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I'm sort of half-watching THE DEFENDERS while doing some design work.

The main problem: THE DEFENDERS is all about the machinations and grand plans of the Hand organization, and the creators clearly have no idea what this organization wants or why it does anything. It seems to me, just from an outside perspective: DAREDEVIL's Season 2 showrunners, Marco Ramirez and Doug Petrie, featured the Hand in their season and made them a mysterious and vague clan of evil ninjas with lots of ominous foreshadowing (references to the "Black Sky," a giant hole in Hell's Kitchen, disturbing resurrections) -- with the belief that someone else down the line would have to be the one to offer some explanations.

The imagery of ninjas and a vaguely Japanese aesthetic were viewed as sufficient definition, except the Hand even as originally created in the 1980s is based in exoticizing Japanese culture and history as ceremonially barbaric.

Then IRON FIST took hold of the Hand storyline, and didn't seem to know what to do with them either, at least not effectively. The Hand were presented as the enemy of Danny's people, of the mystical city of K'un Lun, except Danny seems as much an enemy to K'un Lun as the Hand in stealing the Iron Fist, and we can never see K'un Lun onscreen, so we have no idea why the Hand is opposed to them. The Hand is one mysterious organization defined by their opposition to another mysterious group, the city of K'un Lun. So again, due to the vagueness of K'un Lun, the Hand remained vague in Iron Fist. A distant ninja cult of different factions of unclear goals again.

Then the Hand returned to Ramirez and Petrie for their stewardship of THE DEFENDERS, and Ramirez and Petrie now had to come up with some answers for who the Hand were and what their goals were. Since IRON FIST's Harold Meachum had been ageless and immortal as the result of a deal with the Hand, they decided that the Hand's grand prize was immortality. And since IRON FIST had mentioned dragons a lot, they decided that the prize was acquired through a dragon corpse. They decided that the dragon corpse was holding up New York City and that the city would collapse if it were removed... but these 'answers' only created more issues.

The AVENGERS movie succeeded in convincing audiences that New York City was under threat from aliens thanks to New York City background plates and stock footage showing the metropolis under attack. But THE DEFENDERS never convinces us that Alexandra Weaver and Elektra and Madame Gao and others, wandering around corporate hallways and boardrooms, can actually destroy New York City. There is no visual connection between their conversations and digging and the idea that the NYC skyline will fall. There's no sense of urgency: it's never explained at what point in the ongoing extraction that the city will start sinking. THE DEFENDERS never makes it clear how close or far the city is from the end.

It also seems to me that extracting one dragon body is probably one of the smaller scale enterprises for a centuries old organization like the Hand where their immortal members have not been urgently waiting on fresh dragon corpses.

Looking at another shadowy organization of mysterious goals, the Syndicate on THE X-FILES: despite the common knowledge that its mythology was confused and improvised, I would say that it was coherent on a macro level even if, at the micro level, things got confused. The broad strokes: the aliens are the original inhabitants of Earth who left in the Ice Age, transformed into parasitical viruses that manifest as black oil, infected most sentient life in the universe, are planning to return to Earth to use humans as broodmares and (re)colonize the planet -- all that is pretty clear and an obvious criticism of Americans as colonists who destroyed Indigenous Peoples.

However, broadly, THE X-FILES knew what the Syndicate and the Colonists wanted and what the metaphors were (government corruption, Colonization, a select elite securing their own safety and security while the rest of humanity would be infected by Colonists who would rip apart each human host to birth their offspring). I do not feel Marco Ramirez and Doug Petrie even got the broad strokes worked out for the Hand.

The various rival factions of the Hand are confusing: it's never clear who's with whom. It's not clear why the Hand are so desperate for more immortality when they just spend their days having ponderous conversations. Is Madame Gao's ambition really to just limp around warehouses as hypnotized slaves package heroin? Alexandra's motive is because her immortality is failing, yet there is no panic or desperation in Sigourney Weaver's performance.

Yes, the Hand has no shortage of ninja henchmen and expensive real estate, but what are they doing with any of it? Ripping out dragon bones and incidentally destroying New York City seems like it's on the level of a working brunch for an organization of this scale, not the sum of their ambitions, except to see them onscreen, they seem to have very few ambitions.

What made Colonization on the X-Files compelling: it declared that Americans would soon be on the receiving end, from aliens, what European settlers had inflicted upon Indigenous peoples via the alien colonists.

What metaphor might there have been for the Hand?

To me, Daredevil's defining dialogue is when Fisk beats him into the ground, ranting, "This city doesn't deserve a better tomorrow! It deserves to drown in its own filth!"

Daredevil replies, "This is my city. My family."

So I think -- I would want the Hand to be the opposition of Daredevil's philosophy, where as far as they're concerned, New York City only exists for them as part of their machine. I guess, if we have to stick with the plot: all the industry and pollution (and nuclear waste?) of New York City has been deliberately guided by the Hand over the years to create chemical reactions to make the dragon body more volatile and powerful and, when extracted, it'll create an explosive chain reaction beneath the city.

The Hand leaders find merely walking on the streets of New York City to be intolerable and look forward to how after a few centuries, what was once the city will become a natural landscape. They both look down upon the common people while seeding their self-destruction. The Hand are hastening the reactions and sending their most expendable and devoted to create a pipeline that, upon extraction, will cause an underground collapse.

The Hand also offer the Defenders a deal to comply. Matt is offered the resurrection of his father. Luke is offered evacuation for his social circle in Harlem. Jessica is offered the chance to have her memories of Killgrave erased and to live without grief and pain. Danny is offered the chance to return to K'un Lun, resurrect everyone the Hand killed and rule it on their behalf.

I assume the they're all extremely tempted despite their consciences until Frank Castle shoots down every Hand representative, at which point Matt grudgingly thanks Castle.

MATT: "I was seriously about to cave, Frank."

FRANK: "I know you were, Red. You're only human. You going to have any issue with me taking out half the room?"

MATT: "This is some sort of death and resurrection cult, so... probably fine."

In Season 1 of THE PUNISHER, a traumatized soldier turned bomber publicly threatens Karen Page. Frank Castle goes ballistic. "This piece of shit's going after Karen. Nobody goes after her! Not on my watch! Karen!" He proceeds to intervene, exposing himself after having faked his death, getting shot, nearly getting blown up, also being severely beaten just to rescue Karen and contain the bomber in a walk-in freezer.

His absence in Season 3 of DAREDEVIL where Fisk was gunning for Karen and she was hunted by both assassins and the FBI is bizarre... unless you assume he was slightly off camera, killing ten assassins for each one Karen evaded on camera.

