#and they take this pure evil position and claim to be heroes supporting women

[fictionadventurer]

I don't think anything has shown media bias more strongly than the time a few years back when Women's March people got upset at the pro-lifers, because, "How dare you host your pro-life rally on the same day as our Women's March?" only to be told, "We've been doing this on this date since the '70s, with turnouts several times larger than your Women's March ever had, yet you've never heard of ours while yours dominates every cable news station for days."

[guinevere-beck-fanboy]

Another OUAT Rant

So I thought the way I put my previous OUAT rant could have been improved, so I’m rewriting it here, also with more info and more rant material. Hope you enjoy!

___________________

The four most popular characters on this show are all crap characters and people. They are: Regina Mills, Rumplestilstkin, Captain Hook/Killian Jones and Zelena Mills. All four of them are garbage. And what’s so ironic is that a lot of fans of one character will always hit off on another one of those characters. All four of them are absolute garbage, and for fairly similar reasons. 

1. Killian Jones/Captain Hook

Soooo in the first season this character appeared in (season 2) Killian was actually a good character. He did horrible things but he was a villain, so that’s ok. He also had a fairly tragic backstory, so despite how horrible he was, you had sympathy with him.

And then they gave him a redemption arc and made him a hero... Now this redemption arc... Doesn’t work. Like at all.

The reason for this, is that Killian managed to stay alive for hundreds of years. And even then, after the first hundred he was still a terrible person. If Killian lived an average long life like the rest of us he would have lived and died a terrible villain. If you only manage to become a better man because you get to live 200 years.... Then you aren’t a good person.

On top of this, Killian is seriously glamorized. He is portrayed as some selfless hero after all those centuries. Which I think it just.... Not ok...

I mean here is what our apparent righteous and pure hero Killian has done:

1. Was a pirate (the implications of that are clear... stealing, plundering etc)

2. Homewrecked Rumple and Milah’s marriage

3. Assisted Milah in abandoning Baelfire, her son

4. Led Rumple to believe he had kidnapped Milah and was going to sail off with her and rape her. Then said if Rumple could defeat Killian in a sword fight to the death he could go and save her to goad him into said fight despite the fact that Rumple’s death combined with Milah’s abandonment would leave Bae an orphan.

5. He explains when Emma is the Dark One and saves him from falling off a building to his death that he wears two rings on his finger. One of them belonged to a man named Barnabee, who insulted him and so he killed him in front of his wife. The other ring belonged to a man named Egbar, he caught him drinking the Captain’s wine and drowned him.

6. Murdered his father and left his half brother an orphan

7. Murdered two royal guards and then murdered Prince Charming’s father (when Charming was a CHILD, thus leaving him fatherless)

8. Refused to set Belle free from being held captive by Regina and instead tried to murder her

9. Raped multiple women (When Emma travels back in time and talks to Killian’s past self, and flirts with him leaving him with the impression she wants to have sex with him, Killian responds with “if I didn’t know any better I’d say you were trying to get me drunk... *which is usually my tactic*”. Getting someone drunk and then having sex with them is RAPE.)

10. Shot Belle and had all her memories erased

So a serial killer and rapist is being glamorized as some kind of hero. Killian like Regina is not a hero, he is well and truly an evil person. It took him 200 years to stop being a murderer and a rapist. What a great redemption arc!

2. Captain Swan

Killian is shipped with Emma and this ship is canon. The way I see it though, this is a nightmare relationship.

Killian murdered Emma’s grandfather and ruined his father's childhood. And now... they end up married? That’s.... That’s not a healthy relationship, like at all.

3. Charming is held to the standard that he MUST forgive Hook and is not allowed not to

When Emma finds out Killian murdered Charming’s father, she isn’t mad about it. Nope! She’s just mad Killian couldn’t tell her!

In what world should a woman look past her boyfriend being the murderer of her grandfather? Seriously?

Also when Charming begins being unsatisfied with all proposed venues for Emma and Hook’s wedding, Snow suspects he is not fine with Emma marrying him, and she says to him “that ship is sailed deal with it!”. How disgusting is that? “Your daughter is GOING to marry your father’s murderer! Deal with it!”.

4. Regina Mills

This character is like the fan favorite, but she is complete trash. 

In the first 2 seasons she was actually a very well written character. She was a villain, and the writers did a great job at making her dislikeable, as a villain should be (well not always, but it’s great to have a dislikeable villain). 

But then in the next four seasons of the show, they really began to glamorize her. And I think that’s ridiculous. They act like she has a heart of gold and is an amazing person and refer to her as a hero multiple times. 

So Regina this “great hero” has:

1. Tried to murder Snow White

2. Slaughtered an entire village for supporting Snow White (they literally show the thousands of bodies scattered in one area in the woods) 

3. Tried to kill Emma Swan when she was a baby

4. Cast a curse on The Enchanted Forest that sent them to a town on Earth with false identities and memories where they would live miserable repetitive lives

5. When Henry, her adoptive son, realizes that the truth about Storybrooke, the curse and all that she tries to persuade him he is delusional even going as far as to book him therapy appointments

6. When Henry’s birth mother, Emma, arrives in town, rather than let Henry have the chance to get to know her, she tries to bully her out of town

7. Raped and murdered Graham

8. Kidnapped Belle and locked her up in a tower for 20 years

9. Trapped Jefferson in Wonderland thus separating him from his daughter and knowingly causing him to break a promise to his daughter that he would return to her

10. Cast a curse on the Enchanted Forest implanting false memories and identities into them and sending them to a town where they would be miserable and separated from their loved ones 

11. Tried to murder Emma Swan by giving her a poisoned apple pie 

12. Found a man who wanted to kill Prince Charming and turned him into a giant to help him do so

13. Colluded with her mother to murder Emma, Snow and Charming

14. Tried to use this spell on Henry to make him think he loved her out of fear of losing him

15. Tried to murder Marian, Robin Hood’s wife so that she could date Robin Hood (this one in particular I find quite problematic, because a lot of people in the fanbase were sympathizing with Regina here... Why? Yes, Marian was very judgmental to Regina, but Regina had already tried once to MURDER HER! Of course she isn’t going to see her as a saint?)

And that’s only from the top of my memory. 

5. Swan Queen

Emma Swan and Regina Mills are shipped. And this is a hugely popular ship... Like... Why?? 

Regina tried to murder Emma like three times? She tried to murder her parents, and tried to prevent her ever seeing her son again? Why on Earth would you want this person to be with Emma? 

6. Regina/Evil Queen serum

In the fifth season, Regina begins being tempted to be evil again. So her solution to the problem? Separate “the Evil Queen” (all the evil in her) from her and then kill her evil self. And then she will be a good person without her evil side.

This is just... What? No. You don’t just rip all your less moral attributes out of yourself and destroy them and suddenly you’re a good person. If you have to do that in order to not be a terrible person, *then you ARE a terrible person!*. 

It’s just a really dumb plotline and I hate it. 

7. Rumplestilstkin

Onto Rumple. Like the others, he was a fairly decent character throughout the first five seasons. He did crappy stuff, but he was a villain so that’s ok. They did give him decent moral moments at times but that’s just making an interesting character. He’s overall a douche but can do some great stuff. 

Then in seasons 6 and 7 they gave him a redemption arc. It fails for the same reason as Killian. *It took him hundreds of years to get there*. You can’t claim someone is a good person if it takes them hundreds of years to stop doing terrible things.

And here is a list of what I mean by bad deeds:

1. Rumple denies a dehydrated seer water as he is offended by the prophecy she gives 

2. Rumple murders a bunch of warriors who have come to enlist his son (Baelfire) in a war, despite the fact he had just gained more than enough power to stop them doing so in less harmful ways. 

3. Rumple abandons Baelfire and sends him through a portal to an unknown world. Father of the year everyone!

4. Rumple murders Milah, the (albeit terrible) mother of his son. 

5. Rumple kidnaps Belle and makes her his slave.

6. Rumple creates the Dark Curse and has Regina cast it

7. Rumple tries to steal Cinderella’s baby

8. Tries to prevent Belle reuniting with her father by tearing down posters she has set up all around town of him and throwing them in the trash. Despite the fact that HE is the REASON Belle is separated from her father in the first place.

9. Makes the residents of Storybrooke part of a storybook (lol that was fun to say/type) where they have fake memories and identities and are separated from their loved ones AGAIN 

10. Prevents the Dark One Curse (Which has caused death, destruction and suffering for CENTURIES) from being destroyed

11. Throws Milah into the River of Souls

12. Tries to throw Gaston (albeit he is Gaston but still a human being) into the River of Souls

So like Killian it takes Rumple centuries to not be a serial killer any more.. So I don’t think either of them truly have redeemed themselves.

8. Rumbelle

Remember how I said that Rumple kidnapped Belle and enslaved her? And how he tried to prevent her reuniting with her father after he separated them in the first place? Well Rumple and Belle are a married couple and this is portrayed as a positive relationship. 

9. Zelena Mills

Regina’s sister. Shouldn’t be a surprise then that she is also a terrible person, which like all the others is fine until they decide to start glamorizing her. 

Zelena murdered Baelfire, who is Henry’s FATHER. She then murders Marian and takes on her form and has sex with Robin Hood. This is RAPE. She has gained Robin’s consent by taking on a deceitful form, consent gained through deceit is not consent. 

But hey! Zelena Mills is a badass hero! Forget about the raping and the murdering, she’s actually a pretty decent person!

[semi-imaginary-place]

fe3h blogging 1

spoilers

Sorry blue lions. It was between eagles and deer for me. 

ch3: Well OK. The church is now using me as their personal political assassin are they?  

Fe3h fav characters so far: Tomas: knowledge grandpa! And one of the few I trust  Gatekeeper: my pure boy. On the topic of trust. You know who I don't trust? Claude. He always angling for something. Always digging for secrets never revealing his own

I didn't think I'd like Raphael so much but I do. He's so good natured. He always wants to help and even when the other kids are mean to him. His only response is more kindness. Like oh youre kinda grumpy right now how about a snack. Like a human shaped golden retriever. Full of love and very food motivated. As much as he's a complete musclehead, his emotional/social intelligence is pretty high. He just wants to make friends. Let Raphhael have friends!  

