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teamfortresstwo · 6 months

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I feel like Martin could’ve been a really interesting character in tma but so much of the content about him is about jmart and being like “oh he’s so nice!”. Character who should be put on a high up shelf for a tiny bit while the fandom considers it a little maybe. He has a bunch of moments I really liked but I’m not a huge fan of the interpretations most people have.

I got somewhat more rambly than usual and most of my mutuals probs don’t want to see this so:

YEAH SO TRUE!! He is literally so compelling in s4!! There is so much to like about him!! There’s so much I want to know more about and an arc I wish so badly that he’d had!!!…..

But then he just. Kinda didn’t? Like they put a bunch of cool ideas for him on the table then pushed them all off in s5 by giving him nothing to do except nag at Jon which did nothing but make him sound really annoying. Plus like…. He was framed more righteously than before y’know? Like the narrative was leaning into those ‘cute little UwU bean’ interpretations and it just came across as so…. !!!! Like!! Annabelle Cane literally talks about how good of a web avatar he would make so why didn’t we spend ANY of s5 exploring that!! Why did we barely get to explore him at all outside of like 2 lonely based episodes!! Why is everyone convinced that he’s both super smart AND the epitome of moral righteousness!! We’ve only seen him be manipulative once (which lead do the end of the world) and then got a whole bunch of lip service about it and we were straight up told that a lot of his fluffier qualities are a straight up lie!! And nothing interesting comes of this AUGHHHH!!

Sorry for rambling a bit, I just remembered how much wasted potential Martin had and it hurt.

#Martin negative #TMA critical #like I literally loved all the s5 statements that were focused on him why couldn’t the rest of his cha #characterization in s5 been like that aughhhh.#me bwood I love you but I hate you but I love you #Please explore him. if you’re going to have JM then at least use it to explore their characters a bit more like it could be so interesting #it canonically *is* interesting it’s just also framed as the most boring and flat thing by the narrative #which is also how I feel about s5 Martin #TMA negative #anti TMA #anti Martin #Martin critical #discourse #fandom critical #trying to tag everything I can think of so nobody who doesn’t want to see this does

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spooksicl-e · 2 years

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a little bilbo for the soul bc i’m trying to break out of art block

#he’s just a little guy!!!#a little guy who burgles from giant angry lizards played by benedict cumberbatch #my art #the @ is my insta #fanart #fanartist #art #the hobbit #bilbo baggins #thorin oakenshield #thorins company #martin freeman #jrr tolkien #lotr #lord of the rings #idk how to tag the hobbit so this is a mess #it’s p ugly but i haven’t drawn in weeks so i’m trying not to be too critical #edit: i got rid of the bg impulsively sorry if you liked it better lolzies

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mostlysignssomeportents · 14 days

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The true post-cyberpunk hero is a noir forensic accountant

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TOMORROW (Apr 17) in CHICAGO, then Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

I was reared on cyberpunk fiction, I ended up spending 25 years at my EFF day-job working at the weird edge of tech and human rights, even as I wrote sf that tried to fuse my love of cyberpunk with my urgent, lifelong struggle over who computers do things for and who they do them to.

That makes me an official "post-cyberpunk" writer (TM). Don't take my word for it: I'm in the canon:

https://tachyonpublications.com/product/rewired-the-post-cyberpunk-anthology-2/

One of the editors of that "post-cyberpunk" anthology was John Kessel, who is, not coincidentally, the first writer to expose me to the power of literary criticism to change the way I felt about a novel, both as a writer and a reader:

https://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/

It was Kessel's 2004 Foundation essay, "Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality," that helped me understand litcrit. Kessel expertly surfaces the subtext of Card's Ender's Game and connects it to Card's politics. In so doing, he completely reframed how I felt about a book I'd read several times and had considered a favorite:

https://johnjosephkessel.wixsite.com/kessel-website/creating-the-innocent-killer

This is a head-spinning experience for a reader, but it's even wilder to experience it as a writer. Thankfully, the majority of literary criticism about my work has been positive, but even then, discovering something that's clearly present in one of my novels, but which I didn't consciously include, is a (very pleasant!) mind-fuck.

