#I want to believe he read those tweets critiquing him for how he talked about Jensen 🤭

[tortoisenottortoise]

Am I the only one who likes seeing muscular women in media more than muscular men?

Alright so, this one will probably end up much shorter and a little more ranty than I'd like, but this is kind of personal so be fairly warned. 

 Recently I've seen a few complaints about the new He-Man show and honestly, I fully understand and empathize with them. Whilst I haven't fully seen the show, from what I've viewed I can personally speaking agree (or at the very least understand) where most criticisms come from. I think it's incredibly shitty that the writer basically lied to his audience about how the show would run. Now normally I'd be fine with a twist such as He-man dying, but he's an important part of the show and the way the marketing & merchandising for it was running kind of comes across as him basically using He-Man's name to get people into the show. I also feel like it's fine to view Teela as obnoxious and annoying, nothing about her personality-wise seems likable to me. I also heard a few complaints about Orko's (I think that's his name, don't crucify me) backstory and how his character was handled.Yet as the title suggests one that didn't stick with me was the criticism of Teela and a general trend towards the criticism of women in media as being "masculine". 

I've heard over and over that Hollywood representing strong women by giving them masculine traits is a bad thing and yet... I kind of don't get it? It feels odd to say, almost like I'm the dumbest man alive for admitting something which most people on the internet seem to be so sure about, yet I just don't understand where this is coming from. I've seen this thrown at She-hulk, Wonder Woman, Abby, and many other characters, yet when inquired it usually loops back around to, "Yeah they have muscles", and that's about it. This type of criticism in specific seems to overly focus on the appearance of said characters. It's the one critique I just can't get behind and it feels like at best it's a shallow criticism that fails to get its point across, and at worst it's actively demeaning to women who desire to or show masculine traits. But first, let me break this down into sections.

Section 1: Muscles =/= Masculinity (In my opinion at least)

Oh boy, I feel like this is a section that might rustle some feathers, but I'm going to try and explain myself best as possible. I simply do not view muscularity as a feature that is inherent to or should be inherent to men. I'm not going to pretend as if muscular men aren't more saturated in media and art, nor as if they're societally treated as masculine, but one of the reasons I fail to understand this criticism is that I see muscles beyond the horizons as being just a masculine trait. 

I believe that muscles should instead be seen as a sign of hard work and determination. As someone who's currently trying (and struggling) to stay healthy and fit, it's much harder than a lot of media portrays it to be. It's a test where you push yourself to the limits, not just for the sake of doing it, but so you can improve as a person. Whenever I go to the gym and see a muscular gal or guy walk by, my immediate thought isn't, "how masculine" or anything like that my thought is, "wow! They worked hard to get like that, I should work hard as well!". 

This interpretation tends to feel like it's just simply taking a piss on people who actively work hard to achieve higher levels of strength. Especially when society places and enforces these unrealistic standards onto people. If you don't have a six-quintillion pack nor can bench press a fucking house then you're worthless, of course, that is unless you actually attempt to pursue said standards which in that case you're automatically dismissed as cheating your way to gaining your muscles instead of putting any work in. And that's just for men who often don't have to deal with traditional idiots who are stuck in the year 1950 where I can't walk on the same street as them. My skin crawls when reading tweets from older men talking about how weightlifting women are "ruining their fertility" and I absolutely hate it when people in my life treat these women as if they're mythical creatures from a fairy tale, or when females who have trained to such a degree are simply dismissed as being inferior. 

Obviously, I don't think the people who say this are like that, but whenever I hear this type of critique I can't help but think of the culmination of all these experiences I've gone through. But then again, this might honestly just be because I'm personally attracted to muscular women.

  Section 2: Body type diversity

  Another reason that I tend to like muscular women in media over muscular men is simply due to the sheer oversaturation of muscular men. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem if anybody likes muscular men. I totally get wanting to shove your face in between some man titties or get inspired by their physiques. In all honesty, almost everything I said earlier can directly apply to men, but one of the reasons I bring up body type diversity is that there tend to be much less muscular women than men. I

f anything, I'd have to say that muscular men are almost treated as the default when it comes to things like superhero comics, movies, video games, anime, etc. In a similar vein, the default for women tends to be slim and curvaceous, you get the drill. Whenever someone who doesn't fit into either body type shows up and isn't treated like a joke/gag or a character to rip on, I can't help but be happy about it. As much as I have no clue wtf is going on with TLOU2, I can appreciate that Abby's portrayal doesn't seem to exist solely as a joke meant to demean women for working out. I'm excited when an anime protagonist is a fat character who can go beyond just being a "fat guy" and is treated the same way a normal person would be.

 Regardless of what you think about whatever trait you're criticizing, there's probably someone out there who fits it. If you're not into it or dislike it, then that's fine, but I'd rather have that expressed than it being actively made out as a harmful trope as opposed to just literally another body type that some women have.

  Section 3: Muscular women inspire me more

Ok so, we've now blown into a full-on personal experience, buckle up boys, girls, NBs, anything in between, and I feel like I'm forgetting someone so apologies! But yeah, muscular women in media tend to be a lot more inspiring than people seem to give them credit for. This comes down to a mix of both the qualities I outlined earlier in what makes the characters inspiring but also plays into the idea of body diversity. 

One of the traits that make amazons seem more inspiring is their inherent rarity/lack of screentime. As I stated earlier, whilst I do enjoy my fair share of man-titties, it kind of gets to a point where it's more depressing than inspiring when all you see is just super-models shoved in your face whenever you walk into a theater. If for every Goku I could find ten other guys who were on the chubbier side then I'd be able to take more from when I see Goku and other characters with his body type, yet it's so saturated that it no longer becomes something to aspire to, but simply the norm.  It's not that you can work to become muscular or skinny with hard work and effort, you have to be muscular or skinny unless you want to be deemed a failure. Being chubby often isn't presented as a starting point but just treated as a defect. As someone who spent years battling with my own self-perception, that's just not a good message to get across.

Now, this obviously isn't to say that people can never make muscular characters. After all, it's their story so they can put whatever they want in it. The aim of the game isn't to stop people from making a specific type of character, but to encourage a diverse set of people to make a diverse set of characters. This is the reason why I view muscular women as so inspiring. Instead of coming across as just "the norm" or "the standard" they stand out from the crowd and despite knowing what they have to deal with, are still ready and willing to work out and improve their bodies. They had a goal in mind and set time aside to achieve said goal, that's something I can get behind.

  Conclusion:

This will be another short section, but I just wanted to mention it because it caps off my thoughts on this post in general. What originally started as me just not getting the reason why people disliked Teela's design somehow turned into a passionate rant and I'm A) not sure if it fits on this particular subsection of the community, B) scared I'm going to get ripped to pieces, and C) somewhat unsatisfied with all that I said. At the end of the day, this probably won't be seen by too many people, but to those who do see it, I hope you have a wonderful day. I just wanted to talk about something that was near and dear to my heart and hoped that I made it clear why I view things the way I do. 

P.S: Can we stop having this double standard where we act like women whose arms show the slightest hint of definition are "unrealistic" whilst men can look like tree trunks and be considered normal and healthy? please and thank you!

[definitelynotscott]

LINK TO TOP TWEET OF THREAD HERE

LINK TO THE EPISODE OF HER PODCAST WITH GLADWELL HERE

Transcription below the cut.

[44-Tweet thread by @amandaknox

Does my name belong to me? My face? What about my life? My story? Why does my name refer to events I had no hand in? I return to these questions because others continue to profit off my name, face, & story without my consent. Most recently, the film #STILLWATER

/ a thread

This new film by director Tom McCarthy, starring Matt Damon, is “loosely based” or “directly inspired by” the “Amanda Knox saga,” as Vanity Fair put in a for-profit article promoting a for-profit film, neither of which I am affiliated with.

I want to pause right here on that phrase: “the Amanda Knox saga.” What does that refer to? Does it refer to anything I did? No. It refers to the events that resulted from the murder of Meredith Kercher by a burglar named Rudy Guede.

It refers to the shoddy police work, prosecutorial tunnel vision, and refusal to admit their mistakes that led the Italian authorities to wrongfully convict me, twice. In those four years of wrongful imprisonment and 8 years of trial, I had near-zero agency.

Everyone else in that “saga” had more influence over events than I did. The erroneous focus on me by the authorities led to an erroneous focus on me by the press, which shaped how I was viewed. In prison, I had no control over my public image, no voice in my story.

This focus on me led many to complain that Meredith had been forgotten. But of course, who did they blame for that? Not the Italian authorities. Not the press. Me! Somehow it was my fault that the police and media focused on me at Meredith’s expense.

The result of this is that 15 years later, my name is the name associated with this tragic series of events, of which I had zero impact on. Meredith’s name is often left out, as is Rudy Guede’s. When he was released from prison recently, this was the NY Post headline. [Picture of headline reading “Man who killed Amanda Knox’s roommate freed on community service By Lee Brown December 6, 2020]

In the wake of #metoo, more people are coming to understand how power dynamics shape a story. Who had the power in the relationship between Bill Clinton and @MonicaLewinsky? The president or the intern?

I would love nothing more than for people to refer to the events in Perugia as “The murder of Meredith Kercher by Rudy Guede,” which would place me as the peripheral figure I should have been, the innocent roommate.

But I know that my wrongful conviction, and subsequent trials, became the story that people obsessed over. I know they’re going to call it the “Amanda Knox saga” into the future. That being the case, I have a few small requests.

Don’t blame me for the fact that others put the focus on me instead of Meredith. And when you refer to these events, understand that how you talk about it affects the people involved: Meredith’s family, my family, @Raffasolaries, and me.

Don’t do what @deadlinepete did when reviewing #STILLWATER for @deadline, referring to me as a convicted murderer while conveniently leaving out my acquittal. I asked him to correct it. No response. [Picture of text from his article reading “The 2007 case of Amanda Knox, the American convicted in an Italian court of murdering her roommate, was the impetus for writer-director Tom McCarthy’s Stillwater, but in the 10 years since beginning, abandoning and starting over, it has evolved into something much more - and much better.”]

And if you must refer to the “Amanda Knox saga” maybe don’t call it, as the @nytimes did in profiling Matt Damon, “the sordid Amanda Knox saga.” Sordid: morally vile. Not a great adjective to have placed next to your name. Repeat something often enough, and people believe it.

Now, #STILLWATER is by no means the first thing to rip off my story without my consent at the expense of my reputation. There was of course the terrible Lifetime @LMN movie that I sued them over, resulting in them cutting a dream sequence where I was depicted as killing Meredith.

A few years ago, there was the Fox series Proven Innocent (@InnocentOnFOX) which was developed and marketed as “What if Amanda Knox became a lawyer?” The first I heard from the show’s makers was when they had the audacity to ask me to help them promote it on the eve of its debut. [Picture of text reading “During the panel, one TV critic wondered if the series sets out to imagine “What if Amanda Knox became a lawyer.” as an exchange student, Knox became a headline when convicted in the murder of a fellow exchange student with whom she was sharing an apartment. Knox later was acquitted by the Italian equivalent of the Supreme Court. Strong acknowledged he’d said virtually the same thing when developing the series, after seeing a documentary about Knox on Netflix. This series is a “very fictionalized version of her story, obviously,” he said.”]

Malcolm Gladwell’s last book, Talking to Strangers, has a whole chapter analyzing my case. He reached out on the eve of publication to ask if he could use excerpts from my audiobook in his audiobook. He didn’t think to ask for an interview before forming his conclusions about me.

To his credit, Gladwell responded to my critiques over email, and was gracious enough to join me on my podcast, Labyrinths. [Link to the episode of her podcast with Gladwell]

I extend the same invitation to Tom McCarthy and Matt Damon, who I hope hear what I’m about to say about #STILLWATER

#STILLWATER was “directly inspired by the Amanda Knox saga.” Director Tom McCarthy tells Vanity Fair, “he couldn’t help but imagine how it would feel to be in Knox’s shoes.” ...But that didn’t inspire him to ask me how it felt to be in my shoes.

He became interested in the family dynamics of the “Amanda Knox saga.” “Who are the people that are visiting [her], and what are those relationships? Like, what’s the story around the story?” I have a lot to say about that, & would have told McCarthy... if he’d ever reached out.

“We decided, ‘Hey, let’s leave the Amanda Knox case behind,’“ McCarthy tells Vanity Fair. “But let me take this piece of the story - an American woman studying abroad involved in some kind of sensational crime and she ends up in jail - and fictionalize everything around it.”

Let me stop you right there. That story, my story, is not about an American woman studying abroad “involved in some kind of sensational crime.” It’s about an American woman NOT involved in a sensational crime, and yet wrongfully convicted.

And if you’re going to “leave the Amanda Knox case behind,” and “fictionalize everything around it,” maybe don’t use my name to promote it. You’re not leaving the Amanda Knox case behind very well if every single review mentions me.

You’re not leaving the Amanda Knox case behind when my face appears on profiles and articles about the film. [Picture of Vanity Fair headline “Stillwater: How much of Matt Damon’s New Movie Was Inspired by Amanda Knox? By Julie Miller” with a picture from the movie below and a picture of Amanda Knox superimposed over it.]

But, all this I mostly forgive. I get it. There’s money to be made, and you have no obligation to approach me. What I’m more bothered by is how this film, “directly inspired by the Amanda Knox saga, “fictionalizes” me and this story.

I was accused of being involved in a death orgy, a sex-game gone wrong, when I was nothing but platonic friends with Meredith. But the fictionalized me in #STILLWATER does have a sexual relationship with her murdered roommate.

In the film, the character based on me gives a tip to her father to help find the man who really killed her friend. Matt Damon tracks him down. This fictionalizing erases the corruption and ineptitude of the authorities.

What’s crazier is that, in reality, the authorities already had the killer in custody. He was convicted before my trial even began. They didn’t need to find him. And even so, they pressed on in persecuting me, because they didn’t want to admit they had been wrong.

McCarthy told Vanity Fair that “Stillwater’s ending was inspired not by the outcome of Knox’s case, but by the demands of the script he and his collaborators had created.” Cool, so I wonder, is the character based on me actually innocent?

Turns out, she asked the killer to help her get rid of her roommate. She didn’t mean for him to kill her, but her request indirectly led to the murder. How do you think that impacts my reputation?

I continue to be accused of “knowing something I’m not revealing,” of “having been involved somehow, even if I didn’t plunge the knife.” So Tom McCarthy’s fictionalized version of me is just the tabloid conspiracy guilter version of me.

By fictionalizing away my innocence, my total lack of involvement, by erasing the role of the authorities in my wrongful conviction, McCarthy reinforces an image of me as a guilty and untrustworthy person.

And with Matt Damon’s star power, both are sure to profit handsomely off of this fictionalization of “the Amanda Knox saga” that is sure to leave plenty of viewers wondering, “Maybe the real-life Amanda was involved somehow.”

Which brings me to my screenplay idea! It’s directly inspired by the life of Matt Damon. He’s an actor, celebrity, etc. Except I’m going to fictionalize everything around it, and the Damon-like character in my film is involved in a murder.

He didn’t plunge the knife per se, but he’s definitely at fault somehow. His name is Damien Matthews, and he starred in the Jackson Burne spy films. He works with Tim McClatchy, who’s a Harvey Weinstein type. It’s loosely based on reality. Shouldn’t bother Matt or Tom, right?

I joke, but of course, I understand that Tom McCarthy and Matt Damon have no moral obligation to consult me when profiting by telling a story that distorts my reputation in negative ways. And I reiterate my offer to interview them on Labyrinths.

I bet we could have a fascinating conversation about identity, and public perception, and who should get to exploit a name, face, and story that has entered the public imagination.

I never asked to become a public person. The Italian authorities and global media made that choice for me. And when I was acquitted and freed, the media and the public wouldn’t allow me to become a private citizen ever again.

I went back to school and fellow students photographed me surreptitiously, people who lived in my apartment building invented stories for the tabloids, I worked a minimum wage job at a used bookstore, only to be confronted by stalkers at the counter.

I was hounded by paparazzi, my story and trauma was (and is) endlessly recycled for entertainment, and in the process, I’ve been accused of shifting attention away from the memory of Meredith Kercher, of being a media whore.

I have not been allowed to return to the relative anonymity I had before Perugia. My only option is to sit idly by while others continue to distort my character, or fight to restore my good reputation that was wrongfully destroyed.

It’s an uphill battle. I probably won’t succeed. But I’ve been here before. I know what it’s like facing impossible odds.

If you’re on @Medium reader, you can find this all here: [link to article shared above]

[crowdvscritic]

round up // NOVEMBER 20

Hi, I’m tired. Actually, my friend Celeste created a piece of art that puts the emphasis needed on that sentiment:

I’m very tired. November felt like it was three years and also felt like it went by in a blink and also I’m not sure where October ended and November began—how does time work like that? (I’ve yet to see Tenet, but maybe that will explain it.) But like Michael Scott, somehow I manage, and lately it’s been like this:

Late-night Etsy scrolling. Browsing beautiful, non-big-box-store artwork is very calming just before I go to bed. I’d recommend Etsy stores like Celeste’s chr paperie shop, which I know from experience is full of great Christmas gift ideas. 

Taking a day off of work to do laundry. I’m not sure if it’s more #adulting that I did that or that I was excited to do that.

Eating Ghiradelli chocolate chips straight from the bag. I actually don’t recommend this as a healthy option, but this is also not a health blog.

Watching lots and lots of ‘80s movies. One day I’ll ask a therapist why this decade of films is so comforting for me despite its many flaws, but for now I’m just rolling with it.

Reading. Have you heard of this? It’s a form of entertainment but doesn’t require screens—wild!

Memes. All good Pippin “Fool of a” Took jokes are welcome here.

Leaning into the Christmas spirit by ordering that Starbucks peppermint mocha, making plans to watch everything in that TCM Christmas book I haven’t seen, and keeping the lights on my hot pink tinsel tree on all day as I work from home.

This month’s Round Up is full of stuff that made me smile and stuff that sucked me into its world—I think they’ll do the same for you, too.

November Crowd-Pleasers

Sister Act (1992)

If in four years you aren’t in an emotional state to watch election results roll in, I recommend watching Whoopi Goldberg pretend to be a nun for 100 minutes. (Though, incidentally, if you want to watch that clip edited to specifically depict how the results came in this year, you’ll need to watch Sister Act 2.) This musical-comedy is about as feel-good as it gets, meaning there’s no reason you should wait four more years to watch it. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 7.5/10

Nevada Memes

Speaking of election results, Nevada memes. That’s it—that’s the tweet. Vulture has a round up of some of the best.

SNL Round Up

Laugh and enjoy!

“Cinema Classics: The Birds” (4605 with John Mulaney)

“Uncle Ben” (4606 with Dave Chappelle)

RoboCop (1987)

I’m not surprised I liked RoboCop, but I am surprised at why I liked RoboCop. Not only is this a boss action blockbuster, it’s an investigation into consumerism and the commodification of the human body. It’s also a critique of institutions that treat crime like statistics instead of actions done by people that impact people. That said, it’s also movie about a guy who’s fused with a robot and melts another guy’s face off with toxic sludge, so there’s a reason I’m not listing this under the Critic section. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 8/10

Double Feature – ‘80s Comedies: National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) + Major League (1989)

The ‘80s-palooza is in full swing! In Vacation (Crowd: 9.5/10 // Critic: 8/10), Chevy Chase just wants to spend time with his family on a vacation to Wally World, but wouldn’t you know it, Murphy’s Law kicks into gear as soon as the Griswold family shifts from out of Park. The brilliance of the movie is that every one of these terrible things is plausible, but the Griswolds create the biggest problems themselves. In Major League (Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 6.5/10), Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, and Wesley Snipes are Cleveland’s last hope for a winning baseball team. Like the Griswolds, mishaps and hijinks ensue in their attempt to prevent their greedy owner from moving the Indians to Miami, but the real win is this movie totally gets baseball fans. Like most ‘80s movies, not everything in this pair has aged well, but they brought some laughs when I needed them most.