Guess who chose golden deerI was considering black eagle. But everyone did black eagle. I can go on youtube later. I haven't gotten it but on youtube is lorenz and sylvain's c and b supports and they are hilarious

I found japanese audio of fe3h and it just really hit me that Sylvain belongs in an otome game. I mean his character design (hair color, hair style etc.) and the way he acts is already... eh. But then his japanese voice actor... and its giving me this mental dissonance. Especially aince I've seen the character artist doing utapri, samflam, and other stuff.

weeho spoiled myself on supports: Everyday I grow less and less convinced of Sylvain's heterosexuality. Does he even like women?? He's just emotionally manipulating them as a self destructive coping mechanism because he has self worth issues.  So he presents himself as the superficial stuff like social status and then gets insecure and accuses them of only dating him for status. He's setting himself up for failure. And each tine reinforces his belief that he is nothing but his crest and family. Look at this disaster boy 

knowledge grandpa no! I trusted you and I trust so few people. I wonder if it was real Tomas who first joined but an impostor who rejoined a year ago

List of potential immortals: Jeralt, Rhea, Flayn. There are multiple mentions of Jeralt not seeming to age, he looked the same over 30 years ago. Rhea looks suspiciously like Saint Seiros and was archbishop 20 years ago. Flayn act both young and old and won’t give me her age. That said now that its revealed in the paraloge that Seteth is her dad, maybe not secretly an immortal so much as magical bloodline. Also Seiros, Rhea, Sothis, and Flayn are all related somehow. The green hair doesn’t help. And Byleth is somehow involved. I thought byleth might be part of the immortal gang but mom’s grave stone said she died at age 20 so byleth was born at the church like 20-21 years ago

support thoughts: Are all of huberts c supports just him insulting people?? each and every day I fall more in love with Dorothea. her support with Ferdinand where she straight up says she hates him, the voice acting on that! Lorenz and Ferdinand was hilarious. This is why you get bullied. Lorenz and Sylvain was also funny. Not a big fan of Bernadetta. 

Ok so update on the green haired tinfoil hatting: Flayn related to the saint cetholynn????? somehow and definitely real old.

end of part 1

Thinking back the crests and church(seiros/saints) are what turn people into demonic beasts. there are beasts with crest stones in their heads, in Remire villiage they tried to turn people using Flayn’s blood, and later succeeded. Flame emperor is using the church’s abilities against it. Also Rhea’s been seeking to replicate... something Seiros maybe?? (or more someone.. someone who was precious to her) by ripping the hearts out of babies and putting in a special one??? Rhea seem desperate, but I’m not sure what (or whom) she is desperate for. turning Byleth into Seiros??? There is a ... tension is her, like she is on the edge of snapping. And what was she trying to achieve there in the tomb before she was interrupted. For being “holy” relics, they sure are ominous looking. and they turn people into monsters. The whole church is sketch honestly. The propaganda and censorship campaigns. The crushing of any that are a threat under the language of sin and justice.

So Edelgard went full supervillian. Wow. And Rhea was the immaculate one huh (still don’t know what that means), here I was theory crafting that she was a reincarnated Seiros or something. Edelgard is like a worse Alm, she wants to rid humanity of dragons ruling over them and install a meritocracy. Her methods though are !!!!! yikes. I mean any reign that starts with “kill all that resist” can’t lead to anything good. Also out of 10 siblings only 1 didn’t die of illness or go mad. hmmmn where have I heard that before.

That said I do agree with her goal. I love it when I can take down a religious institution in a videogame.

At Garreg Mach her whole plan in to brute force it. Like if we just keep throwing enough lives at it we are bound to win. Admittedly I know nothing of military strategy, but that doesn’t sound like the best plan.

Interesting the differences between routes. In Edelgard’s church allied with feargus, while in Claude’s the Church lost significant power and Edelgard successfully incited a coup, but why did the Empire give up Garreg Mach as a strategic position? 

My baby deer are all grown up. And yup another mark in the Flayn is some immortal being, her sprite didn’t change at all. Totally in favor of stealing everyone from the other houses.

Who wore it better Part 1 or 2

Edelgard: 2. I mean p1 Edelgard was already best dressed but p2 takes it to a new level

Dimitri: 2. I mean p1′s hair is so goofy looking I just have to choose the edgelord

Claude: both. Claude looks fine so matter the time

Hubert: 2. He really did grow into the goth look

Petra: 1. Both are good but I love the huge braid

Lindhart: 1. p2 isn’t bad but I like the two layers look

Dorothea: 2. but both are good

Caspar: 2. Something about p1 always bothered me

Ferdinand: 2. His character model looks better than his sprite, and his hair is so luscious and flowing!

Bernadetta: 2. its just a mess is p1, v cute in p2

Dudue: 2. what is even going on in p1. where as p2 is like... elegant

Sylvain: 1. as much as I teased about him belonging in an otome game, his p2 haircut is just ugly

Ingrid: 1. mmmm its fluffy?

Felix: 1. What is his p2 hair even doing??? it makes me confused

Mercedes: 1. Fluffy.

Annette: 2. never was a fan of the hair loopies

Ashe: both. p1 is cute but p2 is beautiful. both are sooo good

Hilda: 2. p1 pigtails kinda boring

Raphael: 1. though p2 its a shaggy dog

Leonie: 1. another fluffy head, p2′s low pony tail does not give a flattering shape

Ignatz: 2. a bowl cut is an improvment from whatever p1 is

Lysithea: 2. not sue about the veil but it is more intersting than p1

Marianne: 1. I always did prefer thick bangs

Lorenz: 2. its definitely p2. in p1 he looks like such a clown

Cyril: 2. Honestly he kept the baby face so there’s not much difference.

Claude sees that under Rhea the church enforced a doctrine that locked in the status quo of nobles and crests and he wants to chage the church’s influence to promote tolerance, diversity, and open mindedness. but, hey. Hey. What if we got rid of the church all together.

Why can’t I recruit the old general... hey. Hey!

Aww Claude introduced me to his second mom and dad

So the more people you can recruit the less painful things are. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t get to kill Dimitri.

In terms of characters, Ferdinand has surprisingly grown on me. As for Caspar I shocks me occasionally how uncaring he is about killing people. He reminds me of a smt chaos hero with the whole might equals right thing. As long as he decides they are evil its ok to kill them. Now all he needs to do is get possessed by a demon. Eating away at him from the inside out. Ashe as always continues to be an absolute angel. I need somewhere to gush about how cool Claude looks in him final class promotion. So I rather like the group of childhood friends dimitri, felix, sylvain, ingrid. And it always trips me uo to remember that sylvain is like 2 years older than the rest because he really doesn't act like it. I'm getting that they are all traumatized from the death of felix's brother. A lot of the characters have had pretty bad childhoods.I was surprised to find out that Lysithea was tortured as a child like ok wow. I need to spend more time with you. Does Dimitri have PTSD? Golden Deer has had quite a few goofy hijinks. Marianne's character growth really has been a a thing of beauty, I’m so proud of her. But I love my oddball bunch of misfits. How did Dedue not get found out??? He’s very noticeable. and Claude, you’re starting to sound like Edelgard. I love Edelgard’s final promotion. Looks so cool. Like a mix or her Lord and Flame Emperor clothes. I wince every time some mentions the free market or the joys of capitalism. I guess adrestia is imperialism, faergus is religion, and leister is capitalism. I didn’t care about Dimriti’s death, but Edelgard’s got me.

damn ok so dubstep cyberpunk dungeon and Rhea took like 15 missile strikes. wow this really is very smt. maybe persona 2. And fighting zombie Nemesis and the 10 was excellent (Nemesis is still a stupid name). I love it when we fight literal embodiments of the past

its hilarious that in Shamir and Claude's paired ending,  he ends up ditching 3 whole times. He turns the opportunity to lead the unified fodland down, then he ditches house reigen, and then he abdicated the throne! I love it! That's so him. And they both wanted to travel the world.  Technically Claude is also a descendant of Loog so he also gave up claim to the Faerghus throne too. I swear. This dude. This dude...  Next its going to be revealed that secretly Claudr is Edelgard's cousin. Or one of her "dead" sibling. Lysithea tell us that blood experiment to force crests leads to physical and mental damage. Does this have anything to do with what happened to Edelgard’s siblings? As far as I can tell every ending has Fodland under a single party state. Crimson flower, azure moon, and verdant wind all end in monarchies, and silver snow a theocracy.

Hold up. Flayn said that Cethaleann never had any children as rational as to why she's not a descendant. But how did Lindhart get the crest then?? And I might be mixing up the 10 and the saints, but then I thought  the crests were designed as tools of war by those who slither in the dark. Thats how the 10 got them, to use as weapons against Sothis. But that then brings the question of why Rhea edited history in favor of them.  This is why the holy relics looked so ominous and creepy. The animations are eeeeeeeeuuuuuugggh. My initial though was that the church is secretly evil and this is foreshadowing. I mean rhea's kinda... viscous? Ruthless? Filled with barely contained hatred? I was thinking maybe she's secretly the evil dragon of the game the way Mila kinda was. 

But then you dont need consent to make a crest. Only blood. Blood could have been stolen from cihol and cethaleann to make their crests. Alternately they could have chosen to give crests to specific people.  The 2 sources of crests is also why there’s multiple weapons for some crests. The crest weapons made by the agartans all have a similar aesthetic, but not all the crest weapons have that aesthetic some look different and probably weren’t made by them. As for why Rhea rewrote the 10 into heroes. It might have been to stop people from questioning the crests and relics and seeking to replicate them. By framing it as sothis's doing, with the power of the church she can control crests, how people view them, and keep a closer eye on the descendants. Its its a gift by the goddess, of course we cant try to replicate them.

Let’s see what Claude achieved before he dipped. anti-discrimination laws (race, religion), and increased foreign relations. Potentially equal treatment under the law.

Edelgard really likes brute forcing solutions

The whole opera thing with Dorothea and Manuela stinks of the idol industry where an idol peaks at like 18. Real opera singers have much longer careers.

