#reject gender role and be on the roll with the troll

[unpleasant-angel]

ARE YOU FEMINIST ICON GIRLYPOP YES OR NO????!?!??!!

-🧠🎧

i won't comment on the girlypopness of my existence but i can tell you

every gender is to be pranked equally

[idolises]

(  taylor zakhar perez,  cis man,  he / him  )  —  🎬  just  announced,  DOMINIC 'MICKEY'  SOSA  is  casted  as  TYLER LOCKWOOD  in  upcoming  THE VAMPIRE DIARIES  reboot.  the  twenty - nine  year  old  is  trending  as  people  are  debating  if  the  redbull spiked espresso shot hastily tossed back before an early shoot , a notification packed phone - thousands of unread emails , ignored voicemails and messages left untouched , a kilowatt smile and easy laugh that lights up the room , never backing down from a challenge  that  they  are  known  for  is  enough  to  make  them  as  good  as  original.  a  quick  google  search  shows  that  their  fans  call  them  easygoing,  but  internet  trolls  think  they’re  more  libertine.  i  guess  their  newest  interview  for  variety  where  they  talk  about  his arsenal of useless party tricks  will  let  people  to  know  them  better.

*　　　　&　　◞　　　　𝐢　　　　.　　　　BASICS

full name : dominic emiliano sosa nickname(s) : mickey ( primary ) , dom , d age + bday : twenty - nine + december 3rd ( sagittarius ) gender + pronouns : cisgendered man + he / him / his orientation : biromantic bisexual language(s) : spanish , english hometown : boston

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mickey sosa has always been a dreamer - a fun - loving , carefree spirit who inspired likeminded antics in everyone he was around. as a child he drove his mother crazy , worried her sick , with skinned knees , broken bones and various reptilian / woodland critters he would wander home with. ' you can't do this ' she would admonish , the beginnings of a tirade that would inevitably shift into spanish while his father stood by and simply shook his head with a soft laugh. there was no rhyme or reason why at the age of ten he determined then and there that he was going to be an actor but by then his parents knew well enough that once he'd made up his mind there was no changing it ( ' he's your son , rodrigo ' his mother sighed , ' he gets that from your side of the family ' his father insisted ). despite their reservations , his first apartment in los angeles was a graduation gift from his parents. the years following graduation were a series of shitty jobs that barely managed to make ends meet , shittier apartments , auditions and rejection but mickey endured. no matter how bleak things seemed he never lost his spark and was always able to make light of a bad situation. game of thrones was his first big break , the first time he'd really been in the public eye and his first hollywood relationship ... if you could call it that. they were a star with an established career , mickey was an up and comer who had worked too hard to ride someone else's coattails the rest of the way to fame so to keep their involvement hush hush mickey engaged in various pr relationships. it didn't take long for the press to spin a playboy narrative , painting mickey as a casanova who had slept with half of hollywood and would work his way through the rest. whatever. like everything else mickey rolled with the punches , leaned into the narrative and had fun with it. following the success of game of thrones mickey received more auditions and role opportunities. instead of scrambling to find ways to pay rent he was able to carve out a place for himself in hollywood. his relationship came to a quiet end , the whirlwind of fake relationships steadily stopped and mickey found time to enjoy the perks of fame ; interviews , networking , parties - social by nature the narrative spun by the press may not be wholly inaccurate ...

*　　　　&　　◞　　　　𝐢𝐢𝐢　　　　.　　　　CONNECTION IDEAS

past pr relationship(s) , while he's not one to engage in these anymore mickey had numerous fake relationships when he was an up and coming actor. i imagine some of these would have turned into genuine friendships and maybe one even became something more down the line

flings , self - explanatory tbh when not in a relationship mickey is happy to engage in meaningless sex

ex , while there may be a grain of truth in the articles written about him , mickey isn't a true casanova not really he catches feelings just like anyone else but your muse wasn't expecting that and when things started to get serious they dipped. happy to discuss when / how things ended but i'd like this to be a more recent breakup so ! lots of angst and dealing with lingering feelings at least on mickey's end. he's not the type to hold a grudge but he'll definitely be awkward about it. bonus points if they're Also part of the tvd reboot

ride or die , just like misery , chaos loves company and mickey is chaos personified. gimme two himbos fuelling off each other's energy pls

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post credits : robb stark on game of thrones , alec lightwood on shadowhunters , joaquin desantos on riverdale , matthias helvar on shadow and bone

more one day ,,,

[tssidesfics]

TSSides Anti-Fairytale AU

I’m not coming for fairytales. They have their place, but as an aromantic person...I do not feel seen. And then I decided to re-watch Enchanted (pirated, of course, because fuck Disney). And then this idea happened. 

Patton was a child-king who married his best friend when forced to, and then she died in childbirth. He’s given Roman everything he could, but he’s lived his life dictated by the advisors who’ve used him as a puppet king his whole rule. He’s miserable because he doesn’t like how the system functions but he thinks he’s chained to tradition.

Roman copes with his complicated relationship with his father by questing and almost dying, like, every other week. Anxious attachment for days. Boy keeps trying very hard to find a princess and can’t seem to figure out why nothing will stick. To which Patton goes “oh. He got it from me. Oops.”

All I know is Remus is aromantic and aplatonic and exactly as chaotic as he should be.

Roman’s birthday. Ball. The classic. He greets all the noble families and he’s seen those losers a bunch before, but this time, he meets a new “girl” with a family he usually hates who intrigues him. He is not a girl and I will not be misgendering him because ew, but, gist: Virgil, transphobic rich parents forcing him to conform to gender roles, absolutely miserable, in Peak Bitch (gender-neutral) form. Roman mistakenly believes he’s cured and talks Virgil up a lot. Convinces himself he’s fallen madly in love.

Problem is, he tells Patton, who’s shocked he found a “girl” but absolutely is on-board, and then goes to the family to ask for Virgil’s hand and there’s no Virgil.

Thus begins the Mulan ripoff but openly trans where Virgil poses as a boy servant at the castle because his parents can’t get into the castle willy-nilly and it’s the safest place to be. Absolutely loathes Roman’s very existence because that dumb bitch flirted with him while he was a girl and therefore VIrgil thinks he is The WorstTM. Then Roman catches him grouching about and decides to solve this by teaching him sword-play, mostly to give him the excuse to beat on a dummy with a sword-shaped stick. 

Meanwhile Roman is just le sigh I did it again. I connected more with a boy than a girl. Why did she have to run away? Now I’m doomed to be weird.

Well then assassins break into the castle and Ever-Paranoid Virgil immediately susses them out as bad news and uses the remnants of the ball to absolutely wreck them when they try to kill Roman and his father while they’re taking a rare opportunity to chat and bond. Patton decides he is Adopting This Child, fuck you, advisors, he’s as thin as a stick, and Virgil now gets to eat with the royal family. 

