#i incredibly now have a reasonable backlog of books i have that i want to read next

[endwalkr]

it feels so good to be reading books again wah

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Brinkwhump Linkdump

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

Once again, I find myself arriving at the weekend with a giant backlog of links, triggering a linkump, the 15th such dumpage, a variety-pack of miscellany for your weekend. Here's the previous editions:

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

Let's start with the latest incredible news from KPMG, the accounting and auditing giant that is relied upon as a source of ground truth for a truly terrifying share of the world's economy. KPMG has a well-deserved reputation for incompetence and corruption. They first came on my radar in 2001 when they sent a legal threat to a blogger for linking to their website without permission:

https://memex.craphound.com/2001/12/05/reason-4332442-not-to-ask/

The actual link was to KPMG's corporate anthem, which remains, to this day, a banger:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040428063826/http://chkpt.zdnet.com/chkpt/uknewsita/http://anthems.zdnet.co.uk/anthems/kpmg.mp3

Don't miss the DJ remixes (and the Nokia ringtone!) that the internet thoughtfully provided when KPMG decided that it didn't want the world to know about "Our Vision of Global Strategy":

https://web.archive.org/web/20011128153057/http://corporateanthems.raettig.org/

Now all this is objectively very funny, a relic of the old, good internet from one of its moments of glory, but KPMG? They were already enshittifying, even in 2001, and the enshittification only intensified thereafter. Nearly every accounting scandal of the past quarter-century has KPMG in it somewhere, from con-artists selling exhausted oil fields to rubes:

https://www.desmog.com/2021/06/03/miller-energy-kpmg-auditors-oil-fraud/

To killer nursing homes that hire KPMG to audit its books – and to advise it on how to defeat safety audits and murder your grandma:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/09/dingo-babysitter/#maybe-the-dingos-ate-your-nan

They're the architects of Microsoft's tax-evasion plot:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

And they were behind Canada's dysfunctional covid contact-tracing app, which never worked, but generated tens of millions in billings to the government of Canada, who used KPMG to hire programmers at $1,500/day, plus KPMG's 30% commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mckinsey-and-canada/#comment-dit-beltway-bandits-en-canadien

KPMG's most bizarre scandal is literally stranger than fiction. The company bribed SEC personnel help its own accountants cheat on ethics exams. The corrupt officials were then given high-paid jobs at KPMG:

https://www.nysscpa.org/news/publications/the-trusted-professional/article/sec-probe-finds-kpmg-auditors-cheating-on-training-exams-061819

I mean it when I say this is stranger than fiction. I included it as a plot-point in my new finance crime novel The Bezzle (now a national bestseller!), and multiple readers have written to me since the book came out a couple weeks ago to say that they thought I was straining their credulity by making up such an outrageous scandal:

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

But all of that is just scene-setting (and a gratuitous plug for my book) for the latest KPMG scandal, which is, possibly, the most KPMG scandal of all KPMG scandals. The Australian government hired KPMG to audit Paladin, a security contractor that oversees the asylum seekers the country locks up on one of its island gulags (yes, gulags, plural).

Ever since, Paladin has been the subject of a string of ghastly human rights scandals – the worst stuff imaginable, rape and torture and murder of adults and children. Paladin made AU423 million on this contract.

And here's the scandal: KPMG audited the wrong company. The Paladin that the Australia government paid KPMG to audit was based in Singapore. The Paladin that KPMG audited was a totally different company, based in Papua New Guinea, who already had a commercial relationship with KPMG. It was this colossal fuckup that led to the manifestly unfit Singaporean company getting nearly half a billion dollars in public funds:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/24/incredible-failure-kpmg-rejects-claims-it-assessed-the-wrong-company-before-423m-payment-to-paladin

KPMG denies this. KPMG denies everything, always. Like, they denied creating "power maps" of decision-makers in the Australian government to target with influence campaigns in order to win contracts like this one. Who knows, maybe, this one time, they're telling the truth? After all, the company whose employees gather to sing lyrics like these can't be all bad, right?

The time is now to lead the way, We share the same the idea That may win by the end of the day. Our strength is here to stay. Identity, one energy, One strategy, with sympathy. These are the words that will lead us into a new world.

https://everything2.com/title/KPMG+corporate+anthem

You may find it strange that I'm still carrying around the factoid that KPMG once threatened to crush a blogger for linking to its terrible corporate anthem, but that's just my "Memex Method," which helps me keep track of literally everything that seemed important to me through most of my adult life:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

One of my favorite quips from the very quotable Riley Quinn is that "leftists are cursed with object-permanence" – that is, we actually remember what just happened and use it to think about what's happening now. The Memex Method is object permanence for 20+ years worth of stuff. A lot of those deep archives never see use, but there's a surprising number of leading indicators buried in the stuff that happened in years gone by.

Take James Boyle's 2014, XKCD-style comic about the experience of driving a notional Apple car:

https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/11/07/apple-updates-a-comic/

Apple, it turns out, spent the next decade working on just such a car, and while that car has now been canceled, Boyle's comic correctly anticipates so much about the trajectory Apple's products took. It's uncannily accurate – real "don't invent the torment nexus"/"cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion" stuff:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus

But no matter how many times we insist that the torment nexus shouldn't be created, the boardrooms of end-stage capitalism continue to invent them. Take HP, the poster-child for enshittification, edging out even KPMG in the race to turn everything into a pile of shit. After years of tormenting people to punish them for wanting to print things, HP has announced a new service that so mustache-twirlingly evil that it lacks verisimilitude:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/hp-wants-you-to-pay-up-to-36-month-to-rent-a-printer-that-it-monitors/

Here's the pitch: HP will sell you a printer that you don't own. In addition to paying a monthly fee for your ink – which you pay no matter whether you print or not – you will also pay a monthly fee just for having HP's printer on your premises. You are absolutely, positively forbidden from using third-party ink in this printer, and must use HP's own ink, which sells for about $10,000/gallon.

But while you aren't allowed to use this printer in ways that are bad for HP's shareholders, HP is absolutely free to use the printer in ways that are bad for you. When you click through the signup agreement, you grand HP permission to surveil every document you print – and your home wifi network more generally – and to sell that data to anyone and everyone.

What's more, HP reserves the right to discipline you with punitive credit-card charges if you disconnect this printer from the internet, on the basis that doing so makes it harder for them to spy on your printer.

I'm sorry, this is just more torment nexus shit, the kind of thing you'd expect to drop on Apr 1, not Feb 29, but I guess this is where we are. I can only conjecture as to whether HP's businesses strategists are directly taking direction from my novella "Unauthorized Bread," or whether they're learning about it second-hand from a KPMG consultant who converted it to Powerpoint form and charged $1,500/day for the work:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

All of this cartoonish villainry is the totally foreseeable consequence of a culture of impunity, in which companies like HP and KPMG can rob, cheat, steal (and sometimes even kill) without consequence. This impunity is so pervasive that the exceptions – where a rich criminal faces real consequences – become touchstones: Enron, Arthur Anderson, Theranos, and, of course, FTX.

FTX was arguably the largest-scale corporate crime in world history, stealing more than $10 billion dollars, mostly from rubes sucked in by hype and Superbowl ads. When news that FTX founder and owner Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and was in for a lengthy prison sentence made a huge stir, because criminals like SBF usually walk away from the wreckage with their hands in their pockets, whistling a jaunty tune.

One of the very best commentators on cryptocurrency scams generally and FTX/SBF in particular is Molly White, whose Web3 is Going Just Great feed is utterly indispensable. White's newsletter, "Citation Needed," dives deep into the wrangle of SBF's sentencing:

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-52/

Bankman-Fried's parents – prominent law professors at top law schools – helped brief the court this week on their son's punishment. According to them, SBF faces 100 years in prison, but should be sentenced to 5.5-6.5 years at the most. Why? Because he is a vegan, who is not greedy, and feels remorse, and cares for individuals (recall that SBF presented himself as the avatar of the batshit "effective altruism" philosophy while privately admitting that he used this as a smokescreen).

The most bizarre note in the 100-page filing is SBF's mother declaring that her son is an "angel of mercy," apparently unaware of the grisly meaning of that term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_of_mercy_(criminology)

America's prisons are a travesty and I wouldn't wish them on anyone, but that's not the argument SBF's parents are making; rather, they're arguing that their special boy doesn't deserve the treatment America metes out to poorer, less white people who merely steal hundreds or thousands of dollars. A crook who steals ten billion should be handled the way a casino handles a whale – with concierge service.

The problem is, there are so many of these remorseless, relentless crooks that there's no way we could scale up that white-glove treatment when we finally round 'em all up and make them pay. Writing for The American Prospect, Maureen Tkacik tells us about the ransomware attack that shut down America's pharmacy system last month:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-03-01-zoomer-hackers-shut-down-unitedhealthcare/

The attack brought down Change Healthcare, part of the monopolist Unitedhealth, which serves as the "pharmacy benefit manager" to a vast swathe of American pharmacies. PBM is one of those all-American finance scams, a middleman garlanded with performative complexity put there to make you feel stupid for asking why independent pharmacies all have to pay rent to this malicious, unaccountable – and now, manifestly incompetent – gang of crooks.

Tkacik's breakdown of this scam – and how it rendered Americans' ability to get the drugs they depend on to go on breathing – is characteristically brilliant. Tcacik is fast emerging as my favorite Explainer of Scams, a print version of John Oliver or Adam Conover. You may recall her work from my post last week on how private equity has taken a wrecking ball to America's hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

I always try to finish these linkdumps with some upbeat news to carry you through the weekend, and this week brought two genuinely wonderful – and totally underreported – pieces of amazing news.

The first is that Starbucks has sued for peace in the war against its workers' unions. Hundreds of Starbucks stores have unionized in recent years, but not one of them had a contract. Instead, Starbucks had waged dirty war on their own workers, from denying gender-affirming care to unionized employees to simply shutting down whole stores after they voted to unionize:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/14/starbucks-union-company-threatens-that-unionizing-could-jeopardize-gender-affirming-health-care.html

But the workers held fast and after years of this, Starbucks has caved, promising contracts for all unionized stores and an end to its campaign of terror against workers seeking to unionize more of its stores. In a postmortem for Jacobin, Eric Blanc rounds up "seven lessons from Starbucks workers' historic victory":

https://jacobin.com/2024/02/starbucks-sbwu-contract-bargaining/

This is the kind of listicle I can get behind. According to Blanc, the Starbucks unions won by deploying worker-to-worker organizing, a tactic that many of the new unions that are shaking up formerly impossible-to-organize jobsites are using (Blanc has a book about this coming from UC Press called "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Unionism Can Transform America," so he should know).

Other tactics that made the difference for Starbucks unions: new digital training and support tools and partnering with established unions for support and infrastructure. Blanc also calls out the success of "salting" – the venerable but largely disused tactic of union organizers applying for a job at a non-union shop in order to organize it.

Blanc also mentions government policy, including the outstanding work of NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a shrewd and committed tactician whose understanding of the technicalities of labor law have let her push for bold measures. For example, in Thrive Pet Care, Abruzzo is arguing that when a company refuses to bargain in good faith for a contract with its union, she can step in and order them to honor the terms of a contract at comparable unionized competitors until they produce a contract of their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

Abruzzo is one of several smart, competent tacticians in the Biden administration who are working to kneecap corporate power. Another is Rohit Chopra, chair of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, who just announced another bold, important initiative that will help Americans fight corporate corruption and get a fair deal:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-03-01-public-option-credit-card-shopping/

Chopra is taking aim at credit-card comparison sites that purport to show you where you can get the best deal. If you're an affluent person who doesn't carry a balance, this might not matter to you, but if you're an average working stiff, high interest rates can gobble up a massive share of your paycheck. What's more, credit card margins are higher than they have ever been:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/credit-card-interest-rate-margins-at-all-time-high/

The most expensive credit cards come from the big, monopolistic banks, but you wouldn't know it from the leaderboards produced by Credit Karma, NerdWallet, LendingTree, and Bankrate. All of these sites take bribes from the big banks to list their credit cards above those offered by credit unions – who are typically 10% cheaper than the big banks' cards.

The new CFPB rule prohibits this fraudulent ranking, but the Bureau is going even further. They're using their administrative powers to force banks to report their rates to the Bureau, which will publish them on a publicly funded, neutral website – what David Dayen calls "a public option" for shopping for credit cards.

This policy makes a perfect bookend to the last CFPB initiative I wrote about here: a rule that forces banks to allow you to transfer your account to a rival with a couple of simple clicks, importing all your history, payees, and everything else you need to switch to a better bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

Combine that ease of switching with reliable information on which banks will give you the best deal and you get something that will directly transfer millions and millions of dollars from giant, wildly profitable banks to low-income people who've been tricked into paying them punitive interest rates.

So that's it, this week's linkdump. I promised you I'd end on a high note, and I did it. The world may be full of all kinds of terrible things, but workers and regulators are scoring big, muscular victories in battles where the stakes are real and important. Have a great weekend – we've earned it.

And remember!

The time is now to lead the way, We share the same the idea That may win by the end of the day. Our strength is here to stay. Identity, one energy, One strategy, with sympathy. These are the words that will lead us into a new world.

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/2024/03/02/macedoine/#the-public-option

Image: Stacy (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/notahipster/4402860361/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[weaselandfriends]

You previously mentioned a skepticism of serially-written stories. Do you think the serial format has downsides beyond the obvious difficulty of editing? It seems to me like the backlog you keep lets you edit chapters in the light of ones that will appear shortly, while obviously you can't really remove a chapter that didn't go anywhere if you released it 20 weeks ago; are there other ways that you think serial writing can damage a work?

Yes! You are, amazingly, talking to someone who read Homestuck after all.

Serial writing has an element of a collaborative project, especially in the internet era where it's so easy for an author to receive direct and immediate feedback. This is, I believe, almost exclusively a bad thing (at least in literature). I wrote a story, Modern Cannibals, about the dangers of a fanbase allowed too close to the creator of their fandom, but in that book I didn't touch so much on the impact on the work itself. Ironically, I personally think Homestuck has one of the most interesting and unique author-fandom collaborative elements possible in a serial work, though this interest is developed solely through what I view as Hussie's growing, seeping disdain for his readership, which manifests throughout Act 6 as a series of increasingly bitter and less good-natured jabs at them. (See: Calliope, the Dancestor trolls and especially Hussie's self-insert comments about them, the literal DOTA followed immediately by his self-insert making its most direct influence on the narrative yet, and a generally increasing nastiness that would culminate in the Epilogues, his master stroke.)

