#Backwards City Review

[siconetribal]

Beyond the Bookshelves (1)

Pairing: Loki x Reader

Warnings: Some swearing, work stress, impossible tasks

Summary: You're a Resource Management Specialist at S.H.I.E.L.D. normally referred to as “The Librarian”. You've been assigned the nightmarish task of digitizing all the physical resources currently owned by the agency, with a few new computers and one extra helper.

A/N: I honestly do not know where this is going and why I even started this. It was an idea that sort of popped into my head while at work. I hope you enjoy it! Please comment/like/reblog. If you'd like to be tagged moving forward, please let me know!

The lovely banners used in this fic are from @cafekitsune.

Papers fluttered to the ground around Loki as stared down at the young woman who ran into him. He cocked an eyebrow as he heard a low hiss of pain come from her gritted teeth. The impact could not have been that painful, but how was he to know? He was minding his own business, walking down the fairly empty hallway reading a book when something had come crashing into him. It was not the first time he had been assaulted, but it was certainly the first time to be tackled in the middle of an empty hallway. Glancing around, he noticed there were a few people lingering about, watching to see what he would do or see what transpired.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going.” Her voice drew his attention back down to the ground to see her on her knees trying to gather the scattered sheets of paper. He slid his right foot back as she reached for one near it.

“You are excused,” he responded in a level tone that held little emotion, if any at all. She looked up at him in wide-eyed shock which had him raise an eyebrow yet again at her. He hesitated for a moment to speak, feeling the eyes on them.

“Is there something else you wish to say?”

“Huh? Oh, no, just surprised to hear you say anything. I’ve never heard you speak before, so I thought that maybe you couldn’t.” She admitted, tapping the bottom edge of the sheets to make the pile more uniform. “You have a nice voice.” She added, carefully inspecting the surrounding area, oblivious to the bewildered look of the prince before her. “Ah-ha!” She grinned, crawling forward and reaching between his feet. Startled by her actions, Loki quickly took a few steps backward, leaving a noticeable shoe print on the paper she had been reaching for. “Thank you, this was the last one I needed.” She smiled at him, though when she saw the print, her lips quickly curled downwards into a noticeable frown. “That’s not good, Fury’s not gonna be happy.” She mumbled, carefully placing the dirtied sheet on the top as she stood up with her sizable stack of folders and binders in her arms. “Well, it was a pleasure speaking to you, Mr. Loki, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.”

He watched as she casually resumed her walk down the hallway, unperturbed by the fact that she had just walked straight into him, Loki, the monster that had wreaked havoc in the world and destroyed their precious city. The very city they were currently in now. What an odd Midgardian, but I suppose this would be the place to find plenty of odd ones. He turned to look at some spectators and watched them visibly flinch or stumble as they met his gaze, scrambling to leave the vicinity and get away from here, away from him. Opening his book once more, he continued on his way towards his destination.

Just as she had anticipated, Fury was not pleased with the surprise print on one of the report pages. He looked between it and her in silence, sliding the packet across his desk in her direction as he leaned back and turned his chair slightly.

“Mind telling me why you suddenly decided to decorate such a vital report with a shoe?”

“It was an accident, sir. While on my way here, I was reviewing the content and ended up crashing into someone on the way. They unintentionally stepped on the sheet while trying to avoid the others. I didn’t have time to reprint the documents prior to this meeting. I will be submitting a clean copy into the record and have this one shredded.”

“I’ll let it slide this time only. Next time, watch where you’re walking and leave reviewing for when you’re at a desk. Everything looks to be in order, reprint and file it.”

“Thank you sir, I’ll have it done right away.” She bowed her head and picked up the report.

“Don’t let this happen again.” He sternly remarked. “The next time it does, you’ll have to deal with the consequences. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal, sir.” Y/N nodded. “The next item for discussion is the transition of all physical resources into digital. I do understand that many have requested that all resources be scanned and made digital, but that task is a lot larger than many realize. Also, not all of our sources are safe to scan due to age or they need to be translated and checked prior to scanning. It is not impossible, but a sizable team would be needed in order to have it completed. I propose that the physical sources we have are properly cataloged and organized so they are easier to be found. We can have them scanned in the process, but again, we run into the issues of needing to translate and verify that the translations are correct.”

“Y/N, just get to the fucking point. Can it be done?” Fury cut her off, looking at her pointedly with his good eye.

“In an ideal situation, yes.” She let out a small sigh.

“And what is an ‘ideal situation’?” 

“A team of at least five agents per letter, several translators for the various languages we have to make sure we have them properly translated, and a warehouse filled with scanners and computers to scan, name, and upload. With such a team and ideal conditions always, it could take about five to ten years to complete.”

“Oh just that?” His voice was dripping with sarcasm, his frown more pronounced than usual. Y/N knew he was not pleased with her answer, but there was no use in trying to make it lighter than it really was. They had an extensive library in house and warehouses of delicate and confidential artifacts, which included tomes and scrolls. She was the head librarian and managed all of this with only a handful of others spread across the various locations.

“Ideally, yes.”

“And if it wasn’t ideal?”

“Depends on what factors are not present, but without those minimum requirements it could take decades.”

“But it can be done.” He flatly responded, sitting forward in his seat and resting his elbows on the desk. “We won’t destroy any of the physical resources, but you’ll have to make do with what you get. We don’t have the luxury of just handing over a slew of agents for this. We need boots on the ground globally to keep an eye out on things out there bigger than us.” A weight suddenly dropped in the pit of her stomach. Though she was not expecting anything close to what she listed as an ideal, there was something in his tone that screamed out that she was going to hear the worst case scenario.

“And what would I get to work with?” She managed to keep her voice steady.

“State-of-the-art technology per library staff member per location and a god.”

Silence fell over them as she stood there, slowly blinking at her superior. This had to be some sort of sick joke. She knew the organization could not give what was needed, but this? This was hardly anything at all.

“I’m sorry, did you just say new computers and a god?”

“That’s what I said.” He nodded his head.

“You must be joking, right? This task would take more than just decades to do, and what does ‘a god’ even mean? A ‘god’ per person or location, or just one god? And what sort of ‘god’ Do you just have deities on demand or something? Are they just going to snap their fingers and things will be done magically? What can they do for me and this lifelong assignment I have now been tasked with?” She paced in front of his desk, muttering to herself on how this could work and what sort of person this ‘god’ was. He cannot be serious, right? But Fury isn’t the type to just say shit or joke around. She turned and looked at her boss. No, not a joker. She frowned.

“Y/N, calm down. We’ve got two Asgardian gods that have a knack for understanding all languages. You don’t need a team of translators when they can do it on the spot just like that.” His sharp tone made her stop and turn to face him. “So that whole crap can be cut, and you can work with one of them to get all this done faster with fewer people and just get to organizing shit. You’re getting what you get, end of discussion. Anything else?”

“No sir,” she sighed and shook her head.

“Good, I’ll get Agent Hill to talk to them and reach out to you. You’re dismissed.”

“Yes sir.” She slightly bowed her head and left the office, her shoulders dropping the moment the door closed behind her. This was not going to be easy.

Tag list: @vbecker10

[ailithnight]

A few notes:

I originally planned to have this one have a couple of povs like the first, but then u got carried away writing feral Danny so, just Tim today.

I hope to get the next one out sometime this weekend cause it's harder to write when I have work.

Also, everyone thank @cursedzucchini for writing the comment that gave me the executive function to take these words out of my brain and put them in my phone. Reading that there was someone out there checking the tag for updates every day really motivated me.

Now, without further ado

Chapter 1

A King in Arkham

Chapter 2

Tim sighs, rubbing his temples and attempting to will away the sleep deprivation headache currently pounding on the inside of his skull. Pushing 80 hours awake, the last 38 of which have been spent combing backwards through any and all Arkham documents pertaining to one Daniel James Fenton.

He moved his hands away from his head, placing them on the fresh cup of coffee that had materialized while he was massaging, giving a cursory "Thanks" the retreating body. Normally, Alfred would have cut Tim off from caffeine yesterday. But it seems even the old butler was keen on something being found to justify pulling the kid out of Arkham.

Or maybe that was Jason fueling Tim's addiction. Man had been hovering since Batman called him back at the last break out. At least Dick had been able to reason better with the most volatile of the Wayne siblings.

"Picking him up and running won't do either of you any favors, Little Wing. It'll just put him and Hood on wanted posters. If you want him to have any shot at a life out here, you gotta let Bruce take it through the proper channels."

That had at least prevented Jason from snapping on anyone immediately, though he had seen fit to warn everyone that of they didn't have something by the next break out, he'd be doing it his way.

Which is why Tim had spent the last day and a half poring over every medical record, therapy session, schedule, action report, and discipline slip Arkham had on file that even mentioned Patient 26B.

Meanwhile, Oracle had her hands full trying to find any background information on the young ward. A task which itself was proving challenging because the place the kid came from seemed to have no digital presence at all. None. Not a Facebook or Twitter or MySpace pinging from the area. Not an email address or YouTube account. Not a single god damned website. Not even a .gov! Hell, the only reason they knew the city's name is because it was listed in the CPS paperwork from Chicago.

In other places, small towns and communities in the middle of nowhere, this wouldn't really raise any red flags. But Amity Park was not actually a nowhere town. It certainly wasn't a Gotham or Metropolis. But it was big enough to have formed a conurbation with the nearby city of Elmerton. Which had a perfectly normal digital presence. So Amity Park's lack of digital presence screamed Communications Blackout. A frighteningly strong one to still be giving Oracle the run around almost 2 days later.

Once Tim was finished reviewing Arkham reports, then the 3 weeks of documents from Daniel's stay in Chicago, he'd probably offer to help her. Though she might tell him to go the fuck to sleep instead.

For now. Tim was nearing the beginning of the kid's Arkham stay and; on top of not yet finding any clues as to why the kid was in Arkham, nor anything that could possibly exonerate him; the kid just made no damn sense!

His therapy sessions were all the same dead end.

The therapist would ask he he was feeling. The kid would apparently shrug, or sometimes mumble something the therapists could never quite catch.

They'd ask the standard suicide questions. "Any thoughts of wishing you could go to sleep and not wake up?"

A shrug.

"Any thoughts of wanting to take your own life or wishing someone would take it for you?"

Vehenement refusal bordering on a panic attack.

Move on to the hurting people questions.

"Any thoughts of wanting to harm other people?"

"No." According to the doctors, his tone here is immediate, calm, confident. Truthful. If the Arkham psyches are to be believed.

"Any thoughts of wanting to harm yourself?"

"No." Slower, quieter, meeker. Noted as a clear lie, citing the injuries as evidence.

"Then why do you, Danny?"

"I don't."

"Then where did your injuries come from."

"The ghosts," said with a sigh

At this point, it seems Daniel shuts down. He says nothing else for the rest of the session. Shows no outward response as the therapist tries to convince him there are no ghosts and Daniel must be giving himself those injuries.

2 and a half months. Daily therapy sessions. And every single one is the exact same script. The only differences are some minor notes as Daniel is passed around between therapists as they all inevitably get frustrated talking to the emotionless block of ice.

Outside of the therapy sessions and medical reports documenting the frankly horrifying amount of injuries Danny accumulates, there's not much in his file. He follows all instructions to the letter; never causes trouble for guards or other inmates; and every single locks malfunction, he has afterward been found lying on his bed in his cell staring at the ceiling. If he was somewhere else when the malfunction happened, security footage catches him walking there himself. If he was already in his cell, footage keeps him there the whole time.

Tim sighs again, clicking out of the medical report detailing the nasty bruise that had appeared on the kid's lower left back, then opens up the next file up without reading the name fully expecting it to be another tedious therapy session report.

Instead, he finds a discipline slip with the relevant security clip embedded at the top. The first frame is of the cafeteria. Daniel is sitting alone at a table in the top right. Tim's breath catches in his throat as he recognizes the demented clown in the center of the frame. Hastily, he plays the clip.

There is no sound but Joker appears to say something to the room. Daniel is suddenly standing, whipped around to face the clown. The Joker turns towards him. Daniel tenses. The Joker tenses.

In the next second, Daniel is on the Joker. He's kicking, scratching, biting. Absolutely feral as he just reigns fury upon the most feared and hated rogue in all of Gotham. Surrounding inmates are fleeing to the sides of the room as the Joker seemingly tries to get away from the kid, only succeeding in moving the "fight" around the room. It's hardly a fight. More like a vicious, brutal assault. Inmates cheer as blood appears on the floor. Guards move in, pulling the feral 15 year old off of the Joker; who stays down, potentially unconscious. 2 guards go to help the one currently attempting to restrain Daniel. 6 more converge on the Joker, blocking him from view. As soon as he can no longer see the Joker, Daniel seems to go limp in the guards hands. Then he tenses again, though not struggling. Tim just catches the beginning stages of what seems to be a panic attack before the clip ends.

Tim stares dumbfounded at the screen for several moments. When he snaps out of it enough to actually read the incident report, it is a basic transcription of what Tim just witnessed with confirmation that Daniel had a panic attack immediately after. The report also notes that other than the panic attack, Daniel seemed to sustain no harm. He was disciplined with 3 days without cafeteria privileges, so his meals were brought to his cell, and 3 days without Crafts room privileges.

A note at the bottom of the report reads "To prevent further incidents, Patient 26B and the Joker are no longer permitted to be in the same room or yard."

This makes Tim click out of the discipline slip -without closing it, just moving it to a different section of the batcomputer's massive screen- and scan the rest of the files. There are 2 more. One from a week prior and one from Daniel's first dat at Arkham. He opens both, placing them at points on the screen so that all 3 are visible.

The one from the week prior shows the Crafts Room. Danny is again in an upper corner. Time plays it. The door opens. Joker walks in. Seems to look at Daniel, then rushes him. Daniel looks up before the Joker makes it half way across the room, then in the next second meets him there. Another feral fight only broken up by the guards when the Joker stops moving. Again, Danny goes limp as soon as the Joker is out of sight. The rest of the report confirming a panic attack but no injuries. 2 days lost privileges.

