#she has a stupid amount of power over various world governments

[paterday]

I love that one of the major female characters in project Hail Mary is just objectively a horrible person. The more you learn about her the more she sucks. But also I love her

#my problematic fave #she kidnaps and drugs q dude and then launches him into space #she has a stupid amount of power over various world governments #I love her

[blackjack-15]

Ziplines, Blood Ties, and Colonavirus — Thoughts on: The Silent Spy (SPY)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW, CAP, ASH, TMB, DED, GTH

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: SPY; mentions of the “Nancy Games” (ASH-SPY); SAW; mention of National Treasure (2004).

The Intro:

It’s our penultimate meta, and this time, it’s personal.

In every way, The Silent Spy is the culmination of the Nancy Games. Ever since her trip back home in ASH, Nancy has been increasingly featured in the games, showing us more of her personality, her life, and her backstory — all in an effort to lead up to this story, where we actually delve into Nancy’s place in the world and what it means that she lives in it.

And the answer to that is a lot less wholly idealistic than the franchise would have given 20+ games ago.

I don’t mean to say that SPY is a cynical game — it’s honestly fairly neutral, edging on positive — but that SPY accepts the fundamental truth that all of the Nancy games have been leading up to: that Nancy, though talented, hardworking, and connected, is simply another fish when it comes to the sea of life. She’s not unique in any way that really matters – look at her foils in Alexei, in Jamila, in Deirdre, in Jessalyn — and yet she continues to work hard, to solve puzzles, and to right old wrongs.

At least for me, this is a hopeful message. The point of “Nancy Drew, Girl Detective” is not that no one could do what she does, it’s not that she’s the best, most experienced sleuth in the world, and it’s not that she’s the Last, Best Hope of those who call upon her for aid. The point behind her character is that she’s a relatively normal (if wealthy) girl who does what she can, and chooses to do it again and again.

There’s a wonderful part in the equally wonderful movie National Treasure when our heroes are reading a part of the Declaration — the part talking about the right of the citizens to throw off a despotic government like the British had become — and Ben (Nicholas Cage, actually in a good movie for once!) defines it in modern speech:

“If there’s something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.”

In the beginning of the Nancy Drew games series, Nancy is merely an intuitive puzzle solver. She gets her cases through family connections, turns up at places where mysteries happen to occur, etc. etc. As time goes on and she practices, she eventually comes to the point where she’s being hired for bigger and bigger cases, more and more regularly — in short, she starts to live the truth of that quote. Nancy is, at her core, someone with the ability to take action against things that are Wrong. Throughout this series — and most especially, throughout the “Nancy” games (ASH-SPY), she becomes someone who recognizes her responsibility to take action.

And that’s what’s showcased here in SPY. Upon arriving and learning that she’s been led to Glasgow under false circumstances, Nancy is immediately and wholly over her head — but she’s still someone who has the ability to take action to right a wrong. When she’s working against Revenant, warning the scientist, or reading through secret memo after secret memo, she’s not doing it with the intent to Save the World; she’s finishing Kate Drew’s last task. Her loyalty isn’t to Glasgow, to Cathedral, to MI5, or any other player in this story — her loyalty is to her mother, and to the task Kate Drew died while trying to finish.

Which is, in my view, the best possible motivation in a game that’s all about family.

With that discussion behind us, I want to talk a little bit here about the other theme of this game — power. Revenant, as the terrorist group that they are, want to seize power; their goal is to run Glasgow (branching off from there into a wider sphere, of course) through seizing power during a (self-induced) state of emergency — aka, what’s referred to in-game as the Colony operation.

This is, of course, Politics 101 — whip people up into a frenzy, come in promising to Save Everyone, and entrench yourself in power that you can’t be moved from with any amount of ease. And while Revenant planned it for 2005, it would work even better in 2013, when social media and instant, 24-hour news cycles can keep the fear alive far more effectively than Revenant would have hoped for nearly a decade prior.

Both in 2005 and 2013, Revenant nearly succeeds, only to be foiled by a red-head out of her depth but who tries anyway (the difference between the two, of course, is that Kate was isolated and Nancy had backup). The most startling thing — and one of my favorite things about this game – is that it doesn’t end with Nancy ‘killing’ Revenant once and for all, or even stopping the Colony Operation once and for all. Nancy is, in every way, out of her depth here; she’s not used by either side as an agent, or even as an asset — she is, as Zoe reminds her, a tool, valuable for what she might know, not for her skills, not for who she is, or what she works for.

As the games from TOT on have worked hard to expand Nancy’s world and tie it together, SPY shows the benefit of having a wide-open world: that the world goes on, people live and die, and secretive organizations (ATAC, Revenant, Cathedral, MI5…) plot and scheme to remake the world in their image.

This, in my view, is also a great thing. The thing that Nancy Drew books (and a lot of the early games) get wrong is that Nancy fixes (or is party to fixing) all of the problems introduced. The piano-playing girl that Nancy meets ends up with a Grandmaster as a teacher; the inheritance goes to the Worthy Widow and Her Daughter; Nancy rescues her tied-up father AND solves his case for his client all in one brilliant masterstroke.

That’s not to say that every story should have all of its threads dangling by the end, but Nancy is simply a smart and resourceful girl, working (most of the time) with her own relatively meager resources. She shouldn’t be the answer to the world’s problems, and I think it’s lovely that, especially in the Nancy games, she really isn’t. Nancy is a helper, and that’s far more valuable than being an omniscient, all-powerful being who can magically fix everyone’s problems just by being there.

The last thing I want to talk about in this introduction is how good SPY is for Nancy’s own personal lore. There’s a lot of fuss every time SPY is brought up about how “Nancy’s mom actually died when she was three!!” which, honestly, tells me that the 60s re-writes (which, yes, if you’re pedantic, started in ’59) did more damage than I had previously thought.

The original Nancy Drew books were written in the 30s by various ghostwriters, and were a little different from the yellow-bound 60s rewrites that most people consider the “old Nancy Drew books”. 30s Nancy Drew was a little closer to our games-universe Nancy; brash, outspoken, punishingly independent, and incredibly capable. She’s also a bit violent and unruly, has graduated from school at 16, lost her mother at 10, and does as she pleases with the occasional call home to reassure Carson or (more often) to ask a question about the law.

Sadly, other than taking out a few racial and societal overtones that weren’t really acceptable after 30 years — mostly by taking out any non-white characters and including different forms of bias, note — the yellow rewrites weren’t an improvement to the stories or to Nancy’s character. Nancy becomes less bold, less independent, and far more focused on describing each meal in punishing amounts of detail. The words “kindly” and “sweetly” were increasingly added after “Nancy said”, she’s far more deferential to authority, and her mother instead passes when Nancy is 3, rather than 10.

In changing the form of the media to video games, rather than books, what would eventually become HER had a choice; they could align themselves with the newest Nancy Drew books — the Nancy Drew Files and Nancy Drew on Campus, both of which were known for being Hotter and Sexier (and, in the case of Campus, ridiculously stupid) — or choose what people called “the classics” — the yellow-spine 60s rewrites, as the once-famous blue books had been all but forgotten in the 90s. In the first (and still one of the last, honestly) brilliant move of the series, HER chose to mix and match the things that made for good game fodder from (nearly, given how much the Campus books suck) every written incarnation of Nancy.

And, to their credit, they chose an important fact from the 30s: Nancy’s mother died when she was 10, not when she was 3.

Losing a parent is a defining moment no matter when it happens, but the exact effect often changes based on (among other things) the age of the child. In order for Nancy to be the kind of person who is influenced by the mystery of her mother’s death, her mother had to have died when Nancy could remember — thus, 3 is right out, as Nancy might remember tiny bits and pieces of the events leading up to and right after, but nothing else.

By taking bits and pieces of contrasting (and often contradictory) lore and making their own out of it, HER (and I’m hat-tipping Cathy and Nik especially here, given Nancy’s characterization spike beginning around WAC/TOT) gives us a version of Nancy that’s similar to the sleuth we know and love from the books and movies (ignoring the 2007 disaster) and, occasionally, TV shows, while still keeping her mostly consistent and showing us a few new flashes that make this character stand out and win her place in the Drewniverse.

Now, with all of that said, let’s move on to this game in specific, shall we?

The Title:

The Silent Spy, as a title, is one that is wonderfully mysterious and really makes you want to know more — right up until the title drop within the game itself, at which point it shifts from quite alluring to desperately sad and foreboding.

After all, “the only silent spy is a dead spy.”