A recent example: Blair Fix's review of my 2023 novel Red Team Blues which he calls "an anti-finance finance thriller":

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/05/13/red-team-blues-cory-doctorows-anti-finance-thriller/

Fix – a radical economist – perfectly captures the correspondence between my hero, the forensic accountant Martin Hench, and the heroes of noir detective novels. Namely, that a noir detective is a kind of unlicensed policeman, going to the places the cops can't go, asking the questions the cops can't ask, and thus solving the crimes the cops can't solve. What makes this noir is what happens next: the private dick realizes that these were places the cops didn't want to go, questions the cops didn't want to ask and crimes the cops didn't want to solve ("It's Chinatown, Jake").

Marty Hench – a forensic accountant who finds the money that has been disappeared through the cells in cleverly constructed spreadsheets – is an unlicensed tax inspector. He's finding the money the IRS can't find – only to be reminded, time and again, that this is money the IRS chooses not to find.

This is how the tax authorities work, after all. Anyone who followed the coverage of the big finance leaks knows that the most shocking revelation they contain is how stupid the ruses of the ultra-wealthy are. The IRS could prevent that tax-fraud, they just choose not to. Not for nothing, I call the Martin Hench books "Panama Papers fanfic."

I've read plenty of noir fiction and I'm a long-term finance-leaks obsessive, but until I read Fix's article, it never occurred to me that a forensic accountant was actually squarely within the noir tradition. Hench's perfect noir fit is either a happy accident or the result of a subconscious intuition that I didn't know I had until Fix put his finger on it.

The second Hench novel is The Bezzle. It's been out since February, and I'm still touring with it (Chicago tonight! Then Turin, Marin County, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, etc). It's paying off – the book's a national bestseller.

Writing in his newsletter, Henry Farrell connects Fix's observation to one of his own, about the nature of "hackers" and their role in cyberpunk (and post-cyberpunk) fiction:

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-accountant-as-cyberpunk-hero

Farrell cites Bruce Schneier's 2023 book, A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules and How to Bend Them Back:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/06/trickster-makes-the-world/

Schneier, a security expert, broadens the category of "hacker" to include anyone who studies systems with an eye to finding and exploiting their defects. Under this definition, the more fearsome hackers are "working for a hedge fund, finding a loophole in financial regulations that lets her siphon extra profits out of the system." Hackers work in corporate offices, or as government lobbyists.

As Henry says, hacking isn't intrinsically countercultural ("Most of the hacking you might care about is done by boring seeming people in boring seeming clothes"). Hacking reinforces – rather than undermining power asymmetries ("The rich have far more resources to figure out how to gimmick the rules"). We are mostly not the hackers – we are the hacked.

For Henry, Marty Hench is a hacker (the rare hacker that works for the good guys), even though "he doesn’t wear mirrorshades or get wasted chatting to bartenders with Soviet military-surplus mechanical arms." He's a gun for hire, that most traditional of cyberpunk heroes, and while he doesn't stand against the system, he's not for it, either.

Henry's pinning down something I've been circling around for nearly 30 years: the idea that though "the street finds its own use for things," Wall Street and Madison Avenue are among the streets that might find those uses:

https://craphound.com/nonfic/street.html

Henry also connects Martin Hench to Marcus Yallow, the hero of my YA Little Brother series. I have tried to make this connection myself, opining that while Marcus is a character who is fighting to save an internet that he loves, Marty is living in the ashes of the internet he lost:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/07/dont-curb-your-enthusiasm/

But Henry's Marty-as-hacker notion surfaces a far more interesting connection between the two characters. Marcus is a vehicle for conveying the excitement and power of hacking to young readers, while Marty is a vessel for older readers who know the stark terror of being hacked, by the sadistic wolves who're coming for all of us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I44L1pzi4gk

Both Marcus and Marty are explainers, as am I. Some people say that exposition makes for bad narrative. Those people are wrong:

https://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-favorite-bit/my-favorite-bit-cory-doctorow-talks-about-the-bezzle/

"Explaining" makes for great fiction. As Maria Farrell writes in her Crooked Timber review of The Bezzle, the secret sauce of some of the best novels is "information about how things work. Things like locks, rifles, security systems":

https://crookedtimber.org/2024/03/06/the-bezzle/

Where these things are integrated into the story's "reason and urgency," they become "specialist knowledge [that] cuts new paths to move through the world." Hacking, in other words.

