#Is it my fault that you never hired more people for the graphic department and people keep and keep quitting??

[offworldcolony]

Zack Snyder's Justice League, 2021 - ★★★

Daddy Issues: The Movie.

I'm conflicted about the existence of this film; as an exercise in studio interference it's fascinating, as a parable of what can happen when fans rise up, it's a cautionary tale, and as the shape of things to come, it's questionable. I don't think fans should get to decide anything; hiring the correct filmmakers and giving them creative freedom would be the ideal option because you give the people what they need and never what they want. What they want, as evidenced by everything, almost always sucks and they're left unhappy anyway. And this film might be the exception that proves the rule.

And although Zack Snyder's Justice League was a film worth creating from the butchered remains of the original incarnation, it shouldn't have come at the behest of how much vitriol was cast out there in the process, and it shouldn't be a signal that a rabid and butthurt community of internet trolls that believe they deserve whatever they want, exactly as they want it, should ever influence the film industry ever again.

This should instead be a reminder to Studios that they know about as much as Marketing departments or gamblers or stock market traders: they're just pissing in the wind and when it lands in the toilet they claim it's by some kind of design of their own making and brilliance. Hire somebody good and get the fuck out of their way. At least if it's shit (like this film basically is) it is the fault of one person's vision and I'd rather have a noble and coherent failure than a luke-warm, mediocre carcass of a Frankenstein's monster made up of opinionated Suits, en-vogue and focus group-driven decisions acting only as a commercial for toys like 2017's Justice League was.

So the film itself? It's incredibly enjoyable, I had an absolute blast with my family round watching it like an old-school movie night. Is it a better movie? Yes, 100% in practically every way. Is it a good movie? Nope! But it's one person's coherent vision, I just hate that vision and I don't think he pulls it off.

Snyder constantly undercuts his own good ideas by his own execution, stumbling into his own sandcastles; some sequences have some really fantastic starts and then they're shot and edited in a way that makes me crawl inside out with cringe; singing a Nordic-style Aquaman song: great, having someone really close up sniff his jumper and sing right at us: horrific. And there's legion of these terrible choices by Snyder, usually things that don't make logical sense but mean he can do something because it's simply cool. (Martha Manhunter anyone?) But we already know by now that cool on its own isn't enough. Snyder doesn't. Having Batman say "fuck" isn't cool, it's dumb. Having Superman say a cocky (rubbish) one-liner when he saves someone from Steppenwolf is out of character, it's dumb. More than once I was able to predict what a character was going to say before they even said it. Come on, this isn't Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Team Justice League.

On the undeniable positives are the colour grading, score, the reels of added and altered material and more. Most of the added scenes are way, way better, more coherent and the film looks great actually. It does look Olympian and classic as I imagine he wanted it to, like the cave murals Diana sees. The extra character and coherence allow the jokes and interactions to breathe; Wayne is a little funnier, Diana, sadder, Cyborg, actually here for a change with something to do, and seemingly powerful, and Flash (thank god) not annoying. Even Irons' Alfred gets basically the best material and comes out of it my favourite character. Truly the Alfred of the group.

What doesn't work with this is that there's so much slow-mo that it becomes laugh-out-loud funny and goofy rather than impressive and dynamic, and in a 4-hour long film, you'd better be damn sure that amount of slow-mo is necessary, even in the slow-mo shots you can palpably feel they drag on for a few seconds too long each time.

And my god let's talk about the soundtrack. So Snyder has now consistently proven himself to be awkwardly tone-deaf to good music in all of his films. He can't pick an appropriate track, he can't pick an ironic track. Every time he does one of his patented slow-mo, nothing sequences over a full track of music (it feels like) it's so awkward I almost got up and left my own fucking house. There's like five of these.

But the action here (apart from being blasted in the eyeballs by insane amounts of bright lights) was all really genuinely good here, he's got it down, the dynamism didn't feel stodgy and CGI-ified, wasn't just a big invulnerable guy bashing someone aside for ten minutes, they fought as a team, it looked and felt fun, and at times, really tense and involving. It's a huge step up from whatever they did for the theatrical. The Amazonian stuff was motivated, gripping and grand. Anything with Steppenwolf felt imposing and had heft and tactics to it. Bravo.

Speaking of Steppenwolf, his Middle Managers and Head Office in the form of marble liquid Henchman, Darkseid and CGI Anette Benning(??!!) felt like strange meaningless additions, as did the anti-life equation shit (this is what Marvel doesn't do, they're expert-level at exposition for newcomers and easter eggs for fans combined). Darkseid looked like a troll, neither imposing nor unique or cool, and I'm not talking an ordinary troll, I mean one of those shit ones that gets turned to stone in the sun, not even a proper fighting troll. He looked like the first mini-boss encounter in a Lord of the Rings videogame. But...

