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#elizabeth philpot
stonebutchooze · 2 years
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Ammonite is a film about U-Haul lesbians
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twh-news · 2 years
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Tom Hiddleston: Why we all need monsters and myths | BBC
Tom Hiddleston says it "felt very wild" playing the pastor of a village terrified by a mythical sea creature, in Apple TV's The Essex Serpent.
Set in Victorian coastal Essex and London, the series is based on Sarah Perry's award-winning book, and co-stars Homeland's Claire Danes.
Hiddleston's character, Will Ransome, tries to quell locals' fears, telling them the creature is "an invention, a symptom of the times we live in".
Danes plays London widow Cora Seabourne, who goes to the village to investigate reports of the serpent, after an earthquake dislodged fossils in the Essex landscape.
This causes the God-fearing locals to wonder else might have been awakened.
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Rumours of a malevolent sea monster escalate after a local girl goes missing and is presumed dead. Some villagers work themselves into a frenzy, saying she was "taken for her sins by the Blackwater beast".
Describing the scripts as "brilliant", Hiddleston tells the BBC: "They were about complex people at a complex time, with a conflict of ideas."
He said making the series "felt very wild, and mirrored the passions of the story we were telling. I was really excited to do it".
'We like to be humbled'
Hiddleston is of course no stranger to monsters, having been on the receiving end of "Hulk-smash", as Loki in the Marvel films.
He thinks a seemingly endless fascination with mythical creatures is part of our need to account for things we don't understand.
"Monsters are symbols of mystery... they reflect our need to find meaning in our lives," he muses.
"I think human beings need, or are drawn, to externalise mystery. We like to be humbled by forces in nature and in our world that seem to be unexplained."
Given it's "probable we know we don't know everything", he thinks "we still have so many questions".
"And sometimes those questions coalesce into the shape of monsters, benign and otherwise."
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His character Will's views are challenged by Cora, who he meets in the swirling coastal mists. Much of the plot centres around the tensions - both intellectual and sexual - between them.
The story's focus may be the serpent, but it pivots around Danes' charismatic Cora, going it alone with her young son after the death of her brutal husband.
But unlike many other period TV dramas, Cora is not looking for a new spouse.
"No. Oopsy daisy," laughs Danes, clearly delighted at her character's independence.
"Her intellectual pursuits are the driving force," she adds.
Cora shuns religion and is passionate about fossils. She is desperate to discover if the serpent is a dinosaur which escaped extinction.
"I think it's her eagerness to realise herself," she continues. "Her development had been quite arrested when she married this intensely controlling, abusive man.
"She's just so relieved to have a chance to breathe again."
'Mysterious past'
Prof Gowan Dawson, from University of Leicester's Victorian Studies Centre, told the BBC some of that era's most notable women "who collected and studied fossils did not marry, and devoted their lives to their palaeontological pursuits".
"This was the case with both Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot, who, despite their very different social backgrounds, worked together in Lyme Regis, and made some remarkable discoveries of fossilised sea creatures," he said.
"Fossils opened a window on a mysterious past populated by dragons and monsters, when Victorian Britain was otherwise focused on forging a new industrial future."
It has to be said that although the wild Essex seascape explored by Cora looks stunning, it also looks inescapably cold and damp.
Danes agrees.
"My long, high-tech underwear was heaven-sent - effective and very, very welcome," she says, grimacing slightly at the memory of being so chilly.
Clemence Poesy, who plays the pastor's wife Stella, adds she was saved by "some very elaborate, nude-coloured stuff, almost like wetsuits" under her dresses.
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Poesy, who also features in an episode of Amazon Prime's new comedy Ten Percent, says her character is "quietly extraordinary" and a much smaller presence than Cora.
The talk of monsters resonates with her too, not least because her five-and-a-half year-old is pretty obsessed with them.
"It is a thing isn't it?" she says with a laugh.
The actress also thinks the storyline about doubt, science and belief resonates with modern-day life, comparing it with some people denying the existence of Covid.
"It just felt like science about coronavirus was sometimes denied without any kind of evidence," she says.