This is a theme Paul Di Filippo picked up on in his review of The Bezzle for Locus:

https://locusmag.com/2024/04/paul-di-filippo-reviews-the-bezzle-by-cory-doctorow/

Heinlein was always known—and always came across in his writings—as The Man Who Knew How the World Worked. Doctorow delivers the same sense of putting yourself in the hands of a fellow who has peered behind Oz’s curtain. When he fills you in lucidly about some arcane bit of economics or computer tech or social media scam, you feel, first, that you understand it completely and, second, that you can trust Doctorow’s analysis and insights.

Knowledge is power, and so expository fiction that delivers news you can use is novel that makes you more powerful – powerful enough to resist the hackers who want to hack you.

Henry and I were both friends of Aaron Swartz, and the Little Brother books are closely connected to Aaron, who helped me with Homeland, the second volume, and wrote a great afterword for it (Schneier wrote an afterword for the first book). That book – and Aaron's afterword – has radicalized a gratifying number of principled technologists. I know, because I meet them when I tour, and because they send me emails. I like to think that these hackers are part of Aaron's legacy.

Henry argues that the Hench books are "purpose-designed to inspire a thousand Max Schrems – people who are probably past their teenage years, have some grounding in the relevant professions, and really want to see things change."

(Schrems is the Austrian privacy activist who, as a law student, set in motion the events that led to the passage of the EU's General Data Privacy Regulation:)

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/15/out-here-everything-hurts/#noyb

Henry points out that William Gibson's Neuromancer doesn't mention the word "internet" – rather, Gibson coined the term cyberspace, which, as Henry says, is "more ‘capitalism’ than ‘computerized information'… If you really want to penetrate the system, you need to really grasp what money is and what it does."

Maria also wrote one of my all-time favorite reviews of Red Team Blues, also for Crooked Timber:

https://crookedtimber.org/2023/05/11/when-crypto-meant-cryptography/

In it, she compares Hench to Dickens' Bleak House, but for the modern tech world:

You put the book down feeling it’s not just a fascinating, enjoyable novel, but a document of how Silicon Valley’s very own 1% live and a teeming, energy-emitting snapshot of a critical moment on Earth.

All my life, I've written to find out what's going on in my own head. It's a remarkably effective technique. But it's only recently that I've come to appreciate that reading what other people write about my writing can reveal things that I can't see.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/17/panama-papers-fanfic/#the-1337est-h4x0rs

Image: Frédéric Poirot (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/fredarmitage/1057613629 CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

#pluralistic #science fiction #cyberpunk #literary criticism #maria farrell #henry farrell #noir #martin hench #marty hench #red team blues #the bezzle #forensic accountants #hackers #bruce schneier #post-cyberpunk #blair fix

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icedsodapop · 7 months

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Just a heads up about Killers of the Flower Moon

Here Osage language consultant Christopher Cote speaking about this:

#killers of the flower moon #martin scorsese #films #native american #indigenous culture #osage #settler colonialism #anti native racism #historical revisionism #yeah same. i was a little unnerved that it was from the pov of the white criminals #and even made the guy played by dicaprio to be sympathetic #media criticism

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found-family-tournament · 8 months

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Found Family Tournament Round 2 Part 7 Group 31

Propaganda and further images under the cut

Archive Staff: Jonathan Sims, Sasha James, Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood

Mighty Nein: Caleb Widogast, Nott the Brave/Veth Brennato, Fjord, Jester Lavorre, Caduceus Clay, Beauregard Lionett, Yasha Nydoorin, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Kingsley Tealeaf, Essek Thelyss

Archive Staff:

They’re trying their best to understand

Mighty Nein:

Originally, they were only seven, and the Nein part of their group name was a running joke about rolling nines and Caleb's German accent. Then, after Molly's untimely death, the group picked up Caduceus, making seven again. Later, they ally with Essek, who makes eight. And finally, through the power of love and found family, they defeat a villain named Lucien (who inhabits the body Molly had, it's all very complicated), and revive the body to become Kingsley Tealeaf, who looks at Molly as his brother but ultimately makes the group Nine. His revival is literally an act of divine intervention, fueled by the love and loss they all felt after chasing their beloved friend across the continent.