The report from Daniel's first day again shows the cafeteria. This time, Daniel is center frame. Joker comes up behind him. Daniel tenses but doesn't turn yet. Joker seems to be saying g something, then laughs. Daniel hunches in on himself, seeming to mumble a response. Whatever he said makes the Joker laugh harder. Then he leans down over Daniel's shoulder, talking. Daniel seems frozen for not even half a second before he suddenly pushes himself out of his seat, straight in to the Joker, twisting as he goes to begin the attack. Since it's obviously the first time, the rest of the cafeteria freezes. No one reacts for a solid 6 seconds. Then guards are moving in, hauling the teenager away. The Joker stands unsteadily then takes a knee. He has to be led limping out of the room. Guards struggle to restrain Daniel until the Joker is gone, whereafter Daniel goes boneless, then begins panicking. Report confirms panic attack and no injuries. 1 day lost privileges.

Tim stares at the batcomputer for several minutes, trying very hard to process what he has just learned. His brain feels like soup. He rubs his eyes, looks at his coffee, grabs a comm to put in his ear. His voice is strained as he speaks.

Anyone nearby who can come to the cave for a minute?

Jason responds instantly.

Upstairs. Find something?

I don't... know. I just. Someone come confirm I didn't just hallucinate what I just watched and read.

Red Robin? What did you find?

Not saying until someone else can confirm it.

Red Robin

On my way down.

.

"What the actual fuck?"

[leclsrc]

i love your proposal drabbleeee! could i get another about time based one where theyre planning the wedding? happy 1k!! i love u and the movie so much<3

honeymooning – cl16

You find a creative way to quickly plan your wedding.

auds here... ik i said that was the last req but i have so many im just ignoring jshdhs and i just rewatched about time so this was Birthed... sorry

“We’ve officially broken the world record for time spent engaged and not married,” you announce, walking into the living room of your flat in a hoodie and loose pajamas. 

Charles looks up from where he’d been reviewing something—finances for the team, if you recall correctly—and adjusts his reading glasses (that he will never admit he has to use.) And he laughs, like this is all a joke. You place your hands on your hips, rolling on the balls of your feet as you stare at him menacingly.

“I am not joking. The only thing we’ve—you’ve—decided about our wedding is that I’m going to be walking down the aisle to some weird song you heard in The Godfather.”

“A lovely song,” he interjects, watching you walk until you’re just a few metres in front of him.

“Absolutely not.” You pause, breathing slowly. “And we have no other mutual free days for a while. So here’s the deal—for every decision you make about the wedding, I take one article of clothing off.”

He laughs outwardly, nodding and setting aside the thick stack of paper he’d been perusing. “Deal. You have my attention.” He settles further into the chair, staring at  you with want and amusement.

“Um, okay. Where do we get married?” You smile.

“Italy. Everyone knows everyone here in Monaco, and everywhere else is too far.”

“Okay,” you agree, wrestling the hoodie off and revealing your bra underneath. “Good.”

“You’re beautiful,” he says quickly before you slide into the next prompt.

“Sweet talker,” you retort, settling your thumbs into the drawstring of your trousers and readying them to pull downward. “Alright. Band or DJ?”

“Oh, shit.” He thinks. “Band. It’s got to be band. And if that goes to shit we plug in a phone and play Spotify the rest of the night.”

You laugh, nodding in agreement. “Smart,” you huff out, pulling your pajamas down. He stares, eyes running up and down, anticipatory. Fingers make their way to the clasp of your bra and you mull over the next question. You’ve both settled on a few things—catering and cake and the like—so you skip over those. Then you remember the reason why your guestlist remains unfinished and unfinalized.

“Best man?”

“Oh, nooo,” he moans. “Damn, no.”

“I need an answer,” you sing-song, playing with the clasp. “Or these stay covered all night.”

“It’s too hard, beautiful,” he groans, covering his face with his hands. “Okay. Fuck, okay—Joris.”

“Your choice,” you say, brows raised.

“He’s going to make a fool out of me during his speech, isn’t he.”

“Very likely.”

“Okay, no—Lorenzo.”

“You sure?”

“No—no, Pierre. Pierre.” He nods once. “Pierre.”

“Pierre, final answer,” you say smilingly, unclasping your bra. He smiles, giddy when he finally gets to see almost all of you.

“Yeeee—no, no, Lorenzo.”

“What?!” Your hands flee to cover your breasts and you narrow your eyes at him. “You are such a—that is cheating. Cheating!”

He just laughs, shrugging his shoulders as if to say what can you do. You roll your eyes, but maintain composure, nodding slowly. “Alright… oh, honeymoon.”

“Uh, uuuh—five days in Paris,” he says eventually, grinning.

“Oh, these panties are not coming off for Paris.” Granted, it’s a beautiful city, but both you and Charles are there nearly all the time for work, and it’s so near Monaco it’s basically the same thing. 

“It’s all I can do for my schedule,” he retorts, insistent. “Take off your panties.”

He has a glint in his eye that strikes both amusement and competition in you.

“I will not,” you shoot, smiling and stepping backwards once, hands still covering your chest.

“Take! Off! Your panties!” He hollers, getting up and making a beeline for you. You squeal, turning around and bounding up the stairs toward your bedroom; he’s hot on your tail, laughing.

“Never!” You yelp, a high-pitched sound as you take refuge in the bedroom. “I want three weeks in Hawaii!” 

[sunnebeam]

neon lights.

A 'CITY OF LIGHTS' DRABBLE.

pairing: jeon jungkook x reader

warnings: gangster squad au, cheating (kinda, please read the previous drabbles for better context), toxic relationship, mentions of mafia shit

masterlist + disclaimers.

note: no smut? in a sunnebeam drabble?? who is she???? 😭 lol but here's the next col drabble. the plot is plotting, if i might say so myself :> let me know ur thoughts! and as always, feedback & reviews are my sustenance

— prev – backstreet buildings. | next – thunder & rain.

Things weren't always like this.

Believe it or not, there was a time when you liked Kim Taehyung. Heck, you could even say there was a short minute when you thought you could actually love him. But that was back when he was younger. Back when he was warmer.

Back when he was safer.

"Hey, baby."

The words from a normal person's mouth would sound welcoming and romantic. But when they come from Taehyung, they only sound calculated and dangerous.

Nevertheless, you put on a smile as if you didn't just come from Jungkook's apartment. Nevertheless, you place a kiss on his cheek as if you aren't caught off guard by his presence.

He's early. His flight was supposed to be at noon, which is why you took your sweet time back at Jungkook's. You didn't expect him to be home three hours too early.

"Welcome home," you say to him in what you hope to be a welcoming tone. "You hungry?"

"Mhm. But not for breakfast."

He pulls you in and kisses you deeply, not satisfied with your chaste peck on his cheek. You try to return his eagerness as much as you could, but he seems to sense your hesitation.

He pulls back and looks at you curiously, his dark eyes inspecting every inch of your face intensely. You stare back innocently, hoping he mistakes your frantic heartbeat as excitement from his kiss instead of fear from being found out.

"Where were you, baby?" he asks, his voice egging you as if daring you to lie. "You weren't here when I came home."

"Cafe. Down the block." You hope your words don't sound clipped. "They serve breakfast waffles."

His eyes flicker from your face to the earrings he gave you.

"You didn't bring me some?"

"I'm sorry. I thought you wouldn't be home until noon."

His eyes move downward, inspecting your entire body.

"Oh, I bet you hoped that would be the case," he says after a few seconds, his voice taunting, his smile sinister.

You gulp. "What are you talking about, Tae?" you ask in between chuckles. "Of course I wasn't hoping for—"

You're cut off by another kiss. You're grateful for the distraction, welcoming the kiss and deepening it yourself for good measure. You think you're off the hook but then he bites your lower lip aggressively, pulling away when he hears you hiss.

"Just joking, baby," he says when he pulls back, smirking when he sees your swollen lips. "I know you couldn't wait for me to come home."

Your heart becomes even more frantic and your fingertips are cold with nerves. But you just smile back and nod in agreement.

You almost let out a big sigh of relief when he turns to walk away, but then he stops mid-walk and looks at you over his shoulder.

"I think you were a little too excited for me to come home, baby," he tuts condescendingly. "You put your blouse on backwards."

He leaves you standing in the middle of the room, with your eyes staring down at your blouse in horror and your mind cursing your own carelessness in disbelief.

Luckily, over the next couple of days, Taehyung chooses not to bring up the incident again. Whether to give you the benefit of the doubt or to toy with you, you can't tell but you'll take it anyway. After all, his nonchalance is better than his fury.

Sadly, over the next couple of days, you experience the same nonchalance from Jungkook as well. Whether his radio silence is to give you time or to confirm your accusations about your place in his life, you don't know but you won't try and find out. After all, Taehyung is already on to you and you can't afford to play with trouble again.

Unfortunately for you, however, trouble always seems to find you.

"Where are you going?"

You just arrived home after going to another fancy dinner with one of Taehyung's potential clients. Taehyung asks you the question when he sees you walk to the direction opposite your shared bedroom.

"My skin care is in the other bathroom," you explain to him. "I'm just gonna do my routine there."

He stares at you for a moment before he says, "Don't take too long," and enters the master bedroom.

It's when you just finished with your night routine and you're exiting the bathroom that you see a troubling sight.

"Jungkook?"

"Shhh," he shushes you, his index fingers upright and against his lips.

"What are you doing here?" you ask, caught off guard.

"Baby? Is that you?" Taehyung's voice echoes across the hallway.

Jungkook quickly ushers the two of you back inside the bathroom you just exited, and locks the door. When Taehyung doesn't follow up in calling for you after several minutes and you both hear the door to the master bedroom close, you both sigh in relief.

"Jungkook, what the fuck are you doing here?" you demand angrily.

"The guys and I were just raiding Taehyung's office," he tells you honestly. "We thought you wouldn't be back from that dinner until another hour."

"Tae wanted to come home all of a sudden so we left early." You sigh. "Look, Jungkook. You won't find anything in Tae's office, or in this whole house, for that matter. Trust me."

"Yeah, we figured that ourselves when we couldn't find anything useful. Thanks," he says sarcastically.

"Drop that attitude with me," you say, jabbing a finger against his chest. "Just get out of here. Taehyung already suspects me, and god knows what would happen if he sees you here—"

"Wait, wait," Jungkook cuts you off. "He suspects you? How?"

"I don't know. But please, for my sake, you need to get out now." You open the bathroom door slowly and see that the coast is clear. "Follow me. There are men stationed around the house, but I know a way you could get out."

As quietly and stealthily as you could, you lead Jungkook out the house using the blind spots you figured out when you were still sneaking out to see him. It's when you're hurriedly ushering him out of the property when he gently grabs your wrist.

"Wait a second."

"What is it now?" you groan.

Jungkook knows he only has a few seconds to say what he wants to say. He wants to tell you he's sorry for not telling you he's a cop. He wants to tell you that what you have is real. He wants to tell you that the nights you shared are precious to him.

But he can't. Yet.

So instead, he kisses you, long and deep. When he pulls away, he whispers, "I'll get you out of here, I promise," before running out of the property.

You're left with your fingers touching your lips, completely unaware of the pair of eyes witnessing everything that had just occured.

COPYRIGHT 2023. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

[nuttynutcycle]

"Professor,” the student thrust up their hand, “Why can’t we utilize the heroes as makeshift police? It worked in Europe.”

 “Europe has a different political and geographical space,” the professor scribbled on the whiteboard. “And better pay for its teachers. Who can tell me anything about Venetian law enforcement?”

Several hands waved in the crowded lecture hall. The professor pointed at random.

“Venice utilizes water-based heroes. They use the canals and ocean to have an advantage over lawbreakers and are held in line through their enforcement collars.”

The student sounded like they were reading out of a textbook. “Excellent answer. Now,” the professor clapped their hands, “Could that work here?”

The same student beamed at the compliment. “Absolutely not. We have no cities based on canals or built on evenly distributed rivers to give water-based heroes an advantage. And sir,” the student continued, stifling a laugh. “Can you imagine trying to put a bracelet on an American hero? The government would never make it past congress.”

Chuckles half-heartedly rippled across the auditorium. Many students pretended they were listening or taking notes while Instagram reflected in their glasses.

“Wrong.”

The professor frowned at the interruption. “In this class, we raise our hand and explain our reasoning.” He turned toward the owner of the voice, a boy in a denim jacket in the back of the room. “Care to elaborate?”

 “They already have them.”

The professor pushed his glasses up his nose, a trickle of curiosity rising against his better judgment. He reached over to his computer and paused the lecture recording. “Do you have evidence to support this theory?”

The boy looked up from his computer and shrugged. “Does anyone here think our illustrious government would let a group of highly powerful individuals run around untethered?”

The auditorium quieted. A few hands raised in a sea of hundreds, before slowly lowering. 

The professor had to admit, that was a good point. Still... “Most heroes don’t comprehend the notion of modesty. Trust me, there’s nowhere to hide a bracelet that the cameras wouldn’t see.”

“What about MagniBoy?” One student asked. “That costume covers everything except-“

“Unfortunately for MagniBoy,” The professor interrupted before the lecture became decidedly less PG. “There was an incident last year. We now know for sure that there is absolutely no possible place for a bracelet.”

Several students nodded, some in disgust and others with smiles.

“It’s not on their bodies.” The boy in the denim spoke again. “American heroes are controlled as soon as they join a force, but they just don’t realize it.”

This was quickly verging into Reddit board theories. The professor felt a headache coming on. “Let’s not get off track- “

“Where is it then?” Another student asked.

“Did they swallow it?”

“Why wouldn’t anyone say anything about it?”

The professor sat down in his chair and prepared for the ride. If the class wanted to waste precious exam review time with theories, their loss.

