#apparently some of you are actually using my fictional crimes as blueprints for your real crimes?

[levyfiles]

How do you personally think Ricky Goldsworth would kill people? And who would be kill? I'm writing a fic right now and I'm hella uncreative.

Hmm I think serial killer fiction is remarkably easy especially with a blueprint like Ricky Goldsworth as a profile to work with because his origins are so vague so I think you could literally go anywhere with it.

I've personally never been one for murderer!Ricky if only because he's sometimes touted as a sleeping alter in Ryan's mind and the whole killer or deranged person with DID concept is pretty tired in my book. Having said that, if I were ever gonna deep dive into a universe where Ryan is a killer, he'd be fully awake to his actions while projecting a personification to his worst acts. His killsona, for lack of a better word, is Ricky. And Ricky takes all of Ryan's insecurities and despair and funnels it into action and performance. 

I don’t know if I’ve made this apparent in the past but I am a die-hard fan of Hannibal as depicted by Bryan Fuller and all tropes therein so I love the concept of murder tableaus and messages sent through victimology and frescos painted with the blood of those who fall victim~ so anyway murder tw, violence tw, dark themes, serial killer profile fodder, stuff you'd hear in a true crime story. If that's not your thing then scroll on. Murder is wrong. Real life serial killers are dumb; all that.

Oh but Ricky is all pomp and pleasure. The kill itself is not the show, that's the editing process. The show is the final cut; the way his victim is found. And they'll always be found of course. Firstly, he’s doing it for attention because he sees himself like a rockstar. Every finished product is like a music video, themes matching the notes and the words in the lyrics are just straight up and endless refrain of Look At Me. That’s literally his whole profile. Every kill is a vanity project so his targets are people who he feels think they're better than him. The wealthy, the award holders, and those of entitlement tend to set him off. He takes them down a peg and humiliates them in death. So there isn't a consistent weapon or a particular style which has made him hard to catch because his victimology is only consistent if someone can make the connection but the mess he leaves behind is always very intricately arranged to look like chaos. So for example what looks like a burn victim at first glance is really a man suffocated to death and his body is basically marinated in wet ashes which, if they chose to send it to be identified, forensics would find traces of the cotton and linen chemical compound only found in the mixture exclusively found in US currency. 

Basically his kills are a thing of nightmares because while he doesn’t impulse kill, his murders are fueled by outrage and hurt and he wants someone to notice but not know it’s him unless he reveals himself. So he drops clues so only the really observant could know the story he’s telling with his kills, the thesis as it were, of his absolute worldview like a bloody chart. Barring that, he leaves nothing of himself so whoever comes to understand what he’s doing for his little corner of the universe, will get that he only wants them to look. It’s for attention and sometimes a car crash looks bigger than someone locked in a room of carbon monoxide so he’ll compromise. What I’m generally selling about the idea of Ricky is that every kill has to look like an art installation so everything in the room is meant to be part of his tableau. 

So who’s really gonna know what he’s saying with his kills. When we write messages, we know who it’s for; we have an image of the recipient so it only goes to show that Ricky knows who will understand. Not concretely who as in the actual person but more in the sense that when that person starts to put the pieces of his abstract symphony of narcissistic deviance together and says to the experts “that’s the kind of person who would do this,” Ricky feels he would know them and very much want them to keep looking. I mean once you find your demographic, you aim to keep and attract a fan. That’s what rockstars do. 

Honestly that could be anyone. A detective? Maybe a true crime enthusiast with a irreverent blog/youtube channel. You could go anywhere with that. Hope this helps, nonnyb; and feel free to shoot a link to what you end up writing. I’m not writing Ricky the killer anytime soon so I’m curious to see if anyone would take some of these messy headcanons and run.

[robininthelabyrinth]

A Winter’s Tale - 3 - Ao3 link

Fandom: Flash, Legends Pairing: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart

Summary: Mick Rory is on a mission to save his family, and if it means kidnapping Mayor Leonard Snart, so be it.

Though he’s not expecting it to go like this.

(Dragons and Faeries and Metas - oh my!)

A/N: For the coldwave winter week, run by @coldwaveevents

Chapter 3: Inside Mick’s Novel + Mobsters / Crime Noir (+ Mistletoe)

———————————————————————————————–

"I can't believe the car flies," Snart says, peering out the window over the canyon they’re soaring over.