Internally there are other fantastic family bonds. Caleb and Nott/Veth having an incredible bond, Caleb and Beau being the Empire siblings, Molly and Yasha being the circus kids, Beau and Fjord, Cad and Fjord, the chaos crew, Nott and Jester, it goes on and on. They all change each other so significantly, they grow together, and canonically even though they live apart, they all have regular meetups in the tower Caleb created for all of them, with a stained glass window in Molly's honor and rooms dedicated to each member of the group. Even now in the new campaign, they've had cameos that prove years later they still work together and have each other's backs.

This is THEE definition of found family, these assholes were thrown together through circumstance and mostly hated each other to begin with right up until three of their own were kidnapped and then it was ON. And when Molly died, they took his ideals and turned them into a legacy SO POWERFUL they took Essek from a cold, self motivated war criminal to a man willing to die for his friends. They refused to let Beau face her abusive family alone! They helped Yasha heal from her trauma! They took down the whole Cerberus Assembly for what they did to Caleb! They saved the whole dang world together WITH THE POWER OF FUCKING FRIENDSHIP 😭! THEY LOVED MOLLY SO MUCH THAT IT SAVED THE WORLD! THEY NAMED THEMSELVES AFTER A STUPID PUN AND THEN THERE REALLY ENDED UP BEING NINE OF THEM! I WOULD DIE FOR THEM!!!

official art by Ari Orner, fan art by exmakina and tobyjamessharp

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jewishjon · 1 year

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Look, I love Jon as much as the next person but I think some of you have gone so far along the ‘Jon is a sad little man who did nothing wrong’ route that you’ve genuinely forgotten all the times he held power in a situation or like. Made a decision that hurt people

#yes Jon was in a terrible situation where he was manipulated and was often powerless and blamed for things he had no control over #yes there have been times where the fandom has been overly critical of Jon and it’s ok to try to combat that #but that does not mean Jon is completely powerless and ‘stupid’ and did nothing wrong!!!!#the entire Point of tma is that the morality of your actions and their results cannot be simply defined as good or bad #Jon was just a person who tried and sometimes failed #also it was a pretty big part of s5 that Jon was the most powerful person in the world. like. did we forget about the murders or #AND the stalking AND him being a totally arse to Martin in s1 #anyway I understand where the poor little meow meow characterisation comes from but to me it’s just doing a disservice to Jon #ugh I can’t believe I’m kinda engaging in discourse #gonna be brave and maintag this:#tma #the magnus archives #Jon sims #be nice to me pls

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cryptiqish · 3 months

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we’re only two eps in but already waiting in dread for people to start flanderizing and/or completely misunderstand tmagp characters. i saw what u people did to tim, elias and martin last time i can’t do this again

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #the magnus archives #sorry never going to be not annoyed at the whole ‘funny meme man’ tim fanon like he is 35 and traumatized #elias being tumblr sexymanified is so odd to me because he’s a direct indictment of the banality of upper class evil #and a criticism of the adjacent conservative ideology like that’s the whole point #and my poor boy martin just got flanderized beyond belief lol #tma

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pawthorn · 1 year

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I absolutely need to see Ludinus Da’leth’s reaction to Ashton Greymoore.

This wizard, who led research on alchemical Dunamancy and used Yeza to distill a potion that has one somewhat mild effect. Ludinus also, presumably, has helped Thull achieve some artificial Echo-knight abilities.