It’s the first time Patton has ever actually told his advisors to go fuck themselves. It’s the first step toward a positive turnaround and it happened because Patton’s dad instincts took over and nothing in the world is more valid than that, fight me.

Enter genderqueer icon morally neutral witch, Janus, all pronouns, who’s trying to topple the monarchy to enact lasting change and didn’t want to dirty her hands right away, but honestly people are so unreliable. So he gets onto Patton’s crew as a handmaiden and excuse you who gave the king permission to be actually endearing?

Roman feels slightly weird because Patton’s calling Virgil “kiddo” and he’s not calling him his son but he also treats him very similarly as he does to Roman and Remus, which isn’t great but is significantly better than it could be, but Roman’s got a crush. 

Then Janus finds out Virgil’s trans and reveals this. Virgil thinks he’s about to get blackmailed into murdering the only people who have ever cared about him and then Janus just rolls their eyes like “excuse you I’m evil not psychopathic. I can give you a potion to make your body reflect your mind. You in?”

“Great, so my only cure to stop feeling like frozen trash reheated in a forest fire is to accept the highly dangerous bribe of a definitely evil witch! Thanks! I hate it!”

Yes Virgil memes even in a fantasy world where Tumblr doesn’t exist.

Also Virgil and Roman are bonding. A lot. They’re getting very close and Virgil even lets slip that he loves Roman and then tries to fling himself out a window. Roman gets touched, stops him, and tries to kiss him, but Virgil leans away. Roman expresses confusion.

“I...I love you, but I don’t want to kiss you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either. But I’ve...never wanted to kiss anyone. For any reason.”

“But...you still love me?”

“I do. I’m sorry.”

Roman...doesn’t feel as rejected as he thinks he maybe should? Honestly, it’s not totally a relief, but it’s just kinda...neutral. It’s not even a disappointment. 

Well, Janus is not evil and actually wants to run a kingdom (instating a committee mixed of educated rich fucks and working class receiving education) a whole lot more than Patton, who thinks she’s just...kinda awesome and very misunderstood. There’s a lot of hissing and grumbling that they’re not misunderstood, they’re evil, they don’t even have a tragic backstory, they just kill people to enact the change they want to see, just because they got ditched in a forest as a baby and was raised by a magic snake means nothing. The snake was a very loving and supportive parent.

Roman talks to Patton and Patton is like “fuck marriage rules. Fuck heteronormativity. Fuck my advisors. My kingdom is a haven for the gays. All the gays. Of every color. Come here and be merry and queer.”

Virgil’s just like “yo no reason but in this new world where it’s okay to love whatever gender is it maybe cool to be a boy when the world says you’re a girl?”

Janus draws a knife and glares at Patton and Patton’s just like “even if my partner wasn’t threatening to kill me I’d say it was fine why?”

“No reason.”

“Virgil.”

“What?”

“Is there something you want to share?”

“No.”

“Is there something you need to share?”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re being defensive again, Storm Grouch.”

Virgil sticks his tongue out. “Fine. People used to think I was a girl and I have a stupid body. Happy?”

And Patton learns from Janus the fine art of Validating The Fuck Out Of Gender.

The advisors stage a coop and lock Janus in an anti-magic cage, and then at the same time Virgil’s biological nightmares track him down and steal a spelled green apple from Janus’ shop they give Virgil. You know the drill. Deep sleep like death, yadda yadda.

Well, they immediately claim the body making a big dramatic deal about how they have to bury “her” and they’ll take “her” home to see her off and it’s so tragic, just as they were reunited, when the reality is they have the antidote back home, they’re just looking for control over his life again.

Except Roman goes off. “He is staying here where he--where he will be buried under the name Virgil dressed properly and if you came anywhere near his body I’ll kill you myself.”

Guess what constitutes a totally platonic, non-kiss related act of queerplatonic true love, bitch? Fighting your transphobic partner’s parents over their dead body.

Kingdom’s retaken, sweeping reform while Patton retires to be a stay at home dad to fix his relationship with his kids. Virgil gets formerly adopted. The stepparent is actually a morally neutral genderqueer witch who runs the kingdom fairly and justly, the central love story is trans and aromantic, and my queer ass is something resembling happy.

Logan is probably one of the advisors and the only one with sense who probably starts knocking off his coworkers after the coop because they’re all deeply, deeply stupid. Remus probably spends half the story making friends with a troll he brings in to save the day in the third act.

[coe-lilium]

Would you be willing to rank the major Apocrypha characters (Masters and Servants) from best to worst? I'm curious as to how you would rank them

Gladly :D

Be warned that this will be 90% tastes and maybe 10% narrative/objective analysis. And sorry for taking so long to answer. Also, it got long ^^’

A concise, condensed ver before the cut

- 10+/10, tie between Mordred, Jeanne e Shirou

-  9.5/10: Semirams and Shishigou Kairi

- 8-7.5/10: Vlad, Achilles, Shakespeare, Caules 

- 7: Chiron, Fran, Atalanta, Karna, Fiore, Darnic

- 6, I start not caring: Gordes

- “wasted” and “still bitter after 5 years”, no numbers: Avicebron and Siegfried

- 5-4, it’s complicated: Astolfo

- 4: Sieg (and it might go down to 0, I’m serious)

- 3 to 0: Jack, Reika, Celenike 

Btw, I kept them vague, but spoilers/hints up to vol4 and 5

Rank “will fight the world for them, forever in Higashide’s debt, I wish one day for Nasu to write them himself because I trust the mushroom man to make me love them even more than I already do, 10+/10″: 

Mordred: SHE. Higashide’s best accomplishment in winning me over no matter other flaws. Tie with Gilgamesh as my favorite Nasuverse character ever.

There isn’t a single thing I don’t love about her (bar that atrocious “dress” under the armor, delete that). The armored and casual character design. The backstory as abused and exploited child who tries to break free of her mother influence and plots but ends up following them anyway because of her other parent rejection and, ultimately, how Morgan life lasting damage could not be undone without support. Her snarky, bratty, selfish and ferocious personality she show to the outside world and the hidden insecurities, the good heart and the ability to reflect on her flaws. Her loyalty and her desperate need for parental love and recognition as her own person. Her fighting style that is a delight to read or watch, truly a beast. Her chemistry and relationship with Shishigou, all of it. How it start in that cemetery, how develops over the course of the story, how she manage to open, connect and trust him and ultimately find a real father in him.

If I have to find a “wish this was expanded on” is her written in but not recognised by canon issues with gender/presentation which wasn’t a real issue for me until I read metas here and I’m now quite confused especially on how to write her (him?) in the future, when I’ll hopefully get at it.