“Twenty years ago, the government started investigating bracelets and mood alteration. Two years later they stopped due to public protests.” The boy smiled bitterly. “We love our heroes, and we love our rights even more. Three years after that, our heroes were injected with a tracker ‘for safety’.”

“Those trackers were removed when a hero retired.” The professor interrupted with a gentle smile. “If what you’re saying is true, retirees would notice a significant difference in mood.” Several students nodded in agreement.

The boy looked at him in near pity. “Sir, do you know what the original bracelets were made of?”

The professor remembered. His back straightened.

“Nanotech.” The boy savoured the word, savoured his captive audience. “Bit backwards, isn’t it? They found that heroes were more likely to have more health defects with the experimental tech, so they changed it to computerized ones. But,” he tapped his chin, “What if our generous government decided to inject their puppets with this same nanotechnology. What would happen?” The boy tilted his head innocently. “On a completely different note, how many heroes die from radiation poisoning? Illness? Cancer?”

The auditorium was silent.

“There used to be hero-turned-vigilantes or villains. Where did they all go?” The boy was picking up speed. 

No one was on Instagram anymore; all eyes were on him. 

“And isn’t it interesting that fifteen years ago, the cases of heroes breaking the law dropped by 80%? As did the destruction of vital buildings?”

“Oh,” another student whispered.

“They have thousands of powered people, sacrificing their lives without realizing it. Heroes sign away their personality, their life, their future.” The boy choked on a laugh. “When was the last time a hero made it to 60?”

“Young man,” the professor found his voice, “That’s enough.”

The boy’s gaze sharpened on the professor. “Sir, you were a hero before teaching. What do you think?”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kinkslump Linkdump

This is my dozenth linkdump! The world comes at you fast, and even though I'm writing 4-5 essays a week for this newsletter, many's the week that ends with more stray links than will fit in that format. Here's the previous ones:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

I managed to turn out five posts last week, despite being on tour with my latest novel, The Lost Cause, a hopeful solarpunk novel endorsed by Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. The tour went great – the book's now a national bestseller on the USA Today list! Here's an essay I wrote explaining the structure of the feeling that the book is meant to convey:

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/11/14/cory-doctorow-the-swerve/

This is a climate emergency novel full of rising seas, terrible storms, wildfires and zoonotic plagues, and yet – it is a hopeful novel. What makes it hopeful? It depicts a future in which we are treating these phenomena with the gravitas and urgency they warrant, with our whole society's focus shifting to moving coastal cities inland, weatherizing and solarizing our housing, and creating permanent housing for internal refugees.

While it would be infinitely preferable to live in a world where none of that is necessary, that's not the world we have. This is an sf novel, not a fantasy novel, so all the climate harms we've locked in through decades of expensively procured inaction are present. But the difference between disaster and catastrophe is how and whether we address those harms. Sure, this is a world where superstorms wipe away whole cities and Miami is a drowned mangrove swamp, but it's also a world in which oil executives do not chair UN climate summits or complain that oil companies are being "unjustly vilified":

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/27/opec-says-oil-industry-unjustly-vilified-ahead-of-climate-talks-.html

I write a lot, and it's not just this newsletter. Writing transports me from my anxieties and aches. That's how I came to write nine books during lockdown ("when life gives you SARS, make sarsaparilla"). Lost Cause was one of three books I published in 2023.

I'm going to greet 2024 with another novel, The Bezzle, a sequel to 2023's Red Team Blues, about the hard-charging, high-tech forensic accountant Marty Hench:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

The Bezzle is a story about the shitty technology adoption curve – the way that the worst technologies we have are first rolled out on the people least able to complain about them. After these bad technologies have their sharp edges sanded down on the bodies of prisoners, refugees and kids, they move up to blue collar workers and discount store shoppers, and so on, until we're all living under their thumb.

In The Bezzle, a dear friend of Marty finds himself serving a long sentence in a privatized California prison that flips from one private equity fund to the next, each with even worse, more extractive ways to use technology to bleed prisoners and their families dry. You can read the opening scenes in a just-published excerpt on Tor Books's site:

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/11/20/excerpt-reveal-the-bezzle-by-cory-doctorow/

The period immediately before a book's publication is always a tense one, as the first reviews trickle in. Library Journal's Marlene Harris is the first out of the gate, with a spectacular review:

https://www.libraryjournal.com/review/the-bezzle-1802415

Marty’s reminiscences range from obscure financial machinations to heaping helpings of social commentary but always move the underlying thriller story forward in a backwards heist tale that delivers a righteously satisfying ending to the surprise of both the reader and the villain. This novel, like his previous outing, rides on Marty’s voice. He has a jaundiced view of everything, but he tells it with such style and verve that readers are caught up and ride along on the surface until the shark beneath the water jumps out and bites the villain where it hurts.

I'm headed into Skyboat Media's studios on Monday with @wilwheaton to record the audiobook for this one, directed as ever by the amazing Gabrielle de Cuir. Keep your eyes peeled for a presale crowdfunder in January!

I am often asked how I decide when to present an idea through fiction and when to do so with nonfiction. The answer is a complicated one, and I got into it in some detail on Nature's Working Scientist podcast, in discussion with Paul Shrivastava:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03394-8

When it comes to politics, fiction and nonfiction are intensely complementary. Nonfiction can convey the data about a social phenomenon, but fiction can convey the meaning of the data. It's one thing to see a chart about inequality, and another to inhabit it through fiction. Marty Hench's narrative adventures are a way into the feeling of living in a corrupt oligarchy.

There are other ways into that feeling, of course. Take Barry Bowen's "Lifestyles of the Blessed & Famous: Preacher Homes Sold in 2023" for The Roys Report:

https://julieroys.com/lifestyles-blessed-famous-preacher-homes-sold-2023/?mc_cid=9678383b64

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then carefully staged realtor drone shots ganked from the Redfin listing for a "pastor"'s $3.5m mansion in Newport Beach is a full-on sermon about the corruption of the Hillsong megachurch:

https://www.redfin.com/CA/Newport-Beach/503-30th-St-92663/home/12363926

Narratives and photos are all well and good, but there's always room for some data. The USA's weird breed of federalism and devolved power makes for some very interesting data. Writing for The American Prospect, Paul Starr rounds up several studies evaluating the "natural experiments" created by enacting very different policies in otherwise similar states:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-12-08-life-death-cost-conservative-power/

The data is in: conservativism kills. Living in a red state shortens your life expectancy. The redder the state, the worse it is. The bluer the state, the longer you're likely to live:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-0009.12469

The exemplars here are Connecticut and Oklahoma, whose life expectancies were at par until they began to diverge in policies. Oklahoma got more conservative, Connecticut got more liberal. Today, the average Oklahoman will pop their clogs at 75.8, while a Connecticutensian can expect 80.7 years.

Different scholars have parsed out different policy outcomes. Giving Medicaid to children, for example, shows benefits for the next 50 years:

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20171671

The big one, of course, is gun control. Here's the topline: "restrictive state gun policies reduce overall gun deaths." Water also wet:

https://journals.lww.com/epidem/fulltext/2023/11000/the_era_of_progress_on_gun_mortality__state_gun.3.aspx

Fact-free spiritual beliefs like "an armed society is a polite society" are key to conservative policymaking. Pesky progressives who confuse the issue with relevant facts are playing dirty, pointing out reality's unfair leftist bias.

But after 40 years of neoliberal deference to corporate power, the worm is turning. Somehow, a world on fire, filled with megapastors in megamansions who brief for lethal policies, has finally inspired a global vibe-shift (and not a moment too soon!). One of the most tangible expressions of that shift is the revival of antitrust, which has been in a coma since the Reagan administration.

All over the world – the EU, the UK, Ireland, Australia, and the USA – there are new competition enforcers challenging corporate power in ways that were unthinkable just a few years ago. If I'd written an enforcer like FTC chair Lina Khan in 2010, critics would have slammed me for wish-fulfillment too unrealistic for science fiction.

But today, Khan is taking big swings at corporate power, fighting against a calcified edifice of decades of bad, pro-monopoly precedent. The pro-monopoly press hate her, which is why the WSJ keeps publishing sweaty op-eds insisting that she is wasting her time and that monopolies are good, actually:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

But she is still out there, fighting for all of us. After a pro-monopoly judge stymied the FTC's bid to block the rotten Microsoft/Activision merger, Khan re-filed, appealing the decision:

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/us-ftc-tries-again-stop-microsofts-already-closed-deal-activision-2023-12-06/

Critics insist that she's on a foolish errand, but Khan is tackling the most promising face of a sheer cliff, and the plainly anticompetitive merger between one of the world's largest console makers (a convicted monopolist!) with one of the world's largest games publishers is the right place to start. If she can get her piton into one of the hairline cracks in that face, her arduous climb gains a solid anchor for the next stage of her assent.

Of course, Khan's highest-profile action is her case against Amazon, the omnipresent, dystopian poster-child for enshittification, a platform we can't avoid, but which is so haphazardly policed that the bestselling bitter lemon energy drink you order might be bottled piss harvested from its immiserated drivers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

In a world of murderous, community-destroying monopolies, Amazon stands out for the sheer number of ways it makes the world worse. Amazon maims its warehouse workers and kills its drivers with impossible quotas. It poisons Black and brown neighborhoods with truck exhaust from its giant depots. It destroys small businesses that sell on its platform. It was part of the studio cabal scheming to destroy actors and writers' livelihoods with unfair contracts and AI. Its audiobook monopoly stole at least $100m from independent authors. It makes goods and services more expensive at every retailer (not just Amazon), and price-gouges on its own storefront:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

Keeping that scam going requires a lot of skullduggery. A new set of leaked internal Amazon documents shed some light on how that inedible sausage gets made:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxjbm9/amazon-brags-it-cultivated-california-mayor-with-donations-in-leaked-policy-document

Amazon's "Community Engagement Plan 2024" brags about buying off small-town mayors and astroturf groups in its bid to resist regulations that would limit warehouse delivery van emissions in communities of color (Amazon calls this "philanthropic work"). Coincidentally, that "philanthropy" targeted Perris, a town where residents voted for a warehouse tax to repair the roads that had been trashed by fleets of Amazon vans.

But the real focus of Amazon's "Community Engagement" is California's AB1000, a bill that will limit the construction of supersized, 100k+ sqft warehouses near daycare centers, schools or rec centers. Secondarily, Amazon is hoping to get California to make it easier to advertise alcohol around kids, to "unlock" California's liquor market.

This kind of shameless, mustache-twirling villainry can only go on so long before it meets resistance. One of the longest-running, hardest fought struggles against corporate malfeasance is the farmers' right ro repair fight against John Deere. Deere boobytraps its tractors so that after a farmer repairs a Deere tractor, they have to wait for days, and pay hundreds of dollars, for a Deere technician to come out to the farm and type an unlock code into the tractor's console:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

Despite multiple state right-to-repair initiatives and a pending rulemaking from the FTC, Deere is still fucking around. Now, they've found out. US District Court Judge Iain Johnson just handed Deere a scathing, 89-page memo rejecting the company's bid to kill a class action suit brought by its customers:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/deere-must-face-us-farmers-right-to-repair-lawsuits-judge-rules-2023-11-27/?ref=404media.co

The memo hearkens back to company founder John Deere, "an innovative farmer and blacksmith who—with his own hands—fundamentally changed the agricultural industry":

https://www.404media.co/a-massive-repair-lawsuit-against-john-deere-clears-a-major-hurdle/

Judge Johnson tells Deere's lawyers that the real John Deere "would be deeply disappointed in his namesake corporation," and calls out their lying. You love to see it.

This kind of thing is happening all over the world as policymakers, regulators and lawmakers take aim at corporate power. The Australian government just announced that it would force Apple to open up iOS to alternative browser engines:

https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/new-digital-competition-laws-for-australia/

This is obscure and technical, but that's why it's so exciting: rather than mumbling broad platitudes about competition and user choice, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's regulation targets a critical leverage point where a small change will deliver huge benefits:

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/consumers-and-small-businesses-to-benefit-from-proposed-new-regulation-of-digital-platforms

While there are many browsers in Apple's App Store, they're all just reskinned versions of Safari, all running on the same core engine, Webkit. Webkit is ancient, undermaintained and feature-poor. Crucially, Webkit does not implement the parts of the HTML5 standard needed for WebApps, which would allow app developers a safe channel to offer apps that don't go through Apple's App Store monopoly chokepoint:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

Now, there's a big jump between announcing this kind of regulation and enacting it. As Mark Nottingham points out, Australia's had an "in principle" commitment to enact a privacy regulation for two successive governments, with no actual regulation in sight:

https://techpolicy.social/@mnot/111546662237364754

So we can't take these announcements as a sign to declare victory and stand down. The policymakers who announce these proposals deserve our accolades for the announcement and they require our constant vigilance until they make good on their promises.

That's the case in Ireland, where the Coimisiún na Meán has just published a fantastic regulatory proposal for recommendation systems, requiring recommenders to be turned off by default and that recommendations based on "political views, sexuality, religion, ethnicity or health" have to be switched off by default:

https://www.cnam.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Draft_Online_Safety_Code_Consultation_Document_Final.pdf

It's especially significant that this is coming out of Ireland, a corporate crime haven that has successfully lured the world's tech giants into flying its flag of convenience, with the guarantee of tax evasion and lax regulation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

This rule won't enforce itself. It'll require constant vigilance and pressure. There's plenty of ways to do that on a part-time, voluntary basis, but if this kind of thing enflames you enough to make a career out of it, here's a tenure-track job for an infosec professor at Citizen Lab, fearless slayers of high-tech corporate ogres:

https://jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-Assistant-Professor-Information-Security-ON/576463017/

That's all for this week's linkdump. It's time for me to go hole up in my office and wrap presents. When I do, I'll be tuning into the latest Merry Mixmas MP3 of Christmas mashups from DJ Riko:

http://www.djriko.com/dls/DJ%20Riko%20-%20Merry%20Mixmas%202023.mp3

Riko's Christmas mashups have been part of my holidays for more than two decades now. He's been making them for 22 years! That's a lot of great holiday mashups:

https://www.djriko.com/mixmases.htm

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/09/gallimaufry/#marty-hench-rides-again

[pyro-chaos]

Miguel O’hara x Reader

Summary: Miguel meets you for the first time. Then, he gets to know you, but the upcoming mission will show him a new side of you.