"It opens dimensional portals," Mick points out. "And you're impressed that it flies?"

Snart shrugs, continuing to inspect the car. "Yeah," he says after a while. "I don't know shit about dimensional breaches. But I know a bit about aerodynamics, and this car ain't got shit."

"You're thinking too small, Snart," Mick says. "This is a world with magic."

Snart looks skeptical.

He's...not wrong.

“I think part of the problem,” Snart says thoughtfully, “is that I can’t really imagine anyone bothering to put in all the work and risk all the danger you’re always telling me about magic to enchant an old convertible Honda Civic.”

“Hey, it’s the best type of car!”

“No. It ain’t.”

“…it’s a decent type of car.”

Snart snorts. "Still no."

“I have good memories of this type of car.”

“I’ll allow that,” Snart says. “How’d you get her?”

Mick pauses.

“Oh, now I’m going to press,” Snart says. “Any time you pause, it’s you hoping you can lie to me or evade the subject, and it never works. Just tell me now.”

Mick makes a face at him.

“Soulmates,” Snart reminds him. “I won’t mock you. Much.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Really! At most I’ll just tease you about it on every anniversary we have for the next twenty years. At most.”

Twenty years of anniversaries.

That…doesn’t sound too bad.

Mick kinda likes the idea of this guy sticking around for twenty years.

“Well,” Snart muses, “I’ll either tease you about it or about the fact that you wouldn’t tell me about it…”

Mick rolls his eyes. "Okay, remember what I said about using my Sight to find the Book of Brigid?"

"Given that you said it only about twenty minutes ago, and I ain’t a goldfish? Yeah, I remember. What is that? The Book? Some magic thing?"

"You could say that."

"You wanna say more than that?"

Mick winces. "It's a magic book that incarnates stuff that you write in it."

Snart is quiet for a long moment.

Mick braces himself. The Book of Brigid may not be as infamous in Snart’s world as it is here, but Snart’s an intelligent guy – and perhaps more importantly, a guy – and there’s only one place his brain’s gonna jump.

"So," Snart drawls, his eyes delighted, "if you were to write porn -"

Yep. There he goes.

“It requires creativity to function! You can’t just write a list of instructions or something. It’s got to be artistic.”

“So, what, you wrote erotica?”

"I wrote a romance," Mick says with dignity he totally doesn’t have. "Science fiction. Garima was the Queen of an alien planet and had samurai fighting powers."

"Samurai don't have powers."

"On your world, maybe."

Snart considers that, then shrugs in acceptance. "Alien, huh," he says. "If I promise not to judge, would you tell me if she had any, uh, special -"

"Three tits."

Snart presses his lips together.

"You said you wouldn't judge!"

"I said if. But as it happens, I can't blame you for giving a book like that a shot, and at least you did something interesting with it. Three tits is a good start. I’d be more disappointed if you’d just gone for something totally vanilla, like a secretary willing to bang you or something."

"S'not like the stuff the book creates lasts," Mick says, still embarrassed. Though at least Snart likes his creativity – that’s a positive sign. "Otherwise I would've just written me some loot or something."

Snart smirks. "Do I get a turn with the book?"

"Depends. You a creative type? Writer, artist, playwright..?"

Snart frowns. "I'm...really good at drawing blueprints?"

“Not quite what I meant,” Mick says, rolling his eyes. "But hey, if I ever need a temporary house built, I'm coming to you."

"I'm better at banks. Anyway, what's the point of building a house that doesn't last?"

"Dunno. Trap?"

"Hmm. Not a bad idea. So what's this book got to do with your flying, universe-hopping car...wait. No."

Mick grins. "Yep."

"You didn't."

"I did," Mick confirms, reaching out to pat the dashboard of his wonderful flying car fondly. "Meet Garima, in her newest incarnation."

The car purrs at him.

Snart bursts out laughing.

Mick can't really blame him.

"We're -" Snart chokes. "You telling me we're inside -"

He loses it again.

Mick smirks.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," he says, unable to keep from smiling at Snart's irrepressible mirth. "You won't be laughing when we're dealing with dragons."

"If I can deal with a real life Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - emphasis on the bang bang, if you get my drift -"

Okay, that's enough to get Mick to start laughing, too.

"- then I think I can handle some measly dragons!"

"You'll need to stop sniggering if we're gonna make it in," Mick warns.