Golden Deer is so JRPG in the best way. There’s an evil cult of technologically advanced subterranean people, a zombie army, the power of friendship.

It already caught my attention when  missiles appeared and the evil cult's dungeon belonged is a scifi movie like ghost in the shell and I was thinking to myself "hmmm... this all sounds very smt of you" or maybe Persona 2. I mean with names like Shambala and the whole general aesthetic of that dungeon ... yeah. But then someone points out the UN’s symbol is all over the Agarthan stuff. And wow we really are in an smt timeline aren't we. and I remember seeing the missiles thinking hmmm that looks vaguely familiar. Its the UN symbol. Which means in alternate future Earth Sothis comes, we wage a war against the gods and and then Rhea destroys modern civilization along with the planet. that really does sound like the plot of an SMT game. I did wonder at the inclusion of electronica and dubstep into the soundtrack.

THC (Thinking Hard about Claude). Claude let's everyone know he's up to something, and his self portrayal as a schemer is both deliberate and truthful. He's using it part as social armor and part as an excuse to probe. Claude holds genuine cuiosity, wonder, and passion for the world. He is not always scheming so much as he is one of those people who's brain never turn off. He just wants to explore the world, meet different cultures, and discover all the secrets. Given the environment he grew up in, his natural inclinations angled him to thinking in terms of how to best leverage someone or how to sneak around.

Alright so here’s the lore as I know it. Sothis=Goddess came from another world to Fodlan. Through her blood made the goddess’ children (Nabateans) who are the original magical beasts and can talk, and they resided at Zanado. Rhea=Seiros=The Immaculate One, and the 4 Saints (Cihol=Seteth, Cethaleann=Flayn, Indech=The Indomitable, Macuil=The Wind Caller) are Nabateans. Sothis gave knowledge/interacted with the native humans of Fodlan (Agarthans). Eventually the Agarthans waged war against Sothis killing her and many Nabateans. The Agarthans used their bones to make weapons, their hearts to make crest stones, and their blood to make crests. The above is why magical beasts and demonic beasts are connected to crest stones. The crest stones as the hearts of Nabateans transform humans into a distorted version of their magical beast forms. The Sword of the Creator was made from materials taken from Sothis’ body. Using these weapons the humans attacked Zanado killing everyone except Seiros and the 4 Saints. The 10 Heroes Relics were similarly made from Nabatean bodies. Seiros, already obsessed with Sothis thought only of vengeance and bringing back Sothis. She raised an army, killed Nemesis, and drove the Agarthans underground to become Those who Slither in the Dark. Seiros then took control of the continent under the guise of The Church of Seiros. Seiros and the 4 Saints gave their blood to favored individuals granting them the power of their personal crest as well as potentially extending their lifespan/granting extended youth. This is why the 10 Heroes Relics have a visual aesthetic distinct from that of the weapons of the 4 Saints. The 10 Heroes Relics were made by the Agarthans but the other crest weapons like the other Gloucester crest weapon the Axe of Ukonvasara and the Saint’s weapons were not mad by them. The Church the acted as a tool for Seiros/Rhea to control the continent and its course. She then rewrote that part of history. The goddess was just sleeping, crests were a blessings of the goddess, etc. 

I am unsure as to why she did so, but I believe it served the 2 purposes. First it allowed Rhea to control the narrative and how people thought about the matter. Second it erases the existence of a rebellion against the Goddess. From the Church, Rhea could control the flow of information, censoring anything that threatened her power. Using the language of religion she could also justify using military force to eliminate her political opponents. 

[thelogicalghost]

The Problem of Hans

With the Frozen 2 trailer drop, I wanted to finally organize some of my thoughts about the original in a post I can link to instead of trying to repeat this argument every time it comes up. 

Before I dive in, I want to emphasize that I am not trying to ‘forgive’ or ‘justify’ Hans being a dick. My goal is to parse his actions throughout the movie and find a plausible explanation for seemingly contrasting character moments.

Part 1: Some Background

The original story of the Snow Queen, on which Frozen was loosely based, set the icy-powered queen as the villain. However, during development, songwriters Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez composed and pitched several songs including “Let It Go” that put the sisters’ relationship at the center of the story. The decision was made to redeem Elsa and make the sisters the heroes, requiring the previously supporting character Hans to become a last-minute villain.

Because of this rewrite, and perhaps in order to preserve the ‘twist’, Hans spends the majority of the movie seeming utterly charming and even heroic. Disney inadvertently created a truly terrible villain, a sociopath capable of utterly fooling an entire country but revealing his evil plans and unfathomable cruelty only to a dying women. However, this also meant that Hans’ portrayal has several serious inconsistencies that bring his twist betrayal into question. These moments continue to bother me every time I watch the movie, creating a conundrum that a purely evil, brilliant, manipulative Hans doesn’t explain.

Taking the finished, theatrical release of the movie as canon, I as the audience was left trying to reconcile these discrepancies into a plausible narrative. First, I’m going to talk about the moments that force me to question the movie’s explanation, and then I’m going to present exactly that plausible narrative.

Part 2: The Bits That Bother Me

There are two moments that trouble me particularly in the movie. One is much more significant than the other, so let’s start with that one.

Hans has gathered a group of volunteers to find the missing royal sisters. Two of these volunteers, attendants to the Duke of Weselton, have been ordered by the Duke to kill Elsa. As they approach Elsa’s ice palace and are confronted by her snow monster, these two men take advantage of the confusion to run ahead of the group. Both try to shoot Elsa with crossbows. Elsa defends herself, pinning one man to the wall with ice spikes and pushing the other man onto a balcony with a sliding wall of ice. 

Just as she’s about to push the second man off of the balcony, where he would fall to his likely death, Hans and the rest of the men arrive. Hans shouts, “Queen Elsa! Don’t be the monster they fear you are.” Elsa pauses, realizing that she had been about to kill. The first man tries to take advantage of this pause by raising his loaded crossbow for a final shot. Hans, after quickly glancing upward, dashes across the room to yank the man’s arm up and send the bolt toward the ceiling. This sends an ornate ice chandelier falling to the floor. Elsa jumps out of the way but is knocked unconscious.

The key moment here is Hans’ intervention. Let’s consider the logic of this moment based on an evil, manipulative Hans:

If Hans wanted Elsa dead and out of the way, he could have:

Ordered his men to attack. She was obviously having difficulty managing two assailants, but attacking them with her ice powers could have been a perfect excuse to need to take her down

Continued to distract Elsa so that the first of the Duke’s men could shoot her

Grapple with the man but let the crossbow ‘go off’ to hit Elsa, either killing her (since he could obviously aim it very well) or prolonging the fight and creating other opportunities

If Hans wanted Elsa alive for some reason, but wanted a great excuse to kill or dethrone her later, he could have:

Said nothing, let her kill a soldier from a neighboring country, making her a killer and potentially exacerbating a diplomatic incident

Said literally anything else to provoke/manipulate her or the situation, for example, beg her to surrender (which she wouldn’t, making her look like the bad guy) or urge his men to save the Duke’s men (which would have turned into a full conflict that might have resulted in her wounding or killing her own people)

Instead, Hans appeals to her humanity. He says something calculated to make her stop and consider what she had been about to do. Then he takes an action that was much less likely to do her harm - Elsa had plenty of time to dodge that chandelier - but disrupted the standoff and diffused a tense situation. 

No matter which way I look at this scene, Hans’ actions just don’t make sense if he sees Elsa as an obstacle to the throne.

The second moment I want to mention is much smaller, but to me, equally disconcerting. It happens much earlier, at the end of the scene in which Hans and Anna meet.

Memorably, their initial meeting ends with the two of them standing in a boat that is perched precariously on the edge of a dock. As Anna leaves, both of them seeming quite taken with each other, Chekhov’s boat finally tips over and dumps Hans in the water. As he lifts up the overturned boat, Hans gives the departing Anna a fond smile.

This smile is what bothers me so badly. Hans, in this moment, has no audience. He is under a boat off the edge of a dock. Even his horse would have difficulty seeing him from that angle. Yet his expression contains no spark of malice. It’s gentle and hopeful, suggesting that he’s as smitten with her as she clearly is with him. If Hans were a sociopath, he would need to put effort into faking this expression, and why would he without an audience? There is absolutely no reason to think that his feelings in this smile are not completely genuine, except for the fact that he later claims they’re fake.

Which leads me to ...

Part 3: A Plausible Narrative

Hans arrives in Arendelle and meets Anna. She’s young and clearly unpolished but sweet and authentic. During the coronation ball, they enjoy each other’s company. Hans sees a woman who clearly lacks practical education and whose romantic ideas could land her into a lot of trouble, but whose spontaneity and youthful energy he appreciates. 

Now, in the mid-1800′s, like in most of European monarchical history, marriage among royalty is not a matter of love but of exchange and consolidation of goods and power. Hans suspects that there are problems in Arendelle. The princesses have been sequestered completely in the years since their parents’ deaths. Perhaps the reason Anna’s been kept behind locked doors is that she’s prone to thoughtless acts of romanticism that could easily bring harm to the royal family. He can’t offer the family riches or titles, but he can provide this woman the trappings of romance, be patient with her, and in time, nurture a genuinely loving relationship. He can promise to reign in her impulsive behavior and encourage her to act in ways that benefit the kingdom. Maybe he can offer more, in terms of what experience and knowledge he’ll bring to the table as a prince from a powerful nation, but first he has to talk to the queen.

Surprisingly, when he and Anna approach Elsa, the two sisters seem to be misinterpreting his offer of engagement and negotiations as an offer to run off to the church, like, NOW. Elsa gives a public, automatic rejection. Anna confronts her in an embarrassingly public argument. Then, of course, something happens that Hans couldn’t have predicted: Elsa reveals that she has ice powers, freezes the harbor, and sets a snowstorm on the country.

Without consulting anyone or taking anyone with her, Anna rides off to find her sister. Instead of calling on any of the advisers, minor nobility, or other titles of the realm, Anna puts Hans in change. Hans is not only shocked at the impropriety and irresponsibility, but the fact that no one seems to challenge him for that position. Everyone, local or visiting, is content to turn to this visiting prince, despite the conflict earlier in the ballroom. Well, if he’s what they’ve got, he’ll take that duty. He hopes to eventually be part of the royal family, after all, so these will soon be his people. He sorts out emergency responses including hot food and thick blankets, walking through the streets himself to aid in distribution.