This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousens (2020)

They’re born a minute apart in the same hospital, but they don’t meet until their 30th birthday on New Year’s Day. So, yes, it’s a little bit Serendipity, and it’s a little bit sappy, but those are both marks in this book’s favor. This Time Next Year is a time-hopping rom-com with lots of almost-meet-cutes that will have you laughing, believing in romantic twists of fate, and finding hope for the new year.

Double Feature – ‘80s Angsty Teens: Teen Wolf (1985) + Uncle Buck (1989)

In the ‘80s, Hollywood finally understood the angsty teen, and this pair of comedies isn’t interested in the melodrama earlier movies like Rebel Without a Cause were depicting. (I’d recommend Rebel, but not if you want to look back on your teen years with any sense of humor.) In Teen Wolf (Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 5/10), Michael J. Fox discovers he’s a werewolf.one that looks more like the kid in Jumanji than any other portrayal of a werewolf you’ve seen. It’s a plot so ‘80s and so bizarre you won’t believe this movie was greenlit.

In Uncle Buck (Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 7.5/10), John Candy is attempting to connect with the nieces and nephew he hasn’t seen in years, including one moody high schooler. (Plus, baby Gaby Hoffman and pre-Home Alone Macauley Culkin!) This is my second pick from one of my all-time fave filmmakers, John Hughes (along with National Lampoon’s Vacation, above), and it’s one more entry that balances heart and humor in a way only he could do. You can see where I rank this movie in Hughes’s pantheon on Letterboxd.

Lord of the Rings memes

This month on SO IT’S A SHOW?, Kyla and I revisited The Lord of the Rings, a trilogy we love almost as much as we love Gilmore Girls. You can listen to our episode about the series on your fave podcast app, and you can laugh through hundreds of memes like I did for “research” on Twitter.

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (2019)

Most adults are afraid of children’s temper tantrums, but can you imagine how terrified you’d be if they caught on fire in their fits of rage? That’s the premise of this novel, which begins when an aimless twentysomething becomes the nanny of a Tennessee politician’s twins who burst into flames when they get emotional. The book is filled with laugh-out-loud moments but never leaves behind the human emotion you need to make a magical realistic story.

An Officer and a Gentlemen (1982)

Speaking of aimless twentysomethings and emotion, feel free to laugh, cry, and swoon through this melodrama in the ‘80s canon. Richard Gere meanders his way into the Navy when he has nowhere else to go, and he tries to survive basic training, work through his family issues, and figure out his future as he also falls in love with Debra Winger. So, yeah, it’s a schamltzier version of Top Gun, but it’s schmaltz at its finest. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7.5/10

November Critic Picks

Double Feature – ‘40s Amensia Romances: Random Harvest (1942) + The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

Speaking of schmaltz at its finest, let me share a few more titles fitting that description. In Random Harvest (Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 8.5/10), Greer Garson falls in love with a veteran who can’t remember his life before he left for war. In The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 8.5/10), Gene Tierney discovers a ghost played by a crotchety Rex Harrison in her new home. Mild spoiler: Both feature amnesiac plot developments, and while amnesia has become a cliché in the long history of romance films, Harvest is moving enough and Mr. Muir is charming enough that you won’t roll your eyes. You can see these and more romances complicated by forced forgetfulness in this Letterboxd round up.

The African Queen (1951)

It’s Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn directed by John Huston—I mean, I don’t feel like I need to explain why this is a winner. Bogart (in his Oscar-winning role) and Hepburn star in a two-hander script, dominating the screen time except for a select few scenes with supporting cast. The pair fight for survival while cruising on a small boat called The African Queen during World War I (in Africa, natch), and the two make this small story feel grand and epic. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 9/10

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

A young man’s (Dennis Price) mother is disowned from their wealthy family because she marries for love. After her death, he seeks vengeance by killing all of the family members ahead of him in line to be the Duke D'Ascoyne. The twist? All of his victims are played by Sir Alec Guinness! Almost every character in this black comedy is a terrible person, so you won’t be too sorry to see them go—you can just enjoy the creative “accidents” he stages and stay in suspense on whether our “hero” gets his comeuppance. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 8.5/10

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1937)

What would you do if you found out you were to be someone’s eighth wife? Well, it’s probably not what Claudette Colbert does in this screwball comedy that reminds me a bit of Love Crazy. This isn’t the first time I’ve recommended Colbert, Gary Cooper, or Ernst Lubitsch films, so it’s no surprise these stars and this director can make magic together in this hilarious battle of the wills. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 8.5/10

The Red Shoes (1948)

I love stories about the competition between your life and your art, and The Red Shoes makes that competition literal. Moira Shearer plays a ballerina who feels life is meaningless without dancing—then she falls in love. That’s an oversimplification of a rich character study and some of the most beautiful ballet on film, but I can’t do it justice in a short paragraph. Just watch (perhaps while you’re putting up your hot pink tinsel tree?) and soak in all the goodness. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 10/10

The Third Man (1949)

Everybody loves to talk about Citizen Kane, and with the release of Mank on Netflix, it’s newsworthy again. But don’t miss this other ‘40s team up of Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. Cotten is a writer digging for the truth of his friend’s (Welles) death in a mysterious car accident. Eyewitness accounts differ on what happened, and who was the third man at the scene only one witness remembers? 71 years later, this movie is still tense, and this actor pairing is still electric. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 9/10

The Untouchables (1987)

At the end of October, we lost Sean Connery. I looked back on his career first by writing a remembrance for ZekeFilm and then by watching The Untouchables. (In a perfect world I would’ve reversed that order, but c’est la vie.) In my last selection from the ‘80s, Connery and Kevin Costner attempt to convict Robert De Niro’s Al Capone of anything that will stick and end his reign of crime in Chicago. Directed by Brian De Palma and set to an Ennio Morricone soundtrack, this film is both an exciting action flick and an artistic achievement that we literally discussed in one of my college film classes. Connery won his Oscar, and K. Cos is giving one of the best of his career, too. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 9.5/10

Remember the Night (1940)

Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in my favorite team up yet! Double Indemnity may be the bona fide classic in the canon, but this Christmas story—with MacMurray as a district attorney prosecuting shoplifter Stanwyck— is a charmer. I’ve added it to my list of must-watch Christmas movies—watch for some holiday cheer and rom-com feels. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 8.5/10

Photo credits: chr paperie. Books my own. All others IMDb.com.

[letterboxd]

How I Letterboxd #10: Chad Hartigan.

Filmmaker Chad Hartigan talks to Jack Moulton about his prescient new sci-fi romance, Little Fish, why radio silence is worse than a bad review, and his secret system of Letterboxd lists.

Chad Hartigan has won prizes at the Sundance Film Festival and the Film Independent Spirit Awards for his acclaimed films This is Martin Donner and Morris From America. He’s also been a Letterboxd member since way back, joining what he proclaims as “my favorite website” in 2013. Hartigan has always been an obsessive logger: he has transcribed all of his viewing data since 1998 and continues to work on filling in the gaps in his downtime.

Like many ardent Letterboxd members, Hartigan is a diligent list-maker, keeping tabs on his best first viewings of each year and assembling an all-time top 1,000 films over the summer (with an accompanying 26-minute supercut). Perhaps unusually for a member of the film industry on Letterboxd, he’s unafraid to hold back his opinions and regularly voices his critiques on even the most acclaimed films.

Hartigan’s newest film, Little Fish, is a sci-fi love story starring Olivia Cooke (Sound of Metal) and Jack O’Connell (Unbroken). Written by Mattson Tomlin, it’s set during an imagined pandemic—shot long before our own actual pandemic—wherein a disease causes people to lose their memories. It was set to premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, and then postponed due to Covid-19. It’s now out in limited theaters and on demand, and we were delighted with the excuse to put Hartigan in the How I Letterboxd spotlight.

Olivia Cooke as Emma and Jack O’Connell as Jude in ‘Little Fish’.

You made a pandemic movie before the pandemic. How do you feel about accidentally hitting that unfortunate zeitgeist and now consequently being asked questions like this one? Yeah, strange. The questions are fine. If it wasn’t this one, it would be another that you would have to answer over and over again. One of the things that drew me to the project was that it felt like a fantasy that wasn’t necessarily rooted in reality in a way that my other [films] were. I liked that it’s old-fashioned in its attempts to purely take you somewhere and wasn’t intended to hold up a mirror to our times—but then in the end that’s exactly what it’s doing. I’m curious myself, and I’m checking Letterboxd to see the reactions from people because I really couldn’t guess what it would have been like [now].

Are there any prescient details you’re proud of getting right? I’m so grateful and happy that Jack [O’Connell] is wearing his mask correctly. That’s the number one thing that I’m glad we got right. I think it was very smart of Mattson to focus the movie on [the relationship] rather than the details of this global pandemic. I feel the reason it’s not in bad taste is because it dealt with those things as a backdrop and instead focused on people just trying to remember what’s important and clinging onto those that they love.

Onto our own favorite memory aid, Letterboxd. How did you discover us and how did you manage without us? I’ve been on since 2013, so I’m probably one of the earliest people to jump on it. I love the interface and the diary, just aesthetically it was really fun. I’ve been keeping track of what I see with analog [methods] for as long as I can remember. I have diaries and planners so I logged all that old information. If I was running for president, my platform would be that everybody is required to use Letterboxd comprehensively, because I just love to know what everybody is watching all the time.

Do you talk about Letterboxd in the real world with the other filmmaking people? Yes, and I’m often trying to convince them to join. Other filmmakers are more concerned about having their opinions on peers be public knowledge than I am, I guess. I’ve made four films now and each one’s been bigger and more widely seen than the last. The very first one was a total no-budget affair that couldn’t get into any festivals and I was very excited when I finally got it into the Hamptons Film Festival. It was about half-full and one or two people came up to me afterwards and said they liked it. This was pre-Twitter so I spent the whole next day Googling to see if anybody had written anything. I was so curious to see what people thought and there was nothing—not a review, not a blog—just total emptiness.

When the next film got into Sundance, there were people tweeting their reactions and actual reviews and I read everything. People were asking if the bad reviews hurt me. Absolutely not—nothing can be worse than the radio silence of nobody caring about the first film. The fact that people care enough to sit and write about this movie—good or bad—is a win, and I’ve carried that onward. I like to see what people think, it can be helpful in how you view the film as a success or failure. You learn and move on.

Jack O’Connell at least remembers how to wear a mask in ‘Little Fish’.

Some filmmakers have told us they’re kinder to films after making their own, but you’re not shy at all about being critical. How did making your own films change your perspective as a critic? I don’t consider myself a critic so that’s why I’d be less concerned with someone reading what I thought. Why should they put any stock into what I think? If they get hung up on it then that’s their own stuff because I’m not a critic. Like everyone else on Letterboxd, I just love watching movies. Obviously I can appreciate and understand some of the technical aspects maybe moreso than people who don’t make films, but at the end of the day, rarely that’s the thing that makes you love a movie or not. There’s a great bit in Francis Ford Coppola’s commentary track for Finian’s Rainbow where Fred Astaire’s doing a dance number and [Coppola admits] he totally messed it up because Astaire’s feet aren’t fully in frame. He’s very honest about his mistakes because it’s one of his earliest movies. Then he goes on to say that he thinks there’s the same number of mistakes in Finian’s Rainbow as there are in The Godfather, it’s just that he made mistakes on the things that don’t matter for The Godfather. No film is perfect, but if it can latch onto this one magical aspect that connects you to it, that’s what makes you love it or not.

You had a project where you chart the best films made by directors at certain ages as you reached that age. Tell us more about it. That was a great project. I got the idea when I was 26. This was back when I had a Netflix DVD subscription and it was just hard for me to randomly choose DVDs to throw in the queue. I needed a system. I decided to watch movies from directors when they were my age and see if there’s some common denominator, something I can learn. At that point, there weren’t many, there were films like Boogie Nights and Fassbinder films. Not many people had made stuff when they were 26 or 27, so it was very feasible. Every year there were more movies and more directors to add to the list and it became time-consuming. I did it all the way up until I was 34 and the reason I stopped was because I had a son and there was no way I could continue this level of viewing output.

My favorite part of your account is the fact that you log every viewing of your own films. You know for a fact that you’ve watched Morris From America 26 times and Little Fish fifteen times. Why do you log them? What counts as a viewing? I’ve clearly watched those movies many more times in little chunks but I’ll only log it if we’re sitting down and watching it from beginning to end. I have a ticket to see Little Fish in the drive-in on Saturday, so it’s going to be logged again. Why do I do it? Like I said, I wish everyone was required to use Letterboxd comprehensively. That’s what it’s there for for me, an accurate log of what I watch. This is psychotic behavior but I’m tempted to have a Letterboxd account for my son. I’ll do his views for him once he starts watching movies until he’s old enough to take over. It’ll just be, like, Frozen a thousand times but he’s not old enough to watch anything yet, so we’ll see.

Have you discovered any films thanks to Letterboxd discourse that influenced your approach to filmmaking? For sure, I can’t maybe say specifically, but once I dropped the directors my own age system I didn’t replace it with nothing. I’m a Virgo and I have a little bit of OCD, so I have to have some system. I’ve replaced it with a new complicated system where I pull from different lists and that’s now my main source of how I choose a movie to watch. I have like ten or twelve different lists, each about a thousand movies with a lot of overlap. One of them is my own list of every movie I’ve seen in a theater and I’ll go and look through that and if it’s something I want to revisit. Recently I rewatched Twister, which I hadn’t seen in a long time and is an old favorite from when I was in high school.

I have a bunch of private lists I cycle through; every movie nominated for a Spirit Award, every movie that’s won an Oscar, every movie that’s played in competition at Cannes, the top 1,000 films at the box office. There’s another great website that I use as a biblical resource which is They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? and their lists of acclaimed films for all-time and the 21st century. I hit those up often. Something that I watched purely because of the very high Letterboxd rating and really loved is Funeral Parade of Roses. I try to see as many movies as I can that have a 4.0 rating or higher.

You respect the Letterboxd consensus. I do, but I don’t always agree with it.

‘Little Fish’ director Chad Hartigan.

Which is your most underrated or overlooked movie according to Letterboxd? I can say I was the very first person to log a movie called Witness in the City, which is an Italian noir movie I watched when I was doing my ‘directors my own age’ series. Literally nobody had logged it, so my review was like “whoa, I can’t believe I’m the first person to log this!”. It was very exciting for me because it’s great, but I’m the OG logger of that movie.

From your list of every film you’ve seen in a theater since you were twelve, which was your most memorable experience? The cheap answer is that it’s hard to top my own movies. The Sundance premiere of Morris From America at the Eccles Theater is maybe the best, but if I’m disqualifying my own films, seeing Scream 3 in a very packed theater in Virginia Beach was really fun, really rowdy. There was a trailer for a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie and I remember the climax was Van Damme going “you lied to me!!!” and everyone laughed. Someone did a George Costanza move later during Scream 3 and yelled out “you lied to me!!!” and everybody laughed again—so that’s a high. That’s the thing I miss the most about movie theaters, and the worry I have if theaters go away, is that so much of how we feel about a movie can be tied to the experience; who we saw it with, what we did before or after, what the crowd was like, or if anything strange happened. There are a lot of movies I have strong memories and affection for because of the experience of seeing them and I probably wouldn’t feel the same way about if I just watched it at home on my laptop.

I typically like to cap interviews off with what filmmakers thought was the best film of the past year, but we have your data to hand. For you, it’s Garrett Bradley’s documentary Time. Can you talk a bit about what makes the film stand out for you? One thing I learned about myself from the pandemic is that the motivation and desire to see new things is very closely tied to the theater-going experience for me. Once that was taken away and you could watch a new movie at home, it joins the pile of all the other movies. The fact that it’s new doesn’t really do anything for me. Why would I press play on Da 5 Bloods when I still haven’t seen Malcolm X? I gotta see Malcolm X! There wasn’t an urgency, so I saw far fewer films than in an ordinary year. But Time I found incredibly moving and important. Similar to what I liked about the Little Fish script, it’s so hyper-focused on one relationship and within that one story it has so much to say about larger issues and the world at large. It was an emotional and rich viewing experience.

‘Little Fish’ is on demand and playing in select theaters now. Images courtesy of IFC Films.

[princessbubblegumandjustice]

What Can We Do to Fight Police Brutality and Protect Our Rights?

I see a lot of emotion and turmoil right now, and it’s understandable. Fear, anger, hostility, pain, sadness..

People are throwing around ideas and talking about what we need to be doing and how we need to feel, but all of it is a little abstract and some of it is counterproductive. 

What steps can we take to defend our rights that are concrete and could address the corrupt government and law enforcement system in a way that prevails?

Note: this is merely a starting point for discussion, feel free to add your own thoughts and resources

Here are some steps I think we should consider, support, and spread:

1. Eliminate Qualified Immunity

Qualified immunity protects officers from being sued for violating your rights. Originally meant to protect officers acting in “good faith,” this defense has morphed over time to make it exceedingly difficult to prove your rights have been violated by creating an almost impossible criteria: you need to identify a judicial decision that happened to involve the same context and conduct. Without that, the officer is shielded from liability and the case is dismissed, reinforcing the cycle and never establishing a precedent. 

U.S. Representative Justin Amash, a conservative independent from Michigan, is scheduled to introduce a new bill, the Ending Qualified Immunity Act, on Thursday (06/04/2020). Once it is officially introduced I will include a link, and we can all examine the bill and begin taking steps to support it (assuming the bill doesn’t have any riders).

Read: Qualified Immunity Explained Read: U.S. Lawmaker Prepares Bill Aiming to End Court Protection for Police Read: Justin Amash’s tweet on his Bill

2. Implement Police Liability Insurance

When settlements are paid out for injuries caused by officers, its rarely paid by the officer in question. We, the taxpayer, pay for it. We’re footing the bill for the officers violating our rights and the rights of others.

Mandatory police liability insurance has the goal of punishing cops that police badly: the worse their policing, the higher their premium. Eventually, those with very poor track records would either no longer be eligible for police liability insurance (and therefore be unemployable) or be priced out. It would be similar to nurses and doctors’ professional liability insurance, which pays to defend them against malpractice claims and protects them financially by paying out damages.

One major critique is that this method is simplistic and may cause police officers to be overly cautious (i.e. avoiding conflict since they’re afraid of their rate going up).

Read: Make Cops Carry Liability Insurance: The Private Sector Knows How to Spread Risks, and Costs

3. Demand Data & Transparency

Improved data collection and reporting is necessary to identify law enforcement trends. It should be mandatory for police departments to keep track of a list of policing metrics such as number of people killed, use of force and to what degree, and stop-and-frisks, and have the list of metrics standardized to enable direct comparisons between departments and ensure quality policing. This data should be collected and released publically every year. As of right now there is no federal or comprehensive database, but there is one created by the Center for Policing Equity.

Data like this can then be used to create tailored training programs for departments, whether that’s on de-escalation or implicit bias.