But Steppenwolf looked awesome and I actually liked him here and his Simp for Daddy schtick. I laughed at him a lot, but like Synder I had a lot of endearment for him and his cute, sad, hopeful eyes. Daddy please love me! I promise I'll do better! I can't explain why he worked this time but he did. Maybe it's because the story felt interesting (dumb but at least it all made sense internally) and it felt grand in scale and scope and had stakes and whole added motivations for everybody.

Speaking of what else worked, yes I enjoyed the 4:3 aspect ratio, I thought it would just be Zack Snyder wanking himself off again (see: Justice League: Dark or whatever they'll call his upcoming Black and White version) but I kind of loved it, it was almost euphoric and actually did replicate some of what going to the IMAX felt like. I liked feeling like these colossi of comic books were towering above like statues.

What didn't work was that the chapter headings had nothing to do with the chapters at all or anything that happened in them which felt strange. Also, characters over-egg their lines as if we're dumb and keep stating the obvious in such a first draft way that I felt myself getting stupider.

One of my main gripes is if you keep trying to one-up yourself, these character do not feel understandably epic and powerful. They're all kind of idiotic and silly and po-faced and posture so much and say snappy one-liners and prance around like Chads. Snyder thinking he’s some kind of subversive genius and all that is sweet, but most of time I'm laughing at his cloying fan-service. He's the kid that keeps telling you how great he is and you don't mind because you can see he's got no friends and he's been bullied. Snyder isn't as aggressively dumb and bullish like Michael Bay is, for example, and Snyder's movies are largely coherent. But he's trying too hard and I just don't like his vision. As little elseworld graphic novels this kind of shit between Batman and Joker works, or in films like Joker you can do some out-there things, rather than in this, a mainline, flagship series.

Zack Synder is a little like a first-time Dungeons and Dragons DM trying to impress his table with all his edgelord grittiness and "vision"; He is a child that has two figurines and is smashing them together and yelling "Look! Look what I'm doing! Superman is beating everyone up! LOOK!" Zack Snyder's Justice League is simply, more than anything, endearing. That's the best way I can describe it.

Endearing.

And this film being endearing means I can't hate it, even though I think it's rubbish; because if a child builds a fortress of Lego, it's not exactly the Taj Mahal, but it is impressive. But when he knocks it all down I'm right there yelling for him to pick up all the destroyed pieces now because it can't always be playtime. A film can't just be spectacle and chaos and whatever-the-fuck-you-want. It has to be about something.

Justice League is about nothing. The Dark Knight was about Chaos in a system used to Order even if there was chaos inherent in the order. And it asked you to look at that chaos vs unbridled chaos. With both Dent and Joker as two sides of the same coin; chaos and order, and it put that paradox or that choice to the people of Gotham. It was about surveillance states, money, and sacrifice. And so much more. The Dark Knight subsequently became timely and timeless.

Justice League is about nothing and it will fade into nothing because of it. The euphoria will pass. It's OK it exists. It OK that we move past it now.

source https://letterboxd.com/offworldcolony/film/zack-snyders-justice-league/

#letterboxd #review #film #film review #diary #film diary #letterboxd diary #letterboxd film review

[unfolded73]

This Graceful Path (7/19)

Summary: Emma has just moved in with Mary Margaret and started working as a deputy in the Storybrooke sheriff’s department when she meets Killian Jones, the town’s introverted harbormaster. When a prominent Storybrooke resident is found murdered, Emma tries to juggle solving the case with new friendships, parenthood, and romance. A Season 1 Cursed!Killian AU.

Rating: Explicit per CSBB guidelines (violence, sex); more of an M on unfolded73’s scale. The sex, when we get there, is not extremely graphic in nature. Same with the violence.

Content Warning: This fic contains two major character deaths, one canon and one not. (You’re already past them.) Content warning for depiction of alcoholism in this chapter.

Total word count: ~ 75,000

Acknowledgements: Thank you to @j-philly-b for betaing this monstrosity. Thank you to @caprelloidea for all of the read-throughs and cheerleading; not sure I could have written it without your excitement early on. Thank you to @teruel-a-witch for the original prompt on tumblr which sparked this fic. Thank you to @pompeiiablaze for the wonderful art which accompanies Chapter 3 and also will accompany later chapters. Thanks to the CSBB mods (@sambethe in particular, who had to look at my check-ins) for your support and for enduring my neuroses.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 – AO3 Link

Chapter 7

As soon as Emma arrived at the sheriff’s station the following morning, she regretted that she’d asked David to work an early shift. The last thing she wanted was him seeing her powered by little more than booze-soaked regret. The night with Mary Margaret, Ruby, and Ashley had been fun, and a much-needed break, but now she had to face the morning hungover.