Word count: 3,253

The anomaly didn’t seem to have intelligent thought.

It moved impulsively, like it didn’t have a plan. To Miguel, the anomaly’s behavior suggested the creature must’ve been confused, scared and angry, like a fly stuck behind a window screen. 

Unfortunately, the billionaires that engineered the frog-turtle anomaly decided they absolutely needed the creature to be the size of an SUV, with enough strength behind its scales to flip cars and shatter concrete. The city’s infrastructure couldn’t afford the frog creature’s tantrum. Not only that, but it smelled rancid. 

“Any time now,” Jess’s voice cut through the soft wind, breaking Miguel from his…plotting. 

Rather than answer Jess, Miguel shot his webs into the top of a building parallel to the frog creature. He used the anchor to swing himself onto a building with a better vantage point. 

Jess scoffed.

Miguel liked to keep in the shadows when he fought. Lucky for him, the creature started its rampage before the sun rose. Miguel just needed an opening. 

Before Miguel could continue plotting, ropes of web stuck onto the building he’d settled on. You nearly made him jump. 

Before the mission, Miguel thoroughly reviewed this Earth’s Spiderwoman. He’d originally assigned the relocation of the frog-turtle anomaly to Jess, but after seeing your age, history, and effect on this universe, Miguel decided it’d be best to attend this mission personally, because he intended on recruiting you. 

You only slightly annoyed him by arriving late. 

Miguel’s eyebrow quirked up. You seemed…scattered. On one end, you kept trying to preserve public and private property. On the other end, you had to pursue the creature to stop it from destroying things. There were also pedestrians.

Most people understood that running away from the creature would keep them alive, but a few oddballs froze in place while the anomaly flipped cars and shattered glass. You prioritized the oddballs. You’d shoot webs into their midsections before yanking them behind the brigade the police had conjured up behind congested intersections. 

You tried to assign cleaning the creature’s mess as your second priority. With every car the creature flipped, you scrambled behind to web it back onto the asphalt. 

Miguel could find it in himself to at least acknowledge your multitasking. 

“We should help her,” Jess interrupted his thoughts. Again.

“Not yet” 

You shot a web onto the creature's back. You used the web to propel yourself onto its shoulders. 

“Why?” Jess asked

Miguel tried not to growl at her, “Wanna have a conversation or wanna complete this mission before dinner?”

He could practically hear her eye-roll.

From the rooftops, Miguel and Jess  watched you wrangle the creature like a bull-rider. Except you weren’t good at bull-riding. 

After a good backward body slam into the side of a brick building, the creature knocked you off of its back, but you’d kept hold of the webbing that allowed you to wrangle the creature in the first place. 

The newly free frog monster ran up a building, dragging you along with it. 

Good, the farther away from the public, the better. 

By the time the anomaly reached the roof, you’d used your opposite hand to anchor a second web rope on the sidewalk. With one hand, you gripped the web attached to the creature. With the other, you held the web that kept you tethered to the concrete. 

The frog monster’s ascent caused the sidewalk web to pull taut. You used the tension to find your footing on the side of the building. Then, you yanked the frog-monsters web hard enough to disrupt its balance.

Miguel hummed in... not approval, but not distaste.

You abandoned the side-walk web but replaced it with a web anchored on a skyscraper's antenna. You used the skyscraper web to slingshot yourself above the anomaly. 

From there, you dropped the skyscraper web in favor of swinging circles around the frog-monster. Miguel would compare the sight to an electron circling its nucleus. Except rather than gravity attracting you to the creature, it was your web. 

Miguel’s eye twitched. The police sirens had gotten uncomfortably close. Guess your arrival prompted a chase. 

“I’ll take the anomaly; keep the police occupied?” Miguel asked Jess. However, his tone implied that he wasn’t asking.  

The Spiderwoman nodded before zooming towards the sirens. 

That left Miguel with you. 

Your circles around the frog-monster caused a cocoon-like structure to build around its waist and one of its arms. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like it would last. The creature had claws.

Miguel shot into action before the creature could begin scratching at your cocoon.

The Spiderman entered the fight from above. Without acknowledging you, Miguel smashed the creature into the roof. Hoping to stun it. He succeeded

“Holy shit, who- ” The creature’s pained shrieks cut you off - are you!?” 

Miguel winced; he needed to invest in some sort of earplugs or something. He’d run into louder situations at some point. 

For now, Miguel ignored you, but you didn’t seem to like that. 

“Hey! Uh, sir! I appreciate the help, but with all due respect, you shouldn’t be here!” 

You’re not wrong, Miguel thought, but he didn’t answer. He’d hoped within the time it took him to bite the frog creature, you’d recognize his suit.

Miguel let his arachnid instincts take control of his movements. He could feel the venom slide onto his fangs as he unequipped his helm. 

The creature writhed, knocking Miguel off balance. You responded by shooting a web on the creature's snout and pulling it towards you. 

Between your less-than-weak tug and Miguel’s hold on its free arm, the anomaly’s neck pulled taut. The Spider saw the perfect opening and reacted. The creature went still, and Miguel hoped that the putrid-tasting liquid included only blood. 

Ew Ew Ew, the half-spider jumped off of the creature's back while spitting on the roof of the building. The anomaly tasted worse than it smelled. Miguel licked his lips and spit again - Ew - then a third time - Ew -and a fourth. By the fifth spit, you made your presence known, “Why does your…outfit have a Spider on it?” 

Oh yeah. You

“I’m Spiderman,” Miguel replied, spitting a sixth time, “Lyla, scan the area, please, and do it fast.” 

Lyla flashed to life, “On it boss.” 

Your head reared back like you’d been hit while your eyes followed his digital assistant. However, your body language went from relaxed to apprehensive almost immediately. 

“What? Uh, sorry, I mean - yeah, What?” 

Miguel stopped his spitting and turned his full attention to you, “I’d like to offer you a position within our organization.” 

Miguel hired you on the spot for two main reasons. One, you were an adult. The sheer amount of teenagers that made up the spider-people population surprised and slightly annoyed Miguel. With the kind of delicate work he needed to complete, Miguel would much rather hire adults. 

Two, he desperately needed employees. Preferably with field work experience. However, between the importance of upkeeping the entire universe, and the newness of Spider-society, Miguel couldn’t afford to be picky with his employees yet. 

The half-spider could only think of one reason why he shouldn’t have hired you; he couldn’t accurately predict how you’d react when he informed you of the importance of allowing the bad cannon events to happen. 

Sometimes spider-people didn’t react well to hearing about the necessity of allowing some to die to save the rest. That fact alone made up most of Miguel’s reasoning for reviewing the history of a spider-person before recruiting them. Most of his recruits had already overcome the worst of their cannon. So, they understood why allowing the cannon events to occur meant so much to the fabric of the multiverse. But if they hadn’t had the worst of their trauma? If they felt they had the time to prevent their loved ones from dying? Miguel would place money on the fact that some would try to disrupt their cannon.

Whatever, he’d do what he needed to do to keep the universe safe.

Throughout the tour, you wouldn’t stop talking. Miguel didn’t mind because Jess answered most of your questions, but being introduced to the arachnohumanoidpolymultiverse quieted you down. Your quips didn’t have the same life as they did before, and you asked less frequent questions.

Miguel knew you’d already experienced most of your traumatic cannon events. But seeing your gaze linger on the upside-down kiss another Spiderman shared with a woman reminded him of how much spider-people had to sacrifice for heroism. Miguel saw the same flashes of emotion within every recruit. The sadness in their posture always reminded him of how much he truly wished he could find another way.

“Why can’t we stop it?” You asked no one in particular. Jess put a hand on your shoulder.

Miguel softened his tone, “If we do, the entire version of that universe falls apart,” you clenched your fists. Miguel continued, “Stopping one death will result in billions more.”

“But that can’t be on us,” you argued, but you sounded tired like you’d made this argument with yourself thousands of times before, “we have to…save people; we can’t just let people die because we think it’ll save everybody else-”

“-We don’t think, we know.” Miguel spoke. His tone almost pleading

Your eyes found Miguel’s. The pain he saw in your irises made him uncomfortable. He hoped you couldn’t see a similar pain in him.

“I’ve tried,” Miguel uttered, “I’ve tried to change the - the cannon. But breaking it results in entire universes falling apart.”

Your breath hitched, and your eyes moved to the polished floor.

“You can’t save everyone,” Miguel finished softly. 

At Miguel’s words, the tension left your shoulders and your fists unclenched, but your gaze remained on the floor, “So, is there like an orientation or a training day I’ll need to attend?”

To be totally honest, Miguel expected to hate you. 

When he first got to know you, you rubbed him the wrong way. He hated how much you talked, how you always had something to say. 

But just like the day he met you - when you almost made him jump as you entered the fight - you surprised him. 

“Mornin’ Miguel,” You greeted unenthusiastically. 

He hmphed in response. You’d webbed up to his desk rather than wait for him to get down to you. 

“So I sent you last week's mission debriefs last night-“

“-They weren’t due until midnight on Friday-“

“- but I had some trouble understanding the mission Lyla assigned to me this morning, which I thought was weird because I figured they’d have the same overarching theme as the missions I’ve had since last week?”

That got his attention, “I personally assigned you that mission, but don’t worry, we’ll go over it in our next meeting. Anyways, I assume you saw my last email? Regarding overtime pay?”

You nodded; Miguel wanted to roll his eyes, “Well, your time cards don’t reflect that.”

“I fell asleep on my desk on one of the dates you used as an example, and I figured logging that time without knowing how late I actually worked would’ve been …unethical.” 

This time Miguel actually rolled his eyes, “but you still worked overtime.”

You shrugged, “Honestly, there’s no way to tell.” 

Cameras. He wanted to tell you, but that probably would’ve sounded creepy, “I could ask Lyla.” 

“My pay doesn’t really matter as long as I’m provided proper housing and amenities.”

Miguel cringed. He’d figured that out by now, but he didn’t know how else to repay you. He didn’t know what else was appropriate.

When Jess needed positive reinforcement, he let her have extra time off or a bonus. 

Peter usually needed a “good work” with a vacation and longer deadlines for assigned tasks. 

It made Spiderman from Earth-13122 happy when Miguel assigned him more challenging missions, and he especially liked the large Checks and added trust Miguel gave him as a result.

Miguel… hadn’t figured you out yet. 

Should he tell you that you’ve done well? How would he say it? Did you want to hear that from him? 

Whatever, Miguel just knew he needed to keep you happy. As one of his best, Miguel needed to make sure no emotions could inhibit his work.

“Would you like…better housing?” Miguel asked. Albeit awkwardly. 

You tilted your head, “is there something wrong with my current housing?”

Miguel huffed, he liked you, but he did hate you sometimes. Just a little bit, “Nevermind, just - just take the morning off.” 

You stopped talking, but you didn’t leave.

Miguel tensed. Did he say something wrong? 

“Uh, thanks? But it’s Wednesday morning? We have that meeting soon. Are you sure I should be…missing from that?” 

Miguel smiled at your…admittedly mocking tone; it was all he could do to keep from cringing, “No, take the afternoon off instead.” 

Great save, Miguel thought. 

“Ok? ,Well thanks. Do you need anything before I get back to work?” 

Ay dios mio Before I get back to work, Miguel thought, you never left work

“No, but thanks.” 

You come to the meeting equipped with a notepad, a pen, and breakfast for Miguel, yourself and Jess. Breakfast burritos with eggs, bacon, potatoes, and just a dash of hot sauce-

See, it’s moments like these when Miguel just wants to smile at you, fangs and all, and nod in approval. He really hates how you make him feel that feeling.

Miguel’s happy with Jess, too; she brought coffee. 

“Ok yeah, all this makes sense, but are we sure it’s a good idea?” You ask, sounding more serious than you have for the past twenty minutes. 

Everyone present looks at you. No one you don’t know; Miguel, Jess and Lyla.

The meeting mostly pertains to Lyla and Jess because they’ll be the pair running Spider-society while you and Miguel do the fieldwork. 

“All the logistics are covered,” Lyla chimes in, “and based on the risk calculation models, it’ll be a relatively low-risk mission. At least compared to what you’ve completed in the past. It’ll be like taking candy from a baby.”

“Yeah, the benefits technically outweigh the cons here,” Jess adds.

“It just feels like we’re sticking our noses in a universe where we don’t belong. Isn’t that bad? Can’t it make things worse for that universe?” Miguel already thought of that, but he likes how you take the multiverse into consideration before missions. 

“It’s mostly recon,” Miguel reassures, “Even if we see direct combat, our interference won’t screw up an entire dimension.” 

You nod, but you don’t look entirely convinced, “What if we find something we don’t like?”

Jess addresses your question, “That depends on how much we don’t like what we find.”

You nod again, but you lean away from the table, and your hands begin fidgeting with each other. 

Miguel leans back in his chair. He trusts Jess, and he’s left Lyla in charge before, so he’s not worried about leaving Spider-society unattended. But he’s - well, not worried - more like aware of the unusualness of your reaction. Usually, you’re less…jittery. 

“Anyone have any other questions?” Miguel asks. When no one pipes up, he concludes the meeting, but he just needs to address one more thing before you leave for the afternoon. 

“(Y/N), meet me in my office for lunch; there’s more we’ll need to go over before we depart tomorrow afternoon.” 

You nod, smiling at Miguel on your way out, “See you at lunch.” 

You bring Miguel food again. When he smells the empanada, Miguel almost trips over himself, trying to toss the lunch he’d brought from home. He’s glad he can smell you from across the hallway. He would’ve killed himself if you saw him scramble. 