As the game really is about our resident Silent Spy — Kate Drew and her actions and legacy — this is really the only title that the game could have had, and it suits it down to the ground, both with its mystery and with its sadness.

In life, Kate Drew was silenced, and in death, she is obviously necessarily silent — but Nancy reads her words, remembers her speech, listens to her voice, and, of course, hears her song, whenever the world is quiet enough. And I think that’s a wonderful dichotomy for the title to introduce before the game has even properly begun.

The Mystery:

Summoned to Scotland by a mysterious message and guided by a photograph of her mother, Nancy arrives ready to retrace her mother’s steps — only to be thrown into a world of espionage, gadgets, untraceable phone calls, and deadly mishaps. Her luggage (and her best clue about her mother) having been stolen, the presence of an old family friend who refuses to talk, an evasive skiptracer, an excitable local, and a clever intelligence agent all work together to ensure that Nancy is off-balance the minute she arrives.

All, of course, is even less what it seems than Nancy is prepared for, and she spends to game gloriously off-balance trying to keep up with the larger forces pushing and pulling her. She needs to retrace her mother’s steps, escape from certain death, dig deep into the pasts and presents of the people she meets, and do some impressive sleuthing of her own to even make the change from tool to player — and even that might not be enough to keep her safe when the dastardly minds at Revenant come a-knocking…

As a mystery — or as a collection of intertwined mysteries, honestly — SPY succeeds at what a lot of other games tried (and ultimately failed, in one way or another), which is to link all the happenings in the game together under one cohesive plot that grows more and more horrifying the more you think about it. GTH has a fandom reputation for fridge horror, but SPY holds its own easily when you consider Kate’s fatal chase, Moira’s abduction and guilt, the threats that Ewan and Alec operate under, and the life that Zoe leads on the regular.

Every action that Nancy takes benefits someone — whether it be Cathedral, Revenant, herself, or an interested third (fourth?) party — without her really meaning to, and the game is great in including another question in every reveal.

The beauty of SPY’s mystery(s) is that it takes careful reading, paying attention, and honestly replaying in order to grasp the enormity of every action. No matter how many times you play or replay, there’s something new to find — a time-sensitive conversation, an implication in a note, a theory behind the presence of a clue or a piece of (what you previously thought to be) set dressing — it honestly is limitless, and it just helps to contribute to the feeling that this is a world that Nancy isn’t meant to truly be fully immersed in.

And speaking of people who are immersed in that world…

The Suspects:

We’ll begin, for organization’s sake, with our out-and-out (current) agents first, then tackle our other suspects, then our Nancy-related people, and finish off with — for the final time in this series, as this is the last “Nancy” game — Nancy herself.

A new, yet returning character, Bridget Shaw is one of the cover identities of Zoe Wolfe — aka Samantha Quick, who Nancy impersonated in VEN and who helped the Hardy Boys in Treasure on the Tracks.

Prior to SPY, I had money for a very long time that Samantha Quick would eventually come into the game, and I was absolutely delighted with her appearance in SPY — where else would she be so well situated? Zoe is snarky, disillusioned, cynical, and sometimes downright nihilistic, but she’s also someone who took up a job that, percentage-wise, no one wants to or is able to do, because she’s alone:

“I work in the field for two reasons: one, I don’t need any help. And two, because no one would miss me if I fell off the grid.”

I love watching the ND games subvert their own formula, and Zoe is a great example of the “helper”-type suspect who really isn’t like your traditional “helper” at all. She’s there to do a job, and if sticking with Nancy helps her to do it, then that’s what she does. But she’s not there to Right some Great Wrong for the warm fuzzies of it all, or even because it’s Just and Right. She’s there because it’s her job, and her job is to play the game.

“It’ll be brief, painful, and full of garbage…but that’s life, isn’t it? And that’s the metaphor I’m riding into the grave.”

Next is our (kind of) double operative and partial culprit, Ewan McLeod (real name Sean Kent Davis) is a clever operative of Cathedral who decided that he wasn’t valued or important anywhere near as much as he should have been, and reached out to Revenant to supply them with information. Summoning Nancy to Scotland, Ewan is easily able to gain a portion of her trust as the Watcher in the Wires and is her tie to the relative safety of Cathedral.

As a culprit, Ewan is — ultimately — pitiable. Not that he’s not an egotist with a victim complex a mile wide, but when you actually look at the situation he’s in, it’s hard not to feel bad for him, even though he did it to himself. Having contacted Revenant, he’s now attempting to hold a tiger by the tail, praying it can’t eat him — and his worst fears come true, as his loved ones are threatened (“trying to keep my friends and family alive”, remember) and he’s discarded and made a target by the terrorists that he tried to use to make himself important.

Given the rather chilling threats made by Revenant, I’m inclined to believe that when we find him tied up, he didn’t do it to himself. Nancy would have noticed if the knots were too loose to have been done by a third party, and we know Revenant told him several times that if he wasn’t useful, he’d be punished.

While Ewan makes terrible choices, he’s also a pawn being played by a larger force — like everyone else in the game — and that is at least worth pity, if not forgiveness.

Next up is our former Cathedral agent and all-around tough cookie Moira Chisholm. As one of the people responsible for the events that led to Kate’s death — though no one but Revenant is responsible for killing her, note — Moira lives with guilt, regret, and a powerful sense of loneliness that only the loss of everyone you hold dear can bring.

Moira’s guilty of nothing in the present-day calamity, and helps Nancy the very best she can in her own limited power, but is ultimately a character for whom the past looms larger than the present can match. She has her hobbies, but her house is filled with memories of days when people sat on her couch and broke her teacups, not of hours reading alone.

She’s an intensely tragic character, and an example of what happens when your need to know the “truth” can get in the way of doing right by those you love. Moira lost everything to her previous job for Cathedral (who is implied to have left her, an otherwise dangerous free agent, alive because they knew (correctly!) she would become stagnant and docile under the weight of her own guilt, ouch), and yet she risks life and limb to help Nancy —not because she thinks it’ll exculpate her, but because Moira, at her core, wants to help the world, no matter what it’s taken from her.

Our final suspect is Glasgow’s resident skiptracer and unwilling pawn Alec Fell, who, along with Moira, can be traced back to Kate Drew’s death. Originally, Alec investigated a mysterious car crash — the one that killed Kate Drew — and, when he didn’t stop after a warning, had his office ransacked and burned. In the few months before the game starts, he experiences another break-in and his sister is kidnapped, with a message informing him that if he wants to guarantee her safety, to comply with Revenant’s orders.

Unlike Ewan, when pushed into a corner, Alec does his best to raise a little hell while still trying to keep his sister safe. For everything that he does on Revenant’s orders, he also helps Nancy out, finds her suitcase, locates Moira, tells Nancy where the cards are, and does his best to push back in other, little ways.

Sure Alec is guilty of a few things — most notably the fake shooting scare in Nancy’s room — but he’s a very active character, riding the rails and searching for anyone who can help put an end to this situation. It’s not for nothing that he’s a fan favorite, both for this game for the series at large, and his excellent VA and charming dialogue only make up half of his appeal.

On our Nancy side, we’ve got a few returning characters and one (semi) new one, so let’s go through them before getting (for the last time!) to the girl detective herself.

Carson Drew, father and golf model extraordinaire, is here to ground (as in steady, not punish) Nancy as she goes through this mystery. As the other person besides Nancy who was most affected by Kate’s death, Carson is an invaluable source of Kate-related knowledge, but is concerned foremost with his daughter’s safety.

For my money, the most important thing we learn about Carson here is that, well…he married the wrong woman as much as Kate married the wrong man. It’s sort of simplistic to say that their story shows that, in some cases, love doesn’t conquer all, but it’s true all the same.

Carson was happy to jet off to Scotland on occasion to visit Moira and her husband, but being happy to take vacations is a very different thing from a life constantly shifting and changing. He’s a prosecutor, so he has a strong sense of justice, but also has a strong sense of stability — he chose a career with a set trajectory and clearly defined rules.

Kate Austin, however, was a journalist who occasionally consulted for a Spy Organization when life got a little too boring (it’s important to note that she wasn’t a straight-out spy like Moira — she was far too free-spirited for that). She had all of Nancy’s inquisitiveness but more people skills than Nancy will probably ever have, and made friends easily.

It’s easy to see how she would have been attracted to the All-American, hardworking, solidly intelligent, emotionally balanced man, just as it’s easy to see how the slightly flashy, clever, inquisitive, intuitive redhead would have attracted him.

If this is starting to feel like I’m describing two other characters here…well, longtime readers of this meta series already know what happens when I use a paragraph to describe characters without using their names.