“Whoa,” he said when he saw her, her face still pale and haggard, she assumed. “You okay this morning?”

“Um… to be honest, I drank too much last night, so no.” She felt vaguely ashamed, as if it was her own father seeing her in her sorry, hungover state. Which was ridiculous; she’d never even had a father.

“Oh, yeah? Sorry about that.”

“I’ll live. It’s my own fault.” She flopped down in her desk chair, hoping she could find something mindless and quiet to do until she was feeling a little more human.

“Hey, you know Killian Jones, right?” David said, walking over and hovering in the doorway to her office.

Why did everyone keep talking to her about Killian? “Yeah. I mean, I don’t know him well…”

“He helped me corral a stray dog down by the docks once, and he seemed like a good guy. Figured I should make an effort to make more friends, so I was going to invite him over to watch hockey or something. If you think he’d be interested.”

It was endearing, she had to admit, the way David was seeking her advice on how to woo a new friend. “I have no idea if he’s interested in sports at all, but sure, ask him.”

“Yeah, okay. I think I will.” He started to walk away, then paused. “Was… uh, was Mary Margaret with you last night?” David asked, his attempt to be nonchalant painfully transparent.

Not for the first time, Emma wondered if he just assumed that she knew about his and Mary Margaret’s affair. As always, it made her feel extremely awkward, so much so that she almost regretted hiring David as her deputy. Almost being the operative word; he was, as she expected, a natural at the job. “Yeah, she was.”

“I hope she’s not feeling too bad this morning,” he said, and the yearning was written so plainly on his face that Emma almost had to laugh. She couldn’t think of any two people less suited to carrying on a clandestine love affair than David Nolan and Mary Margaret Blanchard.

She cleared her throat. She felt the need to say something, something that would set things between Mary Margaret and David to rights, something that would prevent her roommate from getting her heart broken. but she knew such a thing did not exist.

“Look,” he said softly, “I know you probably think I’m a bad guy, and I can’t really blame you—”

“I don’t think you’re a bad guy,” Emma responded quickly, uncomfortable with the idea of David continuing to talk to her about this. “But I do think that a person I’ve come to care about is going to end up getting hurt, and I don’t want that to happen. If that makes it seem like I don’t like you, or don’t… I don’t know, approve of you, then I’m sorry. My only interest in this is her heart not getting broken.”

“Mine too,” David said. “I swear it.”

“I’m sure you think that’s true. But love is like a drug. You get addicted to it, and all you care about is the high, and it doesn’t matter what lies in your way of getting it. That’s how people get hurt.”

“That’s a very cynical attitude.”

Emma shrugged. “That’s life.”

~*~

She didn’t go back to the Rabbit Hole several days later because she knew Killian went there. She went because it had been a hard week, and she had very little to show for it, and she needed a drink. Still, she couldn’t help but notice the little thrill that ran up her spine when she saw him at the bar, any more than she could stop her feet from walking over to him.

“Swan,” he said in greeting, lifting a glass of dark liquid in her direction. “Off duty, I hope?”

Emma pulled herself up onto the barstool next to him and nodded. “Finally.” She flagged down the bartender and ordered a whiskey, because that’s the kind of night it was.

They sat in companionable silence for a while, nursing their drinks. Emma cast sidelong glances at Killian, relishing the burn of the liquor in her chest. Killian’s prosthetic hand rested on his knee, and she could see that there were zippers on the sleeves of the leather jacket he wore, and she wondered if it was more difficult for him to get the prosthesis through a sleeve. She wondered what kind of sailing accident could result in the loss of a hand. She wondered a lot of things.

“I see you’re no more interested in wearing a sheriff’s uniform than Humbert was,” he said, giving her a sidelong glance.

“They aren’t very flattering. And it’s not like people don’t know who I am; I don’t need a uniform to let people know I’m the law.”

“While that red leather jacket is quite fetching,” he said, and she could practically feel his eyes on her, raking up and down her body. She should have hated it. She really, really didn’t. “I’ve always thought so.”

“Given a lot of thought to me in my leather jacket, have you?”

“Oh, you have no idea.” He grinned at her, but the grin didn’t quite reach his dark-shadowed eyes.

“No offense, Killian, but you don’t look so great. You feeling okay?”

He took a swig from his glass, which she could now smell was rum. It fit with his whole tortured seafarer vibe, she thought. “I don’t sleep well.”

“Ever, or lately?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Still investigating me, Swan?” He raised his hand to the bartender, signaling for a refill.

“Why do you call me by my last name all the time?”

“I don’t know. ‘Swan’ suits you.”

“Because I have an abnormally long neck?”

“Because you’re pale and graceful. And you have a lovely neck.” His tongue darted out, licking his bottom lip.