You web up to his desk again; he tries not to scoff. 

“So, what did you need to talk to me about?” you ask, placing not one but two empanadas on his desk.

You. Miguel thought, and your weird reaction about this mission, “I assume you saw the dress code? For uh…the mission?” Miguel asks while seating himself on his rolling desk chair. He rolls to a clean part of his desk before taking a bite of the empanada. It’s ground beef and vegetables. He wants to give you a promotion, but he’s already done that.

You sit on the visitor's chair across from Miguel and finish your bite of the burger before answering him, “Yeah -” You wipe your mouth, “- speaking of that, I was wondering if you’d be willing to give Jess the afternoon off?” you take a sip of his water, “I wanted to ask her to go dress shopping with me after work, but it’s her turn to cook tonight.”

Miguel wants to say no. The multiverse matters more than going dress shopping with Jess. But, for the next four days, Jess will have to endure double the normal amount of work. He needs to keep his employees happy. So, if it’ll make you both happy. 

But Miguel wonders, “Can’t you go dress shopping alone?” 

“Is that a no?” 

Miguel scoffs, “If you ask her to go shopping, and she says yes, then she can have the afternoon off.” 

You smile, “thank you.”

He hums, taking another bite of the empanada. 

“Do you have your outfit for the mission?” you question, genuine curiosity in your tone.  

The half-arachnid sighs. He doesn’t actually want to talk about the mission, even though he brought it up. He hates how the hardest part will be a gala. A gala tainted with superficiality. He hates how many horrible people he will have to shake hands with.

He would’ve loved to leave this mission to Jess and you, but no. Layla’s calculations predicted an easy mission because Miguel assigned you and him as the operators. Better to not mess with perfection, 

“I already own a suit,” He answers. 

“What about dress pants? and polished leather shoes and jewelry-”

“- I just said I own a suit; a suit includes pants - wait, Jewelry? Why do I need Jewelry?” 

You look at him like he’s the dumb one, “We’re gonna be around billionaires.”

Miguel shrugs. In return, you raise your eyebrows and shake your head before returning to your food. The silence holds tension. Miguel thinks it’s because you can tell he’s not addressing what he wanted to address. Maybe he’s being paranoid. 

He didn’t want to talk about the gala, he wanted to talk to you about why you seemed off in the meeting, but If he asked, would he be breaching some unspoken boundary that the two of you shared as co-workers? 

He’s glad for the smell of empanadas and burgers; it keeps him from dwelling in his indecision. 

“I can find another person for this mission. If you’re uncomfortable with…the risks of it,” Miguel offers. He doesn’t like the way the words taste on his lips. He doesn’t like how you swallowed because of them. 

“It’s fine, “You begin, “It’s just…” Miguel stops chewing, “Well I don’t know,” You finish. 

Miguel doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like how it sounded like you were going to tell him but decided against it.

He drops the subject. But you don’t, “I’m not uncomfortable with the mission. I can do it.” 

You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Miguel wants to say, but you wouldn’t find comfort in that. After all, you’re Spiderwoman; you do things you don’t want to do all the time. Miguel can’t decide if he admires you or empathizes with you for that. 

[81scorp]

Constructive criticism: Raya and Wish (2023)

Ah yes, Raya and the last Dragon and Wish... and a bonus

Raya and the last Dragon

Taking place in the fictional country of Kumandra, based on Southeast Asian culture, the movie follows the warrior princess Raya as she seek the fabled last dragon to save her father and the land of Kumandra from evil spirits that are known as Druun.

Critics gave the film positive reviews; some critics praised the imagery and depth but criticized the limited Southeast Asian representation.

The movie is very good on a technical level, Visually impressive, fun characters and the story is good... until the third act.

It`s message doesn`t really fit into it`s narrative. It tries to fit a square shaped peg into a round hole.

If I could wish upon a star that I could travel back in time and do some changes to the script I would like to make one small change.

Namaari giving her "This is just as much your fault" speech and Raya acting as if she`s right

The biggest downside in this scene is Raya`s reaction to what Namaari says, looking at her own reflection in her sword as if to say: "My god, what have I become?"

How I would do it: Raya and Namaari fight. Raya gets the upperhand, disarms Namaari and is about to strike the final blow... but then she looks at what`s happening around them, the city is falling apart, killing Namaari is not gonna solve this. She drops her sword.

Raya: "My original plan was to steal the gem. It was Sisu who convinced me to talk to you. She believed in you. And for a moment... so did I."

Then she leaves to save what still can be saved of the people of Fang.

Namaari looks at her own reflection in one of her twin swords and has a "My god, what have I become?" moment.

I guess I could stop here, but I want to change one more scene.

Raya giving her gem piece to Namaari

In the scene where they are all in the pit trying to fight the druuns with their gem pieces and Raya realizes that they have to put the pieces together, it would be better if Namaari gave her piece to Raya before she gives her piece to Namaari.

Namaari would then step backwards and let the Druun take her. The others would then give their pieces to Raya, stand next to Namaari and be turned to stone. Raya tries to put the gem back together, nothing happens, she places herself between Namaari and the others (Tong, Boun, Little Noi and the Ongis), puts a hand on Tong`s arm and a hand on Namaari`s shoulder as if to form a bridge between the two. (Symbolism!)

Then the dragongem starts working, everyone gets unstoned, the dragons return, Kumandra is united and everyone`s happy.

The end.

Yes, I know. Raya needed to learn how to trust, but Namaari needed to show that she could be trusted.

Wish (2023)

Disney (the company that owns your childhood) was turning 100 years old and decided to give itself a big pat on the back by making an animated movie that would celebrate it`s legacy.

The film received mixed reviews, with praise directed towards the vocal performances, the animation and references to the wider Disney canon, but criticism levelled at the plotting, songs, and screenplay.

People were disappointed in Wish because it was supposed to be a milestone, the movie made to celebrate that the Disney animation studio has been around for 100 years! It just couldn`t live up to the hype. But if you take all the hype and great expectations out of the equation and just view it, not as this BIG thing it was intended to be, but just, as the movie it is, it`s... just OK.

Later when the art book of the movie came out and people saw what could have been, many youtubers decided to do what I have been doing since 2015, and do a little constructive criticism of their own. With so many rewrites of Wish popping up on the internet and my history of playing script doctor, it only seems logical that I too throw my hat in the ring and submit my own Wish rewrite.

So... if I had a fairy godmother who could Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo me back in time to when this movie was written, this is what I would change.

People willingly giving their wishes to Magnifico

It would have been better if Magnifico took peoples wishes from them without their knowledge. It would have made him a better villain. He could take peoples wishes when they are asleep.

Asha

I`d dial down her quirkiness a little. Personalitywise she could be an ambitious overachiever, kinda like Hermoine, with an adorkable side.

Valentino

Does everything he says have to be something comical? I like jokes but not all of them landed. It was like his funniness was mandated. Dial down the number of jokes.

Some of the songs

It`s not that the songs are bad per se, some of them just don`t fit into the scenes where they are used, like "At all cost".

They should either have :

A: Given Julia Michaels more time and let her be more involved in the production. (Howard Ashman was very involved in the making of The Little Mermaid.)

or

B: Hired people experienced in musicals. Maybe the people who wrote the songs for Wicked, Hadestown or Hazbin Hotel?

Magnifico needing a book to be evil

The biggest problem this movie has is that it couldn`t decide if Magnifico should be a redeemable, three dimensional antagonist or a classic Disney Villain, so it did both and the results were underwhelming.

I would have made him a twist villain, but instead of waiting for the third act I would reveal it near the end of the first. He would be a charismatic leader, great at fooling people that he has their best interests at heart, who`s paranoia gets the better of him.

To Starboy or not to Starboy, that is the question.

At first I wasn`t gonna bother with the whole Starboy thing since it`s not really an issue. The movie`s biggest problem lies in how they wrote King Magnifico. However, a while ago I saw a video on youtube by ColeyDoesThings who talked about what the movie could have been if they had gone the Starboy route, and she made some compelling arguments. So for this rewrite I`ve decided to go with the Starboy idea.

Starboy`s personality could be a lot like Aladdin, a little bit like Peter Pan with a pinch of Flynn Rider. A bit of a contrast to Asha. I did not change change Star becase I thought it was necessary, but because I thought it sounded interesting.

I would also make Hal and Bazeema gay and have them kiss eachother in the end.

Plot

Asha prepares to interview for the job of Magnifico's apprentice on the day of her grandfather Sabino's 100th birthday.

When Asha is around, her mother and Saba put on a happy face for her, when she leaves they become a bit apathetic. This is something that many people in Rosas over the age of 18 (who have had their wishes taken) do.

She leads tourists through the town as she sings about what an amazing place it is and what an awesome king they have in "Welcome to Rosas". She rehearses for her job interview with her friends,

There are three wishes that the king refuses to grant:

Wishes about killing people.

Wishes about making someone fall in in love with someone else.

Wishes about bringing people back from the dead.

If you wish to become a magician you`ll have to become the king`s apprentice (and you don`t have to be 18.)

Queen Amaya shows up and takes her to Magnifico. At first it goes a little shaky because she`s nervous but then it goes well and Magnifico thinks she is worthy to be his apprentice.

They sing a duet, but not "At all cost". It is a song about optimism and ambition, about what a great student/mentor team they`ll make. The chorus could go:

Magnifico: "With you as my student!"

Asha: "With you as my guide!"

Both: "Great things will happen with you by my side!"

Something like that.

The interview is over and Asha leaves Magnifico`s study.

She is excited. She gets to work with the king! The most awesome king in the world! She does a dorky little victory dance. Valentino shows up, he snuck into the castle with her. Asha starts chasing him, she doesn`t want him to break something expensive, she really wants this job!

Valentino sneaks in through a door to a big (and probably forbidden) room and knocks down an ancient scroll. Asha picks up the scroll to put it back where it was, then she notices the title: How to remove someone`s wish.

Remove? The king grants wishes, he doesn`t take them!

She tries to convince herself not to read it, it`s not meant for her eyes, it`s classified, but her curiosity gets the better of her. She reads in the scroll that the spell should not be used on people under the age of 18. The individual who has had their wish removed becomes docile and free of aspirations, and in some rare cases, even lethargic (just like Simon). They will feel like something is missing from their life but are not able to put their finger on what.

She refuses to believe this. This can`t be true! Magnifico wouldn`t do something like this! He`s a good king!... Right? There are magical orbs of light floating in the ceiling, she takes a ladder and climbs up so that she can get a better look at them. One of the orbs shows a woman that wishes she could fly, another a woman who wishes to sail the seas, another a man who wishes to climb a muntain, and one of the orbs shows... her Saba! It is true, the king takes peoples wishes from them!

She climbs down, puts the scroll back and leaves the room quietly with Valentino under her arm.

She`s about to leave the castle through the main gate when Magnifico shows up. He tells her that there will be a wish-granting ceremony later that evening and he wants her to be present. Asha is nervous, but not a "OMG! I`m meeting my hero!" kind of nervous, but a "Hope he doesn`t figure out that I went into a forbidden room and saw things I shouldn`t have seen" kind of nervous. He seems not to notice, but at soon as Asha leaves the room we see that he did.

Later that evening there`s a wish-granting ceremony, a woman gets her wish granted, the people cheer for Magnifico and Asha sits there next to the queen, stiff and nervous.

Later that night: Asha tries to tell her family the truth about Magnifico, but they don`t believe her. Distraught, Asha runs away and makes her own wish on a star as she sings "This wish". (Not a bad song, but it could have used better lyrics in some places.)

Starboy appears and surprises Asha who smacks him with a branch. (Meet-cute!)

Magnifico senses Starboy's arrival and sees it as a threat to his power.

Starboy doesn`t really grant wishes per se. He`s only as helpful as giving the means, but it’s up to the wishmaker to put the work in order to have their wish fulfilled.

Starboy's magic brings the forest to life, giving voices to the animals, plants and Valentino. They sing "I`m a star", but with better lyrics. (No "we're all shareholders" or "Get that through your system. Solar!") Asha, Valentino, and Starboy embark on a mission to recover Sabino's wish. She wants to save all the wishes, but if she can only save one she`ll have to focus on Sabino`s.

Tension rises in Rosas, Magnifico makes a public appearence and promises a great reward for any information relating to the strange light phenomenon. This makes Simon react. The residents of Rosas begin questioning his rule for the first time. Magnifico gets uncomfortable, leaves and sings "This is the thanks I get" (But sinister, not upbeat, and no "I let you live here fo free and I don't even charge you rent").

Asha returns Sabino's wish and he is overjoyed to have his memories back and sings "A wish worth making", playing his lute. King Magnifico bursts into the family's home, having been informed by a mole that Asha was responsible for Starboy's arrival. He crushes her mother Sakina's wish as punishment, rendering her overcome with grief. Starboy tries to defend her and is spotted by Magnifico, who vows to capture him. Asha and her family flee with Starboy. Sakina can barely stand after what Magnifico did to her wish, so Starboy uses his magic to give her the strength to walk. Sabino and Sakima hide somewhere safe while Asha goes back to Rosas to free the other wishes.

Later, in Magnifico`s study: Simon enters and feels bad for selling out his friend, King Magnifico tells him that what he did was necessary for the safety of the kingdom and that Asha won`t be hurt. He turns Simon into a knight, not in a public wish-granting ceremony though, but right there in his study.

Later, a brainwashed Simon is walking the streets with the company of other knights, searching for Asha and the rest of her friends. Asha sees him and looks for a place to hide. She finds her friends` hideout, not because of Valentino`s butt, but because of his sense of smell. She rallies the rest of her friends, Queen Amaya shows up and joins them.

Asha and her friends start making a plan.

Later, in Magnifico`s secret lab: King Magnifico has made a staff, Amaya shows up and tells him what Asha and her friends are planning.

Gasp! Queen Amaya is a villain! (Dun dun dunn!)