Anna’s horse appears, riderless and distressed. Now Hans is deeply concerned. It seems that whatever sisterly means Anna intended to use to calm Elsa have failed. He organizes an expedition to travel up the mountain, taking volunteers (not hand-picking people who might be loyal to him, note, but inviting people who genuinely care about their monarch to help find her). He probably plans this trip and finds at least one guide, because he gets to the palace shortly after Anna leaves.

Despite having to battle a giant snow monster and nearly falling to his death, when Hans sees the standoff between Elsa and the Duke’s men, he says what he hopes will be the most effective at calming her down. He sees an opportunity to diffuse the standoff by destroying the chandelier, which knocks the queen unconscious. Despite having every opportunity and a long journey back to the city, Hans takes Elsa, unharmed, to the palace dungeons and restrains her.

When Elsa comes to, he begs her to break the curse. This is when Elsa says, simply, “I can’t,” and begs him to let her go. She doesn’t even know where Anna is.

Now, if Elsa was thinking even slightly rationally, she would know that Hans can’t simply let her go. She plunged the city into deep winter. IF the effect is related to proximity, leaving might help, but if it’s not - and Elsa clearly isn’t in control of this curse, how does she know? - then they’ll have lost the opportunity to track her down again and try something else. People are going to die. 

A visiting dignitary tells Hans that, if something’s happened to Anna, he’s “all Arendelle has left.” The message is clear: this is on his shoulders. The fate of thousands of lives and an entire country rests on him. He wants to go look for Anna again because she maybe will have some idea of how to break the curse.

And then Anna shows up, cold and dying. What she says to Hans, specifically, is that she was wrong about Elsa never hurting her, that Elsa has frozen her heart and only an act of true love can save her.

This is the last straw. Sure, eventually Hans would probably have grown to love Anna, but true love at first sight? That’s absurd. And of course, there’s no one else. Clearly something terrible has happened between the sisters, so hoping for love there is pointless. He’s been here two days and not seen so much as a close family friend who might potentially love the girls enough to save them. So now he has a country buried in snow in the middle of the summer by a queen who can’t control her ice curses, and the non-magical princess is going to die.

So Hans does a crappy thing and takes his anger out on a girl who’s going to die. He mocks her for being naive and impulsive, gives her the worst possible scenario just to make her feel stupid, and enjoys her shock and pain. And then he douses the fire and opens a window to make sure she dies quickly, because now Hans has a plan.

You see, witchcraft is a really flimsy excuse for executing a sitting queen, especially when he’s only just got here. But with everyone present perfectly happy to take his word for events, Hans comes up with a way to save everyone and take the kingdom without looking like a monster. All he has to do is say that he and Anna exchanged vows. Elsa’s killed Anna, so now he’s going to execute her for murder. Every story about magic from the era and before suggests that slaying the person who cast the curse will end the curse. He’ll save Arendelle not only from eternal winter, but also from two girls who almost destroyed their own nation with their magic and incompetence.

But, of course, both girls escape, Anna stops Hans and saves herself, and Elsa finally realizes what the trolls should have told her parents all those years ago and saved everyone a lot of pain: love is the key to melting the effects of her powers. 

So Hans is arrested for attempted regicide (despite his actions being assented to and supported by everyone else present), Arendelle cuts off its largest trading partner for the Duke’s role in events, and Anna starts spending time alone with a commoner while Elsa continues to show no interest in marriage arrangements, further eroding the stability of the monarchy. Not to mention the potential massive agricultural and economic problems from the two-day winter.

Part 4: In Conclusion

As I said earlier, I’m not trying to defend Hans’ actions entirely. His tirade at Anna when they were alone was nothing short of abusive. What I’m trying, instead, to offer is an explanation of why his supposed confession doesn’t fit with some of his actions during the course of the movie. I’m trying to frame the events of a movie set in a historical time period in a way appropriate to that time period.

(Yes, I know, it’s a kid’s movie and to some extent a fairy tale, but if your best argument is “well reality should be handwaved for the story” then I would counter that the story’s inconsistencies were actively harmful to the intended message. If the point was to make Hans a gaslighting monster, then don’t make his actions plausibly rational and rely on a single scene to demonstrate that he’s actually monstrous.)

I’ve tried my best to keep this post limited to the content of the movie and extrapolations made from that material. I don’t think Hans should be brought back as a romantic interest (GIVE ELSA A GIRLFRIEND DISNEY) and I don’t think any backstory, up to and including Hans himself suffering abuse, justifies his cruelty. That said, I continue to hope that Frozen 2 will see the return of Hans not as an all-out villain but as someone who knows he’s made mistakes and is working to be a better person.

I mean, if Elsa can be forgiven for plunging the kingdom into eternal winter, maybe Hans can find some resolution, too?

[itsclydebitches]

Buffy 3.07: “Revelations,” Morality, and a Healthy Dose of Hypocrisy

I’m massively late to this party (is twenty years fashionable??) but I’m watching Buffy for the first time and have feelings~ about “Revelations.”

For those who don’t recall or who haven’t seen the show, this is the episode where Xander ‘catches’ (aka spies) on Buffy and Angel together, and rather than confronting her about it and making even the slightest attempt to understand why she’d keep this secret (not that any of them did that regarding why Buffy ran away…), he immediately went to tell the whole Scoobie gang so they could stage an “intervention.” As you can imagine, it doesn’t go too well.

And as I’m sure you can tell, I’m not the biggest fan of Xander, or the gang’s characterization this season. I could write whole essays—and frankly I just might—on how they consistently treat Buffy like absolute shit. But that’s not this post. Right now I want to deconstruct the utter hypocrisy at work in this episode.

Seriously. WTF.

Ultimately the decision the gang comes to is that Buffy is blinded by her love of Angel, which is true, but the problem I have with this is that at no point do they or the narrative acknowledge that they’re all blinded by love, particularly when it comes to romance and supernatural situations. To name just a few: 

Xander has consistently been blinded by lust (cough*objectifying women*cough) and it has put him into circumstances where he’s nearly been eaten and/or killed, requiring that the others save him. It’s enough of an issue that they’ve made it into a running gag rather than acknowledging the problems inherent in Xander’s Nice Guy-ness. 

Giles can think of nothing but saving Jenny when she’s possessed by the demon that he created and later puts himself and the others in danger when he tries to avenger her death. 

Cordelia has a small moment (again played for laughs) where she thinks Xander has been turned into a deadly sea monster and promises to still love and take care of him, going so far as to buy him bath toys to play with. 

And then there’s Willow.

The above examples are just a small sample of moments where the gang is willing to put aside ‘the greater good’ for their own love interests—without extending that courtesy to Buffy—but for me the Willow/Oz pairing is easily the most overt comparison. Both Oz and Angel:

Were bitten by supernatural creatures and then turned into that creature. 

Are victims who in no way welcomed this change. 

Pose a threat to society because of their change. 

Have two distinct sides: Oz is not the wolf and Angel is not the demon.

The issue it that the characters continually muddle Angel’s personalities while keeping Oz’s distinct. (They want to make Angel into a metaphor for an abusive boyfriend SO BADLY and it doesn’t work). In “Beauty and the Beasts,” just two episodes before “Revelations,” for a while there’s some pretty damning evidence that Oz escaped his cage and killed someone, but at no point is he blamed for this. Everyone is unfailingly supportive, reminding him that he’s not the wolf and that they’ll do everything in their power to keep him safe. But why? Xander and the others made it very clear last season and in “Revelations” that they think Buffy should kill Angel (which, reminder, she did) because he’s a threat. The fact that he might sleep with Buffy and might find happiness and that might remove his soul again is enough to warrant his execution. But then there’s Oz who for three nights a month becomes a literal, not a hypothetical danger. Oz who could easily escape that cage (because if Hyde!Pete can rip it off why not a werewolf?). 

Oz who could not only kill people but turn them too (a lot like a vampire). Oz who has no cure for his affliction—the gang knows now that they can restore Angel’s soul should it be lost again. They can’t do anything for Oz except hope to keep him contained. All it would take it one mistake for him to do just as much damage as Angelus.

Or rather, all it takes is one idiot, selfish boy.

 Xander stands proud in “Revelations,” supposedly on the moral high ground, yelling at Buffy for putting them all in danger by keeping Angel a secret, and no one reminds him that he fell asleep while watching Oz. That he knew Oz was a danger, promised Willow he’d stay up all night, happily played the good friend/hero… and then immediately stretched out and deliberately went to sleep. That’s not an excusable ‘well he’s a teenager’ mistake. That’s Xander revealing that he doesn’t think Oz is a true threat… but Angel is.

So what’s the difference between them?

Oz’s violence is mindless, yes, while Angelus’ is calculated. And Angelus killed Jenny, which goes a long way towards explaining the gang’s hatred. It’s hard to look at the same face and acknowledge that it was a different person who committed the deed—Oz has it ‘easier’ in that his transformation is overt. His other side is a literal animal while Angelus wears Angel’s own face. But I think the hypocrisy goes deeper than this. At this point I’m convinced that Xander is still ‘in love’ with Buffy. Or, to put it more honestly, he wants what he can’t have. He and Cordelia never got along, but he wanted her because she was the hottest girl in school. He now has the hottest girl in school and wants Willow instead—but only now that she’s with Oz and unavailable. Oz isn’t a threat to Xander though because Willow wants Xander back. He’s not fighting Oz for Willow… like he’s been fighting Angel for Buffy. Since day one Xander has been beyond blunt about not liking Angel because Buffy actually likes him back and he’s wanted him out of her life since day one too. The fact that they now have legitimate reasons to be wary of Angel doesn’t change the fact that Xander wants him dead purely because he ‘won’ Buffy. He can claim it’s because of Jenny’s death, but I honestly don’t buy that for a second.

