#poor things are so bad at communication its abysmal

[artinandwritin]

Finally working a bit on Little Socks part 2 and i had a little snippet i wanted to share!!

[abiggaynerd]

American girl historical characters ranked by me

1. Addy

for obvious reasons, addy is number one. Her doll is adorable, but her story is where she really shines. The books are absolutely phenomenal. They go over slavery and the splitting up of families due to it. THEY DO NOT PULL THEIR PUNCHES!! I used to cry over these books. I still do. Their family reunion is just. Absolutely beautiful. You can read them for free on the American girl website, fyi. 

2. Samantha and Nellie. 

A lot of people wouldn’t put them so high up, but Samantha HID NELLIE AND HER SISTERS IN HER ATTIC TO KEEP THEM FROM BEING SEPARATED. Nellie is a poor, orphan, Irish immigrant, and the story doesn’t shy away from the realities of that. the story goes over class, dead family members and trauma associated with that, woman’s suffrage, and the abysmal orphanage system and adoption of the era. 

3.Kirsten 

My very first doll! I got her when I was 4 and I ADORED her. Her story is also really good- her best friend fucking dies in the first book??? Leading her father through a snowstorm and having to stay in a cave? Rescuing her brother from a bear and having to hide in a tree? HER HOUSE BURNING DOWN? FINDING A DEAD BODY OF A MAN? HAVING TO SLEEP IN THE ROOM WITH THE DEAD BODY? Her stories are wild. Also, the part where she and her Native American friend communicate through drawings is so sweet! 

4. Josefina

I ADORE HER. Her story is a bit less dramatic than the other girls, but it’s a nice change of pace. Of course, there’s still a bit of drama- her mother is dead, there’s a flood... but in my opinion its slower and sweet! 

5. Felicity and Elizabeth 

Honestly, Elizabeth was kind of boring. I didn’t really care about her. But Felicity has such a great character! She frees an abused horse despite the penalty if shes caught being HANGING. I think she has adhd and she also reminds me of my best friend, so i love her even more because of that.

6. Kaya

Kaya has an extremely dramatic story! She and her sister were kidnapped and forced to be slaves, and when she escaped she had to leave her sister behind! A woman she admires dies and gives her her name, and there is a huge forest fire. Her books are fantastic and AG worked with the Nez Perce tribe to make it accurate in every way possible! I was quite frightened of the book where she was kidnapped as a kid though.

7. Kitt and ruthie 

Molly fucking WISHES she had what kitt have. Her books are gripping and heartfelt, and she is a great character! The book where she got arrested scared me so bad as a child i refused to read that book though. Ruthie is nice too.

8. Cecile and Marie-Grace

While I ADORE Cecile’s doll- (her CURLS!) i honestly find their books... boring. I can’t remember a thing about them, and i just read them. 

-10000. Molly and Emily 

Emily is a nice enough doll and character. Anyway, on to the main point: 

Fuck molly. What the fuck is wrong with you? You dump underwear on your brothers crush to humiliate him, demand Christmas gifts from your father who is at war, harass a traumatized child by making her trauma into a game, and betray the trust of your best friend by using her worst fear against her during a GAME. A GAME. my dad said “molly has a weaker story than the other girls” and he’s right. I do admit her doll outfits are pretty epic but she DOESNT WEAR MOST OF THEM IN THE BOOKS. Also she is NOT BUTCH like people say she DOESNT LIKE WEARING BOYS CLOTHES! SHE HAS TO BECAUSE OF THE WAR! I got her doll when i was a kid and was mad because i wanted josephina. Fuck molly. 

0. Rebecca

I ADORE REBECCA! But unfortunately i cant find her books to reread so i cannot rate her. but I used to go around to my family and act out the silent movie that she saw the filming of and get mad when they didn’t understand me so u know its good

0. Nanea, Carolina, Maryellen, melody, Julie, ivy, Courtney

I have not read their books yet, so i have no opinion on these dolls. But thanks to Nanea for replacing Molly. I am in your debt

[vettingsanders]

Bernie Sanders, Race, and Immigration

Two days before the 2016 general election, Sanders tweeted “I do not believe that most of the people who are thinking about voting for Mr. Trump are racist or sexist” https://twitter.com/berniesanders/status/794941635931099136?lang=en

 In 2015, during a meeting with police reform activist group Campaign Zero, Sanders responded to being asked why he thought a disproportionate amount of people of color were incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses with “Aren’t most of the people who sell the drugs African-American?”  Those present at the meeting stated, “Even confronted with figures and data to the contrary, Sanders appeared to have still struggled to grasp that he had made an error.” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rubycramer/bernie-sanders-revolution-needs-black-voters-to-win-but-can

Sanders opposed busing students of color to reduce racial segregation in schools, saying the practice was an example of “the government sometimes [doing] bad in the guise of good things.” Scan of article here

In 2019, Sanders asked if “ anybody think[s busing is] a good idea” following Senator Harris’s argument over busing with Vice President Biden at a DNC primary debate. https://www.mediaite.com/tv/bernie-sanders-knocks-busing-on-this-week-does-anybody-think-its-a-good-idea/

In 2018, fifteen racial and social justice leaders in Vermont, including multiple NAACP branch presidents, ACLU organizers, and BLM activists, sent an open letter to Sanders and the Sanders Institute to complain that they were “excluded” from the “national progressive movement that Senator Bernie Sanders is trying to foster.”  The letter asks “how could Senator Sanders host what is supposed to be an intersectional, progressive event without inviting the very people whom he serves?”  http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/vpr/files/201812/sanders-letter-2018.pdf

Curtiss Reed, Executive Director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity, stated that the exclusion of Vermont POC from the Sanders Institute’s event was “a catastrophic failure of his sort of tone deafness to marginalized communities in the state of Vermont” and added “I’m tempted to say this is no longer a question of benign neglect on the part of the senator, but willful ignorance on his part not to include marginalized voices in this national conversation on the progressive movement.”   https://www.vpr.org/post/we-find-ourselves-excluded-racial-justice-leaders-ask-bernie-sanders-get-program#stream/0

Vermont Black leaders stated they were “invisible” to Sanders, and that the senator “was just really dismissive of anything that had to do with race and racism, saying that they didn’t have anything to do with the issues of income inequality.  He just always kept coming back to income inequality as a response, as if talking about income inequality would somehow make issues of racism go away.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/vermonts-black-leaders-we-were-invisible-to-bernie-sanders

In 2016, Sanders dismissed Secretary Clinton’s lead in primary votes with “a lot of that came from the South.” POC make up a huge bloc of southern Democrat voters.  https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-sen-bernie-sanders/story?id=38277617

When speaking in Jacksonville, Mississippi, on the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, Sanders chose to criticize the Democratic party by saying “the business model, if you like, of the Democratic Party for the last 15 years or so has been a failure.  People sometimes don't see that because there was a charismatic individual named Barack Obama, who won the presidency in 2008 and 2012.” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rubycramer/bernie-sanders-revolution-needs-black-voters-to-win-but-can

At the same event, he focused on Dr. King as a champion of economic injustice rather than civil rights, saying, “All of us know where he was when he was assassinated 50 years ago today.  He was in Memphis to stand with low-income sanitation workers who were being exploited ruthlessly, whose wages were abysmally low, and who were trying to create a union. That's where he was. Because as the mayor just indicated, what he believed — and where he was a real threat to the establishment — is that of course we need civil rights in this country, but we also need economic justice.”

While speaking at the She the People presidential forum, Sanders was booed by women of color for being unable to say anything of substance regarding racial issues, instead just constantly reminding everyone that he marched with Dr. King decades ago. https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-met-with-boos-after-name-dropping-martin-luther-king-at-she-the-people-summit

Sanders voted for the 1994 crime bill https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/bernie-sanders-has-dodged-criticism-crime-bill-vote-while-others-n1020726

He touted his vote for the crime bill on his website at least until 2006, as proof he was “tough on crime” and “strong on the cops” https://web.archive.org/web/20061018180921/http:/www.bernie.org/truth/crime.html

In his 1998 autobiography, Sanders repeatedly used the n-word. He chose to keep the word in the text when republishing the book in 2015.  https://www.inquisitr.com/5620596/bernie-sanders-under-fire-for-use-of-n-word-in-2015-book-clip-from-audiobook-version-goes-viral-friday/

 The Sanders 2020 campaign hired and fired YouTuber Matt Orfalea within 24 hours after being alerted of his sexist, racist, homophobic, and ableist content, suggesting he was not vetted before his hiring https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/bernie-sanders-matt-orfalea-mlk-youtube-video/

 The campaign also hired and fired Darius Khalil Gordon after two days after being alerted of his sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, and ableist Tweets https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/12/bernie-sanders-new-head-organizer-called-people-fgs-bhes/

The campaign also hired former Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour as a campaign surrogate.  The Women’s March cut ties with Sarsour following anti-Semitic statements. https://nypost.com/2018/11/20/womens-march-founder-calls-on-current-leadership-to-step-down/

Sarsour was also condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for the statement that “a state like Israel that is based on supremacy, that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else.” https://forward.com/news/national/435964/bernie-sanders-linda-sarsour-jewish-voters/

 Sanders opposes open borders as he feels they would lead to the global poor flooding the United States, making the country unable to fund universal health care and free college. https://psmag.com/news/bernie-says-immigration-threatens-the-social-safety-net-research-shows-otherwise

During a 2015 interview, Sanders called open borders a “Koch brothers proposal,” arguing that “what right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that.”  https://www.vox.com/2015/7/28/9014491/bernie-sanders-vox-conversation

In 2007, Sanders voted against immigration reform.  In an interview with Lou Dobbs, he argued that the immigration reform proposals were pushed by “big money interests.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38M9vfg4TPE

[ginnyzero]

Completely Harmless Ch. 23

Completely Harmless An SSO SilverGlade Re-imagining Story (Or Fix it Fan Salt fic) By Ginny O.

When Lily and her friends wanted to buy horses and were directed to the Silverglade Manor and its myriad of problems, they didn’t expect to start a revolution. They were just a bunch a stable girls. Completely harmless. Right?

A/N: Things are only canon if I say they’re canon. Pre-Saving the Moorland Stables compliant for the most part. Posted in its entirety on my website. Posted in 2000 to 4000 word bits here. Rated T for Swearing Word Count 177,577

Chapter Twenty-Three Mr. Fussywithers

Bjorn was in charge of drilling the holes in the wall for the dynamite sticks to go into. Then they’d put the sticks in the holes when he was done, attach the wires, run the wires out towards the road or under the bridge towards the Moon Garden, wait until everyone was out of the way, and then detonate the charges.

So, first, this meant making sure that they had fences set up to keep people out. Good thing Bjorn had thought ahead and kept some of the fences that G.E.D. had been using.

“Waste not, want not,” he said in a matter of fact voice.

They set up the fences to his specifications. Then he gave them hard hats. “All right ladies, while I start drilling, what you’re going to need to do is get some wheelbarrows. I’ve got the truck parked. You’re going to load up the wheelbarrows, then load up the truck. When we’ve got a full load, I’ll take it off to the track site to make into concrete later.”

They all nodded as if this made perfect sense. They jogged off to get shovels and wheelbarrows that had ended up scattered around the garden from their efforts of clearing off the weeds.

“Better get the rakes too,” Pauline said.

“Brooms for the dust,” Stacy murmured.

They came back with barrows full of tools.

Bjorn wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Gotta put your back into this to do it right.” He told them with a grin. “Right, the first holes are drilled. Let’s see that dynamite.”

They pried open the boxes with a handy pry bar and some hammers retrieved from the stable.

Bjorn picked it up and examined. “Looks like the stuff. All right, what we’re going to do is cut it down so it doesn’t explode too much.” He brought out what could have been a cigar cutter and showed them how. “Mind your fingers. Wear your gloves.”

They blanched and nodded rapidly.

They cut the first sticks down at his direction and inserted them into the holes he’d drilled into the rock. He showed them how to attach the wires and then they wound the wire out towards the road where a couple other girls had been sent to set up the blast box.

Attaching the wires to the blast box, they were forced to find a hat and fill it with names to see who would press down on the handle and send the first electric spark. Brittany won.

Agnetha and Bjorn moved clear.

“Fire in the hole!” She shouted and gleefully shoved the handle down.

The spark went along the wires and at first there was a puff of smoke, then the dynamite exploded, shaking the ground and breaking up the rock in a great burst of dust, tiny shards of rock, and smoke.

They cheered. Even if they weren’t entirely sure what they were cheering for.

Bjorn chuckled. “Whelp, this would go faster if we had a better way to communicate.”

“James’ walkie talkies!” Lily said.

“James has walkie talkies?” Regina asked.

“Oh, long story,” Lily rubbed her forehead. “I’ll go over and borrow them with a bit of blackmail.” She rolled her eyes. “If he wants help with his photography project, he’ll loan us those walkie talkies. I’ll be back!”

“Photography project?” Elsa murmured.

“I’m not sure if I want to know if it’s James,” Stacy said in a soft voice.

They all had to agree on that, but Pauline having sat through the meeting regaled them in detail about James’ current antics. Bjorn supervised the filling of the wheelbarrows, stopping them before they were too full. “This is rock, not weeds and dirt, girls.” He reminded them.

The girls all reacted in various degrees of outrage and shock about James as they pushed wheelbarrows half full of rock. (Completely full could be too heavy and Bjorn didn’t want them making it too heavy.) They worked together to heft the barrows into the truck and dump them out before going back for more. This was definitely at least a five person job.

--

Lily crossed her arms and looked down at James. “I’m singularly unimpressed.”

“I need them,” James gestured with his hands.

Lily raised her brow. “To continue your scam with Mayor Peanut?”

James flushed. “You don’t understand. The tourists love him.”

Lily sighed. “James, did it occur to you, I don’t know, that entering a pony into the race for Mayor was a bad idea?”

James shifted on his feet. “I didn’t think anyone would vote for him.”

“Which says a lot about the lack of quality of candidates around here,” Lily looked around. Pia was in an argument with some of the vendors it looked like. Lily wasn’t sure if she cared to know.

Pia’s voice drifted over. “If we clear this area of shops and combine your goods, then we can attract tourists with an art fair or performers!”

“Right,” Lily muttered. “I’m going to stay out of that one. Look James, you seem bright.”

James blinked. “Seem?”

“Until you start trying to defraud people. Which, by the way, is a crime.”

James blinked rapidly.

“So, your schemes could get you in a lot of trouble one day after someone starts looking at you and doesn’t see kid.” Lily patted her horse’s neck. “Then, you’ll lose everything you’ve gained.”

James opened and shut his mouth.

“But you’ve got ideas, and some of them are pretty damn good ideas.” Lily met his eyes. “If you want them to succeed at being good ideas, you’re going to have to put the work into them.” She wrapped the reins around her hand. “We’re willing to help you. Not do 99% of the work for you.”

James flushed. “But I’m not a photographer.”

“Then, dear God in heaven, why did you think that taking photographs of Token was a good idea and not giving Pia the credit she deserves?” Lily’s voice turned tart. “If you think Pia is that great of a photographer. You have an idea, James. But Pia, by all rights, can take whatever plush she likes, run around South New Jorvik County herself, and publish a book so her name will be on the cover, and she gets the royalties if she’s going to be the one doing the work. Getting a publisher and an agent before you even had the photography is,” Lily trailed off. “Talk about putting your cart before your horse to use a Jorvik appropriate metaphor.”

“All right. All right. I get it. I messed up.”

“I think you owe Pia an apology about thinking her work and labor is worth so little.”

James gulped. “What do you mean? How hard it is to pose a stuffed animal and snap a picture.”

“Oh James,” Lily sighed. “For a professional quality picture, there are going to be hundreds of photos and thousands of shots and experimentation with the time of day and the shutter speed and what about the posing, hats, no hats, scarves?”