She and Magnifico sing an evil duet villain song which is kinda similar to "With you by my side".

Asha`s friends infiltrate Magnifico's study to open up the ceiling and free the wishes while Asha plans to distract Magnifico. She and Starboy hides in the woods, she is nervous, Starboy tries to comfort her, so they talk a little. The talking leads to feelings being revealed which leads to singing. They sing "At all costs" and dance a romantic dance, first on the surface of a lake, then high up in the sky. (Thanks to Starboy`s magic.) Starboy gives Asha a magic wand to use as he leaves to help her friends, he then notices that he is getting weaker. Magnifico arrives, he and Asha fights. Magnifico turns out to be Simon disguised with an illusion and he breaks Asha`s wand, Asha finds a way to knock him out using the environment to her advantage.

Her friends almost free the wishes but are betrayed by Queen Amaya. Starboy tries to stop her but she pulls out a dagger and threatens to kill one of Asha`s friends, Magnifico shows up and zaps him with magical chains that he can`t break free from.

Asha returns to the city, is caught by Magnifico, finds Starboy in magical chains and finds out that Queen Amaya was just a mole. Magnifico darkens the sky with clouds so that the people won`t be able to wish on stars.

Asha (to Magnifico): "I believed in you! I thought you were a good king!"

Magnifico: "I`m not a good king. I`m a GREAT king!"

All hope seems lost, Asha starts to sing the reprise to "This wish", her friends and the people of Rosas join her and their singing makes Starboy strong enough to break free from his chains. The breaking of the chains creates a shockwave that knocks Asha, Amaya and Magnifico off the tower. Starboy, still weakened, only has enough strength to save one of them, so he saves Asha.

With Magnifico defeated, his spell powers down as a new day dawns over the kingdom, with the citizens, Asha's mother included, are able to get their wishes back, afterwards, Asha is soon confronted by a regretful Simon, who understands if she doesn`t want to forgive him, but she does as she understands why he did it.

Starboy keeps getting weaker and has to go back, he gives Asha a new wand and the two of them say good bye. She wonders if she`ll ever see him again, he tells her that he`ll be the second star to the right.

With urging from her loved friends, Asha promises to help others earn their wishes as a Fairy Godmother, aiding everyone in making their dreams come true.

Post-credit scene: One year later: Asha is walking to the wishing tree in her fairy godmother outfit. She walks past a grave stone. Sabino is sitting in the tree playing "When you wish upon a star" on his lute. A tear rolls down Asha`s cheek. After Sabino has played the song he disappears as if he was a ghost. We see that the grave stone that Asha walked past earlier was Sabino`s. She wipes away her tear, looks up at the second star to the right, takes out her wand and teleports to some place where she might be needed.

And that`s how I would do it. Not great but hopefully not bad.

I cut "Knowing what I know now" because it was getting a little tight between songs. It would be hard to fit that song, Magnifico and Amaya`s villain song and "At all costs" so close to each other, while still maintaining a good narrative flow.

At first I wasn`t gonna turn Queen Amaya evil because I couldn`t come up with enough evil stuff for her to do (that I could fit into the plot without making it worse). But then I made her a villain because it would make things harder for Asha and her friends, which would make the movie more interesting.

But like I said before, the movie`s biggest problem is not that the Queen wasn`t evil, but that the writers couldn`t pick a lane when deciding if they wanted to make Magnifico a three-dimensional antagonist or a classic Disney Villain.

And now... a Bonus

One more thing about Frozen 2

Turning Kristoff`s Lost in the woods into a cheesy 1980s rock ballad musicvideo

I was gonna have this in my Frozen 2 CC but forgot and didn`t remember until after I published it. Since I don`t wanna go back and edit it I`ll write it here.

This scene is admittedly entertaining and if you don`t care about tone as long as it`s entertaining it`s fine.

But funny songs works better for funny characters and what Kristoff is singing about feels sincere, which clashes with how the song is executed.

The 1980s rock sound: Lose it.

The visuals: Have Kristoff walking around in the woods, seeing things that, to him, looks like Anna: a pile of rocks, a pile of leaves, a cloud in the sky. Stuff like that.

Probably an unpopular opinion.

It is of course very easy for me to write these because I have the luxury of hindsight. And unlike the filmmakers I didn`t have a movie studio full of corporate suits breathing down my neck, focus grouping the movie to death, forcing in unnecessary changes and pressuring me to get it made before a deadline.

Why do I write these?

For several reasons. I`m nitpicky. Sometimes the movies I criticize aren`t bad, I just like my own ideas better. Sometimes the movies I critize are bad. I care about good storytelling and it`s a fun excerize in creativity and script doctoring.

But also because I have a lot of of free time.

---------------------------------------------

Other movies on my Constructive Criticism list that you can look forward to

Supergirl (1984) Jonah Hex (2010) Dragonball evolution The Spirit (2008) The Dark Knight trilogy

And as usual: English is not my first language, so if my writing doesn`t seem to flow naturally, you know why.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 48 – Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree

I will be honest, I read this book because it was nominated for a Hugo award and I have a mildly masochistic personal commitment to read every nominee I can (and so remain at least slightly aware of the genre at large). Otherwise, I’m quite certain I never would have touched it – everything about the pitch and marketing made it seem like something I would hate. I’ll try to be fair and approach the book on its own terms but, well it wasn’t exactly painful I wouldn’t say my initial impression was wrong either.

The book follows Viv, an orcish adventurer in a generic D&D fantasy sort of world, as she decides to retire from the dungeon-delving/monster-slaying game with her last big score – a magical stone that, when buried, is supposed to bring ‘the ring of fortune’ to whatever you do above it. She opens the city’s first and only coffee shop. The book follows her collecting a cast of lovable misfit friends/employees (Calamity the hobgoblin carpenter, Tandri the succubus barista/eventual love interest, Thimble the ratfolk baking savant, a bard whose name I’m blanking on, Amity the dire shop cat/security) as they run the business and develop it into what by complete coincidence will end up looking very familiar to the a cute quirky modern indie coffeeshop. There is theoretically some conflict happening, first with the local mob boss and then with one of Viv’s old adventuring companions, but they both feel pretty perfunctory and like they’re only included out of a sense of obligation.

The actual meat of the book is basically focused on Viv instantly becoming fast friends with all her employees/coworkers and how endearing they are, and also the step-by-step of the coffeeshop's development. First in renovating the property into her vision, then in the branding and marketing, and then the gradual addition of menu items and live music. Through it all Viv and Tandri have a developing romance that (rather appropriately) feels like a coffeeshop AU fanfic where the author decided the slowburn tag meant ‘every other character will just assume they’re already dating by the halfway point but they’ll act like flustered teenagers and refuse to actually discuss their feelings until they kiss on the literal last page’.

So, the book is ‘cozy fantasy’ which as far as I’m aware does basically means ‘no tension slice of life fanfic but with original characters’ (alternatively, ‘2000s ‘cute girls doing cute things’ anime but with a moderately more diverse cast and in sf/f book form’). The only other books in the genre I’ve read are Becky Chambers’ stuff which, while I didn’t particularly love them, I now feel I was being way too harsh on. Those have legitimately impressive worldbuilding and coherent themes and at least gestures at real compelling character arcs and dilemmas. This, well, what you see is what you get? Like, there’s zero false marketing, the entire book is entirely dedicated to hitting the exact broad emotional beats you would expect it to. There’s not really any interest in the world beyond the cafe, it is in fact a plot point that Viv attracts a found family she clicks perfectly with and their relationships are all uniformly positive, and there is exactly one point where she suffers any sort of real reversal – which lasts for about five pages before everyone comes together and rebuilds things even better than ever. There is a wizened gnome whose clearly living time backwards who takes the time to pat Viv on the should and reassure her that everything turns out alright, in about as many words. There's clearly a market for this, and I am not it.

Morality in the book is basically synonymous with niceness. If someone is friendly or at least polite to Viv then even if they seem like an obvious problem in the end they’ll turn out to have their heart in the right place and only want the best – as, for example, the local crime boss proves to be a nice old lady who accepts an order of cinnamon buns every week as ‘protection money’ and donates several shipments of materials to rebuilding the place without any expectation of payment or stake in return. The only two characters in the book who are rude assholes to someone in the cafe are also coincidentally the only real villains there are.

All of this is stuff that on some level I more or less expected opening into the book. The thing that actually disappointed me is that this fluffy book about opening a coffee shop doesn’t actually care about coffee. If you’re going to make it the centrepiece of your whole book, I expect some exultation and appreciation of the stuff! Give me self-indulgent passages going into detail about the smell and taste and smell and experience of it. Make me put down the thing actually craving a latte!

But the book’s mostly interested in the, like, trappings and signifiers associated with a cafe, not (despite Viv’s theoretical obsession with it) the actual coffee. This feels like a point that generalizes. (There actually is a decent amount of detail spent on the baked goods their genius baker invents, which just makes the lack feel stranger.)

As an aside, and I know this is very clearly not a book that expects you to care about the worldbuilding, but it’s kind of strange that coffee is presented as this new exotic novelty to a vaguely European fantasy metropolis that is explicitly already familiar and comfortable with tea? Like obviously the historical analogues aren’t worth getting into – Viv is creating a cute neighberhood coffeehouse by a college campus, no a 17th century Venetian cafe – but it’s not the first place I’ve seen the same portrayal of the two drinks and it’s, odd? Like it’s not like tea is any less foreign to Europe, or arrived particularly earlier.

But anyway, yeah, didn’t enjoy this but can’t say I was misled. It is in fact a book that you can entirely judge by its cover and not be surprised one bit.

[smolmakerel]

Home on the Range

Part(s) 1 . 2 .

■■■■■

Guilty. It's official and everything.

She moved at least 20 steps backwards since graduating from high school a couple months ago. She had scholarships and dreams to move out east, following Mindy and Chad to New York City. She was going to study, funnily enough, law. She probably would've ended up switching her major halfway through the year, but she actually liked what law had to offer.

Well, too late now. She fucked it all up.

And the worst part wasn't even that her friend-girlfriend-person-maybe (she had no idea at this point) walked away scott free. That was a whole thing to think about later when she was alone on the farm. The worst thing was that she found out the farm owner's identity.

10 minutes before showing up.

Sitting grumpy on the couch, Tara glared holes into the wall as a probation officer explained the rules to Mamá and her. Her ankle was weighed down by a bulky strap and box about the size of a deck of cards, blinking green occasionally.

They tagged her like a fucking dog.

“I'll have to go outside to finish my morning chores, but I'll be back by noon, okay Tara?”

Tara scowled at the ground. She knew she looked like a child in timeout, arms crossed and face angry, but she didn't care.

“Whatever…” Tara muttered.

Mamá caught her eye and glared. “Tara, I know you haven't seen your sister in a while, but I'd appreciate it if you cooperated for once.”

Tara scoffed.

The probation officer pulled at his collar at the spike in awkward tension. “The 60-day house arrest begins as soon as that device blinks red in about an hour. After that, a judge will review your case again with my notes of being your probation officer and will either issue more time to your arrest or let you go free. From there, you can apply to get this expunged from your record and, if approved, the information will be wiped clean.”

Tara waited for more, but there wasn't anything else being said. “Wait, that's it?”

“Nice try, kiddo.” Tara rolled her eyes at Sam's voice. She still refuses to look at her, see how much better she's doing compared to Tara. “While we were working things out, I… Tara, can you look at me?”

Tara sneered, stubbornly not looking at her sister.

“Awkward…” the probation officer whispered.

“Look at me, don't look at me - Fine, I don't care. You're not staying cooped up in the house for the entire house arrest.”

Tara snorted. “Then what the hell's the point of it being called house arrest?”

“Tara!” Mamá snapped. Tara flinched a little but mostly held her ground. “Show your sister some… respect.” See, even Mamá doesn't like Sam. Must run in the family since Papi left after something Sam did. “It's only 2 months and then you can come back home. I won't make you into a work horse like your sister.”

“What?” Tara blinked and sat up. She took a quick glance at Sam before averting her gaze. Why was she glaring at Mamá? “What do you mean?”

“You're going to be working on the farm with me. The land's all my property,” Sam explained. “All of this land is my ‘house,’ so to speak, so you'll be working on it.”

Tara couldn't believe this! She got arrested, she's forced to live with her fucking sister on house arrest for 2 months, and she had to work on a farm. How could this day get any worse?

Sam straightened her back and crossed her arms. “And I didn't want her to -”

“Oh, I have to get back to Woodsboro, I have a client I need to meet with,” Mamá interrupted whatever Sam was saying and clapped her hands. She turned and pulled a stiff Sam into a hug, muttering something in her ear.

She couldn't help but scoff to cover up her hurt. So Sam could leave her alone for years with Mamá, break every promise they made to each other, never call to see if she was okay or how she was doing, and destroy their relationship…

But she couldn't help keeping contact with Mamá. Over her.

Did Sam enjoy making her hurt? Did she enjoy the years Tara longed for her sister to come back to her, the years Tara mourned a sister she could never hug or laugh with or love?

And Mamá… she knew. She fucking knew how she knelt at Sam's locked door and begged God to bring her sister back, she couldn't do it without her, she needed her, she loves her -

Tara stood up, and all conversation came to a sudden stop.

She risked a small glance around the room before ducking her eyes again. Her teeth nibbled on the skin of her lips as she struggled to find the words she wanted to say.

“I… need to use the bathroom.”

There was a soft pause where Mamá scoffed and the probation officer awkwardly shifted. Tara kind of felt bad for the guy.

Then, “In the hall, go left and it's the center door.” Huh. So she could be helpful. “I was fixing the sink earlier, so the floor might be a little wet.”

Yeah. Thanks.

Tara turned and rushed to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her to cover up the angry sob that slipped through. Her legs wobbled, so she squatted down then landed on her bottom.