The only reason I don’t completely wish for her and her Master to have been made MCs is the love I have for the following two guys and this couple steal too much of a spotlight from other characters.

Still, while theirs is a story more focused on personal growth and healing then deciding the fate of a great number of people or the world, in the end Mordred and Kairi saved each other so it could’ve still meshed neatly with the overall salvation theme. Sadly it was not meant to be but I’m more than content for what we got.

Jeanne: She. Who gets only second place and no caps lock because, a surprisingly good portrayal none withstanding, she could’ve been even better had Higashide done a bit more research (in his favour, I don’t know what kind of books on her are translated in Japanese and if the processes transcripts are among them).

For example I’ll forever maintain that, while the whole “romance” thing has a historical base (funny that, uh?), it required a way better realisation and as it’s written in Apocrypha does her character a disservice. Laeticia too, who was a potentially interesting “device” and could’ve been our outsider perspective, got derailed into more nonsense romance and aww poor Sieg and oh man, who-gives-a-damn: not me.

Also, not enough of a sarcastic spitfire or military prowess (“just waved the flag”, now that’s a funny way to write “half of Charles’ court was impressed by how good she was with every damn weapon”) for my tastes but I guess historical Jeanne is just that irreplaceable or TM chose to emphasise her piety and “sainthood” over other traits in order to avoid an Arturia 2.0.

Not a single mention to her mentors either, in 5 volumes (which is bad, extremely bad, Higashide why) and too much of Gilles de Rais nonsense but unfortunately Type Moon is committed to roll with it. Dunois, La Hire and d’Alencon never, poor me. 

That said, Fate!Jeanne is really a good interpretation, firmly rooted in history and I love, love her. 

Her faith and lack of hate are spot-on and are treated with respect instead of mocked. 

She’s allowed to have a no-nonsense and even ruthless soldier like attitude, a protective streak (which always remind me of that promise she made to a young noblewoman to keep her husband safe and bring him back to her, or how she took care of her young squire. Both survived her) and loth of empathy at the same time. 

She’s down to earth but can also be immature and have flaws and be tempted. 

This post is already long as it is, so here’s some more reasons I love Apo Jeanne: 

Novel Jeanne musing 1       

Jeanne meta from the manga 1

Jeanne meta from the manga 2

My eternal greatest disappointment will forever be the lack of a satisfying confrontation with Shirou. You write someone able to shake Jeanne d’Arc convictions, make her doubt her conduct and moral standing when the threat of torture and the Rouen process weren’t able do so... and you don’t follow on it? Unforgivable.   

Shirou: This guy. This absolute mess of a human being. I need more and no, GO, “evil alternative self” isn’t what I mean (but yeah, gimme him too). After discovering him in Apocrypha I started digging my university library to hunt down his IRL self story and there is no higher accomplishment for a Fateverse character for me.                                                                                    Fascinating person and fascinating take by TM, double so since I discovered dude’s still being vilified in contemporary Jp stories/entertainment and man do that enrage me.

It’s like someone mixed up a character I love (Kirei), one I loathe (Kiritsugu), shaked it and the result it’s the best possible one I could ask for. 

I like the character design (both), the historical and post 3HGW backstory and how it shaped him into a Jeanne opposite (for excellent reasons), the most “Kotomine” traits like the snark and trollish attitude and how they cover all the suffering, despair and hate boiling under the constant smirk. How Higashide avoided the “turned evil” interpretation that’s prevalent in jp entertainment and made him a good person and a hero, if a misguided one and also the trapping of a “void/hollow inside” personality and instead gave him those fragments where you see he’s still a 17yo kid. 

He’s not just interesting, he’s funny to read, even with all the angst going on.  

The interactions with Shakespeare are great and... his relationship with Semiramis. Man, that’s excellent, excellent stuff. Can’t gush enough about how much I love them together

My only great complaint -for now, until I see a certain late discovery with my own eyes- is that all the narrative build up and comparisons between him and Jeanne (done in-universe and acknowledged within the text mind you, I’m not headcanoning here) went wasted. 

How can you write two characters who mirror each other so perfectly, put them as “head” of their factions, in the same role both... and not deliver with a confrontation? The only thing that tried to do so was -ironically- the anime in ep #13, as their confrontation in the novels wasn’t as personal and as good as the anime.      

Rank “good, excellent civilisation, never get tired of them”, 9.5/10

Shishigou: best father ever, 100% should legally adopt Mordred. He was/is extremely enjoyable to read about, snarky, smart, his fucked-up magus backstory had long lasting effects but managed not to destroy him, on the outside your tough, broody mercenary making hard decision but actually a good, moral person with a caring nature and, again, a great father. 

As already said, his and Mordred narrative is less tied to the different views of salvation theme and more to the “people making their wishes come true” and they’re bit of outliers for the whole duration of the story but I wouldn’t change a thing (except one T_T). 

His relationship with Mordred is one of the absolute highlights of Apocrypha for me, in every medium.

Semiramis: shallow reason first: charming, scheming, hot asshole-ish royalty in league with a Kotomine troll, what more could’ve I asked for?                        That she was an interesting char in her own right, which is what I got.          

More in-depth, she’s another character I never have enough of. Begrudging sole responsible adult of red team, I couldn’t help but grin every time she had to deal with AKA team or single members, not to speak of her scenes with Shakespeare, which are both amusing and very good for characterisation. 

She may not have that much of screen time compared to other faves but earned her place by making what she had memorable. 

Her backstory is simple: abandoned child learns to exploit her society view on women to rise to the top and get everything she wants and fuck everything else. Which not only neatly establish how and why she became what she is but also why this broken kid, which is a sort of her exact opposite, fascinate her so much. 

Speaking about our broken resident Kotomine, her chemistry with Shirou is simply great, all of their scenes are a joy to read. They have fun plotting together, they (she, dude’s either too young to notice or just let it go) casually flirts, have a functioning, mostly open relationship from the get-go that works no matter how messed up they really are and get each other’s back until the very end. Most of the more lighthearted stuff is in vol 1-2, then things gets more interesting. 

See, as much as she seems to be (and like to present herself as such to enemies) the perfectly devoted Servant and is aiding Shirou… she’s also truly villainous, cold and ruthless as hell and is also very conflicted and switch back and forth on what she wants, not much as out of the War as instead from her Master in particular (don’t think bad… okay, do) for the whole series. Vol3 and 4 are a godsend for her character and you dunno how I wish we had more than a bare bone summary for vol 5 because god damn some things in that summary. 

