#booker meta

[lostyesterday]

Cleveland Booker is a deeply underappreciated character in general, but one thing about him I haven’t seen talked about much is how compassionate he is, and how motivated he is to help others. He spends his life doing everything he can to save the most vulnerable creatures he can find. His anger at injustice and his drive to fight it regardless of how alone he is in that fight are unwavering. Even at his lowest point in season 4 when he has lost almost everything, he is motivated most fundamentally by the need to prevent what happened to his planet from happening to others. The mistakes he makes are made from genuine love and compassion, even as he is experiencing unimaginable grief.

[mirrorofliterature]

there's something very amatonormative about the way booker sees the world

he tells nicky and joe that they had always had each other, whilst andy and booker only had themselves and their grief and that's uncharitable and an amatonormative way of looking at the world.

yes, nicky and joe are in a long-term romantic and sexual relationship that is very solid, but that doesn't negate like... their platonic relationships?

when booker says that, it is so damn self-absorbed and naive and amatonormative

does he not realise that nicky and joe have always been with him too? that nicky and joe lost quynh too? sure, andy lost her lover but look at nicky and joe when they tell nile about quynh - they loved her and her loss deeply fucked them up.

booker's betrayal is so, so selfish and amatonormative. and sure he had his reasons - grief, alcoholism, depression - but those are not excuses, but explanations. I'm on the side of 'booker is a character and what he did was understandable and he clearly needs therapy' but 'holy SHIT let nicky and joe feel BETRAYED because they were and shouldn't have to moderate their reaction to protect ickle booker' - like the amount of work booker needs to put in for a proper reconciliation is astronomical.

anyway I digress. by saying 'you always had each other', booker is being an amatonormative little shit who downplays both nicky and joe's platonic relationships, I love and care for the other immortals, including him, but also that they have suffered loss too - their families, and how their first meeting wasn't exactly serendipitous.

anyway! booker's framing of nicky and joe is deeply fucked up, stemming from amatonormativity and booker's worldview of competing grief. like booker.... grief sucks but it's not a competition, y'know?

anyway! this is a Reading TM of booker's worldview vis a via nicky and joe that I've felt strongly about because booker just like. is so self-absorbed in his grief that he cannot recognise and appreciate what he has, nor can he recognise that nicky and joe's lives haven't been sunshine and rainbows because they're in a romantic relationship.

like bro. they love you. go to therapy.

[nevermindirah]

I have a hard to answer question how does one handle in a fanfic tog not going after shitler with Jewish!booker on the team without them coming off like assholes in regards to the human cost as well as the personal cost to booker, cause I'm drawing a blank

hi anon!

this is a super duper big large heavy question, and it's also one that might, depending on the context of your fic, have a very simple answer: the immortals are, other than their immortality, human, and therefore they can each only be in a single place at once.

they don't have superhuman strength or speed, they don't have magic, they don't have access to time-travel technology. I'm not an expert in ww2 military strategy but I'm sure allied governments looked into assassinating Hitler, and nobody managed to do it until the shitstain killed himself. the immortals are highly skilled and well-connected but not at the level of for example the agency that would go on to become the CIA, so who's to say they'd be successful in this assassination if they tried.

there's also the matter of when and for what reason the immortals might decide that killing this particular shitstain should go at the top of their to-do list. it's so easy for us to say in hindsight that a catastrophic volume of suffering could've been averted with this one person's death 10-15 years earlier than what happened in our timeline, but even with the strategic benefit of that hindsight, none of us can predict exactly what would've happened after a successful assassination in 1939, 1932, or even earlier. killing one leader doesn't ensure the movement he leads will stop with his death; someone even worse could have stepped in under the banner of a martyr.

things had gotten bad for Jews in a lot of places many times before things started getting real bad again in Germany. again, I'm not an expert, so I don't know when anyone outside of Nazi senior leadership knew anything about plans for the Holocaust — but would any of the immortals have learned about it sooner than international news media did? would they have known about it early enough that it was possible for a group of four immortals to stop? would they have believed such horrific plans if they'd seen them on paper? there's historical evidence that US officials didn't believe early reports could possibly be true.