Kate is important in the game in that we’re shown her differences from and —more enlightening — similarities to Nancy. Nancy’s actions in this game are reflections on what Kate did (and what she would have done) as much as they show how the daughter diverges from the mother. And while Nancy doesn’t have her mother’s people skills or ease of making friendships, what she does have is her mother’s – and I’m going to use this word purposely — flightiness.

At the end of the day, Carson couldn’t be with Kate when she flitted off around the world, and Ned can’t be with Nancy when she does the same.

(I also find it interesting that we deal in the games only with Carson’s side of the family, and never even have a mention of Nancy’s maternal grandparents. Yes, I know Kate could have been an only child and her parents could already be dead…but I do like the possibility that they blame Carson for Kate’s death (entirely undeservedly!) and thus cut off contact. But this meta is for, well, meta, not fanfic.)

Ned Nickerson plays an important role in SPY in that he tries to help Nancy the best he can, even to the point of breaking and entering in her house (though really, it’s just entering, since he has permission) to find a document for her.

Ned comes off brilliantly in this game, but it’s important to note that his big, impressive (yet charmingly understated) speech isn’t to Nancy, but to Carson. And it doesn’t sway Nancy, it sways Carson. Because, at the end of the day, Carson can relate to lots of the pieces that make Ned what he is, and the situation that Ned finds himself in.

He’s wonderful, as boyfriends go; he calls her, encourages her, offers oddly prescient hints…but he doesn’t go with her. It’d be easy enough to make that a point in the series that, though we don’t see it happen, Ned often accompanies Nancy on her escapades, but instead we’re told — often through contention — that the exact opposite is true.

Ned is solid, true, intelligent, emotionally balanced and kind, but above all, Ned is stable. He’s enrolled in college — in an honors frat — and plays sports, attends his classes faithfully, remembers important dates…the list goes on and on. These are all wonderful characteristics for a boyfriend, but he, like Carson with Kate, ultimately isn’t what Nancy needs out of a relationship — and she is certainly not, like Kate with Carson, what Ned needs out of a relationship.

At the end of the day, both would need to compromise — Ned would need to set off with her sometimes, and Nancy would need to stay close to home sometimes — in order to make the other happy. And, well…nothing we have in any of the games says that either one would do that in the long term. Sure, Nancy returns home after the fight in CAP for ASH…but is in Egypt the very next game — immediately followed by Colorado, Georgia, and Scotland.

And honestly, this is the basis on which I disagree with Ned/Nancy as a couple. It serves neither one and, as we see in quite a few games where they squabble, they can make each other worse.

And speaking of our resident sleuth, let’s talk about Nancy Drew before wrapping up this character section.

In SPY, Nancy is — as mentioned above — a tool, used by both sides to get what they want without caring how it personally affects her. The big thing we learn about Nancy in this — and one of my favorite characteristics about her — is that Nancy is pretty ruthless. To me, it makes sense that, to get the information she wants, Nancy does what a terrorist organization tells her to because 1) it’s not her home immediately at risk, and 2) most importantly, Nancy has done bad things in the name of a good end in pretty much every game.

Lying, stealing, breaking priceless artifacts, endangering others — none of these are really new to Nancy, and what SPY does is brings that to the forefront. Sure, you as the player have the option not to do what Revenant tells Nancy to do…but then you miss out on big parts of Kate’s characterization — and, more importantly, a big part of Nancy’s.

In an unprecedented move, I’m going to reference National Treasure again, and quote part of Ben’s speech before he steals the Declaration:

“[A toast] to high treason…here’s to men who did what was considered wrong, in order to do what they thought was right — what they knew was right.”

To me, that shows us why Nancy does what she does — in SPY, and in every other game where she lies, cheats, and steals her way to the truth. She does it because, at the end of the day, Nancy is a person who is ruthless in her pursuit of her goal. And that’s a valuable trait.

Especially when one is dealing with spies, terrorists, and shady government operatives.

The Favorite:

I love most of SPY, so I’ll stick here with the things that especially stick out to me.

As covered above, I love: what this game does for the lore of the ND world; ‘Samantha Quick’; the many motivations of our suspects, and the emotional resonance that this game has.

Beyond that, there are a lot of little things. I absolutely love that they got the relative of the guy who plays Carson to play Nancy when she was little — that’s adorable to me. I love the cookie-making minigame, the outfit swap for Bridget/Zoe, the voice work for all of our suspects and helpers, and the beautiful locations (especially the spy cabin, both exterior and interior).

My favorite moment in the game is a sad one, but I’m a mercurial kind of person, so you should have really expected that. It’s actually Moira’s log/diary/letter to Kate (it functions as all three) after Cathedral deactivates her as an agent. I love a lot about it — the sad, almost desperate feeling to the words, the pen color changing as the seasons do — but nothing is better done than Moira’s last entry:

“It’s winter. It doesn’t matter that it’s winter, does it?”

My favorite puzzle is probably the zip-lining one. Sure, it’s easy, and sure, the animation makes me a little motion-sick, but it’s just….zip lines are just cool. That’s all there is to it. It appeals to the spy-loving idiot in me, and I think big-woosh-go-fast is stupid cool.

I also have to give a hat-tip to Kate’s letter — turning a fandom meme into a heartwarming story? Nik, you mad genius — and Nancy’s letter to Kate at the end. Both are beautifully written and are the perfect centerpiece to their respective characters, and both always put a smile on my face (and, at times, a tear in my eye) when reading them.

The last thing I really do have to mention here is Logan’s quasi-reappearance. I mentioned this in my “Top 5 Surprising Moments” meta, but I love, love, love that Logan is a Cathedral operative, and that he reported on Nancy during SAW. Not only does this continue to open up Nancy’s world, but it also shows that there are consequences to Nancy’s actions. She’s in rare form as far as rudeness goes in SAW, and SPY weaponizes that against her, giving Cathedral (and Revenant) a way to weaponize her feelings about her mother’s death and her — to be frank — inability to let things lie as they are.

The Un-Favorite:

There are a few things that aren’t quite my favorite in SPY, so let’s run through those as well.

First, in the common refrain of “small visual distinctions are difficult for me personally”, I didn’t like that there wasn’t enough contrast between a plain (on the bottom half) cookie and the orange/purple jelly. The shadow on the screen makes it kind of difficult to tell them apart, especially if there’s sprinkles and/or frosting on top of it, and I found that mildly frustrating, even though I love the minigame itself.

The second thing I don’t like is the option to skip the dialogue. Yes, this is present in most of the newer games, and I don’t like it in them either, but it’s especially egregious in SPY and LIE. Both of these games really rely on hints given in the dialogue (and of course, in the written materials hidden around the game) in order to get a full, clear view of what’s going on. The option is great on repeat plays, but I really do wish that it was disabled if it was your first save file on the game.

The last annoying thing is the Jabberwocky puzzle — or rather, the percentage of the jabberwocky puzzle that the player actually has to do. The puzzle as it stands feels very confusing, and the “hints” you get are quite unintuitive.

The record tells you basically how to create the encrypted message — it’s the first letter from each green word, the second from each orange word, etc., arranged in the order they appear in the poem — but when you start the poem, Nancy has already basically completed this step, and it’s up to you to do the actual decoding just through process of elimination.

It’s a puzzle of letter deduction, like in TMB and the minigame in ASH — and these are normally my favorite puzzles! — but it’s cloaked in the disguise of an encryption puzzle, and for that, it’s incredibly irritating.

The Fix:

So how would I fix The Silent Spy?

The first thing I’d do, which you can probably guess based on the above section, is to fix how the Jabberwocky poem is presented. Even a bit of dialogue establishing what the player actually has to do versus what Nancy does for the player would be helpful in working through it without bothering making the encrypted message oneself, and would set the player up to actually know what they’re doing, versus the mass of confusion that comes with the puzzle.

The only other change I would make would to put in one more flashback — that of 10-year-old Nancy’s perspective shortly after Kate’s death, perhaps after the funeral. We spend a lot of time in flashback seeing Kate before her death, and I think it would add to just a little bit more of seeing Nancy’s relationship with her mother if we could see the Drew house with her recently gone.

(And perhaps, see or hear Hannah? Please?)

The Silent Spy is a game that I find, on the whole, to be one of the best that Nik penned, and certainly a fitting end to the series of “Nancy Games” that gives us a little more perspective on our teeth sleuth. There are as many moments of joy as of sorrow, but in the end the player is left with the feeling that Nancy’s world is a little better for knowing more about her mother, and that whatever else Kate did and was, she left behind a world (both in game and breaking the fourth wall) that was better — and had ways to become even better than that — than it was when she lived in it.