At the same time, though, Act 6 succumbed to incredible bloat (not unlike a RoyalRoad Patreon trap? Only with merch instead of Patreon), became mired in ancillary romantic shenanigans, lost focus of what it wanted to do with most characters and instead crystallized them into some fandom-encouraged configuration (Rose and Kanaya both essentially stop having any meaningful character moments the instant they hook up), brought back Vriska???????? (did the fandom even want this? Or just the devil whispering in Hussie's ear?), and ended the story on a saccharine note that sought inoffensiveness above all else. Indeed, the entire crux of the lousy Act 7 animation seemed to be, at least as Hussie explained it, a reference to the fandom meme "Homestuck is anime." A reference that fell hopelessly flat. How many other niche fandom-specific injokes populate the pages of Act 6, now blisteringly incomprehensible?

Several of these problems were possibly caused by behind-the-scenes issues related to the Kickstarter (which is itself an issue that would only ever exist for a serial work). Still, the point comes across, and this is a work I think pulled off its serial nature better than most.

On the flip side, you get stuff like Game of Thrones - or 90 percent of all long-running TV shows. There's a reason you have the phrase "jump the shark." Though now known generically as a synonym for "gets bad," the original jump the shark moment involved Fonzie, a character who started as supporting cast and who, over time, in response to his popularity, nonsensically became the lead. When fans like something, they want more of it. Some good things are best in moderation, however, and an author typically understands that better than an audience.

Serial writing is a good way for a beginner author to kickstart a career, gain confidence in themselves, and gather the drive necessary to pursue a massive undertaking. If Homestuck never took off, Hussie probably would've written it as a much smaller project, for instance. Once you gain that confidence and that readership, though, I recommend authors move beyond the serial format. I think that's the next step toward developing as a writer.

[feathered-serpents]

DUDE I THOUGHT YOU HAD SO MUCH MORE EXPERIENCE THAN YOU ACTUALLY DO, YOUR ART IS INCREDIBLE!!! what resources did you use to learn to draw??

Hey!! Thank you!!

So the main "teaching tools" I used were the Morpho books, all of them, they're INCREDIBLY useful so google them immediately. As well as the YouTube channel of the artist Ethan Becker. Honest to god he taught me SO MUCH about shape language, anatomy, sketching, expressions, and color. He's a professional animator and it shows.

I would suggest starting with his video on how to draw heads because the method he used there literally changed my wholeass life. I swear by it. And everything else he teaches is just as good

Beyond that, over the past year I've developed these mindsets

Use References

And I don't just mean put the picture next to the screen and try to draw it, I mean straight up do this

Now there are a LOT of people out there that think this is a "bad" technique, and to this DAY I still feel insecure about using this technique for that reason. But you'll discover that professionals do this all the time and it WILL help you learn anatomy if you want to get better at freehand! Otherwise, it just saves so much time spent agonizing over the base and you can go straight into actually drawing what you want to. (Also this pose is by AdorkaStock and their references are literally the best you can find. They have EVERYTHING. Their Patreon is only $5 a month and you get access to their entire backlog, it is WELL worth it)

Speaking of drawing what you want to

Just Go For It

If you want to draw something, but don't know how, or think it's beyond your skill level, just go for it. It is the only way to REACH that skill level. Yes it is frustrating to draw something that doesn't work out the way you hoped, but in the end, that's better than not drawing it at all

Also If YOU Don't Know How to Draw It, Someone Else Does

So look them up and see what they're doing. If you're struggling with a pose, a piece of clothing, a facial expression, fucking HANDS anything, look up your favorite artist and see how they do it. Don't just look at the piece, zoom in on the part you want to emulate and see where they put the lines, the shadows, the details, and how they make it relate to the rest of the drawing. Literally STUDY OTHER ARTISTS you will learn SO much more doing that than just looking at photos

Lastly

Your Style, Stop Worrying About It

Just draw how you want to draw and that's your style. Obviously, it's fine to deliberately put in some flares or stylization choices, but make sure it's FUN for you. When you're drawing what you WANT you will find your style almost instantly. I remember when my friend first told me "I LOVE your art style" and I was so confused because I thought I didn't HAVE an art style. I was just drawing how I wanted to.

Turns out! That's what an art style is!

I hope this was somewhat helpful! Obviously, I have LOADS of more learning to do having only been at this for a year. Take all of this with a pinch of salt, and good luck!

[signaturedish]

Hello, I've read perfectly alien completely over 10 times since 2017 and I don't think I'll ever get sick of it. (I like to listen to it in audio book mode through the FF app) I just want to say that I'm very grateful that you share your stories for free. I honestly am willing to pay for this because the story telling and emotions you convey through words always hit me. Thank you for making and sharing your work. If PA has no fans, then that means I am no longer on earth.

Hello biggerbagofsin!

That is one of the most incredibly kind things anyone has ever said to me and I just wanted to really thank you. I kind of abruptly abandoned this blog for a while and was really nervous about coming back for anything, but you and others in my asks definitely deserve responses. You’ve all been so amazing and I’m so glad I wrote even things I didn’t finish because of the people I got to meet in the process.

I’m going to go through my backlog right now so I just wanted to respond and say that you taking the time to read things I wrote years ago means so much more than money and I really do appreciate you for sticking through all my nonsense!!

I also wanted to officially declare Perfectly Alien abandoned, I won’t delete it and I noticed you left a really good idea for compiling some of the PA adjacent stuff here on ao3 which I’m going to check out- that’s a great idea. But the main story is over- it’s not something I’m excited about anymore, although it’s one of my favorite works and I have really fond memories thanks to all of you, it’s not something I look forward to.

And besides that, on a stickier note. HP used to be my crossover vehicle since the world is simple and the characters are easy to change, I have a ton of fics I adore from the HP fandom and every now and then I read one, but the author has thoroughly trashed my enthusiasm for engaging with that world any further. Death of the author is a messy subject when that author is alive and using their profits to actively harm others, and this discourse has certainly been discussed in better ways than I ever could multiple times over. But for me, I understand reasons people have for engaging anyways, this isn’t a place for judgement- I wrote PA during the Bayverse lmao- but it’s not fun anymore.

Anyway this response has gone on long enough and if anyone has bothered to read all of it, thank you so much. I’m going to go through all my asks, and then do some overhauls for this blog. I’m moving away from TF and HP and I fully understand and encourage jumping ship if that’s what you came here for, I’m going to be moving forward with more current interests now.

[miiilowo]

honestly id love if you talked about williams personality i havent read the books and only have that weird ending in the vr game to go off of lol

okay time to go silly mode

I'm gonna say first off I haven't really read the books, and that's where most of the information on his personality is, of course. The best source I've found regarding him is the @canon-william-afton blog- it's currently inactive, for what I fear are very unfortunate reasons, but there's a good backlog of content there with little to no fandomy sort of objections-Just pure analysis. It's rather sexy of them

When it comes to Williams personality, it's important to try and push the child murder thing out of mind for a minute I find. Mostly because serial killers tend to have a set personality in media-While William does have some of those traits, he doesn't conform to any particular stereotype or trope

He's a businessman! While he's still a very skilled engineer, he primarily took up the charismatic and.. Yknow, business, side of things, while henry stayed behind to be the ideas man with the creativity and animatronics. William can certainly use that charisma to his advantage like your average killer character might, but his charisma isn't your standard "I'm hot and sly so people like me" sorta vibe as much as it is "he's likable because he is goofy as shit"

He's a children's entertainer. You can't be a children's entertainer and have a high standard for what keeps your dignity intact. Hes very theatrical and expressive- The books and graphic novels tend to make note of this. Talking about magic and the supernatural while waggling his fingers, making big dramatic bows upon entering a room, stuff like that. I think one of the better examples of this is glitchtrap and vanny and how they're animated. I bring up vanny since glitchtrap is controlling her and all. They both dance and skip around over walking, make a show of expressing their intentions through body language, and make these big sweeping movements for no real reason beyond the fact that it's probably fun

Another thing to mention is that, in the books, he views both Dave and Springtrap as characters he plays over forms or aliases he's taken. He mentions it pretty explicitly, explaining how he viewed them as roles instead of disguises or otherwise- and that Springtrap was specifically supposed to be a comical, over the top villain. Which I appreciate. So much.

You can only be so normal and start up a restaurant wear you wear a bunny costume, yknow? Getting a job as a mascot is one thing, but starting the whole thing up??? And making trans and genderfluid fox robots in the 80s? (Canon) Come on. Come on now

While that's the more lighthearted stuff, William is obviously very fucked up for a myriad of reasons. Primarily, he deals with a lot of envy directed toward Henry-He thinks he's better at robotics, better than him in general, and it really gets under his skin. It's not just admiration and jealousy, it's hatred and envy. In the books it mentions him having stacks of journals, many of the entries raving about him-If I recall correctly, something along the lines of "admiration to near obsession".

The books also mention him being incredibly paranoid and jumpy-Skittish. I don't remember any explicit examples from the books, but it adds up with what we know about his character in-game too, which makes for a decent transition because I wanted to get over to analyzing what we get from the games anyway.

As for the evidence of it in-game, the first example that pops up is him freaking out when the kids corner him in the back room. I'm not sure if this is paranoia as much as it is cowardice, but we both already know he is because he killed children and is a loser

In my mind, the actual fnaf timeline is Wendigoons over on YouTube. It's fantastic, it explains almost everything (up to ucn-he doesn't get into vr or sb) and provides some really interesting insight on Williams character that I hadn't really seen brought up prior to that. But, the run down regarding his interpretation of william is:

William and henry start fredbears. Evan gets chomped because of Michael. He starts to resent Michael for it, but notices Evan is possessing Fredbear. From here, he becomes obsessed with figuring out how to bring his son back because he loved him so much, and it begins the spiral that'll eventually turn him into a monster.

And I do think William cared for his kids. A lot. If Wendigoons right, then he ruined his life attempting to save one of his kids. He designed baby after Elizabeth (canon), even if it ended poorly. In fact, I think he loved them so much it was a little overbearing, given the security cameras in his house and the fact he talked to Evan when he was away through the Fredbear plushie (which also has cameras installed.) It's almost obsessive, don't you think?

That's something else I wanna touch on: Obsessiveness. William was obsessed with Henry for all the wrong reasons, which backfires horribly later down the line for him in the game universe. But that's not the key point, really: It's his obsession with his work-with remnant and trying to bring his kids back-That would get so bad (combined with other elements and perceived betrayal from Henry) that he would completely become lost in it, leading to:

- intentional murder robots

- unintentional murder robots (x2)

- semi-intentional murder robots

- Killing Charlie (Henry's daughter)

- Elizabeth dying

- Killing 5 kids

- his death

- Michaels death

And so on and so forth. You get the point

William got so into his work that he lost all semblance of his humanity and took humanity from countless others. If that's not an example of negative obsession idk what possibly could be

I also think his ego is massive, but that's just kind of an observable fact. It's fragile, he's wimpy and pathetic, but I think he thinks very highly of himself and when someone (Henry) comes along and shatters that perception he kinda goes koo koo bonkers maybe

He is, of course, also a very determined figure-Something he and Michael have in common. I think his hatred for Michael kind of turns into a rage that fuels him later down the line since he wants to Kill Him so Fucking Bad. You can kind of see this in the hidden minigame in midnight motorist-its more than likely that you're William, and the kid in his room is Michael. Right off the bat who we can assume to be Williams wife tells him to leave him alone, implying it's a common occurrence that he's an ass to his kid. Immediately he goes to his room anyway, yells at him, says he's gonna be sorry, then finds out he ran off-Which he isn't too pleased with either.

William refuses to die, and he will do anything in his power to keep that from happening-including manipulating random gamer women

hooah! Vanessa! I don't think him doing the glitchtrap mind control thing is an example of how good of a manipulator he is as much as it is a show of how smart he is-Though, he obviously is a skilled manipulator in one way or another, considering.. Everything. At the very least, his unassuming personality and interest in acting makes it easy for him to get away with lying. But that's not the point. When glitchtrap shows up, he's not really manipulating anyone like people like to say he does-He just had a solid plan that worked. He IS smart, he is incredibly smart, and it usually works very well in his favor.

You may bring up that he isn't so smart maybe since he moves toward the BB voice in fnaf 3, but Im relatively sure that he's fighting against the suit the whole time. Its likely programmed to follow kids voices, and since the locks snapped shut on him, would be in animatronic mode and not suit mode-, meaning, it's not him approaching the BB voice, but spring bonnie. It also leads me to believe he gets angrier on the later nights, since he gets faster and more efficient-Working against it with more determination than before.

I think that's all I have for now, but for more information, I would recommend:

- The Wendigoon FNaF timeline

- This interview with Williams voice actor (he mentions taking inspiration from Hannibal Lecter and the idea of a snake oil salesman)

- And, of course, the @canon-william-afton blog for a metric shitton of genuine facts and analysis

[borrowedtimeandspace]

The Second Hand Unwinds

21. Secret

From this list of gt prompts

AU: Time After Time (Twelve AU)