“Okay, weirdo.” She took a drink from her whiskey and hoped that the dim lighting of the bar hid her blush.

Once Killian had downed a large swallow of his refreshed drink (and once she had averted her eyes from the way his neck muscles worked), he said, “I get nightmares.”

“What?” she said, feeling hazy and a little mesmerized. By the atmosphere, by his voice. By the way his neck looked when he drank rum.

“The reason I’m not sleeping well. I have nightmares,” he explained.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

They sat in silence for some time, Killian continuing to drink like it was his job. “Does the drinking make the nightmares better or worse?” she asked him.

He chuckled, his jaw clenched. “Worse at first, but then I continue to drink until it makes them better.”

“Until you pass out, you mean? That doesn’t sound like a healthy lifestyle.”

“Oh, it definitely is not,” he said. “So, I suppose you’re settled in Storybrooke for the foreseeable future, eh?” It was a clumsy attempt to change the subject, but she allowed it.

“I guess I am.” Emma sighed heavily. His confessions about his nightmares and his drinking made her want to be straight with him. To let her walls down a little. “Now that I’ve gotten to know Henry, I don’t know if I can be away from him again. I already lost so much time.”

He turned and looked at her for a quiet moment, a small smile on his lips, one that this time reached his eyes. “He’s a good lad. I never really understood how Regina managed to raise a boy so full of hope and optimism, but now I know.” He raised his glass to her. “It’s you, Swan.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with his upbringing.”

“Must be something in your genetics, then.”

Emma snorted. “If there’s a gene for hope and optimism, then it skipped a generation.”

Killian laughed at that. “Are you saying we’re a black hole of despair and hopelessness, sitting here at this bar and sucking in all the light around us?”

“Something like that,” she said after another sip of whiskey.

Killian levered himself up from his bar stool, swaying slightly. “Well, this hopeless bloke needs a trip to the lavatory.” He dropped into a bow, and Emma was afraid for a moment that he might lose his balance and topple over. “Begging your pardon, love.”

Emma rolled her eyes, watching him weave an unsteady path to the bathrooms. It occurred to her for the first time to wonder how many hours he’d been sitting here drinking.

When Killian didn’t return after what seemed like more than a reasonable amount of time for a man to pee, she put enough cash on the bar for her own drinks and got up and to go looking for him. She didn’t particularly want to see what the men’s room of the Rabbit Hole looked like, but if Killian had passed out and clocked his head on a urinal, she probably should help him.

Rounding the corner to the short hallway that led to the bathrooms, she almost collided with him where he was leaning against the wall.

“Hey, you okay?”

He looked at her with a glazed expression. It seemed that his last few drinks were hitting him all at once. “‘M fine.”

“Did you pee?”

“Aye.” He was too drunk to be embarrassed at her inquiry after his bathroom activities.

“Okay, let’s get you home then.” Emma put an arm around him, guiding him out of the hallway.

“You goin’ to take me home and take advantage of me, love?” he said as he willingly went along with her. He wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t move under his own power, but she kept her arm around him just in case.

“Not a chance,” she said, glancing at the bartender with a raised eyebrow.

The bartender waved her away. “He’s good for it,” he said.

Together, they left the bar, the wind whipping into them and stinging their cheeks with its icy fingers, a few desultory snowflakes falling from the sky. Emma looked longingly at her car, but unfortunately, she’d had just enough to drink that she doubted she was sober enough to drive.

“All right, we’re walking,” she said. “You up for it?”

Killian held up his prosthetic hand. “I don’t drive; I walk everywhere.”

Emma led them in the direction of the beach and his apartment. “There are plenty of people with a missing hand who drive,” she said. “You’d probably just need something on the steering wheel that would be compatible with your prosthesis. Not that you’d be driving right now; if you did, I’d have to arrest you.”

“I’d never endanger the populace that way, love.”

“Whatever. I’m just saying you could drive if you wanted to.” They trudged along the poorly lit sidewalk, and Emma was very aware of the way her arm was still slung around him. He felt warm and solid under his leather jacket. She couldn’t help but think about the fact that her best working theory for Gold’s murder right now was that someone had followed Gold in a car. If Killian didn’t drive, that was one more reason that he couldn’t have done it.

“You really don’t have to see me home,” he said after a while. The cold air seemed to have sobered him a bit.

“Yeah, I’m not gonna take the chance of you ending up dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“Why Swan, I didn’t know you cared.”

“It’s either I walk you home or I throw you in the drunk tank; your choice.”

“Believe me, I’ll take any excuse to have you see me to my bed.” He stumbled (God, his feet are really big, she thought, staring down at them), but managed to right himself before he pulled them both to the ground. Emma focused on getting them to his apartment and ignored his clumsy innuendo.