"I'll sober up in time to help us sneak in," Snart says, wiping his eyes. "I promise."

Actually, getting into the dragon meeting-hall is the easy part.

Even with Snart stopping to stare in awe at the dragons every five seconds. Not that Mick can blame him: dragons are majestic beings, with bodies the size of a moose and then wings and tails besides. Some of them even breathe fire.

They're also remarkably indifferent to humans wandering through their halls, but Mick's pretty sure that's only because they're a bit iffy on telling humans apart and don't want to accuse one of their own servants of being an intruder.

Dragons hate being embarrassed.

Unfortunately, that also means that they won't take being the victim of a theft lightly, so they're going to have to be careful, cautious, and -

"Are you staring again?" Mick hisses. "Snart, the dragons haven't changed! Get your head together and start planning!"

"I will, I will," Snart says. His voice is oddly strangled - more like he's trying not to laugh than the wonder that he'd had at first. "It ain't that. It's just - are - do dragons always talk like that?"

Mick frowns. He hadn't noticed anything unusual - the dragons, talking amongst themselves, just sounded like dragons always did. "Talk like what?"

"You know."

"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking, would I?"

Snart waves his hands as if that'll explain everything. "Like," he hesitates. "Well, like they've just escaped a Gotham gangster movie."

Mick scowls at him. "None of those words made sense."

"I don't know how else to explain it," Snart says defensively. "It's like they stepped out of the 30s or whatever. Prohibition-era, rum-running, gangster molls, the whole lot of 'em..."

"Snart. Not helping."

Snart sighs. "Yeah, I can tell. Does the accent at least match your Gotham?"

"...what's Gotham?"

Snart's eyes go wide. "Oh. Oh. This is your Gotham, ain't it?"

"You're talking nonsense."

"No, this is great," Snart says. "It makes no sense, but if it's true...tell me, is there a particularly wealthy dragon -"

"They're dragons. They sleep on gold and complain of poverty while they do it."

"Well, maybe gold isn't a valuable measure of currency for them," Snart says dismissively, like it hadn't taken humans an unreasonable number of generations to puzzle that out. "But I mean - especially wealthy, even among dragons. Indulge me; I'm testing out a theory."

"There's a few," Mick says. He has no idea where Snart is going with this. "Among the entirety of dragonkind? Or just local?"

"Local."

Mick thinks about it. "Uh," he says. "One by the name of Wayne, I guess?"

"I knew it!"

"Shhh!"

Snart shuts up and they continue walking through the hallways. The dragons might be oblivious, but they're not stupid.

"Why do you care, anyway?" Mick asks. "Wayne's a ditz, even for a dragon. Inherited his hoard from his parents."

Snart's eyes are bright with amusement. "I suppose that depends on whether this place has a bat problem."

"A what? No, wait, shit -"

It's too late. One of the dragons walking by has, for some reason, started to turn towards them - a fairly involved endeavor, but one that didn't take as much time as Mick would've preferred.

"What do you know about bats?" the dragon - a female, from the tone of her high-pitched, nasal voice, though who is Mick to know how dragons do gender? - asks. "You got something to say?"

"Depends," Snart drawls, his own voice suddenly gone nasal as well. "You got a name, doll?"

The dragon -

Giggles.

What in the name of fuck...?

"You're funny," she says. "I'm Harley."

Snart puts a hand to his chest. "Not Harley Quinn? I'm honored."

The dragon blinks. "You've heard of me?"

Now it's Mick's turn to blink. How could Snart've heard of the name of a dragon in a totally different universe?

"Oh, sure," Snart says. "Tough as nails and twice as funny, just like a harlequin play...you with Ivy now?"

Now the dragon really looks shocked. "You know Ivy?"

"I'm in the know."

"Clearly! Who youse got squealing to ya, anyway? Tell me!"

"Oh, you get to know all sorts of people and find out all sorts of interesting things in my line of work," Snart says vaguely. "Pass along a kiss under the mistletoe to Ivy, will you? Courtesy of my employer."

"Your employer. Ooooooh, you gotta tell me!”

"I ain't saying nothing," Snart says. "But if a wink'll do you -" He taps the side of his nose for some reason. "- then you might think of someone cold and squawky."

"Oswald!" the dragon - Harley, apparently? - squeals. "Oh, that's rich. What's he want?"