"I think there's a space online that allows superstitions or myths or things to just kind of grow in a way that they probably didn't before. Because we were filming this in the middle of a pandemic, it felt quite accurate."
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The book and TV series are very much about a clash between science, religion and mythology. But Hiddleston's character thinks religion offers more peace of mind than science, and that without faith, people will invent evil creatures.
The scientific developments of the day are seen in London, featuring some undeniably gory medical scenes.
Fear the Walking Dead actor Frank Dillane plays Luke Garrett, a young doctor pushing boundaries by performing open heart surgery.
"I think the Victorians were incredibly forward-thinking - it was a time of massive advancements in science, architecture, philosophy and religion," he says.
"I think that we have this misconception of them being stuffy, but actually they weren't."
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He says it was "a lot of fun" researching his part, and he learned "Victorian hospitals were not the nicest places in the world, they were often called death houses".
"Often if you went in, you weren't coming out," he adds.
"Surgeons back then were often referred to as glorified butchers - there would be gangs roaming London, killing people and selling them on to surgeons, or digging up corpses to operate on."
He also discovered that "surgeons were basically people with knives, and 50 years prior to this, they would be butchers or hairdressers".
Describing the "red and blue swirling thing" outside a hairdresser or barber's shop, he says: "Well that was because back then, if hairdressers also did surgery, you would tie your bloody rags around the light outside, so people knew - they cut hair, but they'll also cut you up if you need it."
His surgical scenes were done with the help of an on-set surgeon, and Dillane adds: "There were prosthetic rubber bodies and people in the background squeezing hearts."
The driving force behind the series was director Clio Barnard, who has been nominated for Baftas for her films including 2013's The Selfish Giant and this year's Ali & Ava.
Hiddleston says he received the scripts "with a beautiful letter attached" from Barnard, who he had "admired for a long time".
Dillane adds: "Clio was a big draw for me. I thought it was a great opportunity to work with a brilliant director."
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Hiddleston adds that despite all the conflicts in the story, he found the connection between Will and Cora "very optimistic".
"One of my favourite scenes is a conversation that we have on a beach, when Cora says, 'science requires dreams just like your theology. You have to make a leap in the dark from ignorance to understanding'.
"And Will simply replies, 'faith'."
Hiddleston goes on: "The resonant thing for me I think is - maybe it's just getting older - how do we feel that our brief, brief time on this planet has meaning?
"And so the curiosity I am inspired by is to keep thinking, keep listening and stay open-minded. You never know where the inspiration is going to come from."
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gifshistorical · 3 years
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Just the salve. AMMONITE (2020)
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yosoyesmesnchz · 3 years
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Ammonite (2020) - Francis Lee
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hiddeninthescar · 3 years
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it seems your mrs murchison has been able to unlock something in you that i couldn't.
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neeleys · 3 years
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Fiona Shaw and Kate Winslet in Ammonite (2020)
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nellygwyn · 4 years
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John had a word with one of the attendants and discovered that the specimen had been on display since the previous autumn, meaning Lord Henley had only owned it for a few months before selling it on. I was so angry that I could not enjoy the rest of the museum. Johnny grew bored with my mood, as indeed did everyone but Louise, who took me off to Fortnum's for a cup of tea so that I could rant without disturbing the rest of the family.
'How could he sell it?' I repeated, stirring my tea violently with a tiny spoon, 'how could he take something so unusual, so remarkable, so linked to Lyme and to Mary Anning, and sell it to a man who dresses it up like a doll and shows it off as if it is something to be laughed at? How dare he?!'
Louise laid her hand over mine to stop me doing damage to one of Fortnum's cups. I dropped the spoon and leaned forward.
'Do you know, Louise," I began "I think....I think it is not a crocodile at all. It doesn't have the anatomy of any crocodile but no one wants to say so publicly'
Louise's grey eyes remained clear and steady.
'What is it, if not a crocodile?'
'A creature that no longer exists.'
I waited for a moment to see if God would bring the ceiling crashing down on me. Nothing happened however, except for the waiter arriving to refill our cups.