Spoilers

As far as I can tell, Mohan Kapoor was accused of sexual harassment by someone over Twitter. There have been no charges filed. No proof was posted, not even the supposed photos he sent. Anyone can pretend to be anyone on Twitter. Anyone can say anything on Twitter. Just because someone tweets it doesn't mean it's true or that they're who they claim to be. I'm not saying that the accusation is true or that it's false; I'm just saying that 'posted on Twitter' is not 'verified and credible' in itself.

As for Yusuf Khan showing up, I think it made sense! They had a bank robbery story, they needed a civilian ally, and this character was effective.

And from another thread:

I see where this is going. Please do not use AI video generation to create new episodes of SLIDERS.

*shudders*

Wouldn't stop you, begging you not to.

Thank you for sharing this, DarkTempTrez. I'm not on Twitter, but I wish everyone joy of it.

I should note: there's also some continuity confusion in the transition from Season 3 to BORN AGAIN: Fisk in Season 3 was totally defeated and jailed. In HAWKEYE, he's free and an active crime boss again. In ECHO, he's unsteady but still free. I delve more into the continuity here:

https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 094#p17094

So, the Punisher in DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN.

Frank's appearance is richly layered, laden with emotion and subtext, with Frank's worldview being an absurd belief in an eye for an eye while yet speaking fundamentally to Matt's grief and struggle to recapture who and what he used to be.

What's absurd: the Punisher's scene is a reshoot. Jon Bernthal was approached by the original producers of BORN AGAIN and he flat out refused. He only returned when the retooling with Dario Scardapane, a former PUNISHER producer, led to Bernthal being re-approached, this time with an offer of creative input as well as a PUNISHER Disney+ special that Bernthal will write.

https://ew.com/jon-bernthal-daredevil-r … e-11698647

Some will often brag about how pleased they are to see people rounded up and imprisoned as illegal immigrants. They don't seem to realize that mass incarceration isn't about safety or stopping criminals. It's about corporations that earn profit from each prisoner added to their headcount.
https://afsc.org/newsroom/ice-signs-mas … new-jersey

Compassion isn't just allowed, it's essential.

Thank you for sharing this.

I totally agree with everything you said. I can see why and how they ended up making the choices that they did, but it's created all the issues you describe. The decision to maintain the Netflix style of vague allusions to superheroes without naming them specifically has left DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN feel like a separate universe that's similar to the MCU but not actually the MCU, like SUPERMAN AND LOIS being adjacent to the Arrowverse.

My suspicion: cameos and such in the films may have been added in reshoots, given Kevin Feige's attitude of shaping film (and TV) narrative in post, with the process of commissioning scripts and teleplays, having production take over completely with no writer involvement, then having post-production and reshoots happen at which point Feige would become more involved.

However, for DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN, the post-production/reshoot resources were devoted to revising a lightweight legal drama to be closer to the grimdark Netflix series and to bring in Karen and Foggy while still having them absent for the bulk of the first run of episodes. This may have made it difficult to add more MCU connections... which is probably why it was foolish and absurd to have even attempted a Disnified-Daredevil in the first place given that they had to reshoot it and hammer it back into the Marvel Netflix mold.

I really agree that Anthony Mackie or someone should have been present in WANDAVISION, HAWKEYE, MOON KNIGHT, ECHO, MS. MARVEL, MOON KNIGHT, SECRET INVASION, AGATHA ALL ALONG, ANT-MAN III, THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER, SHANG-CHI, DR. STRANGE II, ECHO and AGATHA, and also present in DAREDEVIL. The shared universe feeling is severely lacking without that.

Speaking as an AGENTS OF SHIELD person, I wouldn't be upset or offended by Agent Phil Coulson showing up and claiming that Tony Stark revived him with the second Snap and making no mention of the LMD from the end of AGENTS OF SHIELD. AGENTS OF SHIELD has been off the air for nearly five years. It's safe to imagine that SHIELD has, in five years, changed from how we last saw it in the series finale.

If Coulson were resurrected with the LMD version not referred to despite AGENTS OF SHIELD, Coulson's return would only offer proof of my personal belief: that Phil Coulson is one of the greatest superheroes of the 21st century, a figure of action and calm who will always return in our darkest hour and he will save us all.

It would demonstrate that Coulson's cool under fire, his steadiness in the face of magic books and Ghost Riders and killer robots and exploding Earths and impending death are significant and essential. Agent Coulson showing up isn't upsetting, it's validating. And I'd find some way to make the continuity work.

In fact, I would have found it very amusing if Coulson showed in in WANDAVISION and explained that Stark resurrected him. Followed by Coulson getting slashed in the chest in HAWKEYE to discover that under his skin is robotic hardware for a Life Model Decoy.

Followed by Coulson determining in MS. MARVEL that he wasn't resurrected and his LMD memories were altered to make him think he was the real Coulson.

Followed by THE MARVELS where Nick Fury explains to Coulson that he was resurrected but the trauma put him in a coma and Fury brought in Dr. Strange to tether Coulson's consciousness to the LMD copy and merged their memories so that Coulson could eventually get his real body back.

Followed by AGATHA where Agatha tells Coulson that magic doesn't work that way and he's obviously a robot whom Nick Fury found more controllable if he thought himself a man. Followed by AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY where Nick Fury tells Coulson that Agatha was messing with him and Nick will never try to 'control' Coulson because Coulson is so self-controlling that it's unnecessary.

Followed by AVENGERS: SECRET WARS where the real Coulson and the LMD meet each other and it's explained that every previous explanation is partially true and Coulson's consciousness has been split and must be recombined.

Or you could just have the real Coulson back in WANDAVISION and a digital comic explaining that the Snap merged the LMD and biological Coulson into one being. That's fine too.

I think it would be fine if Coulson and SHIELD came back and they weren't the same Coulson and SHIELD from the TV show. It's the nature of spies to reinvent themselves for every era, and if some parts of their history aren't acknowledged -- well, throughout history, spies have been honoured and spies have been hanged, but for the most part, spies have been ignored.

DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN is good, but it's struggling with a lot of issues that are not the fault of showrunner Dario Scardapane, but issues nonetheless. Spoilers.

I've watched the first two episodes of DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN and what seems to have happened here: allegedly, the first six episodes were shot with Foggy killed offscreen in some explosion, Karen not mentioned at all, immediately dismissing the Netflix setup and switching to lightweight courtroom drama and goofy superhero comedy, while showing Fisk as Mayor of New York.

Why? What I've heard -- unsubstantiated -- is that Kevin Feige wanted a Charlie Cox series, but he wanted a lightweight and fun adventure, and wanted Daredevil without the angst of the Netflix show or the characters who added to the darkness. In addition, Henson and Woll would have, in returning to the show, been able to negotiate higher salaries that a newer cast couldn't demand.