there are photos on Copley's wall showing the immortals in Europe at several points during ww2 and there's that one panel from one of the comics of some of the boys being involved in liberating one of the camps. but we don't know details beyond that, and we don't know what the immortals were up to in the 1930s. they may have been very, very busy doing what they could to protect people from Japan's horrific war crimes of the same era, which started several years earlier than the Third Reich.

none of that is to say it would be easy for the immortals to know that the Holocaust was happening and not stop it. I'm sure it was devastating for all of them, who'd already seen so much needless painful death in their long lives, to see the ruthless mechanized efficiency of Nazi mass murder. it would be especially devastating for Booker, even without the Jewish Booker headcanon, bc his children died hating him bc he could not save them no matter how much they begged and no matter how hard he tried.

so my hope for the fic you're working on is that you'll show at least a little bit how their inability to stop these horrors weighs on the immortals. show the personal cost to Booker. do the others get why such horrors happening to his people, who are specifically being targeted because they are Jews, hurts him so badly? or does Andy make dark jokes about how God really must not exist or what did Booker do to piss him off.

does Andy make dark jokes like that bc she sees Quynh's face in every woman they rescue from the Japanese army's rape campaigns? it would have been just as impossible for the immortals alone to save every one of them as it would've been to stop the Holocaust. might their personal connections to victims thousands of miles apart in a war causing overwhelming suffering across most of the planet wear on the immortals' relationships with each other? they can only do but so much. how the hell do they choose which people to try to save?

now that I've thought about it, writing a fic where they do kill Hitler might actually be easier. you can just handwave the deeply frustrating logistical realities and make it so that conveniently killing the nightmare in charge happens to cause the whole house of nightmares to fall apart. (you can also handwave that in your new timeline non-Jews across Europe welcomed their Jewish neighbors home with open arms, when very often the opposite happened irl.)

this topic is so rich for all kinds of exploration in fic. you could end up with a long and plotty meditation on how painful it is for the immortals to have to choose between so many people who need their help. you might have only been asking for the sake of some references to this era of the past in a fic set during or after the movie where the historical timeline is set in stone, in which case I hope what I've shared here leads you to writing those passages with appropriate seriousness and care, even if it's ultimately a small part of a story mainly focused on other things.

this was hard to answer, but not intellectually, this kind of analysis is how my brain works. it just hurts my heart to think about how much my people have lost, how much pain so many people have suffered, and how much suffering is happening right now that there's so little I can do to stop. if I were immortal right now how the hell would I choose between Palestinians and Massalit people and Uyghurs and Rohingya and the multitude of Latin Americans suffering at the US border, all the Black Americans suffering systematically in US prisons, all the other people whose catastrophic suffering I don't even know about?

but I'm glad you asked bc this is such an under-considered element of TOG that's very worth the spotlight. I hope my thoughts here help you, and maybe others will see this and think about it as well.

[max-nolastname]

when the old guard was like “heres a group of functionally immortal warriors, hundreds, thousands of years old” and then it was like “btw, they can die anytime, still! they will always bounce back until one day, seemingly at random, they dont” and then it was like “what if you came into your immortal life alongside another? they are your partner in every way you dont know immortal life without them but you understand that one day you might just have go on for another thousand years without them” and then it was like “what if an immortal was imprisoned in an environment where they die every minute again and again for hundreds of years with no relief” and then it was like “what if an immortal had severe depression” 

[goldheartedsky]

Another day, another round of "Booker should've never been mad at Nicky and Joe amidst his grief!" bullshit that once again centers all this shit on Nicky and Joe when it's not about them.

Grief is a monster. It digs its claws in you in ways that leave unimaginable scars. And losing a child is a *far* different monster than losing family or losing friends. I recently lost my dad and, while the grief was overwhelming, the thought of losing my son is earth shattering. Losing a child upsets the natural order of things and, if you listen to anyone who has lost a child talk about it, it's a pain that never heals. Not after five years. Not after ten years. Not after twenty or thirty.

And Booker had to do it not once, but three times.

And Jean-Pierre, his youngest and last son, dies at 42 years old. The same age Booker was when he suffered his first death. He dies of cancer in a time where there is no treatment, no way to ease his pain. Jean-Pierre dies a horrible, slow death and Booker has to watch it, knowing that his son hates him with every fiber of his body. There is no reconciliation, no forgiveness, no closure.

