something really significant in the machinery of intellectual experience was failing to fire, so much so that it was quite strange. I was surprised and confused. But now I think I understand it; it's everything I've said above.

The world that Pinkman seems to think he is in, is not the world we're actually living in now. The book will be successful economically of course, but it has no affective-identity constituency, other than people who are already socio-culturally neutralized or priced-in by the current equilibrium. It's hard to see how anything will move or shake from this type of project anymore. Most intellectual figures preach to a choir, of course, so Pinkman is no better or worse for that — but some choirs move and shake and generate novel ripples on world history, while others just sit there doing nothing other than precisely what was yesterday's world history. Some books and podcasts and youtube videos make people want to leave their friends and family to join a jihad, some give you strong confidence that a reality-TV star would make a great president, some give you the extraordinary realization that all of society is controlled by a white supremacist patriarchy; all of these lead to novel, unpredictable schisms and re-aggregations, new social formations and subcultures, which in their affective vitality bubble up, viralize or mutualize or enter into arms races, and end up producing system-level outcomes such as electoral victories, migrations, communicating-contagion shooting sprees, various contagious mental pathologies, as well as genuine self- and community-improvement dynamics, unequally distributed. There's nothing better or worse about the Enlightenment Is Cool niche; it's just that it's identity-affective character seems predicated on precisely what we've recently realized is already gone, as demonstrated by the whopping piece of incontrovertible evidence that was my personal lukewarm reception of Joe Rogan's podcast with Steven Pinkman.

You can say I should not generalize from my personal affective experiences, but my personal position seems like it'd be most conducive to liking and being affected by the Pinkman podcast! I'm not talking about the content of his book whatsoever, I'm talking about the reality he takes himself to be playing in. I don't think it's here anymore. First of all, the halo effect of prestige markers is weaker than ever I think. Once upon a time his prestige would have increased the excitement of listening to him. Today, much less. Second, all of the intellectual action today is coming from unique combinations of intellectual horsepower with identity alignments. Jordan Peterson is blowing up in part because he's a smart, credentialed intellectual with a message but specifically because he gives an image of admirable life for a certain type of person. It's not that JP lovers are now changing the world in a way Pinkman lovers will not, it's that JP's identity-affective alignment is not already priced in by the status quo from which Pinker's authority derives (JP tapped emotional needs not already being supplied, through new media, not prestige; hence the socio-political splash). Hell, Joe Rogan himself, who no Serious Intellectual would even call an intellectual, is making similar waves in the intellectual ecology because his basic intelligence and character combine with a certain affectively attractive performance of life that he offers to certain types of people. I could go on.

The problem for traditional public intellectuals on the Liberal Vocation model is that the image of life they herald is radically unavailable to most people so the aspirational inroad to affective alignment is close to nil; it's actually genuinely contemptible to many people (and this is getting worse as the very real racket-nature of much academia is becoming increasingly transparent; ironically the hard-science backlash against postmodernism might have unintended consequences in this regard); and the information they're able to share with the unwashed masses tends to be freely available anyway. Or worse, listeners/readers can usually find someone rehearsing the same information who also offers an identity-performance more affectively aligned with their own temperament and social position. So vanilla prestige intellectuals don't have a monopoly on the information, they no longer even have an advantage on trustworthiness given widespread mistrust toward most institutions, and they uniquely, sorely lack one of the biggest drivers of intellectual impact in the new ecology: affective-identity alignment with moving and shaking niche audiences. (Although note that, with the global internet, "niche" can very well mean several millions of people). To make matters even worse, their cultivated knack for walking the line of polite respectable "good taste" is actually a negative on the balance sheet of their social influence.

Here's another data point. I was struck by the nearly instant appearance of so many reviews and commentaries, almost all of which were ideologically colored. I don't mean that in a bad way necessarily, I just mean so many of the usual suspects were saying things to the effect you would expect them to say. And when most of those items would appear on my radar, my eyes would just glaze over. But think about the commentary that most struck me, and by "struck" I mean this combination of intellectual horsepower plus temperamentally conditional excitement. I'm talking about the post by RS Bakker that inspired this post (by the way I really wanted to just hammer out a quick 500-word thing, but this always happens, which is why I can't let myself sit down to "write a quick 500-word thing" very often). As I said, I read it quickly on the train, and at this point I don't even really remember what it said. All I know is that it had intelligent comments about Adorno and Nietzsche and their critiques of Enlightenment modernity. It was scientifically competent as far as I could tell, and then it had some kind of batshit scientific extensions I didn't really understand but which seemed promising maybe. It was only after I read the post that I wanted to see who this guy was, and from what I could grok apparently he writes fiction but also co-authored with someone in Nature? (!).

So just reflect on this for a moment. Prestige scientist I admire writes book about philosophical/political topics I am highly interested in, he does a podcast that has no effect on me, a million reviews from prestige outlets come out and I can't feel any reason to care about any of them, and it just so happens that the one item in the intellectual ecology that affected me (e.g. motivated novel production on my part), was maybe the one fiction writer in the world who has a publication in Nature writing something on his personal blog (and I didn't even know anything about him until after I read the piece). That's so strange... or rather, it would be strange if we were living even in the 1970s or even the 1990s, but it's not at all strange today. Of course there exists in the world some scientifically sophisticated blogger able to talk deeply about Adorno and Nietzsche, of course he has a blog, and of course it would find its way onto my radar. Of course it would strike me, and of course as a young academic myself right now I am more motivated to write long blog posts than do my institutional duties. Of course, this is the new reality. The real puzzle is how and why the respectable prestige dancehall of liberalism v1.0 is still populated with a good number of really smart people, when all of the music is clearly pumping out of a variegated, thousand-room warehouse of the less compromising... liberalism flatlining at degree zero.