It's been rumoured that Feige approved this version of the BORN AGAIN series from showrunners Matt Corman and Chris Ord, signed off on it, the first six episodes were filmed, Feige watched them and was horrified at how utterly unreleasable the series was. I'm not clear on what was wrong, but the rumours are that it started with Foggy dying off camera in an explosion and then shifted to non-traumatic courtroom antics.

Feige shuttered it when the writers' strike hit, planned to remount, and the BORN AGAIN series was now further mired in ridicule and mockery. It was already being criticized for not rehiring Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson, for dismissing the previous three seasons, and now it was being mocked for creating a fresh start only to produce something so bad that Feige didn't want to release it. It was a PR quagmire.

Feige hired former PUNISHER producer Dario Scardapane, who declared that Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson had to be rehired, full stop. Supposedly, Feige conceded that rehiring them would reverse the negative publicity surrounding the project and conceded it would have been cheaper to just hire them in the first place.

And in a more concrete area of fact: Feige and Scardapane both noted: due to the budget and production schedule, Marvel was in no position to simply throw out the six episodes filmed without the Karen and Foggy characters. Scenes could be reshot; sequences could be re-edited, but these six episodes with no Karen or Foggy had to be used.

Scardapane proceeded to rehire Deborah and Elden and shoot a new first episode where this time, Foggy dies onscreen instead of off-camera, and this time, Foggy dies in front of a terrified Karen at the hands of Bullseye whom Matt hunts down and beats into the ground and then throws off a four story building, executing him, only for Bullseye to... survive it.

(It is not explained how Bullseye survived being thrown off a four story building by Daredevil, but Season 3 of the Netflix show ended with him receiving a metal alloy being grafted to his skeleton that would make him superhumanly resilient.)

Scardapane then scripted the first episode to have Karen move to San Francisco in grief and frustration with how Matt went silent with her after Foggy's death and wasn't there for here, and when Matt regained his senses and finally reached out, Karen had decided to move, returning briefly only for two scenes to see Bullseye sentenced.

Scardapane's script then rebuilt a new version of the original plot with the Kingpin becoming Mayor of New York City (as opposed to already being mayor), and with the heavy context of (a) the history of the Netflix seasons now specific instead of vague and (b) Matt reeling from Foggy's death even as he's astonished by Fisk's return and rise to power.

This enabled Scardapane to (a) use the six filmed episodes, but reshot in parts and with new scenes added and all re-edited to be adopt a more serious tone and (b) account for how Foggy and Karen weren't in these six episodes, which were filmed without them, and which could not simply be discarded.

Karen will apparently be back once the six episodes are used up, and Foggy is apparently back in Season 2, despite his character being dead as of the Season 1 premiere. It is unclear if Foggy will be back as a regular or as a guest-star in flashbacks.

In the first episode, Karen feels like a token presence, appearing just to be thrown away. But the power of Deborah Ann Woll's performance is palpable. Elden Henson, one scene in a bar and one scene outside a bar, establishes himself as Matt Murdock's emotional tether to humanity and decency without which Matt risks becoming the self-destruction, suicidal force of rage and misanthropy he was in Season 3. The moment he takes a bullet in the chest and dies is the moment Matt Murdock starts to spiral.

When watched without the behind the scenes context, the way Karen and Foggy are dismissed seems tokenistic, having them appear just to get rid of them. When watched with the understanding of how much Dario Scardapane struggled just to get Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson in the show at all, and how he has to wrangle six episodes they're not in that he still has to use -- it's very clear how much Scardapane appreciates these characters.

There are some... continuity issues from poor Dario Scardapane inheriting a confusing setup. Originally, it wasn't really clear if the Netflix show was really in continuity with the MCU beyond rehiring Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio. Scardapane declared that the Netflix show was canon, period. That's splendid, but it creates some difficulties.

In Season 3 of the Netflix show, Fisk confessed to criminal conspiracy and was sent back to jail. He did so because Daredevil threatened to release evidence that Vanessa Fisk had ordered the death of Agent Ray Nadeem, which would send Vanessa to jail even if Fisk stayed free; Daredevil further threatened that should anything happen to Karen Page or Foggy Nelson, Matt would release the footage of Vanessa ordering Nadeem's murder.

In HAWKEYE, Fisk is walking free. It's unclear how he isn't in jail beyond a reference to the Thanos snap in INFINITY WAR. The audience is left to assume that key witnesses or investigators and evidence vanished during the Snap that eliminated 50 percent of all life in the universe, leading to Fisk's freedom, and he was able to ensure he remained that way even after the missing people were restored. It may be that Matt was one of the people erased, and the evidence was lost during his disappearance.

The uneasy truce is referred to in BORN AGAIN: Fisk tells Matt that he had nothing to do with Foggy's death, saying, "I kept my promise." And Fisk promised to stay in jail... unless the Snap led to circumstances where the authorities simply had to release him. Another very real possibility is that Captain America (or someone with his level of authority) freed Fisk because without someone in charge of organized crime, the body count would be higher without Fisk than with him.

I guess we can go with the idea of the Snap causing evidence and witnesses to be lost, but because the Netflix seasons are now definitively in continuity, it's very strange to go from Season 3 where Fisk is in jail to BORN AGAIN where Fisk is winning the New York City mayoral election in a landslide.

Given the lawless world we see, I see no plothole where the Fisk's criminal past is a liability in politics, but his freedom from jail is a peculiar continuity point that is never explained on camera.

BORN AGAIN is much closer in style to the Netflix show than HAWKEYE or SHE-HULK, but it creates another oddity: soon to be Mayor Fisk declares that he is a changed man and that he will not tolerate costumed vigilantes like Daredevil running around the city.

This is a bizarre comment in a world where Captain America, the Winter Soldier, the Hulk, She-Hulk, Hawkeye, Captain Marvel, Kamala Khan, Spider-Man and Thor are running around. Fisk, as mayor, has no jurisdiction over state and federally-backed superheroes, especially ones who work closely with the US Army and SWORD, even if SHIELD is currently a covert operation unknown to the public. Furthermore, any authority Fisk might have to curtail superheroes ceased when, following Endgame, the Sokovia Accords were repealed.

Fisk claiming he won't tolerate superheroes in his city might make sense in a world where Daredevil in Hell's Kitchen is one of the few superheroes around, but it makes little sense in the larger context of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One has to assume he's referring to street-level superheroes only, and obviously, Dario Scardapane is mimicking how the Netflix show treated New York City like a little sub-universe where the Avengers are never seen, but now that DAREDEVIL is in a Disney+ show, that disconnect seems... well, disconnected. There is no larger reference to other superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far.

Scardapane also makes an effort to do something unexpected in Matt and Fisk's first faceoff. Despite the massive enmity and hatred between them, Scardapane chooses to depict Matt and Fisk as frenemies rather than bitterly antagonistic. Fisk declares that he is genuinely changed by what happened in ECHO, that he is no longer the Kingpin, and truly seeking to serve his city.