“Oh,” James pushed at his glasses. “I didn’t think of it like that.”

“And she’ll have to figure out a way to protect your plush, or else Token could get really dirty.”

James’ eyes widened. “Uh,” he bit his lip. “I don’t want him to get hurt!”

“And neither would she, so she’d have to take extra care that he doesn’t.” Lily raised her brows. “You’re getting a reputation as a user, James. And well, someone who’s dishonest. And that’s going to get around and run away business.”

James sputtered.

“So, I suggest you come up with a story like Mayor Peanut has laryngitis and let me borrow those walkie talkies and we’ll come up with a way to salvage your abysmal reputation. But it will take work on your part and some sincere apologies to your fellow business community members.”

“You don’t understand,” James whined.

“You grew up poor. Got it.” Lily snapped.

James jumped. “How?”

“You’re a grifter, James. That was the next tactic, some sob story to make me feel bad for you, so you wouldn’t have to change a bit.”

James flushed.

“Now, you can continue to play the small game, or you can play by our rules and see the bigger picture. That starts with being a good citizen helping out the representative of the Baroness.” Lily held out her hand and opened and closed her fingers.

James sighed. He pulled the walkie talking out of his back pocket and slapped it into her hand. He marched over to Peanut the pony, and dug the one out of his hat. “I already lost money from Ferdinand because of Pia’s meddling.”

“James,” Lily said in a low voice. “Honest, upstanding, member of the business community, that is your goal. Eyes on the goal.”

James handed her the second walkie talkie. “It was a good deal.”

“For you,” Lily looked down her nose at him.

“Ferdinand got what he wanted,” James whined.

“You weren’t exercising them. You were renting them out to tourists who may or may not know how to ride properly. That’s a recipe for disaster and it won’t come back to Ferdinand. It will come back to you. If people get seriously hurt riding horses that haven’t been trained or exercised properly before being taken out, then they could sue you for lots of money.”

James sputtered.

Lily lifted her chin and raised her brows. “You can’t have a stable and have it be empty.”

James shifted on his feet. “I don’t have money to buy horses.”

Lily crossed her arms. “Then perhaps you’re going to have to keep renting from Ferdinand until you do and not try to steal people’s money with ridiculous fines in order to buy said horses.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and hit speed dial. “Linda, this is Lily.” She smiled. “Yeah, I know you have caller ID. Hey, I’m sitting here in front of James, and he doesn’t have the capital to buy horses from Ferdinand at full price. Are there any yearlings left that you sold to us?”

James stared at her.

“I’ll bring him along and you can help him pick out some nice, docile, good for beginners, easily trainable, trail riding horses,” Lily said. “Thanks Linda.” She turned off her phone. “Okay, Jamsie, here is the deal. The horses at the Silverglade Equestrian Center are 350 Shillings each since it was a really good or bad year depending for foals. The bad news is that they’re all three year olds and are still settling into their personalities. The good news is that with the right training they won’t have any bad habits to undo. You can rent ponies for the kids from Ferdinand until you start making money. You’ll have to pay someone like Pia and the girls to train them to be good trail riding horses, but you’ll have your own horses. They’ll need to be fed, exercised, the stable cleaned. Oh, wait, you have a club here. So, pay them to help you.” Lily waved a hand at Pia.

Pia ran over. “Hey, Lily.”

“Lily, I’m taking James to pick out some of the yearlings at the Winery to be trail riding horses here. Linda and the Baroness are willing to give him the same deal they gave to us. The caveat being that someone is going to need to look after them and make sure they’re being fed quality food and given clean water.”

“I’d never!” James yelped.

The two girls gave him a look.

Pia pushed her hair back. “I think that the girls and I are going to take up a collection and buy into your stable, James. Just to keep you honest.”

James sputtered.

“The more people, the more responsibility gets spread around,” Lily said lightly. “And the more hands to do the work.”

“And we’d have vested interest that way in training the horses,” Pia nodded. “We’d also have a place to board ours and the fees can come out of our salaries.”

James opened and shut his mouth as Lily glared at him.

“The fees will be standard market rates,” Pia said. “Which, we’ve been researching.”

Lily smiled. She held out her hand. “Up you come, James. I’ll give you a call, Pia, when he needs help herding them back.”

“Herding?” James said. He stared at her hand. “I, um, don’t really know how to ride.”

“Well, then we’ll have to teach you. Can’t have a stable owner not knowing how to ride,” Pia quipped. She smiled at Lily and it was rather evil.

“We’re taking a transport,” Lily said. “It is what, three hundred feet.”

James took her hand and she helped him swing up onto the back of her horse. “It won’t be long. I’m sure Linda is sorting the horses out now,” Lily told Pia. She nudged her horse into a walk.

“Why is it so far down?” James gulped.

Lily sighed.

“I’ll have the money ready and we can do our transaction at the bank when we get back,” Pia said sweetly.

“You trapped me,” James accused Lily as they rode past the stone wall and out of Pia’s hearing range.

“You trapped yourself,” Lily said. “If you’d been honest and above board from the get go, it wouldn’t have come to this.”

James frowned. “Then I wouldn’t be making any money.”

“No. You probably would have made more because people would have relied on you to be a good trader. You don’t know how much money you’ve lost because you’ve given people shoddy goods and they’ve gone to someone else,” Lily said. “I doubt you’ve had a lot of repeat customers.” She urged her horse into the horse trailer.

The engine started and the truck pulling the trailer drove slowly away. They could see the countryside passing outside the windows.

James didn’t say much. “Why are you doing this for me?” He asked quietly, in a very small voice. “I upset your friends. You called me a user and a fraud.”

“Because, I think with the right guidance and the right people around you, James, that you can be a good force for this county.” Lily glanced over her shoulder at him. “You want to succeed. You want Fort Pinta to succeed. You put in the best you’ve got and do the work. And we’ll be here helping every step of the way, because we’re stronger together than we are apart. Don’t view the Pony race as competition. Don’t view the Fort Pinta Beach Party as a rival. Those are opportunities to help Fort Pinta and Jorvik grow. If someone rents a pony from you and go and does the pony race with Penny and Polly, that’s not a loss, that’s a win for Fort Pinta and South New Jorvik County as a whole. The more money they spend, the more money goes into the County and the better everyone can live.”

James grumbled.

“Other peoples’ visions may be different than yours, it doesn’t make them wrong,” Lily said evenly. The transport pulled to a stop behind the S.E.C. stables. The door fell open slowly, the electronics whirring.

Lily backed her horse out and rode through the arch stopping under the dome.

Linda came out of the sell side. “I think I’ve got them sorted. Howdy James, I’m Linda. I’m friends with your sister, Alex.”

“I know,” James ducked his head.

“You first,” Lily said.

James slowly got down, not entirely sure how to do it. “So, about these horses.”

“You have a race and also rent for trail rides, right?” Linda said. “These are good racing horses, and also are trainable enough to be trail riding horses. I’d send someone out with them that has experience though.”

Lily cleared her throat. “Pia is the President of the Fort Pinta Pinto Ponies Club and they’re willing to buy in. They can lead the rides. I need to take these walkie talkies off to Bjorn and Agnetha for our tunneling project.”

Linda nodded. “I’ll show him the horses.”

Lily rode off quickly.

Linda put her arm around James’ shoulders. “How many scoldings have you had?”

“Three, so far,” James slouched.

Linda pursed her lips. “All right. Consider yourself scolded a fourth time. I’m doing this for Alex, James. Because she loves you and wants to see you succeed.”

James gulped.

Linda tugged him into the stable to look at the horses. She explained their finer points to James as they waited for Lily to return.

By the time she did, one of the stallions had taken to James, playfully grabbing his hat and running off with it. Linda laughed and said that James had made a friend, that the stallion was definitely his horse. Or he was the stallion’s human.

Lily leaned over. “Isn’t that Fussywithers?”

“Yep,” Linda chortled.

Fussywithers was only a nickname, because the young stallion as fussy and finicky. His water had to be absolutely fresh. His food just right. His stall perfectly clean and pristine. There was no margin of error with Mr. Fussy.

Lily giggled. He was the perfect horse for James. Funny, how the horses that everyone found were the ones they needed. She dialed up Pia and told her to come get James and his new best friend.

FOR THE ACCOMPANYING IMAGES PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE MY WATERMARK AND CONTACT INFORMATION. THANK YOU. I get it. Some of you might get excited and want to see this stuff in the game, especially the clothes, tack, and pets. However, the only way I want to see this in the game is if I get paid for it. If I see it in the game and I’m not paid for it, there will be hell to pay. You think I’m salty. I’d be angry. Personally, I’m not going to send this info to SSO. If you do, leave my contact information there! Don’t give them any excuses to steal.

Now, I’ll know you haven’t read this note if you leave me comments about how ‘salty’ I am about the game and if I hate it so much I should do something else. I am doing something else. It’s called Mystic Riders MMORPG Project. Mystic Riders however is a very baby phase game. You can check out our plans on the game dev blog. (Skills, Factions, Professions, Crafting, Mini-Games, 25+ horse breeds!) If you know anyone who would be interested and has money or contacts about game making, direct them to the blog.

[hopevalley]

What are your favorite and least stories from each Season and why?

Oh man, this is a really thought-provoking question! I’ll try to come up with good answers (even though sometimes the seasons blur together a little bit):

I’ll give some basic thoughts on each season and what worked/didn’t work for me.

Season 1

While I appreciate that they made the effort to have Elizabeth stick out (vs. blending in with all the Poors), she was downright unbearable at times in the early seasons. Her wanting to help and coming up with ideas is pretty decent in terms of story structure and even characterization/character motivation, but holy cow was it intrusive and nosy/patronizing of her sometimes! I think the point might have been to give Elizabeth flaws, which is great, but people just seemed to accept it, and her, too quickly, at least for my liking. A shame because I felt like her struggling to fit in would 1) be good for her character/force her to understand that to be accepted here she has to concede to giving up her former lifestyle, and 2) be a great, GREAT way for her and Abigail to bond and become friends, since this is something Abigail also struggled with!

So basically, the ‘story’ of Elizabeth coming to fit in in Coal Valley? Vaguely rubbish.

So much DID work, though, and could have been expanded upon for even better storytelling!!! This is especially true of the widows/related stories.

Loss of faith/faltering faith

Loss of personal identity

Moving on/past grief

Processing guilt 

Protecting the memory of a deceased loved one

We also had some great smaller personal stories.

Genius child has to work in the mine because there’s no one else ot take care of his family

Young man can’t read and has to work in the mine (and even after he does start learning how to read, probably doesn’t get to leave). Elizabeth still taking the time to try and help him still means something!

Season 2

I will never forgive the series for its convoluted attempt at a love triangle, here. Charles wasn’t unlikable, but he was OBVIOUSLY interested in Elizabeth romantically, and I don’t feel she’d be so stupid as to be blind to that, old chum or not.

Basically, it was one of the worst plots to ever exist on the show, because it just wasn’t believable in any capacity and felt like drama that existed to be a roadblock more than anything.

Also, not to whine, but Bill’s whole ‘counterfeit money’ plotline wasn’t very well-written.

The plot itself makes sense, but the way it bounced around seems to have just confused enough people that no one even remembers this was a thing.

That said, I think it was a good plot for the character... It was just not executed as well as it needed to have been to make a difference/really shine.

There are a lot of small things from S2 that were pretty nice, though.

Abigail’s fight to help Clara was meaningful, but I’m not sure how I feel about the addition of Clara from a writing standpoint. I feel like Abigail should have felt something was off about Peter’s trips from the start... The issue is that Hamilton is VERY far away and it’s VERY doubtful Peter would have ever gone there. Union City makes more sense if we’re talking about picking up shipments.

Tom and Julie were entertaining if nothing else.

I couldn’t tell you a single thing that happened in Hope Valley in S2, but I’m sure there were Events.

Season 3

Honestly I don’t think S3 had anything horrible in it. It just wasn’t very inspiring at times? It was like they had all these really good ideas but didn’t want to fully commit to any of them.

Henry Gowen was a star.

Frank was excellent in this season.

The biggest issue I have with this plot is simply that they didn’t take it all the way. Either he’s a dangerous man to allow to stay in town or he’s not. Saying he is doesn’t make it so. A rock through a window? Okay, sure...that’s threatening I guess. But it didn’t feel like enough to turn the whole town.

And again, having him barely doing anything even though he’d definitely be worried for Abigail and Cody’s safety is just inane.

Still, overall the whole thing was pretty good/well-done. Especially that unexpected turn at the end where Henry helped turn the tide. (I still wish that had gone somewhere and wonder even now if they had an idea they wanted to use and didn’t get the chance to.)

Abigail adopting children was nice. I wish Becky hadn’t been a part of it at all though. Like the IDEA is nice, but I can’t imagine she’d believe in it all as fast/readily as she does? This plotline just seemed great for Cody and meaningless to Becky, IMO.

But hey, the thing with Cody is meaningful enough. My issue is just that he’s like, 8 or 9 and remembers his parents very clearly, so I don’t think he’d be that willing to replace them. I guess it could just be his personality, but it might make more sense for him to be like 5-6 years old instead (less attached with fuzzier memories by this point if they’ve been on the run awhile).

Despite my qualms I think this was a pretty good story for Abigail. Just wish they hadn’t dropped her role as a mom as quickly as it felt they did.

Hattie was a good character and I enjoyed her introduction story. It was sad, but it felt good/satisfying.

Bill buying Henry’s share in the café was a great little thing. Maybe too convenient and itching for a story of its own (instead of it just happening), but overall a good idea.

Jack’s mom coming to town was entertaining. She had some really good lines. Lard in coffee. I mean...this was gold.

Season 4

The peddler was a cute addition but I didn’t much care for the overt magical element.

If it felt a little more real/grounded/down to earth I think I might have been more intrigued. 

Frank getting his original Bible back was a GREAT story but when they tried tying it into his vaguely stalker-like behavior? It just ruined the entire thing.

For what it’s worth, Frank’s character goes downhill pretty sharply in this season.

There were a lot of cute kid storylines in this one. But they weren’t all...great...

Robert telling the lie about the bear? Nice.

The kid with the knee brace? Ugh.

The storyline itself wasn’t bad!

But after Becky miraculously recovered the previous season it just felt like a slap in the face. I live with chronic pain and it’s just one of those things where I’d like a little representation somewhere.

I still think Becky should have stayed wheelchairbound.

I can’t get over how insulting it was that she just MIND OVER MATTER FIXED HERSELF. The writer who put that in there should be slapped, and the writer who wrote the saME GODFORSAKEN STORY AGAIN with this child should also be slapped.

I really feel that if they were gonna let Becky recover like that, this kid should be living with a permanent disability and this episode could deal with kids helping him play/doing activities he could participate and enjoy.

Maybe it’s too on-the-nose but the hardest part about a chronic illness/disability of any kind is the part where you lose things you loved to do that you considered a part of your identity. That’s an awfully deep storyline for WCtH, but they should have gone for it here.

Phillip was in between.

Phillip and his father were great, but Elizabeth was just SO incredibly awful. This is where she and Abigail started always being right about everything and I felt her involvement was unbearable.

They should have just let Faith take over Elizabeth’s role in that plot and it would have been way better. They could have had the eyesight issue earlier and done something great with it.

Frank and Abigail’s relationship at the beginning of this season was pretty interesting. Even though the whole “danger” thing was a little goofy, it was nice to see them communicating and adjusting. 

It felt like a natural issue people would actually have. And it wasn’t smoothly worked out, which is fine.

Also, Rosemary’s interference was hilarious.

RIP to the following:

Frank’s character after his earlier scene, because he doesn’t get anything else that’s actually in character.

Good writing because Carson is now the town hero he’s gonna save Cody from appendicitis because other doctors are just completely stupid!