Note: A special double feature since I managed to get this done for Hug a Giant Day!

~~~

"Don't speak, don't start, just run! Now, go!"

Zepheera held her breath as she heard Bill hasten out of the Doctor's office, leaving him alone. So far as he was aware. In reality, no more than a few feet away, the borrower was pressed to the back of the bookshelf behind his desk, watching them through the gap between a couple of books.

The last few hours had been chaotic. Bill had burst in, being chased by some kind of liquid creature that took the form of another student. An alien attack, right in the middle of the Doctor's office! At first, Zepheera was incredibly worried when the Doctor, unaware of the other occupant of the room, dragged Bill into the safety of the TARDIS and vanished with her, leaving Zepheera alone with the creature. Thankfully, it hadn't stuck around. It splashed itself into a puddle and vanished into the floorboards.

Zepheera was understandably wary of going down there after that, and decided to climb to higher ground and keep an eye on the place in the Doctor's absence. If something was going on, then now could be her chance to make herself known, contribute in whatever way she could.

By the time the TARDIS reappeared in the office, however, it seemed as though the conflict had ended. She tried to piece together what had gone on based on the way the Doctor and Bill spoke about the experience. His back was to Zepheera, but she could see stars in Bill's eyes and she knew. She'd gone out there with him, and she'd seen things that she simply couldn't forget.

Except that the Doctor wanted her to. Bill resisted, of course, but he argued that he was in hiding and couldn't have people knowing about him. At that point, he was closer to Bill and at a better angle for Zepheera to see the pain in his eyes even as he insisted and listened to Bill try and negotiate to keep her memories. That look alone gave Zepheera more answers than all her time watching him at work here. He was obligated to stay here somehow, probably tied down by whatever was in that hidden vault he and his assistant were looking after. He'd been just as energized by the misadventure as Bill, but he felt he had no other recourse.

And then he changed his mind. Bill changed his mind, and he allowed her to keep the memories of what they'd been through together.

With Bill gone, the Doctor thought he was alone. He turned to face the bookshelf that still hid Zepheera, and she could see the conflict all over his face. She felt she should come out of hiding, say something, help him feel less alone in this.

She struggled to think of what to say, and in that moment of hesitation, the Doctor whirled back in the direction of his desk.

"Shut up," he told the photograph of who Zepheera still assumed was his granddaughter. Apparently his conflict was manifesting a bit more tangibly in his mind, because he then said to the picture of the other woman, "You shut up as well!"

Even the TARDIS seemed to sense his unease, something deep within her chiming at him in a way that made the Doctor look rather ganged up on. "Will you all please just leave me alone? I can't do that anymore. I promised!"

"Why didn't that stop you, then?"

Zepheera's question came without much thought, and her feet carried her forward seemingly of their own accord. No longer was she hidden in the shadows, but standing boldly near the edge of the bookshelf.

"Oh, don't you start now…" The Doctor's scoffed response to her question trailed off when he spun back to glance her way, clearly not expecting her to actually be there. Perhaps she had been added to his backlog of voices of reason that rattled around in there. Zepheera didn't have time to decide if she felt honored by that.

Those cool blue eyes landed on her very few inches. Slowly, the Doctor turned to face her completely, standing just a bit higher than her perch, and the borrower felt her heart drum against her ribs. This was the moment she'd wished for and dreaded for so long. Looking him in the eyes and waiting for how he'd react to seeing her again.

"Zepheera…"

Her own name almost felt foreign to her when he said it. The way the 'r' rolled off his tongue in that Scottish brogue he had this time around was new. Yet, he'd uttered it in such a quiet whisper, almost in disbelief.

"Doctor." Zepheera began to step along the narrow edge of the bookshelf toward an open section, where the books were stopped by a small statuette that still towered over her. There, she would have space to pace out the anxious energy she could feel building up. "It's, ah, been a while."

"I…" For once, the Doctor looked lost for words. "You were gone… I couldn't find you."

"I know," said Zepheera, wringing her hands as she willed the awful memories of their separation away. She tried a smile and hoped it didn't come across as a wince "Not the easiest thing in the world, tracking down one borrower. But, then again, the same could be said about you, and…here I am."

Her ramblings were cut short and her pacing ground to a halt when the Doctor took a step forward; tentative as it was she still felt it from all that way. Then he took another, until he stood only inches away from the shelf. The eye contact between them never broke, even as the Doctor's head and the very edges of his shoulders filled up her field of vision. Zepheera struggled to read his expression; severe as those eyebrows could be, the eyes themselves were softer, full of wisdom, wonder, and sadness. The same as she remembered them in all but color. 

Then her view of those eyes was cut off completely by a hand. She started, but didn't flinch away from its approach. It was the Doctor's, after all. She could always trust it before. It faced her head on at first, palm toward her and fingers stretched toward her as though she were something so delicate to touch. Those fingers hovered but didn't come close enough to make contact. 

The hand rotated slowly, giving Zepheera more of a view of the Doctor's expression. She couldn't quite guess what he was thinking, but he certainly seemed to be concentrating. 

Zepheera watched his fingertips orbit her as the Doctor's hand angled to be nearly vertical. One nearly got close enough to touch her face or brush through her hair, but backed away before it could. Then, in a sudden change of tactic, those fingers stretched behind her, circling around to the opposite side while still managing to avoid contact with the borrower he practically had in his grasp if he would only close his hand. 

Unafraid but confused, Zepheera observed all this as it seemed to come to a standstill, his fingers curled behind her and his thumb hovering  awkwardly nearby. She turned a questioning look on the Doctor.

"Can you keep a secret?" he asked her in a hushed tone.

At that, Zepheera had to scoff. "Sort of in the job description, remember?"

The Doctor gave what Zepheera could only describe as a sheepish chuckle, but such a different one than she used to know.

"For a while there, I have to admit that I was pretty adamantly against hugging. Didn't feel very 'me' at the time, when it was all brand new." Almost imperceptibly, the muscles in the Doctor's powerful fingers relaxed, allowing them to curl in the slightest bit closer to Zepheera, and still they couldn't quite bring themselves to touch her. "Now, I'm afraid I've rather forgotten how we made it work."

Zepheera blinked up at him, fighting back the tears as she finally understood. Looking at him now, she recognized that he was just as uncertain about where he stood with Zepheera as she had been all this time. 

The ball was in her court now, and she wasted no time receiving it.

"I think we can manage," she said as she took her own step forward and wrapped an arm experimentally around the Doctor's nearby thumb. She felt it tense up a little in surprise, but he didn't seem to object. In fact, his shoulders dropped as the tension of the moment melted away. That was all the encouragement Zepheera needed to fully commit to the embrace, squeezing his weathered thumb as hard as she would an old friend of her own size.

Much more gently, Zepheera felt the weight of the Doctor's fingers curl around the back of her shoulders and her side, giving the faintest of squeezes in return. That's when the tears began to flow in earnest.

"I've found you," she whispered.

It had been true for months and months, but finally having the Doctor hear her, see her, hugging him again…it made it real.

[blush-reads]

Books I've read this summer (so far!) in a couple sentences or less

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White - 5/28 - Incredibly brutal portrayal of religious trauma and queer rage. I was hooked from the first chapter.

Something Spectacular by Alexis Hall - 5/30 - Suuuuper sexy and fun; I'm always impressed with Alexis Hall's writing, especially his Regency romances. They make me want to dive into Jane Austen's works cause the characters mention them at least a few times in each book.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker - 6/4 - This book is a modern classic for a reason, it is so important to read and it is really tough to at times but I really loved it. I completely fell in love with Alice Walker's writing and the emotions she so vividly portrays, I am definitely going to read more from her.

Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner - 6/5 - OMG I loved the chemistry between the leads and was smiling almost the entire book. I am so going to pick up their other book and will hopefully be adding them to my list of must read romance authors.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells - 6/6 - Another great installment to a lovely series.

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers by Lillian Faderman - 6/9 - Taught me so much about lesbian culture and I am so sad that I don't own a copy of this book, because even though I took pictures there's some passages that will stick with me for a long time.

Burn the House Down: A Biography of America's First Woman President by Kenna Jenkins - 6/10 - I love alternate history and for it to be by a self-published writer it was even better. It was truly worth reading.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler - 6/13 - This is truly one of the best sci-fi books I've ever read, and for it to be compared to anything is completely cheap because it is truly one of a kind. I ran to the library the next day to check out like three more of Butler's books.

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells - 6/14 - Murderbot is so great I love it, and this series is incredibly fun to listen to at the gym.

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin - 6/15 - A bit absurd at times but a witty and horrifying work that feels all too relevant right now.

The Fianceé Farce by Alexandria Bellefleur - 6/16 - Bellefleur is one of my favorite romance authors, she's so magical and I am so excited to read all of her future works. I have one left from her backlog and I'm already itching for more.

Season of Love by Helena Greer - 6/20 - The blurbs were right, this is like a Hallmark movie in book form. It was incredibly sweet and I loved the butch representation, butches have my whole heart forever.

Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree - 6/25 - Although I am not into D&D, this book was super sweet and soft. Definitely going to read more from this series.

Paris: The Memoir by Paris Hilton - 6/26 - Definitely very hard to read but was one of the better celebrity memoirs out there.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica - 6/27 - God this book was so horrifying I can't even fully comprehend my thoughts on this book.

Upstream by Mary Oliver - 7/2 - I love Mary Oliver, this was so good and it was top-notch literary analysis.

Educated by Tara Westover - 7/4 - This book was so good OMG my mom was so right to recommend this book to me for like four years because it is completely worth the hype it got in 2018. Everyone should read this book and pass it on to their friends.

[astriiformes]

Behind on a whole backlog of neat things folks have tagged me in (hello, moving/job/freelance writing chaos), but I have every intention of getting to most of them so, here’s one @marypsue tagged me in last week (thank you!)

Rules: tag nine people you want to get to know better/catch up with!

Favorite color: Equally split between nice bold/dark/jewel-toned blues and greens, with blue maybe slightly winning at the moment, but I go through phases. I especially love them together, and am extremely excited because we actually get to PAINT THE WALLS in the new unit we’re moving into this week, and I am incredibly ready to use both of them decoratively.

Currently reading: Anything I am “currently reading” is very much in theory, but I have been dabbling in a couple books on trans history and, if I am really going to bear my soul here, a suspicious amount of Star Wars fanfiction.

Last song: “Starsoul” by Urban Tapestry!

Last movie: Fairly certain it was when Scribe and I watched The Mitchells vs the Machines a little while ago, which was a delightful choice -- highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.

Last series: Uncertain if this is supposed to be the last one I dipped my toes into or the last one I finished, but for the latter, Critical Role (Campaign 2, at least), in an act of immense hubris because I stayed up until 3am to catch the entire 7-hour finale (worth it, absolutely worth it, especially for a story that has really meant a lot to me!)

Sweet, spicy or savory: Another equal split -- I swerve between wanting sweet and savory with wild abandon. As far as my body thinks though, it’s savory; I actually need to consume extra salt/electrolytes for chronic illness reasons and have been reaching for the kettle chips and cheesy garlic bread accordingly.

Craving: Hm, at this moment nothing in particular; I’m not really someone with much of an appetite or all that prone to cravings. Always down for some really good black licorice though, which might be the best answer for this one.

Tea or coffee: I want to be a tea person and drink it fairly frequently these days -- especially when we have syrups and foraged ingredients on hand, but I regret to admit that even now that I’m trying out ADHD meds that cause my anxiety to worsen on caffeine, I am still very much a coffee man. A fan of both, but inclined to hubris all the same.

Currently working on:

MOVING; you have no idea how ready I am to be unpacking instead of packing, and done with the endless chain of logistics the last few weeks have been. Even once we’re moved we’ll need to paint the walls and have some furniture projects to tackle (staining, changing out hardware), but at least there will be less emails!!

Updating my Fjord Criticalrole playlist, an endeavor that has turned out to be far more sprawling than expected. It’s getting there though! And I am excited to have it be my first playlist I crosspost on both Spotify and 8tracks now that the latter is fighting to stay alive again

The Back to the Future trans headcanon fic duology that occupies half my waking thoughts these days; progress is happening, they are just both going to be long and I am slow! I got some fabulous trans history research help from a librarian friend though, since I am stodgily committed to writing something that feels properly like a product of the 80s trans experience, not the modern one.

Also, Chapter 7 of I Breathed A Song Into the Air, my aro Legolas fic, which has been languishing without an update for an embarrassing amount of time. I had a burst of inspiration during an aspec Tolkien week that was going on in May, but it didn’t get me anywhere near the finish line, despite my deep commitment to seeing that fic all the way through.

Theoretically a High Rollers fic focused on Quill and Sentry before they met up with the rest of the party? The difficulty of confirming canon events in a smaller fandom with an in-progress wiki and a massive amount of canon to sift through has been a bit of a stumbling block, but it’s my third Google Doc existing as a pinned tab currently all the same.

Logistics for a couple of filk concerts (one virtual and one, surreally enough, in-person) that are rapidly sneaking up on us this summer. More to follow on that soon, actually.

Truly a hypothetical here, but getting back into cosplay after a long break. I want to keep a narrow focus even though there are so many projects I’d like to tackle, but finally getting my ANH Luke up to Rebel Legion standards is a primary goal for sure (I just need the right shoes and to buckle down and make my belt!!). I also am on the hunt for two denim jackets to cannibalize into a single horrible 80s one for Marty McFly, after the realization that his is decidedly more a relic of its era than people usually recognize. And last but not least, plodding away on Quill, especially after learning another coworker of mine is also making a bird(-ish) cosplay, so I have someone to talk wings/feathers with! First up might actually be his talons though -- I just need to stop being so intimidated by sculpting!

I am frazzled enough after a few days that have truly been Days that I think I’m going to skip out on tagging people, but if anyone else wants to pick this up, I am handing you the baton. Carry on!

[mallowstep]

visual impairment in the uk in the early 20th century preliminary research

so it's july, disabilities pride month, i'm researching for watlcitf (1910s ireland au), and i figured i should share what i'm looking at.

(the title for this post is so incredibly specific but that's because most research is. my previous post for watlcitf was like, 2k words exclusively going through census data for one census and one county in ireland. i named maybe twenty characters.)

anyway, disclaimers out of the way, tagging @foxstride because i think they'll be interested in this, let's get started.

unlike last time, i have a specific research goal: to determine what jay's life, as a blind person, would be in the uk (specifically, ireland) in the early 20th century (specifcally, 1900-1914), given that he's from a well-off family.

so i have the benefit of being a bit more focused.