"Dunno," Snart says. "Something about some sorta spear or shit? Heavily guarded."

"The Spear of Destiny? Why's he want that?"

"New centerpiece?"

The dragon snorts fire when she laughs. "For the Iceberg Club? He would! Alright, c'mon, let's go get it for ya. If Ozzie wants to ask for trouble, he's welcome to it - Bats can handle retrieval, and we’ll all laugh it up."

"You're the best," Snart says, very sincerely.

Mick checks - for about the fifth time - to make absolutely sure the guy's a human.

They're walking out with the spear less than twenty minutes later.

"Snart," Mick says, then stops. Where does he even start?

"Gotham," Snart says with satisfaction, as if that means anything. "I'm a Central City boy born and bred, but every criminal knows the basic rules of play for Gotham."

"What is Gotham?" Mick demands.

"In my world? A city. A corrupt, stinking cesspit of a city, where everyone who ain't a supervillain knows what's what and those that are? Well, they’re are crazier than a crapload of cuckoos, and I’m pretty sure it’s just intentional blindness."

Mick shakes his head. "You're telling me you know the human equivalent of all those dragons?"

"Yup."

“…they really must be crazy.”

“No kidding.”

"Still…you were able to manipulate 'em all based on just what you knew about their personalities in your universe? How'd you know they’d still be the same? Especially since they’re dragons here!"

"Lucky guess."

Mick's eyebrows arch. He's not using his Sight right now, but the frequency of Snart's "lucky" guesses is starting to become a bit suspicious.

He opens his mouth to ask when Snart's own eyebrows suddenly go up.

"I suggest we hurry without looking like we're hurrying," he says.

"Why?" Mick asks, subtly speeding up already.

"See that dragon?" Snart asks, nodding at a short but unusually rotund dragon waddling towards the main hall with a small entourage of dragons and humans trailing behind him. "If I had to guess just based on looks, that's probably this world’s Oswald."

"...the guy you said sent us to get the spear?"

"Yeah. And Harley's gonna ask him about it when she sees him."

"And then she'll get embarrassed and swear vengeance on us. Great."

"Harley Quinn doesn't get embarrassed," Snart says. "She finds things funny. But, uh, just in case -"

"Race you to the car?"

"Right."

[trentteti]

And Now, THE Greatest Lawyer Movie of All Time

Settle in. When I set out on this project almost a year ago, I had many questions: What are the greatest lawyer movies ever? What makes a great lawyer movie great? And how long would Blueprint actually let me keep this up?

Since then, I’ve watched 24 lawyer movies, most of them from the ABA’s Top 25 list. Below, I have attempted to summarize my findings and reflections. I hope they serve as a basis for further research in the burgeoning field of lawyer movie scholarship.

Movies Reviewed

12 Angry Men And Justice for All The Paper Chase Compulsion Inherit the Wind Reversal of Fortune The Lincoln Lawyer Anatomy of a Murder A Civil Action A Time to Kill My Cousin Vinny Denial The Verdict Presumed Innocent Judgment at Nuremberg In the Name of the Father Philadelphia Miracle on 34th Street A Few Good Men To Kill A Mockingbird Erin Brockovich Kramer vs. Kramer Amistad Breaker Morant

The 10 Greatest Lawyer Movies of All Time 10) Anatomy of a Murder – “Anatomy of a Murder” might be the definitive courtroom procedural. It’s recreates a case with little social or judicial significance, no clear good guys or bad guys, and not much in the way of personal stakes. But a murder trial is inherently compelling, and by sticking to the facts, director Otto Preminger achieves an unusual level of authenticity. The movie revels in ambiguities: in the interpretation of evidence, in the definition of responsibility, and in the moral obligations of a criminal defender whose client is probably guilty. [Review]

9) Breaker Morant – Despite its historical inaccuracies and one-sided take on the prosecution of war crimes, there’s no denying the effectiveness of “Breaker Morant” as a legal drama and political myth. It tells the story of three Australians in the Queen’s army on trial for killing civilians during the Second Boer War. It’s easy to judge these soldiers from the safe confines of a courtroom, but the reality of war is messy. Sometimes, legal responsibility doesn’t have much to do with moral responsibility: the tribunal punishes those at the bottom of the hierarchy, who had the least freedom over their actions, and gives cover to the decision-makers at the top. [Review]