Also Carson is a surgeon so TAKE THAT, regular doctors!

Doug. You were a real bro, my guy.

I DID like Doug’s role in the story, though. His death made some sense, but it was ill-timed. (How convenient that we only even hear of him moments before his death lol.)

AJ Foster is a highlight of S4 for me. I love her, and for the most part I love her introduction.

She’s such a pain in the neck, but she also talks a lot of sense.

The writing isn’t great for her, or for Bill in these scenes, but at least there was An Attempt™.

I appreciate that they introduced the idea of her much earlier in the season and built up to her actual appearance, which I couldn’t have guessed would be relevant early on.

Considering how the officers at my company hate our IRS auditor, I find the fact that AJ has enemies beyond believable.

Railroad shenanigans were pretty entertaining in this season, too.

Season 5

The last episode at least tried to be kind to the characters, so I appreciate it.

Elizabeth’s conversation with her father before her wedding was a highlight of the entire season.

AJ’s return plot was abysmal.

I’d be terribly embarrassed to have been the one to write this, especially considering how completely whack it feels next to the other plots.

I’ve ranted about this so many times I should have run out of steam but BOY is it cringey. This is the height of Bill-is-a-grumpy-old-man as a Thing in this series and this is probably when it is its worst.

The rattlesnake plotline was contrived as heck, but the only thing to make it worse was how weird everyone acted.

Rhonda was a good character and the plotline, if it wasn’t so rushed, would have actually been really great. I still liked it overall, though.

Frank’s send-off was dumb, but at least he got one on-screen.

I still can’t believe they killed their main romantic male lead off-screen.

What the heck...

Abigail was really, really annoying in this season, and so was Elizabeth. Unbearable.

Also, I still hate the pregnancy oooops~~ ♥♥ plot at the end of the grieving episode. Really? COME ON. I know they wanted to give the fans hope but it was jarring.

Season 6

I still HATE the nativity == baby Jack’s birth parallels. 

Why did they feel the need to do that. Why couldn’t we have just gotten pregnant Elizabeth shenanigans?

They put Jack’s DEATH ON THE TOMBSTONE like how is she popping out a baby less than two months later when she didn’t even know she wa---?F?DJSAFLJDSAFHLDSAL?

Abigail?

DELETED.

Thank goodness.

Bill?

Assassinated. Or at least, his character was.

This is bad. :(

On the plus side he gets promoted to the position of JUDGE...and barely does anything worthwhile with it...yet.

GODFATHER BILL. The best thing in this season.

Fiona?

A goddess. I love her.

Lucas?

Slimy.

But handsome.

The 4th Property Brother. He even tries his hand at renovating.

Nathan?

Honest and good.

Pretty cute.

Works together with Bill once in one of Bill’s only good scenes.

The oil plotline is actually pretty good/fun. Jesse and Clara get more scenes finally. 

Elizabeth isn’t the focus of everything.

Lee and Rosemary got like, no mention in any of these posts but mostly because it felt like they were never really doing anything before, but I did feel like they were given a little more meaningful lines/places in this season.

--

How’s this for an attempt? :P I’m probably missing A LOT but I can’t recall everything too easily!

[hewwoes-moved]

(smacks ☕ so hard on your desk the ceramic cracks just a little and coffee gets fucking everywhere) homestuck.

fhfjgdjdgdj ok shelby this got rly long winded and personal u_u theres just a lot for me 2 say

just speaking in terms of the comic itself it honestly didnt do much for me by just reading it . like yeah vriska helped me come to terms with being a lesbian but highkey that was more thanks to the fandom for being so vehemently for or against it (which resulted in me having to align myself with a VERY passionate group of people either way. god im glad i stanned vriska nd got to hear the right voices). the same thing goes for lgbthsa too, that group was only made in response to shitty fans, not the comic. 

but yknow like. embracing my sexuality and finding a wonderful longterm friend group are HUGE deals for me and regardless of whether or not i like it the homestuck fandom (and thus homestuck itself) WAS a factor in building that.

thinking about it now thats probably why the epilogue felt so fucking maliciously bad; it told a "story" of how this closely knit friend group fell to shit so quickly and how love/sexuality is at best meaningless and at worst destructive. idk about you shelby but that was the worst betrayal ive ever experienced in my life.

id rather not get into the whole blame game of whether or not repeatedly putting my faith in homestuck was a stupid idea bc it usually just makes me depressed. the critical part of me says i shouldve seen it coming, considering all the bullshit that stemmed from troll call/friendsim (mainly talking about lanque but also marvus and elwurd lole), whatpumpkins abysmal communication, and to an extent even act 1 of hiveswap misleading us with xefros and dammeks relationship. the part of me that happens to enjoy enjoying things says that i should just give it a chance and just let the questionable parts fly. basically i have two wolves inside me and im a poor gay mentally ill minor that they keep bullying.

like . im not gonna get on my moral high horse nd say shit like "oh homestuck is so bad bc its horribly racist/ableist and vaguely lgbtphobic if you squint" bc lets be real half the shit im into is NOT any better  . that being said the bad parts of it are just so fucking exhausting and it just seems like theyre always getting more and more concentrated with shittiness and its fucking ALWAYS intentional for the sake of "irony" or "tragedy" or whatever excuse the writers wanna pull out of their ass for being sadistic.

idk if youre a masochist or just REALLY invested in your kins but i cant keep up on a regular basis nd sometimes i feel guilty abt it which just ADDS ON to all the shittiness re: homestuck agdjdjdgskdg,. on that topic shelby this has all been on my mind for MONTHSSS and im so thankful that you let me vent abt it (and get whatever residual homestuck im feeling out through replies to ur posts lol) :crylove: 

[fuckyeahhistory]

OK I know what you’re thinking. Why is the 1533 Buggery Act such a big deal! After all, it’s a piece of Tudor law:

A) that sounds dry AF

B) has nothing to do with me!

Well, if you care about LGBTQ+ rights (or let’s be blunt, basic human rights) than this is a piece of Tudor law that you have to know about!

The 1533 Buggery Act wove a tangled web that stretches throughout history. Beyond those who were caught up in its immediate wake, It’s threads lead us to Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment, Alan Turing’s conviction and the abysmal pit where fundamental rights should be, that the LGBTQ+ community and their allies are still fighting against.

So if that still sounds dry AF, then strap in Donald, because you’re about to get your mind blown.

Seriously we’re getting into world view changing stuff!

The Buggery Act was the brainchild of Henry VIII who had a fun habit of lumbering the UK with laws that came out of him wanting to make a point during a hissy fit…yet inexplicably stuck around for hundreds of years at a major human cost (e.g that time he made it legal to execute someone with severe mental health issues) The 1533 Buggery Act was no exception!

But lets take it back to pre-Henry for a second. Prior to 1533 there were no set laws to persecute homosexuality in England. That’s not to say it wasn’t. In the 13th century two legal codes called for men caught having same sex relationships to be buried alive or burnt, which is horrific!

However, these were suggestions, not actual laws and there is no evidence that these punishments were ever carried out. For the most part, the then frowned upon act was dealt with in the ecclesiastic courts (so basically it was left with god and his earthly servants to deal with either after death or in the realm of the church)

As such, the sudden decision to make homosexuality criminal was a big deal. In fact it was such a big deal that this sharp turn to criminalisation actually had to be addressed in the original statues outlining the 1533 act. Which says that the law was in part created to make homosexuality clearly punishable, saying:

“For as moche as there is not yet sufficient & condigne punishment appointed & limitted by the due course of the lawes of this realme for the detestable & abominable vice of buggeri committed with mankind or beest.”

It goes on to explain the possible punishments for those caught committing ‘buggery’:

“And that the offenders being herof convict by verdicte, confession, or outlaurie, shall suffer suche peynes of dethe, and losses, and penalties of their goodes, cattals, dettes, londes, tenements, and heredytamentes, as felons benne accustomed to do accordynge to the order of the common lawes of this realme. And that no person offendynge in any suche offence, shalbe admitted to his clergye”

Obviously the clear biggy here is ‘pain of death’, but right at the bottom of this portion of transcript there’s the sentence:

‘And that no person offending in such offence shall be admitted to his clergy’ – that right there is the crux of this whole piece of legislation.

Because why create The Buggery Act and criminalise same sex relationships at this particular moment in time?

To persecute the Catholic Church of course!

If you’re thinking , ‘that makes little to no sense’, gold star! It doesn’t… well at least until you break down what was going down in 1533.

You see, until the 1530’s England had been part of the Catholic Church. But, Henry VIII was desperate to break away from the church as it wouldn’t grant him a divorce so he could marry his side chick, Anne Boleyn. So Henry decided to create a new church for England, one that he’d be the head of (and wouldn’t you know it, the head of this new church just happened to be A-ok with divorce).

Sadly creating your own church doesn’t magically erase your countries already existing, centuries old religion overnight. So Henry worked with his right hand man, Thomas Cromwell, to loosen the tight hold Catholicism had on England and for a double win, also siphon it’s money to Henry.

The 1533 Buggery Act was just part of this plan. It was solely designed to take away a little bit of the power away from The Catholic Church, not to actually persecute homosexuality.

And yet this law was about to take its first victim.

By 1540 the Buggery Act had done its job. The Catholic Churches hold on England had been loosened, Henry had married Anne Boleyn (and then had her executed), married again (this time she’d died in childbirth) and was onto marriage number four. Thomas Cromwell had played Cupid for these nuptials, hooking Henry up with his new wife, Anne of Cleves. Sadly Henry wasn’t a fan of his new bride and this was such a big no no that it led to Thomas Cromwell’s death.

But as is probably clear by now, Henry was a petty bitch, and so he made sure that when Thomas went down, he wasn’t going alone.

On the 29 June 1540 Thomas Cromwell was beheaded for treason and his mate, Walter Hungerford, became the first person to be executed under The Buggery Act (among other allegations).

A bloody punishment, with the Buggery Act added as an extra dollop of humiliation for Hungerford and as an additional middle finger to Cromwell who’d helped create the act.*

*side note: before we start feeling really sorry for Walter Hungerford, he was an abusive man who imprisoned his wife to the extent she had to drink her own urine to survive. So you know. Maybe hold the sympathy cards.

Henry VIII

Thomas Cromwell

Ok, that was A LOT to take in. So let’s pause and take a quick moment to  look at where we are:

We have a law that was created to criminalise homosexuality BUT was actually used to screw over the Catholic Church

We have a first victim of the law…BUT he was most likely executed not because of the law itself but as an F U to his mate who created the law.

So, we can all agree that thus far, The Buggery Act is a very bloody farce. But that does that mean it’s done?

OF COURSE NOT!

Though the law was repealed by Henry VIII’s daughter, Queen Mary I in 1553 (who wanted power over this to go back to the Catholic Church and it’s ecclesiastic courts), once she died, her successor and sister, Queen Elizabeth I made the Buggery Act law once more.

And from there it started to truly transform into a law for persecution.

Using a Latrice Royale gif to cut the tension, but just a warning: It’s about to get really dark for a bit.

For much of the 15th and 16th centuries arrests and executions under the Buggery Act were few and far between. However, that didn’t happen stop this horrifying law from spreading.

One of the huge issues of The Buggery Act being a law, was that Britons leaving the country took it with them. Take for example those plucky puritans who set sail for the brave new world of America – alongside terrible hats and a smattering of racism, they made sure to also pack legal persecution!

And so the legal execution of people for homosexuality began in a new country. In 1624, Virginia hung Richard Cornish, a ships captain, for ‘forcible sodomy’ of his ships 29 year old cabin boy.

Two years later, Massachusetts hung William Plain on allegations of sodomy that took place in England (so before he even moved to America!).

That same year, the countries New Netherlands colony successfully managed to achieve the discrimination trifecta when they used the Buggery Act to strangle and ‘burn to ashes’, Jan Creoli, a poor black gay man.

If you thought things were bad, they are about to get even worse.

Back in Britain, a more vocal queer community was starting to appear, thanks to the underground popularity of Molly Houses (places where queer men could be free to openly show their sexuality, kind of the great great great grandfather of the small town gay bar). But this emerging light in the dark attracted the worst kind of people and they dedicated themselves to eradicating what they saw as the gay scourge.

One such group was the catchily named, The Society For The Reformation of Manners. Determined to rid London of its LGBT subculture, they worked undercover to infiltrate Molly Houses, gather evidence against its users and then together with the police, raid them.

One such raid was that of Mother Claps house in 1726. Dozens of men were rounded up and arrested, with several fined and pilloried. But that’s not the worst of it. 

The Society For The Reformation of Manners successfully helped to leverage the Buggery Act to hang three of the arrested men for the crime of having sex, or as one witness spat out during the trial:

‘Making love to one another as they call’d it’

Example of an execution, like that of the Mother Clap House victims. from the era

During the 1800’s the executions continued. Trials for men accused under The Buggery Act sprung up across England. Some of those found guilty had the relative luck (though the chance of survival still wasn’t great) at instead being transported to Australia, but others weren’t so lucky.

The last men executed under The Buggery Act were James Pratt and John Smith, in 1835.

A husband and father, James Pratt, met with John Smith in August 1935, at an ale house in London for a drink. The pair then got chatting with an older man, William Bonill and went back to his rooms.

William Bonill soon left to get another drink at the pub, leaving James and John alone. It was after this that Bonill’s landlord reported finding the pair having sex.

Neither James Pratt or John Smith stood a chance in court. If you are in any doubt on that front, just read the opening transcript from John Smith’s prosecutor.

‘feloniously, wickedly, diabolically, and against the order of nature, had a venereal affair with one James Pratt, and did then and there, feloniously, wickedly, diabolically, and agains the order of nature, carnally know the said James Pratt, and with him the said James Pratt did then and there feloniously, wickedly, diabolically, and against the order of nature, commit and perpetrate the detestale, horrid, and abominable crime (among Christians not to be named) called buggery, to the great displeasure of Almighty God, to the great scandal of all human kind’

Charles Dickens actually attended Newgate jail, when the men were awaiting sentencing and recalled:

‘Their doom was sealed; no plea could be urged in extenuation of their crime, and they well knew that for them there was no hope in this world.’

He was, of course, right. Of seventeen others sentenced to death at the same time as John and James (for crimes including attempted murder) all had their sentences commuted to transportation to Australia. All expect John Smith and James Pratt.

A huge crowd gathered outside Newgate Jail to watch their deaths.

Watching his (possible) partner, John Smith, being blindfolded and his noose put on, caused James Pratt an understandable level of anguish. He reportedly went physically weak, needing help just to stand and calling out:

‘Oh God, this is horrible. This is indeed horrible.’ 

Though we don’t have clean cut evidence that the two were in a relationship, it’s hard to read this as anything other than love and the devastation of James knowing what his partner was about to go through.

Which I think summarises the pointlessness and brutality the Buggery Act had on all those who feel under its wake. Of it’s last two victims; two men who just wanted a private moment to be together and died because of that.

Newspaper from the hanging of James Pratt and John Smith

The Buggery Act remained in place in one form or another until 1861 when the Offences Against The Person Act replaced it.

The new law abolished the death sentence for ‘buggery’, instead punishing those convicted with a prison sentence of up to life. In 1967 the laws around homosexuality as an illegal act were dropped.

All of this, because in 1533 a pissed of King set up a law that he hoped would bring down a religion – the persecution of thousands if not millions, was just secondary. 

If you want to read up more on this and other areas of LGBT+ history (and please do!) some great sources are below:

Rictor Norton, for a treasure trove of articles and essays on the history of LGBTQ+ history in England dating back to the medieval era. 

The Peter Tatchall Foundation, a human rights charity with an amazing section of history of laws that sought to persecute 

The British Library, where you can look at so many of the original documents I mention in this, digitally wherever you are in the world!