With the many, many stay night or Zero parallels and homages in Apocrypha, she come off as a sort of reverse Zero Gilgamesh and Gilles in being, respectively, the devilish member of the  Kotomine - Servant pair and the “personal involvement/interest in the saint figure, sometimes verging on the creep-ish, predatory behaviour" one (Gilles was 100% full on creepy mode, Semiramis keeps her thoughts for herself and is just tempted. I strongly appreciate), “reverse” for being conflicted, but in the end being a better person than both dudes above and respecting and knowing her partner enough to let go of her worst desires/frustrations. There’s some really good stuff in these two’s relationship, let me tell you. 

If Mordred-Shishigou take the cake for best platonic relationship in Apo, Semiramis and Shirou single handy destroy every competition for the romantic one. 

Rank “You. I like you”, 8-7.5/10

Vlad: here’s someone I’m pretty content with how he’s written (I wouldn’t change a thing), but really wish had had more space just because I enjoyed him a lot. Higashide nailed him and I wanted more of a historical Vlad III who is a hero, a good ruler caring for his country and a ruthless warrior and executioner and none of this aspects negate the others. Plus, it was refreshing to see a Vlad III being so clearly separated from the “vampire” twist that his wish for the Grail was to erase book and legacy from existence.

Achilles: a simil Alexander, I dislike the IRL/myth dude but can’t stay mad with their Fate incarnations. I like his personality, his quirks, his relationships with Chiron and Atalanta. Loved the mocking duel (and the anime committee will hear me scream from the other side of the world if I get robbed of it  yeah, I wrote this part before ep17. Fuck you A1). 

I don’t even think he needed more screen time, he’s really fine with what’s shown. Not every character need to be a main one and Achilles manage to be a good secondary one, with enough development and characterisation.

Shakespeare: here’s an enjoyable dude I like to hate. Amusing character, his interactions with Semiramis and Shirou are a joy to read or watch, but, fuck this guy. May Moriarty and Saber Gilles have their way with you in Chaldea.

Caules: one of those rare beasts known as “perfectly functioning siblings” of the Nasuverese. Respect his Servant and tries to do her right till the end. A good dude.

Rank “could’ve shined more in a longer and more focused series, but okay” aka those who served their purpose, 7/10 

Chiron                                                                                                            Atalanta                                                                                                          Karna                                                                                                                Fran                                                                                                                  Fiore                                                                                                                Darnic

Not really anything to say about each one here. They’re fine as they are.            

Could’ve used more Darnic, the 3HGW is a fascinating subject no matter who the Einzbern decide to summon and his actions shaped the whole world of Apo. Personally I’d have cut the Jack business and expanded him as a character/treat, maybe to shed light into CT politics and magus society fuckery (because if there’s something the Yggdmillennia as a whole and each one of them in particular show is how the magi society is an aberration that twist and corrupt everything it touch). But in the end I know it was either Ygg vs CT as promised or Rulers against each other and I’ll gladly take the latter.  A longer series could’ve had space for both, who knows.

Rank “nice arc. There are more interesting people but I’ve come to appreciate you” 

Gordes: Probably the human character who experience more growth in the series.

Rank “wasted” and “decent what little is there, perhaps, but still bitter after five years”

Avicebron: also know as the poor thing similar to the antagonist in background and wish that could’ve worked with the themes while also being a personal foil to the protagonist in being a golem/artificial life creator and user but the writer couldn’t/wouldn’t bother with him for some reason and he only got to be the “Gilles de Rais summon Chtlulu and heroes have to team up to bring him down” of Apocrypha, with no other purpose than being a Zero “homage”. 

To add insult to injury, the Adam threat does literally jack shit on a narrative point because “Servant goes stray and threaten the world, Servants form both factions have to team up to defeat him” already happened, 2 episodes before for the anime, end of vol2 vs beginning of vol3 for the novel version. And Mordred and Shishigou making an alliance with the surviving Black members was already going to be a thing after the Gardens mess. Shame, shame and shame.

Siegfried:  tainbocuailnge here has written some good meta about him lately and, yeah, perhaps all of that was intended, and I can kinda appreciate it. The point is that I couldn’t give a single crap over the OC when for him to come into being means sacrificing freaking Siegfried. I may not have read as much or being already attached to the literature/epic character like other cases but… no, just no. Siegfried deserved way better than what he got in Type Moon. 

Add more personal bitterness because with such numbers I thought it was finally time for the Heroes to shine and for the Masters to be sidelined and instead we got super special super powered MC. To hell with it.  

If anything, Siegfried may be the only character the anime did more good than damage. He’s still there and sometimes get to act as a mentor instead of being a useful power up and then fucking off for the remaining 4 volumes.

Rank “I tried to like you, I wish I could like you, but I cannot stand you no matter what”, 5-4

Astolfo: I’ve tried to like him but to no avail (rest assured, though, that I’ll deck anyone who’ll try use that t*ap or “girl” bullshit). 

It has to be that unholy combination of extremely airhead personality and mannerism, all the screen time he gets that could’ve gone to my favourites, that idiotic attempt at a “love triangle” (for the love of God, Higashide) and a voice acting that, I swear, even if I already didn’t like him from the novel the anime would’ve been the nail in the coffin. All these combined make him grates on my nerves like few other Fate characters. Perhaps part of my distaste comes from being unable to shake the feeling that the author himself don’t respect him.

I realise it’s quite… unfair, because on the page he has everything I usually like: he’s brave, he’s kind, he has morals and will maintain them in front of everything, he stand up to assholes, he save and inspire people, you can overpower him as much as you like and he still won’t care and will still fight you. 

Astolfo is a good, decently written character and I really wish the franchise would just stop using him as a joke and stop being so gross to him in order to cater to even more gross “fans”. 

If I were to put tastes/guts feelings aside, I could praise him for pages. I simply can’t bring myself closing the gaps from appreciating the undeniable qualities to actually like the character. 

Rank: fluctuating between “your concept should’ve been handled by a more experienced narrator” and “goddamn, does your very existence piss me off”, pending more on the second as we go on, less than 4

Sieg: on the page kid’s got a good arc. An homunculus, a magus’s tool, trash to be used and disposed off, gains consciousness and, shaped by what he witness and the actions and sacrifices of heroic figures, rise to free his kin from their slavers and then find himself fighting to “save the world”. How he attained freedom and have come to interpret it and his experiences put him in the path of the antagonist and the two and their “ideologies” makes for an interesting double face of the coin, forced salvation vs free offer and answer to actual prayers. Sounds pretty great. 

Unfortunately, Higashide aimed too high for his skills or didn’t learn well from Nasu and Shirou Emiya, or both. 