Matt declares that he was raised to believe in redemption, but also in retribution should Fisk's change of heart prove false. This is a very interesting and not invalid turn from their previous savagery and loathing, and it's clear that after many years and Matt's breakdown over Foggy, Matt would welcome Fisk seeking redemption.

However, the seeming (but unsubstantiated) reason for the change: there were six episodes filmed with Fisk already Mayor of New York City with Matt having accepted it and not actively trying to bring Fisk down. When BORN AGAIN had a vague connection to the Netflix series, this might have been tolerable, but the presence of Karen and Foggy would make it bizarre that Matt wouldn't devote himself to destroying Fisk's mayoral term after their history of bloody opposition.

Note that in the Season 1 finale, Fisk savagely beat Matt while screaming, "I wanted to make this city something better than it is. Something beautiful. You took that away from me! You took everything! I'm going to kill you! This city doesn't deserve a better tomorrow. It deserves to drown in its filth! It deserves people like my father! People like you!"

Sardapane could revise and re-edit and shoot some new scenes, but he couldn't completely replace those six filmed episodes, so this enemies-to-frenemies adjustment was to justify why Matt won't kidnap and murder Fisk in a fit of rage during episodes 2 - 7, something Matt would have been angry enough to do in the Netflix show.

The situation is... difficult and Dario Scardapane is really struggling. It's astonishing that BORN AGAIN is tight, focused, emotional, or even coherent, given the circumstances.

In terms of President Lex Luthor: he was pretty effective as president, resolving near-wars and conflicts with diplomacy, cleverness, technology and relentless support for metahumans and the Justice League, with Luthor leading the war effort in OUR WORLDS AT WAR against Imperiex and saving the Earth. (There was some question as to whether or not Luthor had prior knowledge of the attack, and he was cleared by telepathic scan, but it may have been rigged.)

In the end, Lex was defeated not because of his presidential performance -- he was excellent -- but because he couldn't let go of his obsession with Superman, made false claims that Superman was drawing a Kryptonite asteroid to Earth, and then put on a crazy supersuit to attack Superman and a variety of heroes, leading to Superman punching Lex out of the suit and out of the White House with Lex buried in charges of illegal orders and falsifying evidence to declare Superman an enemy of state.

The overall sense was that if Lex had focused on his job instead of his weird hatred for Superman, he probably would have served two terms in adulation instead of not even finishing one and crawling out in infamy.

The world has gotten so crazy that Luthor and Wilson Fisk seem like sensible options as leaders: compared to Trump, they're actually competent. However, we have to consider that they may not actually be better; they may simply hide their sociopathy better.

Lex Luthor is an egotistical narcissist who needs to act out his petty vendettas against anyone whom he feels has ever slighted him whether it's someone at a Smallville bake sale who was a little brusque or Superman himself. Regardless of how long Lex held it together as President of the United States, he would have snapped sooner or later whether in his duties or in his obsession with Superman.

Wilson Fisk is a career criminal who used crime to bolster his sense of weakness and insecurity that came with poverty and being uncultured; he once murdered a man for interrupting a date and making him feel awkward and started a gang war over this slight; he ordered numerous murders when creating his empire including Karen Page; he ordered allies murdered to frame Daredevil; he killed Ben Urich for investigating him; he ensured Agent Ray Nadeem went into debt by eliminating his sister in law's insurance coverage in order to make Nadeem's credit score prevent him from being promoted above Fisk's control; he steered Benjamin Poindexter into sociopathy by getting him fired from the FBI and murdered Poindexter's friend Julie Barnes to keep Poindexter pliable and unstable; he ordered Agent Ray Nadeem's death; he engineered the death of Maya Lopez' father to control her and kidnapped Maya's grandmother.

That's just some of what we know. It's a safe bet he's done more.

Maya's powers clearly affected Fisk's mind in some way at the end of ECHO.

But whether or not Fisk is a changed man, whether or not he's pretending or whether or not he's fooled himself -- it's really irrelevant. We have to assume Fisk will, given enough time, turn on New York City and seek to destroy it, even if he convinces himself that he's serving it. And to prefer him over Trump is not really a moral judgement on anyone. They're both bad. But one is competent.

Episode 2: "Any Day Now"

The sliders arrive in a San Francisco dominated by the colossal, unfinished skeleton of a bridge stretching across the Pacific. This Trans-Pacific Unity Bridge is a 30 year project for a bridge to Asia. The Golden Gate Bridge is abandoned while this incomplete, decades-in-the-making bridge has consumed San Francisco's resources for a generation. Sections of the incomplete bridge keep detaching and collapsing. 

The prevailing cultural attitude is to be persistent and to shame anyone seen to abandon or give up on any pursuit or goal, which makes the sliders feel really weak, worthless and guilty about fleeing their homeworld.

Arturo, while leafing through a pamphlet about the bridge, determines that the bridge project is unworkable and always has been. His rant sees him reluctantly pulled into an anti-bridge fringe group seeking a spokesperson to argue that the bridge is a collective delusion and a waste of time and resources. Quinn, accompanying the Professor, determines the whole bridge project has been a scam since it started and finds the original lead engineer who knew the bridge was hopeless.

Meanwhile, Rembrandt and Wade, wandering the streets, spy a troupe of street singers whom Rembrandt eagerly joins. Rembrandt is engaged to perform at a celebration event for the start of the next construction wave for the bridge. Wade, accompanying Rembrandt through the pre-event setup, sees how people have devastated their livelihoods on business plans and investments in anticipation of the post-bridge economy, yet convince themselves that the completed bridge will cover all their losses.

At the concert, Rembrandt sings a song about lost dreams and moving on, and then the event organizers show a celebration video -- except Wade has replaced it with one provided by Quinn and Arturo where the original bridge engineer reveals that the bridge was never workable and is totally unachievable. The populace react with dismay and grief, and as the sliders leave the concert, they hear about a new project: an under-ocean tunnel from San Francisco to Asia, for which the city has great enthusiasm. The sliders groan and, exasperated, they slide out, having made their own peace with giving up and walking away.

I don't have time to write the full stories, but over time, I'm going to write short summaries for nine more episodes of a season of SLIDERS (2025) with a season finale.

I think, inevitably, the first season ends with the sliders going home to confront their problems, face their fears, address their issues, and they will live to regret it. (Haha!)

I think Episode 2 would probably need to start lightening the mood a little, and strike some balance between goofy comedy and misery-horror.

In both outlines for the 2019 pilot and the 2025 pilot, Quinn's mother passes away, but the context is very different.

In the 2019 outline, Wade and Arturo pass by Quinn's office at the accounting firm and neither are happy to see him.