And that wound inside his soul bleeds. And bleeds. And bleeds. Because there is no way to heal. Grief ebbs as time passes and you're able to try and move on with your life, but when time has stopped at a stand-still for Booker? There is no way to move on.

We can see the complete and utter devastation on Andy's face when Quỳnh is simply mentioned, and this is 300 years after losing her. The pain that Booker is carrying around from the loss of his sons, after a little more of half that time? Unimaginable.

Joe and Nicky got off light. And it's not about them. Because, as Booker correctly pointed out, they had each other.

All he had was his grief.

[artsy-waffle19]

One thing I love so much about "The old guard" is that in comparison to other action movies I've seen so far, there's characters that have actual personalities that are vital to the plot and why the characters are doing what they're doing.

major "The old guard" spoilers if you haven't watched it yet pls do. It's on Netflix n a second part is supposed to come out soon (it's already made but there's no release date yet but stiiill)

Idk if anyone noticed that yet and correct me if I'm wrong but I noticed that n needed to share because especially for the older group of immortals it pecomes so clear why they keep going (taking Nile out here because the entire movie is just about her, getting used to it and she isn't in the same situation as the others yet).

But Andy is doing everything she's doing because she feels responsible. Her entire struggle in the beginning is, that she feels like her work isn't doing any good. She wants to stop because the "projects" she works on don't seem to work out so obviously she's discoiraged but as soon as anyone in the group is in danger she immediately jumps to being the leader of the group again ("I will get them back whatever it takes" , "I always go first").

Nicky is the optimistic one of the group and believes that everything happens for a reason, which he keeps reminding everyone of as encouragement. He keeps doing what he's doing as long as he has faith that there is a reason, even if he doesn't know it. I think for him it's the most obvious because it's part of most of his dialogues with the rest of the group "everything happens for a reason boss", "it's like it was meant to be [....] like fate", and it also shows in a lot of his other scenes even if he doesn't outright say it (like the scene in the lab when he beings up going to Malta even though they're captured right now, once again showing how he's optimistic and believes that things will eventually work out).

Joe does everything he does for the principle. This is shown in smaller ways but i really like how they kept subtly putting it into his actions. Throughout the movie he mainly seems chronically pissed off, however we gotta consider that the movie shows a time frame where people are mainly doing things that harm him or the people he cares about in some way, which he obviously deems as wrong so getting back at them is just all about the principle. There's no arguing or reasoning with him because he is set in what he believes in and will fight for justice even about the little things. We can especially see that later in the movie in the final fight in the lab. This shows especially in the line "you shot Nicky...you shouldn't have done that" followed by him, killing the guy he just spoke to, like- Nicky is alive and well, the guy's immortal there was never even a slight risk of him dying but it's the principle. Also that he wants to leave Booker in the lab for betraying them, his last line in the movie of "she's not asking", which basically translates to 'you fucked up so now you owe us, deal with it' or just the entirety of the van scene. Obviously the whole "what is he? your boyfriend?" was just supposed to be some homophobic joke but, once again he asked so he's getting an answer. It's just the principle.

And Booker tries to do all he does for the people he loves, yet all the people he loved are dead and as we can see in his dialogue with Joe ("You and Nicky always had each other.......") and the first scene of all of them interacting, in which he doesn't interact with the group much or hug any of them, plus the fact that he's the youngest out of all of them, he doesn't seem to see himself as part of the group. He can't really find a reason for anything he's doing like the others do because while Andy will always feel responsible for the people around her, Nicky will most likely never lose his faith and Joe will always find something to be pissed off about, Bookers children are dead and any people he gets attached to will eventually die, which therefore disqualifies them as a safe and constant source of motivation. And the fact that he is aware of that but cannot find another reason to live for makes all of his actions so much more understandable and also really heartbreaking. To him his immortality isn't about responsibility, reason or justice it's just about hurting "just because we keep living, doesn't mean we stop hurting". So obviously he'd want to stop it.

I just rewatched it and it's so nice to see the dialogue and the character dynamics and really get the characters actions, which makes the plot like 10 times better. Generally I just really love this movie and I need Netflix to release the second one NOW because that cliffhanger was atrocious.