Otakus mad because he “got the waifu” aside, Sieg do come across as too damn lucky and overpowered and there is a limit on how much the in-universe reason “damn, the Counter Force had to work hard to give him a chance to stop a Heroic Spirit with hundreds time his experience” can go before the readers start getting annoyed at Heroes dropping dead or getting sidelined just to push him forward. 

I’m not a fan of these buzzwords, but the impression he’s a fan fiction OC that force the original and more interesting cast to revolve around/sacrifice for him or hijack their plots is damn strong. Scrap it, it’s not an impression, it’s exactly what happen. In at least 4 or 5 cases. 

There were also too many times he bore me to death so not really what you want from your protagonist. 

Another thing, more grave than personal preferences: his wish/fight firstly go nowhere, then get resolved too quickly without a fuss and then, once his goal has been effortlessly achieved, he proceeds to tag along and stole duels and confrontations from other characters, on which he had no stakes nor reason to be. What kind of writing is this?! He get the contract with Astolfo, walks in the castle and the Yggd agree on releasing the homunculi. And that’s it. Wow?

Also here’s my 100% personal reason for not having an ounce of interest in Sieg, godly writing skills or not: for once, just once, we could’ve got our first Fate solo female protagonist. An all-around badass but, at the same time, not an Arturia nor Shiki nor Arc nor Aoko clone. Who just happened to be my favourite historical figure ever.

Could’ve kept the same theme of opposing concepts of salvation, brought the Ruler vs Ruler/Saint vs Saint thing in the spotlight, with all their nice baggage of similar lives resulting in  opposite views by different regrets and traumas, faith or lack (that instead got all swept under the rug, and man if the self awareness of vol4 isn’t something to behold) and after five years I still feel personally robbed of all of this, especially when it became clear Apocrypha was yet another “male protagonist with the world revolving around him while the female heroine gets to be his support/sidekick. Oh, and as already said, he get the confrontation with whom the narrative builds as her rival”. Because of course he does. 

You don’t sideline Jeanne frigging d’Arc and expect me to forgive you for it.

Rank “why are you even here, why are we wasting anything on you”

Jack and Reika: ye god, why. The concept behind this Jack the Ripper? I find Fake ver superior but I’m on board. Then, first, that fucking character design. Sorry BL, reddit, MAL and whatever: putting a child in a thong is a revolting choice of character design and no, there’s no “well, she learned from prostitutes” that count.    I appreciate at least the connection made with Atalanta. But the execution. Their “plot” drag and drag on and goes nowhere (hilariously so in the anime. What was the point of Jack killing some random homunculi and disappearing for the whole arc, again?). Their only narrative purpose is doing ???? for roughly three volumes, *do that* to Atalanta and shaking Sieg’s worldview. At least they grant Jeanne some badass solo scenes and to us more insight on her character. Still the equivalent of a anime-only filler, and a bad one. 

Pity, really, because a child Jack who 1. is a child and act as one and 2. get heavily influenced by her/their Master and thus could either become a better person or be exploited wasn’t that bad of a twist for a famous figure but the pair was never allowed to be more than “Apo pair of rogue murderers”. 

Celenike: just… begone. I cheered when she died in the novel, cheered loudly when she died in the anime and will cheer even more loudly when she will die in the manga. 

[an-ephemeral-blog]

Linkspam #7

Top Links

Debunking the Capitalist Cowboy by Nan Estad at Boston Review:

Business schools fetishize entrepreneurial innovation, but their most prominent heroes succeeded because they manipulated corporate law, not because of personal brilliance.

Capitalism, like the United States itself, has a mythology, and for five decades one of its central characters has been the nineteenth-century maverick cigarette entrepreneur, James B. Duke. Duke’s risk-taking investment in the newfangled machine-made cigarette, so the story goes, displaced the pricey, hand-rolled variety offered by his stodgy competitors. This, in turn, won Duke control of the national, and soon global, cigarette market. Repeated ad nauseam in business and history journals, high school and university curricula, popular magazines, and websites, the story has taught that disruptive innovation drives capitalist progress.

The problem? The Duke story is false: mid-century business historians fabricated it to accord with the theory of creative destruction, developed by libertarian economist Joseph Schumpeter. For generations, we have learned from this myth to fetishize entrepreneurial innovation as the engine of capitalism, while missing Duke’s instrumental role in rampant corporate empowerment.

Air Pods Are a Tragedy by Caroline Haskins at Vice:

Even if you only own AirPods for a few years, the earth owns them forever. When you die, your bones will decompose in less than a century, but the plastic shell of AirPods won’t decompose for at least a millennium. Thousands of years in the future, if human life or sentient beings exist on earth, maybe archaeologists will find AirPods in the forgotten corners of homes. They’ll probably wonder why they were ever made, and why so many people bought them. But we can also ask ourselves those same questions right now.

The Cis White Gay Man at a Crossroads by Tim Murphy at Into:

To ally oneself with power and privilege after historically having one’s own inherent gender and racial privilege compromised because of one’s sexuality is extremely seductive. It’s also uncomfortable, to say the least, to know that your new bros are perpetuating cruelties that you know in your gut to be real because, especially if you are an older gay man, you remember such cruelties to the point that your voice rises and breaks when you allude to them.

It can be so uncomfortable that, in the next breath, you deny their authenticity. People who feel vulnerable and unsafe, you say, enjoy playing the victim. Your new status in the world depends on not connecting your own former, or fleeting, suffering to theirs.

Privileged by Kyle Korver at the Player’s Tribune:

When the police break your teammate’s leg, you’d think it would wake you up a little.

When they arrest him on a New York street, throw him in jail for the night, and leave him with a season-ending injury, you’d think it would sink in. You’d think you’d know there was more to the story.

You’d think.

But nope.

Women suffer needless pain because almost everything is designed for men by Sigal Samuel, interviewing Caroline Criado Perez, for Vox:

Sigal Samuel: Can you give an example of a drug that’s been found to be less effective for women?

Caroline Criado Perez:  The most shocking one was a heart medication that was meant to prevent heart attacks but at a certain point in a woman’s menstrual cycle is actually more likely to trigger a heart attack. That has to do with the problem of not testing the drug on women at different stages of their menstrual cycle, because you [the researcher] say, “Oh, that’s too complicated and too expensive.” You’re basically saying, “I would rather let women die than have to do a complicated test.”

It Wasn’t Just the Trolls: Early Internet Culture, “Fun,” and the Fires of Exclusionary Laughter by Whitney Philips in Social Media + Society:

Very quickly, I realized that many of the young reporters who initially helped amplify the white nationalist “alt right” by pointing and laughing at them, had all come up in and around internet culture-type circles. They may not have been trolls themselves, but their familiarity with trolling subculture, and experience with precisely the kind of discordant swirl featured in the aforementioned early-2000s image dump, perfectly prepped them for pro-Trump shitposting. They knew what this was. This was just trolls being trolls. This was just 4chan being 4chan. This was just the internet. Those Swastikas didn’t mean anything. They recognized the clothes the wolf was wearing, I argued, and so they didn’t recognize the wolf.