Why you have to know about the 1533 Buggery Act OK I know what you’re thinking. Why is the 1533 Buggery Act such a big deal! After all, it’s a piece of Tudor law:

[kansetsukiss]

A brief introduction to the gdgd Universe

By rights, this should be nothing more than a season-end review of gdMen, but the preponderance of low ratings and confused comments about the show make me want to go a bit further. I can’t make anybody enjoy a series they don’t, and I can barely in the least make them understand its ‘objectively’ good qualities, but I hope I can offer a bit more cultural context in which to place it, which may soften the criticism borne from confusion...

What is gdgd? Literally, it’s a stylised form of ぐだぐだ - gudaguda, meaning (amongst other uses) ‘tedious, repetitive, rambling.’ As for the gd-verse, I’m unable to firmly grasp it myself - no incarnation or responsible party has been successful enough in the English-speaking anime community to warrant, say, a nicely-sourced Wiki page. A cursory study tells me it begins in 2011 with gdgd Fairies, a bizarre comedy starring three fairies having tea in a forest, chatting about anything and everything. shrshr generally introduces an absurd conversational whim, timid pkpk acts as straight-man, and taciturn krkr interjects with dark non-sequiturs and punchlines. It’s cheaply animated in MikuMikuDance, but uses its low quality to its advantage - for instance, frequently relying on terrifying stock models of old men for visual gags, reminiscent of early Garry’s Mod absurdism. In a recurring segment, the three VAs improvise captions to a brief, surreal video clip provided by the animation staff: sometimes referencing characters they’ve played on other shows; sometimes having a reference censored due to licensing restrictions; sometimes birthing running jokes later referred to in the scripted segments, as if they’ve written them into the gdgd lore. Next-episode previews insert the cast into direct parodies of popular shows; season 2 opens with a press conference apologising for this silliness, followed by a smash-cut to a Lucky Star reference. Coarsely put, gdgd Fairies does what the fuck it wants.

These are all the essential qualities of gdgd - cheap MMD animation, whole segments of VA improvisation with audible laughter, pop culture and meta-references, a general freewheeling disregard for structure and convention. Other projects by studios Bouncy and Strawberry Meets (the two sharing credit for gdgd Fairies; their exact relationship is still unclear to me) manifest this spirit of gdgd even when not invoking it by name, and have generally each tackled a particular genre ripe for parody. Chokkyuu Hyoudai Robot Anime follows three robots in the far future attempting to revive and understand the ‘humour’ of ancients - it’s incredibly dry, and deconstructs joke formats to the point that even I have trouble sitting with it. Mahou Shoujo? Naria☆Girls is a vague parody of magical girl tropes, though the ‘plot’ quickly devolves into a ridiculous string of unrelated happenings, and the majority of the show revolves around the VAs improvising off terrible prompts. It’s the worst-looking show of the gd-verse, motion-capturing the VAs into incredibly janky schoolgirl models that clip through each other (which has of course, despite its humour, translated into the lowest MAL score in the gd-verse). Minarai Diva, a copy of which continues to elude me, attempted to form an idol unit and write music on live broadcasts, similarly mo-capped and apparently riddled with technical difficulties. Tesagure! Bukatsumono follows an after-school club attempting to improve generic after-school club scenarios. And this year’s gdMen puts three male VAs in the lead for a change (sexual innuendo is much more abundant here) while riffing off isekai fantasy tropes - maybe especially funny to me, being totally apathetic towards the genre.

I’m urged to apologise for the gd-verse because I constantly see viewers repulsed by its face value, refusing the spirit of gdgd to a vehement degree. I vaguely understand why - when I finished the first episode of Naria Girls, I thought I’d found the worst show I’d ever seen. Thanks to its abysmal rating, I was entering with the assumption that it would be terrible, and the loose dialogue and poor animation are definitely qualities of terrible things. By the second episode, once the shock had worn off, its self-aware lackadaisy that had been disguised as ineptitude became wholly apparent, and I allowed myself to be taken along. I quickly realised I loved it. But I’ve seen comments that hint at viewers latching on to that initial attitude - “what is this?! It’s ugly! It’s so poorly written it almost seems improvised!” - and refuse to budge, even while staring the gdgd in the face. The initial expectation that it will conform to the traditions of anime encounters the non-traditional spirit of gdgd; in this conflict lies the absurd. The typical viewer can either accept the gdgd, or come to despise it - it is so at odds with expectations that it cannot be merely rejected. It must be destroyed.* By which I mean: I can understand initial confusion, but I can’t understand the viewer that sits through a whole season of Naria Girls and at no point realises that it’s all a big joke. People hate things they don’t understand, and it’s easier (and more fun) to hate than to attempt to reconcile yourself with something new - for instance, that animation quality isn’t the only metric of merit; or that not every piece of art is asking you to take it seriously.

Let me tell you: if you’re enjoying a guide to an obscure comedy studio that’s riffing of The Myth of Sisyphus, you’ve got the spirit of gdgd in you. If you seek to explore the gd-verse with me, I recommend starting where it all began with gdgd Fairies. Let me know how you go. And to all who may be wary, I ask you to try, if only a little, to let the spirit of gdgd into your heart. You may absolutely fucking hate it, yes. You may well be changed for life.

なーんちゃって~

*I can’t help but wonder how prevalent this mindset is. Nichijou has a devout cult following, but massively tanked on release. Teekyuu has persisted for 9 seasons purely because one Blu-Ray sale funds the entire next season. Meanwhile, a billion cute-girl 4koma adaptations are pumped out yearly (not that they’re all bad, mind you). Am I overthinking things? I know I’m touting an intersectional review blog here, but I don’t want to come off as a snob.

[sienna27]

TWD Spoilers - The King, The Widow, and Rick (8x06)

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First, whoever wrote this one, credit due that it did have some great lines.  That said, the theme of the whole episode seemed to be, “Everyone Does Stupid Shit And Almost Dies Because Of It,” which genuinely did detract from the overall ‘enjoyment’ shall we say.  Because everyone was acting like morons and if these people were really all that stupid, they wouldn’t have survived beyond day one of the turn.

Examples (getting all the negative stuff out up front):  Michonne and Rosita.  Both still limping around, completely unable to fight, “yesterday” decide “today” to just go off on their own to do some Savior Compound sightseeing.  In the process, nearly get themselves both killed, and nearly LIBERATE the Savior Compound(!), because neither of them were strong enough to take out the one woman who was driving off with the damn speaker truck to clear the place of the walkers.  

Which leads me to Daryl and Tara.

Yes, yay, they saved Rosita and Michonne’s bacon by taking out the Speaker Truck and the Savior woman driving it.  EXCEPT, them deciding to go rogue means that the people who are supposed to be keeping track of Rick and whether or not he gets out of the garbage heap alive . . . have just abandoned him.  Good job, guys.

Which leads me to RICK!

Dude, WTF?!  Why would you walk in there alone with NOBODY nearby to save your ass?!  These people have already turned sides on you.  I do agree that it is not unreasonable to think that they might not turn again, but as of right now, they are aligned with Negan.  And now you’ve been taken hostage, stripped naked and dumped into a transport crate to be shipped off to the Saviors.  Oops.  

Now let’s go to Carl.

Another callback to season 1 . . . Carl being an idiot 😑  I don’t care if the new guy seems okay, your dad said to leave it alone because you can’t trust new people right now.  But yeah, fuck that because again, you’re Carl so you just do whatever the fuck you want.  And oh look, you almost got eaten FOR NOTHING!!!  The whole thing was just so, so stupid and was more of something season two Carl would have done when he was like eleven.  It was eleven year old stupid.  

The Hilltop.

There are only three people I’d like to see dead by the end of the season.  Negan, Dwight (because it’s the only way to end that story line) and . . . Jesus.  I did mute every time he spoke because I’ve been done with the sanctimonious bullshit for three episodes now.  Please note, he gave away their emergency food supply to the people possibly about to be executed because they missed A meal!  Like it wasn’t Day Six of the Siege!  All of the events of these episodes are overlapping.  You took them hostage, and took them for a walk, and then gave away all of your people’s emergency food storage on THE SAME DAY!  I was so glad Maggie took him to task for that, and that she flat out told him that she wasn’t keeping those people alive because he wanted it (as in he was right) but just because it was the only pragmatic move in case they needed to do a hostage trade in the short term, but in the long term she was executing their asses.  THANK YOU, MAGGIE!  

We need SO much more Maggie, and NO MORE, Jesus, please and thank you.

The Kingdom.

So E is just a pathetic spineless bitch now?  Because that was what I got from his scene.  I understand he was pretty devastated by recent events, (rightly so) but he had some time to get his shit together and Carol very calmly explained to him how he needs to stand up and go help those people grieve because he DID make those decisions for them, and he needs to take responsibility now for his actions, and he’s like, yeah, no.  Not happening.  So I hope all those people who were thinking C and E would be a great couple (*eye roll*), get how they can fucking suck it.  Because if you think The Amazonian Warrior who has suffered from pretty much day one and still keeps on kicking ass and taking names, deserves to be saddled with a man who has so little personal character that he can’t even take responsibility for what he did, then you have no respect for Carol.  At all.   That’s just putting aside the fact that she already has a man, and it’s a huge fuck you to the Caryl relationship to be an A, B, C, D’er, but whatever.  And I don’t even blame E for the deaths, but I do blame him for how he’s responding to those deaths.  You made choices, and you got people killed.  It happens.  But if you take to your bed now like you have the damn vapors, then fuck you, you’re being a punk bitch.  We already have Eugene filling that role.  And no matter what else happens with him later, E’s already shown his true character here and he’s tainted because of it.  Sort of like last week with Negan and all of the pathetic penis commentary.  It seems deliberate that these characters are being knocked down off their pegs to make them less likable for whatever is coming next.  Not saying it’s bad writing, I’m saying it’s people being pushed to the wall and now showing their true colors.  The results have been pretty abysmal for both of them.

Now to the Positive stuff, because that was a lot of bitching :)

Good opening line from Rick:  “It’s scarier than I thought it would be.”  

For some reason I really love that they wrote letters to each other with the updates.   And that The Kingdom letter wasn’t to E.  it was to Carol, because her people know that Carol’s the one in charge :))

Poor Carol getting saddled with another kid.  Like she needs that shit.  

Jerry breaking my heart:.  “He told me that I didn’t need to do this anymore . . . this is what I do.”  Again, pointing out that E’s failure here as person, is doing a hell of a lot more damage beyond just the deaths.  Jerry doesn’t know who he is if he’s not this guy.  

Maggie cuddling baby Gracie.  💕  Though I do think it’s fair to wonder if Gracie’s mom might still be alive out there.  

Good line for the new guy, Sadiq:  “Killing them would free their souls.”  And it is an interesting idea.  That is one thing that hasn’t been touched on much is the ‘spirituality” of the undead.  Back on the farm Hershel et al thought they were just sick and could be cured, but that was just because they were in denial.  Since then walkers are just treated as monsters and that’s that.  It did add some needed depth to show someone who saw them differently.  And saw killing as many as he could to be a ‘righteous’ act, and not just a matter of “vengeful clearing” like Morgan does.  It was funny though because before Sadiq even said that, I was looking at that walker stuck to the post trying to get the bag he would never reach, and I was just picturing that as being someone’s eternity.  And how that would be a special kind of hell.  Then he freed him from that.  

I liked that Carol’s pep talk to E didn’t include the words “I need you,” because she doesn’t.  She doesn’t need him.  She needs for him to get his shit together to go deal with his people.  That’s what she needs.  

The one positive of Gregory is that he’s done with Jesus and is just going to call him Paul again.  The passive aggressiveness of it, pleases me :)

No Caryl this week.  Not even an inferred bit.  Though at least the mid-season finale is lined up for both of them to be at the Savior compound.   

Side point to that, I skipped Talking Dead even though it was MMB because it made little sense that she was there so it seemed like they were wasting her time.  It wasn’t her episode.  Airtime was pretty evenly split with everyone, but Christian or Danai still would have been more logical choices because it was their first episode back and hearing their take on things to date just made much more sense.  For some reason it just felt like Melissa was the only member of the main cast who agreed to go, if that makes sense, and it kind of annoyed me in an odd way.   And then they put her with someone brand new who we have no allegiance with at all, so I didn’t even feel the need to watch to see her interacting with a friend.  Meh.    

Anyway, overall the episode felt kind of bloated.  TWD has always been at its best with more focused scenes and constant whiplash trying to keep up with everyone at once, in all these locations, doesn’t allow for that to happen.  I’m just glad the next big fight is coming up so the crew will get culled down a bit more and we’ll be getting even closer to re-consolidating back to just one (maybe two) communities.  I hold out hope because if we think back, so often the A to B storylines totally shifted gears, so maybe we’ll luck out and the Negan stuff will start to wrap much earlier.  I just want to move on to what’s next 😔

[silver-and-ivory]

Would you like to provide some links or examples as to how police favor white supremacists over black rights activists? No pressure to respond, of course, but if you do choose to, I'm not asking for anything exhaustive. Maybe a keyword or event or two so I can research it myself. Thanks.

Ha, this is not the ask I was expecting to get about that post!

Hm.

It’s possible that this article from the Atlantic about gun control has some relevant information, but it’s not comprehensive.

So here’s a summary of what I was referencing instead. When slavery was common in the South, there were gangs of white men who would search for runaway slaves and in general police black behavior. According to some sources, modern police forces are a direct descendant of these gangs.

After the Civil War, former plantation owners and so on tried to reestablish their power. Part of the way they did this was through arresting lots of innocent black people; slavery was - and is - still legal as long as the slaves were criminals. The police didn’t function as protectors or as enforcers of the law, but instead as the implements of white supremacy.

All of this was accompanied by racist policies whereby insurance companies would devalue districts where black or other nonwhite people lived, resulting in white flight and creating ghettoes. Also, job discrimination created poverty; government welfare programs after wars and in the New Deal weren’t applied equally to whites and blacks, so that the form of welfare that blacks got ended up being more stigmatized. (For example, WWII veteran benefits included a Nice Picket Fence in Suburbia. Black people did not get that benefit.)

Skip ahead a few years the criminalization of blackness (and other minorities) continues to be a Major Problem. The police consistently act as enforcers of e.g. segregation laws. The criminal “justice” system consistently fucks over black people and forgives white supremacists, like the murderers of Emmett Till. (A little known fact is that Emmett Till had had polio, which left him with a consistent stutter. He was taught to whistle so that it was easier for him to speak. The incident that lead to his death was him whistling at a white woman. This is kind of far out there but it seems as though there’s a natural connection between these two facts.)

(Police also served as enforcers of gender normativity- there were laws that women had to be wearing three articles of men’s clothing at a time, and vice versa; also, gay sex was sometimes criminalized. The police would arrest and rape queer people routinely. This is depicted in Stone Butch Blues very disturbingly and it is also probably relevant to this Amnesty International article, “Brutality in Blue”. It’s part of what caused the Stonewall Riots.

In addition to this, the police would ignore crimes committed against queer people, turning a blind eye to queers being assaulted or raped. This is called selective enforcement and it is Very Bad.

This all means that black trans women are (likely) at a higher risk of having bad stuff happen to them; for an example, see the CeCe McDonald case.)

At some point the school-to-prison pipeline became a thing as well. The policing of black people was also extended to Latinos.

 It only gets worse with the War on Drugs, wherein President Nixon deliberately and explicitly decided to criminalize crack in order to hurt black people (and marijuana in order to hurt the anti-Vietnam counterculture). A particularly notorious example of the criminalization of [stuff black people do] is the massive disparity in crack versus powder cocaine sentencing. Crack is something poor black people tended (tend?) to use more; powder is something rich white people tend(ed) to use. So of course…

…people faced longer sentences for offenses involving crack cocaine than for offenses involving the same amount of powder cocaine – two forms of the same drug. Most disturbingly, because the majority of people arrested for crack offenses are African American, the 100:1 ratio resulted in vast racial disparities in the average length of sentences for comparable offenses. On average, under the 100:1 regime, African Americans served virtually as much time in prison for non-violent drug offenses as whites did for violent offenses. 