See: National Justice Database

4. Take a Stand Against Quota Policing

Quota policing, whether formal or informal, impacts how our actions are viewed by law enforcement and in turn how we view police officers. 

Quota policing is when officers are expected to or awarded if they meet certain quotas regarding arrests, stops, or tickets. Quota policing infringes on our rights as citizens as it can force police to manufacture illegality and dissuade them from using discretion, leading to more unnecessary stops and opportunities for brutality. 

Quota policing can be formal or informal. Event though some states, like New York, outlaw policing quotas they persist nonetheless. One example is in a recent lawsuit against NYPD, in which Officer Adhyl Polanco has accused the NYPD over alleged quotas, stating:

”’The culture is, you're not working unless you are writing summonses or arresting people,’ says Polanco.” ...

“Polanco says he encountered an unwritten rule that officers are expected to bring in ‘20 and one.’ That's 20 tickets and one arrest per month. But it was tough to get anyone outside the department to believe him, because NYPD officials would always deny there were any quotas. They still do.”

5. Fight Private Prisons

Police brutality is one aspect of the corrupt justice system. Private prisons play a role in how we are all treated and how we view and interact with the entire justice system. 

Private prisons are prisons that are privately owned and operated, or leased by private corporations that have total operational control. Private prisons have a financial incentive to incarcerate more while releasing and rehabilitating less. Inmates are not a commodity and never should have became one. 

With contracts that guarantee 65% - 90% occupancy in prisons it is evident that our system is broken. Leaders are pressures to act against their communities’ best interests and keep prisons filled to ensure that taxpayer dollars aren’t being wasted. How might this be done? Finding more people to incarcerate (more stops, which create more opportunities for brutality) and longer sentences. 

See: Abolish Private Prisons

6. Demand Change in Blue Blood Culture

Police officers have a tough job and face struggles non-officers don’t, and their shared experiences mold a culture unique to them. This, by itself, is not an issue. This is completely natural and part of the human experience.

The problem is that police officers play a vital role in society and hold a lot of power over the public. When an insular culture develops, it becomes very easy to pressure officers into complicity. The nail that sticks out gets hammered in. No one wants to be othered, seen as a snitch, or hated by all their peers. Officers want to be a part of the in-group, but that involves conforming and being trusted.

This means looking the other way when a fellow cop plants drugs, when they beat on people, when they commit fraud, when they break protocol, when they don’t even attempt to investigate, when they take or give a bribe, the list is endless—it’s the blue wall of silence.

Without accountability and transparency, cultures like this are allowed to proliferate. Culture is self-sustaining in the fact that it only continues to exist as those within it continue to perpetuate its existence. Previously listed measures are a necessary step before department cultures like this can be expected to change. Without accountability and transparency, we rely on the good of one’s heart alone. It’s been demonstrated that just isn’t enough. This is the only non-concrete step, but it is dependant on practical changes for it to be successful.

Please also check out: Campaign Zero, which outlines even more solutions than what I have here, researches policing practices, tracks legislation in different states, and enables you to reach out to your representatives.

[isslibrary]

New additions to the Indian Springs School Library May thru August 2020

Bibliography

Sorted by Call Number / Author.

152.4 O

Owens, Lama Rod, 1979- author. Love and rage : the path of liberation through anger. "Reconsidering the power of anger as a positive and necessary tool for achieving spiritual liberation and social change"--.

200.973 M

Manseau, Peter. One nation, under gods : a new American history. First edition.

304.8 K

Keneally, Thomas. The great shame : and the triumph of the Irish in the English-speaking world. 1st ed. New York : Nan A. Talese, 1999.

305.5 V

Vance, J. D., author. Hillbilly elegy : a memoir of a family and culture in crisis. First Harper paperback edition. "Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis--that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country." -- Publisher's description.

305.8 D

DiAngelo, Robin J., author. White fragility : why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism.

305.800973 D

Dyson, Michael Eric, author. Tears we cannot stop : a sermon to white America. First edition. I. Call to worship -- II. Hymns of praise -- III. Invocation -- IV. Scripture reading -- V. Sermon -- Repenting of whiteness -- Inventing whiteness -- The five stages of white grief -- The plague of white innocence -- Being Black in America -- Nigger -- Our own worst enemy? -- Coptopia -- VI. Benediction -- VII. Offering plate -- VIII. Prelude to service -- IX. Closing prayer. "In the wake of yet another set of police killings of black men, Michael Eric Dyson wrote a tell-it-straight, no holds barred piece for the NYT on Sunday July 7: Death in Black and White (It was updated within a day to acknowledge the killing of police officers in Dallas). The response has been overwhelming. Beyoncé and Isabel Wilkerson tweeted it, JJ Abrams, among many other prominent people, wrote him a long fan letter. The NYT closed the comments section after 2,500 responses, and Dyson has been on NPR, BBC, and CNN non-stop since then. Fifty years ago Malcolm X told a white woman who asked what she could do for the cause: Nothing. Dyson believes he was wrong. In Tears We Cannot Stop, he responds to that question. If we are to make real racial progress, we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed or discounted. As Dyson writes: At birth you are given a pair of binoculars that see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy. Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class. In fact the greatest privilege that exists is for white folk to get stopped by a cop and not end up dead...The problem is you do not want to know anything different from what you think you know...You think we have been handed everything because we fought your selfish insistence that the world, all of it--all its resources, all its riches, all its bounty, all its grace--should be yours first and foremost, and if there's anything left, why then we can have some, but only if we ask politely and behave gratefully"--Provided by publisher.

305.800973 G

Begin again : James Baldwin's America and its urgent lessons for our own. New York, NY : Crown; an imprint of Random House, 2020.

305.800973 O

Oluo, Ijeoma, author. So you want to talk about race. First trade paperback edition.

320.9 B

Bass, Jack. The transformation of southern politics : social change and political consequence since 1945. New York : Basic Books, c1976.

323.1196 L

Lowery, Lynda Blackmon, 1950- author. Turning 15 on the road to freedom : my story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March. Growing up strong and determined -- In the movement -- Jailbirds -- In the sweatbox -- Bloody Sunday -- Headed for Montgomery -- Turning 15 -- Weary and wet -- Montgomery at last -- Why voting rights? -- Discussion guide. As the youngest marcher in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, Lynda Blackmon Lowery proved that young adults can be heroes. Jailed nine times before her fifteenth birthday, Lowery fought alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. for the rights of African-Americans. In this memoir, she shows today's young readers what it means to fight nonviolently (even when the police are using violence, as in the Bloody Sunday protest) and how it felt to be part of changing American history.

364.973 U.S.

U.S. national debate topic, 2020-2021.

420 M

McCrum, Robert. The story of English. 1st American ed. New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Viking, 1986.

488.2421 A

Balme, M. G., author. Athenaze : an introduction to ancient Greek. Revised Third edition. Book I -- Book II.

510 C

Clegg, Brian. Are numbers real? : the uncanny relationship of mathematics and the physical world.

530.092 F

F©œlsing, Albrecht, 1940-. Albert Einstein : a biography. New York : Viking Penguin: a division of Penguin Books USA, Inc, 1997. Family -- School -- A "child prodigy" -- "Vagabond and loner" : student days in Zurich -- Looking for a job -- Expert III class -- "Herr Doktor Einstein" and the reality of atoms -- The "very revolutionary" light quanta -- Relative movement : "my life for seven years" -- The theory of relativity : "a modification of the theory of space and time" -- Acceptance, opposition, tributes -- Expert II class -- From "bad joke" to "Herr Professor" -- Professor in Zurich -- Full professor in Prague, but not for long -- Toward the general theory of relativity -- From Zurich to Berlin -- "In a madhouse" : a pacifist in Prussia -- "The greatest satisfaction of my life" : the completion of the general theory of relativity -- Wartime in Berlin -- Postwar chaos and revolution -- Confirmation and the deflection of light : "the suddenly famous Dr. Einstein" -- Relativity under the spotlight -- "Traveler in relativity" -- Jewry, Zionism, and a trip to America -- More hustle, long journeys, a lot of politics, and a little physics -- Einstein receives the Nobel Prize and in consequence becomes a Prussian -- "The marble smile of implacable nature" : the search for the unified field theory -- The problems of quantum theory -- Critique of quantum mechanics -- Politics, patents, sickness, and a "wonderful egg" -- Public and private affairs -- Farewell to Berlin -- Exile in liberation -- Princeton -- Physical reality and a paradox, relativity and unified theory -- War, a letter, and the bomb -- Between bomb and equations -- "An old debt. Albert Einstein's achievements are not just milestones in the history of science; decades ago they became an integral part of the twentieth-century world in which we live. Like no other modern physicist he altered and expanded our understanding of nature. Like few other scholars, he stood fully in the public eye. In a world changing with dramatic rapidity, he embodied the role of the scientist by personal example. Albrecht Folsing, relying on previously unknown sources. And letters, brings Einstein's "genius" into focus. Whereas former biographies, written in the tradition of the history of science, seem to describe a heroic Einstein who fell to earth from heaven, Folsing attempts to reconstruct Einstein's thought in the context of the state of research at the turn of the century. Thus, perhaps for the first time, Einstein's surroundings come to light.

530.092 G

Gleick, James. Isaac Newton. 1st ed. New York : Pantheon Books, c2003.

539.7 B

Lise Meitner : Discoverer of Nuclear Fission. Greensboro, NC : Morgan Reynolds, Inc, 2000. A biography of the Austrian scientist whose discoveries in nuclear physics played a major part in developing atomic energy.

598.07 T

Watching birds : reflections on the wing. United States : Ragged Mountain Press, 2000.

811 D

Dabydeen, David. Turner : new and selected poems. 2010. Leeds : Peepal Tree Press, Ltd, 12010.

811.54 J

Jones, Ashley M., 1990- author. Dark // thing. Slurret -- //Side A: 3rd grade birthday party -- //Side B: roebuck is the ghetto -- Harriette Winslow and Aunt Rachel clean -- Collard greens on prime time television -- My grandfather returns as oil -- Elegy for Willie Lee "Murr"Lipscomb -- Proof at the Red Sea -- Sunken place sestina -- Hair -- Antiquing -- The book of Tubman -- Harriet Tubman crosses the Mason Dixon for the first time -- Avian Abecedarian -- Harriet Tubman, beauty queen or ain't I a woman? -- Broken sonnet in which Harriet is the gun -- Recitation -- What flew out of Aunt Hester's scream -- Election year 2016: the motto -- Uncle Remus syrup commemorative lynching postcard #25 -- To the black man popping a wheelie on -- Interstate 59 North on 4th of July weekend -- Red dirt suite -- Love/luv/ -- Summerstina -- Ode to Dwayne Waye, or, I want to be Whitley -- Gilbert when I grow up -- I am not selected for jury duty the week bill -- Cosby's jury selection is underway -- A small, disturbing fact -- Water -- Today, I saw a black man open his arms to the wind -- Xylography -- I see a smear of animal on the road and mistake it for philando castile -- There is a beel at morehouse college -- Dark water -- Who will survive in America? or 2017: a horror film -- In-flight entertainment -- Imitation of life -- Broken sonnet for the decorative cotton for sale at Whole Foods -- Racists in space -- When you tell me I'd be prettier with straight hair -- (Black) hair -- Kindergarten villandelle -- Song of my muhammad -- Ode to Al Jolson -- Hoghead cheese haiku -- Aunties -- Thing of a marvelous thing / It's the same as having wings. A multi-faceted work that explores the darkness/otherness by which the world sees Black people. Ashley M. Jones stares directly into the face of the racism that allows people to be seen as dark things, as objects that can be killed/enslaved/oppressed/devalued. This work, full as it is of slashes of all kinds, ultimately separates darkness from thingness, affirming and celebrating humanity.

814.6 G

Gay, Roxane, author. Bad feminist : essays. First edition. A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay. "Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink, all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I'm not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue." In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture. Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

822.3 T

the tragical history of Doctor Faustus : The Elizabethan Play. Annotated & Edited by John D. Harris, 2018. Wabasha, MN : Hungry Point Press, 2018.

822.33 Shakespeare

Major literary characters : Hamlet. New York : Chelsea House Publishers, c. 1990.

822.8 W

Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900. An ideal husband. Mineola, N.Y. : Dover Publications, 2000.

823.914

Vincenzi, Penny, author. Windfall. 1st U.S. ed. Sensible Cassia Fallon has been married to her doctor husband for seven years when her godmother leaves her a huge fortune. For the first time in her life, she is able to do exactly as she likes, and she starts to question her marriage, her past, her present, and her future. But where did her inheritance really come from and why? Too soon the windfall has become a corrupting force, one that Cassia cannot resist.

843.8 F

Flaubert, Gustave, 1821-1880. Three tales. Oxford ; : Oxford University Press, 2009. A simple heart -- The legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller -- Herodias.

909 S

Sachs, Jeffrey, author. The ages of globalization : geography, technology, and institutions. "Today's most urgent problems are fundamentally global. They require nothing less than concerted, planetwide action if we are to secure a long-term future. But humanity's story has always been on a global scale, and this history deeply informs the present. In this book, Jeffrey D. Sachs, renowned economist and expert on sustainable development, turns to world history to shed light on how we can meet the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century. Sachs takes readers through a series of six distinct waves of technological and ideological change, starting with the very beginnings of our species and ending with reflections on present-day globalization. Along the way, he considers how the interplay of geography, technology, and institutions influenced the Neolithic revolution; the spread of land-based empires; the opening of sea routes from Europe to Asia and the Americas; and the industrial age. The dynamics of these past waves, Sachs contends, give us new perspective on the ongoing processes taking place in our own time-and how we should work to guide the change we need. In light of this new understanding of globalization, Sachs emphasizes the need for new methods of international governance and cooperation to achieve economic, social, and environmental objectives aligned with sustainable development. The Ages of Globalization is a vital book for all readers aiming to make sense of our rapidly changing world"--.

937.002 B

Bing, Stanley. Rome, inc. : the rise and fall of the first multinational corporation. 1st. ed. New York : Norton, c2006.

937.63 L

Laurence, Ray, 1963-. Ancient Rome as it was : exploring the city of Rome in AD 300.

940.3 B

Brooks, Max. The Harlem Hellfighters. First edition. "From bestselling author Max Brooks, the riveting story of the highly decorated, barrier-breaking, historic black regiment--the Harlem Hellfighters. The Harlem Hellfighters is a fictionalized account of the 369th Infantry Regiment--the first African American regiment mustered to fight in World War I. From the enlistment lines in Harlem to the training camp at Spartanburg, South Carolina, to the trenches in France, bestselling author Max Brooks tells the thrilling story of the heroic journey that these soldiers undertook for a chance to fight for America. Despite extraordinary struggles and discrimination, the 369th became one of the most successful--and least celebrated--regiments of the war. The Harlem Hellfighters, as their enemies named them, spent longer than any other American unit in combat and displayed extraordinary valor on the battlefield. Based on true events and featuring artwork from acclaimed illustrator Caanan White, these pages deliver an action-packed and powerful story of courage, honor, and heart"--. "This is a graphic novel about the first African-American regiment to fight in World War One"--.

940.53 B

Browning, Christopher R., author. Ordinary men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland. Revised edition. One morning in Józefów -- The order police -- The order police and the Final solution : Russia 1941 -- The order police and the Final solution : deportation -- Reserve Police Battalion 101 -- Arrival in Poland -- Initiation to mass muder : the Józefów massacre -- Reflections on a massacre -- Łomazy : the descent of Second Company -- The August deportations to Treblinka -- Late-September shootings -- The deportations resume -- The strange health of Captain Hoffmann -- The "Jew hunt" -- The last massacres : "Harvest festival" -- Aftermath -- Germans, Poles, and Jews -- Ordinary men. In the early hours of July 13, 1942, the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, a unit of the German Order Police, entered the Polish Village of Jozefow. They had arrived in Poland less than three weeks before, most of them recently drafted family men too old for combat service--workers, artisans, salesmen, and clerks. By nightfall, they had rounded up Jozefow's 1,800 Jews, selected several hundred men as "work Jews," and shot the rest--that is, some 1,500 women, children, and old people. Most of these overage, rear-echelon reserve policemen had grown to maturity in the port city of Hamburg in pre-Hitler Germany and were neither committed Nazis nor racial fanatics. Nevertheless, in the sixteen months from the Jozefow massacre to the brutal Erntefest ("harvest festival") slaughter of November 1943, these average men participated in the direct shooting deaths of at least 38,000 Jews and the deportation to Treblinka's gas chambers of 45,000 more--a total body count of 83,000 for a unit of less than 500 men. Drawing on postwar interrogations of 210 former members of the battalion, Christopher Browning lets them speak for themselves about their contribution to the Final Solution--what they did, what they thought, how they rationalized their behavior (one man would shoot only infants and children, to "release" them from their misery). In a sobering conclusion, Browning suggests that these good Germans were acting less out of deference to authority or fear of punishment than from motives as insidious as they are common: careerism and peer pressure. With its unflinching reconstruction of the battalion's murderous record and its painstaking attention to the social background and actions of individual men, this unique account offers some of the most powerful and disturbing evidence to date of the ordinary human capacity for extraordinary inhumanity.

940.54 S

Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands : Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York : Basic Books, c2010. Hitler and Stalin -- The Soviet famines -- Class terror -- National terror -- Molotov-Ribbentrop Europe -- The economics of apocalypse -- Final solution -- Holocaust and revenge -- The Nazi death factories -- Resistance and incineration -- Ethnic cleansings -- Stalinist antisemitism -- Humanity.

951.03 S

The search for modern China : a documentary collection. Third edition.

973 M

Meacham, Jon, author. The soul of America : the battle for our better angels. First edition. Introduction : To hope rather than to fear -- The confidence of the whole people : visions of the Presidency, the ideas of progress and prosperity, and "We, the people" -- The long shadow of Appomattox : the Lost Cause, the Ku Klux Klan, and Reconstruction -- With soul of flame and temper of steel : "the melting pot," TR and his "bully pulpit," and the Progressive promise -- A new and good thing in the world : the triumph of women's suffrage, the Red Scare, and a new Klan -- The crisis of the old order : the Great Depression, Huey Long, the New Deal, and America First -- Have you no sense of decency? : "making everyone middle class," the GI Bill, McCarthyism, and modern media -- What the hell is the presidency for? : "segregation forever," King's crusade, and LBJ in the crucible -- Conclusion : The first duty of an American citizen. "We have been here before. In this timely and revealing book, ... author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear. With clarity and purpose, Meacham explores contentious periods and how presidents and citizens came together to defeat the forces of anger, intolerance, and extremism. Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called 'the better angels of our nature' have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women's rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson's crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life has been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear--a struggle that continues even now. While the American story has not always--or even often--been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, "The good news is that we have come through such darkness before"--as, time and again, Lincoln's better angels have found a way to prevail."--Dust jacket.

976.1 S

Smith, Petric J., 1940-. Long time coming : an insider's story of the Birmingham church bombing that rocked the world. 1st ed. Birmingham, Ala. : Crane Hill, 1994.

F Bir

Birch, Anna, author. I kissed Alice. First. "Fan Girl meets Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda in this #ownvoices LGBTQ romance about two rivals who fall in love online"--.