#nancy drew #nancy drew games #clue crew #the silent spy #nancy drew meta #SPY #video games #my meta #long post

[trickster-4]

Here’s a continuation of What Belos Fears.. It’s much less Crackish.. Sorry it’s what came out..

Emperor Belos had long since lost much of his humanity. The sense of taste was off to him at times. But here and now.. It was absolutely delectable. The smell of the cooked meat and the fried rice. He could definitely smell the special frijoles his mother usually made for him.. Just a small taste couldn’t hurt right?

*SMACK*

Henrietta Noceda was lightning fast at striking with her cane. She was fifty two years old and had her husband has been gone for a very long time.

Eda laughed at the sight while his ex employee Lilith smirked. His daughter Luz giggled along with her girlfriend Amity.. Willow and Gus on the other hand couldn’t contain themselves and began to laugh. Kikimora on the other hand gave them all a glare before giving her boss and annoyed stare.. His mother spoke to him with a stern no nonsense tone.. After all it didn’t matter if her son was six feet tall or ten he was still her son thus it fell to her discipline him for lack of manners..

“¡Nadie toca la comida hasta que estamos todos en la mesa!”

“Yes.. ma’am..” Belos brooded silently he turned to Kikimora who turned her away in a huff.. “I’m sorry..” He whispered..

“You were acting like the last fifty years of our lives never happened Belos..”

“I know… I’ll tell her it’s just..” He slumped before leaning to his assistant leaning towards her. “I’m trying to figure out how to stay in a friendship with Camilla.. I haven’t been with Luz for years.. I want to have a good relationship with my daughter..” Belos looked to Luz his daughter who had barged into the kingdom and shook it too it’s foundations.. “I want her to live on the isle for at least four years..”

“I see..” Kikimora’s eyes widened she was aware of how long it took to develop a magical bile sac.. And once it happened it was a permanent process. Though witches and demons experienced a number of benefits long lifespans, extreme durability, and magic. Yet there was a price to be paid so to speak..

““You wish to play the long game my liege?”

“Yes..”

A low magical environment played havoc on the senses of magical beings and they became sluggish, sickly overtime, and took more time to recover from casting intense spells until they returned to the demon realm. Contrary to his fears Witches wouldn’t lose their magic and could in fact produce more bile it just simply took time.. Luz was already changing Kikimora noted the slight imperceptible edge developing in her ears and nodded. “Very well my lord..”

Luz Noceda his baby girl wanted to learn magic. He couldn’t convince her to like him but perhaps he could quietly support her dream… And if the result of her studying for her dream meant she became a permanent resident of the demon realm and thus became closer to his sphere of influence well that’s just pleasant luck.

“Heheheheh..”

Luz moaned in annoyance and exhaustion at her father’s antics. Although this was actually par for course even before he discovered actual magic he tended to laugh maniacally whenever he was plotting stupid schemes.. Like the time her father cut the antennas of her mother’s brand new television in an attempt to improve it’s reception… That month Belos Noceda had flinch every-time Camilla walked around in chanclas.. Amity patted Luz’s back while letting her lean into her shoulder.

“Hijo, deja esas estupideces ...”

“Sorry Mama..” Belos replied with apologetic tone.. He then saw that Camilla had arrived sitting opposite of him.. He looked at her once more old feelings stirred affection, fondness, and delight. But the depth there was once for those emotions were gone.. He had moved on it was fifty years ago for him..

“So magic is real.. I’m happy for you but can you take off the creepy mask hijo?

“I.. It’s not pleasant to look at but fine..” Belos slowly removed the mask letting his face be seen. His face had become a greenish gray his eye’s sclera had long become black with the amount of bile his body produced now.. He wore a very masculine and attractive mustache..

Luz looked with amazement at the face that was often in her childhood dreams.. A gentle smile holding onto her finger.. Her eyes began to water softly as the memories began to come.. A single large hand came across the table as a finger caught the tear. She smiled softly but gently pushed the hand away not used to the affection and conflicted about who was trying to give it..

With his long black flowing hair and handsome face he was the epitome of nobility. His ears had become the same as his subjects. In the middle of his face was a slash sideways across his face.. He had long since gotten used to hiding such scars to portray an invincible man who could not be broken.. Though throughout all his enemies, Belos laughed, it was his daughter who had nearly take his eye..

“Wow I did not expect evil to look handsome..” Eda observed the tyrant king.. “So you were an electrican.. What’s that..”

“The equivalent of ward repair..” Belos angrily muttered in frustration and annoyance.. He hated his job as an electrician and would choose world conqueror over that any day..

“Ha!! That’s a Dead-end job though that’s hard to believe. I would have expected someone as smart as you to have gone higher in the human world..”

“Belos was always such a passionate boy about his dream.. He never felt an attraction to the sciences unless it pertained to his pursuit of the existence of magic..” As Henrietta spoke Belos took one of the tamales and began to unwrap it.. “He was convinced that magic was real and was determined to find it..”

“Yeesh..”

“He was also a huge D&D nerd..” Camilla noted with a look of annoyance.. Her entire experience with that one game she played was so horrible it completely made her give up on trying it anymore..

“Oh that’s not so bad..” Luz noted with a smile..

“He was a horribly difficult DM… Seriously a level twenty guard in the town you began at?”

“It’s not my fault the entire party was made of murder hobos yourself included!!”

“I was trying to have fun!!”

“Well D&D is also about strategy!!”

The two stood up and began to argue with one another.. It was a familiar occurrence one that Luz was starting to remember when a sad look grew in her eyes..

“I didn’t miss this..”

“Luz..”

*SMACK*

Camilla and Belos were both smacked in the head with a chancla so hard they were knocked back into their seats..

Luz sighed before face palming Amity was shocked at the sight of Luz’s grandmother knocking both Camilla and Belos into their seats.. Eda smiled and took another sip of her drink.. Lilith also smirked and reached for more of the wine to watch her former boss’s humiliation.. Willow and Gus were watching with interest and relaxed smiles..

Kikimora took a long gulp of her wine.. It was surreal what was happening before her eyes, but she already had her fill of it..

Henrietta slowly put the chancla onto her feet and then glared at them hard.. Luz was right there and she didn’t need to be seeing her parents at each other’s throats. There was a look of shame and fear in both parent’s eyes.

“Los niños no es así !! ¡No voy a permitir que discutas frente a tus amigos y familiares!

“Huh, your grandma seems to have good head on her shoulders plus she keeps him in check.”

“She really is amazing..”

“So Belos what’s this I’ve been hearing about you being a dictator on an island?” Henrietta eyed her son making him flinch in fear of her..

“I’ll answer that..” Luz spoke up with boldness in her voice. “For the last fifty years Emperor Belos ruled the boiling isle with an iron fist. He throws those who practice the wild ways of magic into prisons and forces a caste system…”

“Luz why?!” Belos suddenly felt like a shadow was being casted over his body.. “¡¿madre?!”

“Get in the kitchen..”

Emperor Belos sullenly stood up and followed his Elderly mother into the kitchen.. Luz and Amity flinched at the sound of Belos crying as Grandma Noceda disciplined her son… Lilith and Eda had a look of fear at the sound of the chancla.. Guz lowered his head in fear and Willow joined him not too soon after… Camilla took a sip of her wine and looking across seeing Kikimora’s glass was empty filled it up.. Incidentally she noticed the ring on her finger one that looked a lot like the one on Belos’s finger..

“How long?”

“Thirty five years..”

“I see excuse me…” Camilla smiled serenely she turned to a confused Luz and various guests.. “Luz sweetie please escort our guests to the guest room at the edge of the house.. We’ll be back in a moment..”

Later…

Camilla stood next to Belos helping him wash the dishes.. They were silently fulfilling their punishment for fighting in front of Luz and the guests after being reunited.. Grandma Noceda had forced Belos to release all of the residents from the Boiling isles from the Coven systems..

After several hours of conversation Belos was able to negotiate irrevocable terms of surrender with Lilith and Eda as leaders of the rebellion.. Continuing the war would have been devastating to the population.. So a compromise was reached Covens were voluntary and not mandatory with the option to transition to others there would also be no more more Coven Branding… Palismans would have more rights and legal defenses..

Belos would remain Emperor of the Boiling isles for two reasons the first was his supporters were powerful wealthy witches who could fuel the war for a long time…. The second was due to the religious factions being rather ardent in their devotion.. Still he would no longer hold total power..