The bathroom swirled in her vision. She struggled to choke down her emotions. She didn't want Sam to hear her, and she especially didn't want Mamá to hear her. Nothing good happened when Mamá heard her crying.

Fumbling, Tara searched for her inhaler. She could faintly hear Sam in the living room and focused on her voice. It was a one time thing, she wouldn't rely on Sam again.

“I really got to go now, Quentin and Homer are waiting for me by the cattle gate.”

“We'll, uh, be monitoring the ankle bracelet 24/7. Keep if charged, don't take it off, don't go swimming or take a bath‐‐can't be submerged.”

“Okay, thanks Officer Bennett.”

“I need to go now. I'll call later.”

Tara leaned her head back on the door. She brought her inhaler up to her lips and pressed down on the button, inhaling with a raspy gasp. She pulled it away and tried to calm herself down; she was working herself up over nothing.

Sam was her sister, but that didn't mean Tara had to reconnect. 60 days was all they had together, it would pass quickly and she could get back to her life.

Not really since she won't be going to New York City with Chad and Mindy in 2 weeks, but she would make it work.

She had to.

There was a knock on the door, Tara jolted at the sudden noise. Her inhaler fell from her hand and clattered on the ground until Tara scooped it up and held it close to her chest.

“Tara?” Sam's voice was hesitant. “Are you alright?”

Tara sighed. “Fine. What do you want?”

Sam's silence droned on for a long few seconds, and Tara pushed back the worry that she sounded too snippy. She didn't mean to. No one liked when she talked back, especially -

(Deep breath. Calm the flames. The fire wasn't your fault.)

“Mom left but I didn't get your suitcase.”

Tara wanted to laugh at that. Shouldn't she know Tara didn't have a suitcase? Her and Mamá were working together to make her miserable, and fuck it was working. A little too good.

“Mamá said she wouldn't pack anything because she bought all my things and didn't think a criminal needed things to sell for drugs.”

Rich coming from her. She's the one who stole Tara's bed to sell for alcohol when she realized she wasn't making enough at the time to fund the house and be an alcoholic. Tara had to sleep on the rug in her room for a few months before eagerly offering to take Mindy's old mattress when she needed a new one.

“... What?” Sam actually sounded pissed off. She was a great actress. Sam sighed. “I might have some old clothes you can wear, but we're going to get you new clothes soon.”

Confused, Tara looked down at the puddle on the ground between her converse.

“I know you haven't seen me and I haven't seen you in a while, and this isn't the most ideal situation for us, but I love you, okay?”

Tara refused to breathe. Her shoulders shook.

“I'll be outside, if you need me you can walk straight until you get to the cattle gate. And we can watch a movie with dinner tonight if you want?”

Tara closed her eyes.

“... Right. Um, I'll just… yeah…”

As Sam left, Tara could hear her angrily muttering to herself.

All the tension drained from her body once Tara heard the screen door shut. She opened her eyes and wiped the wetness on her cheeks.

Amber was right about her. Sam really was a manipulative person.

[fooligandan]

got sent a reaction/review thing to apparently the second attempt of orchard's dunmesh video (first one got taken down) and like. Yeah alright i'll take the L and play this game, i got nothing better to do today

this is literally just the same review again lmfao just without the part about calling anyone who likes anime a pervert. completely just doubling down on everyting

spoiling the ending of the series without warning as a "checkmate, weebs" thing to keep justifying her hatred of some guy who isn't real from a show/medium she clearly hates

still not even a good review, completely misunderstands/misrepresents the whole story. I do NOT know how any of this happened, I think she either is doing this on purpose to be a contrarian (why? no clue. all things considered suggest she actually believes these things?) or else was watching/reading with her eyes closed except for the parts that support hating on laios specifically. CANNOT tell which. Maybe it's both

not directly show critique related but the casual description of rural areas being "backwards" and calling cities "civilized" while ALSO calling detractors/people she just dislikes "inbred hicks"… preddy telling... of what idk but its Telling of something. like what's you're prawblem

^ also really telling is the "autistic people can know how social cues work they just choose to not follow them cuz they think theyre dumb" comment (as a point for why laios is, like, a misanthropic nihilist who doesnt even care about his own sister, or else doesnt show it "correctly". which gets repeated often). what in the ableism is this? ma'am are you ok? what's even happening here anymore? this kinda disturbed me tbh ngl

Terrible, kinda felt like I was being fed sandpaper. Hope to never hear anything from/about orchard ever again if I'm being completely honest. Luckily that's easy peasy lolll

[snitchesnsneeds]

Bethany's Bizarre Miraculous Reviews: The New York Special

New York! New York! It's a Fuck of a town! The Bronx is up but the Battery's down! I was spooked by it when I went there in the summer of 2017-ound! New York! New York! It isn't a town!

(It's a city.)

(Also I heard Alya and Nino did a big no-no here so I'll keep my eyes out.)

Oooh! Big new Fancy Opening!

Good introduction, silly stuff with Mr. Pigeon, New suits that I'll talk more about in season 5, etc.

Green typically represents jealousy, Chat. It's good to see you trying to befriend Ladybug instead of flirting with her, though.

Also good ego. It's hard to balance your ego from experience.

And of course Marinette harshly simps for Adrien when it's a detriment to her. Do the salters live in backwards land or something? Chat Noir isn't perfect but he has more respect for Ladybug's boundaries. He doesn't sniff Ladybug's pillow, and I doubt he would even if he knew where she lived.

Sock puppetry lmao

Chloe, shouldn't you be happy about going to New York? You wanted to move there with the Karen that birthed you.

Get disrespected lmao

I love through that sock-filled monologue Marinette implied Lila wasn't their friend. Then again, considering my belief that more of the class is sus of Lila than Marinette,

Yes! Marinette's actually letting go! Or at the very least trying to! Forget what I said earlier. Baby steps, baby steps.

I'm assuming Ladybug's taking the Horse Miraculous with her again like with Startrain. Also the Kitty toy alarm's so cuute!

Dramatic irony lmao "Do you see a supervillain in the house?"

I'm also glad we're getting Luka and Kagami content, even if they aren't going on the trip.

Adrien's dad is coming! And I think he's afraid of flying!

Oh god. This relationship is an agony of cringe. Also quit encouraging it, Alya. Even Rose seems to be for Marinette changing seats and she's an utter romantic.

He is afraid of flying.

Sleep cute. I love it. And the ships too.

Oh no. Alya, Nino, don't do it. Marinette and Adrien are better off as friends. Don't do what I think you're going to do.

He doesn't look that much like a pirate. Aren't supervillains supposed to have more swag than this? Maybe he's just a villain.

Oh yeah. The Miraculous isn't the only magic (in an abstract literary sense) in this verse. There's also superheroes. And all the other Zagtoon shows.

Adrien and Marinette are made for eachother in the same way water and cesium is.

They're really trying to tell me Sabrina is bi and into some guy she just met? I could probably believe the bi part, actually, but only if she uses her love language: acts of service pushed to the extreme.

The mischevious

They're really trying to act as if Sabrina isn't approx. as evil as Chloe and pushing this relationship with what looks like a background character?

Hot Dog superhero whose hot dogs empower others. This is objectively the best superhero I've seen.

Fuck it. I'll take this. There's Julerose in this slow dancing scene. Look on the bright side of life.

Doors! Doors! Doors! Doors!

Oh. So it's the teenaged American heroes suggesting that. Oh. Alya's more innocent than thought. She's still into it, though.

Why is Uncanny Valley's superhero design so white? And just looks like that in general? Sparrow's is cool and practical, though.

There's the piracy! I was looking for that!

Why did Techno Pirate only steal her third eye? She's 100% technology! Oh. He just couldn't.

Ladybug, quit distracting Chat Noir. He fully did not expect this.

Oh. Chat Noir had time, he was just anxious or something. Yeah. I get it now. Ladybug has the right to be pissed.

So it was an accidental killing. And she was only corroded, not dusted.

What is with these assholes? Technolyzer or whatever his name was the one that forced Chat Noir to cataclysm Uncanny Valley, and yet they're blaming Ladybug and Chat Noir?

Reused sewer model

No, Chat, she would've been fine no matter what. The Miraculous Big Bang undoes death. It undoes erasure from existence.

This feels forced. Too forced.

...Is that her civilian model? And at least someone's getting consequences for trying to force Adrienette.

This is a joke. That sopping wet cat breakup is a joke. Marinette's unfaithfulness is a joke. The superheroes under liberation are jokes. Why is Miracalyzer or whatever his name is making someone want to take people's freedoms away? Oh right. We got this much Julerose content in an absolute joke of a special. Cursed irony.

Alright, the orchestral reprise of Chat Noir's transformation was pretty cool, I'll admit. He's back!

Miracolonizer? Is that his name?

So was Adrien's dad just listening to stuff in his room this whole time?

And was this trip that short?

And all the VAs were dehydrated at the time due to production fuckery and a constrained schedule?

So that's what that fic was talking about. It was a Julerose fic as well. Marinette was dating Luka and Adrien was dating Kagami at the time of this special. No mention of polyamory. They were making her cheat. This is Luka disrespect. This is Kagami disrespect. Alya, what the fuck? Also the other plot stuff was just My Hero Academia again, and I hate My Hero Academia.

Edit: So apparently Adrien was told he's going to New York right as he was leaving. So it wasn't his fault.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

New Brunswickers showed up for the pride community on Saturday, standing together in support of Policy 713 and speaking out against the government’s plan to review it.

“We can’t go backwards. We just can’t,” said Liette Arseneault, a teacher and ally. “This policy is super important for our kids to feel safe, our kids to feel secured and it’s our job as educators to make them feel that way.”

Despite the wet and cold conditions, supporters of all ages gathered outside of Moncton’s city hall for a two-hour rally hosted by River of Pride.

The event saw multiple speakers talk about the importance of having the policy in place and helped highlight the support that 2SLGBTQIA+ students have in the province. [...]

Continue Reading.

Note from the poster @el-shab-hussein: be careful lol, pneumonia's no joke. If your city's raining on pride, take an umbrella (not just a good jacket). If your city's hot on pride, bring water bottles, a hat, and wear sunscreen, sunstroke's no joke either.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[hifithepanda]

Hello! I'm Malcolm (he/him)! This is my sideblog for all of my reviews of my large Steven Taylor media binge. Essentially, I'm on a mission to watch/hear/read every piece of Doctor Who media with Steven in it (he's my favorite companion, if you can't tell). I was originally on instagram (as hi_fi_the_panda) but since I don't really use that platform anymore I decided I'd move all my reviews onto tumblr. I'm not sure how consistent I'll be considering a) I am a uni student and b) I definitely go through phases of being super into Dr Who and completely ignoring it lol.

My main is @lizard-speed and am always free (and more than willing) to talk about Steven, the First Doctor run, or Dr Who in general!

Below the break is my masterdoc of all the Steven media w/ links to all the reviews!

On-Screen Appearances

The Chase

The Time Meddlers

Galaxy 4

The Myth Makers

The Dalek Master Plan

The Massacre

The Ark

The Celestial Toymaker

The Gunfighters

The Savages

Big Finish

Frostfire

Mother Russia

Home Truths (Sara Kingdom Trilogy Pt. 1)

The Drowned World (Sara Kingdom Trilogy Pt. 2)

The Guardian of the Solar System (Sara Kingdom Trilogy Pt. 3)

The Suffering

The Perpetual Bond (Oliver Harper Trilogy Pt. 1)

The Cold Equations (Oliver Harper Trilogy Pt. 2)

The First Wave (Oliver Harper Trilogy Pt. 3)

Tales from the Vault

The Anachronauts

Return of the Rocket Men

Upstairs

The War to End All Wars (Old Steven Trilogy Pt. 1)

The Founding Fathers (Old Steven Trilogy Pt. 2)

The Locked Room (Old Steven Trilogy Pt. 3)

Fields of Terror

Across the Darkened City

The Vardan Invasion of Mirth

The Bounty of Ceres

An Ordinary Life

The Ravelli Conspiracy

The Sontarans

The Dalek Occupation of Winter

An Ideal World

Entanglement

The Crash of the UK-201

Daughter of the Gods

The Secrets of Det-Sen

The Secret History

Etheria

This Sporting Life

Helmstone

O Tannenbaum

Peace in Our Time

Out of the Deep

The Five Companions

The Light at the End

Men of War

Novels

The Myth Makers

The Gunfighters

Galaxy Four

The Savages

The Celestial Toymaker

The Ark

The Massacre

The Time Meddler

The Chase

Mission to the Unknown

The Mutation of Time

The Empire of Glass

Salvation

Bunker Soldiers

Roses

The Golden Door

64 Carlysle Street

Planet of the Bunnoids

The Little Drummer Boy

Ash

Corridors of Power

Scribbles in Chalk

The Schoolboy’s Story

Waiting for Jeremy

Making History

Mars

The Long Step Backward

Snowman in Manhattan

Do You Smell Carrots?

White on White

The Power Supply

Murder in the Dark

Comics

Are You Listening?

Death to the Doctor!

The Forgotten

The Choice

Endgame

[jaelbay]

It’s Gonna Be Okay

After the Blip, he visits her at work. It’s in the middle of an 18 hour shift at Metro-General Hospital. There’s an abundance of accident-related trauma cases. People started reappearing. Everywhere. Sometimes on highways. 

New York City is a mess. Again.

That’s when he arrives. All of a sudden. No announcement, no text, or phone call…

If he even has a phone, she muses. Maybe it’s another trademark of his cult. It doesn't allow for earthly attachments.

Ever since his return in 2017, he seems as immaterial as the ethereal form he takes during his emergency cardiac surgery that he guides her through. 

“Just a little higher,” he had said. A ghostly visage of Stephen floated above his unconscious body collapsed on the gurney. An encirclement of fractured glass drifted about his suspended, spectral clone.  

She remembers shrieking, jumping backwards and landing against an instrument cart with a wide gauge needle and catheter in hand. Christine is grateful that she hadn’t punctured anything. 