F Bra

Bradbury, Ray, 1920-2012, author. Fahrenheit 451. Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition, 60th anniversary edition. Introduction / by Neil Gaiman -- Fahrenheit 451. The hearth and the salamander ; The sieve and the sand ; Burning bright. History, context, and criticism / edited by Jonathan R. Eller. pt. 1. The story of Fahrenheit 451. The story of Fahrenheit 451 / by Jonathan R. Eller ; From The day after tomorrow: why science fiction? (1953) / by Ray Bradbury ; Listening library audio introduction (1976) / by Ray Bradbury ; Investing dimes: Fahrenheit 451 (1982, 1989) / by Ray Bradbury ; Coda (1979) / by Ray Bradbury -- pt. 2. Other voices. The novel. From a letter to Stanley Kauffmann / by Nelson Algren ; Books of the times / by Orville Prescott ; From New wine, old bottles / by Gilbert Highet ; New novels / by Idris Parry ; New fiction / by Sir John Betjeman ; 1984 and all that / by Adrian Mitchell ; From New maps of hell / by Sir Kingsley Amis ; Introduction to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 / by Harold Bloom ; Fahrenheit 451 / by Margaret Atwood ; The motion picture. Shades of Orwell / by Arthur Knight ; From The journal of Fahrenheit 451 / by Fran©ʹois Truffaut. In a future totalitarian state where books are banned and destroyed by the government, Guy Montag, a fireman in charge of burning books, meets a revolutionary schoolteacher who dares to read and a girl who tells him of a past when people did not live in fear ... This sixtieth-anniversary edition commemorates Ray Bradbury's masterpiece with a new introduction by Neil Gaiman ; personal essays on the genesis of the novel by the author; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Nelson Algren, Harold Bloom, Margaret Atwood, and others; rare manuscript pages and sketches from Ray Bradbury's personal archive; and much more ... --- From back cover.

F DeL

White noise. 2009; with an introduction by Richard Powers. New York, NY : Penguin Books, 2009.

F Gri

Grisham, John, author. Camino Island. First edition. Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts. Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer's block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous offer of money convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Bruce Cable's circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets. But eventually Mercer learns far too much.--Adapted from book jacket.

F Hem

Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961, author. The sun also rises. The Hemingway library edition. The novel -- Appendix I: Pamplona, July 1923 -- Appendix II: Early drafts -- Appendix III: The discarded first chapters -- Appendix IV: List of possible titles. A profile of the Lost Generation captures life among the expatriates on Paris' Left Bank during the 1920s, the brutality of bullfighting in Spain, and the moral and spiritual dissolution of a generation.

F Hur

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their eyes were watching god. 1st Harper Perennial Modern Classics ed. New York : Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Foreword / Edwidge Danticat -- Their eyes were watching God -- Afterword / Henry Louis Gates, Jr. -- Selected bibliography -- Chronology. A novel about black Americans in Florida that centers on the life of Janie and her three marriages.

F Kid

Kidd, Sue Monk. The invention of wings. The story follows Hetty "Handful" Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah, the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family. The novel begins on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be her handmaid, and follows the next thirty-five years of their lives. Inspired in part by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke (a feminist, suffragist and, importantly, an abolitionist), the author allows herself to go beyond the record to flesh out the inner lives of all the characters, both real and imagined. -- Provided by publisher. "Hetty 'Handful' Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke's daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women. The novel is set in motion on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other's destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love. As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women's rights movements. Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, the author goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful's cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better. This novel looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved. -- Publisher's description.

F Nab

Vladimir Nabokov. Glory. United States : McGraw-Hill International, Inc, 1971.

F Orw

Orwell, George, 1903-1950. 1984. Signet Classics. New York, NY : Berkley: an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC, c. 1977. "Eternal warfare is the price of bleak prosperity in this satire of totalitarian barbarism."--ARBookFind.

F Sal

Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David), 1919-2010. Nine stories. 1st Back Bay pbk. ed. Boston : Back Bay Books/Little, Brown, 2001, c1991. A perfect day for bananafish -- Uncle wiggily in Connecticut -- Just before the war with the Eskimos -- The laughing man -- Down at the dinghy -- For Esme--with love and squalor -- Pretty mouth and green my eyes -- De Daumier-Smith's blue period -- Teddy. Salinger's classic collection of short stories is now available in trade paperback.

F Tho

Thomas, Angie, author. The hate u give. First edition. "Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life"--.

F Tho

Thomas, Angie, author. On the come up. First edition. Sixteen-year-old Bri hopes to become a great rapper, and after her first song goes viral for all the wrong reasons, must decide whether to sell out or face eviction with her widowed mother.

F Tol

The Hobbit : or There and Back Again. First U.S. edition; Illus. by Jemima Catlin, 2013. New York, NY : HarperCollins Publishers, 2013.

F Ver

Around the world in 80 days. Classics. Trans. by Geo. M. Towle. Lexington, KY, : October 29. 2019.

F Ver

Around the world in 80 days. Illustrated First Edition. Translated by Geo. M. Towle. Orinda, CA : SeaWolf Press, 2018.

F. Gri

Belfry Holdings, Inc. (Charlottesville, Virginia), author. Camino winds : a novel. Hardcover. "#1 New York Times bestselling author John Grisham returns to Camino Island in this irresistible page-turner that's as refreshing as an island breeze. In Camino Winds, mystery and intrigue once again catch up with novelist Mercer Mann, proving that the suspense never rests-even in paradise"--.

SC A

Alomar, Osama, 1968- author, translator. The teeth of the comb & other stories.

SC Mac

Machado, Carmen Maria, author. Her body and other parties : stories. Contains short stories about the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. "In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella 'Especially Heinous,' Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naïvely assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes. Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction." -- Publisher's description.

[sincerelymarinette]

A Recorded Life (38/50) - Miraculous Ladybug

Words: 1110 Chapter Summary: With only a little time left before the gala, Marinette does a live stream to work on her design. Alya and Adrien accompany, and the fans find a specific gossip article that outs the heroes. Author's Note: I hope everyone is staying safe out there! Sorry for no update last week, it was a crazy and stressful week and I needed the weekend for a break. But we're back! I'm really excited for the upcoming chapters and I still love writing the fan comments so much.

Prev / Next / Masterlist

Live Gossip

---

Marinette had a camera set up facing her mannequin, which was in front of her chaise lounge. On the chaise lounge were Alya and Adrien, so Marinette had backup while she worked on her dress for the gala. She needed backup, mainly for the reason that it was the first time she had ever live-streamed creating a design.

Sure, she had posted so many design videos and tutorials she couldn't even keep track of it anymore. But she had never been live while working on anything, only the occasional one with Alya for a question and answer game.

Adrien and Alya were eating the snacks as Alya watched the comments on Marinette's YouTube live-stream. She was reading off comments, compliments, and most questions that came up to keep the commentary entertaining. Of course, the banter between the three of them was just as entertaining as well.

"This person asked what you're making this dress for," Alya asked. "I think you explained it at the beginning, but a lot more people have joined now."

"Oh!" Marinette said and turned to the camera. "Well, Adrien invited me to go to the Agreste Gala in about two weeks because he knows how much I love fashion. So, I have to make my own gown." She explained. "It's going to be a really fun event, and I'm excited."

Alya groaned. "I can't believe I couldn't get a press pass. It's unfair!"

"Yeah, but trust me, it wouldn't have been your scene," Adrien shrugged.

"Are you kidding me?" Alya asked. "Any place I can get a good story is my scene. Besides, you do know who helps Marinette with her fashion channel, right?" Alya smirked.

Adrien awkwardly chuckled and scratched the back of his neck. "Ah, I guess you have a point there. Can...we go back to questions?"

"Sure, this one is for you!" Alya said. "Have you been modeling less lately?"

Adrien shrugged. "Well, I guess I should probably address it. I guess I've kind of taken a break. You know, I don't want to endanger anyone by being out and doing photoshoots. I still do some, sometimes, but I haven't been living at home recently, so planning them is kind of hard. I'm still doing fencing, though!" Adrien explained. "Hey, Mari, want me to model your dress?"

Marinette giggled. "I think I can handle this one."

"Next question is asking if you guys have planned anything for Adrien vs. Jobs?" Alya asked. "For the record, I better be invited to some of those. They'll be fun."

"Oh yeah!" Adrien started. "We're going to be doing the first one soon. I don't know if we should spoil anything, but I'm really excited," Adrien said.

Marinette stepped back to look at her work in progress. "Yes, it's going to be so much fun!"

Adrien kept seeing his name appear in the chat, and he read as fast as he could to try to understand why the fans were freaking out.

Adrien you're not living at home?? are you ok?

what happened to adrien?

Adrien where are you staying if you're not staying at home

did gabriel do something because I will fly to paris right now and fight him myself

why aren't you living at home?

omg are you staying with marinette because i SHIP IT

adrien, are you okay? I get not modeling and stuff, but what happened at home?

Adrien pointed at the comments and Alya read along. "Guys, don't worry. I'm okay, and it's just better for Marinette and me to stay together. Plus, getting muffins for breakfast is the best part of it all," Adrien said.

"It's been fun. He's been helping my parents with dinners, and we play a lot of video games," Marinette smiled at the camera and stepped back to admire her piece. "It's getting there. What do you guys think?"

While the comments flooded with praise to Marinette, there were a few critiques and others demanding pictures of her and Adrien at the gala. Her fans loved seeing her work and also listen to her and her friend's bicker, but then all of a sudden, a link was being spammed in the comments.

"Hmm, what's this?" Alya asked and clicked on the link as all three of them gathered around the screen. Marinette gasped loudly when she saw the picture come on the screen with the headline "LADYBUG KISSES CHAT NOIR AFTER AKUMA ATTACK? WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?" from an American gossip blog.

Marinette composed herself and took a deep breath. "You guys know how I feel about talking about my superhero side. Let's just get back to the dress and talking."

Adrien shared a concerned look with Alya as they reset and went back to normal. "Uh, Mari, the chat is kind of going crazy."

Marinette sighed and went over to the computer again to read what everyone was saying. Adrien knew it was best if he stayed quiet, he didn't want to say anything he would regret or make Alya or Marinette mad, or even make the whole situation worse. Being quiet was the best choice.

OMGRNJAWKDNWJ THE K I S S THEY'RE TOGETHER THEY'RE TOGETHER

THE SHIIIIIIIIPPPPPP

OHMYGOSH THEY ARE SO TOGETHER? I MEAN, ADRIEN LIVING WITH MARINETTE, HER PARENTS LOVING HIM, HIM MAKING DINNER, THEM GOING ON DATES AS VIDEOS, ITS BEEN A THING FOREVER!

i love them so much im so happy theyre finally together

omg!!! couples tag!! with alya and nino!!

the picture is SO CUTE! when did you guys start dating??

Marinette stood back in front of the camera. "All right guys, we've got to get going. Thanks so much for tuning into the live stream to see me work on my gala dress! I'll be sure to show you guys the finished product, too. Make sure to check us all out on social media to keep updated, and I'll see you in the next video!" Marinette ended, and Alya shut off the live stream.

Marinette sighed loudly as she sat on the chaise lounge next to Adrien. "Well," Alya said, "At least you guys have talked about it, so it's not as awkward," She tried to help.

"She has a point," Adrien said, "People were bound to find it sooner or later. Might as well address it now," Adrien added.

"I guess so," Marinette shrugged. "So much for keeping it a secret," She giggled and grabbed her phone.

"What are you going to do?" Alya asked.

With a smirk, Marinette scrolled through her tweets until she found the one from a few months back.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng @MarinetteDC I am dating Adrien Agreste. I am dating Chat Noir. I know Chat Noir's identity.

Alya Césaire @alyacesaire @MarinetteDC WE STAN A CONSISTENT QUEEEEEEN

Adrien @AdrienAgreste retweeted @MarinetteDC

And the fans went crazy.

---

@lady-of-the-roses-and-lilies @bookishserendipity03 @avatheexceed @gkz10 @coccinellegirl @kat-thatoneweirdo @strawberryblondish @snow-swordswoman @lilgaga98 @evufries       

[grouchomarxiste-blog1]

Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite: Marx and Violence

Warning: A majority of this was written pre-pandemic, so please excuse my overly optimistic tone. It was a different time.

Yes, another Bong Joon-Ho film. Can you blame me? The guy’s a genius. Parasite was another one of those great films that will never leave you. You can watch the movie simply without doing a major analysis in your head and you will still agree that it’s a great movie. Which personally, is why I believe it's made its way into the major American awards season. Parasite winning Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes was one of the few decisions I’ve agreed with. I didn’t see any of the winners in the film categories besides Parasite, and I’m very much ok with that. It’s making its way into Hollywood and the favorite lists of celebrities. Elon Musk said he loved Parasite (he also turned Grimes, the former “anti-imperialist,” to the mother of his future child). Chrissy Teigen loved Parasite (a lot can be said about her, so let’s not). Obama loved Parasite (but I have some serious doubts about the authenticity of his yearly favorites list. Mainly because I can’t imagine him listening to Summer Walker). I was completely boggled at all of those tweets. How? How is one so blind? How did one watch Parasite and not feel a thing? After I watched Parasite, I rushed back to school to attend the discussion section of my Political Theory class so I could read and discuss primitive accumulation through dispossession with revolutionary fervor. I recommended it to everyone near me. I even wrote a note to my professor who tucked it into his book. But is that the problem- that all these beloved figures (not mine) end up loving the sheer adrenaline of the story and tweet to their followers about how great the movie is. Those followers, with their favorite celebrities’ seal of approval, watch the movie, not putting it together either. Bong Joon-Ho is critiquing those very figures! In every post-Parasite interview, Bong Joon-Ho has said that Parasite is about America and capitalism, but we have just reduced those statements to memes on Twitter. As funny as they are, Parasite is rich for its class analysis. The Hollywood reaction is just as important. Marx is all over this movie, there's no question about it. I also want us to understand these controversial moments from a Fanonian perspective, again all with relation to Marx. I hope for us to understand that everything about this movie is intentional and every bit of it is worth pages and pages of discussion. I nearing 11 pages as I write this. I also hope that this film can be a way for us to understand economic exploitation in the 21st century. While many celebrities have misunderstood it, it is important that you, us, the people, the working class, grasp every bit of this radical film.

I’m not going to bother with another one of my “brief summary” because I’m assuming, we’ve all seen it. It's on Hulu now and I believe Apple TV. If you don’t want to pay for either platforms, watch a pirated version online, I genuinely don’t think Bong will mind.

I want to talk about the home. I know we all had the same reaction to that beautiful home: awe, admiration, and envy. The Park’s home itself is significant, but also in contrast to the Kims’ home. The Kim’s live in a small semi-basement home, where they have to reach up in order to look out their window and see the street level. Their home is dirty, cramped, just not a place where anyone wants to be. But immediately, I thought of Fanon and the native sector. I know that Parasite isn’t about colonialism, but space is important to Marx (I’ll return to Fanon). In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels attribute many things to the process of proletarianization. To name a few: literacy campaigns and public education, the politicization of the proletariat towards the end of feudalism, expansion of media, etc. One that stands out, is the mass migration and urbanization of the proletariat. Through that, the proletariat was concentrated into the poorest parts of the city where they shared their most intimate quarters with workers like themselves (Marx and Engels, 15) One might dismiss this as a historical example specific to Europe, but if we go back to my thoughts on Memories of Murder, we’d note how Korea’s transition to a modern capitalist society, was a fairly recent one (from 1987 onwards). As the agricultural sector suffered, Koreans living in the rural provinces were forced to move into the major cities. Park (Song Kang-Ho’s character in Memories) was lucky enough to become a successful businessman, unlike the Kims who earn their livelihood by holding pizza boxes- the most insignificant work. Along with urbanization, the proletariat also occupied the small space of the factory, where they are reminded of the everyday brutality of their work. The Park’s home is not cramped, but the one scene where everyone is rushing to hide from them, results in Ki-taek, Ki-jeong, and Ki-woo hiding underneath a coffee table overnight. After that lengthy battle with Geun-sae and Moon-gwang, the Kims are exhausted. They do not want to be laying side by side hearing the Parks have sex. My friend Sef also reminded me that the Parks had weird sex as Mr. Park recalled how their old chauffeur possibly had sex with a drugged-up prostitute, a scenario that previously made Mrs. Park scream out of disgust. Revisiting this, I believe this definitely deserves a psychoanalytic analysis.

This isn’t their breaking point, but also hearing Mr. Park say that Ki-taek smells like the subway is a factor. Once making their break they run outside where it's raining heavily. They come to their home which is flooded and destroyed. Here is where I’ll start talking about Fanon. [READ NOTE]. Again, I know the colonial system is not the case in Parasite. Fanon was a Marxist and expanded on Marxist theory in the colonial context. I just want to warn you that I am using Fanon as carefully as possible, not using concepts that are distinctly racial. I know there’s probably also much more relevant work out there on spatiality and violence, but I think Fanon’s prose style in The Wretched of the Earthis quite appropriate for the film. Let’s consider the colonial bourgeoisie as the Parks and the natives as the Kims. Fanon calls the colonial world, a “compartmentalized world.” The colonists’ sector is clean and protected whereas the native sector is overcrowded, envious, and starving. Sounds about right so far.