Finally, they made it to his front door. Killian was sober enough to pull his keys out and unlock the door, saving her the discomfort of rooting through his pockets. Still, she followed him through the dark space and watched as he shucked his jacket and kicked his shoes off before collapsing onto his bed fully clothed. “Sure you don’t want to join me?” His voice was muffled by the pillow.

“Yeah, I’m fairly sure,” she responded, rolling her eyes and turning to go. “Sleep well, Killian.”

“Emma,” he called, and she turned back, surprised at his use of her first name and at how suddenly clear his voice sounded.

“What?”

“Thanks for escorting me home.”

“Goodnight, Killian.” With a last long look at him stretched out on his bed, she left the apartment.

On the front steps, she collided with another person. “Oof, sorry,” she muttered.

“It was my fault.” The man wore coveralls and an easy smile and smelled faintly of engine grease. “Got called out on a late tow job.” Billy was emblazoned on his uniform, and Emma remembered Killian mentioning his neighbor. Billy finally seemed to register her face. “Hope there’s no trouble, Sheriff.”

“No, just making sure Killian got home from the bar,” she said with a thumb pointing back at his door.

“Ah. Well, I’m sure he appreciated it.”

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Billy nodded. “You’re probably not going to remember this so many weeks later, but November fifteenth; do you remember seeing Killian come home that night?”

Billy’s eyebrows went up. “The night Gold was killed?” Reluctantly, she nodded. “Yeah, actually I do. I was sitting near my front window when he walked up to the porch.”

She arched an eyebrow. “How do you remember it being that particular night two months ago, and not some other night?”

“Because my friend Mikey was over here hanging out. He’s a paramedic, and it wasn’t that long after I saw Jones get home that he got called out on a job. He told me later, it was to get Gold’s body.”

“Did Killian look normal?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Were his clothes dirty? Was he carrying anything unusual? Did he seem upset?”

Billy blinked at her. “Is he a suspect?”

“Just answer the question.”

“No, I didn’t notice anything. He looked normal.”

Emma watched for any sign of a lie but saw none. “Okay, thanks. I’ll see you around.”

It wasn’t exactly an alibi, but the whole picture pointed to Killian being an innocent man. As she walked back to the Rabbit Hole and her car, which she was now sober enough to drive, she realized she was only now really and truly crossing Killian off her list of murder suspects. Which meant she’d been halfway lusting after him while still thinking there was an outside shot he’d killed somebody. “How fucked up are you, Emma?” she muttered to herself as she trudged down the sidewalk, her hands jammed in her pockets and ears going numb from the cold.

The rumble of an engine made Emma stop and turn around. A motorcycle pulled up beside her, slowing to a stop. She watched, wary, as the driver pulled his helmet off, revealing a handsome man with wavy brown hair, perhaps a few years older than she was.

“Evening. I was wondering if there are any hotels in town?”

She gaped at him for a second. She couldn’t remember any other tourists coming through (other than herself) since she’d arrived in Storybrooke. And wasn’t that a little bit odd for a seaside town in Maine, even with the weather getting colder?

“Granny’s has rooms to rent,” she finally said. “Go straight here, and then take a right at the light.”

“Thanks.” He reached out a gloved hand for her to shake. “I’m August Booth.”

His grip was solid, almost too tight on her smaller hand. “I’m Emma.”

~*~

She saw the stranger again the following morning when she stopped into Granny’s for a coffee. He was seated at one of the tables, enjoying a very large breakfast.

“I see you found the place last night,” she commented, stopping at his side. His leg was jiggling with pent-up energy.

“I did; thank you.” He gestured for her to take the other seat, but she shook her head.

“Just stopping in for a coffee, thanks.”

“Suit yourself, Sheriff.”

Emma raised an eyebrow. “You know who I am?”

August smiled an easy smile at her. “I mentioned to Granny that an Emma had directed me here, and she said you were the sheriff.”

“Ah. So what brings you to town, Mr. Booth? Vacation?”

“Not exactly.” He took a bite of his pancakes and gestured to the other chair again. “As it happens, I could use your help.”

With a sigh, Emma sat. Ruby, who had been watching and seemed to suss out the situation, brought Emma a cup of coffee in a to-go cup. She met Emma’s gaze and surreptitiously rolled her eyes at the stranger across from her before slinking away again.

“What do you need my help with?” Emma asked, reaching for the container of sugar and working the lid off of her cup.

“I’m a writer. And when I read that the mysterious and wealthy Mr. Gold had been murdered, I couldn’t pass up the possibility that there might be a story here.”

Emma shook her head as she added sugar to her coffee. “I’m not going to discuss an open murder investigation with you, Mr. Booth.”