His ghostly hand had casually dipped into his chest cavity and the invasive pooled blood in his corporeal, pericardial sac illuminated from behind as if displayed in a museum enclosure. 

Even after he returned to his body, he seemed… Unattached. Enlightened. Metaphysical. All those 1960s, hippy-esque terms she never in a million years thought she would have used to describe Doctor Stephen Vincent Strange. The man who earned his Master’s and Doctorate degrees simultaneously. Who’s eidetic memory found no match. Who broke ground in the neurological field so often that he had attended more speaking engagements, honorary dinners, and earned more awards of recognition than any physician she had ever heard of. 

That same Strange had come stumbling down the hallway in those flowing, fustian, deep cerulean robes with their various, pompous tassels and braided belts that encircled his waist. Hell, there were even tassels swinging from the tops of his knee-high, lace-up, medieval-emulating boots.  His outfit was made more unbelievable because it was him wearing it. Of his own volition.

The Doctor Strange she knew wore Armani suits, wore Jaeger-LeCoultre watches, drove a Lamborghini Huracan.

He had looked like he was ready to stroll into a midsummer Medieval fair. 

Cardiac tamponade aside.  

She finds herself in much the same situation as years prior. She is bent over the nurses station reviewing patient paperwork. Her hand is cramping from all the charts she’s signed off on the latter half of this shift.

“Christine!” His long-deceased, assertive, baritone voice trumpets down the artificial, harshly-lit wing of the ER.

Involuntarily, she gasps. She looks up from her work, sees him, and goes ramrod straight. Her pen goes clattering to the floor and her papers swirl through the air, escaping from the confinement of the clipboard. Her hand flies to her chest to still her racing heart. 

She locks eyes with him as he parades down the hallway. His bright, crystalline blue eyes meet hers and for a handful of tense moments she is convinced that she’s dreaming. It’s not the first time she’s dreamed of him coming back from the dead. 

But, everyone else at the nurses’ station is looking at him too.

Her hands begin trembling and she’s pretty sure the hallway has dropped a couple dozen degrees in the last minute. Goose bumps erupt up her exposed arms in her short-sleeved teal scrubs.

“Christine!” He says again and strides towards her in those ridiculous, lace-up, shin-high boots with their blue tassels. His numerous tassels on his belts swing with every step. His unruly cowlicks dangle limply from his head of dark brown hair and contrast with his pale forehead. The familiar, unchanged patches of gray hair at his temples are groomed back with the rest of his hair. He doesn’t look a day older than when he died in 2018.

There is a deep scarlet line of dried blood caked over his left eyebrow. Another one adorns the edge of his lower lip. Dirt or soot encrusts his cheeks and forehead, suggesting an abrupt impact with the ground. 

His sentient, crimson, billowing cloak rests on his shoulders and undulates through the air from an undetectable breeze. It completes his look of unhurried, relaxed command of the situation. 

But, Christine knows him well enough to recognize the weariness in his gait by the subtle weave of his locomotion. A slight deviation to the right, a mild one to the left. He’s been awake for hours. Maybe longer than she has.

His brows are furrowed, his scrupulous gaze assessing everything. Everything about her, she realizes. His mouth is set in a grim line. He slows as he approached her. “Christine?” A question. 

She knows she is staring. Gawking even. Mouth parted with countless thoughts streaming through her head, but none of them catching purchase long enough to come out of her mouth. All logical thought processes are suspended. Christine is acutely aware of Stephen planting himself a few feet away from her now in all his dramatic regalia and the brightness and whiteness of the hospital taking on a tremulous, bleary appearance before warm wetness on her cheeks informs her that she is crying.  

“Stephen?” Her voice cracks and her throat constricts painfully. She doesn’t remember how she ends up in his arms. But, she does. And his cool, trembling, damaged hands hold her face reverently. The pads of his thumbs gently dash away the tears sliding down her cheeks. She grounds herself by reaching up and grabbing a hold of his arms. His azure, fabric vambraces are rough under her touch.  

This is real. He’s real. He’s alive.

She chuckles humorously, but it comes out as a choking noise through her pinched throat. 

Five years, and now this. Now…

She takes a deep, hitching breath and calms down enough to take in his precipitously broken expression.  His exquisite eyes now have standing tears that refuse to fall. 

Like the private moments after his teacher died on the table. When he reaches over the faucet of their adjoining sinks to still her hands. When he holds her more affectionately and gently than he had ever done so before. When he tells her she was right about there being other ways to save lives. When she was being paged overhead. When he told her he didn’t want her to go. 

“Christine?” He asks. “Are you alright?”

She can’t trust herself not to cry again. So, she only nods.

He studies her and gently shakes his head. “I knew you would be okay. I looked ahead… I had to know. It was selfish of me — but I had to know.”

She frowns. “What are you talking about?” 

He lowers his hands to her shoulders and gently holds her in place. He breathes out a sigh, as if bracing himself for a terrible confession. “The time stone- it let me—”

“Stark said you were dead,” she can’t help but interrupt; can’t abide his lengthy, enigmatic explanations right now. “He announced on the news that you were gone. What the hell? My God, Stephen, it’s been five years! What happened?” She knows people started reappearing hours ago, but she knows he was there. He knows precisely what happened. He always does.

A guilty glance from his eyes tells her he doesn’t want to tell her. “It’s over,” he concludes. “We undid what Thanos did. And—” He swallows, a few tears finally spill over the rim of his lashes. His keen eyes scrutinize her face. “Stark saved us all.” The last word wavers as his expression momentarily crumples. 

Christine is alarmed because this is the most emotional she’s ever seen him. 

“Stephen?” She reaches a hand up to caress his face. He stills and closes his eyes, seeming to relish in the contact. “Are you okay?” She breathes.

He takes a moment before opening his poignant eyes. He nods once. “Yeah,” he says unsteadily with a wistful smile. His bright, moist eyes are hopeful. “It’s all gonna be okay now.” 

[racefortheironthrone]

On your old WOIAF review, you mentioned that the Brindled Men are close to Robert E. Howard's racist ideas about the relationship between humans and apes. Could you elaborate further? Also, what do you think about the theory that the Brindled Men and the Ibbenese are another species of men, like the Neatherthals and the Australoptecus were to us? Or do you think their depictions in WOIAF should be read as not 100% accurate, since the meisters are talking about things so distant from Westeros that they only heard about?

I want to clarify my current thinking, because I find myself a bit unsure as to what the situation is.

It's always difficult to divine a writer's intent, but I think that's particularly true in this case because of two simultaneously true facts: one, GRRM is fascinated by the idea of what if the non-homo sapiens hominids, like the Neanderthals and the Denisovians, were still around. Two, GRRM is a huge fan of the work of Robert E. Howard and that dude had some weird and unusually racist even for the 1920s beliefs about human beings, great apes, and how evolution and species works. (I'm going to leave aside H.P Lovecraft for the moment, because parsing the similarites and differences between their thinking on this when they spent years corresponding with each other about this and many other topics is pretty hard to do.)

To provide a short version of Howard's beliefs: in part because Howard was a white Texan born very close to the "closing of the American frontier," and in part because of how he personally related to America in the 1920s, Howard had this odd combination of beliefs, in which he saw "barbarism" (which he sort of used as a short-hand for both less-developed times, places, and definitely people, including pretty much all non-white people) as savage, unintelligent, driven entirely by base urges, but also honest and vibrant and energetic; similarly, he viewed "civilization" (which again, he used as a short-hand for certain peoples, places, and times that he considered to be the most similar to contemporary white people) as more enlightened, more refined, more intellectual, but also corrupt and decadent.

In Howard's mind, humanity was constantly in a loop of civilization growing ever more refined and decadent until it collapsed back into barbarism due to its own weakness and corruption, at which point it would be replaced by the rising dynamism of the barbarian who had toppled it, who would found a new civilization, and then so on. (Howard was probably borrowing from someone who had borrowed from Ibn Khaldun.)

What made Howard weird, though, is that he thought this could happen at the level of the species: if humanity became too "degenerate," they would literally go backwards and devolve into non-human apes; and vice-versa, apes could ascend and become human (or at least human-like).

You see this trope all over Howard's writings. Here it is in "Tower of the Elephant":

""We saw men grow from the ape and build the shining cities of Valusia, Kamelia, Commoria, and their sisters. We saw them reel before the thrusts of the heathen Atlanteans and Picts and Lemurians. We saw the oceans rise and engulf Atlantis and Lemuria, and the isles of the Picts, and the shining cities of civilization. We saw the survivors of Pictdom and Atlantis build their stone age empires, and go down to ruin, locked in bloody wars. We saw the Picts sink into abysmal savagery, the Atlanteans into apedom again. We saw new savages drift southward in conquering waves from the arctic circle to build a new civilization, with new kingdoms called Nemedia, and Koth, and Aquilonia and their sisters. We saw your people rise under a new name from the jungles of the apes that had been Atlanteans. We saw the descendants of the Lemurians who had survived the cataclysm, rise again through savagery and ride westward, as Hyrkanians. And we saw this race of devils, survivors of the ancient civilization that was before Atlantis sank, come once more into culture and power—this accursed kingdom of Zamora."

Here it is in "Rogues in the House":

“That is Thak,” answered the priest, caressing his temple. “Some would call him an ape, but he is almost as different from a real ape as he is different from a real man. His people dwell far to the east, in the mountains that fringe the eastern frontiers of Zamora. There are not many of them; but, if they are not exterminated, I believe they will become human beings in perhaps a hundred thousand years. They are in the formative stage; they are neither apes, as their remote ancestors were, nor men, as their remote descendants may be. They dwell in the high crags of well-nigh inaccessible mountains, knowing nothing of fire or the making of shelter or garments, or the use of weapons. Yet they have a language of a sort, consisting mainly of grunts and clicks.

“I took Thak when he was a cub, and he learned what I taught him much more swiftly and thoroughly than any true animal could have done. He was at once bodyguard and servant. But I forgot that being partly a man, he could not be submerged into a mere shadow of myself, like a true animal. Apparently his semi-brain retained impressions of hate, resentment, and some sort of bestial ambition of its own."

And here it is again in "Queen of the Black Coast:"

"Cast in the mold of humanity, they were distinctly not men. They were winged and of heroic proportions; not a branch on the mysterious stalk of evolution that culminated in man, but the ripe blossom on an alien tree, separate and apart from that stalk. Aside from their wings, in physical appearance they resembled man only as man in his highest form resembles the great apes. In spiritual, esthetic and intellectual development they were superior to man as man is superior to the gorilla. But when they reared their colossal city, man’s primal ancestors had not yet risen from the slime of the primordial seas.

...Many died who drank of it; and in those who lived, the drinking wrought change, subtle, gradual and grisly. In adapting themselves to the changing conditions, they had sunk far below their original level. But the lethal waters altered them even more horribly, from generation to more bestial generation. They who had been winged gods became pinioned demons, with all that remained of their ancestors’ vast knowledge distorted and perverted and twisted into ghastly paths. As they had risen higher than mankind might dream, so they sank lower than man’s maddest nightmares reach. They died fast, by cannibalism, and horrible feuds fought out in the murk of the midnight jungle. And at last among the lichen-grown ruins of their city only a single shape lurked, a stunted abhorrent perversion of nature."

And here it is in "Shadows in the Moon":

"Out of the shadows of the cliffs moved a monstrous shambling bulk--an anthropomorphic horror, a grotesque travesty of creation.

In general outline it was not unlike a man. But its face, limned in the bright moonlight, was bestial, with close-set ears, flaring nostrils, and a great flabby-lipped mouth in which gleamed white tusk-like fangs. It was covered with shaggy grayish hair, shot with silver which shone in the moonlight, and its great misshapen paws hung nearly to the earth. Its bulk was tremendous; as it stood on its short bowed legs, its bullet-head rose above that of the man who faced it; the sweep of the hairy breast and giant shoulders was breathtaking; the huge arms were like knotted trees.

The moonlight scene swam, to Olivia's sight. This, then, was the end of the trail--for what human being could withstand the fury of that hairy mountain of thews and ferocity? Yet as she stared in wide-eyed horror at the bronzed figure facing the monster, she sensed a kinship in the antagonists that was almost appalling."

So you can see why I get a little nervus when in WOIAF GRRM invents a new group of people in the far-off land of Sothoryos and describes them in terms like this:

"And the native races grow ever more savage and primitive the farther one travels from the coasts.

The Sothoryi are big-boned creatures, massively muscled, with long arms, sloped foreheads, huge square teeth, heavy jaws, and coarse black hair. Their broad, flat noses suggest snouts, and their thick skins are brindled in patterns of brown and white that seem more hoglike than human. Sothoryi women cannot breed with any save their own males; when mated with men from Essos or Westeros, they bring forth only stillbirths, many hideously malformed.

The Sothoryi that dwell closest to the sea have learned to speak the trade talk. The Ghiscari consider them too slow of wit to make good slaves, but they are fierce fighters. Farther south, the trappings of civilization fall away, and the Brindled Men become ever more savage and barbaric. These Sothoryi worship dark gods with obscene rites. Many are cannibals, and more are ghouls; when they cannot feast upon the flesh of foes and strangers, they eat their own dead."

Are these Neanderthals and/or a non-sapiens hominid species, or is GRRM unwisely indulging in a bit of Howard pastiche in a more problematic way than just dropping the city of K'dath or Carcosa on to the map of furthest Essos? It's hard to say. Some of the details - the description of the bones, the long arms, the foreheads, the jaws, the mention of them not being able to cross-breed - suggest a non-sapiens hominid like the Neandethals. But others - the fact that some of them can learn to talk but further into the interior they become more bestial, the mention of "dark gods with obscene rites," the invocation of cannibalism and corpse-eating - feel like Howard pastiche. And then the eponymous skin seems like all GRRM's invention, but it's hardly flattering.

Either way, I think this is an aspect of the world-building that should have been edited out. I don't really see the benefits being worth the potential downsides.