unfortunately, i don't have a great backlog of information. i can't just pull up the national archives and start going through census data. that's alright, what else is research for?

i'm going to try to keep to things that are broadly accessible, but if i can't find things on the internet, i will be turning to my university's library resources.

getting my footing

so after checking that the obvious search (various combinations of the keywords form the title) didn't pull up anything particularly useful, i started going after disabilities in general in early 20th century england.

(i know i'm not set in england, but i also know that i can find broad coverage of information about the uk by starting my research in england.)

before i do that, thoough, we did have britannica's history of the blind, something i found fairly unhelpful. i already know braille was around by the 1910s, and then for some reason it tailspins into the us, which is exceptionally unhelpful.

(an interesting story might be sending jay abroad for a better education, but this is not that particular historical au.)

anyway, as per usual, britannica told me a lot of what i already knew and didn't offer any good leads to new information. (i draw the line at buying books for a fanfic. this is a one-shot. i am going to have written more about my research for it than the actual fic. sigh.)

so next up: historical england's a history of disability, which covers a wonderfully long time range, making it good for anyone from the middle ages to the recent past.

i jumped straight to disability in the 19th century, because their 20th century starts covering 1914 and on.

for those following along at home, the 4 headings in the sidebar are clickable links to articles with more information.

i know jay is going to be living at home, so while i did skim through the section on asylums and workhouses, neither of those are applicable here. we're skipping straight to the daily life of disabled people.

since about 50 years pass between the main time period of this article and my time period, i'm not sure how much i can rely on the attitudes section, but jumping off places.

some key quotes:

"These were the ambivalent Victorian attitudes towards disability - a combination of fear, pity, discomfort and an idea of divine judgement."

"Henry Fawcett (1833-1884), blinded as a young man, became Postmaster-General in 1880; he introduced the parcel post and the postal order."

"In 1838 the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read was formed and in 1866 the Worcester College for the Blind ('for the blind sons of gentlemen') became the world's first further education provision for disabled people."

"In 1868 the British and Foreign Blind Association was formed by Dr Thomas Armitage, initially to promote the use of braille. It was to become the Royal National Institute for the Blind."

"In 1894 the first branch of the Guild of the Brave Poor Things (motto: 'Happy in My Lot') was formed as a self-help group for people with physical disabilities. They described themselves as a group to "make life sweet for the blind and crippled folk of all ages"."

so great! that gives me a good number of jumping off places. nothing ideal, but it's a start.

henry fawcett

seems like a good enough start. researching attitudes won't help me entirely, here, mostly in that i'll be better off starting with other things and seeing what i pick up.

well according to wikipedia, he was blinded as an adult while he was already in education.

that's incredibly frustrating.

moving on.

royal national institude for the blind

as i know this exists, i figured it's as good a place to start as any.

sticking with wikipedia, because frankly, sticking with wikipedia is as good a place to start as any, we're on the wikipedia page for royal national institute of blind people

wikipedia's history summary was saddening.

moving on.

rnib's history page is next up on the list.

well, the first key takeaway is the adoptation of a braille magazine ("progress") and braille contractions. i'm not doing an overview of braille here, because these research posts are primarly for my own benefit, and i'm comfortable with my understanding of braille as it stands.

alright, i'm frustratingly limited in what i've learned, but i'm making progress.

the white cane

i took a bit of a change of course. we went back to the drawing board: literally just googling "history of blind people" in vain hope but lo! i actually stumbled upon something.

a list of facts about the white cane lead me to the wikipedia page for the white cane lead me to an archived web link about the history of orientation and mobility and good lord! have i finally started getting somewhere.

this is entirely focused around the us, and i'm not going to type up a summary here as it's quite long.

that said, it's alltogether helpful. the biggest takeaway is that mobility was taught by individual teachers going home to home. exceptionally helpful tidbit, that is.

the thing with historical research is that there are things that feel like reasonable assumptions to make often aren't, so i feel quite happy in that knowledge.

to the specifics: ireland

alright, while i'm mostly unsatisfied with what i've done, i want to move on. i have a feeling that i'm going to need to revisit this. i actually just changed the title to preliminary research to account for this.

sigh.

so we've moved to the history of ncbi, the national council for the blind of ireland.

they were founded in 1931, meaning that my instinct to start in england was correct, but still. their history page confirms that home teaching is the big thing at the start.

summary and moving on

okay so i went to do some research into the history of education in the england (the status of ireland vs england is at the moment Complex, but suffice to say that for most purposes i'm searching for english history) to see if i could find any sort of wrap-up about home tutors vs schools, and.

lo.

i found something fairly useful. it's an elemetary education act for blind and deaf children, which, like, god. so useful.

laws are just. good ways of establishing the general outlook of a time period.

so.

unfortunately.

it does not apply to ireland and scotland, and yes, i do have to do research into the history of education in ireland, but i feel i have hit some kind of nebulous conclusion.

because this is half research notes and half helpful information for others (if anyone else needs this kind of specific information), i'll try to summarize here

schools were possibly able to handle blind students. by "handle" i mostly mean "provide a seat and something resembling education", but that's better than nothing.

most mobility, braille, etc., skills seem to be taught by instructors going home to home

thanks to the relatively low traffic, population density, etc., blind people seem to have a decent amount of mobility

that's all for now. my skills in research are not historical research, so i can't promise that like. i have the best critical thinking skills here. etc. etc.

<3

[bi-bard]

Do You Ever Stop to Think About Me?- Emily Prentiss Imagine (Criminal Minds)

Title: Do You Ever Stop to Think About Me?

Pairing: Emily Prentiss X Reader

Song Drawn: Dorothea

Word Count: 1,687 words

Warning(s): Mentions of feeling abandoned, broken promises

Summary: Memories were strange things. Some feel like they’re forgotten in seconds, others seem to last a lifetime. When the source of (Y/n)’s longest lasting memories rolls back into their small town, how will they react?

Author’s Note: I got halfway through this and realized that I basically wrote some very weird version of the first season of You... oh well. Please consider supporting my Ko-fi account. It would mean a lot to me. If I know there are people interested in it, I’ll get the monthly donation part set up. 

Buy me a coffee? https://ko-fi.com/khoward0

If you want to know more about my Taylor Swift writing challenge, click here!

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

“It appears that the FBI has just arrived on the scene of the latest crime-”

I popped my head into the living room when I heard the news. I had been trying to keep up with the latest string of murders in my town. Not only had they been a strange occurrence in a town as small as ours, but they were also incredibly graphic... at least that’s what the news was saying.

My heart felt like it stopped when I saw who got out of the car. Emily Prentiss. I’d be damned. I hadn’t seen her in years. Some of us moved from city to city... or country to country while others stayed in the same town their whole life. She threw a quick “no comment” at the reporter’s question and walked into the house with some of her coworkers.

“Wow,” I mumbled before checking the time. “Oh, shit.”

I had work that day. A librarian in a small town wasn’t the best gig in the world but it paid fine and I got to be surrounded by things I loved. 

I was sitting at the front desk, checking on which books were overdue and which ones had just been checked back in.

“Excuse me,” I looked up to see Emily and two men standing there.

“Emily,” I said, furrowing my eyebrows. “Emily Prentiss... I don’t know if you remember me. I’m (Y/n) (Y/l/n).”

“(Y/n),” she repeated, smiling at me. “I remember you, I promise.”

I stood up, walking around the desk and hugging her. 

“This is Agent Morgan and Dr. Reid,” she introduced. I shook Morgan’s hand and waved back at Dr. Reid. 

“What can I help you guys with,” I asked. 

“We were wondering if you’d seen anything odd here recently,” Agent Morgan explained. “Maybe a man coming here a lot suddenly. Maybe you’ve talked to him. Probably close to your age, awkward, most likely white.”

“I can’t think of anything,” I said, biting my lip as I tried to think. “We don’t have many regulars and when we do they tend to stick to themselves.”

“Did you know any of the victims,” Dr. Reid asked. 

I shook my head, “Not personally. Some of them would come in here every now and then but I tend to be a bit of a fly on the wall when no one needs my help.”

“Here,” Emily handed me a card with her number on it. “Keep your eyes open, call me- I mean- us if you see anything.”

“Do you have security cameras,” I looked back over at Reid and nodded. “Can we take a look at them?”

I nodded, stepping back behind my desk so I could hand him a key, “This will get you into the room. It’s in the back right corner. Door says ‘Security,’ you can’t miss it. We have backlogs for a week so I don’t know how much you can get off of it.”

“Thank you,” Reid and Morgan walked off. 

“Emily,” I said, touching her arm. “Am I in danger?”

“I... I don’t know.”

“Emily...”

“The other victims look like you, the library is the center of the hunting ground. Yes, I’m worried about you. Keep your eyes open. Don’t go somewhere private with someone you don’t know. Just... please be safe.”

“I’ll try,” I nodded. Emily was about to walk away. “Hey... I don’t know how long you’re going to be in town after this but... if you’re able... do you want to go out for drinks? Catch up?”

She grinned at me, “That sounds really nice.”

“Okay,” I chuckled awkwardly before grabbing a spare piece of paper, quickly scribbling my number down before handing it to her. “If I can help you guys anymore, let me know.”

“Okay,” she nodded. “I’ll see you later.”

I nodded. She walked back towards where her coworkers had gone earlier. I sat down at my desk, trying to stop blushing before going back to work. I spent about twenty more minutes working before I saw Dr. Reid walk out quickly while talking on the phone. 

Agent Morgan walked over and handed me the key, “Thank you for your help.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied. Emily waved at me as she and Agent Morgan left. 

I had stood up to go put some books on the desks. It was slower today than usual but it gave me more time to get my work done. I only left the desk because the library was empty. I popped my head out from behind a shelf when I heard the door open and close. I saw a man standing by the desk.

“Can I help you,” I asked, walking over to the desk. 

“Hey,” he said, waving at me. 

“Hi,” I chuckled. “Can I help you?”

I was caught off guard by the man jumping at me and holding a knife to my neck. I stuttered over some words, scared out of my mind.

“Come on,” he pulled me closer. “We have a date tonight.”

--Time Skip--

“Listen, just let me go, and we can talk about this,” I said, trying to not cry in front of him. 

“This is the only way,” he replied as he finished tying me to the chair. “This is the only way for us to be together. All those girls. The ones who wanted to take your place.”

“I...I...”

“Don’t you remember,” he asked. “You always were so kind to me. Whenever I came in, Mondays and Fridays-”

“The Fantasy section,” I mumbled.

Agent Morgan said that he would awkward but this man was as casual and confident as a man his age. I saw him each week. I gave him a wave as I did with everyone. How did that turn into him think I loved him?

“I’m so happy that you remember,” he cupped the side of my face. I noticed the knife in his other hand. “I love you.”

I knew very well that it would’ve been very bad for me to reject him. Knives were scary.

“I love you too,” I replied shakily. He smiled, tilting his head at me. 

I was terrified. I didn’t know how long I was going to have to do this or if I was going to be able to. I tried to force a smile at him.

I shouted when the door was kicked open. Agent Morgan and Emily walked in with their guns drawn. The man stood behind me, knife by my throat. 

“Hey, hey, put the knife,” Emily said. “You love (Y/n), right?”

“Yes and you won’t come between us,” he shouted. 

“But killing them would,” she reasoned. 

“Please,” I begged quietly. “If you love me, you’ll listen to them.”

“But-but-”

“I’ll never get to see you again if I’m dead,” I continued. “Please. For me.”

I let out a sigh as he moved the knife away from me. Agent Morgan stepped forward, handcuffing him after the knife clattered on the ground. The man watched me with a smile as he was led out. Emily walked over and started untying me.

“So... how about that drink,” I tried to joke.

“You’re being funny,” she asked. “You just had a knife to your throat.”

“I must be trying to avoid it by using humor as a coping mechanism,” I said, rubbing, now untied, wrists. “That’s a thing, right?”

“I don’t know about immediately after,” she replied, finishing untying my ankle. “Can you stand up?”

“Yeah,” I nodded, standing up. Emily supported me even though I was standing. “So... that drink?”

“My god,” she laughed as we walked. “Get cleared by the medics and I’ll go for that drink tonight... if I can clear it with my boss.”

“Deal,” I said. 

Emily passed me over to the medics with a grin before walking over to talk to some man in a suit and scowl that looked like it hadn’t moved in years. The medics checked on me quickly. I wasn’t too concerned. I hadn’t actually been hit but I could see why they needed to check on me. Emily walked back over just as they were wrapping up. 

“Good news,” she said. “My boss has encouraged me to go. Is (Y/n) going to be alright to go?”

“Should be alright, everything looks normal and they aren’t describing any pain,” the EMT nodded. I stood up and thanked them. 

“I know this lovely restaurant,” I started rambling. Emily just smiled and nodded.

--Time Skip--

We both thanked the waitress as we handed back the menus. I looked at her and grinned.

“I should thank you for saving me,” I said, trying to break the awkward silence between us. 

“It’s my job,” she shrugged. I raised an eyebrow at her. “You’re welcome.”

I chuckled at her, shaking my head for a moment. Another moment of silence took over the conversation. I looked down at the table.

“Can I ask you something,” I tilted my head at her. She nodded. “Did you ever think about me after you left?”

“Of course I did,” she replied. “You were one of my best friends ever. You made yourself very hard to forget.”

“Oh,” I chuckled. “I never forgot you either... you were... gosh... a little more than a best friend.”

“What?”

“Emily, we made out, you were my first kiss, you took me out on a date,” I said. “You don’t remember?”

“I do but I didn’t think about how much you’d hold onto that... we never really talked about it.”

“I haven’t left this town in years, not much else to think about,” I chuckled. “I guess I was scared that you had gone off, found cooler friends, forgotten about me... and I was just here. Stuck. Waiting for someone to make me feel the same way you did.”

“I didn’t forget about you,” she replied. “You have my number now... maybe we could keep in touch when I leave. I’d love to show you around D.C.”

“I’d like that,” I grinned, blushing a bit. 

Emily waltzing back into my life may have been one of the best things to ever happen to me.

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

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[daleisgreat]

The Avengers: Endgame

Over the last couple months I finally upgraded to somewhat modern TV and gaming rigs in the form of a 55” Samsung 4KTV and Xbox Series X. I own three 4K UHD discs, but one I already covered a couple years back with my entry of the BluRay version that came bundled with the 4K disc of Die Hard. The other is a two pack of the first two John Wick films, and rest assured those will get their day in the sun here eventually. From my research, the Xbox Series X is not a top shelf 4K BluRay player, at least not at the system’s launch before presumable system software updates, but also sounds like a fairly better quality version of the drive that came in the Xbox One X|S, and also supports upscaling of regular BluRays to 4K. Coincidentally, on top of my movie backlog pile was a movie I absolutely wanted to take advantage of that 4K upscaling and thus here we are with today’s write-up for 2019’s The Avengers: Endgame (trailer). WARNING: Unlike nearly most of my other movie recaps I will be diving into serious spoiler territory ahead. The amount of hype leading up to Endgame was insurmountable. Anthony and Joseph Russo did an astounding job directing the first part in 2018’s Infinity War (read my entry for it here). Both that and Endgame top the three hour mark to squeeze in as many characters, references, periphery side plots and so much more from the previous 21 Marvel Cinematic Universe films that lead up to this finale. By accomplishing just that, both movies are the breeziest three hour viewings I have experienced because the Russo brothers do a commendable job at keeping the scenes flowing and doing their best to give everyone their proper time to shine. The ending of Infinity War saw Thanos (Josh Brolin) deliver the snap heard around the world that vanished half of all life in the entire universe. It was a soul-crushing downer of a cliffhanger to end on, but the post-credits tag hinting at the cry of help for Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) left crowds with a glimmer of hope. This being based around comic books there is the unwritten rule where no one truly stays dead either, so part of the experience going into Endgame was to see how the remaining Avengers plan to bring everybody back. Endgame kicks off with the fresh effects of ‘the snap’ when it starts with Hawkeye’s family all getting dusted from him in the middle of a picnic.