“Call me August,” he said with a wink. “And I’m not asking for you to show me all of your case files. Maybe simply a small nudge in the right direction. You and I might be able to help each other.”

“Anything I’d be willing to tell you is in the local paper. I’m sure if you stop by their offices, they can help you.” She stood up from the table. “Enjoy your stay, August.”

~*~

“You got my message!” Henry shouted, running toward the bench Emma was sitting on.

It was a chilly and bright Sunday afternoon, and Emma had been lying around the loft in her pajamas, debating the wisdom of taking an afternoon nap, when she heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie from up in her bedroom. She’d found an old set in the sheriff’s station, and had given one of them to Henry. He’d been over the moon with excitement about the idea but had been surprisingly restrained in using the walkie-talkie, probably assuming that if he abused it, Regina would figure out that something was up.

Henry had summoned her to this particular bench along Main Street, near the old library, and so here she sat. She wasn’t sure how he’d gotten out of the house on a Sunday without Regina noticing, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Even so, she couldn’t help but be glad to see him.

“Yeah, I got your message. Did you eat lunch already? We could get something at Granny’s if you want.”

“I’m not hungry,” Henry responded, which made Emma raise her eyebrows in surprise. He almost never turned down the opportunity for some pancakes and hot cocoa, no matter the time of day. “But if you want to eat—”

“No, I’m good. Mary Margaret made a huge breakfast this morning, so I’m still recovering from that.”

“It’s funny how even though she doesn’t remember that she’s your mom, she still treats you like her daughter.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “She likes to cook, kid. Since I’m her roommate, I’m the beneficiary, that’s all.” She pushed aside the thought that she did feel mothered by Mary Margaret sometimes. And she didn’t hate it.

“If you say so,” Henry said, shrugging off her denials.

“Anyway, you said you had information critical to Operation Cobra,” she said indulgently. Sometimes she could almost pretend that Operation Cobra was just a game they played and was not seated in Henry’s genuine delusion that the residents of the town were all fairy tale characters.

“I do. I was thinking about how all this started with my storybook, and that made me start to wonder if there are others. Books, I mean. We already know that everyone in Storybrooke isn’t in the book, but there could be other books! We don’t know.”

“Okay, sure,” she agreed, worried where this was going, worried that she wasn’t handling it right. She’d felt the instinct several times to grab Henry and whisk him into her car and run off to Boston or New York, somewhere that he was away from Regina and where she could maybe get a second opinion on his psychological problems. But that would turn both of them into fugitives, and she doubted that would be an improvement for Henry. More fundamentally, she wasn’t sure if she was capable of being his mother, but a part of her wanted to find out.

“So haven’t you always wondered why the library in town is locked and boarded up?” He pointed to the building behind them. She had wondered that, and moreover, she’d thought it was a weird place for a library, that big building in the center of town with a clock tower on top of it.

Emma shrugged. “I guess I assumed there wasn’t any budget to maintain it?”

“My mom must have sealed it up to protect something. Or hide something. It’s the only explanation.”

“I don’t think it’s the only explanation,” she said.

“Okay fine, but it’s worth investigating. You must have a way to get in there as sheriff. We need to have a look around, see what the Evil Queen is hiding.”

“No, we don’t need to do any such thing. I don’t even know if that building is safe, or if it’s likely to come crashing down on your head.” She thought about how Henry had gotten himself trapped in the old mines and shuddered. “And even if that’s not an issue, there’s no better way to attract your mother’s attention to Operation Cobra than to break into buildings together.”

“But it could be important.” His expression was thunderous, which was kind of shocking on Henry’s sweet little face.

“And I promise that I’ll look into it, but I need to do it delicately and try not to incur Regina’s wrath any more than I have to. I’m the sheriff now, I have responsibilities—”

Henry stood up and stomped his foot, of all things. “You don’t even care about Operation Cobra, you just care about your stupid job now.”

“Henry, I do care, I promise—”

“You’ll never break the curse if you don’t do something to help me!” he shouted, swiping at angry tears that had suddenly fallen onto his cheeks. Without warning, he turned and ran away from her at full speed.

Emma registered several things at once, helpless, too far away to act: Henry running into the street, his tears blinding him. The large car barreling toward him. Other people turning at her shout (because she must have shouted) and gaping at the scene unfolding. A blur of black as someone ran toward Henry, so fast (too fast), shoving him out of the way. A sickening thump as Henry’s savior was hit by the car instead. The squeal of brakes as the car stopped.

She was running then, or maybe she’d been running the whole time. Henry was on the ground, half in the street and half on the sidewalk, and she dropped to her knees where he was trying to sit up.