Xander wants Angel dead because he’s competition. Cordelia wants him dead because she cares more about her own safety than any moral nuance. Oz is indifferent to a lot of this, but if ANYONE should be sticking up for a guy dealing with supernatural shit outside of his control, it’s him (though of course he doesn’t). Willow only mildly sticks up for Buffy’s secret keeping to alleviate her own guilt over seeing Xander. And Giles…

Well, we come right back to this issue of blindness. At this point in the show Buffy is beginning to acknowledge nuance in her job: vampires are not inherently evil (Angel), sometimes they can do good things even if it’s for selfish reasons (Spike), sometimes it’s worth letting them go if they’re not a major threat (those Southern brothers), etc. Buffy is beginning to see gray in a job that was previously straight forward. Giles, meanwhile, still sees in black and white. He and the rest of the gang only view a vampire as ‘good’ when it serves their interests (Angel saving Willow, providing them with information, etc.) but once they’re no longer useful they should be put down. They shouldn’t be fought for like they would a real friend. Meanwhile someone like Oz is always good and should be protected regardless of the danger they pose (like leaving a window open…). Giles proves that he, like the rest of them, is unable to distinguish between Angel and Angelus like he does Oz and the Wolf when he says, “I must remind you that Angel tortured me. For hours. For pleasure.” No. Angel didn’t. Angelus did. But more importantly he follows that with,

“You have no respect for me, or the job I perform.”

That right there is the problem. The job Giles performs is to help Buffy kill supernatural creatures and beyond their love of Oz, Buffy is the only one acknowledging that not all supernatural creatures should be killed, indiscriminately. I believe that Buffy has a HUGE amount of respect for Giles himself (I adore these two honestly lol), but Giles is very traditional and blindly accepts that ‘how it’s always been done’ is the way things should be done. Buffy, meanwhile, has always questioned that. It used to be just in a ‘why can’t Slayers have a life outside of slaying?’ way. Now she’s positioned in direct contrast to Faith who kills not only without a thought, but also with great pleasure.

The rest of the gang needs to start acknowledging that both the job and their morals might need some tweaking. Buffy is no saint herself, but they need to help her work through all this, not yell at her for reveling in the exact same behavior they are all engaging in.

Hypocrisy at its finest.

And don’t even get me started on “Dead Man’s Party” <3

[progressivemillennial]

In Defense Of Millennial Feminists and Bernie Sanders

I was reading a piece in The Guardian entitled “The destruction of Hillary Clinton: sexism, Sanders and the millennial feminists” last night before bed and wanted to put together a response piece today since who better to talk about millennials and Bernie Sanders than The Progressive Millennial?  So, I’ll share my thoughts on some excerpts from the piece.

“Many younger women, on the other hand – no less feminist, no less committed to gender equality – had formed their ideas about “the Clintons”, as Savannah Barker reminds us, in the shadow of 20 years of relentless personal and political attacks. Few of them – as I know from decades of teaching courses on feminism, gender issues, and the social movements of the 60s – were aware of the “living history” (to borrow Hillary’s phrase) that shaped the woman herself.”

Now, this is undoubtedly true: most millennial feminists probably have very little awareness of the history of feminism in the 20th century and of the struggles that women in previous generations had and have gone through.  The author shows respect for millennial feminists, and I want to show respect for this author and to feminists of all generations because we have a lot to learn from each other.

“They hadn’t experienced a decade of culture wars in which feminists’ efforts to bring histories of gender and race struggle into the educational curriculum were reduced to a species of political correctness. They didn’t witness the complicated story of how the 1994 crime bill came to be passed or the origins of the “super-predator” label (not coined by Hillary and not referring to black youth, but rather to powerful, older drug dealers).”

Again, it’s true that we either weren’t there for that or don’t remember all of that.  However, I'm puzzled by this idea that Clinton used the super-predator label to refer to older drug dealers because her original quote was:

“They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called super-predators: no conscience, no empathy...we can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel, and the President has asked the FBI to launch a very concerted effort against gangs everywhere.”

Does she refer to older drug dealers as kids?  That seems off.  Moreover, millennial feminists were also concerned about Clinton’s reaction to protesters who brought up the super-predator label at a fundraiser.  Perhaps you remember her saying “back to the issues” after the protester was escorted away from the speech.

“Any rift between feminist generations, however, would almost certainly have been healed by Donald Trump’s outrageous comments and behavior, had younger progressives not become bonded, during the primary, to a Democratic male hero who both supported the issues they were most passionate about and offered young women independence from the stale and, in their view, defunct feminist past. These young women weren’t going to rush to order a plastic “woman card” for a candidate that had been portrayed by their hero as a hack of the establishment. They didn’t believe in sisterhood– a relic of a time when, as they had been told (often in women’s studies courses) privileged, white feminists clasped hands in imagined gender solidarity, ignoring racial injustice and the problems of the working class.”

This paragraph could easily have started out as “Had it not been for a man named Bernie Sanders, Hillary would have won against Donald Trump, who spoke and acted outrageously.”  I am at a loss because I really can’t speak to whether young, progressive women didn’t believe in sisterhood.  I was at the Women’s March on Washington, and a lot of the women there seemed to be interested in sisterhood.  But it’s true, I don’t know a single millennial woman who ordered the woman card from the Clinton campaign.  And I think it is true, as well, that young women believe in a different kind of feminism than what young baby boomers believed in during the 1960s and 1970s.  I am grateful for it.  My contemporary women friends want equality and want all genders to partner together for women’s rights and equality.

“And as much as I am in agreement with many of his ideas, Bernie Sanders splintered and ultimately sabotaged the Democratic party – not because he chose to run against Hillary Clinton, but because of how he ran against her. Sanders often boasted about the importance of the issues rather than individuals, of not playing dirty politics or running nasty ads in his campaign. And it’s certainly true that he didn’t slime Hillary by bringing Bill’s sexual accusers forward or by recommending that she be put in jail, as Trump did. He also seemed, at the beginning of the primary season, to be refreshingly dismissive about the “email scandal”: “Enough already about the damned emails!” he shouted at the first debate, and I remember thinking “Good man, Bernie! Way to go!” But within months, taking advantage of justified frustration with politics as usual (a frustration more appropriately aimed at GOP stonewalling of Democratic legislation), Sanders was taking Hillary down in a different way: as an establishment tool and creature of Wall Street.  ‘I think, frankly,’ he said in January, campaigning in New Hampshire, ‘it’s hard to be a real progressive and to take on the establishment in a way that I think [it] has to be taken on, when you come as dependent as she has through her super PAC and in other ways on Wall Street and drug-company money.’”

Both candidates talked about the importance of focusing on the issues, and it allowed Democrats to boast that their primary was far more civil and far more issues-based than the Republican circus.  In fact, the whole campaign was especially tame when compared to 2008, and with reason: the Podesta emails show that there was some kind of agreement that appeared to guarantee that Sanders would not attack Clinton.  Clinton also had eight years to prepare for these attacks that she’s establishment and beholden to Wall Street.  Some of these charges were made--with more vigor--in the 2008 primary.  And it is challenging or impossible to take money from large, powerful entities like big banks and pharmaceutical companies and implement a progressive agenda.  How do you fight corruption when you take money from the corporations whose corruption you must fight?

“Too many young Democrats made it clear they were only voting for Hillary Clinton as the lesser of two evils.”

I could be wrong, but I think this sentiment permeated the populace regardless of generation.

Progressive. It’s a term with a long, twisty history. In the 19th century, it was associated with those who argued for the moral “cleansing” of the nation. A century ago, both racist Southern Democrats and the founders of the NAACP claimed it for their purposes. The Communist party has described itself as progressive. By the time Sanders argued that Clinton was “not a true progressive”, the word was not very useful descriptively – one can be progressive in some ways and not so progressive in others, and no politician that I know of has ever struck every progressive chord. Context matters, too. As Jonathan Cohn wrote, in May: “If Sanders is the standard by which you’re going to decide whether a politician is a progressive, then almost nobody from the Democratic party would qualify. Take Sanders out of the equation, and suddenly Clinton looks an awful lot like a mainstream progressive.”

Progressives were for the moral cleansing of a nation?  Many progressives were also for enacting anti-trust legislation, prohibiting the establishment of monopolies, and replacing corrupt politicians who were more interested in serving the interests of the ultra-wealthy instead of the people.  But it is true, the term progressive means different things to different people.  The term has been used as a replacement for liberal when liberal became unpopular.  But by using progressive in either way, whether as a term to mean anti-corruption or a term to mean liberal, Bernie Sanders was more of either than Clinton.  This is an interesting relativistic kind of notion that progressive’s meaning has changed over time and that Clinton would look like a mainstream progressive if Sanders hadn’t run.  So, if you run against a progressive and you don’t look like a progressive, then you’re probably not a progressive.

“When Sanders denied that badge of honour [of progressivism] to Clinton he wasn’t distinguishing his agenda from hers (their positions on most issues were, in reality, pretty similar), he was excluding her from the company of the good and pure – and in the process, limiting what counted as progressive causes, too. His list didn’t include the struggle for reproductive rights or affordable child care. Nor, at the beginning of his campaign, was there much emphasis on racial justice.”

One of the great shortcomings of the Sanders campaign was that it did not focus more on racial justice.  I recall the reproductive rights issue a little differently.  He had a good relationship with Planned Parenthood and hoped for their endorsement.  His website had information on women’s reproductive rights dating back to at least summer 2015. 

“Charged with making coffee while the male politicos speechified, shouted down and humiliated for daring to bring up the issue of gender inequality during rallies and leftist gatherings, their early calls for sexual equality were seen as trivial, hormonally inspired, and counter-revolutionary. Inspired by the Black Panthers to look to their own oppression, women began to speak up about what came to be known as “personal politics”. But unlike the Panthers, women were told over and over that they had to subordinate their demands to larger causes in the interests of the movement. They found themselves simmering and stewing as boyfriends and husbands defined what was revolutionary, what was worthy, and what was progressive.”

I appreciate the perspective that this author brings to this piece.