The film transitions to the remaining un-dusted Avengers squad of Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Iron Man (Robert Downer Jr.) floating aimlessly in space until the convenient deus ex machina that is Captain Marvel miraculously tracks them down and hauls them back to Earth. A few weeks Avengers HQ tracks down Thanos on an isolated planet and with Captain Marvel’s power, they anticlimactically kill him off in a brief scene. This was one of the parts of the film that did not sit well with me after building up Thanos as this unrivaled threat in all the previous films, and to have the Avengers cold-bloodedly put him down in quick order seems so……unlike them, but he did off half the universe so I understand how the Russo’s felt justified for filming it that way, but I cannot help that it did not come across right, and could have been handled better. Of course, a more proper Thanos battle would be coming later in the final act thanks to my pet peeve plot device that is…. …TIME TRAVEL!!!! This and alternate dimension traveling I despise and have turned me off to many shows over the years like Lost and CW’s DC shows. The worst of it is indeed present here because meaningful character deaths that happened in Infinity War to Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Gamura (Karen Gillan) become undone and their sacrifices proved for naught. All that griping aside however, I will give the Russo brothers credit because even with those qualms I feel they pull off time travel and have it appear as more than a convenient storytelling method. Again, major props because that is a hell of a hurdle to overcome. The filmmakers go out of their way in a couple scenes to directly call out Back to the Future’s style of time travel bullshit, and have a couple characters ever-so-carefully explain in detail and for the laymen how “real” time travel works.

This is all thanks to a rambunctious rat who inadvertently zaps Ant Man (Paul Rudd) out of the Quantum Realm…after being trapped there five years due to his team being on the end of a dusting before bringing him back. Ant Man deduces upon his return that he is able to undo the dusting through his van-quantum-realm-contraption, and convinces the Avengers to conjure up a plan they cleverly dub the “Time Heist” to travel back to capture all the Infinity Gems Stones before Thanos does. I loved how these scenes played out, and there is a plethora of fan service throughout it as the three squads of Avengers jump to different periods like the final battle of the original Avengers film, and a 1970 military base where Howard Stark (John Slattery) unknowingly meets his son. Plans do not proceed swimmingly to say the least, and past timeline Thanos becomes clued in to their plan and thwarts the Avengers attempt at trying to undo the past in a CG showpiece for the ages with his assault on Avengers HQ. The CG fireworks continue to dazzle for the bulk of the final hour of the film with a climatic showdown between Thanos and his forces against The Avengers and the returning of the dusted Marvel characters. I have seen too many comic book films fail at translating over-the-top comic book action on the silver screen, but the Russo brothers always manage to pull it off. I fondly remember the theater crowd going gaga when Captain America (Chris Evans) summons Mjolnir and wallops Thanos with it. The women of Marvel have another moment to shine together where they collectively team up to kick ass. Moments of levity are brilliantly peppered in throughout the chaos for a much-needed chuckle from the nonstop adrenaline-boosting action. That final battle masterfully builds up to the dramatic sacrifice of Iron Man in the standout emotional scene of the film.

The resulting aftermath was heartwarmingly done here with a pre-recorded farewell from Iron Man, and a collage of nearly all the major and minor MCU characters at Iron Man’s funeral. I believe this is the first MCU film without a post-credits tag, and that is 100% fine by me, because the beginning of the credits is a lovingly crafted tribute to the original Avengers cast done in the fashion of the Original Series cast of Star Trek VI that resonated with me feeling the end of a pivotal era of the MCU that I have been largely enjoying since the original 2008 Iron Man. I usually do not dive into this much detail and spoilers when recapping the movies here, but due to this being the final chapter of this era of the MCU films I could not help myself, and believe me there is so much more I wanted to dive in here on because like I said, the Russo brothers crammed in an incredible amount of narrative into three hours. There is so much ground in here it is impossible for me to recap it all, and that it will in all likelihood be the fastest three hour movie you will ever endure. I did not get a chance to even touch on over-the-hill Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the hybrid Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo (spoiler: they both killed it!)). Endgame unsurprisingly did major bank at the box office, so I feel safe knowing most of you reading this already watched it by now which is another reason I went all out on the spoilers.

I re-watched the film for this entry a second time with commentary from the Russo brothers, and writers Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, and that greatly helped explain some little tidbits that were easy to miss and/or not fully comprehend in the midst of the three hours. I know this is a little detail, but I want to give props to Marvel for being one of the few companies out there for shelling out resources to caption the commentary track! I exponentially appreciate it more than you know! The commentary helped with understanding why they did not do a lot for Black Widow’s (Scarlett Johansson) aftermath of her death because she has her prequel film set to release. Other notable takeaways from the commentary was how Stark’s “I am Iron Man” line was a last minute addition to the film, giving credit to Star Trek VI as inspiration for their credits sequence, being hopeful for Marvel capitalizing on Falcon donning Cap’s shield and lots of understandable love for the visual effects team for their hard work. Aside from the commentary track, the BluRay has a second disc with just under an hour of bonus material. There is the requisite short, but top-of-the-line gag reel that is standard in most Marvel Studios home videos. There are five minutes of deleted scenes worth a look, with some of them lightheartedly covering up plot holes. Remembering Stan Lee is a touching tribute to Stan, filled with archived interviews from him on his experiences in the cameos, and showing plenty of delightful off-camera interactions with the cast and crew. There are well done character profile pieces for Thor, Black Widow, Captain America and Iron Man, with each one having countless cast and crew state proper kudos to what the actors have done for those characters over the years. If you only have time for one then I recommend Man Out of Time: Creating Captain America, because it goes into a little more detail than the others and Chris Evans has some intriguing introspection from his years with the character. Finally, there are short, but worthwhile pieces on the Russo brothers and the women of the MCU that should not be skipped out on either.

As I mentioned above, the hype building up to Endgame was insurmountable, but Joseph and Anthony Russo overcame the odds and delivered a gratifying conclusion to this era of the MCU. Watching the BluRay upscaled in 4K on a TV about a third bigger than my previous set made it a grander experience too for those showpiece moments. Sure I had quibbles and nitpicks I mentioned above, but by and large those are easily overcome by how much the Russo brothers got it right with this film. I am kicking myself for waiting a year and a half to re-watch it, but picked up on a lot of little things that went right over mine and Drax’s heads the first time out. If you have yet to give The Avengers: Endgame another viewing, then do not hesitate because you will not regret once again taking in this landmark epic that delivered against all odds! Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street The Accountant Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron The Avengers: Infinity War Batman: The Dark Knight Rises Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve The Clapper Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed I & II Deck the Halls Detroit Rock City Die Hard Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Grunt: The Wrestling Movie Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Hell Comes to Frogtown Hercules: Reborn Hitman I Like to Hurt People Indiana Jones 1-4 Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Last Action Hero Major League Man of Steel Man on the Moon Man vs Snake Marine 3-6 Merry Friggin Christmas Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpions Revenge National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets Nintendo Quest Not for Resale Payback (Director’s Cut) Pulp Fiction The Punisher (1989) The Ref The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VIII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery Scott Pilgrim vs the World The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Slacker Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Sully Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild The Wizard Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Apocalypse X-Men: Days of Future Past

[tibbinswrites]

Prompt #170: Part 3

So @day-fire​ asked (fist slammed a table) for a part three and made grabby hands... how could I leave those grabby hands empty? I’ve now done prompts for: #1, #2, #4 and #16, #9, #10, #20, #33, #77, #78, #170 (part 1), (part 2), (part 3), #327 and #502 and I’ve finally completed my backlog so I’m not accepting any more prompts at this time.

Also, just in case you weren’t aware, I’m part of an incredible destiel fanfic, art and podfic anthology. Our indegogo page is live here and there are tiers ranging from simply gorgeous PDF copies and all the podfics to beautiful print books with a bunch of other merch like bookmarks and art prints. We are now FULLY FUNDED so this project is a go! Everyone who buys a printed copy of the book now shall definitely be receiving one (and hey, maybe even a hardback one if we make it to 143% funded).

So here it is. The third (and final) part to the original prompt: “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

I hope you like it ^_^ Read the first part here

Read the second part here

Before Chuck’s body even had time to cool (metaphorically of course, there hadn’t been an actual corpse left behind once Jack was through with him), Billie showed up.

“Well done,” she said in that perpetually-sarcastic-yet-somehow-still-serious tone of hers. “You actually did it. I have to admit I’m surprised, it was touch and go there for a while.”

“Okay,” Dean immediately shifted from one fight to the next as he turned to confront Death. “We followed your plan, did your thing and we won. So now, you owe us.”

Watching Billie’s face transform into shocked indignation was worth the demand all by itself.

“My thing?” She said, drawing herself up to her full height, a crackle of dark energy seemed to buzz around her for a moment. “My thing was saving the world, the world that you all live on. I believe that what you mean to say is ‘Thank you’. I owe you nothing and our alliance is done.”

“That’s not how I see it,” Dean insisted stubbornly. “You going after Chuck was more personal than doing us a solid. He was messing with your books and your big picture plan so your beef with him wasn’t exactly altruistic.”

“Dean, what are you doing?” Sam murmured in his ear, stepping forward to grab his shoulder but Dean shook him off, his eyes only on Billie.

“Well you’ve got balls, Winchester, I’ll give you that,” she allowed, looking more amused now than anything, which Dean counted as a win because, you know, even by his standards, he knew that pissing off Death was a monumentally stupid idea. Even Sam’s presence retreated from his side, back towards Jack. “Go on then, tell me. What is it you want? Aside from… oh, I don’t know, your lives, the lives of seven billion people, your entire universe, and of course the fact that your future is your own again. Because none of that counts if my perceived motivation isn’t up to your very hypocritical standards.”

Okay, so maybe she was a little pissed. Nonetheless, Dean ploughed through, his hands balled at his sides, ignoring the warning looks from his family.

“The point is—”

“Just ask me for the favour, Dean,” Billie interrupted smoothly. “It does you no credit to be making demands with faulty logic to try and save yourself a debt. Either I’ll help you or I won’t, but I’ll be more likely to be on your side if you stop insulting me.”

Dean hesitated at that and swallowed hard. She was right, but that didn’t make it any easier. Sure, he made skeevy deals all the time that almost always backfired but at least he usually expected them to. Quid pro quo was something that he understood well. In this life you had to be willing to give a lot to get a little back. Straight up asking for help from a cosmic entity though? That was new, humiliating territory. He had nothing that she wanted from him anymore. He could ask, hell, he could beg, but he knew as well as she did that he had no leverage to stop her from just walking away.

“I want Cas freed of his deal.”

“Dean!” That was Cas, stepping forward, his face filled with compassion and gratitude as he moved into Dean’s line of sight and Dean’s face flooded with heat that Cas could look at him that way, that Cas could still look at him that way. “You don’t have to do this for me.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Dean said, dragging his eyes back to Billie, who was watching them carefully. “I got nothin’ to bargain with, you know that. You don’t want our lives or souls or whatever. Chuck’s already dead and you don’t care if we’re happy or not. I’m just asking, please. Break the deal.”

Billie considered him for a long time, her dark eyes taking him in, taking in Cas and then she was looking past them to where Sam and Jack probably stood before falling back on him. He briefly wondered what she saw… she didn’t like him all that much he was sure and if he had learned anything about her it was that she didn’t do anything that contradicted with whatever her big picture was. What Dean was asking was a pretty heavy shift of the way the stage had been set. But he couldn’t let her just leave without taking what might be his only shot to save the man he loved.

Finally, Billie sighed and took a step back, her grip shifting on her scythe.

“I can’t.”

Dean tried not to wilt, resolutely did not look at Cas. He didn’t want Cas to see the apology in his eyes, the failure.

The entire room was still, not even the dust motes seemed to move. Which was ironic really considering the fact that the world Dean had just helped save was starting to fracture around him.

Dean felt a warm hand on his arm then and a soft voice in his ear.

“Dean, it’s alright.”

“No!” He turned on Cas with all the fury he wanted to direct at Billie, at the Empty. “It’s not alright! How can you just stand there and tell me that you’re fine with being miserable for the rest of your life? How can you justify that? How can you?” he jabbed an accusing finger at Billie, who stared back, impassive in the face of his rage. “After what he’s done for this world, and his part in your plan—which was freaking huge by the way, he did way more than any of us—how can you just stand there and tell me that he doesn’t deserve to be happy?!”

“Deserve has nothing to do with it,” Billie told him calmly. “I told you, I can’t break the deal, because I wasn’t the one to make it. I can, however, make a call.”

And with that, her eyes rolled up into her skull, leaving the blank whites staring out at them all. Disconcerted, Dean glanced around at the others. Cas was still next to him, his presence solid, his eyes almost hopeful. Sam had herded Jack nearer the door in case they needed to bolt, though Dean knew that was more for appearance and instinct’s sake, neither of them were going anywhere, no matter how hairy things got. Jack was staring at Billie, looking pleased if not relaxed. Sam’s eyes met his and Dean wasn’t surprised by the conflict he saw there. He felt it too. He knew as well as Sam did that if he put all his hopes in this and it didn’t pan out, it would destroy him. Sam would back his play, of course he would, he wanted Cas to be happy and safe as much as Dean did, but Dean could see the deep concern there that he knew wasn’t for Cas. He looked away, back to Billie, whose irises were slowly sliding back into place, and the growing puddle of darkness that was beginning to materialise on the concrete floor.

Dean watched, feeling increasingly sick as the black, liquid-looking substance bubbled and rose and solidified into a vaguely humanoid form. There was no face, which was disconcerting as all hell, and the thing’s limbs were just a little too long and… wobbly to be truly human. It was making his brain fuzz over just looking at it. He felt Cas’ grip tighten on his arm.