The disparity has since been reduced to a mere 18:1 ratio. Racial equality, eh?

This is a good time to mention that a good deal of Republican presidents, including Nixon and Our Good Friend Ronald Reagan, tried to pander to the South by being utter racists. They would deliberately say things like “welfare queens” or “thugs” or “law and order” or “states’ rights”, and the South would know that they really meant to say “fuck those uppity n-words, amirite?”. This was called the Southern Strategy. Internal records show that Nixon knew exactly what he was doing and that he was deliberately doing it; he summarizes his strategy in basically the same way I am.

At some point a narrative of black criminality started being common. Black people and black men especially were seen as threatening, thugs, brutes, less than human. They were threats to the beauty of the white women (as in Emmett Till’s case). This has also been applied to various other minorities (see: Donald Trump on Mexicans).

Unfortunately - somewhat similarly to their treatment of queers - , police are very bad at actually doing stuff about real crimes committed against black people- ie, the much vaunted black-on-black crime problem, which some people use to derail conversations about police brutality and abuses. The underpolicing of minority neighborhoods is actually an outgrowth of racism as well.

Partially due to a fear of blacks, and partially due to a neurotic fear of Communism, during the 70s or around that time, the FBI started keeping information on a lot of black activists, including the (radical! socialist!) Martin Luther King Jr. They assassinated or otherwise eliminated a lot of the black leadership. Here is a very emotional letter from James Baldwin to Angela Davis about her arrest, which is probably somewhat relevant. (Content warning for comparisons to the Holocaust.)

The media did not care about dead black people. The media did care when white college students, down in the South for Freedom Summer, started getting killed, by police forces. The involvement of white students, of course, was orchestrated by nonviolent black activists like King.

Another remarkable thing that King did was that he made going to prison a mark of prestige, rather than shame. This is really cool just on its own, but it’s even more clever when one considers the context.

Everyone knows about Martin Luther King Jr. Not everyone knows why he was so admirable, or so successful. Through nonviolence, he made clear what had been true for centuries- that the white supremacists were the initiators of violence and the breakers of peace. He actively worked against notions of black people as brutes or criminals.

Black Lives Matter and the Ferguson… thing… are reactions to hundreds of years of racist police enforcement and brutality. Conservative Republican reactions are, by and large, abysmal: whenever another black child gets murdered by the police people always try to justify it, claiming that the kid is Just A Thug. He stole cigarettes! He had his hand in his pocket. He was wearing a hoodie. He was so big and threatening. We had to tackle her to the ground because we were Just Scared. He was rude so we put him in a chokehold and ignored him saying he couldn’t breathe! They were just thugs.

As if these make someone less of a victim, or less worthy of care. As if this makes police officers less responsible for what they’ve done.

(Note that I’m not making specific claims about specific incidents- just, taken as a whole, it’s Very Very Damning.)

As a whole, the police force functions as an instrument of white supremacy. This is a disgusting perversion of the Lockean social contract and the rule of law.

And I don’t know how to solve it.

[justanothercinemaniac]

Epic Movie (Re)Watch #176 - Logan

Spoilers Below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: Yes.

Was it a movie I saw since August 22nd, 2009: Yes. #477

Format: Blu-ray

0) This is Hugh Jackman’s final turn as the character he made iconic seventeen years ago. While there might still be a chance the character could come back (likely if it were for a Deadpool crossover or if he got to fight The Avengers) this is likely it. And embracing that allows this film to go to places no X-Men film before it could (as does its R-rating).

1) The opening scene with the carjackers establishes a lot for this film. First of all, we get a good look at just how fucking disheveled and miserable Logan is. It even shows in his imagery; the gray hairs, the tired face, all of it. It also establishes the film’s more grounded tone. This isn’t X-jets and time travel, this is war and violence. R rated and bloody violence, which is also established in the opening scene.

2) Marco Beltrami returns to compose this film after The Wolverine, and his score is quite strong. It is subtle, nuanced, moving, and embraces its Western still in a surprising and emotional way. I absolutely loved.

3) Logan IS a Western more than it is a superhero film. In a superhero film characters KNOW what they are. Superman is aware he gives people hope, Batman knows he is order in a world of chaos just as the audience does. Logan however? He’s not a symbol. He’s not a warrior. He doesn’t play into tropes. Life is a sad, abysmal, bloody mess where nothing makes sense and it’s all just HARD. A lot of the best Westerns are like this (notably Shane), so Logan is really setting itself apart from the superhero crowd by embracing this.

4) Boyd Holbrook as Donald Pierce.

Holbrook makes the villainous Pierce wonderfully skeezy. He’s got this wonderful energy and charisma which makes the audience just love to hate him. Holbrook is an absolute delight in the part and helps elevate the film be being totally despicable.

5) Stephen Merchant as Caliban.

I mentioned in my X-Men: Apocalypse recap that both that film and this one features an adaptation of the character Caliban from the comics. This was the result of just poor communication between the filmmaking teams meaning both characters ended up in both films. But they play notably different roles, with Caliban being more of a plot device in Apocalypse but an actual character with decisions and consequences in this film. I have a head canon that Apocalypse Caliban is Logan Caliban’s father. I don’t know if anything supports this but I like it.

Merchant is wonderful in the decidedly NON comedic part (considering the actor has considerable comedic talent which he has shown off in the past). He is quiet, understated, you see that there is a pain there always lurking underneath (or not so underneath) the surface. Wonderful at drumming up empathy and occasionally giving exposition without forcing it down our throat, Merchant is the hidden gem of this film and absolutely glorious.

6) The decline of Xavier’s health in this film allows Patrick Stewart to play the character notably different than before.

For one thing, it is really interesting to hear Xavier dropping, “fucks,” left and right. But more than that the hope which has so defined the character for seventeen years is now largely gone. Not totally though, it’s still there. But it’s mixed in with pain and heartache, anger and confusion, bitter disappointment and self doubts. It is an absolutely heartbreaking and conflict filled role which allows Stewart to really shine in what is also HIS final turn as the beloved Professor X.

7) This line is very telling not only of Charles’ state in the film but also Logan’s conflict.

Xavier: “I always know who you are its just sometimes I don’t recognize you.”

8) When I first saw the film I thought this was just a nice wink to the first X-Men film.

Logan [after Charles says someone is waiting for him at the statue of liberty]: “Statue of liberty was a long time ago, Charles.”

Only with this viewing did I realize the motel where Logan meets Laura and Gabriella is the Liberty Motel with a statue of liberty logo.

9) This is part of the whole “the characters don’t know what they’re supposed to represent” trope in Westerns, but Xavier is kind of a dick in this film.

Xavier: “What a disappointment you are.”

Like, I get that you’ve had a hard life too Charles. But Logan is around 150 years old (I think). He’s been through the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, lost his memories, got them back at some point, and of course went through the events of every single X-Men film that happened before (including losing everyone in Days of Future Past then getting them back then losing them again before this film).

10) I thought it was a smart decision to only HINT at what happened with the X-Men instead of actually showing it.

Xavier: “Logan, what did you do? What did you do!?”

I’ll talk more about this in a little bit though.

11) Gabriella going to Logan for help feels like a Western trope. Like in The Magnificent Seven, the former outlaw/gunslinger trying to lead a quiet life is pulled back into it by someone who NEEDS them. In this case Logan is the gunslinger.

12) Dafne Keen as Laura.

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. This girl. This fucking girl. This fucking girl is so fucking incredible. It is wildly difficult for me to wrap my head around how fucking amazing Dafne Keen is as Laura. I mean, her first sign of unique character and strength is when she fucking knocks out Pierce by throwing a damn pipe at his head! A mostly silent part for the first half (two-thirds?) of the film, Keen is able to embrace the physicality of her role BEAUTIFULLY. The way she moves, the look in her fucking eyes. She’s SO intense and that’s amazing. Everything about her. The fact that an eleven year old girl could be so damn intimidating speaks massively to her performance in this film. Hugh Jackman has been playing this part for longer than she’s been ALIVE and she can hold her own with him in every one of his her fucking scenes! This girl is a tiny badass! You know you don’t want to mess with Laura because she will fuck you up! I mean holy shit, she walks up to a group of bad guys with a fucking decapitated head. SHE GETS A HARPOON SHOT THROUGH HER CHEST AND IT BARELY PHASES HER! That entire first fight scene with her, Logan, and Pierce’s crew at their makeshift home shows off her skills as an actress phenomenally! She is a raging force of nature you do NOT want to piss off! Dafne Keen is the breakout star in Hugh Jackman’s last time as Wolverine! That tells a lot!

13) Bad guys deluding themselves into thinking their good guys is very honest to reality, but honestly how can you hunt down and murder children like a fucking sack of shit and think you’re still the good guy?

Pierce [to Caliban]: “I’m gonna need you to do one more thing for the good guys.”

14) Fuck Transigen. This film really did a good job of making films who you are hoping get brutally massacred by Logan and Laura. THEY BIRTHED CHILDREN FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF STUDYING THEM AND SELLING THEM AS SOLDIERS!

Dr. Rice [Transigen head scientist]: “Do not think of them as children. Think of them as things with patents and copyrights.”

I cannot begin to express how absolutely fucking horrific and despicable that concept is. THIS IS A COMPANY WHO TRYS TO KILL CHILDREN BECAUSE, “They could not be controlled.” BECAUSE THYE DIDN’T SERVE A PURPOSE! BECAUSE THEY WERE ACTUALLY HUMAN CHILDREN TRANSIGEN TRIED TO FUCKING MURDER THEM!

I look forward to their deaths.

15) I dig this.

Xavier: “She’s your daughter Logan.”

In the comics X-23 is a female clone of Wolverine, pushing that forward into a father/daughter relationship I think is strong. You can feel their relationship in her performance. Even when Laura is giving Logan a death stare you can feel that they’re connected. I mean, he’s the only one who gets ANYWHERE by telling her what to do.

16) Shane is prominently featured in a scene during the first half of the film.

Xavier talking about an early memory of seeing Shane in the theaters (when he was a kid) was reportedly an improvised moment. According to IMDb, this is an actual memory Patrick Stewart has from his youth which he brought up for the film. Shane was a large influence on the film, and one of the most iconic moments from the film ties very significantly into the movie.

Shane: “A man has to be what he is, Joey. Can’t break the mold. I tried it and it didn’t work for me. Joey, there’s no living with…with a killing. There’s no going back from one. Right or wrong, it’s a brand. A brand sticks. There’s no going back. Now you run on home to your mother, and tell her…tell her everything’s all right. And there aren’t any more guns in the valley.”

17) Logan losing it at the X-Men comics he finds is very telling of how he views the past. The very first page he opens to is Wolverine saving Rogue, who is notably absent from this film and who Logan had the strongest relationship with in X-Men and X2. This is how he WISHES life was. A big adventure, where he got to save his friends and the world on a more regular basis. Instead he’s left with pain and heartache.

17.1) The X-Men comics had to be special made for this film, as Marvel wouldn’t allow the studio to use actual X-Men comics.

18) Xavier’s Oklahoma City seizure.

When I first saw this film in theaters, this was the moment I went, “Holy shit, this film is amazing.” The fact that they turn this scene where everyone is frozen into a pseudo-action scene is amazing. Logan taking the time to go around and kill the bad guys is not only intelligent and organic but amazing to the eye. According to IMDb:

Professor Xavier's Psionic blast was done by shooting shaky footage and then re-stabilizing the frame in post. Resulting a footage containing strange motion blur with smearing effect, that is both organic and very unusual. The team shot the sequences slightly wider than was needed so that shots could be blown up to hide the edges of the stabilizing effect.

All of this makes the scene CRAZY strong and memorable, with Laura even participating by killing the one guy Logan missed.

19) What exactly happened to the X-Men.

News Reporter [reporting on the Oklahoma City incident; referring to a similar instance back in Westchester a year ago]: “…and took the lives of several mutants, including seven of the X-Men.”

In the comics, because of a psychic attack on Wolverine, he killed what he thought were super villains attacking X-Mansion which turned out to be his fellow teammates. In pre production there was the idea to film this as a prologue to the movie, while in the later dinner scene there was a deleted moment where Xavier went into detail about what happened at X-Mansion. I prefer this because it allows us as the audience to have hope that our favorite X-Men survived. (I may have even gotten the quote wrong; the reporter could have said, “seven mutants, including several of the X-Men.”)

20) Logan and the family dinner.

This was a concept first introduced in X-Men Origins: Wolverine; Logan finding a bit of peace and normalcy before his life goes crazy again. It is a nice moment of warmth in a story of heartache. What makes it all the worse? Logan, Xavier, and Laura. They WANT this. They are eager to have it.

Xavier [to Logan, about the family]: “You should take a moment and feel it.”

This is the goal. Xavier wants the Sunseeker boat with Logan, Laura wants her friends and family, but only one of the three gets this. Excuse me, I’m sad now.

21)

Will Munson [after Logan takes care of some redneck thugs]: “You’ve had training.”

Logan: “Some.”

22) Well. This is heartbreaking.

Charles: “This was without a doubt the most perfect night I’ve had in a long time. But I don’t deserve it, do I?…I think I finally understand you. Logan?”

Except he’s pouring his heart out to NOT Logan, but a Wolverine clone who murders him!

23) Fucking Logan clones.

(GIF originally posted by @notias1)

The dual Hugh Jackman-s in this scene are amazing, especially the seamless transition between X-24 walking down the stairs and Logan looking after him. The fight is strong as well, but nothing compared with what’s to come.

24) I love that these are Caliban’s final words, in reference to what Pierce told him earlier. It’s surprisingly badass.

Caliban [before setting off some grenades]: “Beware the light.”

25) Can I be totally honest with you guys? Hugh Jackman deserves a fucking Oscar nomination for this film. Like, 100%. Maybe there’ll be enough better performances towards the end of the year, but it at least deserves to be TALKED about. Just look at the scene where he’s standing over Xavier’s grave. He barely says a fucking word but still there is so much incredible raw emotion in his performance. There is heartache, there is anger, and it is all just SO amazing. But of course it’s the Oscars. He won’t even be a part of the conversation because it’s a comic book movie that came out in March.

26) Having a mute character speak COULD take away from what makes them interesting, but because of Dafne Keen’s performance Laura she is even MORE compelling.

Logan: “I don’t know how you got me here [to the hospital] but thank you.”

Laura: “De nada.”

The passion, honesty, ferocity, and focus which made her physical performance so compelling in the first half of the film all carries through beautifully into her voice and it just works so seamlessly. I fucking love it.

27) I’m not crying, promise.

Laura: “You’re dying. You want to die. Charles told me.”

Logan: “What else did he tell you?”

Laura: “To not let you.”

This was the exchange that made me think Logan was going to survive the film. Boy, was I wrong.

28) Okay, um…

Logan [when Laura shows him his adamantium bullet]: “Actually, I uh…was thinking of shooting myself with it.”

In X-Men Origins: Wolverine Logan got shot point blank in the skull with an adamanitum bullet and survived, he just lost his memories. You could say he wouldn’t survive in this film because of his healing being weaker, BUT that’s how they kill the Wolverine clone X-24 by shooting him in the head with it. BUT IT DIDN’T WORK IN X-Men Origins!

29) Laura is vicious!

Logan [when Laura is being distant from him]: “I even gave back the money!”

Laura [coldly]: “Such a nice man.”

(GIF originally posted by @rocktheholygrail)

30) I’m not crying. I promise. Not yet.