[fabdante]

tw physical abuse, violence, domestic abuse

*spins* I wonder if anybody ever noticed how quickly reboot Dante heals, and used it as an excuse to hurt him more/worse than they would've otherwise dared to when they knew he was going to be seen out in public? Because they know he can just heal up just fine (he's not fine- healing still takes energy, his healing factor still has a LIMIT, but its not like Dante'll ever tell them that, and they more than likely wouldn't care enough to stop if they knew), "so it doesn't matter what I do to him". Like, abusive foster parents, or guards, or teachers, or other people in positions of power. I wonder if Dante ever used that healing factor of his as an excuse to take physical abuse meant for somebody else, even if the victim wasn't someone he knew or they weren't kind to him, just because Dante knows they don't deserve to be treated like that? It still HURTS, but at least he can take it. (Besides, it hurts less than seeing someone else get hurt, and because he thinks he deserves it for being- who he is. Like maybe he thinks there must be something wrong with him for the demons to keep hunting him so doggedly.)

I wonder if he's ever been stabbed or shot on someone else's behalf? I wonder if he's ever killed someone that took the abuse too far, human or not? I wonder if he ever ran away into Limbo, because it made running from the cops easier?

Plus, reboot Dante has more control over his healing factor than preboot Dante seems to, so if reboot Dante needs to lie there and bleed for a bit to satisfy someone's sadism, he can. Very useful trick, that, sometimes. Especially if/when you need to play dead.

Ok so I may have gotten off topic but I'm very interested in the idea of reboot Dante and violence asdfghjk. I love characters and their complicated relationships to violence, it's a whole thing for me.

But yeah in an effort to keep this short my TLDR is: I think that yeah, Dantes been subject to a lot of abuse and his healing abilities could have enabled that abuse to be worse in the right scenario though I think he's very liable to start hitting back. I think he's definitely protected people he cares about with his healing abilities and he's definitely killed abusive people before (something him and Kat have in common). And I think the ability to play dead would be useful for him dfghjkl

In an effort to ramble about reboot Dante and violence, here's more post asdfghj (I'm not putting it under a read more but if anyone wants me to let me know):

I've come under the realization that I tend to categorize reboot Dante as more...violent and volatile then a lot of the fandom. I tend to characterize him like a scary dog in a lot of ways, largely a persona built out of a desire to protect himself and shut other people out. Which is to say I think he grew up in a lot of abusive and dangerous situations and given his unique circumstances he learned to hit back rather quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if Dante were someone's punching bag when he was younger and I wouldn't be surprised if he, given things like his healing abilities and what not, then decided to take this opportunity to punch back.

From what we see of him in game, particularly the late game conversation with Vergil about finding solace and release (the one where Vergil's like 'yeah I channeled all my energy into hacking because I felt like I didn't quite belong and it made me feel better what about you :)' and Dante was like 'yeah no I just slept around a lot and killed lots of demons' which was definitely not what Vergil wanted him to say asdfghjk), I think it's fair to assume Dante gets some sort of not exactly comfort or enjoyment from violence but a sort of like...it's sort of an outlet for his frustrations and emotions. And it's an easy outlet for those emotions.

I think there's also something to it with that one Barbara Kruger piece, this one:

The piece itself has like a homoerotic tone to it, at least I feel, particularly within the context of when it was made and all. But there's also this idea that like any sort of attention when you are starved from it is good attention. Here it's the idea that like these men want attention from other men but are too scared to receive it in a loving, kind way and so then turn to violence because it is some sort of attention, some sort of contact, with one another.

Which relates to what I want to talk about here, Dante is starved of affection and love which he copes with by both a lot of meaningless sex but also I think there's something to the idea that when you are touch starved, any sort of touch will do after a while. So getting into a physical fight, allowing oneself to engage in that, can give the sort of give a little hit of what he's looking for. Which is that sort of connection with another person, that like 'we're both here we're both alive you're real and I'm real' of a hug except you know, Worse. Like is a fight a kind interaction, no, but you can't really deny the fact you are both here in this moment and you are both alive and real as you drive a fist in a guys face. The idea that any attention is attention, even if it's bad attention.