8) Philadelphia – Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington lead this legal drama about a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his former employer, a prestigious Philadelphia law firm, for wrongful termination following the revelation of his diagnosis. The movie is a shameless tearjerker, but there’s much to admire about its spirit. It holds up the courts as a place where citizens can go to appeal to the better angels of our nature and ask that their humanity be recognized. [Review]

7) The Verdict – “The Verdict” is the archetypal lawyer redemption story. An alcoholic ambulance chaser has a case fall on his lap that reminds him what lawyers at their best can do: fight to give people half a chance at justice, at least some of the time. Paul Newman’s famous closing statement exemplifies the movie as a whole: it’s unflashy, sincere, pleading. [Review]

6) The Paper Chase – Prospective 1Ls be warned: law school is apparently very hard. Maybe there should be more law school-set psychodramas, because it turns out to be surprisingly satisfying to watch students in “The Paper Chase” cower before Professor Kingsman, a notorious Contracts teacher and terrifying executor of the Socratic Method. His questioning is as dramatic as any line of cross examination. [Review]

5) A Civil Action – The true-story case at the center of “A Civil Action” is a remarkable one: in the mid-1980s, a hot-shot personal injury lawyer proved that a leukemia cluster in a small Massachusetts town had been caused by illegal chemical dumping, and he went bankrupt in the process. “A Civil Action” is a rousing legal drama that gives a fascinating look at the high-stakes poker game of civil litigation. [Review]

4) In the Name of the Father – In theory, the courtroom is a place where citizens meet as equals and reason and the truth win out. In practice, it’s a place where the concentrated power of the state can come crashing down on your head, universal rights of man be damned. The trial in “In the Name of the Father” is not a forum for weighing evidence – there isn’t any evidence. It’s political theater, a scapegoating ritual meant to comfort one population with the illusion of security and terrorize another with a display of arbitrary cruelty. Starring Daniel Day Lewis and Pete Postlethwaite, it is a powerful, tragic film. [Review]

3) Judgment at Nuremberg – Stanley Kramer’s film is a fictionalized retelling of the “Judge’s Trial,” in which a group of German judges were tried for colluding with the Third Reich. While many lawyer movies explore the themes of judgment and guilt, none does so with more depth and seriousness than “Judgment at Nuremberg.” It’s a film that turns our judgment inward, asking us to take a hard look at our own capacity for good and evil and the moral standards to which we hold ourselves. It shows the legal system attempting to do the same: as judges are brought before the court for judgment, the system itself is put on trial, and its relationship to justice is questioned in the wake of unconscionable crimes. [Review]

2) 12 Angry Men – While most lawyer movies focus on the dramatics of trial, “12 Angry Men” goes where the real action is – the jury room – and explores epistemological questions at the heart of our legal system: What can we really know? What constitutes a “reasonable doubt” when a person’s life is on the line? Uncertainty can be maddening, and the tension in the room builds over the course of the movie’s runtime to become almost unbearable. And yet, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about the case; it’s one story out of a thousand on a hot New York day. [Review]

1) My Cousin Vinny – I could have saved myself a lot of time and declared this the winner at the outset, but I had to do my due diligence. In the end, it just wasn’t possible to top “My Cousin Vinny,” which is not only a perfect movie, but also a quintessential lawyer movie. Joe Pesci stars as Vinny Gambino (aka Jerry Callo), a New York lawyer trying his first case – a capital murder trial – in the deep south. The movie offers a unique and hilarious perspective on lawyering as the art of quibbling. [Review]

Honorable Mentions

To Kill A Mockingbird Erin Brockovich Kramer vs. Kramer Amistad

Notable Lawyer Movies Not Reviewed What can I say? There are a lot of lawyer movies, and I’m just one man. I didn’t get a chance to watch every viable contender. Here are a some notable lawyer movies that were not considered:

The Accused Adam’s Rib A Man for All Seasons The Caine Mutiny Chicago Class Action Conviction The Crucible A Cry in the Dark The Devil’s Advocate Devil’s Knot The Firm Fracture Ghosts of Mississippi The Hurricane In Cold Blood The Insider Intolerable Cruelty Jagged Edge JFK The Judge Legally Blonde (my bad) Liar Liar Michael Clayton North Country The Paradine Case Paths of Glory The Pelican Brief The People vs. Larry Flynt Primal Fear Rashomon The Rainmaker Runaway Jury The Social Network Stir Crazy The Young Philadelphians Witness for the Prosecution Young Mr. Lincoln

For more breakdowns of the best of the field, check out the fine lists put together by Above the Law, Inside Counsel, and the American Film Institute.