'How can that be?'
'Do you know of the concept of extinction?'
'You mentioned it when you were reading Cuvier, but Margaret made you stop for it upset her.'
I nodded.
'Cuvier has suggested that animals species sometimes die out when they are no longer suited to survive in the world. The idea is troubling to people because it suggests that God does not have a hand in it, that he created animals and then sat back and let them die. Then there are people like Lord Henley that say the creature is an early model for a crocodile, that God made it and rejected it. Some people think God used the Flood to rid the world of animals he didn't want. But these theories imply God could make mistakes and needed to correct himself, do you see? All of these ideas upset someone. Many people, like our Reverend Jones at St. Michael's find it easier to accept the Bible literally and say God created the world and all its creatures in 6 days, and it is still exactly as it was then, with all of the animals still existing somewhere. And they find Bishop Usher's calculation of the world's age of 6000 years comforting, rather than limiting and a little absurd.'
I picked up a langues de chat from the plate of biscuits between us and snapped it in two, thinking of my conversation with Reverend Jones.
'How does Reverend Jones explain Mary's creature then?'
'He thinks they are swimming about off the coast of South America, and we haven't yet discovered them.'
'Could that be true?'
I shook my head.
'Sailors would have seen them. We have been sailing around the world for hundreds of years and never had a sighting of such a creature.'
'And so, you believe that what we were looking at in Bullock's museum is a fossilised body of an animal that no longer exists. It died out for reasons that may or may not be God's intentions.'
Louise said this carefully, as if to make it crystal clear to herself and to me.
'Yes'
~ Remarkable Creatures // Tracy Chevalier
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deinonykisses · 3 years
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listening to the little women score and remembering desplat did the score for the girl with the pearl earring, and then remembering that i was obsessed with tracy chevalier’s novels all through middle and high school and got progressively more upset that each one was strikingly heterosexual
like mary anning and elizabeth philpot never married, the romantic subplot of remarkable creatures was SO unnecessary and imposed this weird 20th century view on two women whose legacy was a massive impact on the scientific community
but yeah, no, sure, they both fell in love with the same older man and mary anning inexplicably decided to sleep with him.
@ tracy chevalier meet me in the denny’s parking lot you coward
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the-breath-in-air · 3 years
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The normalization of age gaps in romantic relationships is really interesting in Ammonite. 
There’s Mary Anning (Kate Winslet, 45) and Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan, 26), of course. 
But there’s also Mary Anning (Kate Winslet, 45) and Elizabeth Philpot (Fiona Shaw, 62). 
And Mary Anning (Kate Winslet, 45) and Dr. Lieberson (Alec Sacareanu, 36). (sort of).
And Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan, 26) and Elizabeth Philpot (Fiona Shaw, 62). (sort of).
Class is a great divider in Ammonite - but age, not so much. And it makes sense. For one thing, age gaps among adults aren’t inherently a problem. But more importantly, these characters either exist entirely on the margins - or cross in and out of the margins - of this tiny little town, and so it makes sense that their romantic relationships would cross people of different ages.
Like, they’re all quite isolated without each other.
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arsenicum-vulpes · 3 years
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Elizabeth Philpot’s lovely garden in Ammonite (2020)
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danisnotmyname · 3 years
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Post-movie.
Charlotte visits Mary after London.
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brookesaunders18 · 4 years
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sciencespies · 4 years
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'Ammonite' Is Historical Fanfiction About the World's First Great Fossil Hunter
https://sciencespies.com/nature/ammonite-is-historical-fanfiction-about-the-worlds-first-great-fossil-hunter/
'Ammonite' Is Historical Fanfiction About the World's First Great Fossil Hunter
Paleontology wouldn’t be the same without Mary Anning. She scoured the dreary coast of southern England for secrets not seen since the Jurassic, fueling the nascent 19th-century field of fossil studies with evidence of strange sea dragons, flying reptiles and other fascinating fragments of life long past. And now, over 170 years after her death, she’s got her own movie.