A council would be formed between the leaders of the rebellions and Belos’s supporters.. Two thirds of that council would be from the rebellion.. Together they would decide new policies and laws and keep each other in check.. It would be a different government they would be making but one that would keep Belos’s supporters and the rebellion from killing each other..

“… I’m not moving back..” Belos spoke softly as he scrubbed the dish..

“I know Belos.. It’s been fifty years for you.. Life is not a novella I didn’t expect you to be waiting on a sea shore for that long..”

“.. I want Luz to move to the Boiling Isles..”

“..I wanted to her to spend time with you.. She deserves to know her father.. That said I don’t trust you to leave her in your care she may stay with Edalyn.. And you may visit her in a neutral location…”

“I understan-“

“Let me finish!” Camilla spoke with with vehemence. “I will also be living with Edalyn for the foreseeable future..”

Belos shivered at the thought of Camilla living so close by. But his daughter Luz would be living closely as well. He sighed and nodded that he understood.

Meanwhile in one of Grandma Noceda’s guest rooms…

“I can’t believe I forgot to tell mom that we’re dating…” Luz slammed her head in frustration against the wall.. She sighed in annoyance before lying down in the bed with Amity.. “This is gonna be soooo confusing…”

“It was a pretty tense day Luz..” Amity agreed with her girlfriend. “We’ll tell her when she moves in with Eda..”

“Ugh..”

“Hey Luz you know we’re in this together right?” Amity asked with a small smile..

“Yeah..” Luz blushed goofily as her girlfriend hugged her..

#owl house #the owl house #lumity #eda the owl witch #emperor belos #toh belos #fanfic #not as a crackish as the last one #toh

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2009

20 to 21 years old. And so the 2000s end, not with a whimper, but with an explosion of upbeat, great pop songs.

Only one third of these lists left to make!

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

First to second and final year of my Master degree in Contemporary History. Also got two summer jobs that year. I was basically only researching and writing my master thesis at this point and trying to survive on a 50€ per month budget to pay for transport, clothes, driving lessons, and food apart from one meal a day. Needless to say, some corners had to be cut and my health wasn’t the best. I was also trying to register to pass some concours d’Etat to be a government worker considering there was 0% chance I’d be able to find a job otherwise with my qualifications and my mother had been trying to find an excuse to throw me out for more than four years at this point. Basically I was broke, stressed out and in panic mode.

Thank god, the music was mostly energetic and upbeat on the radio. I can’t imagine what my mood would have been like if the charts had been as horribly depressed as in 2018 or 2019.

This was also the year when my favorite music reviewer ever, Todd In The Shadows, started to make his first videos, so you might think his lists are going to influence mine, but as it turns out we have very, very different tastes for the most part (I mean come on, the guy hates Depeche Mode), so... not so much. But he helped me discover a lot of songs I would have ignored otherwise, so yeah, godspeed, Todd.

It should be mentioned that the two songs that I wanted to put at the top of this list before looking at the actual year-end lists turned out to be non-elligible and that is extremely frustrating. Obviously, as I mentioned in the previous post, there’s Life In Technicolor II by Coldplay, which has an incredibly fitting name since it’s one of their most colorful songs ever. But I’m not even sure I would have put it at #1 since this was the year of Mika’s second album, and oh my god, We Are Golden was FANTASTIC. It’s my absolute favorite song from the guy, the music video is incredibly fun, and I listened to that shit on a loop as soon as it dropped.

I usually don’t put such large links for non-elligible songs but the fact this isn’t elligible is nothing short of criminal. Check it out if you’ve never heard it.

As for albums from bands I liked... eh. Lacuna Coil dropped Shallow Life, which was not as good as KarmaCode, Pet Shop Boys dropped Yes which wasn’t nearly as good as Fundamental, Depeche Mode dropped Sounds of the Universe which was DEFINITELY not as good as Playing the Angel (I liked Wrong, though. But it’s not elligible), Eminem released Relapse which was joyless and pretty bad and he was kinda dead to me at that point (even if it wasn’t as terrible as Encore AND he had that song with Drake that was very good), Placebo released Battle for the Sun which was pretty great but still not as good as their previous two albums, Paradise Lost had Faith Divides Us Faith Unites Us and basically same thing there, and Indochine had La République des Météors which is imho their worst record in the past twenty years, by far.

Long story short, every single one of the bands and artists I loved who released an album that year let me down (except Placebo, maybe).

And then VNV Nation released Of Faith, Power And Glory, I listened to it, and suddenly I had a new favorite band, and everything was good and beautiful in the world again. Album of the year for me, hands down.

With that out of the way, a few honorable mentio-HOLY SHIT HOW MANY OF THESE ARE THERE, WTF

Replay (Iyaz) - A perfectly good and innocent little earworm.

Run This Town (Rihanna) - I don’t like the original very much (Kanye’s verse is atrocious) but I've had a mashup of it with Bach’s Tocatta & Fugue in D minor (yes you read that right) on my mp3 player for years now, so this has to count. The mashup is called Run This Town In D Minor. It’s one of my favorite mashups ever. I even made fanart of it once! Look it up if you can, the original video has apparently disappeared.

Circus (Britney Spears) - You know it’s a good year for pop when even Britney Spears makes music I like.

Magnificent (U2) - Wait, even U2 was making decent music? I had zero use for them since at that point Linkin Park had more or less taken over their ecological-musical niche of “mainstream epic-sounding pop-rock music with tortured vocals and Emotions(tm)” but that one was still kinda nice.

Même Pas Fatigué (Magic System & Khaled) - I’ve said that before and I’ll say it again but they always bring a smile to my face and I don’t get why it’s ‘cool’ to hate their songs in my country. Yeah, they often sound the same, but I’d listen to ten similar-sounding Magic System songs in a heartbeat whereas you’d have to pay me to listen to ten similar-sounding Nickelback songs.

Day n Nite (Kid Cudi) - This had a tendency to get stuck in my head, but not at all in an unpleasant way.

21 Guns (Green Day) - Much better than I remembered.

When Love Takes Over (David Guetta), Stereo Love (Edward Maya ft Vika Jigulina), Evacuate the Dancefloor (Cascada) - That year was full of catchy, stupid, energetic songs, wasn’t it?

Greenlight (John Legend) - If I had better taste, this would be on the list. Alas, you’re reading the top 10s of someone who once put Blue (Eiffel 65) in a #1 spot, so yeah.

In Your Hands (Charlie Winston) - Same thing, basically.

Like a Hobo (Charlie Winston) - “Like a hobo from a broken home, nothing’s gonna stop me”, said this very useful song. Now is a good time to remind you that my nickname at the public university was The Hobo. So yeah. I liked this song a lot and I still do.

Forever (Drake) - Drake and Eminem are both amazing on this track. Unfortunately there’s also Kanye West and Lil Wayne on it. But. Like. “I'm Hannibal Lecter so just in case you're thinking of saving face / You ain't gonna have no face to save”. Dude. Duuuuuude.

You Found Me & Never Say Never (The Fray) - Did I mention I really, really liked this band. I think I did. Several times.

Paparazzi & Love Game (Lady Gaga) - Would both have had a chance to land on the list without the incredible amount of great, catchy tunes that year had to offer.

C’est Dans l’Air (Mylène Farmer) - Mylène Farmer had THREE singles on the French year-end list and this is the ONLY one I like. Good electro, mediocre verses but a great chorus (and a weird and kind of hilarious music video). Basically a song saying we’re all going to die and she can only sing about it. It’s strange, it’s a bit dark in a fun way, but it’s sadly not enough to land on the list, and it was the last cut from it.

Phew. Making this list was like a Hunger Games of catchy, upbeat, stupid songs to find which one was the best. It’s not #1 but I’m still shocked I had to put it so high.

But first, the runner ups.

10 - Fire Burning (Sean Kingston)

US: #33 / FR: Not on the list

Yes, ALL these honorable mentions were kicked out to give the last spot on the list to this guy and a chorus that goes “somebody call 911, shawty fire burning on the dance floor, WOAH!”.

The fact that I don’t feel bad about it means this was the right pick for that spot.

9 - Rain (Mika)

US: Not on the list / FR: #22

Anybody else thinks Mika looks like the Fourth Doctor on this screenshot from the music video or is it just me?

Anyway. So yeah, as I said, We Are Golden would have topped this list if it had been elligible. Sadly, it isn’t, but Rain is. I don’t like it nearly as much as We Are Golden, but what can I say. It’s still Mika. I’ll take whatever I can.