Conclusions The purpose of this project – nay, journey – has been not only to identify the greatest lawyer movies of all time, but also to better understand what makes lawyer movies distinct and valuable. Below are common themes and tropes I noticed, along with some personal reflections.

Common Themes

Legal Justice v. Moral Justice: Even on its best day, the legal system is just an approximation of justice; there’s an inherent gap between what’s right and what’s legal. Lawyer movies like “…And Justice for All,” “A Time to Kill,” and “Amistad” are all about this gap. The tension between intuitive, emotional morality and the big-picture, impersonal rule of law is perhaps the most common and unifying theme of the subgenre.

David v. Goliath (aka Justice is blind): Equality before the law is an ideal enshrined in the 14th Amendment and further sanctified in Hollywood Court, where the law is so powerful a tool that it can be used by the powerless to bring down tyrants and unravel maleficent conspiracies. Hence the abundance of lawyer movies about a little guy daring to take a giant to trial. See, e.g.: “Erin Brockovich,” “Philadelphia.”

Judgment: The essence of a trial is judgment. So lawyer movies naturally raise a lot of complex questions about responsibility, complicity, and innocence. What should we make of the ugly things that we humans do? Should we forgive each other, and by extension, ourselves? Or should we demand better, and hold in righteous contempt anyone who betrays the our shared principles? Movies like “Compulsion,” “Judgment at Nuremberg,” and “A Few Good Men” offer tentative answers.

Redemption: In movies about the day-to-day grind of being a lawyer, the theme of moral redemption is prevalent (although you could probably say the same of Hollywood films in general). Lawyers can represent our loftiest ideals, but they can also be money-hungry bullshit artists. A profession that spans such a moral range is perfect for stories of rebirth (see “A Civil Action,” “The Verdict”). Thus the lawyer movie myth of the down-and-out advocate who gets One Good Case and finally has a chance to do something that matters.

Common Tropes In my reviews, I’ve often referred to the website tvtropes.com, a wikipedia of the formulas and cliches found in literature, TV, and film. It’s an amazing rabbit hole of a resource, and it helped me identify the following as common tropes associated with the lawyer movie subgenre:

The Ace The Ambulance Chaser Amoral Attorney Armor-Piercing Question Army of Lawyers Asshole Victim Break Them by Talking Common Nonsense Jury Conviction by Contradiction Courtroom Antic Crusading Lawyer David vs. Goliath Disregard that Statement Good Lawyers, Good Clients Grey and Gray Morality Ham to Ham Combat Hello, Attorney! Hollywood Law Insanity Defense The Judge Kangaroo Court The Killer Was Left-Handed Miscarriage of Justice Mistaken Confession Omnidisciplinary Lawyer Penultimate Outburst The Perry Mason Method Redemption Quest Rogue Juror Simple Country Lawyer Stock Legal Phrases Surprise Witness That Was Objectionable

For more lawyer movie tropes, check out The Courtroom Index and the entries on Artistic License – Law and the Law Procedural. [Warning, this website is very addictive.]

Personal Reflections A trial is a natural subject for film. This is somewhat obvious, but watching 24 lawyer movies really drove home for me how much sense the courtroom makes as a setting for a movie. I can think of three main reasons.

One, trials are naturally theatrical. They’re showcases staged for the jury; contests with clear-cut adversaries, rules, and stakes; operations with built-in beginnings, middles, and ends.

Two, trials are both intensely personal (lives are at stake) and highly impersonal (precedents and principles are also at stake). The best drama tends to be similarly split. It’s both specific and universal, telling stories rooted in people’s individuality but connecting to some bigger picture. Most court cases that become lawyer movies have this dynamic built in.

Three, the law intersects with various other subjects that make for great screenplays: government and politics, crime and violence, police investigations, the prison system, and the fog of war, to name a few.

Which is all to say: it’s no wonder that people are still telling legal stories 2,500 years after Aeschylus invented the genre with “The Eumenides.”