This would lead to Quinn and Arturo and Wade cleaning out the old Mallory house after Quinn's mother has passed, and finding that the anti-gravity machine is a sliding machine.

But in the 2025 outline:

The plot has Quinn trying to recharge his mother's dialysis machine with a zero point battery that instead fries the San Francisco power grid, and rips a hole in reality. Quinn barely notices because his mother suddenly seizes and dies, just as Wade enters the basement of the foreclosed home where Quinn and his mother had been living with all the medical supplies Quinn stole to try to treat his mother while holding out for a transplant that never came. The rip in reality expands into a vortex, sucking in Quinn, Wade, and a passing car driven by Rembrandt (a rideshare driver) with Professor Arturo (Rembrandt's passenger).

On the next world, Quinn and Wade emerge from the vortex and then dodge Rembrandt's car as it flies out into a ditch. Quinn and Wade are relieved that Rembrandt and the Professor are okay as they extract them from the crashed car, the Professor is familiar with Quinn (a former student) and recognizes the vortex and Quinn is mute and in shock. Wade (a science student in this version) is explaining how Quinn's zero point battery opened what seems like an interdimensional gateway -- and then Rembrandt erupts in rage, yelling at Quinn for his carelessness, his recklessness.

... this is a nightmare. We went from PARKS AND RECREATION to TRUE DETECTIVE.

I blame Slider_Quinn21 for this. He told me "SLIDERS writes itself" and I can't seem to look away.

AGATHA ALL ALONG is such an impressive show that I find myself watching even the end titles and credits, which I normally skip. I am only on episode 7.

Trump wants to be President for Life.
https://newrepublic.com/article/191848/ … -preparing

I finished YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN. It is a solid, very enjoyable season of a new show, and it really works as the third season of WHAT IF as it actually offers an interesting WHAT IF concept: what if Peter's mentor was a corrupt industrialist like Norman Osborn instead of a morally shaky industrialist like Tony Stark? It tells stories that could not be told in the main MCU continuity and leverages every point of uniqueness and exclusivity in this specific version of Spider-Man. It's both a WHAT IF and a mainstream depiction of Spider-Man.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD was okay. If I'd seen it in summer 2024, I would have considered it okay. But in February 2025, it's simply inadequate. I posted why here.
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 058#p17058

That said, I've enjoyed most Marvel movies including the recent run, so one inadequate movie is not a big deal to me. It's probably a big deal to Kevin Feige, though, that the entire franchise seems to be spiraling from the lack of A-listers, the fallout of Jonathan Majors, the critical failure of SECRET INVASION, the box office failure of THE MARVELS and ETERNALS, etc.. And I liked THE MARVELS and ETERNALS a lot.

Of 35 Marvel movies, I think I have only disliked three -- IRON MAN II (meandering tedium setting up future movies), CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER (where it feels like Cap only spent a week fighting in WWII) and CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD (bland product that seems especially out of touch in 2025). Unlike a lot of people, I loved ANT MAN III, ETERNALS, THE MARVELS, THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER and my dislike for recent Marvel product has been the blandness of THE FALCON series, the pointlessness of SECRET INVASION and the tedium of ECHO. Creatively, I think the recent run of movies has been terrific...

And yet, I concede that there has been a lack of headliners. In the earlier phases, the films were clear: these movies are about Iron Man, Thor and Captain America. Ever since ENDGAME, it's been unclear who the A-list is: the last THOR film was likely the last for awhile; Tony Stark is dead; Steve Rogers is retired; Spider-Man is A-list in the real world but a minor hero in the actual Marvel Cinematic Universe. Shang Chi, Dr. Strange, Ant Man and the second Black Panther are all more peripheral characters than the main stars. It's no longer clear which characters are the leads, especially with Sam Wilson seeming more like a passenger than a protagonist in his own TV show and his movie.

Maybe the hope was to do a post-A-list run of films, but the Marvel franchise, despite my fondness for almost all of it recently and historically, does seem to be in decline.

**

I just realized I forgot to watch WEREWOLF BY NIGHT and AGATHA ALL ALONG which I will address post-haste.

Sorry to hear about the spoilers. While I personally don't care about spoilers, a lot of people do and more importantly, Marvel has portrayed themselves as very concerned with spoilers: fake trailer shots, special effects as decoys, threatening Tom Holland... which makes their indifference for THUNDERBOLTS alarming. THUNDERBOLTS may be a lower budgeted project that doesn't have the money to do all the spoiler camouflaging, however, which may be why you're seeing things get spoiled that more expensive Marvel films would obscure.

**

I finished ECHO. My God, that show was boring. Even at five episodes, Echo wanders around her hometown doing nothing much, and when the Kingpin appears, she reiterates that she is done with him... which she already conveyed exhaustively in HAWKEYE when she shot him in the face. What was the point of this show?

**

I finished WHAT IF and I honestly found Season 3 to be weak and boring. With the exception of the two part finale, none of the episodes seemed to present vital or meaningful stories, and so many of them like a Shang Chi/Kate Bishop teamup or a Howard/Darcy relationship could have just been done in the main universe, despite some shifts in setting. I thought it was also very odd that Riri Williams, who only appeared in the BLACK PANTHER sequel, got a whole episode of focus; we barely know the prime Riri, so showing an alternate version isn't very meaningful.

I'm not sure what went wrong here, but I think it's best that the show take a break for now, even if it was good to see Peggy Carter back in action for two episodes.

**

I just got back from CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD... and there honestly isn't a lot that's new and very little that's brave. It's basically a higher budgeted episode of THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER and despite some flairs of excitement and some good jokes, it comes off as bland, empty product that, in its political leanings, is naively out of date and utterly out of touch.

Were Marvel movies always like this? Were they always nothing more than functional, passable spectacle if Robert Downey Jr. wasn't there to ad-lib? Were they always formulaic, vacant filler when fake feminist Joss Whedon wasn't there to punch up the scripts? It seems to me that Marvel movies are and always have been product, but sometimes, that product was elevated by vision, and when the director of a Marvel film is just executing the formula, it comes off as product.

I guess I have always thought of the Marvel movies as like instant ramen noodles. Instant ramen fine on its own, but instant ramen is vastly improved by visionaries adding in fresh vegetables, eggs, meat, and even possibly replacing the instant ramen itself with fresh noodles. Movies like the GUARDIANS trilogy, WINTER SOLDIER, RAGNAROK, ENDGAME and BLACK WIDOW replaced the ramen; movies like CIVIL WAR, CAPTAIN MARVEL, THE MARVELS, all the ANT MAN films added fresh ingredients. But CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD is just the ramen.

Also...