“I’m fairly certain that Sanders himself doesn’t see “equal rights for women and minorities” as so firmly inscribed in our culture as to be “traditional” or “passé”. Nonetheless, Sanders gave Clinton no credit for her longstanding progressivism in these areas, while identifying her with the corruption he was dedicated to cleaning up. Organising against the abuses that he made his signature causes was indeed a worthy progressive agenda. Portraying Clinton as the enemy of systemic change, on the other hand, was not only factually incorrect, but proved politically disastrous in the general election.”

I was not aware it was the role of a political rival to prop up the other rival during the primary to help them win the general election.  Why run for office if you talk as if you can’t win?  I know many, many progressives who were left scratching their heads during the primary wondering why Sanders did not attack Clinton more.  Clinton might not have been the enemy of systemic change, but she also was not the champion of systemic change.  You can’t be that when you run as a continuation of Obama’s presidency.  Google Clinton third term Obama.  The search results are endless.

“Sanders’s branding of Hillary as establishment, however, seemed vastly unjust and corrosively divisive to me, especially when delivered to a generation that knew very little about her beyond what Bernie told them. Like progressive, establishment is a pretty meaningless term, particularly when lobbed at one Washington politician by another. Neither Sanders nor Clinton had been working outside the system.”

It’s true that neither had worked outside of the system.  However, Sanders is a self-described socialist and Independent.  Clinton is Clinton.  There’s nothing more establishment than the Clintons.  History books may very well write about Clintonian Democrats from the 1990s through the 2010s.  What once was new in Washington is now old.  The fact that the Clintons are so easily described as the establishment demonstrates how successful they have been in politics.

“Appearances to the contrary, Sanders was not a union organizer, but rather a longtime member of the Senate. And if Clinton had more support from the Democratic party, that was due in large part to the relationships she had cultivated over the years, working with others – something Sanders was not particularly good at. Nonetheless, for weeks during the early months of the primary, I listened to 19-year-olds and media pundits alike lavish praise on Bernie Sanders for his bold, revolutionary message, and scorn Hillary for being a part of the establishment.”

Ah, yes, Sanders was not good at working with others.  If you read through the whole piece, you’ll notice subtle jabs at millennials and Sanders alike.  As far as the media goes, I think both sides have beef.  Sanders barely got any play on television.  He’s on television way more often now than he was during the primary.  Clinton had more negative press than I know her supporters would like, and Donald Trump had way too much coverage.  The Trump coverage was particularly pathetic.  I would also say that, yes, 19 year-olds praise for Sanders’ bold message was well-founded because his message was far bolder than Clinton’s.  Clinton attempted to be the boldest progressive at times while also being the most centrist, and you can’t be both.

“Later, the news media even let Sanders get away with describing Planned Parenthood and NARAL as “establishment” when he didn’t get their endorsement. They made little of it when he described abortion as a social issue (as though loss of control over one’s reproductive life has no impact on one’s economic survival). They accepted, without question, his descriptions of himself as an activist for feminist causes, when all he had done was vote the right way in the Senate. They posted pictures of him being arrested at a protest against the University of Chicago’s real estate investments, while making no mention of the work Hillary had done, when she was the same age, investigating racist housing practices with Marian Wright Edelman. Clinton’s emails and her “trust problems” were the only stories about her they were interested in reporting.”

To be fair, Planned Parenthood is a fairly establishment organization.  It’s valuable, it’s important, but it’s not on the outskirts of importance to the Democratic Party.  Again, the media did a poor job covering the primary.  I think both sides have room to gripe. 

Sexism had absolutely a role to play in Hillary Clinton losing the election.  Putting it on the shoulders of Bernie Sanders and young feminists seems mistaken and fairly harsh.  Bernie Sanders lost the respect of many of his followers when he insisted repeatedly that they vote for Clinton during the general election.  He did not tell them to vote for someone else.  He consistently relayed that message to his supporters.

While it is accurate to say that most millennial feminists know little to nothing about the struggles of previous generations of feminists, to claim that they were swayed by politically motivated fictions to not vote or to vote against Clinton suggests that millennials are incapable of thinking critically and coming to well-informed decisions.  It should also be said that millennials had a unique perspective in viewing Clinton because they had not been raised with exposure to the Republican attacks on her and didn’t have an especially strong emotional tie to her as feminists. 

The bottom line, for me, is that people will blame Bernie Sanders and millennials all they want for Clinton’s loss in 2016. 

And that’s the beauty of being the establishment: if you lose, you can blame whomever you’d like, and people will go along with it.

[insert-witty-comment]