I also tend to view him with very little care for his own self preservation. A mix of just not caring what happens to him but also that young person invincibility complex that's further enabled by the fact he can heal himself at will. Like he both is aware he can recover from injuries and all, but also fairly sure he's not going to live long, that sort of thing and isn't quite sure how much he cares to. But I definitely can see him, given the big heart he has down there that he likes to pretend he doesn't have, very eagerly playing human shield for people he cares about because he can take it and they can't.

So I think it's very likely he's taken hits on someone else's behalf before lashing out on the abuser/attacker. I don't think he takes abuse well, happening to himself or others.

I'm also very much of mind he has killed people who are not demons before because of the above.

There's also a lot of other angles to look at when it comes to reboot Dante and violence done by him or onto him to but I'm trying to keep this short asdfgh it's just a really interesting subject to me with characters, particularly characters already associated with violence.

[phatburd]

I'm going to repost something I wrote about Booker in an ask into its own separate post, because some people need to hear it.

~~

Booker is not inherently selfish. Full stop.

Let me explain. In the early 2000s I was going through a really bad mental health patch. I kinda fell apart professionally and personally in the aftermath of Bush vs. Gore and pretty much hated everyone and everything.

I don’t know how many people here are old enough to remember the discussions around “enhanced interrogations.” In my really bad psychological state, I read a book that discussed the use of torture through the ages and its ineffectiveness as a tool to gather intelligence. This is because everyone has a breaking point, where they will do anything, say anything, agree to anything, just to escape the pain.

This is the point where I realized the same thing applied to depression and suicidal ideation. At some point, the pain of living becomes so goddamn intense, a person develops tunnel vision and will do anything to stop their own pain. Depression is torture without any visible mechanism. In that case, is it selfish to end your own pain?

This is where shitheads will say, “But what about all other people in your life? You’re selfish because you’ll hurt them!” No, they don’t fucking get it. That’s counterproductive because a person that far down in the hole will think, “Well, maybe they’ll be better off without me then.” The pain is so intense, you’re not thinking of others because you can’t. You just want it to end by any means necessary.

What does this have to do with Booker? Yeah, this is the mental state I imagine Booker to have been in for longer than most people have been alive. He wants it to end and he will do whatever it takes, including agreeing to things he probably wouldn’t have if he wasn’t in that mental state.

Is wanting to end your own pain weak or selfish? I’d say no. Anyone who says yes hasn’t been there, and I hope they never reach that breaking point to understand what it feels like.

[scimitar-and-longsword]

Hey hope you're well :) Currently at the airport to Italy and then later this week Greece and I'm wondering what your headcanons are about Nicky and Joe when flying :) like who's there three hours early and who arrives ten minutes before take off? xD

Oh my goodness, have so much fun in Italy and Greece! I'm so jealous!

Ok this is such a fun question.

Joe is definitely the early one and Nicky is very lackadaisical about getting to the flight on time. "Yusuf, you need to calm down, we're never late."

I think Nicky falls asleep right away on long flights and Joe can't sleep for the life of him on planes. It's so hard for him to sleep on planes that he gets a little frustrated sitting next to Nicky who sleeps through everything.

Nicky tries so hard to stay awake because he knows Joe gets a little nervous on long flights, but something about the white noise lulls Nicky to sleep every time. Joe doesn't blame Nicky, he just wishes he could sleep through it as easily.

Nicky is very good at planning for this though. He always makes sure they have books and charges phones with movies downloaded. He's always pointing out the in flight movies and snack selection to Joe. So when he does inevitably fall asleep Joe has lots to focus on. "There's a TV Joe!"

I think when the others are there Nicky sits with Andy and they both peacefully sleep, while Nile and Joe are up trying to distract each other talking about art.

Booker sits by himself because he somehow keeps Andy and Nicky awake by talking too much. And freaks Joe and Nile out more by talking about all the things that could go wrong with the plane... Oh Booker.

Once they land Nicky does get a bit more anxious about losing luggage. Joe is just so relieved to be off the plane he doesn't even care. "Nicky, we only had two bags. It's fine, the Uber will be here in 5 mins." "No Joe, I'm sure we had 3 bags!" (They only had 2)

[shire-baird]

oh. OH IVE HAD A THOUGHT

So I've been thinking about immortality, particularly the different attitudes that Hob and the Old Guard have towards it. (Especially Booker)

And then I remember that quote that kind of goes, "Ist it better to have loved and lost, or have never loved at all?"