Ammonite will open at the Toronto Film Festival but isn’t set to premiere in theaters or in homes until later this year, but the historical drama is already stirring the waters like an excitable Plesiosaurus. The first trailer for the film hit the web yesterday. The tale, directed by British filmmaker Francis Lee, follows Anning (Kate Winslet) as she reluctantly brings a young woman named Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan) along on some fossil-hunting trips in the hope that the vigorous activity will help her new apprentice’s illness. But the two find more than fossils. In Lee’s telling, Anning and Murchison begin an intense affair that seems to have no room to breathe under the cultural strictures of Victorian England.
In other words, this is paleo fanfic.
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The real Anning was an expert fossil collector and paleontologist who combed the beaches of Lyme Regis and the surrounding area for fossils that eroded from the Jurassic rock. You can retrace her steps on the same beaches, as I did during my own visit to England a few years ago, and maybe even find a little golden spiral along the tideline—ancient, shelled relatives of squid called ammonites.
Anning wasn’t alone in her exploits. Fossil hunting was a family business, and Anning’s father, Richard, took Mary and her brother Joseph on excursions to collect ammonites and other pieces they then sold as tourist curios. When Richard died, the rest of the family took over the business. And they were good at it. In 1811, Joseph found the gorgeous skull of an Ichthyosaurus; Mary later collected more bones from the same animal. Of course, that’s to say nothing of the Philpot sisters. Elizabeth, Louise and Margaret Philpot collected fossils in the Lyme Regis area when Anning was still a child, and Elizabeth became a mentor who encouraged her student to understand both the science and the market value of what she found. Even Anning’s dog Tray, a black and white terrier, went along on fossil trips and would stay at specific spots to mark a fossil’s location while the pooch waited for Mary’s return.
Thanks to her discoveries, sketches and notes, Anning eventually became a rock star in her own right. It’s at this point, when she had established her own fossil shop, that Ammonite finds Anning. But while Murchison really was one of Anning’s friends, no evidence suggests that the two had any kind of romantic ties. In fact, no evidence of the paleontologist’s love life—beyond her drive to keep digging into the Blue Lias strata that produced so many bones—exists at all.
Turning Anning’s remarkable story into a torrid romance has already incensed some would-be viewers. Reactions have run the gamut from objections to historical inaccuracy and homophobia, with little resolution given that we’re far too late to ask Anning herself.
In defending his choice, Lee snapped back against the anti-queer underpinnings of the outrage and said he sees Ammonite as another part of his efforts to “continually explore the themes of class, gender, sexuality within my work, treating my truthful characters with utter respect.” Focusing on Anning’s romantic life, even if entirely invented, is a way to see her as a whole person, not just the woman who sells seashells down by the seashore.
I have to wonder what Anning would say to this. As she wrote in a letter, “The world has used me so unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone.” In the sexist, male-dominated world of 19th-century science, Anning’s finds were celebrated while she herself was barred from joining academic societies or even finding a path to gain equal footing with the likes of William Buckland, Gideon Mantell and other traditional heroes of paleontology who parasitized her labor. Now, in having her life’s story made a fiction, is the world using Anning again?
In all the hubbub over Ammonite’s portrayal of Anning, commenters have continually missed a critical point. Anning never married, and we don’t know if she had romantic or sexual relationships with anyone. Lee, and some others, have taken this as a hint that Anning may have been a lesbian and hid the fact to avoid controversy. But it’s equally possible that Anning was asexual or uninterested in romance. Perhaps, then, Ammonite is an exercise in erasure wrapped in progressive packaging, ignoring what we know of Anning in an attempt to read between the lines. The truth died when Anning did.
How audiences will experience Ammonite will largely depend on what they bring to it. If they’re expecting a historically accurate biopic, they may sit back on their couch fuming. Ammonite is to paleontology what The Untouchables is to Prohibition or Raiders of the Lost Ark is to archaeology. If viewers are looking for a queer romance set against a wave-battered backdrop, they may feel a little warmer to the treatment.