8 - I Gotta Feeling (Black Eyed Peas)

US: #4 / FR: #17

I lost about 80% of the respect I had for this song the day I realised its untouchable, marvellous beat was very probably stolen from Take a Dive. I still love it though. Had a few actual parties in 2010 and early 2011 and this was garanteed to make everyone dance, even people like me who don’t know how to dance.

And then the dancefloor died instantly anytime anyone tried to put Boom Boom Pow on because it’s impossible to dance on that one. But that’s another story.

7 - Poker Face (Lady Gaga)

US: #2 / FR: #5

Needless to say this was absolutely everywhere and overplayed to death and beyond, and the fact I still wanted to listen to it and put it on my playlists really tells you how good I thought it was (and still is).

6 - Ça m’énerve (Helmut Fritz)

US: Not on the list / FR: #1 (...yes.)

This is a novelty song with a singer pretending to have a thick German accent, complaining about various things in France, like the fact he doesn’t fit the dress code for a club, that he wanted to buy a sweater with “Rock” written on it but it’s out of stock, that some girls can fit in a size 34 blue jean and not him, that there’s a queue of people trying to buy macarons at the Ladurée shop, and so on. And every time he concludes “that gets on my nerves”, said in a very flat tone. Here’s a translation.

It was overplayed as f█ck here. Think Despacito levels of overplay. But the beat is great and it’s still hysterical after having heard it about a hundred times that year.

Fun fact, while I was making this list and relistening to this song, my s.o said “haha that sounds great! What is it?” and I stared at him in disbelief. Somehow, he was completely serious. That’s like someone escaping the Great Macarena Onslaught Of 1996. What happened. How.

5 - Waking Up In Vegas (Katy Perry)

US: #36 / FR: Not on the list

Again, I must remind you that my s.o is a Katy Perry fan and that I’ve heard this song even more than the average radio listener did at the time, and it’s STILL #5 on this list. What can I say. It’s a ton of fun and one of my favorite songs from her.

4 - New Divide (Linkin Park)

US: #61 / FR: Not on the list

Is this their best song? Not by a f█cking mile. I thought it would be much lower when I started to make this specific list, but what can I say. Linkin Park is like that one old friend that you kept no contact with for years, and once you meet them again, it’s like they never left. Who cares if that wasn’t nearly as good as Numb or In the End? Not me, that’s for sure.

Also, “In every loss in every lie / In every truth that you deny / And each regret and each goodbye / Was a mistake too great to hide / And your voice was all I heard / That I get what I deserve”. Holy shit, dude.

3 - Good Girls Go Bad (Cobra Starship)

US: #43 / FR: Not on the list

BEHOLD. THE ONLY SURVIVOR OF THE 2009 ‘CATCHY UPBEAT STUPID SONGS’ HUNGER GAMES. THE CATCHIEST, UPBEAT-IEST, STUPIDEST OF THEM ALL. HERE IT IS AT LAST.

The thing I love about this is that it’s a song made by nerds for nerds and that the singer looks and sounds completely non-threatening. As Todd said in his own list back in the day, “that guy couldn’t make good MILK go bad” and that’s what’s so endearing about the song, I think.

Also yes, this is, in fact, placed above Linkin Park.

2 - Use Somebody (Kings of Leon)

US: #14 / FR: Not on the list

This was my #1 at first. I LOVED it. I even bought the album, even though, as you know, my funds were very low that year. That music is soaring. It’s majestic. Well, the lyrics aren’t that majestic and soaring, it’s about loving someone and trying to catch their attention, but the rest? Damn this is intense. It was also elligible for the 2010 list, by the way, where I ALSO wondered if it should be #1, but in both cases, it wasn’t meant to be.

And so this list of 2009 hit songs comes to a close.

It began with the forging of the Great 2009 Upbeat Songs. Three were given to the Punk Rock hits. Seven to the Dance Tracks. And nine, nine songs were gifted to the Radio Friendly Pop Songs, which above all else desired power.

But they were all deceived, for another song was made. Deep in the forgotten land of Synth Pop, in his Parents’ Basement, the Dark Lord Adam Young forged a master song, and into this song he poured his joy, his talent and his will to dominate all charts.

One song to rule them all.

1 - Fireflies (Owl City)

US: #60 / FR: Not on the list (76 the next year)

I know. It’s a meme nowadays. But still. Have you any idea how satisfying a song with an initial beat that looks like small pulsing yellow and blue lights in the dark ACTUALLY titled “Fireflies” is? How gentle it all sounds and looks, even when the music soars? The number of drawings and paintings I made just based on the colors of THAT song? It’s like a synth pop version of one of my favorite Mike Oldfield tunes ever, Weightless.

And then, on top of all the rest, how relatable was that guy’s body language and general attitude?? Before even knowing he was on the spectrum I was like “oh BIG mood.”

Also following his twitter was one of the best decisions I ever made.

So yeah. I would have loved to put Coldplay or Mika in that #1 spot, but I’m not too mad about it thanks to this wonderful little song and its author. Such a shame Deer in the Headlights and Alligator Sky aren’t elligible for the 2011 list.

Next up: Johannes finally moves out and finds a great job and starts living a little, plus here’s a #1 that will be difficult to justify

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #long post #eye contact tw

[veryfashionabledesigns]

Analyzing the Snicket Aesthetic, Part 5/5: Society and Law

-Values and social conventions are all over the place. A good rule of thumb is that sympathetic characters tend to be more progressive, and bad/stupid ones more old-fashioned. This is most clear in the way other characters react to Violet’s interest in a traditionally masculine field; namely, the only characters who overtly disapprove are Mr. Poe and Count Olaf. Olaf’s baddie squad often remark on her appearance, while her friends/family are more likely to compliment her intellect.

Figure 1: Crow fascism is a thing in this universe, apparently.

GENDER

         -Despite the old-school style, the Snicketverse doesn’t seem to be much more patriarchal than most of the modern world. Female characters take on a variety of traditionally masculine careers such as medicine and politics, and can presumably make a fair amount of money independently. Esme is almost certainly the breadwinner of the Squalor household.

         -Despite being pregnant while presumably unmarried (possibly, see my note on marriage and last names below), Kit does not seem to face any stigma, nor is her ability to support a child by herself questioned. In real life, single motherhood has been (and still is to some extent) stigmatized until quite recently. As late as the mid-20th century, it was not uncommon for single mothers to institutionalized and/or pressured into giving up their children for adoption.

-One or two characters disapprove of Violet’s inventing, and in the show she apparently takes enough offense at the term “tomboy” to risk breaking character while in disguise. It may have been used towards her in a derogatory sense at some point.

-Women may not necessarily take on the last names of their husbands at marriage. Esme does not change her last name after splitting with Jerome. Quite a few fans also theorize that Bertrand changed his last name to Baudelaire to match with Beatrice’s.  

-The token nonbinary character, the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender, is given a notably more sympathetic portrayal in the series than in the books. (The books even use the pronoun “it” on a regular basis—yikes.)

-Personally, I’m 100% on board with the interpretation of Isadora as transgender, since the books suggest that the Quagmires are genetically identical. Sadly, this can’t really be considered canon to the Netflix series, which portrays her as looking very different from her brothers. It can still be canon in our hearts, though.

 GAY STUFF

         -The stance of LGBT etc. issues in this universe is sort of up in the air, and seems to roughly reflect those contemporary to the writing of each adaption. Sir and Charles are ambiguously gay in the books, and openly so in the show. Lemony laments that “it will be some time before two women are allowed to marry” in the Beatrice Letters, but mentions “more progressive court rulings” in the show.

         -In the show, Larry Your-Waiter mentions his mothers, presumably Mrs. Your and Mrs. Waiter. The Penultimate Peril, Part One reveals the pairings of Jerome/Charles and Babs/Mrs. Bass.

         -In the one of the Grim Grotto episodes, however, Esme opines that a family consists of “one man, one woman, and their children,” although this is mostly to flex on Fernald.

 RACE

         -Race is never overtly mentioned in the text itself. The illustrations and the movie are conspicuously white, although the cast of the show is fairly diverse. For the most part, the Snicketverse seems largely “color-blind,” for better or worse.  

 RELIGION

-Religious practices are almost never overtly shown, but Judaism, at least from a cultural standpoint, is quite prominent, especially in the Netflix series. Both the Baudelaire and Snicket families are confirmed as Jewish by the author. Other religions certainly do exist, however. Lemony mentions hiding out in a cathedral, and the Hotel Denouement boasts “a church, a cathedral, a chapel, a synagogue, a mosque, a temple, a shrine” and “a shuffleboard court.”