Welcome back to the madhouse.Last time on Hawkins Book Club, we learned that Nichols was personally watched over by God, UFO stealth systems can be foiled by college students, aliens can’t design a functional user interface for shit, the Star Wars galaxy is real, furry aliens exist, there’s an intergalactic empire trying to take over Earth, the majority of alien abductions are actually carried out by the government, a floppy disk can contain enough data to reprogram the human brain, there’s a whole bunch of souls of abused kids just floating around and swapping bodies with each other, the CIA is really bad at assassinations, you can find your destination by bleeding all over a map, you can buy your own isolation tank from a commercial supplier, Eleven was a complete pansy who should have punched out the Demogorgon (according to Moon), UFOs were intentionally designed to look like a 3D vagina, aliens are avid gamers, Nichols lives within driving distance of me and God is a Stranger Things fan.That said, we are now at the 1997 book The Black Sun: Montauk’s Nazi-Tibetan Connection. The Order of the Black Sun, as you may recall, was the magical cult in which high-ranking Nazis tried to time travel by screwing each other in a mass orgy while this guy watched, so prepare yourself.Once again, the Prelude is back, and basically recaps the previous books, but with one addition;“In the wake of all this, Long Island experience the horrible tragedy of TWA Flight 800 where hundreds of individuals died as the result of an unexplained in-flight mishap. Although many theories have been put forward, the media refuses to seriously investigate the most probable cause of the situation;Structural failure?“a particle beam emitted from a Brookhaven Labs facility which activated a nuclear missile.…That works too, I guess. So basically those books is going to be all about those dastardly Nazis.The Introduction finally explains what “Synchronicity” is;“Synchronicity is called the fabric of time because it is the principle by which we recognize or know the phenomenon of time. If different actions are aligned and intercede within one frame of reference, they are said to synchronize… What is not so obvious is that people, places and things can also manifest beyond the laws of probability. Synchronicity, but its very nature, enables us to make associations that we might otherwise pass by.”This is genuinely kind of an interesting idea. Moon then reaffirms that the Nazis will be the focus.Chapter 1 retells the story of how a Nazi U-boat landed at Montauk with significant amount of treasure to bury, and how the crew went on to become barbers in Queens. Prior to that, a significant amount of U-boats were spotted by Montauk residents in the water that the US military never fired upon. Moon concludes that his meant the Nazis had access to Camp Hero through an underground dock. He goes on to talk about the German Bund Nazi supporters that had a large camp right next door to the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Apparently these Nazis also conducted “Bon meetings”, which connected to an ancient Tibetan animistic religion which were closely monitored by the FBI.Chapter 2 begins with a woman named Cindy contacting Nichols and Moon, claiming that her husband worked at Camp Hero. She showed them blueprints of the base’s underground and told them that the base was still being used. Specifically, Cindy’s husband was once of three mechanics working at the Camp… to maintain the lawn mowers. I guess even time-traveling Neo-Nazis want to make sure their grass is perfectly mowed in front of their secret base. Immediately after that conversation, her husband was fired the next day. A bit later, Cindy also told the duo about several Bigfoot sightings around Montauk, which Moon interprets as being another connection to Tibet via the Yeti. Soon after that, Cindy’s father called and revealed the following information;“He can stick his finger into a live electric circuit and feel no shock. An hour later, he could shake someone’s hand and they are liable to receive the shock. I decided to meet the man.”Well, with info like that, who wouldn’t? “Max” then reveals that he was fascinated with UFOs since he was a boy, and in fact literally built his own working flying saucer.“Max claims to have travelled around the United States in his home built UFO with eight women. They would travel the countryside looking for luminous spots on mountains where they hoped to find gold. Some of these spots proved to be false leads, but many precious metals were found, processed and sold for a considerable profit. The money was split between him and the eight women.”….Yeah…..This book…..So because of this, the military hired Max and he was stationed at Camp Hero to serve as a courier. He reveals that the Nazis did indeed visit the base several times. He also states that when a UFO crashed in Amagansett in 1995, the military approached him and asked if he wanted it. When he declined, they took it away themselves. He also attended the Bon meetings, which “were held to tell people what they could say and couldn’t say or tell people what they could and could not do.”“Obviously the people at these meetings were tied into a completely different reality… It sounds like an Aryan race outpost that was halfway between this dimension and another.”Moving on.Chapter 3 kicks off with a discussion of the infamous “Birth of a Nation,” you know the film that portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as the saviors of the white race. Well, this film reveals that founder of the KKK was a man named (big shock) Ben Cameron, and the film was semi-endorsed by President Woodrow Wilson. Moon also states that the Klan’s emblem was identical to a symbol revered by both the Montauketts and Crowley’s gang.“The book I read further stated that the Klan decided to put ‘meaningless occult symbols’ on their garments. This is a whitewash if ever their[sic] was one. One has to wonder if the writer was personally deluded, deliberately misleading or just making up his own mind.”Pot, meet kettle. I’m sure you’ll get along nicely.“The Klan was obviously using magic for its own purposes. The inner meanings were for initiates only.”Obviously. The name synchronicities continue;“All of this took on an even more profound meaning when I received a letter from a woman who said that her mother knew both Ewen Cameron, once the head of the CIA’s MK-Ultra mind control project, and also Alexander Duncan Cameron Sr., the father of the same Duncan Cameron featured in ‘The Montauk Project’.Well, well, we finally have a link between the Montauk Project and MKUltra. So it turns out that my previous hypothesis was incorrect, and in reality Ewen Cameron is Martin Brenner.“Ewen Cameron has been written up in several un-biased books as one of the most evil monsters to inhabit the corridors of the noble profession of psychiatry. His systematic torture of patients through what he called ‘psychic driving’ is well documented. It is well documented. It is a system whereby one’s own words, particularly of a traumatic content, are repeated over and over on a tape loop which plays continuously on a tape recorder. Combined with various forms of mental stress and deprivation, psychic driving is designed to make one totally lose one’s marbles. This aspect of Cameron’s work was done in conjunction with the CIA. Most of it took place at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, Canada, where he employed many former Nazis. The CIA settled out of court with several people who were tortured by Cameron while he was working under the auspices of the agency.”Fascinating, but then the woman who’s giving Moon all of this information drops a massive bombshell on us;���She also told me that her mother had very esoteric understandings about time travel and had mothered a child with Ewen Cameron.”Oh yeah, Season 2 theorists rejoice. You might want to hedge your bets on this side. Moon comes into contact with this woman who is described as lucid, but suffering from PTSD. She reveals the following;“Her birth was carefully planned, and she was considered to be reincarnation of Innana, the Sumerian goddess…. Anna’s family is of pure Aryan lineage and is traceable beyond Germany.”….Okay. So apparently the ancient Sumerian Aryans were “enlightened and positive”, but became corrupt, and infiltrated every secret organization on Earth; the Knights Templar, the Illuminati, the Freemasons and everything else. These people are called “the Controllers”. Cameron was one of these people and believed that she was the incarnation of Innana, whose energy he could harness as power. To guarantee this, the Cameron lineage was kept pure since the beginning of time all in order to establish a New World Order composed of Aryans. He may have also been involved with sending Rudolf Hess traveling through time and met with John F. Kennedy’s parents.“At affairs like these, Ewen would put on a show. Women from various programs would attend to the men’s sexual desires. Ewen would arrange sexual partners and engage in what could perhaps be best described as the perverted occultism of the rich and powerful.”Well, now we know where Jack got the urge to go on his infamous sexual endeavors from.“Anna was personally quite traumatized by her association with Ewen Cameron. Consequently she began to study psychology to understand his pathology. She says he was overtly homophobic but also a latent homosexual. He amused himself by brutalizing young men as well as women. Ewen was well aware that Anna hated him, but he was gleeful about this because he knew no one would ever believe her over him.”Charming. Anna then describes that the intent of these Controllers was to afflict their subjects with Multiple Personality Disorder, with one personality serving as the blank, programmable one and the other acting as a cover.“Studies on MPD show that these individuals have an IQ above the normal range, a great amount of creativity and above average psychic abilities. It is also true that if you split a personality, the pineal gland will activate and the person can become psychic. The element of possession also comes into play as one is prone to pulling in exterior forces when being tortured. These forces will usually manifest as a beast of demon. Once MPD is achieved, further programming can be achieved by what is now known as Stockholm syndrome. This is when a victim bonds with his or her captor or controller.”That explains why the Demogorgon was attracted to Eleven. Anna also participated in out-of-body experiences and time travel as well. She also has scars on her lungs identical to that of Duncan Cameron, and the chapter ends claiming that Ewen Cameron’s death was faked and he worked for a foreign intelligence agency and Hubbard was a goddamn hero for calling him out on his horribleness and of course, lots of sex magick was involved.In Chapter 4… wait a minute.I just realized that Moon completely forgot to actually talk about the child in question. Seriously, he mentioned her (I’m going to assume she’s a girl for obvious reasons) twice and then never spoke of her again, instead electing to focus on her mother and his favorite subject; sex magick. Maybe Chapter 4 will explain this?Eh… not really. It basically states that the Camerons’ genetics give them a greater ability to travel between dimensions. Moon speaks with two Celtic shamans named Cameron who elaborate on this.Chapter 5 talks about the “Kennedy Connection”. A friend of Moon’s named Claudette says that she was raped by a German scientist who was connected to the Nazis in the 1950s, and ended up marrying him due to the social mores against giving birth while unwed. He frequently disappeared when they went to Montauk on vacation. Also;“The most bizarre story she had to tell was this German scientist’s dealings with the late Robert F. Kennedy. She said that while Kennedy was Attorney General, he would sometimes visit their house Queens. He always showed up in a limousine. The driver would wait outside while Booby came in the house. These visits were typified by her husband retrieving LSD sugar cubes from the refrigerator which he and Booby would consume and go ‘tripping’.Ah, the good old days, when the Attorney General could go off to trip out with a Nazi rapist and no one would care. Now it’s all “Russian collaboration” this and “Election hacking” that.Moon then goes off on a bizarre tangent when he claims that JFK Jr. was bisexual. He spends a large amount of writing trying to prove this and comes to the conclusion that the only thing that connects this to the Project is that JFK Jr. rented a house next to Camp Hero. Also;“Arnold Schwarzenegger, the poster boy of Aryan genetics also married into the Kennedy clan. He is the star of ‘Total Recall’, a movie that used a device similar to the Montauk Chair as its main theme. His psychic signature has literally been blasted over America’s air waves by nature of his tremendous stardom.”Uh-huh. I have no idea why Moon is so obsessed with linking Total Recall to Montauk, but let's just move on. Moon then describes how Joseph Kennedy Sr. had pro-Nazi leanings in the 1930s and appointed a Nazi sympathizer named Tyler Kent to manage confidential telegrams between Churchill, Kennedy and Roosevelt. Scotland Yard ultimately arrested Kent when they found that he was hiding telegrams in his apartment and Kennedy disavowed connection to him. Finally, a Scottish genealogy book ended up genetically linking the Kennedys to the Camerons.“This book said that both families trace their roots to the Scottish Isle of Skye, the isle of witches. Perhaps the Kennedy mystique of Camelot is real magick at work and not just a media illusion. All of you know that if JFK Jr. was ever nominated for president, he would be elected on the female vote alone. There is also a frenzy people feel about electing a Kennedy. It is magick.”This book….Chapter 6 discusses the Teutonics. It essentially claims that the Teutonics were involved with Egypt due to similarities between Norse and Egyptian mythology. The Vikings tapped into magical powers via runes as well, and the Nazis continued this belief. This is because the Celtic and German people have a sort of sacredness in their blood. Hitler was able to harness this old pagan power that was suppressed by the “ruling clergy” to convince the country to go to war.Chapter 7 talks about Lion Gardiner. He was a part of the Dutch “House of Orange” and had “royal blood”. In addition, every European king traced back to the Sumerian “gods” (aka aliens) who mated with human women, hence their special bloodline. There’s a brief history about the House of Orange that I’ll skip over for the sake of brevity.Chapter 8 covers some of Gardiner’s escapades on Long Island. In 1658 a guy named Samuel Parsons visited his friend’s wife Elizabeth Howell. She handed her newborn baby over to Parsons, started singing a Psalm, and started screaming about a witch, as one does. When her dad Gardiner came over she stated that she saw a “black thing” at the foot of her bed. She clarified that this thing was a shadow or something conjured by the Gardiners’ servant Goody Garlick. Over time, Elizabeth began to fall seriously ill and continued to claim that Garlick was bewitching her with pins. Eventually she died, and Garlick was put on trial for witchcraft. The “evidence” was that she dispensed herbs, owned a black cat, acted as a wet nurse for children and used “counter-magic” to help Gardiner with his animals. She was defended by her husband and Gardiner himself, and managed to get her off. This apparently heralded in “an era of black magic practices on Long Island which still exist to the present day.”Chapter 7 is titled “Project Paperclip and the Hamills”. The former was an Allied plan to save Nazi scientists and war criminals for their own use, and the latter was the family of a Muppet Show guest.