Movies are a great and terrible way to learn about the law. A number of movies I watched opened my eyes to aspects of the legal system that I was unfamiliar with. And since the law affects each of us so profoundly, there’s a ton of value to movies that inform mass audiences about how the system works. “Anatomy of a Murder” and “A Civil Action” are good examples of lawyer movies that are both accurate and insightful. On the other hand, too many lawyer movies are set in the world of Hollywood Law. They distort and glamorize the practice of law and contribute to our collective ignorance. A little embellishment is understandable – real lawyering can be pretty boring, I hear – but it’s a problem when lawyer movies perpetuate gross misconceptions. Take, for example, the “CSI Effect“: some argue that jurors have started having unrealistic expectations about forensic evidence thanks to the lawyer movies and TV they watch, and this might be improperly influencing their willingness to convict.

A lot of lawyer movies age badly. I found a surprising number of movies to be uncomfortably dated, especially with respect to gender and race. Movies like “The Paper Chase” (1973), “Kramer vs. Kramer” (1979), “Presumed Innocent” (1990), “A Time to Kill” (1996), and “Amistad” (1997) all offended my modern sensibilities in subtle and obvious ways. I don’t think this has anything to do with legal subgenre in particular, but watching so many old movies reminded me how much culture has changed over the past few decades. Signs of progress, I suppose.

Filmmakers need to get clear on “vs.” versus “v.” Why are “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” which are both about court cases, going with “vs.” while “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” about a 10-minute misunderstanding between two superheroes, uses the legalistic “v.”? A special prosecutor and/or congressional investigation is needed.

Lawyer movies are great. I thought I’d be sick of them by now, but I’m not. While this particular investigation has come to a close, I plan to keep watching lawyer movies whenever I can find them. Who knows? Maybe someday one will impress me so much that it will make me reconsider my pick for the Greatest Lawyer Movie of All Time. But I kind of doubt it.

Honestly, how could any movie lawyer be better than this guy?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9AqbDtSFNU[/youtube]

And Now, THE Greatest Lawyer Movie of All Time was originally published on LSAT Blog

[soyosauce]

Living Under Glass In Implanted

The data stored in her blood can save a city on the brink… or destroy it, in this gripping cyberpunk thriller. When college student Emery Driscoll is blackmailed into being a courier for a clandestine organisation, she’s cut off from the neural implant community which binds the domed city of New Worth together. Her new masters exploit her rare condition which allows her to carry encoded data in her blood, and train her to transport secrets throughout the troubled city. New Worth is on the brink of Emergence – freedom from the dome – but not everyone wants to leave. Then a data drop goes bad, and Emery is caught between factions: those who want her blood, and those who just want her dead.

Within a techno-thriller-like framework Implanted’s author, Lauren C. Teffeau, weaves solarpunk and cyberpunk themes into a rich setting. New Worth is structurally crafted to evoke a sense of the outside world after radical climate effects have occurred. The stratification of class is literalized, with the rich living high up, enjoying the sun and the best goods the city has to offer. The poor live in all but darkness and have society geared against them in that there’s more crime and the cleaning robots don’t come around that much in the lower levels, etc.. The layout of the entire city is meant to feel like a vertical urban sprawl with only the aesthetic or veneer of a green space, a neat take on an urban jungle.

Emery comes from the terrestrial district down below, with her parents working her ass off to get her in school and land a job that’ll eventually enable them to move up. She’s short, she’s brown, and she’s completely bought into the status quo. Almost. It’s immediately clear early on that she’s a trauma survivor who goes to a virtual reality arcade to hone her skills. A particular skill set that she uses to claw back some control or agency in her life by hunting down people who prey on marginalized people, usually women; removing their implants and selling them.

In her personal life, she’s closed off and secretive, slow to trust—focusing on her coming graduation and landing a decent, but boring job to help her family move up, literally! Of course, this isn’t to be. A corporation blackmails her into joining their ranks, cut her off from everyone, even faking her death, and trains her to be a courier. Porting important information around in her blood, co-opting her very body for their own agency.

Importantly, she was close to fully synching with Rik, a person she plays the arcades with but has never actually met.