LEGAL SYSTEM

         -Aristocracies seem to pop up in odd places. The city has at least one Count, Winnipeg has a Duchess, and Arizona apparently has a King. That being said, neither Count Olaf nor the Duchess seem to reap any political power from their titles, so we can’t necessarily assume that His Arizonian Highness actually serves as a functional monarch. On the whole, the Snicketverse’s aristocracy is likely a relic from the past, now lingering only in social custom.

         -In fact, we can really only speculate on who, if anyone, is in charge of the region where the series takes place. No government above the city level is ever alluded to, and each town seems to have its own legal system. Paltryville has its own constitution, and the Village of Fowl Devotees has a seniority-based oligarchy.

         -Likewise, each town can make and enforce its own laws—and even carry out extrajudicial executions—with no apparent restriction or oversight. This is especially noticeable in The Vile Village.

         -However, if each town in the Snicketverse functioned like a sovereign nation, things would most likely play out a bit differently. Characters travel frequently without encountering any apparent borders or having to exchange currency. Nor were the Baudelaires able to seek asylum in neighboring towns after The Vile Village. It is likely that each town functions more or less independently, while formally being unified by the rather permissive and/or ineffectual government of the City.

         -The only governing body established to exist in the City is the High Court. Presumably, however, there are other city-level officials; someone must be making and probably enforcing those laws. (?) Government and law enforcement tend to be collectively and vaguely referred to as “the authorities.”  

Figure 2: Despite thier aura of menace, these two were apparently elected to powerful government positions. Assuming the City actually has a democracy.

         -That being said, the High Court is, in many ways, absurdly powerful. Judges can apparently determine when, where, and how trials are carried out, and can even order the entire courtroom to wear blindfolds.

         -The trial in The Penultimate Peril does not appear to have a jury or any lawyers. Due to some narration in The Bad Beginning we know that lawyers exist in the Snicketverse, and apparently there is enough demand for their services for them to earn considerable income.

         -Police are mentioned once or twice in ASOUE, but they seem to be utterly ineffectual. All of the named officers in either series are stationed in small towns. As early as The Reptile Room, the Baudelaires demand that Mr. Poe attempt to catch Count Olaf personally rather than relying on police. Later on, when the Baudelaires are on the run, they hardly ever seem to encounter actual police officers. Before the trial in TPP, murder suspects are locked in the storage closets of a hotel rather than an actual jail. Some degree of vigilantism seems to be expected of citizens.

         -In fact, vigilantism seems to be one of V.F.D.’s main directives. In ATWQ, Lemony describes himself as a detective. Dewey’s library reportedly consists of evidence that could be used to prosecute various criminals. The Netflix series features several volunteers actively trying to capture Count Olaf. The need for secrecy could stem from interpretations of the law that differ from those of the official government.

         -City laws are interpreted and enforced in a highly literal and pedantic manner. For instance, a signature coerced via threats is considered legally binding, but one signed with the non-dominant hand is not. Fleeing the scene of a crime is illegal, even if said crime scene is on fire.

         -The age of legal adulthood is 18. It is not clear if individuals must be of age to inherit property or live independently throughout the city, or if this is a stipulation only of the Baudelaire family will.

         -Caligari Carnival is able to openly advertise their intentions to publicly feed live employees to lions without so much as a lawsuit, let alone criminal charges. Human rights, apparently, are not a big deal here. On the other hand, Justice Strauss clearly states that dangling caged babies from tower windows is illegal. Remote outposts such as the carnival may operate outside the jurisdictions of any towns. Come to think of it, that would explain why someone decided to build a carnival in the middle of nowhere.

#the legal system is where things get really weird #analyzing the snicket aesthetic #vfd being a vigilante organization actually explains quite a bit tbh #asoue aesthetic #world building

[thedcdunce]

Ladytron

“Just because I'm slightly over the flesh ratio shouldn't mean a damn thing! I've got mechanical rights!” - Ladytron

Real Name: Maxine Manchester

Gender: Female

Height: 5′ 10″

Weight: 1000 lbs (454 kg)

Eyes: Black

Hair: Black

Powers:

Cybernetic Enhancement

Abilities:

Mechanical Aptitude

Weaknesses:

Stupidity

Psychopathy

Coolant Rupturing

Equipment:

Exo-Mantel

Various Hidden Artillary

Universe: 

Wildstorm Universe

Prime Earth

Origin: Born a Kherubim Lord from the planet Khera

Citizenship: British

Base of Operations: Halo Building, New York City

Marital Status: Single

First Appearance: WildC.A.T.s #21 (July, 1995)

Powers

Cybernetic Enhancement: Maxine Manchester is a cyborg, having suffered critical to fatalistic injuries during a police ambush. As such her physiology is mostly robotic and she is built of what Majestros calls 75 million dollars worth in parts.

Flight: Maxine can fly through the use of rocket packs which are housed in her back.

Gun Enhancements: Maxine carry's weapons stored inside her body's housing which can remain entirely hidden until she needs to kill.

Gattling Cannon: Likewise she also possesses wrist mounted blasters on her forearm.

Finger Laser: Maxine can emit a low yield heat beam from the tip of her digits, useful for igniting oil fires.

Automatic Transmission: Maxines bionic frame can channel and cycle varying levels of dynamic energy from most any power source available.

Resistors: Internal function which can ramp up the amp amount pertaining to whatever ergokinetic force she's channeling. Potentially she can kill a Kherubim Warlord with such tactics.

Sound Manipulation: Maxine has a powerful sonic cannon housed in her mouth.

Superhuman Durability: Maxine has withstood powerful blows from aliens and superhumans alike.

Superhuman Strength: Maxine has been seen lifting and throwing cars with relative ease.

Superhuman Speed: Ladytron can run, jump and move faster than most automobiles while on foot.

Superhuman Stamina: Manchester's power source is a condensed fusion reactor running on inexhaustible nuclear power. For all intents and purposes, Ladytron's body never tires nor wears down no matter how much she exerts herself.

Superhuman Reflexes: Despite her brash, impulsive nature. Ladytron is as quick with reactions as she is fleet of foot.

Superhuman Agility: Manchester is able to move more so seamlessly without physical impediment despite her heavy metal.

Enhanced Senses: As a Cyborg, Ms. Manchester's auditory functions are peaked well beyond the human norm.

Enhanced Hearing

Enhanced Vision

Abilities

Mechanical Aptitude: Being a cyborg, Ladytron has a knack for interfacing with other forms of machinery. She can physically link herself up with any on board computerized system in order to commandeer it's functioning for personal use.

Weaknesses

Stupidity: Both a strength and a fault, Maxine Manchester isn't very bright not is she all that levelheaded an individual. Often charging recklessly into distressing situations without pause for thought.

Psychopathy: Being raised by an abusive father and after several motions of negligence between foster homes and penal facilities. Ladytron's psychological and sociological state of mind stands hideously imbalanced.

Coolant Rupturing: Ladytron is powered by a small nuclear reactor which runs the risk of an atomic meltdown should her liquid nitrogen coolant system fail.

Equipment

Exo-Mantel: During her time in a comatose bionic state, Noir modified her body with some additional bionic augmentations that greatly magnified her physical performance. Outfitted with Pincers and razor sharp feet additions giving her a semblance similar to the arachnid family, she could crush and stab her enemies with them as well as flail them about. After the world's end event she had it modified her old mecha body with some Kherubim technology to resemble more of a scorpion semblance. Enabling a semi-even battle between herself and Daemonite Royals Defile and Lady Decadence.

Various Hidden Artillary: Maxine withholds a great variety of hidden firearms on her person, some ranging from handheld pistols to heavy duty munitions wears.

History

Maxine Manchester was abused by her father as a young teenager. She fled from home and turned to a life of crime, robbing stores and killing anybody who got in her way. Soon, the government caught up with her and she was hit several times during a gunfight with the FBI. Her wounded body was handed over to Doctor Khaz, a mad scientist, who enhanced her body, replacing most of it with robotic parts. She escaped and continued her crime spree as a cyborg. Khaz recaptured her and told her about Stanley, a robot he had created before her. Khaz saw himself as father to Stanley and Maxine and sent her out to bring back Stanley. Maxine and Stanley shared the same psychopathic mentality and soon married between crime sprees. Maxine and Stanley decided to kill Khaz, but Khaz had an override in Stanley's brain. The brainless Stanley turned on Maxine and she killed him. She then killed Khaz and returned to her life of crime.