This was how the wolf operated: by exploiting the fact that so many (white) people have been trained not to take the things that happen on the internet very seriously. They operated by laundering hate into the mainstream through “ironically” racist memes, then using all that laughter as a radicalization and recruitment tool.

Other Favorites

Science

Going Critical by Kevin Simler at Melting Asphalt - cool interactive post about criticality in networks

I Got Tenure, But Science is Still Broken by Ryan Abernathey at Medium

From sick role to practices of health and illness by Arthur W Frank in the journal Medical Education

Technology

Google Is Eating Our Mail by Tomaž Šolc at Avian’s Blog - what happens when a private company gets to decide what email is worth receiving

Coding Is For Everyone - As Long As You Speak English by Gretchen McCullough at Wired

YouTube Disabled Comments On Livestreams Of A Congressional Hearing On White Nationalism Because They Were Too Hateful by Ryan Broderick at Buzzfeed News - “Tuesday's hearing was meant to examine the rise of white nationalism and white supremacy and the role social media plays in its spread. Then the comments got hijacked.”

Thinking through ACL-aware data processing by Lea Kissner at the The International Association of Privacy Professionals “Privacy Tech” blog

A Conspiracy To Kill IE6 by Chris Zacharias at their personal blog

History

Liberalism and Jewish Emancipation by Mark Koyama at Liberal Currents - how Jews became full citizens of England

Politics

Is Josh Hawley For Real? by Alexander Zaitchik at the New Republic - A terrifying analysis of the “post-liberal” movement.  “Stated simply, the post-liberals reject universal reason as a basis for laws and government. They mourn the institutions, values, and hierarchies that secular rationalism has laid to waste in the name of progress.”

The families funding the 2016 presidential election by the New York Times

Identity politics strengthens democracy by Stacy Abrams in Foreign Affairs

Misc

How to Draw a Horse by Emma Hunsinger in the New Yorker

My Cousin Was My Hero. Until the Day He Tried to Kill Me. by Wil S Hylton at the New York Times

The Untold Story of the Ermahgerd Girl by Darryn King at Vanity Fair

Stoicism’s Appeal to the Rich and Powerful by Ada Palmer at Ex Urbe

What If A City Decides It Can Live Without A Freeway? by Nathanael Johnson - “Inside the push to tear down an Oakland freeway”

Put down the self-help books. Resilience is not a DIY endeavour by Michael Ungar at the Globe and Mail

What Could Have Been by Sophia Steinert-Evoy at Jewish Currents - “I realized: I was watching two Jewish American millennials sing about the crisis of Jewish identity created by the State of Israel on a nationally syndicated television show. But in its subtlety, the performance doesn’t make a statement so much as it opens a line of questioning—starting with What could have been? and leading, perhaps, to: How do we move forward?”

[trendingnewsb]

The Problem Isnt Just Trump. Its Our Ignorant Electorate.

For many of us, mornings have taken on a certain nauseating sameness. We roll out from beneath the blankets and, before the scent of coffee has reached our nostrils, we are checking the news feeds for the latest semi-literate tweet coughed up by the ranting, traitorous squatter occupying the Oval Office.

The rest of the day is spent in a kind of horrified suspension, holding our breath, waiting for whatever outrage will inevitably belch forth from the White Houseonce a bastion of seriousness and decorum, now ground zero for the demise of western democracy. How many lies will Trump spew today? Which dictators will he suck up to? Will he smear a Gold Star family? Attack a woman who dares to call out his smarmy predations? Unveil a puerile, racist nickname for a Senator or member of his own cabinet?

As much as we loathe it, however sickening it might have become, every day seems all about him, a former game show host and real estate failure, a hawker of rot-gut vodka and bullshit degrees from a fraudulent University who once styled himself as the Donald. The cable news shows lead with his most recent flatulence, the op-ed pages brim with intimations of doom, late night comedians are having a field day.

He is the president and, thus, bears watching. But we would be mistaken to think that he is truly the center of our universe, a man with a plan, commanding the heights, directing the action.

Virulent as he may be, Donald J. Trump is a symptom not the disease. Without us, he would amount to nothing more than what he had always been before the bizzaro presidential election of 2016: a foppish narcissist desperate for any measure of affirmation; a joke; a nothing. He did not create his voters. They have been there all along, seething with sometimes justifiable anger and suffering their various insecurities. They created and enabled Trump. And make no mistake, in all their vulnerable humanity, they are us: Gullible, compliant, distracted, marinating in irony.

At root, we the people are the problem.

We are understandably reluctant to impugn the intelligence and integrity of our fellow citizens. It is arrogant, uncivil, bad form. Who are we, any of us, to hold ourselves superior? When Hillary Clinton referred to some Trump supporters as deplorables, she was roundly castigated on all sides. How dare she? Yet it is an uncomfortable reality that anywhere from a fifth to a third of our electorate can be fairly (if gently) described as low-information voters. If the results of numerous polls and questionnaires are to be trusted, they know very little about the world they inhabit and what they do know is often woefully incorrect.

Surveys conducted every two years by the National Science Foundation consistently demonstrate that slightly more than half of Americans reject the settled science concerning human evolution. They are not unaware that virtually all credible scientists accept the overwhelming evidence that we evolved from earlier species. They simply choose not to accept that consensus because it doesnt comport with their deeply held beliefs. Many also embrace the absurd notion that the earth is only six thousand years old. Astonishingly, in the early 21st century, around a quarter of our citizenry seems unaware that said earth revolves around the sun.

It is a mistake to regard concern about such ignorance as effete snobbery or elitist condescension. While misapprehensions about basic astronomy, earth science and biology may have little impact on these folks daily lives, does anyone actually believe that similarly uninformed views arent likely to affect their grasp of policies regarding, say, climate change? Income inequality? Gun violence? Immigration?

Profound knowledge gaps like the aforementioned reveal an inability to think critically and leave a person vulnerable to all manner of chicanery. We are all ignorant about many things. Dont get me started on my dismal grasp of mathematics! But the hallmark of a sound education is not glorying in what you think you know, but, instead, appreciating the vastness of what you dont know.

If ignorance is the key that opens the door for charlatans like Trump, improved education, whether in school or in the public square, would seem to provide an obvious solution. But here we confront the perverse Dunning-Kruger Effect identified by psychologistsessentially, the less we know, the more certain we become of our superior knowledge. We have also discovered that exposure to facts and evidence does not always have the expected impact. Many people, when confronted by irrefutable proof that some core belief is incorrect, dont change their minds but dig in their heels. What feels right to them must be right and no amount logic and reasoning will dissuade them. Emotion trumps evidence.