“What do you want now?” The thing whined, it’s non-face turned in Billie’s direction. It’s voice was perhaps the most surprising thing about it, it was high pitched and nasal (which was impressive considering the thing’s lack of nose) with a slant to the words that Dean couldn’t place. He supposed ‘afterlife dimension’ came with its own accent.

“The angel wants out of his deal,” Billie said. “The humans wish to make what I’m sure will either be a heartfelt plea or some kind of threat.”

“You called me for that? Isn’t this over? Hmmm... I have God and His sister all nicely tucked away and sleeping. Why am I still awake?”

“Look...” Dean said to the goo-creature, and the head swivelled around on a too-loose neck. He stared at where he thought the eyes should be, trying not to be creeped out by the fact he had no idea if his gaze was being returned or not. He also wasn’t sure what tack to try here. He had no more leverage over this thing than he did the Grim Reaper, would it respect a strong stance or was grovelling the way to go? He would do it, if that’s what it took to let Cas live the rest of his life chasing joy. Hell, he would get down on his knees if it meant that he could finally return the words Cas had voiced not three weeks ago. His mind was spinning, but coming up a blank.

So Sam stepped up, taking slow, measured steps to stand at Dean’s other shoulder. “You’ve helped us out before, done Jack a solid when you let him come back and we appreciate that. We also know that you’ve got some issues with Cas and we’d really like to resolve those so that… so you don’t take him.”

“Yeah,” Jack piped up, moving to Cas’ other side. “We’d really rather he stay with us. Without giving up his happiness.”

“Cas is the main reason you still have a place to go back to,” Dean added. “Can’t you just give him a pass? More than anyone he’s earned that.”

“The little shit woke me up!” The creature screeched at them out of its non-mouth. “I haven’t been woken up in the history of ever until that feathered moron came along. All he had to do was sleep, yes, and he couldn’t even do that! So I’m taking him when I damn well please. I gave up my legitimate claim to you, nephilim, just to squeeze out every drop of revenge. You think I’ll go back on that now? Oh, no, no, no, not when the due date is so close, am I right?”

Dean blinked, suddenly getting the feeling that the Empty had stopped talking to them at some point and had started addressing Cas, who he felt perfectly still beside him.

“Am I right, angel?” The thing cooed, “You almost have your happy, don’t you? You’re holding it back by a mere membrane. And now it stands right next to you and tries to get me to change my mind. That has to be nice… seeing how he cares. How they all care.”

Cas said nothing, but in a quick glance Dean saw his lips press together, his eyes lower. The submission hurt Dean more than any outburst of rage at this creature who had stolen all the things that people lived for, everything that Cas had fallen for and given so much of himself to protect. It wasn’t fair that he was now just as cut off from it as when he was a mindless automaton. He should be angry.

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me,” he said, still looking down at the floor. “But if this deal breaks, Jack’s soul is forfeit, and I can’t—”

“No it’s not.”

Every head turned to look at Billie, who was the picture of nonchalance, except for the gleam in her eye. “Jack’s soul will go to heaven.”

The Empty spluttered. “I think you’ll find nephilim are my jurisdiction.”

“They are,” Billie agreed, “but Jack’s not a nephilim anymore. Is he?”

Dean gaped in Jack’s direction. The kid frowned, then looked like he was concentrating really hard on something, and then surprise lit his features. “I’m human?”

“Your power was what was needed to defeat God,” Billie explained. “The exact amount of your power. No more, no less. It was never really yours anyway, it was inherited from your father. But you disowned him and chose a father of your own.” She nodded towards Castiel. “That severed the power from you, made your human soul separate from the archangel grace. In reality, Chuck was fighting two of you, Jack, and He was only able to destroy one. Of course, He thought the one worth destroying was the one with the power, leaving you as the other. Pure human. Which,” she smiled at the Empty, “is my jurisdiction.”

If the Empty had a face, Dean was pretty sure it would be glaring fire at Billie. “You’re on their side?” It screeched. Dean winced at the piercing volume. “You want me to break the deal. What? Are you going to keep me awake until I obey, yes? You can’t pull that lever twice, Reaper. I helped you with the old man and the dark one all on the promise that once this was over you’d let me sleep and I know you to be a being of your word.”

“You’re right,” Billie said evenly. “I will keep my promise, regardless of whether or not you help the angel. But I would prefer it if you did. As a favour.” Her eyes flicked briefly to Dean’s at that and a newfound well of respect for Billie threatened to spill out of his dumb mouth. He swallowed it back. He was pretty sure she could see his gratitude. She had already helped them by calling the Empty here, and it would have been more than fair for her to leave them to do the convincing, which he was pretty sure wouldn’t have worked on its own.

The Empty seemed to consider that; clearly weighing the benefit of having Death owe it one against whatever pleasure it would gain from torturing Cas. The decision took far longer than Dean was comfortable with and something snapped in him at the tense silence. His hand found Cas’ and he held it tight, ignoring the surprised look that melted into fondness on his left. He felt a hand land on his opposite shoulder and looked up into Sam’s face. There was a soft smile there, and pride, but there was a twitch in his eyebrow that begged him not to entwine himself so deep that he couldn’t disentangle himself if this all went to shit. Dean couldn’t bring himself to tell him that it was far, far too late for that.

“Hmmm...” The Empty said. “Well… There it is. Looks like Castiel just cashed in his happy.”

Dean’s head snapped around. Cas was looking at him, beaming really. His eyes glittering in the low light, radiant in a way that was different from his grace and far more beautiful. The hand in his gave a gentle squeeze, though there was fear in those eyes now, his moment of pure joy eclipsed by the fact that this could all be gone with his next blink. Dean brought his other hand around to clasp their already joined ones, as if he could just hold tight enough, then nothing could make him let go.

Seeing Cas afraid was like an icy fingertip sliding down his spine. He turned back to the Empty, readying himself to throw a punch or to prostrate himself on the ground and beg, or start another goddamn apocalypse just to draw the fear from those blue, bottomless eyes. It couldn’t end like this, not when they were on the precipice of whatever this promised to be, not when they could finally, finally start living for themselves.

“Please,” Dean said, his voice thick and unwieldy in his mouth. “Please let him stay with me.”

The creature hummed again, an irritating sound that buried into his skull. “Alright.”

It flicked one of its (too bendy) arms in Cas’ direction and the angel cried out in pain, dropping to the floor like a sack of bricks and dragging Dean down too where their hands were still clasped.

“Cas!” Dean yelled as Cas began a low moan that rose in volume and pitch and agony until it was a scream, and then his back arched so dramatically Dean heard it crack, and Cas’ eyes widened to the point of popping. In the next painful convulsion, Cas ripped his hand away from Dean’s.

“Cas!” Dean cried again, scrambling to get it back, to offer what little comfort he could. If these were going to be Cas’ last moments, Dean couldn’t bear the thought that he would have to endure them alone.

Cas’ lips were moving, but all that was escaping was a wordless scream. Dean shook his head, not understanding as Cas’ agitation only grew. He looked around at each member of his family crouched next to him, and terror dominated his expression.

“Eyes!” The word was strangled. “Help—”

Suddenly, the sound of Cas’ screams cut out at the same moment the world turned black. Dean’s vocal chords strained around Cas’ name, around Sam’s name, but he couldn’t hear either. He felt Cas in front of him, writhing and solid and silent, felt the hard concrete under his knees, felt the fabric of a jacket as he reached out blindly with his other hand. But all he saw was blackness. Fear roared inside him. He couldn’t see his family, he didn’t know what was happening to Cas. Had he gone blind? Deaf? Was Cas looking to him for a final comfort?

Worst of all was when Cas’ hand went limp.

Dean was pretty sure he was losing his mind. He was sure he was screaming, sure he was yelling himself hoarse, cursing the Empty, Billie, God. He dropped his hand from what he was pretty sure was Sam’s shoulder and moving it to his own face. He felt wetness there, sweat or tears he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that Cas wasn’t moving and he had no idea what to do except clutch that hand in between both his own and hope.

Just as suddenly as it had vanished, sound returned. He heard his own name in Sam’s voice and a moment later, his brother’s scared face materialised in front of him, and Jack was there too, his own face pale and scrunched in confusion and discomfort as he shook himself. There was also a horrible, burbling sound that it took him far too long to realise was coming from him. He took a deep breath to stop it and looked over at where the Empty and Billie had been stood.

They were gone.

“What the hell was that?” Dean asked, his voice raspy and worn out.

“No idea,” Sam said, looking a little ill. “But it really sucked.”

“Yeah.” As the adrenaline leaked away from his brain, leaving his extremities tingling, he flexed his hand and found he was still holding onto something.

Cas!

With a jolt, Dean looked at the still figure lying on the ground. His eyes were closed and there were black shapes on the floor extending from his shoulders.

“No,” He moaned, squeezing his eyes shut again, flashbacks of a cabin, of another joyous moment turned to ash, of a grief so heavy he’d buckled under it the first time, how could anyone ask him to even lift it now?

He heard Sam swallow next to him, clearly floundering for whatever words he thought Dean needed to hear.

He heard Jack’s breath hitch, then. “Wait. Look!”

Dean blinked heavily. Jack was staring at the black marks, then he reached forward and picked up a feather. Four inches long and inky black, the thing gleamed in the poor light. Despite the urgent pleas of his heart, Dean looked more closely at what he had assumed to be just scorch marks. There were more feathers. Loads of them, filling in gaps in the patchy outlines of Cas’ wings. They were how Cas’ wings had looked the last time Dean had seen their shadows; there weren’t enough feathers to make the wings complete, Cas had shed plenty over the years after all, but there were still dozens of them. All the feathers Cas had had left, if Dean were to guess. He didn’t know what to make of it and although he could hear Sam’s brain whirring as it tried to put the pieces together, Dean couldn’t quite bring himself to care what it meant. He leaned over Cas and smoothed the hair back from his forehead, numbness crawling its way along Dean’s limbs and tightening around his nerves. He arranged the body how he would if the pyre was already built, pretty sure someone was talking around him but unable to take any of it in. He adjusted the coat, laid Cas’ hands carefully by his sides, fixed the tie.

While he did that last one, his hand passed over Cas’ chest and he felt a flutter beneath his fingertips. He paused for a second and felt it again. Hope surged through him so fast it was painful. He pressed his palm to Cas’ chest and waited. Please, please, please, please, please.

Thump.

“He’s alive!”

Dean began to gently tap his fingers against Cas’ cheek, calling for him over and over again, his other hand feeling the steady, human beat of Cas’ heart.

“Come on, sweetheart, wake up.”

Cas groaned, the most wonderful sound that had ever graced Dean’s ears. All the air escaped him as Cas began to twitch, his eyelids fluttered and he blinked them open.

“I love you too,” Dean blurted out, physically unable to keep the words in any more. “I love you so freaking much Cas, and I’m real glad you’re not dead.”

“Me too,” Cas said blearily, pushing himself to a sitting position, only to be bowled over again by Dean launching himself into his arms. Corny or not he couldn’t help it. He needed to hold him, surround himself in Cas’ warmth and Cas’ smell and Cas’ love. He needed to feel the life around them. “You make me very happy, Dean.”

Dean said nothing, but he shoved his face in closer to Cas’ neck.

After a few moments he deemed himself recovered enough to pull back and help Cas to his unsteady feet. Jack moved in for the next hug and Cas’ eyes went soft with wonder as he embraced his son, finally allowed to feel the joy that such a gesture brought. Sam was next, pulling him into a sasquatch-worthy bone-crushing hug and whispering something that Dean couldn’t catch, though their grins were bright and a little teary as they separated.

Cas then looked down at the feathers scattered on the ground and bent to gather a few. “Angel feathers can be useful spell ingredients,” he said by way of an explanation as he stuffed them into his coat pocket. “And it’s not as though I have a use for them anymore.”

“You know, we could try and find a way… if you wanted...” Dean started to offer, and even though Dean wasn’t sure if the Empty had completely destroyed Cas’ grace or what and had no idea how to even start that quest, he knew with certainty that he would find a way if that was what Cas chose.

Cas was already shaking his head, a small smile on his lips.

“No. I think… I think I’m tired of being an angel. I don’t want to watch humanity anymore, I want to be a part of it. I want to enjoy this, every moment that I get to love and be loved in return is a treasure I never could have imagined before I met you.”

“So… home?” Dean asked, more than ready to start building the rest of his life with his brother, his son and this newly-human man who had never looked like more of an angel to him.

Cas nodded and reached for him, slotting their fingers together.

“Home.”

[duckbeater]

Some Notes on A. S. Hamrah

A lifetime ago, I thought it’d be rewarding to teach A. S. Hamrah’s “A Better Moustrap” to first-year students struggling through their second semester of basic comp. I wanted to wow them with Hamrah’s heedless deployment of unsettling theses, argued crisply and irreverently, in an essay that supplies a plausible solution to its concerns (a rarity among most rhetorical appeals, whose authors left my students stimulated but empty-handed). Very in the vein of “A Modest Proposal,” “Mousetrap” confronts a social ill—fetish videos where women crush small animals to death under their Stilettos—yet proposes a non-ironic salve: “crushies,” where “the must-have plush-toys of the Christmas rush will be smashed underfoot.” Most of my course was based on weird internet shit, which I thought (I still think) mostly anyone can appreciate, especially the young. “Mousetrap” is full of that weird-internet-shit jouissance.

“Reading this is like eating your favorite food,” I told the class. “You’re just gonna shovel in ideas. They’re all delicious. Eh, they’re pretty weird, too. But it���ll be fun.” It wasn’t fun. Nobody read the essay. Moving through its arguments, in front of twenty-five nineteen-year-olds and a few grandmothers, was embarrassing. I had to dissect Hamrah’s great takes on crush video culture, his movements through film history, his appraisals of Mickey Rooney, then his wider and, to me, scintillating prognostications on American adulthood—an adulthood most everyone in the classroom (accepting the grannies) was soon to inherit—totally alone. “Do you watch these videos?” one student asked. “Then what’s your fetish?” asked another. “Bryson fucks books!” became the consensus. (“I fuck your dads!” I thankfully did not say but very much wanted to. I was a coward; this partially explains why no one bothered to complete my assignments.)

Flying solo—or falling sans parachute, as the case may be—through Hamrah’s film criticism and cultural reportage of the last decade has probably been a shared experience among his far-flung admirers. Finding his byline in Bookforum or the obscure domain of the International Federation of Film Critics or mirrored pages from the defunct Hermenaut was usually the result of a periodic Google search. If he appears more regularly now, and more regularly in prestige venues, that’s the fault of n+1, where he’s contributed reviews tri-quarterly since roughly 2008.

Indeed, it was Hamrah’s initial, online-only contribution that inspired so much ardor and devotion. “Oscars Previews” provided bright, bursting capsules—the gleeful bitchery of a best friend's phone call. Apparently this quality was transliterated from its material creation, when he reported the piece to his editor, Keith Gessen, over a phone, after complaining he didn’t have time to write the thing. Each entry in this salvo (none are more than a hundred or so words) lands with a zinger. They have the polish of a joke, featuring a setup, some reinforcement and then a payoff. He even plays some of his capsules against each other as callbacks. The entirety of Hamrah’s entry on Michael Clayton reads: “There was a lot of driving in Michael Clayton. I like driving in movies but after a while Michael Clayton started to seem like a car ad—though it showed how a car ad can be liberal. That’s a message for our times.” The wit is authoritative, hypnotic, dismissive. The taste behind these pronouncements felt sui generis, and the criticisms brief enough to be dispatched verbatim without attribution. I was a senior in college when I first read Hamrah. I had a busy season of parties at professor’s houses and dined-out on his opinions for weeks. 