The colonist’s sector is a sector built to last, all stone and steel. It’s a sector of lights and paved roads, where the trash cans constantly overflow with strange and wonderful garbage, undreamed-of leftovers. The colonizer’s feet can never be glimpsed, except perhaps in the sea, but then again you can never get close enough. They are protected by solid shoes in a sector where the streets are clean and smooth., without a pothole, without a stone… The colonized’s sector or at least the “native” quarters, the shanty town, the Medina, the reservation, is a disreputable place, inhabited by disreputable people. You are born anywhere, anyhow. You die anywhere, from anything. It’s a world with no space, people are piled one on top of each other. (Fanon, 4)

This becomes extremely relevant when the Kims run out of the Parks’ home in the pouring rain. I kept noticing that they were all barefoot, only focused on getting out of there. My toes curled in the movie theater watching that. Running away from that traumatic house to find your own home destroyed, relocating to a displacement camp, THEN going to work the next day for your unaffected employer who has the audacity to audibly take a sniff of you. I don't know about you, but to me, this sounds like the conditions for a proletarian revolution. Besides the literal allegory, the tone sharply shifts. One could argue that it began to change when they found Geun-sae in the bunker or when Moon-gwang hit her head but that was just some good old dark comedy for me. After the flooding, things are different. Ki-taek has this unmoving face. Things turned grim and we knew something climactic was about to happen. Fanon’s most famous chapter, “Concerning Violence,” maintains that decolonization will always be a violent event because colonialism is a violent system itself. Something that I absolutely love about this chapter is that it isn’t some dense, theoretical work. It’s a revolutionary call to arms for all colonized people. It has a strategic pace which parallels Parasite so well. He sets the scene- the compartmentalized, Manichaen world. He slowly intensifies the antagonistic relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, until this culminating point:

The colonized subject thus discovers that his life, his breathing and his heartbeat are the same as the colonist’s. He discovers that the skin of the colonist is not worth more than the “natives.” In other words, his world receives a fundamental jolt. The colonized’s revolutionary new assurance stems from this. If no longer strike fear into me or nail me to the spot and his voice can no longer petrify me. I am no longer uneasy in his presence. In reality, to hell with him. Not only does his presence no longer bother me, but i am already preparing to waylay him in such a way that he will no longer have any solution but to flee (Fanon, 10)

As corny as it sounds, when I first read that, it brought me to tears. I’m not sure if it was just because I was up for three days straight writing my midterm and I was finally breaking, or because it just meant that much to me. But that section in which the colonized discoversthat his life is worth as much as the colonizer is such a crucial moment. This parallels the infamous birthday scene. Geun-sae gets out of the bunker, stabs Ki-jung, the Park’s kid (I’ll look his name up later) has a seizure, and Chong-sook is wrestling with Geun-sae. Shit is going down. If we recall, Mrs. Park mentioned that it takes a few minutes for her son to die after a seizure and needs to go to the hospital immediately. So much is going on and Mr. Park starts screaming at Ki-taek to give him the keys. Ki-taek is immobilized at this point. His daughter has been stabbed, son attacked, wife almost killed, the Parks’ got him dressed up in some cultural appropriation, Hollywood Indian regalia. In fact, I find it very fitting that he’s dressed up as a Native American at this moment. I see this as Bong’s satirical nod to old ultra-capitalist Hollywood. But if enough wasn't going on, Mr. Park sniffed. He got close to Geun-sae, a man who’s been living underground for 3 years and audibly sniffed him in disgust. The same way that he sniffed Ki-taek. Of course, there’s probably a difference between a “subway” smell vs. “I haven't showered in 3 years” smell but at the moment it feels as if it's almost the same thing. In my initial viewing, I thought what happened next was because of that, but no. Ki-taek realized that his life was worth the same as the Parks, and their presence no longer bothers him, but he is now plotting against him, and the time of action is now. Ki-taek stabs Mr. Park and flees. Annoyingly, the YouTube section for this clip is filled with people feeling bad for the Parks and discussing how what Ki-taek did was wrong. Of course, the average viewer will view the Parks as some sympathetic rich suckers who only treated the Kims kindly. The casual reader who picks up Fanon for the first time would also dismiss his theory of violence as immoral in comparison to non-violent methods like Gandhi’s. A lot can be said about Gandhi, but Fanon says that non-violence is a strategy created by the colonizer to deter decolonization and paint the colonizer as a gentle ruler who wants peace. This is not the case. Colonialism is a violent system. Capitalism is a violent system. Colonialism can only be undone violently. Capitalism can only be undone violently. Now I don't mean to make this all about colonialism, as my friends say I often do. But the similarities are clear. The question isn’t whether the murder of Mr. Park was a justified act, but what were the conditions that forced Ki-taek to murder. Geun-sae killed Ki-jung, but no one in the comment section is having a debate on whether his murder was ethical. Because in our heads we feel bad for him, and the life that he’s lived- why don’t we feel the same towards Ki-taek? Geun-sae and Ki-taek are two sides of the same coin. Geun-sae’s exploitation is naked. He’s confined to the basement, controlling the lights of the home. A feature of the house that Mr. Park doesn't even pay attention to, never mind considering that there is someone manually operating it. A clear example of how our labor is alienated. All while blindly worshipping Mr. Park- a man who knows nothing of his existence. Honestly, I hope some of you see yourselves in Geun-sae the next time you defend billionaires online. But Ki-taek is just another exploited worker. I understand this can be hard to understand in our current understanding of the world. How is Ki-taek exploited? Him and his family conned their way into their jobs and leech off of the Parks. Again, we must return to the system as a whole to understand. None of this wouldn’t have happened if the Kims weren’t desperately poor in a capitalist society, which enables families like the Parks, to live a life of excess at the expense of the Kims. Capitalism is a system of exploitation; we cannot forget that. Quite simply, no one is rich without thousands that are poor.

          The levels of the home are also this unforgettable feature. I just want to make this quick note about the issue of the ghost. Did you forget about the ghost? Da-Song didn’t (yes, I finally looked his name up!). I find the story of the ghost such an interesting touch. Not just as a way for Bong to warn the audience about Da-Song’s history of seizures. When Mrs. Park tells Chung-sook of the story, she says “they say a ghost in the house brings wealth.” This, of course, is true since the exploitation of those like Geun-sae are responsible for the wealth of the Parks, in the larger picture. I’d like to look further into this. There's a twofold meaning to this. I do believe that this ghost is symbolic to the exploitation of the Kims, and the proletariat in general, but that’s Mrs. Park’s understanding of this ghost. The way she understands this ghost, is as a source of wealth. Maybe Mrs. Park isn’t as ditzy as we imagine- she to some degree, understands her class position. But like most, she doesn’t question the ghost, or her class position. She knows that if she looks into either, it would result in the ugly truth. Da-Song, however, is just a child. He’s too young to really understand the economic and social relations which are responsible for his wealth. He’s also too young to consciously suppress any desire to investigate the matter like his mother. He is a child after all and is naturally curious. But his first encounter with the ghost was the one that resulted in a near fatal seizure. This can be his body’s reaction to the life-threatening figure of a ghost. The ghost isn’t just a threat to his mortal life, but his wealth, some may argue that these are the same. Mrs. Park pays for therapy for his “trauma” so he could forget the event, but he still knows. He saw this ghost and is the only one to seriously consider its threat. Mrs. Park knows it's real but chooses to not think about it. I want to return to the Manifesto. Let's hear these famous words: “A specter is haunting Europe- the specter of communism… Two things result from this fact: Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers itself to be a power...” (Marx and Engels, 8). Don’t think I’m just including this because he’s talking about a specter, in fact, I think this story of the ghost is an intentional allusion to the specter of communism. Da-Song represents this figure of the bourgeoisie who is in constant anxiety over the threat of his wealth. When he reappears at his birthday party, he has another seizure. Also, at this time, the family, and all of their guests are witness to the horrors of their wealth and what it's created. This naked, hideous display, this moment of confrontation is a pivotal point in the dialectic. Of course, this murderous moment is not seen as a success to the viewer with Mr. Park, Ki-jung, and Geun-sae dead, Ki-woo presumed to be dead, and Ki-taek missing. This just shows us that the bourgeoisie are their own gravediggers- to again invoke the Manifesto. On a larger scale, this would be the moment of a revolution- but we don’t. Ki-woo survives with Chung-sook and is put on probation. Ki-taek is missing to the police, but Ki-taek realizes that he’s living in the bunker in hiding. Ki-woo declares that he will make enough money to buy the home and free his father. At first, I wondered “why couldn't he just sneak him out of the house when the new owners were asleep?” “Why did he have to buy the home?” As much as I wanted to portray the Kims to be revolutionary figures, Ki-woo has the common fate of most. Instead of usurping power from the bourgeoisie, he believes he can free his dad from the home, by owning the house. Everyone who lives in the basement is stuck there for a reason, because someone is forcing them to stay there. A perfect allegory for the relations of production as I have repeatedly mentioned throughout this text. Ki-woo desires a bourgeois life (as most working-class folk do!) in order to lift his father out of the despair of poverty. He believes the only way he can save his father is to own the home, which could easily be seen as the means of production. A nice touch which I had to look up, was as Ki-woo tells us of his desire to buy the home, a song plays called “546 years”- the amount of time it will take for him to earn enough money. I wish this song title was more obvious for the American viewer. I am not trying to take away from this film by saying that, but for a viewer who knows Korean or the song title, they’ll understand the tragic nature of his dreams. Whereas the American viewers will sympathize with his dreams- as we’ve done with immigrants and “the American Dream” or the bootstrapping mentality of some people. In some way I do think Bong didn’t want an overtly revolutionary ending. I don’t think the average viewer, especially in this day, could handle an ending like that. Not to say that we don't understand class inequality and such. We are not living in, say the 60s/70s where there were Marxist movements all throughout the world. I don’t think we have the conditions for a revolution at this moment, although I do think the mass unemployment and the other severe economic consequences of this virus will radicalize the working class in large numbers, to a degree that we haven't seen in a long time. But to make my point, I feel that we are living in historic political times and we are coming to understand ourselves in a liberating way.  It is my hope that films like Parasite will awaken the revolutionary potential in us all.

Note: I wanted to use Fanon’s theory of violence and diagnosis of colonialism as a violent structure, in relation to capitalist society. I don’t want us to interpret his writings as something that can be isolated from the racial structure of colonialism, but i do think it is a beneficial guide to understanding this film.

Work Cited:

Philcox, Richard, translator. “On Violence.” The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon, Grove Press, 2004.

Joon-Ho, Bong, director. Parasite. Barunson E&A, 2019.

Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. The Communist Manifesto. International Publishers, 1948.

[seenashwrite]

Notes From Nash: Season 15, Episode 3

It's ep three, and was third try the charm? Well, we're still in that little town, which is infuriating. But don't lose hope, chickadees. There was some character arc action and some plot advancing, and just drama in general, and it moved at a decently quick clip, all of which is refreshing after last week's ass-disaster of an episode. 

If I were grading this ep, all things considered (including some damn fine acting moments that elevated the material), it's an A-. (Five points were docked immediately because we were still in the little town.) But seriously, this week's writer(s) had a LOT to make up for given the aforementioned last week as well as a largely lackluster premiere, so you know what? Props to them. 

We got a loose end from season past tied up, got rid of some dead weight, and then there was a thing that happened that I’m not entirely sure was necessary at this interval, but I get why it happened. Of course, we had our requisite random hamfisted “solution(s)” and still-unexplained bits that should’ve been clarified ages ago, can’t not have those, it seems. Regardless, this episode was actually fairly interesting to watch. I’m still wary about the state of the season after the first two, but this one had some spark.

Spoilers below the cut, you know the drill.  

This one's in order, I was jotting stuff down as I watched. Past ep breakdowns linked at the bottom. If you’re new, hello, welcome, etc., I don’t do meta shit or reading into the symbolism of the color of a blurry wallpaper just over someone’s shoulder, I look at writing and cohesiveness and structure and flow and all that jazz. I basically just call things as I see ‘em. 

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More spooky-scary still seems to be pouring from the hellpit, but at least this crypt is pretty, and Harry Potter tent-esque because the square feet inside is seemingly bigger than the outside.  

Rowena appears to be outfitted in one of my grandmother's housedresses, or a coffin lining, or a 1980s prom dress, whichever you prefer, and none of them have been pressed. I'm trying to say I don't like it. They also continue to do Ruthie's makeup in such a manner that she perpetually looks approximately fifteen years older than she actually is, so in a way I'm thankful this is likely her last episode. On the other hand, I trust these writers and the people who assemble/green light the promos about as far as I can throw them, so we shall see. In any event, Ruthie is quite the good actor and I hope she gets a million gigs after all this is done.  

This Sam-Dean moment with Creased Brow Sam and Gruff Voice Dean is falling so flat, not because of them, but because we're hearing The Same Damn Thing We've Already Heard. Move the plot along, please----- Oh wait here comes Belphagor once again with a solution, this time a nice little plot rescue MacGuffin! Lilith's Crook. Just gotta blow it like a horn. 

Motherbitch, this is stupid.

I got a thought: make it Gabriel's horn, so it calls in all the angels who should've come back with the reverse-y switch-a-roo, and they deal with sealing the hole, but bonus! At end of ep last scene is that it's also called Gabriel back, too. I'd announce to the universe that this show needs to hire me, but, welp.

Oh look, Ketch is in a hospital gown. Oh look, I bet Ketch is about to die in that hospital gown, instead of a badass suit like it should be. It looked like DHJ accidentally spoiled via a tweet that I happened to see----- 

I dodge the promo images and articles and such so I can give a view of someone who doesn't know what is coming in these things. 

-----because he talked about coming back just to leave again, that it was a pleasure, whatever, and y'all will have to fill me in on that because I kinda can't believe he whiffed that hard. I'm not looking it up, is my point. Did he whiff? Actually, don't answer that, I don't care. I mean, don’t go to trouble looking into it on my account.  

Hmmm. Was Ketch’s death entirely necessary? At least, right now? I dunno. Maybe. I’m 50/50 whether this, or have him be double-crossy then get killed later. In any event, well-acted by DHJ. He's quite fantastic. He is wasted in all the Hallmark dreck he's been in, I really hope he gets some good work after this. That's that. Moving on. 

We're 1/4 in, and I'll give it this: we've gotten some action, some drama, but they've GOT to make up for the lack of plot progression in episode 2. Belphagor is shady as shit, which we knew, and this just got reinforced by that demon who has such a hard-on for Belphagor getting axed. 

I do not mind rando badass lady hunter having lines and playing a tangentially-important role in the ep, but this means if we ever see her again, she'll likely get killed, so I'm not getting attached. 

So hell is an angry vagina. SFX, are y'all okay? Is that prick whose tweets occasionally come across my feed still working there? Y'all need some hugs? I know y'all need some better budget, that all the DC shows got it, but oh well, that ship's sailed.  

Well done set dec, I dig the ghoulish statues in that hallway. And hey costume design, I like the ring that dude was wearing, I would wear that in real life. It would also look great as a wrist cuff. I digress. 

We know this demon is not going to succeed in killing Belphagor, so once more we have a pointless halftime cliffhanger. Also, have I mentioned I'm done with Cas being a weak puss? I'm telling you, if stuff got rewound, he should be incrementally getting his mojo back, that tracks logically. See Ep. 1 notes for what I thought should've happened for a legit "Whoa" moment. 

"Do you have any idea what he is?" --- he's a poop demon. Again, see the first episode of @youtotallymadethatup​    /shameless plug

[sighs]

Is this show gonna end with a Jack vs. Jack battle royale? Because fuck that noise. But! Writing-wise, it's okay that ol’ Belph may become the big bad. Nash, why would you say that, you ask. Easy.

IT WILL GET US THE FUCK OUT OF THIS LITTLE TOWN

A. Ny. Thing. to get us the fuck out of this little town. I am so goddamned bored.

Cas, this is a mistake. You should leave. What are you doing. Leave. Don't fall for that. Leave. Go now. Whoosh. Okay, or glow worm and barbeque the body. That was a nice little catch of emotion by Misha at the end. Except are the demons now gonna jump into his body? Better not, we've seen that season. 

Commercials! Cannot believe I've not been inundated with the adverts for the convention here in the spring, that's usually the jam. Imma go get some frozen yogurt. Highly rec strawberry with a little warmed-up Nutella. Try it, then tell me I'm crazy. I'm not. It's heavenly. 

Aaaaand, we're back!

Don't look so distressed Cas, y’all were gonna burn it anyway. But this takes Jack v. Jack off the table. Hopefully this means we'll be headed back to the Empty to get some progress on that hanging thread from last season sooner rather than later. Still, I'm glad we are down a character for awhile, this character in particular was starting to work my nerves and honestly, is just dead weight. I want it back to Sam and Dean for the most part this final season with sprinklings of Cas. Everyone else is secondary.

[claps] Very excellent Ruthie and Jared. One critique: Wish there could've been some sort of line from Rowena, re: "And perhaps I'll get to see my boy again", something of that ilk.

But I want to say this, and say it emphatically:

The nonsensical spells pulled from asses must stop

The soul-catcher thing is an example of a great move because it drew upon the past, then built upon for the present. This heart and angel blood and salt shit, and then this “Oh by the way it needs my dying breath” stuff is just obvious “um um um well how about bleh” writing stumbles, and it shows. The only reason that lameness worked? Ruthie and Jared’s performances. Period. Because y’all gave them absolute garbage to work with, and they made it shine.

Hey! There's the two convention promos with one short local ad in between, followed by the same local ad again! I was beginning to think they'd forgotten! 

WE ARE OUT OF THE LITTLE TOWN, I REPEAT, WE ARE OUT OF THE LITTLE TOWN 

DEAN IS IN A HENLEY, I REPEAT, DEAN IS IN A HENLEY 

Oof, Dean. I mean, I figured this convo would have to happen one day, it's been building, because even though his intentions are good, Cas has been involved in his fair share of shit taking left turns. Hopefully Cas is going to go seek out other angels. Also, re: Cas saying he's getting weaker - because, why? WHY. This has never been addressed in a definitive, satisfactory manner. 

Right, so, like we do each time, let's check in to see if we've had any character development and/or plot progression: 

Do Ketch and Rowena and Belphagor count, since they've progressed to being dead? Dunno, that's more of a finality to their overall arcs. Dean's being an asshole and Sam's being weepy and Cas is being an Eeyore, that's about par. Meh. Okay. So did the plot get advanced? 

YES THANK YOU FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER SWEET LORD YES. But, eh... a little weaksauce. Yes, that chapter of the initial onslaught is closed, yet we know it's not over. So I feel like the ep should've ended with, after the bunker door slams, a cut to a little scene that serves as a clue about what lies ahead. I mean, ahead-ahead, season-wise. Like, twenty second blip, not even, then hard cut to black screen, then on to promo which appears to be MotW. 

So that's it, really. More adept writers could've made the material of #1 and #2 into the premiere (minus several things, most specifically minus Kevin, should've saved Osric for something else down the line), then this should've been episode #2 instead of #3. Can't unring that bell, though. Let's hope we hit some speed before Buckleming comes along to run us into a ditch, then (fingers crossed) we have a few eps after that to rebound for the finale.

See you next week.

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Past posts, from newest to oldest (and I sometimes do addendums if a response warrants)

Episode 2

Episode 1

[go-diane-winchester]

Jensen's newest and possibly biggest headache just got launched.  If only he could sue...

Honeybunch found this for me, and I am just groaning.  Apparently someone wrote a book on shipping from a fangirl's perspective.  Read this Amazon review on it and you will notice that the character Forest seems very familiar.

From Riverdale screenwriter Britta Lundin, Ship It is a funny, tender, and honest look at all the feels that come with being a fan.  CLAIRE is a sixteen-year-old fangirl obsessed with the show Demon Heart. FOREST is an actor on Demon Heart who dreams of bigger roles. When the two meet at a local Comic-Con panel, it's a dream come true for Claire. Until the Q&A, that is, when Forest laughs off Claire's assertion that his character is gay. Claire is devastated. After all, every last word of her super-popular fanfic revolves around the romance between Forest's character and his male frenemy. She can't believe her hero turned out to be a closed-minded jerk. Forest is mostly confused that anyone would think his character is gay. Because he's not. Definitely not.

Unfortunately for Demon Heart, when the video of the disastrous Q&A goes viral, the producers have a PR nightmare on their hands. In order to help bolster their image within the LGBTQ+ community-as well as with their fans-they hire Claire to join the cast for the rest of their publicity tour. What ensues is a series of colorful Comic-Con clashes between the fans and the show that lead Forest to question his assumptions about sexuality and help Claire come out of her shell. But how far will Claire go to make her ship canon? To what lengths will Forest go to stop her and protect his career? And will Claire ever get the guts to make a move on Tess, the very cute, extremely cool fanartist she keeps running into?

Amongst the adoring reviews, there were a few that were sensible, like this honest one. 

''Claire is a terrible person. She's internally homophobic, but on the other hand she pushes a sexuality on another person in a way that made me very uncomfortable. She does terrible terrible things in the name of the fandom, without seeming to care that she could ruin Forest's career forever. She goes on to share some of Forest's private information in a fanfic, and continually harass him. And I'm not even started on the abusive relationship she has with the girl she likes.  I hated Claire with a passion. The story itself also had issues. I didn't like the message it was pushing about fandoms and writers. Fans don't get to dictate what writers write. They can comment and critique the show or story, in fact they are supposed to do those things!  But they shouldn't force a writer to change something, because in the end it's not their story. And the fact that we're supposed to be sympathizing with Claire as she tries to push everyone to do what she wants, seemed wrong to me.''

Now if you feel that Claire [familiar name] sounds a lot like a stubborn heller and Forrest sounds a lot like the heller's version of Jensen, then you are right.  Britta Lundin, the pathetic waste of space that wrote this book, and who somehow got a job as Riverdale writer, is actually a heller.  See?