And that line was kinda rotating in my mind with Booker and Hob. And then I realized what the difference between them is.

They have both loved, and both lost. But Hob focuses on the loved, and Booker focuses on the lost.

[thestormlightnetwork]

i swear some of the meta that i see on this site should be short-listed for the booker prize

[mirrorofliterature]

don't get me started on the booker apologists who think that his being "queer" (because Greg Rucka said he's essentially bi and on the ace spectrum in a private discord chat, lol) absolves him of having a self-centered, amatonormative world-view.

the very fact that he thinks nicky and joe's queer romantic love shielded them from all other forms of loss/trauma/etc just reinforces the fact that his personal version of amatonormativity is not contingent on heteronormativity!! I don't know why people are choosing to be deliberately obtuse about this very valid point you made (other than woobifying an angsty white dude, as usual.)

I did stumble across that and I found the way people were treating that as canon very strange. I amended a post where I called Booker straight with this:

I am now aware that Greg Rucka has in a discord message confirmed Booker as queer. This is not canonical, however. It’s very not publicly available word of god. Until it is included in the next movie, it is not movie canon and I will continue to call him straight, because to the movie watching fan, that’s what he reads as.

It is even less canon than authors tweeting out that a character is x sexuality or confirming it in an interview - and I don't personally care that much what the author says outside the story. I find it very strange that people are weaponising booker's 'queerness' to absolve him of his sins. Like, queer people can be shitty, too.

I'm not sure why people are so desperate for him to be so when the film is chock-full of interesting and dynamic queer characters, but I digress. Just because Booker being bi and ace is Rucka's headcanon doesn't make it canon as it is not in the film - if it's your headcanon, that's cool, but Booker is not canonically queer. There is nothing that implies that he is bi or ace - I would have noticed, particularly the latter.

And you're completely right. Being queer does not prevent people from being amatonormative!

This is a really poignant ask. I think that what a lot of people disagreeing with my interpretation comes from is these people do not understand what amatonormativity is. It's not jealousy, it's devaluing all relationships outside of monogamous romantic relationships. It is implicit in Booker's words and is unlikely conscious on his part, but it comes out in this canonical line: 'you two always had each other!' Romantic relationships do not stop grief, or racism, or homophobia, or - millions of other horrible things nicky and joe have experienced.

All my posts really stemmed from a deep frustration at Booker's just absolutely selfish narrow tunnel vision - because Nicky and Joe lost their first families (their parents/siblings/nieces+nephews), experienced centuries of discrimination, AND lost quynh.

anyway booker's issues are not nicky and joe's responsibility - they have their own recovery to worry about.

[feuer-bluete]

Finally watch the Old Guard yesterday, with my dad so in german, and rewatched today in english. prepare for lots of reblogs :D also if you have seen it, you are welcome to sent me your favorite posts about it

[biblioflyer]

Is Discovery still a "serious" show?

I've been rolling something around in my head. I think there's been a gradual but noticeable tonal shift in Discovery. Season three was probably the pivot point, but from 4 onwards I just didn't get the impression that Discovery was aiming for the same gravitas as Picard or the Expanse. Whereas seasons one and two very much felt like they were trying to ride the coattails of The Expanse or Ron Moore's Galactica in terms of trying to make the universe read like a Very Serious Setting full of Serious People. I think it pulled it off about as well as Stargate Universe did (which is to say, not very well) and has pivoted to something that tonally reminds me a bit of Star Trek: The Original Series. Sometimes full of gravitas but also leaning into classic TOS tropes like the captain leading from the front no matter how silly and fearlessly embracing weirdness in a manner that sometimes feels a bit Doctor Who.

I'm not a person who reads a lot of backstage interviews because I prefer to interpret what's going on through my own lens and I tend to view needing to have a show explained to me by its cast and crew to be a cardinal sin. If I'm baffled, then I'm not above assuming its me, but at the same time, I like to think that I'm canny enough to follow a plot as long as there aren't too many moving pieces. I'm willing to put my phone down for 43 minutes and pay attention to what's going on. That's all to say, if this was well established years ago as confirmed by the showrunners and cast, I didn't see that interview or Tweet. I don't generally watch The Ready Room either because I'd prefer not to have other interpretations of what's going on intruding on taking in the narrative.