This is not to say Hamrah only works when you’re young and grasping for style. But I do think it’s evident now that his short forms are the seedbed for his long form successes, paper sketches for the larger canvas. When you read enough of Hamrah’s capsule reviews, you get the sense he’s reporting exactly (or only) what fits into his little joke, sometimes you can even hear him reaching for his beats. When you read a whole book of them, you get the sense Hamrah’s less interested in the works under review than in his performance of reviews, his performance of freedom and audacity.

—

The Earth Dies Streaming, apart from film writing, is a log of Hamrah’s fascination with his persona, his brand of humor and arch sensibilities. He’s not exactly a curmudgeon—he wants readers to know he’s tried too many drugs to be a curmudgeon (comparisons to acid trips crop up, as does “bad speed”)—and he’s not exactly an academic (despite his Ivy League bona fides as a corporate semiotician)—and he’s not even a movie reviewer in the jejune, crass, sell-out way so many movie reviewer must be in today’s enfeebled, saturated, and deeply compromised market (he tries “to never include anything in [his] writing that could be extracted and used for publicity”). This is where I trot out a gif of Amy Poehler playing a Cool Mom in Mean Girls. Hamrah’s bobblehead offers virgin daiquiris to teenage cineastes. “I’m not like a regular film critic,” he says, “I’m a cool film critic.” The tits, the wink, the velour sweatsuit.

Other irritations. Hamrah’s insistence on the inferiority of animated films and his churlish dismissal of Miyazaki’s contributions to the medium’s history. He’s always on accident catching some part of a children’s movie—on an airplane, in a public clinic—and using these unsatisfactory experiences to comment on the aesthetics and advancements of animation at large. It’s a hobby horse he flays as often as Adorno assaulted jazz, and (to both their credits), slightly adorable for how insistent and under-thought. If only, as he does in “Jessica Biel’s Hand,” he would immerse himself in the backlog of lauded animation from this century and the last, he might, for once, be able to say something interesting about it.

Hamrah’s stance against feature-length animation is nearly as looming and placeless as his stance against other films critics, whom he evidently reads closely but can never be bothered to cite. His essays are peppered with a dreaded sea of bought-off weekly reviewers whose pedestrian tastes frustrate him. This, despite the regularly insightful, playful, and overall helpful criticism of David Edelstein and Emily Yoshida at New York; Dana Stevens at Slate; Manhola Darghis at the Times; Justin Chang in Los Angeles; and the fairly dour takes of Peter Debruge in the industry’s digest, Variety. Hamrah alludes to David Denby’s work in Streaming’s introduction, then names him outright in a later capsule review of Little Children. Otherwise, your guess is as good as mine as to with what critical consensus Hamrah finds his views out of alignment. These are critics and journalists who, obliged by deadlines, report weekly on their film-going habits. That they have new things to say even once a month is a miracle, but that they do so four to ten times a month is frankly incredible. (It must be evident that I’m a fan of movie reviews and film criticism. I work an office job where between menials I find intense delight and distraction in the work of daily reviewers, and I carry around with me an ungainly amount of knowledge regarding box office performances and future releases that in all other ways I have no interaction: I go to the movies maybe three times a month, often by myself, and often I see low-brow flicks. Last weekend I saw the third How to Train Your Dragon movie; the weekend before that, Isn’t It Romantic; a weekend before that, Roma. I saw these movies on the advice of daily reviewers, and Roma only after reading Caleb Crain’s celebration of it.)

I volunteer Richard Brody and Christian Lorentzen as Hamrah’s contemporary intellectual kin, with caveats. Brody’s work is too mystical, too mythical to properly critique his subjects, and his symptomatic readings, which border on the Lacanian in terms of the extraneous and deranged, become hulking apertures that always overtake whatever work is under discussion, squashing them. Also he is never, ever funny in his reviews. Brody is a curmudgeon, and what he criticizes rarely appears in the films themselves but float around the films’ receptions, financing or forebears, and when he ventures into specifics—a film’s lensing, its sound, the actors and their acting styles—his descriptions become ridiculous. Lorentzen, as with his book reviews, writes to a word count. (There is no other reason for the amount of tedious plot summary in a Lorentzen take-down.) If Hamrah sounds like these critics, it may be because all three are careful in their dissents to let the filmmakers know they think they’re complete assholes. When these three do find praise for a work, it’s the entirely appropriate object of adoration, art-house and independent, or, gotcha!, a studio event they appreciate for more correct, more interesting, and more nuanced reasons than everyone else.

What sets these critics apart from the daily reviewers I listed above, may be the daily reviewers’ capacity to surprise and be surprised. Perhaps they saw a movie with a daughter and her friend; they appreciated a family flick in context; they were caught unawares by stray scenes in a larger, unsuccessful work, and appreciated glimpsed wisdom. They have hope yet for a return to better forms. These reviewers are flexible and receptive; they are as likely to be charmed as they are to be chagrined. Even when Brody, Lorentzen and Hamrah are surprised by the quality of a work, they take it as an affront to their sensibilities and bridle, like horses suspicious of an open gate. Why were they not warned? Why should they trust this development? Their reflexive, ingrained annoyance, occasionally flowering into high dudgeon, fills their actual reviews with foregone conclusions. One does not visit their writing for news, or for new takes, for synthesized connections, or revelations of form. One visits for the comforting familiarity of a flagging standard—“a continuity of aesthetics that [has] become an aesthetics of continuity,” if I’m remembering the St Aubyn phrase correctly.

Criticism this entrenched in its own personality ends up toothless. It’s why Renata Adler, for instance, will be remembered for her reporting and not her film criticism. Despite its bite—and it’s quite biting—it rarely leaves a mark. Hamrah never cites Adler—nor do I think he will. His prose and her prose are rather too alike. He must sense the comparison coming, and dislike it, because Adler is not particularly well informed on film and filmmaking. Her amateurish moonlighting grated in 1968, and it grates now, but only for its prosumer-level expertise. Her prose (like Hamrah’s) remains indelible, deadpan, and addictive. When I recall the subhead to Kyle Paoletta’s appreciation of Hamrah, “Always On: A. S. Hamrah’s film criticism is a welcome corrective in an outmoded field,” I consider Adler’s own attempts at the form, as a corrective. And I find them contiguous with other platforms discussing same, places like Slate, Twitter, and The Ringer’s Exit Survey, which preempts the leap from hot take to tweet. (Q: “What is your tweet-length review of Venom?” A: “What if All of Me (1984) but action and also tater tot–loving aliens?”) What I’m saying is this: Hamrah’s form is not novel. His tone is not novel. His writing is, however, very convenient (brief, digestible) and entertaining, and he’s been adding more personal atmosphere of late.

So the named lodestars in Hamrah’s critical firmament: Pauline Kael, Susan Sontag, Jonathan Rosenbaum, J. Hoberman and Manny Farber (to whom Hamrah pens an exceptionally sweet and informative essay). Hoberman, the only critic still alive among these titans, shares Hamrah’s acid tongue and penchant for political excavations, while doing his readers a courtesy by assuming not all of them attend film festivals or live in limited-release area codes. The same semester I taught “A Better Mousetrap,” I taught Sontag on sci-fi movies and Hoberman’s seminal “21st Century Cinema: Death and Resurrection in the Desert of the (New) Real” (later to become his book-length essay, Film After Film). Hoberman can be as tart and irreverent as Hamrah, but he’s not above recounting plot summaries. He’s both a guide and a rebel. I suppose, following my own argument, if in fact I’m making one, this makes Hoberman the better critic—a classification that would not hurt Hamrah’s feelings. (This would hurt very few film critics’ feelings.)   

—

Very little of the above matters. I had hoped to answer why, then I got bored (then I had to go to work; after that, I had to design a booth for a marketing expo in London; then I lost the thread). When I was in Brooklyn last December, I dropped into the Spoonbill on Montrose. The first book I bought on my second time in New York City was Hamrah’s The Earth Dies Streaming, and I carried it about like an obsessive as I made my way by foot to Prospect Park. I devoured it in a few days. I devoured it again on the plane ride back to Chicago. And I’ve read all the capsules before, and most of the essays—they’re usually posted in front of paywalls. If I quibble with Hamrah, it may be because he’s made me a better writer, and surely a better thinker, yet I found that I disliked my own dismissiveness and superiority, my own rigidity. If I can name my influences, I thought, I can break from them. But this is unso. 

[lyntendoswitch]

At the tail end of 2020 I discovered the video content of Tim Rogers who has inspired me to also voice my game opinions in an unnecessarily verbose and personal way. I don’t recommend clicking on the read more, but if you’d like to read a little bit about the best games I played this year, go on ahead.

10. What Remains of Edith Finch 9. A Short Hike 8. Disco Elysium 7. Personal 5 The Royal 6. Persona 3 Dancing In Moonlight 5. Vestaria Saga War of the Scions 4. Ring FIt Adventure 3. Final Fantasy 7 Remake 2. Hades 1. Animal Crossing New Horizons

2020 found me with an unprecedented amount of free time. I spent most of this year working for the government (a job with a very small brain effort that left me with evenings and weekends free to do whatever the hell). Additionally, I spent most of the year in quarantine with video games as my true, real friend and life companion. Compiling this list gave me more titles than ever to choose from, so I feel better about my list than ever. So here are the best games that I played this year.

Before I get into the top 10 I want to give 4 honourable mentions.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim This is the most recent game I played since making this list. I loved so many things about this game - the soft art style, the harsh music, the convoluted crazy plot. I love the aesthetic of this game and loved the characters - I believe it is rare to have an anime game where none of the characters irritate you. I even loved the combat, although I did not think I would. Something about shooting so very many missiles is so satisfying even when you don’t exactly know what is going on in the screen. The final battle in this game was definitely my favourite moment in this game - it was stressful, it was engaging, it was so extremely fun. The tragedy of this game comes down to personal taste. All time travel stories with complex timelines are bound to fall apart eventually, because no writer can keep all the threads together in a logical sense. 13 sentinels had so many story beats, plot twists, betrayals, and sci-fi tropes crammed into their storyline that I knew halfway through the story that there was no way they would be able to resolve all of it in a fulfilling way. I was, unfortunately, right - the ending explanation for all the chaos is, in my (correct) opinion, extremely lame. However, I certainly had fun on the journey.

Fire Emblem 3 Houses: Ashen Demons DLC I did not place this on my ranking since it is not really fleshed out enough to be considered its own game (unlike in previous years, where I have confidently but the Splatoon 2 Octoling Expansion as a separate title from Splatoon 2). However, this blog is, above all else, a Fire Emblem stan account, and I will not NOT talk about Fire Emblem. I do not care for the Abyss house. I think the characters are too close to being plucked out of the Fire Emblem Fates universe for comfort, and I mean this to be as profound an insult as possible. These characters are gimmicks above all else. I also do not care for the expanded lore that the sewer city brings to Garreg Mach. The idea of a centralized church school army is already so unstable, and to have a population of rat people living under it makes the whole foundation of the world crumble a little. However, the story and gameplay of the Ashen Demons DLC added something that the base game did not, which is challenge. (As an aside, I play on normal mode and am aware that there is challenge available to me if I wish for it.) FE3H offers you so many characters, so many paralogues, so many opportunities for training and stat increases, that eventually plot missions become completely boring. Ashen demons limiting everyone to new and interesting classes, limiting your available units, and preventing any sort of training made the chapters fun again. I found the chapter where you were supposed to outrun a golem before some gates closed fun as hell - it was my favourite part of the entire side story. 

Kentucky: Route Zero I played this game in February, and I remember not liking it at any point. It is confusing, disorienting, and lacked a clear goal. However, it has now been 10 months and I still think about it constantly - both the vignettes presented in it, and the way it made me feel. The Besties podcast made an excellent point about this game when they said that no one who plays this game ever compares it to other games - only books, movies, or paintings. The whole game is so fascinating and sticks with you - the wretched circle of a highway, the horse funeral. My favourite part is the live performance you attend at a run down diner with your party of four as the only audience. It is so quiet and contemplative and melancholy, and the scene is absolutely perfect. Kentucky Route Zero might be my favourite high concept artsy abstract artwork ever.

Blaseball As with everyone, it is difficult to call Blaseball a game. As the website says, it is a cultural event that I am so happy to participate in. I am so happy to have found a piece of media to fill the aching void that left by Homestuck when it ended, then re-opened the wound with their awful post-epilogue novel. I deleted my Twitter account this summer because I was tired of being angry and doomscrolling. And then, after Chris Plante on the Besties told me about Blaseball, I happily remade a Twitter account that only followed the official Blaseball account, the devs, and the numerous RP accounts. The quality of life improvement that having simulated, pleasant, hilarious social media to check every day is indescribable. It helped me cope with a rough life transition. Thank you, Blaseball. My favourite moment of 2020 is the 11pm boss battle of Shoe Thieves vs The Shelled One’s Pods.

And now....... The List.

10. What Remains of Edith Finch The start of 2020 was incredible because games journalism websites were churning out endless top 10 lists for both the end of 2019 as well as the end of the decade. I religiously picked through all of these lists and wrote down a list of 30 best indie games of this past decade that I missed out on for whatever reason. It was my first and last experience with a backlog - previously, I would simply impulse purchase games I really wanted to play, and I would not rest until the game is beaten. Having a backlog of things to try stressed me out endless and it dampened the impact of almost all of these quirky 1-6 hour indie experiences. However, not even the stress of meeting a self-imposed quota could dampen the impact of What Remains of Edith Finch. Exploring this house and playing through its various scenarios was so fascinating and beautiful. For me, the most impactful moment of the game was playing as the little girl who became an owl who became a sea serpent. That was when I realized I was not playing something that I would be thinking about for a very long time.

9. A Short Hike A Short Hike was the very first game I played off my backlog list of Best Indie Games. And boy, is it ever. This game takes 2 hours to finish but is absolutely saturated with heart and the exploration makes those 2 hours feel like you have been on a much longer and more fulfilling journey than you believed possible with so few hours. It is Animal Crossing and Legend of Zelda combined, condensed, and polished into a beautiful pearl. I was so instantly in love with the characters and loved doing the little side quests. I also loved getting totally lost because I wanted to see how far I could swim and ended up on a different part of the island. The most impactful moment of this game is its finale, which I won’t spoil, but it is absolutely incredible.

8. Disco Elysium Many people more eloquent than me have said great things about Disco Elysium, and they are all correct. As someone who loves character building and creating a character to roleplay instead of playing as myself in a game, I have never been more enabled to do just that than Disco Elysium. The mystery was so cool, the mechanics are exactly what I like, the exploration is great. The one drawback of this game is that I literally cannot remember a single song from it. Maybe it had an amazing OST? Every game that is released nowadays has to have an amazing OST. There is so much reading in this game that the music really has to be unintrusive, and so it faded right into the background and out of my memory. I love that you could create your own persona in the game, but that you find your identification later and discover who you were before. Also, I would die for Kim Kitsuragi. The finale of this game also kicks ass - I will not spoil it but there is a moment that is so quiet and intimate that it took my breath away. What an amazing experience.