She has basically written a Mary-Sue insert in a destiel story, but she changed the names of the main characters, because Jensen will sue her for including him in her filth.  She wrote herself into this story, and how she fantasizes dealing with Jensen.  So what is wrong with the book?  Well, honeybunch is calling it the heller handbook.  That should give you an idea of how horrible this book is, not only for this fandom but for any fandom that has heller-like entities amongst them.  People's moral compasses are completely broken if they cant see how bad an influence this book is and how bad a person Claire is.  And what are hellers going to do when they read this book.  They are going to get mobilized into action to harass and stalk and abuse Jensen, amongst other things, until he gives him and makes their canon.  Look at what the protagonist Claire does in this story. 

She tries to literally and explicitly BLACKMAIL the executive producer to make her ship canon.

She SABOTAGES the panel at the convention.

She releases private information about one of the actors (which was given in confidence).  

She even gets that actor eventually fired. 

She harasses Forest [our Jensen insert] in order to make her ship canon. 

''She faces no consequences about these actions and even gets treated like a hero. This book is disgusting. She is that toxic part of tumblr that everyone hates.'', writes another reviewer.  Yep, she sounds terribly hellish. 

What is Britta trying to teach young girls?  Your ship is so important that ruining lives over it is acceptable? 

Either Jensen will give in to the harassment, or he will shuts down the show completely.  Good bye, Supernatural.  Good bye SPN family.  Good bye Sam and Dean Winchester.  And most importantly good riddance, Misha Collins and his hellers.  Hah!  I have an inkling Misha is going to get hold of this book and tweet about it or talk about it.  It seems like a Misha-type of thing to do.  If he does do that, I am going to laugh.  The attention monger is predictable. 

According to one reviewer,  Rico [read Misha], Forest's co-star was just an all-around fabulous guy.  See how the leech wrote the guys.  Jensen is a homophobe as always and Misha is just so likeable.  SMH! 

Amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/Ship-Britta-Lundin/dp/1368003133/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1546899202&sr=8-1

[laracastrowrites]

An Excerpt From An Interview

A lot of readers had a meltdown over The Darkling’s fate.

"That really doesn’t bother me. Occasionally I would get a tweet from somebody who’s like, ‘How come Alina and The Darkling didn’t end up together?’ I’m all for people who want to write fanfic, but there’s absolutely no way I would ever make a relationship that was, quite frankly abusive. People like to forget the fact that he tried to enslave her, tried to steal her power, and even if you put all those things aside, the idea that Alina would forge that kind of alliance with somebody who mutilated one of her friends…Alina has this team of people who had sacrificed so much to defeat this man, the idea that all of a sudden she was going to be, 'Never mind, he’s hot, let’s have fun.’ It was just unacceptable to me."

And.....

"If I wanted people to hate The Darkling there would’ve been many ways to do that, I could have him kill a kitten or something. It almost became this challenge where I was going to keep him as compelling, charismatic and attractive as possible because I don’t believe the people that are most dangerous to us are devoid of those qualities; they’re the people who enter our lives who are broken and beautiful, but are still bad news.”

She said all this with a straight face.

***

I've read this specific one (and maybe that's why I dont search for them anymore neither read them lol).

So let's break this statement piece by piece, shall we?

First of all: look, Idk how things went at the time but like... when the interviwer says "the Darkling's fate" I think she means his death, right? So why the hell she made that about ships and shipping??? There was no reason for that! Anyways, this just shows how HER mind is so focused on that and whomst exactly would do anything for their(HER) ship to "work", right?...

And let's go to the part where she talks about Alarkling then: I love how she puts it in a way like she had nothing to do with how their relationship went down and like, she couldnt have done nothing about it lolol look, I know sometimes writers feel like their characters conduct the narrative and make decicions that you werent "expecting" and dont go with what you have planned at first, but with a piece like tgt where we clearly see that the author didnt respect the organic course of things, making all she could to stick with her planned couple that just worked inside of her own mind, I think we have a right to say that, if she wanted to, she could have changed the Darkling and Alina's dynamic and relationship (and I'm not even saying on a couple/romantic basis, she could have made them turn down friends or allies or whatever!, eventually) and she knows this damn well! So perhaps she should stop playing innocent on this, like it wasnt HER choice and it's all on the bad Darkling, a FICTIONAL being created by HER that is following HER script and what SHE'd planned !!!!! And no, people DONT forget all the crapy things he'd done, but since the first book readers had the hope he would turn around and redeem himself (at least on where he wronged Alina) cause the author put that hope in there, she did play with the idea of redemption within his character, then ofc some people would be sad and/or pissed and disappointed because she didn't delivered; you dont get to play and tease people with something without ever delivering it and expect people to be quiet about it and dont complain later, but well, she said that doesnt bother her anyway (which I dont believe it's true lol), right? So... And btw, Genya's torture was bullshit and ooc and gratutious (this interview just made me see that she REALLY did that just to make him irredeemable already) and it's ALL on her and it was her shittiest move in the whole trilogy (even more than Alina's fate), maybe she should think a little about why she needed to disfugure a female character that had already been raped and manipulated and used in order to further a villain's arc and put him into a hole he couldnt get out by doing an act based on...something(???) that didnt even fit in that character's motives and reasons and modus operandi, just saying... (self critique never killed anyone, you know, and in this case, she REALLY needed to think about it cause that was very problematic and harmful). And I have to lol everytime I see her talking about how the Darkling wanted to "steal" Alina's powers, omfg the irony ,,,,,,, should I remind her who exactly "stole" Alina's powers away by the end of the day ???? SHOULD I ?????? Spoiler alert, it wasnt the Darkling........... WHO'S THE VILLAIN NOW UH? WHO??? WHOMST ?????

And well, let's get back to Genya's case and the part where she says "Alina has this team of people who had sacrificed so much to defeat this man," I mean, if Alina isnt supposed to unit forces with shitty people who hurt her friends then why the fuck she would be on the King's side ????? Ok that in s&s Genya was on the Darkling's side, but it isn't like she didn't and couldnt see the King was shit too and Nikolai wasnt the first one in the throne's line of succession, so ???? Why exactly she would have to be on THEIR side??? And I'm not saying she should be on the Darkling's side either, ofc not, but the thing is (and it's other point that bothers me): she shouldnt be EXACTLY on the monarchy's side either! But if LB thought she must, then at least she could have seen its problems and be critical about them and could try to make a better Ravka by improving the govermnent system and making opposition to the Darkling at the same time. It bothers me that Alina never grew to have a political view and agenda when her own existence was very political! Something that the Darkling got it since the first time people tried to kill him, and he was way younger than Alina when that happened (but maybe she spent too much time living as an otkazatsya to get right away what meant to be a grisha in that world, luxury the Darkling didnt have, but still... after everything she went through, after she accepted herself as a powerful grisha, where people were still trying to use her and her powers from all sides, she should have gotten something out of there, she should have seen more clearly through, the only thing she had to do was using her fucking brains). Alina was just pushed through the narrative by people with their own purposes and agendas and she never grew to have one for herself (her purpose was based on urgencies created by people with agendas, for example: she wanted peace for Ravka, why? Because the Darkling and the Monarchy entered in a civil war; why was she staying by the Monarchy's side? Because the Darkling wanted to enslave her, so at least these people here arent trying to do the same (as long as she knew.......... except for the Apparat), so she was always reacting to the situations rather than acting and creating new ones based on her own purposes). Or maybe LB did this on purpose so she could justify Alina's resilience in losing her powers by the end of the trilogy (which doesnt, ofc). But then she lost the opportunity to create so many nice nuanced conversations about politics, oppression, privileges, power, religion, the ways of war, etc.; if Alina had been the opposite of the Darkling but still getting his point and being attracted by him and his ideas but still sticking on what she believed in and showing better ways than him to do things (I mean, how about Alina throwing on the Darkling's face that he said he was trying to end the war and create a better world for grishas beggining by enslaving and controling her, a fellow grisha, which was exactly what their oppressors did, so it was very contradictory and not by far the best shot, and it wouldnt be long lasting, I mean, I would've loved to see that! But maybe it was too dangerous... what if he'd listened to her, uh ??!?!?!?!!!!! what if he was convinced by her, uh ???!?!?!?!!! then they would have to be kind of on the same side, right? and omg! god forbid this from ever happening !!!!! 😒😒😒 ), anyways, it'd be much more nuanced and interesting, in my humble opinion...

I have more rants about the grishaverse concerning the political aspects and LB's bias choices but I wont get to it rn, that's it for today.

[apriceonemotion]

Harries vs. “Sexualizing” Harry

There seems to be an issue within harries on Twitter where there’s a divide in opinions, which happens with most things in this fandom really – with song and suit preferences and sometimes even his personal relationships. But when it comes to fans using his own words against other fans to make them feel bad for feeling a certain way, that’s when it gets a bit more serious. Some fans get really angry and aggressive when it comes to others expressing their sexual attraction to him and it has become a huge issue as it is mentioned almost daily now. When discussing the sexualization of Harry Styles, we need to step back into time to really dig deep into why it’s such a huge issue to some people.

Harry was seen as an actual sex symbol for the beginning and even toward the end of One Direction, as he was painted as the womanizer or the attractive flirt of the group not only by the media but even the One Direction team. In X Factor they made it a huge joke that Harry flirted with every girl that was in the competition and then proceeded to poke fun at how 17 year old Harry was into older women like Caroline Flack. He was being painted into a textbook example of a womanizing player. They used the fact that fans found him sexually attractive to their advantage in marketing, as they made him the face of the group as well as giving him parts in music videos that made him even more attractive to the young audience.

When looking back at that time, you could see multiple articles being made prying into his personal relationships and making him seem as if he has sex with and dates multiple women, all because he was labeled from the very beginning as the flirty one. Whenever he had a relationship, the media was writing his life as a news story.

During this time, fans were young and the idea of idolization from these fans had a fine line between loving these boys as musicians to wanting to actually be with them sexually and/or romantically. Society constantly shames young women for feeling sexual attraction to male artists and demonizes the girls that ever expressed how they feel. Although the attraction these young fans were feeling was used against them in marketing for 1D, there was still a huge divide inside of the fandom at that time of if anyone should be expressing their sexual attraction to the boys.

Fans then and now firmly believe that showing that you are sexually attracted to one of them, that is all you see them as. A lot of this is based on internalized misogyny that young girls have embedded from older generations demonizing young women for being as vocal about sexuality as young men can. I know that most people reading this may be denying that they’re internally misogynistic but in reality, the majority of women feel this way especially in their young teen years since society has still plagued the idea that women should not be sexual beings unless they are the ones being objectified by men.

A sex symbol in the music industry is a person that is seen only for their sexual attractiveness and not their actual talent and musical ability. This term gets thrown around way too often in Twitter arguments, but when you claim that every single fan that made one tweet about being sexually attracted to him is painting him out to be a sex symbol, you are trying to generalize that all fans who see him in that way don’t like him for anything else but that when that’s not even close to being accurate. Seeing someone’s tweet for the first time and assuming that’s all they ever talk about is a stupid thing to do in the first place. Majority of fans that make those tweets do tweet other things, you just don’t care to look.

People are very complex and go from mood to mood over the course of the day. One moment they could be thinking about how attractive Harry is and the things they can imagine, but the next moment they could be talking about how much they appreciate him and his music for what they have done for them in their life. Thinking that women can’t have sexual thoughts and go about their day normally after is again internalized misogyny. Feeling uncomfortable when a woman feels sexual attraction shows that you are just simply uncomfortable with the idea of women being as sexual as men are allowed to be.

However, another point that is always brought up is how Harry was actually a sex symbol once like I stated in the beginning. In his Zane Lowe interview, he was asked how he feels when people only focus on him in that light (sexually), and the quote he gave has been thrown around in a misleading way in order prove that the past years of him being sexualized by media has made him uncomfortable of fans doing the same thing when that’s not even close to being true.

“It’s a very strange dynamic,” he says. “It’s also a weird thing to think of about yourself. The thing about sex in general is, it used to feel so much more taboo, like in the band – the thought of people thinking I had sex was like ‘oh, no, that’s crazy’ like what if they know? But it’s like… y’know. With this record, I wanted to be more free and honest.” He does keep this quite vague, as he always does, which is possibly how it’s been misread and misused. But in this quote, it’s clear that in the beginning of One Direction when he was being shown as a womanizer, he felt very weird about people knowing that he has sex and that he is being seen as a sexual being. He felt very closed off, which was very obvious in that time as he started to have his relationships more private and we as fans did not know much about his personal life. But as he says in the end, it seems as if he is trying to be more open about sexuality with Fine Line, as he feels more free to discuss the subject of sex rather than how taboo it felt in the beginning of being famous.

Nowhere in that quote does he claim that fans finding him sexually attractive is uncomfortable, however, he does state that he feels uncomfortable by being seen only for his looks instead of his talent. Him feeling this way is more rooted from the media making him out to be the good looking player of the band rather than the fact fans found him sexually attractive. It also would stem from people in his life who actually only saw him as an attractive male celebrity and based their support of his career solely on that, not fans on Twitter once in a while tweeting about how attractive he walks.

Blaming an entire fan base on his lack of activity on social media just because a few fans are sexually attracted to him, as well as attempting to make them feel lesser for feeling that way toward him, is actually very damaging. Harry has said himself that social media is bad for his mental health, which research shows that social media is bad for anyone’s mental health as it holds high standards for a good quality of life for a typical human. Putting the blame on fans is basically saying these people on Twitter are the main reason his mental health is bad when he gets online, which is a huge burden to put onto someone as mental health is not something to use against people. You are making it seem that this random person on Twitter is one of the main reasons he doesn’t like social media, when in reality, he probably doesn’t even see it since he doesn’t get online much.

Harry has gone through social media abuse from the media and crazed fans all of his life, most likely more damaging words have been said to him than the ones you are mad at. Viral tweets are made about him that criticize what he wears all of the time, a lot of them are borderline homophobia or even denying the fact that he is as queer as he says he is. People on social media critique his entire life, it’s always been that way since the beginning of 1D. I really doubt that someone giggling about how Watermelon Sugar is clearly about eating a woman out is going to bother him as much as that.

I’ve always been told that Harry would be upset to see the things that people say but we all do not know him personally and he has never said that anyone finding him attractive has made him uncomfortable. I feel like the only thing he may find strange is the idea of himself being attractive to other people, which is more of a personal reflection of himself. The transition of becoming famous and having girls find you attractive must be strange if you have always believed you weren’t. It has nothing to do with ‘thirst tweets’ being made about him.

Now, let’s all keep our internalized misogyny to ourselves and instead learn to accept sexuality in its many forms so you don’t demonize young women for ‘thirst tweeting’ about Harry Styles’ hands.

[incogvito]

This is Unimportant

Because, in the grand scheme of things, I am unimportant. And while that won’t ring true for every aspect of my life (I am important to my family, my friends, etc), to a large degree, say 99% of the Earth’s population, I don’t matter.  (This isn’t a pity party. Just hang with me.)

So, if I don’t matter, the things I care about mean even less. To that same 99%, the amazing things my kids do are not just unimportant, they’re irrelevant. And guess what? That’s fine. That is absolutely normal and expected, really. But if you were to put me in a situation where I had to care...something like the relief efforts for Harvey and Irma and Maria...where I might not necessarily know the person across from me, that changes. You might say that empathy is required. And that’s really what I want to talk about. The things that are required, and the things that are expected.

See, there is currently a culture war being “fought” in this country. To those outside of the US, this is completely ridiculous, I’m sure, but in a way, totally expected. The person that was elected as President of the United States, before the election, was a celebrity. And further, he was a celebrity that, while never really doing anything that makes a celebrity celebrated (he bought buildings), he is someone that, excuse the terminology, “gets off” on being famous. He is, in a weird way, part of a pop culture moment (that moment being the 1980′s, aka the Me Generation); I think the first time I saw him was on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, a tv “magazine” show that explored the glitzy side of wealth. Money and wealth was important in the Era of Reagan, and that’s kind of getting off topic, but it’s important context. The 80′s made celebrities of guys like Lee Iacocca and, you guessed it, Donald Trump. So, for Trump, being not just in the public eye, but being a part of the social conversation, was (and still is) important to him. It’s the whole basis for his being. Which is why he makes tweets that are so incendiary; Twitter and tweeting is social currency. His speeches have less to do with policy (of which he has none other than destroying the legacy of Barack Obama) and more to do with what is happening on TV. It’s why he goes after NFL players. Or Broadway shows. Or ESPN anchors. He cares less about things like Detroit’s water, and more about things like the Detroit Lions*.

Take that, and then push out from there, to his influence. His base feels emboldened to criticize things that, in the grand scheme of things, shouldn’t matter to a politician; A movie star talking about climate change; an athlete that kneels in protest; things that only matter to us, the people, because we are generally looking for someone in that position to speak about something we care about. Or, the opposite; we want a leader to validate something that we, the people, don’t want to care about. Trump took three days to talk about the violence in Charlottesville because he doesn’t care about it. He cares about Q ratings. He cares about approval. It’s why he vacillated so much in his responses. He cares about celebrity and fame. So, his base attacks things that are part of pop culture; films, music, tv shows, and...I’m finally getting to my point...comic books.

Let’s go back to the idea of the things that are expected of us and the things that are required of us. Without naming names and giving credence to a lot of, frankly, stupid ideology, I’m going to cut right to it. There’s a comic book reviewer that has this notion that Marvel Comics and DC Entertainment are out of touch with what today’s reader wants to read. As far as I know, those are the only two companies he has targeted in his ire, but I could be wrong; he may have said something about Dark Horse or Boom! Studios or Image...I don’t know for sure (I would imagine this to be the case). A lot of his arguments stem from the idea of diversity hires affecting the finished product. Things like transgender authors, or black artists. Or things like female characters being drawn in “untraditional” (read: unsexy) ways. Or of a writer injecting his or her political ideology into the stories. A lot of it is navel gazing and totally besides the point, but it caught fire this week when Mark Waid (note: a personal friend) posted on a private Facebook page that he was looking for this individual and screenshots of that got leaked (note: I was a member of that private page). The context of Mark’s statements were that he wanted to engage in dialogue with the reviewer in person at Baltimore Comic Con, but his words were written in the moment and probably came off as more incendiary than intended (as evidenced by his later posts, the same day/night, once the leak happened). I’m not going to defend Mark; don’t need to or want to. Again, I want to talk about requirements and expectations and how they pertain to comic books and comic book reviewing. 

(I fully apologize for what’s about to come, because it’s 2017 and I have to write this, and I’m 44 and people should know better, but oh well, I guess.)

When you buy a comic book (or DVD, or what have you), there is only one requirement; you are required to read it. Actually, you’re required to pay for it and expected to read it (and there are some that don’t pay because either they get comps, or the publisher sends out PDF’s, or they pirate the books). That’s it. Buy and read. You are expected to have an opinion based on this, because generally speaking, we all do. I read a comic by a creator a few weeks ago, another friend, and it was my opinion that this was not his best work, and a waste of his abilities. But... YOU’RE NOT **REQUIRED** TO SHARE THAT OPINION. Crazy, right? Look, I’m not saying you can’t say, “This comic was a waste of my time,” especially if you’re getting paid to do so. But if someone hands you a stack of books and asks you to review the books, you’re review should be about the contents of the book, not the creator working on it. I’m in the camp that believes we should spend more time writing about the things we like, and spending less time destroying the things we don’t care about. I used to work in a comic store (almost 11 years) and my boss had what he called, “the third aisle rule,” or something similar. The philosophy is this; while you and a customer are dogging something in aisle one, over in aisle three is a reader who has that same book and now, due to hearing you trash it, doesn’t want to buy it because a) she’s too embarrassed to bring it to the counter or b) she’d rather buy her books somewhere else that she won’t be ridiculed for her choices. Ostensibly, it’s about not losing a sale. We were encouraged to praise the books we loved, but if we didn’t like something, we were asked to not talk about it at all. 