SPOILERS

I don't understand why they told this story of the Leader and Red Hulk and Thunderbolt Ross and Betty Ross in a CAPTAIN AMERICA film. These elements and this plot are all a Hulk story, except Mark Ruffalo doesn't appear in this film and Marvel doesn't have the distribution rights to do Hulk-titled films. What we have here is a Hulk storyline that for some reason features Sam Wilson instead of Bruce Banner at the center of it. It's very much a square peg in a round hole, much like TITANS trying to do an adaptation of UNDER THE RED HOOD but removing Bruce Wayne and using Dick Grayson because the rights for Dick were easier to acquire.

What is the point of making a Hulk storyline the center of a Captain America film? Captain America fans will be disappointed at not receiving a Cap story; Hulk fans will be disappointed that the Hulk isn't even in this film.

One would have hoped that Sam Wilson's feature film as Captain America would feature a story written for Sam instead of one that seems written for Bruce Banner but with Bruce removed and replaced with Sam for rights and legal reasons.

A constant claim by Biden supporters, including Simon Rosenberg and others: the economy under Biden was great, and voters were mistaken to think that it was not.

However, this Politico article notes: unemployment rates discounted people who were underemployed. Median wage statistics tracked full time wages, not wages from underemployed, part-time workers. As a result, this created flattering numbers for the economy that did not reflect reality.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ … y-00203464

This seems like the sort of mistake an Uber executive running Democrat strategy would make.

I find this lines up with Bernie Sanders' view that Democrats, despite tax credits and supports for the middle class, had effectively abandoned the working class. They couldn't even see the working class or conflated them with the middle class.

ME: "As a fanfic author, I'd like to bring something to your attention."

EMMA: "Oh God."

ME: "What was the last thing you ate before you engaged in your current quest to take down a serial killer once and for all?"

EMMA: "Toast."

ME: "What was the last thing you drank?"

EMMA: "Coffee. One cup."

ME: "Are you aware that this one slice of toast and this one cup of coffee was 60 hours ago? And that you haven't eaten since then and you haven't had so much as a glass of water as you've run around Pennsylvania and Louisiana hunting the Lakewood Slasher?"

EMMA: "Wait, what?"

ME: "Also -- the last time you performed your ablutions, how long did you spend brushing your hair and applying makeup?"

EMMA: "Like ten minutes. Hey, what do you mean -- "

ME: "So: 60 hours ago, you combed your hair and applied makeup and you had one peace of toast and one cup of coffee; you then began searching for the Lakewood Slasher and dodged several attacks and fought him twice and during all this time, your 10 minutes of hair and skin care remains completely intact without a single touchup. You haven't eaten a single meal or drank any fluids in two and a half days, and yet, you haven't collapsed from hunger or dehydration. You haven not slept for 60 hours; you're as energetic as though you just woke up. You were in a car crash at the 45 hour mark and emerged with the full agility of an Olympic athlete and your hair and makeup have not changed. Have you even needed to go to the washroom since breakfast?"

EMMA: "No!"

ME: "And you're aware; you look like Willa Fitzgerald. You have almost no body fat to draw on for reserves, so the fact that you're in perfect fighting trim on no food or water or sleep and don't have a hair out of place -- well, it might suggest that your fanfic author is excusing you from certain human fragilities. And that your writer is more on your side than you think."

EMMA: "Okay, okay. But you realize: even if I never get tired, being awake for 60 hours of mayhem and violence has driven me pretty close to insane."

So, awhile ago, there was a 2015 TV show called SCREAM on MTV, about a slasher hunting high school students, and a complex mythology. Inspired by the feature films, the TV series was less a comedic, metatextual take on horror movies and instead explored the anxieties and trauma of school shootings through the analogous fiction of a slasher killing teenagers (played by early twentysomething actors).

Despite a massive launch, MTV's inability to market shows effectively and two short seasons (only 24 episodes in total) and about 300,000 viewers by Season 2 meant SCREAM never really had much of a chance. The show was beautifully shot and wonderfully performed especially with standouts Willa Fitzgerald, Bex Taylor-Klaus, John Karna and the brilliant voice actor Mike Vaughn as the Lakewood Slasher.

The show ended on a pleasant note but with a lot of loose ends. Inexplicably, MTV renewed the show for a third season, but then fired the entire cast and crew and started a new storyline with new characters that had no connection to the first two years, and then found themselves with a 'third' season that was unmarketable: if aired as a third season, the viewers would wonder if this new storyline would be abandoned like the oriignal and not bother. MTV ended up not even airing this third season, selling the six episodes to an affiliate two years later that burned it off over three nights. 

Awhile ago, a YouTube vlogger who makes SCREAM commentary videos (footage of the films and TV show, his voiceover) declared he was writing a novel to wrap up the MTV SCREAM series, to be released in monthly chapters over his Patreon. After he finished this book, LAKEWOOD: A SCREAM STORY, I subscribed for a month and downloaded the whole ebook and... it is awful. Tenses jump from past to present. Commas and periods are missing. Names are mis-spelled. Characters do nonsensical things like knock on the door of the home in which they live instead of using their keys. At one point, a woman in a burning car decides to make a phone call rather than try to open the door and get out of the car. A police officer asks what he should do if he finds out the location of an active serial killer.

Out of curiosity, I tried putting this barely-readable volume through Google Gemini Flash 2.0, half-chapter by half-chapter to see what AI could do. AI could fix the tenses and punctuation and get them consistent and also spell characters' names the same way throughout. AI could even identify incredibly obvious errors like a woman knocking on the door to her own house. However, when it came to more complex issues, AI could be very hit and miss.

One impressive achievement for AI: the original novel had a sequence where a police detective learns that the serial killer broke into the police station and marked an abandoned train station on a map with a knife. For some reason, our detective in charge sends two uniforms to poke around instead of having the entire train station cordoned, secured and examined by a forensics team. AI was able to create a new chapter and address this, passing all the uniformed cops' dialogue to the detective character, adding in a forensics team, and following proper police procedure.

However, for scenes that consisted of bland exposition, AI could only clean up the grammar; it couldn't infuse them with deeper meaning. When scenes and sequences lacked a thematic purpose or point and consisted of characters reiterating the plot, AI could only clarify and refine what was there. It couldn't come up with jokes or deeper meaning or any meaningful statement on anything.

AI could broaden the descriptions with sensory details, describing carpets and lights and skies and coffee cups in excessive detail. However, these excessive details were often reused in other scenes; there seemed to be a narrow algorithm that often generated the same flickering yellow lights and cracked concrete whether describing a bowling alley or a house or a hospital. And none of it was purposeful in creating a lighthearted or frightening tone; it was just verbiage.

Reused descriptions were also very common in very uniform patterns of describing speech and body language.