Logan: “Bad shit happens to people I care about. Understand me?”

Laura: “Then I’ll be fine.”

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

31) Wolverine fighting in the woods to save the kids from being murdered by Pierce and Rice is probably the worthiest cause Logan has ever fought for, and the way he is choreographed as fighting alongside Laura shows their relationship is as strong as ever. They work with/off of each other, making each other stronger and helping the other survive. Because they’re family.

32) The fact that Wolverine’s final battle is against himself (or, a clone of himself) is probably deeply poetic but I’m too fascinated by what’s going on screen to analyze it. Again, he and Laura are fighting side by side here. Hell, it’s Laura he’s fighting for! And it’s Logan Laura is fighting to save. She’s the one who shoots X-24 in the head to kill him in an attempt to save Logan. But…oh boy…I don’t know if I can write this…

33) Pierce’s death is horrible and gratuitous and SO fucking cathartic considering he spent the entire film DESPERATELY TRYING TO MURDER CHILDREN! (Warning, below video features graphic content from an R-rated film. Viewer discretion is advised.

34) Logan’s death.

For one thing (holy shit I’m tearing up as a write this, what the fuck?), the prophecy Yukio made in The Wolverine comes to pass.

(Screenshot taken from a GIF set originally posted by @highsmith)

Except it’s not literally his heart, like in The Wolverine. It’s Laura. Laura is his heart. And, um…wow this is fucking hard. Okay look: I didn’t cry when I saw this in theaters. Everyone else did, but I kinda saw it coming. But a lot has happened between now and then so it hits closer to home. Anyone who has lost a parent or a loved one will be moved as Logan’s daughter watches him while he dies.

Logan: “Don’t be what they made you. Laura…”

Logan: “Ah, so this is what it feels like.”

This is the only time Laura refers to Logan as her father and also the only time Logan doesn’t deny it. Showing that they’ve accepted their relationship, but then he dies. Holding his daughter’s hand in his own. Because she’s his heart. Okay now I’m tearing up.

You know what makes the scene even harder? The little fucking funeral all the kids have for their savior. For the Wolverine. For Logan. And the fact Laura uses the same quote from Shane harkens back not only to a brief moment of just being a kid with Xavier and her dad in the other room, but also just what kind of impact those words have in a new light.

Laura [quoting Shane]: “A man has to be what he is, Joey. Can’t break the mold. There’s no living with a killing. There’s no going back. Right or wrong, it’s a brand. A brand that sticks. Now you run on home to your mother, and tell her everything’s all right. And there are no more guns in the valley.”

And then, in what is probably the most fitting final image of this 17 year old character, Laura turns the cross into an X.

Logan is a masterpiece. Working in a different style and going against established superhero and X-Men tropes makes this a worthy finale to Hugh Jackman’s tenure as the character. He is as strong as ever, Patrick Stewart is as strong as ever, and newcomer Dafne Keen fucking hits it out of the park. It’s heartbreaking and brutal and amazing because of these things. It’s fantastic and I think everyone should see it. Just...wow.

[kazimakuwabara]

“Mr. Kuwabara why do you keep your hair up like this?”

“Hmm?” Kuwabara blinked, suddenly becoming aware that his student actually had asked him something worth answering.

For the past half hour, rather than serving her detention, Usagi Tsukino, has taken it upon herself to badger her teacher’s aid. From questions such as, ‘Why is your shirt pink?’ (he had left a red sock in the wash) to ‘How old are you?’ (Twenty-six) and even, ‘What type of underwear do you like?’

The latter question had led to Kuwabara threatening another detention, with the poor blonde apologizing and explaining she was trying to get something for her boyfriend--which then led to Kuwabara wanting to know why Usagi was thinking of getting her boyfriend underwear (you’re too young!)(wait we’re not!).

And then of course after all that, led to a much needed, albeit very awkward silence. 

But at some point, the young blonde had crept up behind him, and was patting his head, and asking about his hair. 

Sighing, and trying hard not to smile, he shrugged, “It’s just something leftover from when I was a teenager.”

“So you were in a gang or something?” Usagi asked leaning against him with ease, and patting his pompadour gingerly, “You seem too nice to have ever been in a gang!”

Kuwabara smiled and half turned to look at her, “But don’t I have one of those faces that you think is scary? I think I’d be suited in a gang.”

Usagi looked at Kuwabara’s face seriously, “No. You’re always smiling. You’re not scary at all!” She then laughed, flashing a great big smile as she continued, “you should change your hair! You’re not scary at all, so you should have a different haircut! You know my friend Mina...”

Kuwabara sighed, and let the full strength of his grin shine as the petite girl rambled. It was hard not to smile around this girl. Besides the radiating aura or pure innocence and kindness Kuwabara could see shining from her, no matter how far she was from his sight, Usagi was one of those special students who could just charm anyone that she met. Her grades may be abysmal, but her empathy, caring heart, and her general zeal for life mattered far more than her grades ever could.

There was definitely something odd and magical about Usagi Tsukino.

Usagi smiled back and then glanced down at the papers in his hand. Shooting an accusing finger over his shoulder she cried, “AHA! You are the one drawing cat smiley faces! I knew it was you! Miss Haruna said it was none of my business, but I knew that you were doing them! She’d never do something so cute!”

Kuwabara bit back a bark of laughter and faced away from his student. The last thing he needed was this chipper girl to see how much he agreed with Haruna’s grouchy attitude.

“Now that’s not nice. She could have been making them!”

“No! Stinky Miss Haruna-”

“No. No name calling Tsukino!”

“...There’s no way Miss Haruna would draw cat faces on our papers! She just puts mean notes!”

Kuwabara sighed looking back at the paper, which indeed had a half drawn cat on it. Next to its face were the words, ‘Please try harder.’ The paper belonged to Usagi herself and she had scored 45 points.

“Miss Haruna is just worried for your future. She’s angry because she cares. Even adults can have a hard time communicating. Her notes aren’t really mean, they tell you to study harder. She cares about you and all her students,” Kuwabara said in a calm tone. 

He smiled glancing back at Usagi’s uncertain face, “You know I had teachers who would call me terrible names to my face, and one even went out of their way...well to cause me quite a bit of grief, even going as far as trying to fail one of my paper’s when I had passed. Trust me, Miss Haruna isn’t as terrible as you think.”

Usagi seemed shocked by what Kuwabara had revealed, and pressed affectionately closer to Kuwabara, “Well...if you say so.”

Kuwabara smiled at Usagi’s words. Her tone clearly indicated she believed Kuwabara, even if her words didn’t quite match up.

Bringing out a red pen he circled something on Usagi’s paper, “You got the work right here Usagi, but the answer wrong. Can you explain to me how you got the answer you wrote down?”

Usagi, with an arm, still draped over his shoulder and a hand to his hair peered closer. This was perhaps too close for a student and T.A. to be, but Kuwabara had not realized this.

A sudden clatter and the startled face of an older teen, gawking in the classroom door, made Kuwabara suddenly very aware of his student’s close proximity. While Kuwabara was taking Usagi’s closeness as harmless...to a stranger this might look very bad.

Feeling the tips of his ears burn, Kuwabara opened his mouth, but Usagi was suddenly shouting, one arm curling tight under his chin, “Mamoru!” She then enthusiastically waved at the young man, while simultaneously choking her teacher. While uncomfortable, this had managed to break the sudden tension in the room. 

Kuwabara tugged at Usagi’s arm, “Hey,” he chuckled and looked back at his student with an exasperated face, “Tsukino, you’re choking your teacher here.”

“Oh..? OH!” Usagi released Kuwabara, laughing and waving a hand at him in a hurried gesture of apology. And then her eyes were back to the teen who stood at the doorway, her face flushed with sheer affection.

Kuwabara glanced back at the older teen and noted he was not one of his middle school students. The young man also was looking at Usagi in a way so tender, that Kuwabara felt intrusive. But then the older young man’s sharp blue eyes fell on him, and those eyes were inquisitive, mistrusting, and maybe even a little accusatory. 

Sensing Usagi was about to run to the young man (no doubt the mysterious boyfriend), Kuwabara got up and placed a heavy hand on her head.

“Don’t try and bolt for it Tsukino, you are still in detention!”

“Ahhhh Mr. Kuwabaraaaaa!” the girl whined, her eyes perilously big, and her expression crushed. 

Kuwabara looked back to the teen and suppressed the smile at the other boy’s face. The teen was clearly taken aback by Kuwabara’s height, and a flash of jealousy was in his eyes. 

‘Yup. The boyfriend...’

“Did you come to pick her up?” Kuwabara asked, plucking off his reading glasses and placing them in his front pocket.

The young man cleared his throat, “Her friends were looking for her. I thought perhaps she was here...”

Kuwabara nodded, “Well you were right, and I’ll gladly release her in just a moment...”

“YAY!” Usagi cheered, throwing both her hands up in the air, and skipping a bit.

Kuwabara leveled Mamoru with a suspicious look, “Why was miss Tsukino interested in getting you underwear as a present?”

Usagi’s embarrassed squawks, and Mamoru’s serious face comically flushing red, and drastically changing to stark embarrassment had Kuwabara roaring with laughter. He had a long way to go in terms of ever being taken seriously as a teacher, but boy would Urameshi love to hear about this!

[angelofberlin2000]

This article is written by an obviously great fan of Keanu on occasion of the first JOHN WICK! Angelica Jade Bastien wrote another amazing article about Keanu Why Keanu Reeves Is Such an Unusual (and Great) Action Star on February 17, 2017. Her articles about Keanu are such a delight to read!

____________________________________________________

by The Editors

February  9, 2016  |  

The February issue of online magazine Bright Wall/Dark Room is called "The Unloved," and is focused on making a case for a handful of unloved and overlooked movies. In addition to this excerpted essay from Angelica Jade Bastién about Keanu Reeves, this month's issue also has pieces on "Elizabethtown," "The Hobbit" trilogy, "Afternoon Delight," "Bellflower," "The Sweetest Thing," "Detention," and "The Man Who Knew Too Little." The illustration above is by Brianna Ashby.

You can read previous excerpts from the magazine here. To subscribe to Bright Wall/Dark Room, or purchase a copy of their current issue, go here.

I. Transfixing Stillness

Keanu Reeves missed his calling as a silent film actor.

Critics and viewers alike refer to him as stiff, shallow, fake, always playing himself. These opinions have been repeated enough that they’re treated like fact. But this critique misses something. Keanu’s power lies not in transformation or the ability to wrap his mouth around clever word play. No, Keanu is at his most powerful when film is at its most elemental. Like Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, and the greatest of silent actors, Keanu has immense screen presence and a keen understanding of communicating story through physicality, albeit with a very modern inflection. A simple glance or curled lip can unfurl lengthy character history or upend expectations.

But this isn’t the commonly held image of Keanu as an actor. He’s been steadily working since the mid-1980s, his earliest defining role one-half of the titular loveable but dim-witted duo in "Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure" (1989). Through a variety of high profile blockbusters, low-key dramas, and interested misfires in period pieces, Keanu is still stuck in the amber of our first impression; we don’t treat him with the seriousness he deserves. At best, Keanu is regarded as a guilty pleasure. At worst, he’s seen as a truly bad actor of little worth. No matter where you fall, you likely believe he isn’t worthy of critical study or even much respect for his craft. But this image—of odd blankness, affability but dim wit, worth only found in action films—ignores how purely cinematic his acting style is. For Keanu, acting isn’t a mode of transformation but a state of being. He transmutes story into flesh.

In the biography Furious Love, Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger recount Richard Burton’s bafflement, acting alongside Elizabeth Taylor in the splendidly overwrought "Cleopatra" (1963), over her seeming lack of technique: “ ‘She’s just not doing anything,’ he complained to [Joseph L.] Mankiewicz.” But the director pulled him aside and showed him footage “that took his breath away.” Burton, Kashner and Schoenberger explain, “was struck by Elizabeth’s absolute stillness,” and learned from her “how to tone down the theatrical performances for the camera’s cool eye.”

I’ve often wondered if Keanu’s costars ever think the same thing, since he has a similar transfixing stillness. Bret Easton Ellis once noted that Keanu has a “stillness, an awkwardness even, that is unusually empathetic. He is always hypnotic to watch.” When you watch him opposite actors with more pronounced tics—like Robert Downey Jr. in "A Scanner Darkly"—Reeves almost seems like he’s doing nothing. But still, your eyes gravitate toward him.

Because of Keanu’s style, the gap between his good and bad performances is a chasm. There is no middle ground for him (which perhaps explains some people’s distaste for his work). Keanu’s failed performances are those that push him toward a theatricality against his natural instincts. They also tend to be the kind of roles actors use to challenge or prove themselves—difficult accents, lush period pieces, reliance on verbal dexterity. The most damning performance in his career is that of Jonathan Harker, the fiancé to the legendary vampire’s object of obsession in Francis Ford Coppola’s fever dream take on Bram Stoker’s "Dracula." If you ever come across a list of the top acting miscasts, Keanu’s performance in the film is likely on it. The critical reaction to his role is so poor it has its own subsection on the film’s Wikipedia page. It’s hard to figure out which review is the most damning. Total Film writes dismissively that “[y]ou can visibly see Keanu attempting to not end every one of his lines with ‘dude.’” Entertainment Weekly said he appeared “out of his depth.” AskMen was especially vicious, writing, “It’s one thing to cast Keanu Reeves as an esteemed British lawyer, but it’s quite another to ask him to act alongside Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins[...] [They] ran circles around the poor Canuck, exposing his lack of range, shoddy accent, and abysmal instincts for all to see.”

Yes, in "Dracula" Keanu is overburdened by the period costumes, lost in the details of each frame as if he were another illusion, appearing as though he’s wandered onto the wrong set. This isn’t because he’s out of his depth. It’s because he’s fighting against his natural instincts as an actor. The harsh criticism of Keanu’s performance in Dracula seeks to dismiss his career as a whole. But Keanu wouldn’t have such a long-running, successful career without fulfilling a cultural need or tapping into something primal that draws our attention.

II. The Crossroads of Virile and Vulnerable

One critical consistency between Keanu’s virulent pans and more beloved roles (think of the tender-hearted hustler in 1991’s "My Own Private Idaho") is the common refrain that Keanu always “just plays himself.” The harsh ring of “just” implies a lack of craft and worth as an actor. The statement also assumes we truly know the personalities of stars. We can rattle off details of Keanu’s tragedies during the 1990s (stillborn child, death of his girlfriend eighteen months later), find plenty of platitudes about his kindness, and get a narrow view of his personality through interviews. The act of thinking we know a star as high-profile as Keanu isn’t novel, especially in the age of never ending press cycles and paparazzi. What’s more fascinating, though, is what the “playing himself” criticism says about Keanu as an actor.

Critics and audiences alike have a warped view of the history of acting, as if “true” cinematic acting began with the deification of Marlon Brando, followed by the 1970s glory days of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Each of these actors pronouncedly transform themselves from role to role. They take on various accents with panache, layer on idiosyncrasies, whittle their bodies down or bulk themselves up. A character is a costume to put on and never take off until the last camera rolls. It isn’t a coincidence that Jake Gyllenhaal and Matthew McConaughey’s recent renaissances and newfound respect both involved dramatic weight loss. Keanu is one of the few high-profile modern actors to not go for willful physical transformation or uglify himself for gravitas. If you’re not “transforming” as an actor, there is a belief that you’re doing something wrong. This line of thinking harkens back to the idea that we must suffer for our art. But Keanu is more powerful than actors who rely on physical transformation as shorthand for depth, because he taps into something much more primal and elusive: the truth.