One of the things that was brought up in one of these articles that popped up in the aftermath of that leak was that the guy (and now I’m legit blanking on his name) made comments about diversity hires, pointing out one writer who was selected for the DC Writer’s Workshop. He claims that the writer was selected purely because she is a transgender woman (I need to apologize here because the article used the male pronoun and because I’m unfamiliar with the writer he was targeting, I am not sure if I’m using the correct pronoun, or if the article writer was trying to be intentionally controversial, so I am just going on my best guess). Here’s the thing about diversity hires; he has no right to question anyone’s hiring practices. He does a YouTube review “show.” As far as I know, he isn’t a comic book writer (but one of his buddies that, I think, initially leaked the screenshot is a writer and might have written comics? I’m unclear, but moving on). As far as I know, DC hiring her did not take food off of his table.

But guess what?

It took food off of MY table.

How?

Because I “auditioned” for the same Writer’s Workshop.

But, this is the funny part. Instead of tearing apart someone I don’t know, or a process I wasn’t a part of, I just got over it. It stung for a day, sure; rejection is never easy, but ultimately WHO CARES WHO DC HIRES? Just give me a good book. At the end of the day, I’m still a fan; I still want to be entertained. 

And to this guy and his friends, in their minds, in this scenario, DC took an opportunity away from a white man (which, I’m sorry, I’m Puerto Rican and Italian, and while my name is more Italian, I was raised by my mom’s family, so I identify with my Hispanic side). Is it so controversial that DC maybe thinks I’m not a good writer? And that she is? And why do you care? Or, the other side of it; that hiring someone that is fringe (I guess) or left of center harms these characters that we’ve known for 70 years or less (depending on the character we’re talking about at that moment). This is the weird gatekeeping of culture that somehow, someone who doesn’t own that character or idea feels they have ownership over. It’s all so...backwards. If DC hires six women to write a book, it doesn’t affect me. Because I was never offered the book, but I still get to do my comic, I still can raise money on Kickstarter, and I am still generally content to work like this. I don’t need a hero or anyone to defend me, and I think that these precious white cis gendered heterosexual male writers they’re going to bat for probably don’t either. 

I say it again and again, but you’re holding on too tightly to something that isn’t yours.

Using your platform (YouTube, a blog, Twitter) to critique a comic is neither an expectation or a requirement, but yeah, it’s your right. But you have no right to attack a creator that’s just trying to make a living. If you want to be a Fox News pundit/talking head, they keep firing people, so as long as you keep it in your pants, I’m sure they’ll hire you. It worked for Tomi Lahren (is that how you spell it?). If you want to make comics that reflect your way of thinking, and you want to hire whoever it is that speaks to your mentality, go right ahead. They did one about that Stick guy. Go on to Kickstarter, GoFundMe or Patreon. I’m sure there’s at least 100 people that will side with you and want to read that. That’s the beauty of it; you can put your ideas in action.  Marvel and DC are multimedia conglomerates (Disney and Warner Brothers, respectively). They (the companies) don’t care about anything other than making money. So, if you don’t want it, don’t buy it. But if you’re buying it just to make some sort of statement...you’re probably an idiot. Then again, you’re probably pirating the comics anyway.

I have as much right as anyone to be angry or upset about these hiring practices (if that’s what they are), but I really don’t care. I do not sit at my computer looking at Newsarama and seething over who got hired on a book. I write comics.

Like I said, this is unimportant.

*EDIT: In case you thought this was stupid or that I don’t know what I’m talking about, please refer to the very last sentence here:

[itsjustkp007]

Trump Rant/Plea #1

I try to not be too political on social media in general, and I try to hold my tongue. I try to hope for the best. I try to be optimistic. I try so hard to not let things that I cannot change not bother me, but the last 5 days have gotten so out of hand and I am so disappointed that I find myself needing to say something. I want to give the new President the benefit of the doubt. I am trying to so badly, and you have no idea how much I want to be proven wrong or told that the media is villainizing him, but...it’s not. By signing for those pipelines, by signing for the reversal decision of Roe v. Wade, by making decisions without even consulting the people for guidance, I would feel that the Founding Fathers would be disappointed if I didn’t say something. I know that America has a controversial past (to say the least) and I know that we’re nowhere near perfect, but we were founded by standing up for our beliefs, for seeking opportunity in a new world (wasn’t ours, but that’s a whole other issue), and for fighting for what we believed was right. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Declaration of Independence is one of the first documents where we established, as a country, what every person in the United States should be guaranteed. Abraham Lincoln stated that the country should be of the people, by the people, for the people. JFK stated that we should ask not what our country could do for us, but what we could do for our country. Despite any mistakes we made, despite our disagreements, despite everything that we have faced, there was this underlying belief that we are in this together, as cheesy as it sounds. Trump has made it clear that we’re not a united front anymore; we are more divided than ever, and that’s how he wants it. This isn’t just a critique anymore; this is what I have gathered from his actions over the last five days. I have disagreed with Presidents before, and I will disagree with all Presidents at some point, but I was at least heard.

I know that long text posts aren’t a lot of people’s “thing,” and I’m sorry. I have a Tumblr to share the things that I enjoy, share the random thoughts that I have, and whatever else comes to mind. I don’t claim to be a certain type of blog because I want to have the freedom to post what I want. If someone reads it, great. If someone ignores it, that’s fine, too. I just want to have an outlet where I can be whatever version of myself that I want. Yes, I’m a fangirl of a lot of things. Yes, I’m a book nerd. Yes, I watch way too much YouTube. Yes, I am very passionate about a lot of things, but I learn from what I post here. I learn from seeing others’ opinions. I love sharing similar likes and dislikes with people over the Internet, but I also love being real. I want to be real about my emotions and not hide in fear. I want to share my worries and concerns. I do it rarely because I prefer to be positive, but hey, if it makes one person feel validated, then I’m happy. No regrets. Anyway, now that that “disclaimer” is out of the way, here’s what I posted on Twitter (seeing as that’s where the President goes for opinions).

My Tweets: “1) I usually try to not be bothered by the things that I cannot change, and I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but... 2) ...I cannot accept Trump’s behavior. I cannot accept his total disregard for humanity as a whole. I cannot accept his inability to listen. 3) We are a country made of the people, by the people, for the people, and he used his power for his own personal gain and to boost his ego. 4) I know that America isn’t perfect. I know that we have our problems, but I love my country, and I hate seeing my fears become reality. 5) I know God is in control and I know that I can trust Him, but how can I feel peace when the POTUS is going against what America stood for? 6) I get that America has a controversial past; who doesn’t? I can forgive and forget. Not every POTUS before him was perfect, but they tried. 7) At least if I disagreed before with a President, they explained their thought process towards why they made that decision... 8) ...I think I’m just disappointed that everything I was worried about with Trump has happened, and it’s only been 5 days. 9) I have never wanted to be proven wrong so badly in my life, and my worst fears became reality. I may sound bitter, but that’s because I am.”

Granted, I meant my worst fears of Trump being POTUS, but you get the gist of it. I want to be wrong about Trump. I want him to do a good job, and I want him to change his ways and do the best that he can. But actions speak louder than words. He has made it clear to me who he is looking out for, and I know it’s not me. It’s not Democrats. It’s not Republicans. He’s not looking out for anyone but Donald John Trump. Out of all of the hate that his family has received, he has only responded to those who oppose him. He has not stood up for his wife. He has not stood up for his son. He has only taken the hate thrown at him and delivered hate back. Donald Trump has fought fire with fire. He has no problem trying to defend himself and bring people down with him, but he has failed as a husband and a father. If I was married or had children and I saw someone talking shit about my family, you better believe they will hear back from me. I defend my loved ones. Honestly, I would be more likely to respond to hate towards my family rather than hate towards me. It’s not because I won’t defend myself; it’s because I don’t have time for comments about me from strangers that will not help me grow as a person. If Trump won’t defend his family, what makes anyone think he’ll defend us? If Trump won’t fight for his family, what makes anyone think he’ll fight for us? This is why I did not vote for him. It was not just because I disagreed with him, and it had nothing to do with his political party. It had everything to do with the fact that he has failed to show love and compassion to his family. I can’t expect someone to love and support my country and its people when they can’t even love and support their loved ones.

The parenting in my house was 50/50. My parents were, and still are, a team. They’re not perfect, but they always had my best interests at heart. My dad worked 7 PM-7AM for the first 14 years of my life, and he was still as involved in my life as he could be. He’d skip a nap to pick me up from school if I was sick. Whenever he got the chance, he would tuck me in at night, read me a story, goof off with me, and tell me to have sweet dreams before I fell asleep. If I had a nightmare, he would get up and check under my bed for monsters or stay in my room as my pretend bodyguard and protect me from any evils until I went back to sleep. My dad was busy and he did work a lot, but I could count on him. He worked hard to provide for me, but he also made me feel loved and protected. When was the last time Trump helped Barron with his homework? Did he ever take his kids to the park to play because he knew how much they loved it there? Did Trump ever spend time with his kids one-on-one? How many times did he attend a sports game, a dance recital, or anything that his kids were in to show how proud he was of them? These are legitimate, not rhetorical questions, and I don’t ask them to make him look like a non-existent father or to make him feel bad. I ask them because...I’m worried that he didn’t make an effort. If you can’t spend time with your kids, help with the kids, or even try to get to know your kids, that is lazy to me. I don’t remember my father ever saying he was too busy for me. I realize that I’m lucky to have two loving and supportive parents, and I get that my father was never as busy as Trump is/was, but I don’t understand how Trump doesn’t seem to think about his family for a second. How can I expect him to serve our country as President and make decisions for the benefit of our country if he doesn’t even think about what would benefit his loved ones? I hope that these observations are proven false and I really hope that I am wrong about Trump only caring about himself, but I’m not holding my breath. I stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago.

[bountyofbeads]

Trump Bet He Could Isolate Iran and Charm North Korea. It’s Not That Easy. https://nyti.ms/2sBJ7E4

I'll just say this from the outset, Trump is in WAY OVER HIS HEAD, this is not the New York real estate business deal(he was terrible at that as well). Level headedness, taking advice from the experts, understanding and reading history & foreign policy, as well as, thoughtfulness are required. And Trump is NEITHER patient, nor a deep thinker and he definitely doesn't study or read. He refuses to take advise from anyone and surrounds himself with sycophants.

Trump Bet He Could Isolate Iran and Charm North Korea. It’s Not That Easy.

The president assumed economic levers would guide the countries’ national interests. Now, he confronts twin challenges in an election year.

By David E. Sanger | Published Jan. 1, 2020 Updated 3:43 PM ET | New York Times | Posted January 1, 2020 |

President Trump entered the new year facing flare-ups of long-burning crises with two old adversaries — Iran and North Korea — which are directly challenging his claim to have reasserted American power around the world.

While the Iranian-backed attack on the United States Embassy in Baghdad  seemed to be under control, it played to Mr. Trump’s longtime worry that American diplomats and troops in the Middle East are easy targets and his longtime stance that the United States must pull back from the region.

In North Korea, Kim Jong-un’s declaration on Wednesday that the world would “witness a new strategic weapon” seemed to be the end of an 18-month experiment in which Mr. Trump believed his force of personality — and vague promises of economic development — would wipe away a problem that plagued the last 12 of his predecessors.

The timing of these new challenges is critical: Both the Iranians and the North Koreans seem to sense the vulnerability of a president under impeachment and facing re-election, even if they are often clumsy as they try to play those events to their advantage.

The protests in Iraq calmed on Wednesday, at least for now, and Mr. Kim has not yet lit off his latest “strategic weapon.” But the events of recent days have underscored how much bluster was behind Mr. Trump’s boast a year ago that Iran was “a very different nation” since he had broken its economy. They also belied his famous tweet: “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”

Today the most generous thing one could say about those statements is that they were wildly premature. Many foreign policy experts say he fundamentally misjudged the reactions of two major American adversaries. And neither seems to fear him, precisely the critique he leveled at Barack Obama back in the days when Mr. Trump declared America’s toughest national security challenges could be solved as soon as a president the world respected was in office.

The core problem may have been Mr. Trump’s conviction that economic incentives alone — choking off oil revenues in Tehran and the prospect of investment and glorious beach-front hotels in North Korea — would overcome all other national interests.

He dismissed the depth of Iran’s determination to re-establish itself as the most powerful force in the region, and Mr. Kim’s conviction that his nuclear arsenal is his only insurance policy to buoy one of the last family-controlled Stalinist regimes.

“After three years of no international crises,” Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on Tuesday, Mr. Trump is “facing one with Iran because he has rejected diplomacy and another with North Korea because he has asked too much of diplomacy.”

“In neither case has Trump embraced traditional diplomacy, putting forward a partial or interim pact in which a degree of restraint would be met with a degree of sanctions relief.”

Mr. Trump does not engage with such arguments. He simply repeats his mantra that Iran will never be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons and that North Korea — which already has fuel for upward of 40, much of it produced on Mr. Trump’s watch — has committed to full denuclearization, even though that overstates Mr. Kim’s position.

His top national security officials, starting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, offer a somewhat more nuanced view, saying that over time Iran will realize it has no choice but to change its ways and expressing optimism that “Chairman Kim will make the right decision and he’ll choose peace and prosperity over conflict and war.”

Increasingly, though, such lines sound like a hope, not a strategy. And that is Mr. Trump’s fundamental problem as he enters 2020: His diplomacy has not produced a comprehensive plan to gather the nation’s estranged allies into a concerted course of action.

The absence of a common approach is hurting the most in Iran. When Mr. Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal — declaring it a “terrible” piece of Obama-era diplomacy because it did not create permanent restraints on Iran’s ability to produce nuclear fuel — his aides sounded confident that Europe, China and Russia would follow suit. They did not.

Europe has flailed in its efforts to counteract American sanctions against Iran, but has insisted that the deal remains in place, even though both Washington and Tehran are violating key aspects of it.

Russia and China have taken the next step: Last week they opened joint naval exercises with Iran in the Gulf of Oman. The exercises were not militarily significant, and the three nations have plenty of differences. But to the Iranians, they symbolized having two nuclear-armed superpowers on their side.

Vice Admiral Gholamreza Tahani, a deputy commander for the Iranian Navy, was quoted in the Financial Times declaring that “the most important achievement of these drills” was the message “that the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot be isolated.”

It is possible that the Trump administration’s strategy will still bear fruit: Mr. Pompeo was doing everything he could in recent weeks to express support for Iranians who were mounting protests inside their own country. But the history of past protests — most notably in 2009 — offers little hope that they can threaten the government. Hundreds of protesters appear to have been killed by internal security forces this time.

Meanwhile, the Iranians have a fine sense that “maximum pressure” campaigns work in both directions. They are vulnerable to cutoffs in oil flows.

But the United States is vulnerable to highly public attacks on troops and tankers. And the attack on the outer walls of the American Embassy in Baghdad, even if short-lived, was clearly intended to send a shiver down the spine of Mr. Trump’s political aides, who remember well that a hostage crisis led to President Jimmy Carter’s re-election defeat 40 years ago.

Mounting a strike and pulling back is a familiar technique from Iran in recent months, including its attacks on oil tankers, an American drone and Saudi oil facilities.

The Iranians have made clear what Mr. Trump needs to do to reopen negotiations: Essentially, return to the deal struck with Mr. Obama, largely by lifting sanctions Mr. Trump imposed starting in May 2018. There are signs Mr. Trump is eager to resume talks, including his effort to lure President Hassan Rouhani to the phone when the Iranian leader was in New York in September for United Nations meetings.

That diplomatic initiative will doubtless continue in secret. But the Iranians have found new leverage: the ability to turn anti-Iran protests in Iraq into protests against American troops there, complete with Iran’s signature “death to America” street chants.

Mr. Trump returned to a well-known stance on Tuesday, emphasizing that he did not want a war but also warning Iran that if it started one, any conflict “wouldn’t last very long.”

North Korea is a harder problem because there Mr. Trump had a diplomatic process underway, one that was both bold and imaginative. By breaking the mold and agreeing to meet the North Korean leader face to face, the first for an American president since the end of the Korean War, he had the makings of a breakthrough.

But he made key mistakes. He failed to get a nuclear freeze agreement from the North in return for the meeting, meaning that the country’s nuclear and missile production churned along while the two old adversaries returned to their old stances.

And Mr. Trump’s team, internally divided, could not back itself out of the corner the president initially put it in with his vow for no serious sanctions relief until the arsenal was disbanded. Mr. Trump did cancel joint military exercises with South Korea — over Pentagon objections — but that was not enough for Mr. Kim.

But perhaps Mr. Trump’s biggest miscalculation was over-relying on the personal rapport he built with Mr. Kim, and overinterpreting the commitments he received from the young, wily North Korean leader.

That continues. On his way to a New Year’s party at his Mar-a-Lago club on Tuesday night, the president focused on their relationship, as if Mr. Kim’s declaration that he was no longer bound by any commitment to cease missile and nuclear testing did not exist. “He likes me, I like him, we get along,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s representing his country, I’m representing my country. We have to do what we have to do.”

Then he misrepresented the agreement in Singapore, describing it as if it were a real estate deal. “But he did sign a contract,” Mr. Trump said of the vague declaration of principles reached in Singapore in June 2018.

In fact, it was not a contract, it had no binding force and it referred to the “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” That phrase means something very different in Pyongyang than it does in Washington: It means the North expects the United States to pull back its own nuclear-backed forces, including submarines and ships that can deliver such weapons to the peninsula.

So now Mr. Trump finds himself in roughly the same place his predecessors did: awaiting a new missile test.

It may be a solid-fuel, intercontinental missile, according to some experts like Vipin Narang of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to show that the North has finally mastered a weapon that can be rolled out and launched with little warning. And it may carry some kind of payload to demonstrate that the country now knows how to make a warhead that can withstand re-entry into the atmosphere, a difficult technology.

But buried in Mr. Kim’s New Year’s statement was a suggestion of what he really had in mind: talks with the United States about the “scope and depth” of the North’s nuclear force. That means he really is not interested in denuclearization at all. He is interested in arms-control talks, like the United States conducted for decades with the Soviet Union, and then Russia.

And arms control, of course, would achieve what Mr. Kim, his father and his grandfather all sought: that insurance policy for the family.

David E. Sanger is a national security correspondent. In a 36-year reporting career for The Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book is “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.”

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What Kim Jong-un’s Latest Threats Say About His Trump Strategy

With an election and impeachment trial pending in the United States, North Korea’s leader added elements of caution in his threat of “shocking” action.

By Choe Sang-Hun | Published Jan. 1, 2020 Updated 4:28 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted Jan. 1, 2020 |

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has long threatened to “find a new way” if the United States persists with sanctions. And when North Korea announced his “revolutionary” new way on Wednesday, the strategy revealed both a defiance and a deep caution in confronting President Trump.

Mr. Kim vowed, in a lengthy policy statement, to expand his country’s nuclear force, making vague threats to show off a “new strategic weapon” in the near future​ and “shift to a shocking actual action.” He warned that North Korea would not be bound by a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests.