The AI consistently provided each verb for speech with an adjective and then a needless dependent clause, or repeatedly used the noun "movements" and then attached two adjectives. The AI consistently used phrases like "the air was thick with" various smells and "her furrowed brow", often multiple times in a paragraph.

However, I found it had its uses. There came a point when just touching up the original prose was no longer effective and it was necessary to write new scenes. But I didn't have time to do it, so I would write a bullet point list of events, actions and key dialogue, and AI would generate a prose version of my outline.

This prose would have all of the problems mentioned above,  and either underdescribe or overdescribe actions, sensory details, settings tones of voice. However, it was a lot easier and faster to rewrite and replace poor but present prose than to write it on a blank page. The AI would sometimes make very cursory nods to the specific themes I tried to indicate in my outlines, or miss them entirely, but it still provided a framework for me to add it in whether through replacing or altering the descriptions and dialogue. At times, AI would provide only a two sentence summary of what I'd imagined as a more complex exchange; I could ask it to expand, but even that expansion would be repetitive and uninsightful until I rewrote it.

AI could help me get through a lot of the problems that often made me feel blocked in writing. At one point, I needed to know what police procedure would be for specific evidence. The AI, while a clumsy wordsmith, could describe the appropriate procedure and even put it in some poorly worded paragraphs for me to revise into my own voice. In another scene, I needed information that a medical examiner could plausibly provide from examining a body. AI could generate the jargon, although I stripped it back to the bare minimum.

At another point, I was stuck on how the characters could, outside a building, quickly get to the roof without going in. AI suggested some options (HVAC maintenance, skylight access) and a process by which the characters could ascend. When the characters were caught in a deadly situation and I couldn't think of a way out, AI could offer some ideas. As a result, problems that would normally stop me for days or weeks became something I could work through in an hour. Rewriting this person's fanfic would have taken a year and it wasn't worth that kind of time; AI allowed me to do it over the course of two weeks.

Slider_Quinn21 has talked about struggling with writing and I wonder if he might try AI. Not in these sense of generating a novel. But in terms of writing a bullet point outline for each scene, having AI generate a very poor but present version of the prose that he could then use as a raw draft to rewrite into a first draft.

Of course, there is quite a bit of find and replace needed as I went to work stripping out 172 variations on, "she stepped out of the car, her movements taut and tense" or "her voice troubled" or "the air was thick" or "the smell of stale beer" or "her face etched with worry" and all the highly repetitive writing tics.

I am not sure AI will get 'better'. These repetitive flaws might be amended, but it can't seem to address theme, meaning, insight or purpose unless a human provides those things first. Upon assembling the makeshift novel after a week, I determined that this SCREAM story was effectively a story about ableism and how society often stigmatizes people with disabilities. The AI could not see that, could not refine it, could not hone in on it independently.

When I pointed it out, AI could offer research and statistic and analysis and even refer to the theme in new content, but it couldn't create drama to explore and present it without me first providing an outline and key points for dialogue, and even when it produced those scenes, it was in repetitive prose that lacked intent and purpose and deliberate decision. It would emphasize scenic details that weren't relevant to the theme of stigmatization; it would focus on body language that was irrelevant to the scene being about societal disdain for disabilities.

I doubt AI writing will ever be good. It might have fewer repetitions, it might generate more verbiage pertaining to theme, but I suspect it will always lack artistic intent on its own. It doesn't create art. It generates words and presents data. I think more advanced language generation will be like modern CGI in movies: CGI has become more elaborate and more complex -- but it still looks like an advanced cartoon, you can always tell it's computer generated, and it never looks that real.

The best way to see AI writing might be the way CG can produce animatics. The AI writing is not a final product, but rather reference material to help a human write the actual story, just as Blumhouse will often use CG to produce a cheap animated version of a movie before deciding whether or not to spend the money on filming it with real actors and sets and locations.

AI will not make a bad writer a good one, but it can fix grammar and spelling and provide a subpar working draft, effectively a very rough and artless version of what a writer might imagine, and spare them the trouble of getting those first words down on the blank page.

Simon Rosenberg who turned out to be pretty wrong in predicting a Kamala win for the 2024 election, suggests a new strategy for fighting the Trump and Musk robbery of the US Treasury: criminal referrals.
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/time … s-for-elon

I don't think I would trust any more of Rosenberg's polling analysis in the future, but in terms of strategy, he could be onto something.

The Jacobin had an interesting article pointing out: Obama and Biden weren't any different from Trump in deporting migrants. Obama and Biden were just a bit better than the rest at drawing media attention elsewhere:
https://jacobin.com/2025/02/democrats-t … guantanamo

However, Trump has thrown government and the entire globe into chaos whereas Obama and Biden were more stable and workable and weren't attacking Canadians via tariffs.

Good to know. And as I am empowered by my Tim Hortons discount card to speak for all Canadians:

We as Canadians collectively pledge to be tireless in defending our economy, sovereignty, natural resources and pilight's inalienable right to give his opinion of Kamala Harris as a weak and ill-prepared nominee who was selected and not elected, for pilight to give any personal opinion regarding any known matter of public record, and for pilight to do so without being accused of dumb and random crap that he never actually said.

**

Just now, at the clinic, I asked the nurse if she could take a second pint out of me. She said she could not, that I'd donated enough blood, and she asked what the problem was. I told her: I was afraid to go home and read Sliders.tv and whatever godawful thing a certain someone might have posted while I was out. She said she didn't know what that was and gave me another juice box.

You may wonder why I'm so torqued. Why pilight being insulted and harassed is infuriating. The answer is: I don't appreciate being taken advantage of.

I just reloaded my Tim Horton's prepaid card; I have the floor and speak for all Canadians for another half-hour. So, as I've established, we Canadians are a bitter and grudge-bearing lot.

We are still pissy over the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the unfair split of the Oregon Treaty of 1846, the USS Nashville sailing into the Great Lakes in 1907, the States trying to integrate British Columbia into a West Coast military command point in 1934. And I guess there was that time in 2012 when Slider_Quinn21 offered to help me write a SLIDERS story and didn't come through. These have all irked us nationally as Canadians, but the thing that really burns our collective Oka cheese: when someone breaks a deal again and again.

When someone makes a deal and they burn us once, we as Canadians are acrimonious. When you burn us multiple times, we become downright vengeful. Of course, we have to note that Slider_Quinn21 came back to help us with the SLIDERS REBORN fanfic in 2016, so we marked that situation as a promise kept.

But when Canadians make deals, we expect you to live up to them. And a certain poster here -- let's call him 'Bryan' -- has broken our deal. Repeatedly.

Bryan was told that it was not appropriate to arbitrarily accuse people of being Trump supporters every time he didn't like their less-than-uniform support of Democrats. Bryan was told that it was not acceptable to hijack conversations with unproven claims of voter fraud in 2024. Bryan was told it was not acceptable to hijack conversations with arbitrary accusations of Trumpism.