7. Persona 5: The Royal In 2017, I did something that is not the deciding factor, but definitely contributed to, my being sent to hell after I die. I was in an unhappy relationship and really wanted out, but my boyfriend at the time had a PS4 and I did not, and I really wanted to play Persona 5. As such, when he got the game and I borrowed it, I tried to finish it as quickly as possible so that I could give it back and break up with him. To my dismay, Persona 5 is upwards of 80 hours long, and I was burned out long before it was over. I finished the game with such resentment in my heart that I could not fathom why anyone would like it. As someone who is older, wiser, PS4-er, and in a better mental state, I decided to give P5R a try. Playing the remake at a much slower pace and really contemplating the story and characters made for a totally different and much more pleasant experience. I finally was able to shed my dislike for these characters who held me hostage 3 years ago and really appreciate them. Additionally, the new content they added to the original was SO good. The new music in Mementos makes that whole section bearable!! Akechi’s entirely reworked social link!! Maruki is one of Atlus’s most interesting characters, and the final dungeon was so so so interesting!! I am profoundly sad that I can’t recommend this game to anyone because 120 hours is just prohibitively long. Most impactful moment: when Akechi joins the party and he is like, totally feral, lol

6. Persona 3: Dancing In Moonlight Every once in a while my palms start to itch because it has been entirely too long since I’ve played a rhythm game. This palm itch feeling sunk me deep into Theatrhythm Final Fantasy back in 2017, and this feeling forced me to impulse buy Persona 3 Dance. I am furious that I liked this game so much, because I know it was created simply to extract money from fools like me. The story was so blatant about it! “It’s a dream, ok? We’re all dancing because it’s a dream and none of this matters. Go play a song, idiot.” I’m not even angry at this - I almost respect the hustle. Additionally, it was so wonderful to hang out with the Persona 3 crew again. I did also play Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight, but since I had already spent a hundred and twenty hours with the phantom thieves, there was no feeling of being reunited like with P3D. Also, in my mind palace, I consider P3D to have “actually happened”, and P5D to be the money grab hustle. S.E.E.S. is a cohesive unit. If Mitsuru Kirijo says it is time to dance, then dance we shall. I cannot be made to believe that Ryuji, Futaba, or Makoto will be compelled to dance even in a dream. Finally, having Elizabeth as your velvet room attendant did wonders. If there is a line between being a loveable eccentric and being annoying, Elizabeth tiptoes just around the former, whereas the twins are squarely located in the latter. The remixes in P3D also all kick ass (Burn My Dread Novoiski Mix? Deep Mentality Lotus Juice Mix?? Neither had any right to go as hard as they did), and I loved how they personalized the dance styles to the characters’ personalities. Even if this game was a money grabber, it was still made with love and respect for the series, and I loved playing it.  Most impactful moment: That first king crazy ranking on all night difficulty... god damn

5. Vestaria Saga: War of the Scions I had mentioned earlier that I appreciated the FE3H DLC for adding challenge back into 3 houses, but then I played Vestaria Saga and I realized I simply did not remember what challenge actually was. Vestaria Saga, the game by Fire Emblem’s creator, is the hardest Fire Emblem game I’ve ever played. This game honestly rules - it closes its door to the waifus of modern fire emblem games and is a return to form with political intrigue and smart tactical decisions and well-rounded characters. Every single chapter has these wonderful and deeply stressful plot twists and you always have to scramble to get all of the objectives complete without dying. There is a moment in this game where the main Lord, Zade, scolds princess Athol for being so reckless, how he had to force the army to fight a losing battle to rescue her, and look at how exhausted everyone is. He gestures to his army, and for the first time in a tactical RPG, I felt it. In all the fire emblems I play, my units end up being able to dodge and tank any hits they receive, but in Vestaria Saga finishing a map was a stressful, long, and sweaty process. I loved every second of playing this game - it is so rewarding in its gameplay and so rewarding in its story. Most impactful moment: the kiss!!! And how all of them face consequences immediately afterwards!!! I adore this game.

4. Ring Fit Adventure Ring Fit Adventure is the most fun I’ve ever had with a gimmicky fitness game. This game finally understands that they key to continuing with the game and building good habits is the ability to unlock and equip beautiful athleisure clothing. I actually got gains from Ring Fit Adventure, and I know this because I stopped playing it for a month, came back, and was unable to finish the reps at the difficulty I set for myself. This game make gym stuff so genuinely fun in a way that no one else has been able to do. I also really like the feel of the ring con! I have a few moderate complaints about it (a fitness game will never be perfect, unfortunately): you always start reps on the same side, and if you kill enemies then you don’t get a chance to try the other side at all, the motion sensor on yoga poses is wack, and FUCK the robot baseball minigame game to hell. Despite this, I absolutely adore this game and what it stands for. I may never beat the campaign, but it will always have a place in my heart. Most impactful moment: the first fight with Drageaux

3. Final Fantasy 7 Remake I was so so so curious about the hype surrounding this game that in the month before its release I manically played through the original Final Fantasy 7 so that I would have enough background information to be able to play and enjoy the remake. I was very glad I did. FF7R kicks ass. It is my favourite Final Fantasy game ever, and maybe it will always be so. I take a lot of issue with most FF games because they get too cosmically big and ridiculous and nonsensical by the end and that ruins the immersion of the story for me. Since FF7R only covers the Midgar portion of the original, it is forced to create grounded characters and a grounded, smaller scale story. And it is AMAZING. I loved every single minute of this game. The OST is incredible, and the art in it is absolutely unbelievable. I love how they incorporated random encounter enemies in this more realistic version. Also the dialogue!!! The way these characters banter with each other is so life-like and true to character that it boggles my mind. Even the NPC side conversations - never has a city or town felt so alive and filled with people than in FF7R. The ending of this game filled me with PRIMAL fear for the future, but it is so clear that the team making this game loves the world and its characters so much that I cautiously say I trust them to take the story further in the later remakes. Most impactful moment: Cloud saying “bring it on bitch” to an enemy made me black out laughing

2. Hades I generally stay away from rogue-likes and from real-time combat because for a game-liker I SURE am bad at video games. However, everything Supergiant Games ever makes seems tailor made for me, so when Hades came out of early access I bought it, and then I didn’t stop playing it until 80 hours later when I had unlocked everything ever. This game is SO good. The voice acting and storytelling is phenomenal. They did a spectacular job blending the story with the core gameplay elements. They made dying in a rogue-like fun and rewarding. The music is (as always) transcendent. I cannot say enough good things about Hades. Most impactful moment: a tie between the first time you watch the sunrise after your first successful escape, and the romance social link between Zagreus and Thanatos

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons Of course... Death Stranding may have prophesized the pandemic, but Nintendo created it to sell copies Animal Crossing New Horizons. This game saved all of us. The experience of having so many people I knew playing the same game all the time for the entirety of March and April was so incredible. I have plenty of quips about ACNH with relation to old games in the series (I loathe crafting, I loathe printing out Nook Miles Tickets one by one, and I worry that the sandbox landscaping feel of this game makes me less inclined than ever to actually talk to my villagers), but while they are all valid criticisms, they certainly did not stop me from pouring 350 hours and counting into this game. I have loved slowly, carefully crafting my island into a replica of Garreg Mach. I have loved collecting furniture and making turnip money and completing the museum. There is simply no other game that can be 2020′s game of the year. Most impactful moment: checking your mail and having one of your friends mail you an item that reminded them of you

[valuentumbrian]

Boeing’s Financials Are Absolutely Frightening

By Brian Nelson, CFA

On November 18, 2020, Boeing (BA) announced that the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) withdrew its order that had grounded its 737-8s and 737-9s (737 MAX) that had been involved in two terrible accidents during the past few years, a Lion Air flight that killed 189 people and an Ethiopian Airlines jet crash that claimed the lives of 157 more. We’ll never forget these tragedies and the impact on the families and the aviation industry, more generally.  

In January 2017, we had added Boeing to the Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio, but we had removed it March 16, 2018, prior to the unfortunate and high-profile accidents that occurred several months after. During the short time it was in the newsletter portfolio, the stock roughly doubled, producing a return 5 times that of the S&P 500’s performance. Here was the rationale for the removal at the time (bear in mind that this was before the terrible tragedies that occurred months later):

The primary reasons for the removal rest in a combination of Boeing’s value and technical/momentum considerations. Shares have soared to the high end of our fair value range, and now technically, they have started to roll over as investors, fair or not, worry about retaliation with respect to coming tariffs. We’re huge fans of Boeing on a fundamental basis, but a great company a great stock doesn’t always make.

Fast forward to January 23, 2020--a month or so before the COVID-19 market collapse--when Boeing’s shares were trading at ~$320 per share, I penned a piece in frustration: “Why *NOW* Do You Care About Boeing’s Stock?” I said in that January 23, 2020 note in no uncertain terms: “In no, way shape or form should you *now* be interested in Boeing’s stock.” There was some more harsh writing in the note, and I wish I could have said it nicer – but at times, I just want our members to get a feel for exactly what we think about a stock. There’s always room for improvement in my tone.

But please let me put it nicely now: I really didn’t like Boeing’s shares at $320 in January 2020, especially since we had removed them from the Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio for a huge win just a number of months prior. Now with the benefit of hindsight, I hope you can forgive me for that emphatic and colorful note (in analyst speak, we call that type of writing “pounding the table”). Boeing’s shares had fallen from ~$320 that day in January 2020, to a 52-week low of $89 per share in mid-March.

But that was then, and this is now. Shares of Boeing have finally bounced back, converging to our fair value estimate of $200 that we established near the depths of the COVID-19 meltdown. The company’s shares had rallied back to those levels in June of this year, and now they have settled again at our fair value estimate after technically basing for a number of months. We’re viewing this share price move, in particular, positively, but Boeing still has a long way to go to meet the fundamental/financial criteria we’re looking for to be reconsidered in any newsletter portfolio.

The reality is that Boeing’s financials are still pretty scary. During the first nine months of 2020, the company burned through an incredible $15.4 billion in free cash flow, even as it cut capital spending by a few hundred million. As of the end of the third quarter of 2020, its total consolidated debt now stands at $61 billion, with total cash and marketable securities of $27.1 billion. This compares to total consolidated debt of $24.7 billion and total cash and marketable securities of $10.9 billion, as of the end of the third quarter of 2019.

The grounding of the 737 MAX and the outbreak of COVID-19 have combined to be an absolute wrecking ball to Boeing’s financials, and it may take a very, very long time before things start looking better on the books. S&P, Moody’s and Fitch still give the company investment-grade credit ratings (BBB-/Baa2/BBB-), but we’re not sure the aerospace giant deserves them. Here’s what Fitch noted October 2020: “…many of the company's quantitative rating factors will be inconsistent with the 'BBB' category for three years (2019-2021) and into 2022.” It’s probably fair to say that Boeing’s corporate debt should be rated junk, but that would cause some severe reverberations in the credit markets, in our view.

It's worth sharing Fitch's views on expectations for airline traffic in coming years:

Fitch's base case for airline passenger traffic (domestic and international) assumes revenue passenger kilometers (RPKs) will not recover to 2019 levels before FYE23 and at FYE21 will still be 30% below 2019 levels. Underlying this forecast is the assumption that an effective vaccine/treatment is available, but not at scale, through 2021, and there will be a continued collapse in travel until there is widespread vaccine/treatment availability.

Our base case assumes domestic traffic recovers to 2019 levels around the middle of 2023, while international traffic returns to 2019 levels after 2023, perhaps the summer of 2024. Available information so far supports this assumption of domestic recovering first, including the data coming out of the important Chinese domestic market. We expect capacity will recover before RPKs, and we believe load factors will remain lower than the record levels seen in 2019 (source).

Here is what the International Air Transport Association (IATA) had to say about the 5-year outlook for air passenger demand (July 2020):

…we have revised down our passenger forecast over the next five-year period. In our new forecasts, we expect RPKs to decline by a little more than 60% in 2020 compared to 2019, with a return to pre -COVID levels not occurring before 2024. Many uncertainties remain around the outlook and in this update we have investigated various possible future scenarios. The main point is that the risks around our latest forecast remain clearly tilted to the downside...The upside could see travel demand return to 2019 levels in 2023, while the downside could be much more severe (source).

The airlines are certainly not over the hump, by any stretch, and we think the credit rating agencies are probably giving Boeing the benefit of the doubt that it will start raking in material free cash flow in 2022 due to pent-up demand and accelerated deliveries (an optimistic, but still an assumption with reasonable basis). However, as we’ve learned time and time again, supply chain issues can pose problems, and lower airline traffic will almost certainly impact its services operations.

In the longer run, new aircraft are extremely expensive to build and come with substantial “unknown” risks (e.g. think 787 delays, the recent 737 MAX incidents), and key rival Airbus (EADSY) is not backing down either, with competition only intensifying as the duo vie for orders during these troubled times (Boeing hasn’t had a new aircraft order since August). It's only a matter of time before China and Russia will be key players in the aircraft-making industry, too. Boeing has no margin of error left; should it be hit with another negative exogenous event in the near term, things could get really, really ugly for shares.

When it comes to our favorite ideas, we continue to prefer net-cash-rich, free cash flow generating powerhouses with strong competitive advantages that facilitate recurring revenue business models that can take advantage of secular tailwinds (see the concentrated nature of the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio). With Boeing’s dividend suspended, too, there’s simply no place in any of our newsletter portfolios for this troubled airframe maker, despite a hugely attractive backlog of unfulfilled deliveries ($393 billion, ~4,300 commercial airplanes). The company falls within what we'd describe as the “too hard bucket,” in our view. One day--many years from now--the aerospace giant’s financials may return to some “normalcy,” but until then, Boeing is likely dead money with a severely-bloated balance sheet walking on thin ice.

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Related aerospace: ITA, PPA, XAR, SPR, TGI, HXL, HWM, HEI, TDG, RX, DCO, BAESY, EADSF, SAFRY, CAE, BDRAF, BDRBF, ITT, ATRO, CSTM, DCO, MOG.A, WWD, KAMN, HON, TXT, AVAV, LHX, AIR, ERJ, RYCEF, RYCEY

Related airlines: JETS, ALK, LUV, AAL, ACDVF, DAL, UAL, HA, SAVE, GOL, CPA, RYAAY, AZUL, ICAGY, EJTTF, DLAKF, DLAKY, AFRAF, DRTGF, WZZAF, AERZY, FNNNF, NWARF, AIBEF, QUBSF, ESYJY, LTM, SKYW, MESA, ANZFF, CEA, ZNH, AIRYY, ALGT, KLMR, JAPSY

Related lessors: AL, AER, GE  

Related travel stocks: TCOM, TRVG, BKNG, EXPE, TRIP, TZOO, CTRP, DESP

Related air freight: UPS, FDX

Related country ETFs: FXI, MCHI, RSX

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Brian Nelson owns shares in SPY, SCHG, DIA, VOT, and QQQ. Some of the other securities written about in this article may be included in Valuentum's simulated newsletter portfolios. Contact Valuentum for more information about its editorial policies.

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