So this is a round about way to say, am I reading this correctly? That Discovery has consciously pivoted to a more "Whovian" tone in many ways after flirting with The Expanse's razor edged gravitas. Or are other people still reading Discovery as a "serious" show? I should also say that I mean none of this in a sneering way. I think Discovery is actually better for taking itself less seriously because as a production it was never good at Very Serious Drama.

[goldheartedsky]

It must have been so scary for Andy.

She’s fallen in love with mortals before, but it’s different with them. Hector. Achilles. As hard as it is, she knows she’s going to outlive them. Their days are numbered. A lifespan is something Andy can wrap her head around.

But then Booker shows up and it’s fucking terrifying.

How long do they have? Will he be like Lykon and die before her? Bleeding out in her arms? Will she finally be able to let Booker into her heart, only to get cut down the next day? Will he be ripped away from her like Quỳnh was?

Or will they have something good, at least for a few good decades. A hundred years? A thousand?

Death she can count on. But the uncertainty that comes with letting another immortal into her heart? That must have scared the hell out of her.

And she did it anyway.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Live Nation/Ticketmaster is buying Congress

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me THURSDAY (May 2) in WINNIPEG, then Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. Monopolies are intrinsically destabilizing and inevitably implode…eventually. Guessing which of the loathesome monopolies that make us all miserable will be the first domino is a hard call, but Ticketmaster is definitely high on my list.

It's not that event tickets are the most consequential aspect of our lives. The monopolies over pharma, fuel, finance, tech, and even beer are all more important to our day-to-day. But while Ticketmaster – and its many ramified tentacles, like Live Nation – may not be the most destructive monopoly in our world, but it pisses off people with giant megaphones and armies of rabid fans.

It's been a minute since Ticketmaster was last in the news, so let's recap. Ticketmaster bought out most of its ticketing rivals, then merged with Live Nation, the country's largest concert promoter, and bought out many of the country's largest music, stage and sports venues. They used this iron grip on the entire supply chain for performances and events to pile innumerable junk fees on every ticket sold, while drastically eroding the wages of the creative workers they nominally represented. They created a secret secondary market for tickets and worked with ticket-touts to help them run bots that bought every ticket within an instant of the opening of ticket sales, then ran an auction marketplace that made them gigantic fees on every re-sold ticket – fees the performers were not entitled to share in.

The Ticketmaster/Live Nation/venue octopus is nearly impossible to escape. Independent venues can't book Live Nation acts unless they use Ticketmaster for their tickets. Acts can't get into the large venues owned by Ticketmaster unless they sign up to have Live Nation book their tour. And when Ticketmaster buys a venue, it creams off the most successful acts, starving competing venues of blockbuster shows. They also illegally colluded with their vendors to jack up the price of concerts across the board:

https://pascrell.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ful.pdf

When Rebecca Giblin and I were writing Chokepoint Capitalism, our book about how tech and entertainment monopolies impoverish all kinds of creative workers, we were able to get insiders to go on record about every kind of monopoly, from the labels to Spotify, Kindle to the Big Five publishers and the Google-Meta ad-tech duopoly. The only exception was Ticketmaster/Live Nation: everyone involved in live performance – performers, bookers, club owners – was palpably terrified about speaking out on the record about the conglomerate:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

No wonder. The company has a long and notorious history of using its market power to ruin anyone who challenges it. Remember Pearl Jam?

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taking-on-ticketmaster-67440/

But anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. Not only is Ticketmaster a rapacious, vindictive monopolist – it's also an incompetent monopolist, whose IT systems are optimized for rent-extraction first, with ticket sales as a distant afterthought. This is bad no matter which artist it effects, but when Ticketmaster totally, utterly fucked up Taylor Swift's first post-lockdown tour, they incurred the wrath of the Swifties:

https://www.vox.com/culture/2022/11/21/23471763/taylor-swift-ticketmaster-monopoly

All of which explains why I've always given good odds that Ticketmaster would be first up against the wall come the antitrust revolution. It may not be the most destructive monopolist, but it is absurdly evil, and the people who hate it most are the most famous and beloved artists in the country.