He was warned to stop, by my count, eight times. He kept doing it. He was warned that he would be banned if he kept doing this on two separate occasions, by my count. After the tenth instance (by my count), he was banned and it should have been over. It should have been finished. It should have been done.

But then God spared Bryan. Or rather: Slider_Quinn21, who is unto a god, gave Bryan a second chance. Slider_Quinn21 was the first person Bryan had ever attacked on Sliders.tv with accusations of Trumpism for Slider_Quinn21 worrying that Biden would lose in 2024. Slider_Quinn21 was the first target of Bryan's abusive and harassing tendencies... and Slider_Quinn21 forgave him and asked for Bryan to be pardoned and reinstated. I saw Slider_Quinn21's mercy and grace and I was moved and humbled by it.

I bowed to what God and Slider_Quinn21 asked of me and Canada. The deal was struck: Bryan could return so long as there was no further hijacking, unfounded accusations and unproven claims of 2024 electoral fraud.

Bryan has broken every term of our agreement, much in the same way Donald Trump has broken every agreement he's ever made. Every single one. Bryan has trespassed and stepped over every single boundary, just as Donald Trump has done the same in his life.

Bryan has proven duplicitous, dishonest, dishonourable and utterly untrustworthy. He agreed not to make false accusations. He agreed not to post his conspiracy theories. His last several posts have contained all of the supposedly curtailed behaviours with a declaration that he should never have ceased in the first place. Like Donald Trump, Bryan's word has no bearing on his conduct.

Bryan has no respect for boundaries. When told that to stop posting unproven claims of 2024 voter fraud and false accusations of Trumpism, Bryan's approach was to claim any news article that reported the 2024 Democrat loss was from a fraudulent and untrustworthy news outlet or to make the same accusations but claim they were corrections, and then simply posted more unproven claims and made the false accusations outright.

When Bryan is given a boundary, he treads on the boundary lightly and gradually and then steps over it entirely. Like Donald Trump, he is incrementally disrespectful of boundaries, creeping and encroaching; he denies he is preparing to break the boundaries when this is spotted; he then breaks the boundaries and claims he wasn't previously curtailed from doing so and that the boundaries either didn't exist or weren't ones he should have to follow.

Bryan is manipulative and controlling. He constantly claims that he is leaving Sliders.tv, bids farewell to 'everyone' (even though he's accused us all of fascism for not being sufficiently groveling to his political party of choice), attempting to trigger guilt and regret and make certain people feel a sense of loss -- and then he comes back, tactically seeking to capitalize on the hope for reconciliation and a second chance in order to continue trespassing on boundaries and ignoring all agreements.

This is precisely how he took advantage of Slider_Quinn21's goodwill and patience and forgiveness, and now Bryan flaunts that abuse of Slider_Quinn21's kind nature as Bryan declares he should never have ceased the behaviours he barely ever stopped to begin with, and then he complains that he isn't liked for "some reason" as opposed to the mountain of reasons accumulated over every broken promise and trespassed boundary and the chances upon chances that he's abused.

As Canadians, when we see you take advantage of our kind-hearted friends, we will detest you on a deeply personal level that makes it difficult to breathe.

We Canadians can spot an abusive, harassing manipulator like this from a one kilometer distance. We Canadians can tell that the only real difference between Donald John Trump and Bryan here is that Bryan claims to vote Democrat and is probably less in debt.

Canadians loathe people who have consistently proven that their word is worthless.

And let's be clear: Slider_Quinn21, like any friend, is only human too. But here's the thing: we Canadians know that when Slider_Quinn21 doesn't come through, it's because he had a screenwriting obligation or because he was tired, we forgive it, we consider asking less of him, and we save our national rage for someone who's actually out to screw us over time and time again.

We know that when Bryan turns on us and breaks our deal, it isn't because he's tired or disoriented or busy. It's because he's malicious and deceitful and most importantly: he fundamentally doesn't respect us or you or me or anyone but himself.

As Canadians, we also have a particular contempt for people who give false apologies. Who apologize for their misdeeds, give assurances that they understand the strain and pain they have caused -- and then proceed to inflict more of the same in exactly the same way and prove that any apology past or present or future is as worthless as their word.

And as Canadians, when you break your word with us, we consider you an active hostile. When your apologies are proven meaningless because you repeat the same behaviour, we find you treacherous and duplicitous. When you gradually creep upon boundaries to break them, we find you incrementally insidious and manipulative.

We will consider you to have destroyed your lifetime allotment of any leniency or goodwill.

We will no longer trust you. We will monitor your actions. We will resent the exhaustion and drain of managing the situations you constantly create.

We have been hurt so consistently and repeatedly by you that we have gone from wounded to wrathful and now, we will document your behaviour and how you suckered us and launched unprovoked attacks on our friends time and time again and then we'll comb through every loophole and clause and then we're going to get back at you just as hard as you got us by striking at a precise moment in a specific way that will be small-scale and trivial and inconsequential and not in any way physically or financially or professionally harmful and yet incredibly annoying and aggravating and exasperating from now to eternity because we Canadians are petty, we are obsessive, and we despise people who exploit the goodwill and forgiveness of others, who take no accountability, have no integrity, and demonstrate total disregard for fair dealing.

Satire inspired by https://thebeaverton.com/2025/02/editor … dians-are/

Well, America isn't Americans. I doubt you or anyone you know, even the Canada hostile neighbours you may have, personally started a trade war. Even Republicans aren't keen on 25 percent tariffs, hence their pleading for the pause; it's going to massively increase costs for Americans. Even the threat of a trade war (paused for a month) has hurt Americans and Canadians alike, so the damage is on both sides due to one person's non-existent grasp of trade.

The trade war was paused. But that bell can't be unrung. As a Canadian, I am a bitter, angry, vengeful little creep and I will hold a grudge forever until I have seen it arrive at a satisfactory resolution, and I have an extremely peculiar standard for resolution that most human beings fail to meet.

I am someone who is offended by groveling apologies because I consider them insincere. Grizzlor is one of the few people whose responses I have ever accepted as 'apology' because Grizzlor's responses are distinctly unapologetic; they always convey that while he didn't mean to insult me personally, he's not changing his personal opinion. That was sincere and that I can respect.

And because I will hold American's decision to tariff Canada over America forever (or until my country gets a Grizzlor-esque response from American leadership), I will no longer trust American businesses. Pause or no pause, I can't count on being able to trade with them equitably. I can't count on being able to do business with Gillette or Neutrogena or Amazon or Netflix... so I will be looking at alternate arrangements to replace as much American commerce in my life with Canadian, Japanese and Korean commerce instead.

Anyway. Nothing for Slider_Quinn21 to apologize for on the trade war front.