Not too long ago, I fell into conversation with a woman aboard an airplane. Our chat somehow turned to health care. She offered the opinion that people who couldnt afford health insurance didnt deserve medical services. Why should she pay for someones care when they were obviously too lazy to earn their own money?

Because Im my own kind of fool, I rose to the bait. Did that mean they should be allowed to die in the street? I wondered. Well, no, she said. That would be inhumane. They could always go to an emergency room. So she was willing to pay for their care, I observed, but only in the least efficient, most expensive manner. This gave her momentary pause, but she quickly regrouped, simply repeating her prior assertion: Why should she pay? I didnt ask who she planned to vote for in the then-upcoming presidential election, but given that she had also voiced the opinion that women were, by virtue of their gender, unqualified to be news anchors, Im guessing it wasnt Hillary Clinton or Jill Stein.

She is hardly the worst example of an unthinking voter. Bill Maher once invited onto his show former GM Executive Bob Lutz. One supposes that such a fellow has benefited from an adequate education and that hes open to reason. Yet, when the subject of climate change arose, Lutz denied it was happening. A bunch of nonsense as far as he was concerned.

As it happened, Maher had also invited Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, educator and Director of the Hayden Planetarium. Tyson patiently explained why Lutz was misinformed. The planet was warming. Humans were largely to blame. This is how we know.

You might expect an educated person to respond by at least engaging on the topic. Tyson was, after all, vastly more knowledgeable on the subject at hand. Had their roles been reversed, with the topic being cars, I have no doubt he would have deferred to the automaker, asking questions, trying to improve the state of his own knowledge. Not Lutz. You could see him shutting down before Tyson had even warmed to the topic (no pun intended). As Upton Sinclair famously put it, Its hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.

Anyone who has watched the focus groups of Trump voters has seen this sorry dynamic played out again and again. Everything, no matter how tawdry or malicious, is excused or minimized. You get the feeling these folks would accept the sexual molestation of teenage girls as a trade-off for Neil Gorsuch. In fact, many did in supporting Roy Moore.

Welcome to the Post-Truth Era.

Much has been written about the impact social media and the internet in general have had on how people receive and absorb information. By now, we are all familiar with bots, trolls, phony scandals and the tendency of folks to hunker down in their own info-silos. The old adage that a lie is halfway round the world before the truth gets its socks on has never been more salient.

Consider the recent attacks on one of the young Parkland shooting survivors. A teenager who had just witnessed classmates being gunned down at his own school quickly discovered that speaking up for common-sense gun regulation resulted in vicious trolling and the viral lie that he was a paid crisis actor. This was similar to what befell the grieving families of the small children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Imagine waking one morning in a state of searing grief over the violent death of your baby to discover that some odious prankster like Alex Jones is telling his gullible audience that the whole tragic incident was staged, that your child was actually a paid performer doused in artificial gore and posed in a gruesome tableaux of death.

That Jones and his ilk have not been thoroughly shamed and driven from the public sphere says a lot about our growing tolerance for vile nonsense.

Trump did not invent Fake News. The Big Lie has been the stock in trade of con men and tyrants since time immemorial. But he understands its value. Alternative facts as his lickspittle factotum, Kellyanne Conway infamously put it, has long been his metier. Hes a bullshitter, a phony and now hes our president.

This shouldnt have happened. But we let it happen, though Trump did have plenty of help

Unsurprisingly, the Fox propaganda machine and any number of right-wing radio ranters enthusiastically clambered aboard the Trump Train. They were abetted by many in the mainstream media who, mindful that Trump lured eyeballs to advertisers and too timid to call him out as the carnival barker he so obviously was, went along for the ride. A number of Republicans in Congress dismissed him at first. But when it became clear he had a shot at winning and that his devotees comprised at least half of their party, they scurried to adopt him as their useful idiot.

Its true that we are not all equally culpable. Roughly three million more people voted for Trumps chief opponent. But the right-minded among us didnt do enough to forestall the plainly looming disaster. The proof of that is the Trump presidency itself.

So, if we in our various incarnations are the problem, then what is the solution? Is there any way out? Wed better hope so. Whats certain is that its on us. We made a wreck of our government and its up to us to fix it.

There are positive signs:

A once compliant media has begun to take the gloves off. Genuine conservatives, outraged that their movement has been hijacked by philistines, are sounding the alarm. People are rising up and calling BS. For every Sean Hannity there is a Rachel Maddow, Jake Tapper or even Shepard Smith (at Fox News, no less!). For every Paul Ryan, there is a David Frum or Max Boot. Frothing crowds at CPAC are countered by the #MeToo movement and impressively eloquent teenagers fed up with politicians of any stripe who cower before the gun industry. On a good day, a John McCain or Jeff Flake will stand up to the cringing accommodationists in their own party. And, of course, Donald Trump himself, along with his corrupt lackeys, face a formidable foe in the person of Robert Mueller.

NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers recent testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee should mark a turning point, though he merely confirmed what has been apparent for some time: that even as our nation is under attack from a Russia determined to subvert our democracy, the president has not directed any relevant agencies to defend the country. This is a violation of the oath Trump swore on inauguration day and smacks of treason. We have entered uncharted waters.

Whats clear is that we need to use all non-violent resources at our disposal to rid ourselves and our country of the dangerous infection spreading from the White House into our body politic. These are not normal times and our usual reflexes will no longer suffice.

Trump is a problem of our own creation. We must become the solution.

Ron Reagan is an author and political commentator who lives in Seattle and Arezzo, Tuscany.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-problem-isnt-just-trump-its-our-ignorant-electorate

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2Daf3yw via Viral News HQ

[thecastingcircle]

Republicans are putting on their “smug faces” and scoffing at the raft of celebrity performers, Rockettes and now even a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, who are refusing to raise their microphones, kick up their bare-legged heels or otherwise perform for Donald Trump at his inaugural.

Bristol Palin, despite her own tenuous grasp on celebrity status, took to her blog to snipe at the refuseniks as ”sissies”.

But make no mistake, this disdain drips with envy (and Bristol would be snapping selfies with those A-listers in a heartbeat if they’d have her.) Republicans and conservatives know full well that denying Trump the celebrity and cultural imprimatur he so desperately craves matters, and not just because of the awkward headlines after each new rejection.

America is, in many ways, as much an idea as it is a country. And Americans have long marketed that idea around the world through our popular culture. From jazz, the blues, country and rock to Hollywood movies, culture has in many ways been our greatest export (or our most obnoxious one, depending on your point of view). In decades past, “The Western” defined the image of a cowboy nation; something both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush revived to their domestic political benefit and to the world’s chagrin. The Hollywood of Frank Capra’s era, when Reagan became a minor star, sold the world an image of American pith and patriotism in many ways as defining as the moon landing or the A-bomb.