“Since I have known Preston, people close to him have disputed his contention that he even knew Mark Hamill. I have asked Preston’s father about this. He remembers Mark as a young boy who cleaned up leaves from their backyard.”…..No, I’m still not convinced; you’re going to need more than that. Regardless, multiple people claiming to have a connection to Hamill have contacted Moon, but most of them disappeared shortly thereafter. In 1992, Nichols ran into Hamill in a Long Island mall, and that actor mentioned that he was prohibited from speaking to Moon. He also said that he was working on a sequel to the Philadelphia Experiment movie that was backed by the government.“When the movie was released, Doug Curtis was listed on the credits and, lo and behold, the Executive Producer was a man by the name of Mark Levinson. This seems to be an obvious play on the name ‘Mark’ and the ‘Levinson time equations’ mentioned in ‘The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time’. It was as if Mark was rubbing it in our faces.”Okay, this I can believe.“Shortly after this time period, it was reported on ‘CBS This Morning’ that when virtually all the homes in a section of Malibu burned during the brush fires, Mark Hamill’s house was miraculously saved. He appeared for a brief minute or two and said he did an occult Indian ritual which preserved his house.”Alrighty then. Also, seeing as how Hamill looked rather different in later years due to plastic surgery from a car accident, Moon begins to speculate that the Mark hanging around now is actually a body double. Moon points out that this accident did occur while the Montauk Project was in full swing. He then starts saying that Mark’s father was a Lt. Col. James Hamill who was an integral part of Operation Paperclip, specifically the acquisition of the V-2 rocket team. The “evidence” for this is that Mark’s father was stated to work in Navy intelligence and the Lt. Col. Hamill looked much like him and was old enough to be his father. This segways into the next chapter.So Moon was contacted by the German publisher of his books, Jan von Helsing. Von Helsing claimed that he was born psychic “from a mother who could read spirits” and his father was involved in psychic research. Despite this, he didn’t care much for the paranormal and became involved with the “punk rock music scene”, until a skinhead of all people told him that he saw Helsing’s aura and that his “crown chakra was not function properly”. This bizarrely helpful skinhead convinced Helsing to stop taking drugs alcohol and, um… meat, which somehow resulted in him falling into a one and a half week coma, during which he saw visions of “pyramids and domed houses.” Later, he met an aura reader, who claimed that Helsing was involved in time travel, and a part of his soul is stuck in another time. He then went on to meet Cameron’s half-brother Al Bielek who informed him that he was one of only eighteen people on the planet who had a “triple aura”, all of whom came from another universe as it was being destroyed. Their souls or whatever emerged to begin a rebirth and rebuilding process. According to Helsing, himself, Bielek, Cameron, Nichols, Moon and of course Mark Hamill are part of this special group. Cameron added that people have seven layers of information that manifest in a double lattice structure. People with triple auras have three of these things. Anyway;“The idea that triple aura individuals come from another universe is paralleled in Duncan’s own readings. Duncan sometimes referred to 637 people who came in from the Old Universe. There is an even further synchronicity at work here because Duncan’s psychic memories parallel the Star Wars movies almost to a tee.”Oh, we’re back to this.“There is a lot more information yet to come forth with regard to the whole subject of Star Wars. Preston Nichols was involved with the sound production and has publicly claimed in lectures that psychics were used to project into the filming so that people would come and see the movie several times.”………….….“The Star Wars series itself was based upon George Lucas’s ‘Journal of the Will’. Although it has not been publically released, this journal contained the dreams and inspirations of Lucas, a man who is reported to have lived at Montauk. The use of the word ‘will’ is a distinct parallel to Aleister Crowley’s concept of the will. When one unleashes the will, whether is through George Lucas or any other individual, the truth has a way of coming forth. The truth we are concerned about, lest anybody wonder, is unlocking the secrets of time.”……………………..“It seems clear that both Duncan and George Lucas were pulling from the same source. When we consider that Mark Hamill was once a roommate of Duncan, a childhood friend of Preston, and eventually became the brother-in-law of George Lucas, there is less room for speculation. There was an active but unseen influence working on all of them. It seems that Hamill, Lucas and Preston (who worked as a sound engineer for these movies) all contributed to remind the population at large of its ancient legacy and predicament.”I….I’m at a complete loss for words right now, so let’s just move on. Chapter 11 is just a long description about how secret societies and the government are suppressing Helsing’s work which has something to do with the Aryans and the Jews and I don’t know let’s keep moving.Chapter 12 starts off by claiming that Steven Spielberg is involved in this whole mess too due to making Raiders of the Lost Ark and Close Encounters of the Third Kind which revealed some of the truth about Nazis and aliens, respectively. Apparently a couple of people gave him copies of the first book. What follows is a colossal amount of horseshit over the course of several chapters that will try to break down here;*Dr. Felix Kersten was the personal doctor of SS commander Heinrich Himmler, who in fact did not want to actually murder every single Jewish person on Earth, and is essentially portrayed as a somewhat sympathetic figure instead of the utter fucking monster he was.*Hitler suffered from syphilis and his mental state was decaying rapidly, and was constantly being shot up with drugs by a “Dr. Morell”.*There was an art dealer who looked exactly like Hitler who was involved with Montauk in the 1960s and the Soviets might have covered up his escape. Also, Hitler might have had literal clones made of him.*Otto Skorzeny was a complete badass and managed to find a hidden Cathar treasure and later went on his own adventures after the war.*The Kaaba in Mecca was part of the Great Pyramid’s original capstone and was given to Abraham by Tahuti, Muhammad derived his “power” from the Great Pyramid as a result and was nurtured and supported by “the Goddess”, Allah is apparently more feminine than masculine in reality.*The Cameron family is literally the lineage of Christ. Also, Montauk was part of Thule, which was the capital of the mythical land of Hyperborea (“That’s what the Greeks called Iceland, you know”). Thule itself was the source of all life on Earth. Seeing as how the Earth geometrically forms out a void, Thule is the center of this void and is thus the titular “Black Sun”. Also, “SS” does not stand for Schutzstaffel, but instead it stands for Schwarze Sonne, meaning “Black Sun”. Thulium is also a “psychic gas”, which aliens require in order to survive on Earth. A whole bunch of “Thulists” met at an Artic base called Point 103 in 1945 to get in telepathic contact with a mystical source “at the center of positive forces on the planets”, called the “Manisolas” which are bio-machines that are manifestations of the morphogenetic grid.*Vrihl is still in play and is described as a magical force “set in motion by orgasm for the purpose of invoking beings from the ‘Outside’”. These beings are called the “Onoma”, the “deepest archetypes of the subconscious and are said to be the keys to evoking the Elder Gods or Forgotten Ones”, which in turn inspired H. P. Lovecraft. The Nazis tried to use it for this purpose meaning that this book is seriously claiming that the Third Reich tried to summon the Demogorgon from the Upside-Down. I’m not quite sure what to feel about that. Also, they used Vril to make flying saucersPutting the brakes on, we arrive at Chapter 22. So the guy in charge of the Nazi Vril project, Dr. Viktor Schauberger, fled to America after the war and was recruited by Brookhaven National Laboratory. There, he created the Cosmotron, a large particle accelerator. However, when he found out that his supervisors were planning on using it to manipulate the grid, he managed to break out of his contract and returned to Germany, where he died a few days later.Speaking of which, Chapter 23 goes into more detail about the Nazi flight from Germany after the war. So essentially the I.G. Farben Corporation worked to move scientists, equipment and money to neutral countries. Farben was responsible for providing the Zyklon B gas for the concentration camps and future Pope John Paul II sold it for them in his youth. The United States government gave them support before the war in exchange for chemical warfare research, but they were investigated after the war. One of the members of Farben was a man named Leo T. Crowley who also running the FDIC and was in charge of all enemy property confiscated during the war. Regardless, the investigation ruined Farber.“Today, I. G. Farben exists but only as a shadow of its former self. That it survives at all is puzzling. I can only guess that it is some sort of weird PR ploy whereby holocaust victims can make claims against it. Perhaps the real goal is to simply haunt the Jews. On the other hand, there may be latent hopes to rekindle the company under the rise of a new Reich.”…..Sure. Oh, and also an SS General named Reinhard Gehlen helped form the CIA and staffed it with some former SS agents.Chapter 24 talks about the Nazi shenanigans in Antarctica. So apparently Hitler decided that Antarctic would be a great place for a secret base called “Neuschwabenland” and sent a navy detachment down there in 1938. This is where the Spear of Destiny was hidden after the war and there might be a Nazi UFO base down there guarding the entrance to the Hollow Earth.Chapter 25 continues an investigation of the National Archives, which revealed that the OSS went to Tibet for reconnaissance purposes that ended up with the agents giving the Tibetans a large radio transmitter. Apparently the trip was actually meant to find traces of the prior Nazi expedition, which segways into Chapter 26. These expeditions were led by a Dr. Ernst Schafer of the Ahnenerbe for studying the Tibetan political and religious practices, specifically their sexual practices.“On his expeditions, Tibetans were filmed having intimate sex in public, the pictures of which included a fifteen year old girl masturbating in public on a bridge beam.”And you thought Jonathan Byers was a mildly creepy voyeur. Anyway, the Tibetans handed over their 108-volume sacred script to the Nazis, which were later taken by the Soviets. Chapter 27 then claims that five days before Hitler “allegedly” shot himself, the Soviets found six Tibetans lying dead in a ritual circle in the cellar of a Berlin building, one of which was wearing green gloves. Apparently this guy advised Hitler for whatever reason, along with a whole bunch of other occultists. Chapter 28 expands on this by stating that the Bon religion is based on the Black Sun and the mysterious “Goddess”. Moon then proceeds to bash Buddhism for a bit, claiming that it was based upon a patriarchal system. Also, Shangri La is a real thing. There’s a whole discussion about the Bon magick that continues through Chapter 29. Chapter 30 discusses the Shensi Pyramids again, and the Nazi expeditions to Tibet to retrieve magical tablets that would teach them how to obtain a “powerful consciousness”, and had a mining operation meant to dig up a substance vital to this goal. Chapter 31 confirms that the Nazis did indeed go looking for the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, just like in Indiana Jones. The Romans seized them at first from the Middle East, before the Visigoths took them in the Sack of Rome, and taken to a cave where they were rediscovered by Otto Skorzeny’s commandos. Some of the treasure was dumped in a salt mine and the rest went to Himmler. Somehow the Ark ended up in Ethopia. Chapter 32 talks a bit about magical “White Gold and Occultum”, which was contained in the Ark.Chapter 33 expands on this by claiming that an alien “Blue Race” produced royal bloodlines. Chapter 34 describes Napoleon’s life a bit and states that he used Occultum, which was found in mummies. Chapter 35 talks about Crowley some more and his contact with an entity called LAM, which is linked to the blueprint room Moon mentioned in the previous book.“Magicians in the past have referred to that blueprint room as R’lyeh, a region which contains the sleeping or hidden god Cthulu… All of the gods within R’lyeh are known as the Forgotten Ones which is another name for the Elder Gods or Elder Race. This can be extended as well to the Blue Race.”So Lovecraft was right all along, who knew? Also, Atlantis relied upon an addiction to a phosphorus substance called “Zro”, which allowed them to achieve a higher state of being.Finally, we reach the Epilogue which matter-of-factly states that Prescott Bush, (the father of President George Bush Sr.) literally stole Geronimo’s skull with the Skull and Bones society. Why? So they could eat the residual Occultum residing in the bones of course! This practice apparently continued at Montauk. Moon ends the book with one final exclamation that the Black Sun is the source of creation;“Today, it has come into full view for the world to see. The powers of creation can be accessed by any free soul who wishes to reach for them. The Black Sun is alive and kicking and is no longer reserved for those who would perpetrate evil against man or life. It breathes the fire of life and love. It is the hidden god, Mon, talking. In this sense, it is also the ultimate synchronicity in terms of puns. It is MON-TALK!”And with that God-awful pun out of the way, Moon presents one final Author’s Note warning the readers to stay away from people claiming to sell white gold, with one guy in particular managing to scam a whopping ten thousand idiots.“New Age people are now being targeted for all sorts of scams, particularly in the financial arena. As the Romans used to say ‘Caveat emptor’(buyer beware).“But you can totally trust me guys! Buy my next book!”And with that, we finish Montauk’s Nazi-Tibetan Connection. What did we learn? Well, we learned that there’s a pretty good chance that Brenner may be Eleven’s actual father if we go upon this. Also, we never found out about the child herself in all of this by the way. I guess that’s something to look forward to, right? Also, both the Cthulu Mythos and the Star Wars galaxy are real.Join me next week on Hawkins Book Club and we’ll take a look at Montauk: The Alien Connection.Thanks for reading, and Stay Strange.The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time OverviewMontauk Revisited: Adventures in Synchronicity OverviewPyramids of Montauk: Explorations in Consciousness OverviewEncounter in the Pleiades: An Inside Look at UFOs Overview via /r/StrangerThings