The sheer pressure put on Ammonite to fulfill our fossiliferous expectations says something about our current moment in science. The accomplishments and importance of women in paleontology are far more prominent than they were in Anning’s time, yet the standard image of a paleontologist remains an Indiana Jones wannabe focused on trophy hunting dinosaurs. And when it comes to diversity within the field across positions—from volunteer and student all the way up to professors—there remains a diversity gap that even cisgendered, straight, white women are fighting against, to say nothing of better support and representation for everyone else who falls outside those narrow categories.
And so we keep turning to Anning as a singular hero, a woman who made amazing and lasting contributions against the odds. She, and the women whose careers were intertwined with hers, deserves to be honored just like the men who fill the introduction sections of paleontology textbooks. At the same time, perhaps we are asking Anning to carry too much—to be the sole representative of an entirely different view of paleontology. If representation for women in the field were better, perhaps it would not feel as if so much is at stake. As it stands, we are so starved for stories other than the Great White Fossil Hunter that it’s almost impossible for any tale to satisfy everyone.
If we’re fortunate, some future paleontologist will be able to point to Ammonite and say it’s the first time they got to see themselves represented. I hope so. For the time being, though, I’m looking forward to the evening when my girlfriend and I can curl up on the couch and watch a romance about warm hearts and cold stone, even if we know Mary Anning’s truth requires a bit more digging to find.
#Nature
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maryanningrocks · 5 years
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Mary Anning: The Woman
Mary Anning was born in 1799 in the town of Lyme Regis on the Dorset Coast to parents Richard and Molly Anning. Out of at least nine children born to the Annings, only Mary and her older brother Joseph survived past childhood. This is despite Mary herself being struck by lightning at only 15 months old as she was being carried by another woman. Three women were killed in the lightning strike but miraculously, Mary survived.
The Anning family were poor and working class- the bottom of the pile in society. On top off this, the family were dissenters, protestants who had separated from the Church of England, who were often ostracised by other Christians. She attended a school run by the Congregationalist dissenters, though the education she received here did not extend far past reading and writing.
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[Image of a drawing finished in 1842 showing the fossil shop and home Mary purchased in Lyme Regis]
Mary and her brother would frequently join their father, a cabinet maker by trade, on fossil hunting expeditions along the coastline, which they would then sell for extra money. This was a dangerous occupation and in 1810, when Mary was just 10, their father died of a combination of injuries contracted from a cliff fall and being weakened by tuberculosis. The family was left with his debts to pay and had to rely on parish support to survive.
Mary was left to take over the fossil business to provide for her family while Joseph became an apprentice upholster. Even though she lacked formal education, Mary taught herself geology and anatomy and the rest is history (and will be covered more in a Mary: the Scientist post!).
She was highly successful and by 1826 had saved up enough money to buy her own home and store, Anning’s Fossil Depot.
Once again, the dangers of Mary’s trade were shown when she narrowly avoided being crushed in a landslide in 1833 while she was out fossiling and sadly, she lost her dog, Tray, that day. In a letter, she wrote: "Perhaps you will laugh when I say that the death of my old faithful dog has quite upset me, the cliff that fell upon him and killed him in a moment before my eyes, and close to my feet ... it was but a moment between me and the same fate”
In her personal life, it is well known that she was good friends with fellow fossil collector and palaeontologist Elizabeth Philpot. The two often worked together and it was Philpot who first discovered that the ink sacs Mary had discovered in belemnites could be revived and used for writing and drawing.
Another childhood friend of Mary’s, Henry de la Beche was so inspired by Mary’s finds that he painted the famous Duria Antiquior, which he then sold prints of to help in supporting Anning through her continuing financial difficulties.
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[Oil on canvas reproduction of Duria Antiquior painted in 1850, based on de la Beche’s earlier 1830 watercolour]
Anning died in 1847 aged just 47 from breast cancer. Due to the pain from this, her work tailed off in the last years of her life. She is buried at St Michael’s church where there is a stained glass window, donated by the Geological Society, which Mary herself was never allowed to join, in 1850. You can still visit her grave and children and adults alike often leave fossils around the headstone for Mary.
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so final thoughts since the CBC livestream is over.