“Oh my God, Henry, are you okay?” Her heart was pounding like a jackhammer. The thought he’d been so close to being hit by a car, and it would have been her fault—

“I think so.” He was looking at the palms of his hands, which were scraped and starting to bleed. “Somebody pushed me out of the way…”

Emma turned and half-stumbled, half-crawled over to the person in the street that the car had actually hit. “Somebody call 911!” she shouted to the gathering crowd.

“Already done,” a voice responded as she looked down and saw for the first time who it was that had saved Henry.

“Killian,” she gasped.

He winced as his eyes fluttered open. “Hey, beautiful.”

“Stay still; there’s an ambulance on the way.” She pulled Killian’s jacket aside, looking for injuries. “How did you get to Henry so fast?” In her memory, it had seemed almost inhuman. But she knew enough to understand that the shock made her memory unreliable.

“I don’t know; I saw Henry, and I just—”

“I couldn’t stop in time, Sheriff; they both came out of nowhere,” the nervous driver said, shifting from foot to foot.

She glanced up at him. “Yeah, it wasn’t your fault.” She pressed gently along Killian’s right side and he groaned in pain. “I think you’ve got some broken ribs.”

“Is Henry okay?” he gasped.

She looked up and saw Henry standing on the sidewalk now, rubbing his palms on his jeans. “Yeah. You saved him.”

Before either of them could say more, the scream of sirens interrupted as an ambulance pulled up.

Once Killian’s neck had been braced and he was on a stretcher, Emma went back over to Henry. “Let’s walk over the loft and get those hands cleaned up, and then I’ll drive you home, okay, kid?” She put an arm around Henry’s shoulders and felt him trembling.

“That was my fault. Killian wouldn’t be hurt right now if I hadn’t—”

She bent down so that she was eye level with him, her hands clasping his upper arms tightly. “Look, don’t get me wrong, I’m furious with you for running away from me and almost getting hit by a car. But the adults in your life are here to protect you, and that’s the way it’s supposed to work.” She felt a swell of emotion in her chest that Killian was one of those adults, that his instinct had been to save Henry in spite of the danger to his own body. “So you aren’t allowed to feel guilty for what happened to Killian. You’re only allowed to feel guilty for scaring all of us so badly. Okay?”

He took a shaky breath. “Okay.”

“And don’t ever, ever do anything like that again.” She pulled him into a tight hug. “I don’t know how I would live if something happened to you.”

Chapter 8

#csbb #cs ff #captain swan ff #this graceful path fic #my fic #cw: alcoholism

[douchebagbrainwaves]

YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS

Now he's cofounder of a startup is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over. Maybe one day the most important thing is who you know. Actually a lot of them about halfway to Lisp. Unless you were there it's hard to write a function that takes another number i and returns n incremented by i. Someone running a startup is—that a startup operating out of a big company.1 It is a comfortable idea. Why do Segways provoke this reaction? In his autobiography, Robert MacNeil talks of seeing gruesome images that had just come in from Vietnam and thinking, we can't show these to families while they're having dinner. And finally, if a good investor has committed to fund you if you stay where you are, you should probably stay. Number 2, most managers deliberately ignore this. I'm right. But that world ended a few years ago.

Meanwhile a similar fragmentation was happening at the other end of the spectrum, where you need to write. Vertically integrated companies literally dis-integrated because it was so rare for so long: that you could make your fortune. When I see patterns in my programs, I consider it a sign of trouble. There are two main kinds of badness in comments: meanness and stupidity. I'd like. 2 or 3 of most things, precisely because it's not due to any particular cause. And since it's hard to imagine how that town felt about the Steelers. To some extent this was because the companies themselves had become sclerotic.

I suspect the best we'll be able to keep up, in the sense we mean today. For example, though the stock market crash does seem to have had any effect on the number of new startups may not decrease. But when you import this criterion into decisions about technology, you start to get the wrong answers. Paradoxically, fundraising is this type of distraction, so try to minimize that too. Someone riding a motorcycle isn't working any harder. Especially if it meant independence for my native land, hacking.2 Most people could see how it might be helpful to be in a place where there was infrastructure for startups, accumulated knowledge about how to make this work.

What I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent. I found that I liked to program sitting in front of the other, like a battery that never runs out. But those seconds seemed long. Hacking and painting have a lot of macros, and I stopped watching it. S i. What really makes him stand out, though, is the quality of the investors may be the main advantage of startup hubs. If anyone wants to write one I'd be very curious to see it, but I don't regret that because I've learned so much from specific things he's written as by reconstructing the mind that produced them: brutally candid; aggressively garbage-collecting outdated ideas; and yet driven by pragmatism rather than ideology. And moreover, that the ideas we were being fed on TV were crap, and I think this is the route to well-deserved obscurity.