But he also moderated those threats by leaving out the specifics. Mr. Kim did not explicitly say that he was formally lifting the test moratorium or that he was terminating diplomacy. Instead, he said his efforts to expand his nuclear weapons capabilities could be adjusted “depending on the U.S. future attitude.”

It’s a wait-and-see approach that leaves room for more negotiations.

Analysts say that Mr. Kim is making a calculation against the backdrop of the political uncertainty in the United States, where Mr. Trump faces both a Senate impeachment trial and an election. The North Korean leader, they said, doesn’t necessarily want to rush to strike a deal that could be overturned if Mr. Trump does not win a second term.

“Kim Jong-un continues to hedge his bets,” said Jean H. Lee, a North Korea expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. “I think we’ll see Kim continue to find ways to provoke Washington as a way to gain the upper hand in future nuclear negotiations without directly challenging President Trump.​”

As he waits, Mr. Kim can continue to play the role of tough guy, increasing the stakes in his nuclear brinkmanship. North Korea can expand its nuclear arsenal, produce more bomb fuel, build more nuclear warheads and improve its missile capabilities.

Less predictable is whether or when Mr. Kim might deliver an infuriating message to Mr. Trump by testing a nuclear weapon or intercontinental ballistic missile.

Such a test could precipitate another “fire and fury” response from Mr. Trump. When Mr. Kim last conducted such tests, in 2017, Mr. Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea,” inciting fears of possible war.

Tensions eased after North Korea declared a test moratorium in April 2018. And after Mr. Trump met with Mr. Kim in Singapore later that year, the president said the two “fell in love.”

That moratorium remains the best outcome Mr. Trump can cite from his on-and-off diplomacy with Mr. Kim — one that the North Korean leader may be wary of yanking away too soon.

By treading carefully, Pyongyang also avoids more economic pain. Launching a long-range missile would set off another round of United Nations sanctions, and such tests could also provoke China and Russia at a time when Mr. Kim strongly needs their help to blunt the pain of current international measures.

Those sanctions required China, Russia and other countries to send North Korean workers home by late last month, depriving Mr. Kim’s government of a key source of hard currency. North Korea also increasingly depends on Chinese tourists as an alternative source of income, and Mr. Kim has recently built a number of tourist zones to attract them.

In his policy report this week, Mr. Kim acknowledged that his country’s efforts at economic reform faced “grave problems” and were “not making visible progress,” according to the state news media. He also reported “evil practices and stagnation” in key industries and criticized his economic officials for “merely shouting the slogan of self-reliance” while lacking leadership and “responsibility” to revamp the economy.

(The North’s state-run news agency watered down Mr. Kim’s criticism in its English version of the report, indicating that it was mostly for domestic consumption.)

Mr. Kim also indicated that he was preparing for a “protracted” standoff with Washington, exhorting North Koreans to accept it as “a fait accompli that we have to live under the sanctions.” After 18 months of faltering diplomacy, he said he was convinced that his country should stick to “self-reliance” rather than embracing the “brilliant transformation” of its economy that Mr. Trump promised if Pyongyang abandoned its nuclear weapons.

Mr. Kim also called on his people “never to barter the security and dignity” that the North’s nuclear deterrent provided, “even though we tighten our belts.”

With that, he was essentially admitting that his previous approach with Washington has failed.

In 2012, in his first public speech as the country’s leader, Mr. Kim had promised that North Koreans would “never have to tighten their belts again.” When he convened the party’s Central Committee the following year, he declared the parallel pursuit of economic growth and a nuclear arsenal. And in an April 2018 committee meeting, Mr. Kim said that he had completed his nuclear force and could therefore now halt nuclear and ICBM tests and focus entirely on economic growth.

Mr. Kim met Mr. Trump in Singapore two months later. But talks between the two broke down last February in Vietnam, and the two leaders failed to reach a denuclearization deal. Mr. Kim returned home empty-handed, without the sanctions relief that his country badly needed to achieve economic growth.

That stasis led to the deadline set by Mr. Kim, who warned that the United States had until the end of 2019 to offer concessions. Pyongyang promised a “Christmas gift” if Washington didn’t make progress on lifting sanctions, making an implicit threat that North Korea might return to its old ways and end the self-imposed moratorium.

But the deadline also showed how desperately Mr. Kim wanted economic relief. By shifting to a harder line, Mr. Kim was juggling an increasingly tricky balancing act.

“​Kim’s long buildup to his New Year message has inadvertently made North Korea look constrained,” said Prof. Leif-Eric Easley at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “He tries to use China and Russia for financial benefit, but doesn’t want to appear dependent or beholden. He pushes his military engineers to develop more sophisticated weapons, but has to consider the risks of tests failing. He wants to increase diplomatic pressure on South Korea and the United States, but knows a major provocation is likely to bring more sanctions upon his regime.”

On New Year’s Day, Mr. Kim did not face his people with a nationally televised speech as he had done in previous years. Instead, the state news media carried his policy statement, which came after a four-day meeting of the Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, North Korea’s highest decision-making body.

Mr. Kim’s new guidelines meant that “North Korea will give up denuclearization talks with the United States, accept a prolonged standoff and sanctions as reality, and strengthen its self-empowerment, including its nuclear and missile capabilities,” said Cheong Seong-chang, a senior analyst at South Korea’s Sejong Institute.

And Mr. Kim does appear to be giving the hard-line military a more prominent role in his government, even if it is unclear when and whether he will test an ICBM.

North Korea’s state news media recently reported that he was expediting the development of new weapons technologies, such as solid-fuel missiles that are harder to intercept and a new submarine-launched ballistic missile.

“We should expect that elements of the regime favor tests of several new systems, which likely include new solid-fuel and intercontinental-range missiles, as well as new warhead designs,” said Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.

“As talks stalled,” Mr. Mount said, “these elements will have steadily gained in influence.”

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Pompeo Cancels Ukraine Trip Amid Protests at Embassy in Iraq

A meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine would have been the first for a top Trump official since the impeachment inquiry began.

By Edward Wong | Published Jan. 1, 2020, 6:10 PM ET | New York Times | Posted January 1, 2020 |

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday canceled a weeklong trip to Ukraine and four other nations to stay in Washington and monitor tensions in Iraq after protesters broke into the United States Embassy compound in Baghdad and wrecked parts of it, the State Department said.

The department’s spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus, said in a statement that Mr. Pompeo aimed to “ensure the safety and security of Americans in the Middle East” by staying in Washington and would travel in the “near future” to the countries he had been scheduled to visit.

The Iraqi protesters, who were mostly members of Iranian-backed militias, broke into the embassy compound on Tuesday and set some outbuildings on fire. The attackers trapped diplomats and other embassy employees inside larger buildings, but the ambassador, Matthew Tueller, was outside the country on leave. The protests on Wednesday were calmer, and no demonstrators breached the gates. Protesters dispersed in the afternoon, and there were no reports of injuries.

Former State Department officials and associates of Mr. Pompeo say he has been keen to ensure that American diplomats are not harmed under his watch, especially because as a congressman, he was among the most scathing critics of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s handling of a militant group’s attack on an American compound in Benghazi, Libya. The 2012 assault resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

In May, during a period of heightened tensions with Iran, Mr. Pompeo ordered a withdrawal of most employees at the Baghdad Embassy and the Erbil Consulate, and last September he ordered the closing of the Basra Consulate.

The assault Tuesday in Baghdad by protesters, some of whom chanted “Death to America,” evoked both Benghazi and a siege in 1979 of the American Embassy by student demonstrators in Tehran, Iran, where 52 diplomats and support personnel were held hostage for 444 days.

Some of the protesters in Baghdad were members of an Iranian-backed militia targeted by the American military with airstrikes after commanders determined the militia was responsible for a rocket attack that killed an American security contractor. At least two dozen people died in five strikes in Iraq and Syria. (The militia has denied responsibility for the rocket attack.)

Mr. Pompeo had planned to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Friday. That would have been the first meeting between a member of President Trump’s cabinet and Mr. Zelensky since the impeachment inquiry of Mr. Trump began in late September.

The Democratic-led House impeached Mr. Trump on Dec. 18 along a largely party-line vote, accusing him of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after hearings revealed how Mr. Trump withheld $391 million of military aid to Ukraine while pressuring Mr. Zelensky for political favors. A reconstructed transcript of a July 25 call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky was a key piece of evidence.

Mr. Pompeo’s planned trip had stirred speculation throughout Washington and Kyiv about what messages he would deliver to Mr. Zelensky on behalf of Mr. Trump. On several occasions since the Ukraine affair became public in September, Mr. Pompeo has emphasized Mr. Trump’s assertions that there should be investigations into unsubstantiated, conspiratorial claims of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election and actions on Ukraine policy by former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is now a leading Democratic presidential candidate.

The State Department on Monday announced Mr. Pompeo’s trip, which also had stops planned in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Cyprus. The department had said Mr. Pompeo intended to “reaffirm U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” on his trip, a reference to the yearslong war that Ukraine is fighting against a Russian-backed insurgency in the east.

The Ukraine trip this week had been scheduled after Mr. Pompeo canceled plans for a visit there in November. That journey, and a possible meeting with Mr. Zelensky, would have taken place in the middle of the impeachment testimony in the House.

The two cancellations could add to suspicions among Ukrainian officials that Mr. Trump has little regard for Ukraine while holding warm feelings for Russia and President Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Zelensky still wants a White House meeting, despite the furor over impeachment and Mr. Trump’s actions on Ukraine. And Ukrainian officials were frustrated by an Oval Office meeting on Dec. 10 between Mr. Trump and Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister.

Mr. Pompeo had made plans to avoid interacting this week with William B. Taylor Jr., the departing chief of mission in Kyiv. Mr. Taylor was a prominent witness in the House impeachment hearings. The ouster last spring of his predecessor, Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch, was a signal moment in a shadow American foreign policy in Ukraine run by Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Last April, Mr. Pompeo ordered the recall of Ms. Yovanovitch after speaking with Mr. Giuliani. Ms. Yovanovitch was a champion of anti-corruption efforts, and Mr. Giuliani and associates with ties to Ukrainian businessmen had pressed for her ouster.

Mr. Pompeo then chose Mr. Taylor, a veteran diplomat and ambassador to Ukraine under previous administrations, to run the mission in Kyiv. But Mr. Taylor argued strongly against the withholding of military aid, and his congressional testimony on Mr. Trump’s shadow policy — what Mr. Taylor called the “irregular channel” — led the president to denounce him on Twitter.

Mr. Taylor was scheduled to leave his post this month, but a close aide to Mr. Pompeo, T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, asked Mr. Taylor to turn over his duties to the deputy chief of mission on Wednesday, before Mr. Pompeo’s scheduled arrival, a person with knowledge of the discussion said. Mr. Pompeo could then avoid interacting with Mr. Taylor. After that conversation, Mr. Taylor decided to leave Ukraine on Thursday.

Mr. Trump has not nominated an ambassador for Ukraine since he and Mr. Pompeo forced Ms. Yovanovitch to leave. The president has left vacant many ambassador positions around the world, presumably as part of a wider goal of cutting the operations of the State Department. Critics say that has contributed to the rudderless, chaotic nature of foreign policy under Mr. Trump.

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Shock Waves From American Airstrikes in Iraq May Have Just Begun

Retaliation against an Iran-backed militia set off anti-American protests that could strengthen Iran’s hand.

By The Editorial Board | Published Jan. 1, 2020, 3:16 PM ET | New York Times | Posted Jan. 1, 2020 |

Iran-backed Shiite militias have been firing missiles at American troops and military contractors in Iraq for six months now, and last week they finally killed one of the Americans. On Sunday, the United States retaliated against the militia responsible with five airstrikes in Syria and Iraq that left 24 people dead and dozens wounded.

Militia commanders vowed vengeance, and thousands of protesters chanting “Death to America” marched through Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone on Tuesday and broke into the compound of the American Embassy. A new spiral of violence between the United States and Iran seemed in the making, although demonstrators ended their siege of the embassy on Wednesday.

This could hardly be what President Trump wants, if he has been sincere in saying he wishes to avoid wars in the Middle East. In June he aborted a retaliatory airstrike after Iran shot down an American drone. This time the administration decided to send a message that killing Americans serving or working in Iraq will not be tolerated.

Whether the airstrikes will serve as a deterrent, however, is doubtful, since it’s likely that the militias were trying to provoke just such a response.

Kataib Hezbollah, the militia targeted by American fighter bombers, is regarded as the most potent of the dozens of militias, mostly Shiite and backed by Iran, that were assembled into an umbrella organization, the Popular Mobilization Forces, to fight ISIS under the auspices of — and with salaries paid by — the Iraqi Army. But Kataib Hezbollah, whose commander once fought against American troops and now ranks among the most powerful men in Iraq, is also a sworn enemy of the United States, which has 5,000 or so troops and an unclear number of civilian contractors in Iraq to train security forces and prevent a jihadist resurgence. The militia would like to see the Americans driven out and Iran’s influence in Iraq unchallenged.

Another part of the equation is that Iraq has been weakened by months of violent demonstrations, which have forced the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, setting off a power struggle. One target of the demonstrations has been the power wielded by Iran-backed militias in Iraq, and Kataib Hezbollah may have correctly gambled that provoking the United States into airstrikes inside Iraq would divert popular passions toward anti-American actions.

Iraq, lacking a functioning government, now finds itself trapped in a fray over which it has little control, compelled by public indignation to denounce the American airstrikes on its territory but loath to lose the American counterbalance to Iran and its proxies. Iran, apart from its political calculations in Iraq, is also struggling under American economic sanctions and would no doubt like to make America’s hostility as costly as possible for the Trump administration.

After Mr. Trump loudly pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and imposed tough sanctions on Iran, it is hard to see what incentives he could dangle to prevent Iran and its proxies from further complicating the task of American forces in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East. The president could conceivably lessen tensions by opening some form of dialogue with Iran, whether about a possible renegotiation of the nuclear deal or resolving conflicts in Yemen or Syria.

But by withdrawing from the nuclear deal and painting Iran as the premier evildoer in the Middle East, Mr. Trump and his lieutenants have left little room for dialogue. Far more likely is another provocation by Iran and more intractable entanglement for the United States.

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[actutrends]

The left nukes Buttigieg over McKinsey work

” He’s not going to win Michigan,” stated Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Detroit-born member of Congress’ so-called “Team” who has backed Sanders.

To Buttigieg’s supporters, the assault is more than a stretch: They’ve argued that he was simply a junior staffer at the time and stopped seeking advice from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan in 2007, well before it cut jobs. Still, in a political climate where lawmakers and governmental prospects regularly conjure up health insurers as wicked vultures taking advantage of sick Americans, the left discovered its opening.

” These attacks are false and careless,” stated Sean Savett, quick action communications director for Buttigieg. “Pete’s work at Blue Cross Blue Guard included 3 months of examining overhead expenses– things like rent, utilities, and travel costs. His scope of work did not include policies, premiums, or benefits. This was his very first client research study, so it mostly involved on-the-job training to develop abilities using spreadsheets and discussion software.”

Buttigieg has actually long argued that Sanders and Warren’s eat-the-rich message is “not unifying” and raised issues about how policies such as complimentary college would play in a basic election. But by highlighting Buttigieg’s time advising the insurer to cast doubt on his capability to defeat Trump, progressives see an opportunity to take among the young prospect’s primary critiques of his left-wing competitors and train it back on him.

” If you assisted a health insurance company lay off individuals in Michigan, Donald Trump is going to have a field day.

The attacks– which tend to frame his work in disqualifying terms– signal the degree to which progressives view Buttigieg as a danger to the most enthusiastic parts of their policy agenda.

That grace period in the main is over: Buttigieg was forced to release his customer list and make his fundraisers public this week after Warren slammed him for not being transparent. In addition, Sanders ribbed him for recommending that the Vermont senator has actually “been too simple on upper-income individuals and the millionaires and billionaires” since Buttigieg has argued that the advantage should not be offered to children of the wealthy.

Quickly after Buttigieg revealed his client list on Tuesday, the progressive group New York Communities for Change organized a demonstration beyond one of his ritzy charity events in New york city City. One activist’s indication checked out “Wall Street Pete.” The group, part of a coalition that has endorsed Sanders, is planning a 2nd “emergency” demonstration at another Buttigieg fundraiser on Wednesday.

Murshed Zaheed, a former Harry Reid aide who is backing Warren, has required to calling him “Pete Romney”: “Pete sort of invokes those soulless, white-collar, elitist D.C. political leaders … They sort of paint themselves as whiz kids, but deep down they are essentially soulless, uncaring technocrats for corporations who are simply here to optimize profit.”

Staff on rival campaigns have also weighed in with clear attacks. “Some of the most popular people who have actually been openly assaulting Medicare for All frequently appear to have direct ties to the medical insurance industry that makes large profits off the current business system,” David Sirota, Sanders’ speechwriter, tweeted on Tuesday.

Like numerous Democratic 2020 hopefuls, Buttigieg had actually formerly made favorable remarks about Medicare for All before retreating from the strategy. Last year, he tweeted: “I, Pete Buttigieg, political leader, do henceforth and forthwith state, the majority of agreeably and indubitably, unto the ages, that I do favor Medicare for All.”

Earlier this year, nevertheless, he launched his own contending plan he branded “Medicare for All who want it”– an optional public insurance model that would continue to charge patients premiums and disappoint complete universal protection.

At the same time, Buttigieg has actually increase his attacks on the single-payer model Sanders and Warren supporter, saying it would be too expensive for taxpayers and strip Americans of their option of insurance. In September, he began to cut ads pursuing the strategy: “I rely on the American people to make their health care decisions for themselves,” one read.

Amid the reaction to the news of his work for Blue Cross Blue Guard prior to the company scaled down, Buttigieg attempted to move the spotlight to the jobs impact of Medicare for All– which would largely eliminate the private insurance coverage market and ripple throughout the healthcare world, eliminating the jobs of an approximated 1.8 million people. Warren and Sanders have proposed support to help those workers who are displaced by Medicare for All.

Asked if his work resulted in layoffs on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Tuesday night, he said, “I question it. I don’t understand what occurred in the time after I left– that remained in 2007– when they decided to shrink in 2009.”

Then he included: “What I do know is that there are some voices in the Democratic main today who are calling for a policy that would remove the job of each and every single American working at every insurance company in the nation.”

However Medicare for All fans who had ended up being progressively annoyed with Buttigieg’s rhetoric around single-payer say he should not be permitted to evade concerns about his past work for the medical insurance industry and how it might notify his current positions.

” It definitely explains a lot,” quipped Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the lead author of your home Medicare for All expense who has argued intensely versus public alternative proposals like the one pressed by Buttigieg.

” I believe he has a responsibility, if he wants to be a unifying Democratic governmental candidate, to really consider the criticism of his industry talking points versus a movement that has over three-quarters of the Democratic Celebration on board and also a considerable variety of Independents in swing states. For him to parrot these market talking points is a huge disservice and it’s not, I think, the mark of a unifying president.”

And, in action to the campaign’s argument that Buttigieg was a lowly number-cruncher for McKinsey rather than a mastermind, critics point out that he promoted the job as part of his political bio in the past, and argue the junior nature of the work is another reason he isn’t certified to inhabit the Oval Office.

” If that’s their argument– that 10 years ago he was a 25- year-old doing PowerPoints– then he has no organisation running for office,” said Zaheed.

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