Implants are the heart of the high tech in this cyberpunk fiction. Everyone has one and it’s installed fairly early on, else they lose some of the higher functionality, apparently. It allows people to sync with one another, sharing their emotions and thoughts so long as they’re connected. All of society is built on this technology. Citizens’ identities and the way they interact is completely changed by their implants. Social structure and corporate structure is built on the idea that everyone has one. Except… not everybody does. The Disconnects are people who reject this idea, unwilling to trade their freedom and natural human interactions for a device that essentially keeps the populace under the city’s thumb. All the information that is disseminated from them is outright trusted. People no longer trust their own senses, they trust the information being fed them. Social interactions have gone “Online” even more, essentially.

Joining Aventine, the corporation that has blackmailed her, eradicated the one connection she was building toward having despite her trauma. It’s the ultimate way of letting someone into your life, as their presence would always be there with you.

Fast forward months later and a job goes wrong. The information she’s carrying turns out to be important enough that both the corps and the disconnects are after her and she has to risk finding and asking for Rik’s help, who thought her dead.

What ensues is a fairly typical technothriller structure. The slow lead up filled with infodumps and personal stakes followed by action as she has to use her knowledge of the city to navigate her way to any sense of freedom. It’s a cyclical and satisfying narrative that doesn’t feel bloated but does take a while to get going. Luckily, the whole thing is a fast read so it’s not a big deal.

There are some more interesting aspects to the story though, deviating from cyberpunk and the techno-thriller formula. The underlying feminism to the fiction was always nice, even if it made Rik kind of annoying sometimes. The agency of the story is always with Emery, which means when she screws up it’s on her; just as the bulk of the decisions are her own. Rik is a well-off white guy in the higher levels who is a fairly good blueprint for a good supporting character. He sympathizes with the disconnects and acts of as a lens to fill Emery in on the details of the New Worth she herself is unaware of. It works well. But he’s still a little wrapped up in his own privilege in the story, in my opinion. Which, I think is how it is meant to be.

The story is all from Emery’s perspective. Usually, I don’t end up liking something written in this way but it’s pulled off nicely here. Emery is likable and well fleshed out and her voice, while very casual (the only meh part of it for me), ultimately culminates in good character work. There is less prose but the themes are worked in such that there’s a decent amount of emotional payout because of the perspective.

It’s also somewhat subversive. It’s less frenetic than traditional cyberpunk, which usually has new terminology and infodumps that take place during action that doesn’t relent much. This is decidedly more low-key, making it also more accessible.

It also feels solarpunk in that it’s not entirely nihilistic regarding technology or the future, in general, despite the ecological disaster. There are explorations of being responsible and not simply ignorant when trying to understand the outside world that this society looks forward to. Not doing so having real, lasting impact that’s detrimental to humanity. The characters have low points but even when the omnipresent corporations illicit very little hope, it’s disillusioned later. Emery isn’t looking to simply save herself, she has to consider what her actions will do to others; decidedly not traditional cyberpunk where the protagonists are anti-heroes. Which, I like a lot. This feels like a more relevant cyberpunk story because of this.

The city finding a new use for things is also present but… not in the way you’d expect. It’s a living, breathing thing aesthetically because it has technology to counteract the greenhouse effect of living under glass, but also has maintenance tunnels and spaces for sub-cultures that are used by her as a courier to get her job done, even when that job eventually becomes eluding everyone. It felt like a well-realized setting with a purpose beyond the overcapacity of humanity resulting, again, in a nihilistic narrative more indicative of cyberpunk.

She needs to integrate into a corporation. Dressing like them and doing as they say. There is not the normal freedom of expression found in cyberpunk here, that’s been taken from her and, though subtle, I thought was an interesting way to turn it around later when she’s running from the corporation using the tech and the clothes they gave her. Rather than cybernetics being the thing used to subvert power structures, it’s a more literalized repurposing. Pretty cool.

Implants are both good and bad. Therefore the “good”, the “bad”, and the morally grey are put squarely on the shoulders people. Which ends up getting rid of the technophobia trope, too.

It’s also always great to read a female protagonist that isn’t sexualized. Her voice and thoughts make sense, both in just the case of being a believable character, but also in terms of being respectful of a trauma victim while not skirting the issue. She has internal things to work out as a result and the narrative is about that. It’s not only a blip of a character detail to make her sympathetic. It’s how you come to be able to empathize and understand her thoughts and decisions throughout the entire story.

Surprising, thoughtful, and good; Implanted, I hope, is the start of a distinctly feminist cyberpunk wave of literature striking out against the cyberpunk visual tropes pervasive in visual media today that people seem to be waiting for. People like me!