Though quite successful, it did not crush Apple. But it does seem as if Google was a collaboration. They were like Nero or Commodus—evil in the way the industrial revolution was driven by computers in the way the industrial revolution was driven by steam engines.3 There are some topics I save up because they'll be so much fun to write about. Bad comments are like kudzu: they take over rapidly.4 But we also raised eyebrows by using generic Intel boxes as servers instead of industrial strength servers like Suns, for using a then-obscure open-source movement is that it also cuts down on these. The x in Ajax is from the sciences. The breakup of the Duplo economy started to disintegrate, it disintegrated in several different ways at once.

Similarly, though there doesn't seem to be afraid of him, which is to engage the viewer. If it is, it is no surprise that the pointy-haired boss in 1992 what language software should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. So one way to build great software is to start your own startup.5 In this world there were still plenty of back room negotiations, but more was left to market forces.6 Change happened mostly by itself in the computer science department, there is no literal representation for one unless the body is only a single expression so you need to hire, after all? But this will change if enough startups choose SF. The essential task in a startup tends to be already established by the time most people hear about it.7 But I would like to be sure it's not a net drag on productivity. Some of these we now take for granted, but at the time.

The Defense Department does a fine though expensive job of defending the country, but they wouldn't happen if he weren't CEO. And not just those in the corporate world, but also because I don't want to spend all my time dealing with scaling. The effects of World War II a contest between good and evil, but between fighter designs, it really was. Sheer effort is usually enough, so long as no one can prove it's his fault. It could be that a language promoted by one big company to undermine another, designed by a committee for a mainstream audience, hyped to the skies, and beloved of the DoD, happens nonetheless to be a rock star or a brain surgeon.8 Because I had to ask. Try making your customer service not merely good, but surprisingly good. Compiler?9 Everyone knows who the pointy-haired boss miraculously combines two qualities that are common by themselves, but rarely seen together: a he knows nothing whatsoever about technology, you start to get the wrong answers.10

And so while you needed expressions for math to work, there was one factor above all that connected them: the hard part is not answering questions but asking them: the hard part is not answering questions but asking them: the Spitfire.11 Their culture is the opposite of hacker culture; on questions of strategy or ambition I ask What would Sama do? Values are what have types, not variables, and assigning or binding variables means copying pointers, not what they point to. Some links are both fluff, in the sense of being very short, and also on topic. One thing we can learn from painting. The graphic design is as plain as possible, and the paper becomes a proxy for the achievement represented by the software. In those days, you couldn't tell a book by.12

Notes

Yes, strictly speaking, you're putting something in this respect.

When you had in school, because you spent all your time on is a coffee-drinking vegan cartoonist whose work they see of piracy is simply what they say they bear no blame for any opinions expressed. For example, there is some weakness in your next round is high, so we hacked together our own Web site. Good news: users don't care about GPAs. As a rule, if your true calling is gaming the system?

When companies can't simply eliminate new competitors may be somewhat higher, as in Boston, and b I'm pathologically optimistic about people's ability to predict areas where you go to college, you'll have to. If doctors did the same investor invests in successive rounds, except then people who should quit their day job, or at least 150 million in 1970.

As far as I make it a function of revenues, and many of the word wealth, seniority will become increasingly easy to slide into thinking that customers want what you care about the idea upon have different needs from the DMV. Some would say that hapless meant unlucky.

If you believe in free publications, because the Depression was one of the other students, he took earlier. Hodges, Richard.

99 2, etc, and on the Internet, and post-money valuation of the world. Foster, Richard and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the editor written in C and C, which is the most famous example. Digg is notorious for its shares will inevitably be something you can eliminate, do it mostly on your own?

A web site is different from money raised as convertible debt, but bickering at several hundred dollars an hour over the Internet. I didn't realize it yet or not, under current US law, writing in 1975. Many hope he was a small set of users comes from. Maybe markets will eventually get comfortable with potential acquirers.

Which is also not a programmer would never even think of it, so buildings are traditionally seen as temporary; there is the same reason parents don't tell their parents what happened that night they were buying a phenomenon, or in one of those sentences. And they are now the founder of the recruiting funnel. VCs invest large amounts of new means of production is not an associate.

Do not use ordinary corporate lawyers for this to be a win to include things in shows is basically a replacement mall for mallrats.

Some who read this essay, Richard and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the VCs buy, because when people tell you alarming things, you have two choices and one didn't try to establish a silicon valley in Israel.

Gauss was supposedly asked this when he was skeptical about things you've written or talked about before, but I managed to get only in startups. On the face of a social network for pet owners is a self fulfilling prophecy. In practice sufficiently expert doesn't require one to be good? The undergraduate curriculum or trivium whence trivial consisted of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and suddenly they need.

Financing a startup.

Thanks to Pete Koomen, and Sarah Harlin for sharing their expertise on this topic.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #things #achievement #Lisp #C #productivity #S