For a while, it looked like I was right. Ticketmaster's colossal Taylor Swift fuckup prompted Senator Amy Klobuchar – a leading antitrust crusader – to hold hearings on the company's conduct, and led to the introduction of a raft of bills to rein in predatory ticketing practices. But as David Dayen writes for The American Prospect, Ticketmaster/Live Nation is spreading a fortune around on the Hill, hiring a deep bench of ex-Congressmen and ex-senior staffers (including Klobuchar's former chief of staff) and they've found a way to create the appearance of justice without having to suffer any consequences for their decades-long campaign of fraud and abuse:

https://prospect.org/power/2024-04-30-live-nation-strikes-up-band-washington/

Dayen opens his article with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which is always bracketed by a week's worth of lavish parties for Congress and hill staffers. One of the fanciest of these parties was thrown by Axios – and sponsored by Live Nation, with a performance by Jelly Roll (whose touring contract is owned by Live Nation). Attendees at the Axios/Live Nation event were bombarded with messages about the essential goodness of Live Nation (they were even printed on the cocktail napkins) and exhortations to support the Fans First Act, co-sponsored by Klobuchar and Sen John Cornyn (R-TX):

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/arts/music/fans-first-act-ticket-bill.html

Ticketmaster/Live Nation loves the Fans First Act, because – unlike other bills – it focuses primarily on the secondary market for tickets, and its main measure is a requirement for ticketing companies to disclose their junk fees upfront. Neither of these represents a major challenge to Ticketmaster/Live Nation's control over the market, which gives it the ability to slash performers' wages while jacking up prices for fans.

Fans First represents the triumph of Ticketmaster/Live Nation's media strategy, which is to blame the entire problem on bottom-feeding ticket-touts (who are mostly scum!) instead of on the single monopoly that controls the entire industry and can't stop committing financial crimes.

Axios isn't Live Nation's only partner in selling this distraction tactic. Over the past five years, the company has flushed gigantic sums of money through Washington. Its lobbying spend rose from $240k in 2018 to $1.1m in 2022, and $2.38m in 2023:

https://thehill.com/business/4431886-live-nation-doubled-lobbying-spending-to-2-4m-in-2023-amid-antitrust-threat/

The company has 37 paid lobbyists selling Congress on its behalf. 25 of them are former congressional staffers. Two are former Congressmen: Ed Whitfield (R-KY), a 21 year veteran of the House, and Mark Pryor (D-AR), a two-term senator:

https://www.bhfs.com/people/attorneys/p-s/mark-pryor

But perhaps the most galling celebrant in this lavish hymn to Citizen United is Jonathan Becker, Amy Klobuchar's former chief of staff, who jumped ship to lobby Congress on behalf of monopolists like Live Nation, who paid him $120k last year to sell their story to the Hill:

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/lobbyists?cycle=2023&id=D000053134

Not everyone hates Fans First: it's been endorsed by the Nix the Tix coalition, largely on the strength of its regulation of secondary ticket sales. But the largest secondary seller in America by far is Live Nation itself, with a $4.5b market in reselling the tickets it sold in the first place. Fans First shifts focus from this sleazy self-dealing to competitors like Stubhub.

Fans First can be seen as an opening salvo in the long war against Ticketmaster/Live Nation. But compared to more muscular bills – like Klobuchar's stalled-out Unlock Ticketing Markets Act, it's pretty weaksauce. The Unlocking act will "prevent exclusive contracts between ticketing services and venues" – hitting Ticketmaster/Live Nation where it hurts, right in the bank-account:

https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2023/4/following-senate-judiciary-committee-hearing-klobuchar-blumenthal-introduce-legislation-to-increase-competition-in-live-event-ticketing-markets

It's not all gloom. Dayen reports that Ticketmaster's active lobbying in favor of Fans First has made many in Congress more skeptical of the bill, not less. And Congress isn't the only – or even the best – way to smash Ticketmaster's criminal empire. That's something the DoJ's antitrust division could power through with a lot less exposure to the legalized bribery that dominates Congress.

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/2024/04/30/nix-fix-the-tix/#something-must-be-done-there-we-did-something

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