The first time we see Keanu as FBI Agent Johnny Utah in the beloved surfer-crime drama "Point Break" (1991), he sits on the hood of a car seemingly unperturbed by the rain pouring down on him. It takes a moment to recognize the shotgun that sits in his lap. His hair slick. His tight black shirt and jeans clinging to his impressive body. The camera holds close to his lips as he unfurls a piece of gum and puts it into his mouth, and then we see a sequence of him blasting through a gun course at Quantico. This introduction gives rise to the kind of action star Keanu grows into, much different than his 1980s predecessors who tended to be powered by an unerring confidence and machismo. Their emotional landscapes weren’t as developed as their biceps. The opening of "Point Break" illustrates how Keanu’s relationship with the camera informs his onscreen masculinity. He carries himself with a supple vulnerability, at times even a passivity, that seems at odds with the expectations for an action star.

I’ve found myself attracted to Keanu’s presence because of the way he marries typically masculine and feminine qualities. He’s both intense and vulnerable, kind and tough, honest and mysterious. Keanu, of course, isn’t the first star to exist at the crossroads of virile and vulnerable. Actors like James Dean, Montgomery Clift, and Paul Newman embody a similar alchemy that have drawn women (and men) to them. But these actors often seem to fight against the lustful gaze of the camera, while Keanu supplants himself to it. Where they seem cynical, disinterested, or too wounded as a romantic lead, Keanu is utterly open.

In "Point Break," he’s a hotshot with a gun and a badge. But he’s also an object of lust for the camera (and audience), with a disarmingly open smile. Furthermore, without the help of a woman—the short-haired pixie vixen surfer Tyler (Lori Petty)—he wouldn’t be able to integrate himself into the gang of robbers/surfers led by Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). This artful dynamic—a woman of greater skill guiding a passive man into a world beyond his imagination—develops even further in "The Matrix" (1999). Some of this, of course, exists on a plot level. But Keanu tends to let his scene partners take the lead, becoming almost a tabula rasa on which they (and we) can project our ideas of what it means to be a hero, a man, a modern action star.

III. Modern Loneliness

"Constantine" (2005) has a lot working against it. As an adaptation of the Hellblazer comics from Vertigo, it isn’t memorable. But as a continuation of Keanu’s thematic exploration of loneliness as an actor, it is. "Constantine" casts off most of the comics’ canon for the screen. Gone is the London setting, the character’s British background. The cynicism, chain smoking, and dark humor remain, even though Keanu (who is of Chinese, Hawaiian, and English descent) looks nothing like the blonde-haired comic character. Searching for emotional truth in a fantasy comic adaptation involving a working class magician who can see angels and demons and toys with the black arts seems like a fool’s errand. But sometimes you find grace in unlikely places. Amongst CGI demons, Tilda Swinton’s androgynous take on the archangel Gabriel, and lots of hellfire, Keanu somehow provides a trenchant take on the burden of loneliness in the big city.

(When looking closer at Keanu’s career, loneliness comes into focus as a thematic preoccupation. He’s often disconnected from the world around him, forging relationships only with intense effort or by accident. While he’s a great romantic lead—more so in films where romance isn’t the main plotline—I think he’s even better suited to moments when he’s wading through the cold, dark waters of spiritual isolation.)

The loneliness that comes with the modern metropolis—like Los Angeles, where Constantine resides—has a different tenor than loneliness anywhere else. It’s magnified to such a great degree in part because of the bizarre effects of population density. Everyone handles loneliness differently. Many, like Constantine, take to trying on addictions and seeing which fit. And addiction aside, most people dealing with loneliness—including myself—acquire weird habits to fill the darkness. A small moment about thirty minutes into "Constantine" (just before he meets Rachel Weisz’ earnest, Catholic cop who has yet to realize she’s being swept up in a battle between heaven and hell) illustrates the idiosyncrasies that come with loneliness.

Constantine sits alone under the harsh fluorescent lights of his apartment, doing what he does best—slow self-destruction at the hands of smoking and alcohol. A spider as sickly as the peeling paint on his walls tumbles across the table. He puts the spider under an empty glass, watching it for a few moments with dull curiosity as it makes sense of its tiny, glass prison. He blows some cigarette smoke into the glass, but keeps the spider trapped. “Welcome to my life,” he remarks. It’s a series of small gestures only the lonely think of, then actually go through with. Enacted by other movie stars, this moment could come across as maudlin or empty. But the great beauty of Keanu’s skill makes the short scene at once painfully earnest, chillingly lonely, and aching with self-pity.

"Constantine" taps into a lot of what makes Keanu sincerely watchable and an actor of surprising depth. An emotional truthfulness? Check. Strong physicality? Just watch the way he plays with a pack of cigarettes or curls his body when he has a coughing fit. Interesting handling of modern masculinity? It’s all there, even if the film isn’t always aware of it. And nine years later, Keanu would finally find a vehicle that perfectly amplifies his strengths.

IV. Keanu Reeves, Action Star (A Certain Baggage)

"John Wick" (2014) stars Keanu as the titular former assassin, so feared he gained the nickname Baba Yaga (The Boogeyman). From the moment we see Keanu as John Wick, he carries himself like he’s wounded. These psychological wounds eventually give way to physical ones. His peaceful retirement is first interrupted by the death of his wife, then his old life creeping back in. Before her death, his wife arranged for him to receive an adorable puppy named Daisy, meant to help him grieve, and Wick gradually warms up to the dog. Unfortunately, he crosses paths with Iosef (Alfie Allen), the obnoxious son of a powerful mob boss/former associate. Maybe if Iosef knew of Wick’s reputation, he wouldn’t have brutally beaten Wick, killed Daisy, and stolen his 1969 Mustang. This crime leads Wick on a quest for revenge through a deadly world full of the ghosts of his past profession. "John Wick" synthesizes Keanu’s greatness—his central, thematic loneliness; his command of physicality and stillness; and his peculiarly vulnerable masculinity.

On the surface, "John Wick" is a simple, classic story of revenge with some of the most impressive world-building I’ve seen in years. Beyond that, though, it metatextually capitalizes on the story arc of Keanu Reeves, Action Star, regaining his title in the genre. He sells every punch given or received, every thrown knife, every ounce of blood spilled. There is weight to the action in the film. You see the toll it takes on his body and, at times, a minute shift of his expression acknowledging how age affects performance. When he’s already wounded and gets into a fight for his life with Ms. Perkins (Adrianne Palicki), we feel it.

Wick is cut from the same cloth as Alain Delon’s assassin in "Le Samourai" (1969), whose cool stoicism and impressively-styled badassery yields a heavy influence. But while Delon and his kin seem sharp and cold, like cut glass, Wick is powered by something altogether different—longing, loss, connection. In Keanu’s hands, Wick isn’t void of emotion—or struggling with its first pangs—but brimming with it.

The film frames Wick as mythic. His face moves from mournful to vengeful at a clip. His eyes lock with a man just as he stabs him in the gut until he dies, while lights the color of cotton candy blue and magenta shift the architecture of his face to something fearsome. Keanu tells Wick’s story through his body—the way he wears a suit and his wedding ring, the cool determination in his eyes, the flash of warmth in a brief scene with Addy (Bridget Regan), the slackness in his face when he sees Daisy dead. This is a man who has nothing to lose, who carries the weight of his history with each step—and “his” history here is both Wick’s and Keanu’s. Stars like Keanu bring a certain baggage with them—the roles we’ve loved, the bitter taste of when they’ve failed us, half-remembered gossip. This context informs "John Wick."

There are actors we admire, and then there are the stars we love. The best of them get under our skin, becoming a part of our lives, following us through tragedies and triumphs. Keanu is one of those stars for me because of the sheer joy watching him brings. But there’s also the joy for the medium that radiates off him. Actors like Keanu—who find beauty in stillness—are why film was created in the first place. It’s a medium that can show us the truth of the human condition in a way no other form can. Keanu often taps into the truth of the shifting boundaries of modern masculinity, of how our bodies tell as much of a story as what we say. "John Wick" is as much a slick revenge flick as a fairytale. Keanu Reeves is back, the film seems to be whispering to us.

But was he ever gone in the first place?  

[bending-sickle]

Random question: is the stuff in Jurassic Park about t-rexes not being able to see movement based on any science at all, or just made up because it sounds cool?

Short answer:

Logical answer:

Dude, it doesn’t even make sense. You have this massive animal walking around and if something isn’t moving, then it’s invisible?  Its life would be filled with accidents like:

(Which, okay, for clarity? That horse totally know what it was doing. It straight up body-slammed its rider into the tree.)

Just, “Whoops! There’s a tree there!”

And then, like, if it’s got food in front of it, right in front of it, it’ll suddenly just paw helplessly at the air, wailing, “Where did it go? It was here a minute ago!”

I mean, for frick’s sake, freezing behavior (i.e. when prey animals listen to Dr. Grant and think, “If I don’t move, maybe the Big Bad won’t see me” worked this well then all of Tyrannosaurus’s prey would’ve evolved to freeze and Sue would’ve starved to death. And forget about finding carcasses to scavenge, because dead critters don’t move and are therefore invisible. It just makes no sense.

(Now this is an over-simplification. The object would not be invisible. Which, yes, flies in the face of Dr Grant’s “Don’t move! He can’t see us if we don’t move.” (Side-note: Dudebro, you were told that all the dinosaurs were female.)  Not being able to see motion doesn’t mean not being able to see, period. The inability to see motion (akinetopsia) - which I could only find as a condition caused by a cortical lesion and not, y’know, a healthy visual sensory method in an organism - means that you see a series of static frames instead of a fluid moving image. [x] So like a zoetrope. 

Note that stationary objects can be seen, no problem. So our old girl Sue would not be walking into trees, even if those trees are very, very still.)

But, okay. Fine. Let’s play. Even if good old Sue the Tyrannosaurus was, effectively, blind to the world, she would still have her sense of smell, and her sense of hearing. Which means that, no matter how abysmally poor those senses might be, this dude right here is toast:

And abysmally poor those senses were not. Not by a long shot.

That snoot, for instance. Tyrannosaurus had large olfactory bulbs and olfactory nerves relative to brain size and also a large naris, suggesting large nasal passages, all of which point to a highly developed sense of smell. Of 21 non-avian dinosaur species sampled, Tyrannosarus had the most highly developed sense of smell.  Over 50% of the Tyrannosaur’s brain was devoted to analysing smells. That’s one good snoot.  [x, x, x, x, x. See also x and x]

Now, say Sue has a cold, so she’s got a stuffy nose and can’t smell a man pissing his pants two inches from her face. Even so, you bet your butt she can hear that pee trickling down into his socks.  Tyrannosaurus had a very long cochlea (the length of which is often related to hearing acuity, or at least hearing’s importance in behaviour) and extensive tympanic pneumaticity, implying hearing was an important sense to Tyrannosaurus.  Specifically, low-frequency sounds (like elephants, which use them for long-distance communication). [x, x, x]

(Curiously, the inner ear’s structure also suggests Tyrannosaurus had a “heightened sense of equilibrium and balance” [x].)

So let’s take a step back and check out the Tyrannosaurus brain, just to see what we’re talking about:

It’s not very big.

It’s really not very big.

But it’s packed full of stuff, like:

Smelling bits, including:

ob = olfactory bulb

olf = olftactory region of nasal cavity

ons = sulcus (or sulci) for olfactory nerve branches and associated vessels

otc = olfactory tract cavity

Hearing bits, including:

c = cochlear duct (=lagena)

fc = fenestra cochleae (=round window)

Seeing bits, including:

opt = optic lobe

II = optic nerve canal

What a good brain. In fact, it’s the relatively largest brain of all adult non-avian dinosaurs (except certain maniraptoriforms, i.e. Bambiraptor, Troodon and Ornithomimus). [x]

Let’s Check Out That Eye answer:

Vision. Pretty neat stuff to have evolved. And it did so at first by being purely a perception of light (photoreception).  Nondirectional perception (“There’s light!”) in the form of eyespots slowly evolved into directional perception (“There’s light coming from over there!”.)  More complex eyes took a few million years to evolve, figuring out such useful tricks as image-processing and the above-described directional-perception.  This process began around the Cambrian explosion (541 million years ago). From there, fine-tuning continued in the form of shape-sensing and improved resolution continued, all the way until complex eyes that could distinguish shapes and colours, and even binocular vision.  [x, x, x]

By the time dinosaurs came about, eyes were pretty well designed.  All the cool kids could see light, where it came from, what shapes were around, what they were doing. Hell, even colour was starting to be a thing.

Now, what kind of eyes did Tyrannosaurus have? Damned fine ones.  The best, in fact, out of the coelurosauria.  

For example, binocular vision. Look at those front-facing eyeballs. Just perfect for judging the precise snout-to-prey distance.

A Tyrannosaurus’s binocular range was 55°.  This surpasses modern hawks.  Its visual acuity was 13 times that of humans (for reference, an eagle’s is only 3.6 times that of humans). This means that our dear friend Sue could have seen not just what was right in front of her snout, but something was was 6 km away (whereas we can only see a paltry 1.6 km away).  So depth perception? A+.

That depth perception is tied to visual precision (which adds weight to the “Tyrannosaurus was an active predator” camp, because you don’t really need to be precise in your eye-snout coordination if your food is just lying there, putrid and delicious and free, but you really could use it if your food is trying to run away and hide amongst a dozen other panicked little meatcicles).  

Tyrannosaurus had good visual tracking, using quick, coordinated eye and head movements to track prey,.  The inner ear also contributed to the enhanced reflexes coordinating these movements.  Again, perfect for meatcicle-hunting.

Colour vision might also have been a thing Tyrannosaurus had going for it.

[x, x, x, x, x, x, x]

All of which means Tyrannosaurus had really, really good vision and saying it could only see things if they moved is just…bzwuh?

Unless. Okay. In Jurassic Park, our intrepid scientists put frog DNA into the dinosaur DNA because lol why not. Which brings me to the “unless”. Because frogs, now. Frogs are weird. And by frogs I mean toads, which are not frogs.

Ahem.

Toads do this thing where if the visual stimulus dings the “I am a worm” bell, its behaviour is “I eat the worm!” but if the visual stimulus isn’t wormlike, then the toad is all, “I am not here. I am invisible. Nobody eat me, please.”  In sciencey terms, this is a prey-recognition system in the visual pathway resulting in innate release mechanisms of the om nom nom variety.

Why this pathway? Because toads don’t have involuntary saccadic eye (i.e. tracking) movements.  

This means they hold their eyes in a rigid position.

So what toads need to do is recognize stimulus before they decide to do anything.  Hence their specific detection system that lets them discriminate between “can nom it” and “will nom me” stimulus. [x, x]

Here is where my “unless” comes in.  Suppose Jurassic Park Sue has toad eyes (and a cold. And lost her hearing in some unfortunate roaring accident) and has to use those eyes to decide what to do with this strange little creatures in front of her. To nom or not to nom?  Well, in that case, if Dr Grant doesn’t move, poor Sue won’t get any stimulus that can help her decide which mechanism to enact. Meaning she won’t know if she’s looking at prey or not. Meaning she won’t “see” Dr Grant (or at least, won’t see him as food).

But that’s nonsense.

Dr. Grant is dead.

[picardonhealth]

COVID-19 has flipped the health care script. Can B.C. maintain its superiority as the pandemic reverses the country's health-outcome norms?

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

ANDRÉ PICARD, The Globe and Mail 

Traditionally in Canada there is a health gradient that goes from north to east to west.

Health outcomes - everything from traumatic injuries to rates of chronic illness to life expectancy - are the worst in the north, get slightly better in the Atlantic provinces, and gradually improve as you move across Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies and the Rockies before arriving at the health pole star of British Columbia.

With COVID-19, the pattern has been different.

The three territories and the four Atlantic provinces have put the more wealthy and populous provinces to shame with their strict, no-nonsense pandemiccontrol measures.

This demonstrates, more than anything, that political will and public buy-in matter more than resources in controlling the spread of the coronavirus.