Our love of Hollywood-style glamour helped elect two presidents: JFK and

Reagan, who fulfilled the prophecy that a country so enamored of actors would eventually make one their president. “All in the Family” chronicled the racial and cultural upheavals of the Nixon era. Bill Clinton captured the zeitgeist of young voters in the early 1990s by playing his saxophone on the “Arsenio Hall” show and survived sexual scandal and impeachment in a country reared on “Dallas” and “Dynasty.” It’s arguable that without the mainstreaming power of entertainment shows like “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and the “Cosby Show” and portrayals of black presidents that became routine in film and on television, it would have been that much harder to get to a real first black president.

Reciprocally, presidents have always sought to rub elbows with celebrities.Actor-singer Gene Kelly served as a master of ceremonies and performed at Harry Truman’s inaugural gala in 1949. Old Blue Eyes crooned “High Hopes” for Jack Kennedy’s campaign and was among the Kennedy boys’ famous pals. Charlton Heston was cultivated by Republicans and the NRA for decades, and not because he looked good hoisting a rifle over his head. Even Richard Nixon relished his Oval Office photo with Elvis Presley, while Ronald Reagan welcomed associations with as varied a bunch of stars as John Wayne and James Brown.

Obama, though, has taken celebrity association to another level. He has been a darling of Hollywood, the music industry and popular culture from the time he declared for president in 2007, when Oprah herself anointed him “The One” and a year later, pop singer/rapper Will-I-Am turned his iconic “Yes We Can” speech into a remixed Youtube hit. Michelle Obama, like Jackie O before her, has become the toast of the fashion world, and a patron of the arts, from Broadway to great American music which she brought into the White House in all its multicultural glory.

As the entertainment world has gone from a bipartisan sphere to an overwhelmingly liberal one, Republicans and conservatives have come to view it with disdain. The Obamas in particular drive the right to distraction. Calling Obama a “celebrity” was considered a real, live epithet during the 2008 campaign, when a bitter John McCain saw his own political star status eclipsed. It infuriates Republicans that this elegant black family is celebrated while, for example, the Palins are ridiculed as rubes and bumpkins (though that could have something to do with the latter’s penchant for street brawls).

Conservatives rail at Hollywood movies that make them feel alienated by presenting capitalists, corporations and moral traditionalists as the villains, and sexual libertines, iconoclasts and the godless (or godlike, in the form of superheroes, witches and warlocks) as the heroes.

They lash out at popular music that they feel coarsens the culture and steers their kids away from Christian dogma. One wonders at the angst in far-right households as their white teenaged children blast hip-hop music on their expensive devices and in their nice cars. It’s a fear of cultural contagion that has driven parents crazy since the sock-hop kids of the 1950s discovered the gyrations of black rock-and-roll.

The Christian right has even been known to attack cartoon characters, from Tinky Winky the Teletubby to Spongebob Squarepants, whom they view as grooming a generation of young Americans to tolerate such presumed sexual heresies as open homosexuality, gender ambiguity and same-sex marriage.

These complaints are not incidental. They’re viewed as part of an existential struggle between traditionalists and an abortion- and birth control-legalizing, secularism promoting, sex-before-marriage practicing, drinks and weed imbibing, “happy holidays” left that long since won the culture wars; and against whom the cultural right has been fighting a half century-long insurgency.

Beyond racial hierarchism and plain old partisanship and hypocrisy, the 80 percent of white self-professed evangelicals who voted for Trump purportedly did so to lay claim to the courts, where they believe they can yet win out on banning abortion and birth control, forcing women back into traditional roles, and undoing gay marriage (or at least exempting themselves from being forced by law to photograph or bake cakes for them.)

Trump, who has spent a lifetime cultivating celebrity status — and not cultivating traditionalists; far from it, in fact — owes his election in large part to the sense of familiarity that being a reality TV star afforded him. That status allowed many of his voters to put aside his misogyny and vulgarity, and to ignore information about his business failings, chicanery and Putinism, because they think that having watched him on “The Apprentice” and at his rallies, they know who he really is.

Now, a man who clearly craves the adulation of the famous; the Queens rich kid who desperately desired the respect of the Manhattan and Palm Beach elite, is being denied it, publicly and in humiliating fashion. The mad scramble by his team to secure famous players for his inaugural festivities coupled with his ad-hoc photo ops with a fading Jim Brown, a bizarre, unmedicated Kanye West and huckster-cum-murderer Don King makes Trump’s existential yearning clear. He can try to deflect with pathetic tweets about really wanting to be surrounded by “the people” on his big day, but the truth is transparent: the germaphobic pouter who lives in an all-gold penthouse built from cheap materials by undocumented Polish migrants wouldn’t wipe his nose on his core supporters. Just look at his billionaire cabinet for a clue.

And yet his vicious campaign, which opened with racism and closed with a bizarre anti-Semitic screed, and which dined out on vows to discriminate against Mexicans and Muslims while unleashing a resurgence of racist hate groups and just plain haters is reaping the cultural opprobrium it sowed. And it’s making The Donald miserable.

Even the proto-Nazis unleashed by Trump’s campaign, some of whom are organizing an inaugural event pitifully dubbed the “Deploraball,” seem to crave pop culture normalization, based on their apparent desire to have Kanye as a special guest performer. One wonders how awkward it would be for the rapper to be on stage when the “Sieg Heiling” begins.

So far, the reaction of the creative community, from Broadway to Los Angeles and from hip-hop to Radio City Music Hall, has been to say a resounding “no” to Trump. It’s not a dismissal born purely of partisanship, but rather a rejection of the entire underlying ethos of his divisive, revanchist campaign. Maintaining a unified front against authoritarianism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and misogyny is no laughing matter, no matter how much Trump’s apologists try to snide it off on cable TV.

Ultimately, denying Trump and Trumpism the cultural cosign they crave is an important statement. It does what so far, the collective media have been unable or unwilling to do: rejecting the normalization of the utterly abnormal. It tells not just the country, but the world, that Trumpism may have a hold on our politics, but it doesn’t have a hold on us. America’s ascendant majority will not so easily slink off into that good night, and will not quietly ingest what Trump has foisted on the electorate.

He and his bilious, Russophile Twitter and comment-section trolls, his apologist surrogates and his zombified, partisan enablers on Capitol Hill will have to do their dirty work — including the horrors of disappointment and lost healthcare and social safety net programs soon to be visited on Trump’s own working class supporters — without the shield of popular cultural will.