Major reports;
Liberals got a minority, they will need support in order to pass legislation, given what the leaders have said, I suspect this will be NDP support. This is good for my political beliefs, though at the same time, unless the conservatives plan to be particularly obstructionist, or the Liberals actively seek out a coalition government they can use the conservatives to support policies that I wouldn’t. It’s complicated, and how things will be will be coming out as leaders talk.
more nitty-gritty
The numbers 156 Liberal, 122 Conservative, 32 Bloc, 24 NDP, 3 Green, 1 independent. 
My MP was re-elected (with over 50% of the vote, in a riding with 8 candidates)
My grannie’s MP was re-elected (also a good NDP riding though less of a landslide)
My Brother’s MP was re-elected, again he’s a good MP, I prefer my MP, but I’m happy with all of these results, and they make me happy for my family’s participation in democracy.
Jodie Wilson-Raybould was re-elected as an independant, Jane Philpot was not. As someone from Vancouver and not Ontario, it’s hard for me to really comment on Jane’s campaign or chances, but I will for Jodie, because I was watching her riding. Jodie was a good MP, and she was popular, I’m glad she won, though I don’t know if I would’ve voted for her if I were in her riding, since I didn’t bother to learn about the other candidates. I’m not /surprised/ that she won, but I wasn’t sure, I’m glad, and hopefully as an independant she will be able to move beyond the scandal and represent the people of Vancouver-Granville well. 
Conservatives got more votes than liberals, which honestly is kind of frightening, it seems highly regional, and that region is west, it is kind of wierd hearing them talk about the west being blue, when the west west is pretty orange. but oh well. 
I’m surprised the greens gained, but that’s probably only because I don’t like them. I know there are people who do, I don’t fully understand it, because from what I can tell, all of these people would be better served by the NDP but that’s not my business. I don’t like the Greens and I don’t like Elizabeth May, but we could do worse. I probably don’t like them even more because they tend to take seats from the NDP, which as an NDP supporter I find frustrating.
The NDP lost seats, but they’re in a better position, so IDFK.
Personal stuff.
I didn’t manage to get anything done on my essay, that I intend to print in hopefully 2 hours. I chose the wrong topic and I’m suffering, I will fail and I know this, but as long as I fail well enough to scrape by a pass with the exam it’ll be okay. I also have another essay due this Friday so I have to go through this hell again. I need to up my anti-depressant, I’m a mess.
It’s 8am, I didn’t sleep, I won’t sleep. I need more coffee, a lot more coffee. I didn’t finish my junk food, because I didn’t want to go to the kitchen and miss stuff heating up my food. I FaceTimed with my mum while watching the coverage, and said hello to my cat. it was nice. I still feel anxious that I’m not sure whether or not my vote was counted. 
I don’t know how I feel, because it’s a wierd position within this type of democracy.
I like the parliamentary system, I like having a local MP, I love my MP. I like my MP much more than the NDP as a whole. I also am happy for a liberal minority with NDP coalition, this is a good result for the things I want. 
At the same time, the conservatives got more votes, but will likely have very little roll in government in terms of actual decision power. I don’t like the conservatives, but I’m also not anti-democracy so I don’t really know how to deal.
I really don’t want to like our system because the current result is okay, that’s a bad reason, that’s how the liberals wiggled out of electoral reform. Although, I’ve always been kind of iffy on electoral reform, I don’t know how to balance things, especially with huge ridings like the teritorries. MMP is nice, but it would be pretty bad in already large ridings (geographically). Already there are ridings like West Vancouver - Sunshine Coast - Sea to Sky that are disturbingly varried to actually fufill the thing I like about parliamentary system. I would be comfortable enough combined with Vancouver-Kingsway, it’s where my Grannie and Unlce live, and it feels like part of the same overarching community, but if my riding were combined with Vancouver Centre, regardless of having mutliple MPs, I’d feel like some of the faith I have in my community being represented would go. 
I have a lot of thoughts on democratic systems, and I don’t have a solution, because democracy is hard. But I just there are feelings. and elections like these make these feelings stronger.
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