Over all, the pandemic has hit hardest by every calculable measure - deaths, hospitalizations, cases - in Quebec.

This can be explained, in part, by bad luck. The virus hit Quebec hard in March, 2020, because of an early spring break that resulted in travellers bringing the virus back; this allowed it to take root. The province reacted slowly and has never really fully recovered - this despite having enacted the toughest measures in the country in recent months, including lengthy curfews.

Ontario, arguably, has been hardest hit politically. The criticism of Premier Doug Ford's handling of the pandemic has been loud and relentless. This can be explained, at least in part, by the concentration of news media in Canada's most populous province - though the narrative has been helped immensely by the province's abysmal communication. Ontario also has an enthusiastic cadre of outspoken health experts.

Given the significant news coverage, many might be surprised to learn that Ontario's pandemic performance is actually slightly better than average, at least in terms of cases and deaths per capita. Even now, with daily dire reports of hospitals on the brink, Ontario does not have the worst COVID-19 hospitalization rate.

That dubious honour belongs to Saskatchewan, with Manitoba and Alberta not far behind. But for better or worse, the criticism of politicians and public officials is more muted in the rest of the country.

While we're doling out prizes for poor performance, it should be noted that Manitoba also has the worst per capita death rate after Quebec, and Alberta takes second-place "honours" (again, after Quebec) in terms of cumulative cases per capita.

The poor showing of the Western provinces is doubly troubling because they got off relatively lightly in the first wave and were hammered by the far more predictable and preventable second wave.

The one province that has not been mentioned so far is British Columbia. That's because the Pacific province has the best outcomes in every category - cases, hospitalizations, deaths - among all the provinces west of New Brunswick. B.C. has "charted a different course," to quote Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry.

If you recall your ancient history (ancient, in pandemic time, meaning January, 2020), B.C. had the first COVID-19 death in Canada, at the Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver. The province acted swiftly, largely avoiding the carnage in nursing homes that soon occurred in Quebec and Ontario. Tragically, however, B.C. was as complacent as other provinces during the second wave, and longterm-care deaths soared.

One of the fascinating things about B.C.'s pandemic response is that the province has largely avoided the frustrating cycle of lockdowns and reopenings, and it has done so primarily by doing the bare minimum.

Until recently, B.C. had far fewer restrictions than any other jurisdiction in Canada. (It also has a handy foil next door, with neighbouring Alberta always seeming to do far worse, while generating lots of political controversy to boot.)

More than anything else, B.C.

has managed its pandemic messaging masterfully. It has done so despite having the worst data and the least transparency - and despite undertaking some dubious decisions, including waiting too long to close ski hills (this has allowed case numbers to explode recently).

Dr. Henry is clearly in charge, at least on the public stage, with the province's politicians in the background. That is a stark contrast to Ontario, where Mr. Ford takes centre stage while Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Williams stumbles and bumbles behind him.

The question now is whether Dr. Henry's mantra of "be kind, be calm, be safe" can still work, or whether B.C.'s largely laissez-faire approach will catch up with it - and whether, perhaps just as importantly when it comes to the optics, the ineptitude of other provinces will make it all look not so bad, relatively speaking.

[mikemortgage]

David Rosenberg: If American bulls want a reality check all they have to do is look at Canada

Well, the bulls certainly are emboldened, there isn’t any doubt about that. And this confidence, bordering on hubris, is proving very difficult to break. We are back to good news being good news and bad news also treated as good news‎.

The Dow’s nine-week winning streak barely came to an end but the Nasdaq did make it 10 in a row last week. The major averages are enjoying their fastest start to any year since 1991 (hmmm …which was still a recession year, folks). Amazingly, the S&P 500, after this 11 per cent January-February surge, is now within 4.3 per cent of reclaiming the cycle (all-time) highs. Virtually every commentator is bullish both on the market and macro outlook.

Where’s the loonie headed? David Rosenberg says he’s in the ’71-cent camp’

Goldilocks has left the building, David Rosenberg warns, so best get ready

David Rosenberg: Things aren’t nearly as rosy as the Bank of Canada believes

The safe-havens are now under pressure in this feel-good, risk-on environment. Gold has peeled back to a two-week low of US$1,286 per ounce after failing to pierce US$1,350 per ounce at the recent 10-month highs recorded on Feb. 20. The Treasury market has begun to trade quite defensively — the 10-year note yield is up 10 basis points in the worst week since last November to a five-week high of 2.76 per cent. The yield curve is re-steepening. The dollar is showing signs that it wants to break out again, as investors seem to be reassessing and revising up the U.S. economic landscape and pricing out the prospect that the Fed will be cutting rates this year, after all. Rate-cut odds by year-end have almost vanished to 2 per cent from 22 per cent a week ago, while market-based rate hike probabilities rose from just over 1 per cent to 7.7 per cent — ostensibly owing to what has been construed as some economic cheerleading during Jay Powell’s congressional testimony last week.

Let’s revisit the factors underpinning the relentless rally this year in risk assets, some of which came to further light this past week:

1. Trade tensions with China were already thawing out, but last week we did hear Robert Lighthizer say that the plan to raise tariffs from 10 per cent to 25 per cent was being postponed.

2. Theresa May kiboshed the risk of seeing a hard ‘no deal’ Brexit. We either see her plan get passed or we end up seeing Article 50 being extended. Against this backdrop, 10-year gilt yields soared 16 basis points in the steepest surge since September 2017. And within the FTSE, stocks that benefit from a soft Brexit (or no Brexit) outperformed the index by 300 basis points last week. ‎And let’s not forget sterling’s test of a seven-month high of US$1.33 last week, before being hit by a round of profit-taking.

3. There is more and more talk of Modern Monetary Theory and this has caused investors to start pricing in fresh rounds of fiscal reflation, financed by the Federal Reserve, no less. MMT really should stand for Magical Money Tree (whoever heard of such nonsense, and yet this “theory” is gaining more adherents, and investors love it).

4. Richard Clarida of today’s Fed conjures up the memory of Ben Bernanke and his revolutionary ideas (non-conventional easings) back in 2002 when he was a newbie governor. Now Clarida, the No. 2 person at the Fed, is pushing for the central bank to aim for a period of inflation above the 2 per cent target. Bernanke was ahead of his time, and perhaps Clarida is too. One reason why the bond market has become a bit more jittery.

5. The corporate bond market is back open for business and spreads have tightened dramatically. The same is true in the EM debt space. Fear is back in the broom closet — and the investor stretch for yield is back in the kitchen (even as my old Merrill colleague, and bond guru, Marty Fridson is again warning of some froth entering back into the high-yield space).

6. While the oil price took a bit of a drubbing on Friday, the near-20 per cent surge this year has proven to have been a big surprise, thanks to Saudi-led OPEC compliance on the production curbs. The correlation between WTI and the S&P 500 is positive to the tune of 90 per cent, so the rebound in crude has helped out a lot with respect to the newly-found optimism in the stock market.

7. Earnings season was mixed and guidance poor overall, but was not an unmitigated disaster. The bar was lowered enough for most companies to beat their beaten-down estimates.

8. Everyone seems to have been emboldened by the Q4 real GDP data in the USA  — a “solid” 2.6 per cent annual rate. I remember the days when a number like this was referred to as sluggish. No mention, I have to say, about the spurious run-up in business capital spending, which somehow escaped the monthly indicators but showed through in the GDP report. Outside of that, and GDP would have gripped a ‘1-handle’ in Q4. Now the data have been spotty, overall, but the mantra in the economics community is that we are in a 2016 type of ‘soft patch’ that will prove transitory.

9. The prevailing view in China is that the data are stabilizing and fiscal and monetary stimulus efforts are going to turn growth back into acceleration mode. And the equity market rally might lead one to believe that this is indeed the case (note that the Shanghai index led the world on the way down last year and led the way up last Fall … recall that the Chinese market had already bottomed prior to the late-year U.S. meltdown). The MSCI decision to quadruple the representation of Chinese shares in its flagship Emerging Market composite to 3.3 per cent (in line with Russia and Mexico) will undoubtedly add to the excitement created by the big rally in the Shanghai index this year. Well, there is no denying that it is a ‘cheap’ market, trading at a forward P/E multiple of 14, a 17 per cent discount to the historical (10-year) norm of 17.

10. There’s even some renewed enthusiasm in the euro area, which is brand spanking new. Even though Italy’s macro numbers have remained abysmal, confidence seems to have returned in both France and Germany. And the just-released data showed the eurozone jobless rate slipping to a 10-year low of 7.8 per cent and the headline inflation did the unthinkable and ticked up to 1.5 per cent from 1.4 per cent (though oil prices had a thing or two to do with that).

While these factors may be encouraging the bulls, it is nevertheless amazing that we could have a situation this past week where investors positively rerated the economic outlook and repriced the Federal Reserve for a renewed tightening in policy. After all, the Citigroup economic surprise index for the United States deteriorated to -43.4, which is the weakest it has been since August 2017; and the global index sagged to -32.4, a level we last saw in June 2013, which only begged for more monetary easing.

The Atlanta Fed took its Q1 real GDP growth estimate to a microscopic +0.3 per cent annual rate and the NY Fed is down to +0.9 per cent. Even the usually bullish Macroeconomic Advisers cut its Q1 view to +1.2 per cent from an already puny +1.6 per cent the week before. Be that as it may, the consensus is adamant that this is all related to temporary factors like the weather, the government shutdown and trade/tariff tensions.

Even if true, the reality is that despite this broad consensus that the data softness is temporary, the numbers are coming in surprisingly weak. The economists knew that this so-called transitory malaise was going to result in an ISM decline in February — but why did the index ‎fall so hard from 56.6 to 54.2 rather than to 55.9 as was widely expected? Why are the numbers surprising so much to the downside? This was, after all, the worst ISM reading since November 2016. New orders slipped to 55.5 from 58.2. Production sagged to 54.8 from 60.5. In the past six months the headline has receded 6.6 points, which has not happened since the credit rating downgrade in August 2011. Each of the past three recessions were presaged by such a dive, and the only other ‘head fake’ was in 1995. Note that in 1995 and 2011, the Fed was forced into easing action to lean against escalating downside economic risks. All the Powell Fed has done so far is talk.

Oh, and as for the latest backup in bond yields, this too looks temporary because the ISM data showed prices-paid declining for the fourth month in a row to 49.4 from 49.6 (nearby peak was over 80!) — the first time since January/February of 2016 that we have seen back-to-back sub-50 readings on the inflation metric. And keep in mind that back in early 2016, oil and commodity prices were sinking, not sharply rebounding as they have done this year. Tells you a thing or two about corporate pricing power …or perhaps a lack thereof.

Then there was the consumer spending data for December — a 0.6 per cent slump in real terms doesn’t happen every day, that’s for sure (only one economist polled by Bloomberg was calling for such a decline). And we already know that auto sales plunged 5 per cent in January (16.6 million units) with no recovery at all in February (16.56 million units, which is the lowest tally since August 2017 — the consensus was looking for a rebound to 16.8 million but this was not forthcoming). The Friday data on PCE was a tell-tale that, no, sorry, the retail sales plunge that month was not due to any hasty reporting flaws. And while the consensus was looking for a decline, indeed, the slump was twice as much as what was generally expected. Real discretionary outlays fell 0.4 per cent in the sharpest decline since February of last year and before that, September 2009 when it wasn’t even clear yet that the Great Recession had run its course. Perhaps even more disconcerting was the extent to which ‘essentials’ are being cut from the family budget — ‘nondiscretionary spending’ contracted 1.1 per cent in December, which is a deeper slide than anything we ever saw in each of the past three recessions (having occurred just two other times in the past three decades).

The decline in real consumer spending was right across the board in December. The government shutdown happened too late to have any perceptible impact. The weather that month was just fine. The mantra by the experts was how great the holiday shopping season was going. The stock market decline had little to do with it because the ‘wealth effect’ on spending occurs with lags; it is not contemporaneous (I can’t believe how many times I’ve heard this as a reason). Volume spending on durable goods sagged 1.9 per cent in the worst month since September 2009; nondurables dropped 1.2 per cent in the largest decline since the month of the Lehman collapse in September 2008; and even spending on services, typically resilient to the forces of the business cycle, dipped 0.2 per cent, something we haven’t seen since August 2012.

Let’s not forget that the spending plan components of the latest Conference Board consumer confidence survey rolled over in a meaningful way in February — and this includes the effects of the stock market rebound — across autos, housing, major appliances and even vacations (by road and by air). Ignore forward-looking indicators at your peril.

And the next question is whether Canada is acting as a leading indicator, too. After all, look at the similarities — tensions with China, a national leader under pressure, an early-year stock market boom, a central bank that has been pushed to the sidelines after a rate-hiking cycle, signs of deleveraging in the household sector, and the benefits of the recovery in oil prices. Canada may be small for a country, but it’s economy is bigger than California’s and being so well integrated with the United States, it may be serving up a wake-up call here (keeping in mind that California has been known to have been a leading indicator at times in the past as well).

So Americans should take note that their little brother north of the border saw real GDP growth throttle back to a mere +0.4 per cent annual rate in Q4, from +2 per cent in Q3 and +2.6 per cent in Q2 of last year. The bright spot in the report was actually dismal in its own right — a +0.7 per cent annualized increase in real consumer spending. Housing contracted at a 14.7 per cent annual rate and business spending plunged 10.9 per cent (-4.8 per cent for machinery and equipment and -15 per cent for nonresidential construction). The government sector didn’t help either (-0.6 per cent). If not for an inventory boost, curiously at the same time as imports declined, the headline would have been much worse. Indeed, real final domestic demand contracted at a 1.5 per cent annual rate in Q4 and that followed a 0.5 per cent drop in Q3. Back-to-back declines in this metric, virtually all the time, are associated with official recessions.

The monthly series showed a 0.1 per cent GDP dip in December, and that sets the stage for another flat quarterly reading, at best, for Q1. One can kiss goodbye to the Bank of Canada’s efforts to keep market-based rate hike expectations alive (all the more so with core inflation still modestly below target), and to the early-year rally in ‎the Canadian dollar as well. The loonie should not be rallying in the face of a horrible 0.8 per cent rundown in industrial activity in December, the fourth setback in the past five months, contracting at a 2.3 per cent annual rate through the piece.

This all comes as a bit of a surprise given the alleged good news we have seen on the employment front. But the Household survey may have been flashing a false signal — the companion, though lagged, SEPH data showed a 20,000 net payroll slide in December. And even though the headline Household survey data appeared to have been decent, the workweek has shrunk 0.3 per cent, the second decline in a row (and flat or down in four of the past five months). Hours worked are a leading indicator for job creation, and the news here is not good. And keep in mind that the Q4 inventory bulge does not augur well for any near-term recovery in manufacturing activity.

The one thing Canada is showing us all is that: one, monetary policy does influence the economy with a lag … this receives scant attention from U.S. economists; and two, ballyhooed infrastructure spending sounds great from a political ‘feel good’ standpoint, but doesn’t do a very good job at affecting the business cycle. (But won’t stop the big government spenders south of the border from clamoring for a big package financed by money printing out of the Fed).

One final comment on the risk-on rally that has taken hold in the first two months of the year. I would hazard to say that if we hadn’t endured that Q4 meltdown, such a flashy rebound never would have occurred. As things stand, the stock market is still more than four per cent off the highs and actually, despite all the euphoria of late, has really made no headway at all for the past 14 months. It could be dangerous to extrapolate very good January-February stock market gains into the future, because if memory serves me correctly, the S&P in prior such years went on to post mediocre gains or outright declines in the ensuing 10 months. I am thinking of 1987, 1988, 1993, 2004, 2011 and 2012 when I say that.

Word to the wise.

David Rosenberg is chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates Inc. and author of the daily economic report, Breakfast with Dave.

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