He is deeply interested in exploring and exploiting Dunamancy, but clearly it hasn’t been easy or straightforward to do so.

And eventually he’s going to meet a barbarian with a hole in their head who is instinctually using rage-fueled Dunamancy.

And someday Ludinus may learn that Ashton gained these powers when someone poured Dunamancy juice into his dead body through a hole in their skull.

And I just really want to see that moment.

#critical role #ashton greymoore #campaign 3 #ludinus da'leth #there’s a fic that lives in my brain #that’s too ooc from the tone of cr for me to write #where da’leth gets ahlod of ashton and runs magic experiments on them #because why wouldn’t he #then we finally get the st martin stuff w ashton i’ve wanted from the start

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scarlettroubles · 2 years

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I am 90% convinced that if Daisy, Basira, Georgie and Melanie had just teamed up to give Jon a make over, they could have lured Martin's gay ass back to their side and away from Peter 'twelve times divorced' Lukas and they could have figured out Elias' big plan now that they have Martin back and brutal pipe murdered the grinning little bastard with a vouyerism kink and lived happily ever after in Scotland.

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ilynpilled · 1 year

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tywin au where instead of terrorizing the realm he terrorizes twitter timelines by becoming a millionaire educator tradcath account

#listen i understand criticism of the lannister siblings #but you gotta understand if someone talked to you like this since you were 5 you would also become dysfunctional beyond repair #imagine being raised by a tradcath millionaire educator #u want love but u get a sigma male affirmation video instead #all of these tweets are real btw #tears in my eyes #tywin #art by britt martin #asoiaf #valyrianscrolls

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zylice · 3 months

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Tom Hiddleston always gets the short end of the stick when it comes to ‘Loki.’

- His show didn’t have showrunners that actually knew about or cared about his character

- The original script he was given was blacklisted in 2018

- Michael Waldron the show ‘creator’ is a ‘phile’ and a sicko overall.

- Kate Herron said that they ‘made things up as they went along.’

- They wanted to ‘knock Tom down a notch’ in order to let Sylvie shine. I recall Taika saying a similar thing in relation to Ragnarok and even Feige removed him from Age of Ultron due to his ‘insane acting skills.’ 🙄

- Apparently Chris Hemsworth is ‘sick of Loki’ and said that he’s like a “clingy ex-girlfriend who can’t take the hint that it’s done, it’s over.”

- Taika Waititi said that Loki outshined Thor before so he wanted to stop that from happening.

- Taika wanted to put Loki in a porta potty:

- Taika wanted Tom to get pregnant with a horse implying bestial r*pe!!

- Most of his scenes from the movies were deleted

- Michael Waldron and Kate Herron said that they wanted to ‘knock Tom down a few pegs’ in order to give Sylvie a chance to shine

- He had to film the show during COVID which stuffed a lot of things

- He couldn’t promote the second season due to the SAG AFTRA strikes.

- He’s never featured in the Marvel opening title sequence

- He is still one of the ‘lowest paid Marvel actors.’

- He goes out of his way to promote Infinity War even though he’s only in it for 2 minutes!

- His series didn’t get the ‘spotlight treatment’ or have and show runners who KNEW anything about Marvel or Loki! Tom spent FOUR days showing them PowerPoint presentations showing them all about aloki and the MCU at the infamous ‘Loki Lectures’ but “SCREW YOU TOM AND YOUR CHARACTER! WE CARE MORE ABOUT KANG AND THE TVA, YOUR ‘CHARACTER’ IS JUST A PLACE HOLDER NOW!”

- They made him look older and less appealing in the show than he does irl. Look at him in some shots in the show then see him behind the scenes! The makeup, lighting and angles were unflattering at times! They even managed to remove that sparkle in his eye in the show but it was there behind the scenes!

- The director of S1, Kate Herron said that it was wanted Sophia/Sylvie to ‘knock Tom Hiddleston down a notch.’

The director of S2, Aaron Moorhead said ‘Why don’t you just go away?’

What we could have had… 😪 Poor guy. I wonder how he feels being bullied, exploited and sidelined all the time. 😢💔

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