At this time, Savant and Mister Majestic were trying to rebuild the WildC.A.T.s after the previous team were nearly all presumed killed. They convinced Max Cash, alias Condition Red, to join and acquired the Tactical Augmented Organism for their team. Savant wanted another woman for the team and decided upon Maxine. Majestic didn't want to be associated with a criminal like Maxine, but T.A.O. managed to change his mind through his hypnotic abilities.

The new WildC.A.T.s captured Maxine while she attempt to rob both sides of a drug transition and T.A.O. built a virtual reality-program to reeducate Maxine. The program worked and Maxine joined the WildC.A.T.s, but still remained violent and anti-social. She became romantically interested in Max Cash, but he was turned off by her robotic body and her abrasive personality.

When Max got wounded in a bombing, he used the opportunity to sneak out of the hospital to avoid her. Maxine was furious and took out her anger on the man responsible for wounding Max. The man told her and Spartan that T.A.O. had ordered him to bomb the building.

The WildC.A.T.s confronted T.A.O. who turned out to be an evil mastermind after all. T.A.O. inflicted heavy casualties on the team, including Maxine. He managed to remove her cooling systems so that her internal nuclear reactor overheated. Majestic removed her nuclear reactor, but Maxine was heavily damaged. She was taken to the Church of Gort, a cult for cyborgs, robots and Artificial Intelligence, for repairs.

During her stay with the Church of Gort, Maxine became a convert and started to follow the teachings of the Church of Gort. Mister Majestic who had become somewhat of a father figure to Maxine was pleased to see her embrace the tenet "all life is sacred", though she only seemed to recognize mechanical life as sacred. Still, according to him, it was a step in the right direction. But after a schism within the Church, Maxine was targeted by other members for having too many organic parts.

Halo

Maxine fled the Church of Gort and met up with Max's brother Cole Cash. Cole was annoyed by Maxine and left her with the Halo Corporation. There, she overheard that former WildC.A.T.s-member Voodoo had been injured by serial killer Samuel Smith and decided to take vengeance upon him.

Her plan was simple-minded: she visited all hotels and motels in the area to fight anybody listed under the name "Smith". After attacking a few innocents, Maxine met with Samuel Smith, whose superhuman powers turned out to be more than she could handle. The damage was so great that she was deactivated.

Later, her body was reprogrammed and adapted into a more scorpion-like form by Wildcat-traitor Noir to attack Spartan, now known as Jack Marlowe, but Marlowe easily defeated the body. Her body was then used by Grifter, whose legs were broken, as a remote-controlled body. Her personality was encrypted and filed away in the Halo Corporation's mainframe. When Grifter's legs healed, he no longer needed her robotic body.

World's End

After the Reaper clones of the High ruined the Earth and all its resources, Ladytron along with the rest of the reformed Wildcats protected Los Angeles from the Halo Building which was the only location that still had power due to their unending batteries. Mr. Majestic repeatedly attacks the building for supplies to take back to his new home in Hawaii. He asks some of the team to come but doesn't ask Ladytron due to her anti-social behavior. She takes part in the team's missions to find the oasis that was thought to have been made by the original Engineer but actually created by Tumbleweed. Later she and the Wildcats encountered the Daemonites' presence in L.A. and battled them until a shaky treaty was established between one another.

Ladytron was even able to rally a group or robots and cyborgs that were members of the Church of Gort to fight against Daemonites that broke the treaty and she made the city's surviving humans understand that the robots and humans need to work together if they expect to live through this crisis. Nemesis and Backlash later left the team expecting Majestic's offer to relocate in Hawaii but they later send a distress call to the team asking them for help. However, Voodoo, now the group's leader, told Ladytron to stay behind because of her relationship with Majestic; but after the team leave the Daemonites were ready to attack their now vulnerable base. Ladytron was able to protect the refugees and proved herself in stalling the Daemonties, Lord Defile and Lady Decadence. Though she was soon subdued by the two Daemonites high lords, but the Wildcats arrived back on time, and Maxine was saved by the robots from the Church of Gort.

After the Halo Building was destroyed, Maxine and the Wildcats joined up with Team-7 in stopping Tao from becoming a mad god who threatened creation. Just as Tao was forcefully given the Creation Equation by Max Faraday, Ladytron had listened the words that were spoken by Faraday to Tao, and transmitted it into the ears of all the heroes, given everyone and herself possessing the power equivalent to Tao. However, Tao was proven stronger and had each of the heroes facing their own fears, in which Ladytron faced her abusive father which briefly sends her into a terrified and catatonic state. After Tao's defeat, Maxine and the other heroes were then gifted with new, augmented costumes reminiscing to their 1990's attire, in which Ladytron was not totally satisfied with her new look.

Maxine and the Wildcats later heeded to the Authority's call in UnLondon and offered the chance to leave Earth on the Carrier. After the Carrier departed, Maxine participated in the war against the Knights of Khera. Following the Knights' defeat, Maxine was tasked by Spartan in helping and joining with Jackson King in finding Earth's new Doctor as she is potential from being unaffected from mind control since King's previous manipulations from Tao, in which she accepted much to King's great reluctance.

#ladytron #maxine manchester #wildcats #WildC.A.T.s #dc #DC comics #thedcdunce

[qm-vox]

So You Want To Run An Autumn Court

(Check out So You Want To Run A Winter Court if you missed it.)

Winter may be the most misunderstood Court, but Autumn may have the strongest claim to being the odd man out. In a society built on recovering from horror and trauma, the Autumn Court (the Ashen Court, the Leaden Mirror, the Court of Fear) seems purpose-built to churn out monsters, murderers, and slasher villains. If that was all this is, if Autumn was only part of the system because pacts and Pledges made it so, the Court would have been killed to the last man hundreds of years ago. So why do the other three Seasons tolerate Autumn? What purpose does it serve in the Freehold, and what does its defining passion - Fear - offer to the other Courts?

The following article offers advice on designing and running your own Autumn Court and Autumn Courtiers, either as a player or storyteller. It draws primarily from Changeling: the Lost, Lords of Summer, Rites of Spring, Dancers in the Dusk, and Swords at Dawn; further books, if referenced, will be cited.

God Damn It White Wolf, Not Again

Make no mistake: this article is meant to be rooted in the canon of Changeling: the Lost and help present and expand on the Autumn presented in that canon. Unfortunately, more than any of the other three Seasonal Courts, Autumn is both inconsistently characterized, and constantly mischaracterized. For every two great ideas presented about it there’s some shit that’s definitely a flashback to when oWoD was still being designed and the entire staff of White Wolf was doing hard acid. Where necessary, I will be bringing up those parts, explaining why I have chosen to refute them, and offering alternatives rooted in the canon and/or how actual human people behave. Consider yourselves advised.

Witch-Queens - An Overview

The third of the Seasonal Courts and the first of the Declining Seasons, Autumn is associated with Fear in all of its forms: fright, terror, panic, dread, anticipation, doubt, horror, and suspense, among others. Autumn cultivates fear in themselves and others; to have an Autumn Mantle is not just to be an object of fear (though yes, it very much is that), but to know your own fears, to understand them, even to nurture them. Just like the other Seasonal Courts, Autumn rules its Freeholds for one-fourth of the year, generally from the equinox to the solstice, though local custom may vary.

Magic is Autumn’s claim to fame and specialty as a Court, but their MO goes beyond it; in part this is because Autumn is a big believer in efficiency, cunning, secrecy, and prudence, but this is also in part because Autumn is keenly aware of how much they just do not know. “Magic” is an incredibly diverse field, especially when one considers that Autumn takes it upon itself to investigate rumors or knowledge of non-Wyrd magic. Much like medicine, occult knowledge is a field in which you could be a lifelong expert, outstanding in your field, whose knowledge is consulted by Lost the world over, and still both not know shit and be aware that you don’t know shit. Thus one of the first questions Autumn tends to ask when solving problems is, “is there a non-magical solution to this problem?” Often the magical solution ends up being safer and more efficient, but the question is still worth asking, if only to arrive at that answer with confidence.

Talk Shit, Get Hit - Politics in Autumn

Brace yourself, this section is long as fuck.

While Autumn has traces of cooperation between Freeholds (notably, Autumn publishes magazines shared between Autumn Courts, and sometimes funds lectures by members of other Autumn Courts courageous enough to travel to strange lands), it is ultimately a local creature, with much more in common with how Spring governs itself than Summer or Winter. Where Winter’s understanding of internal rank and politics is informed by the knowledge that Pledges get broken and thus are insufficient to enforce trust, Autumn’s various forms of governance are informed by a certain cynical acceptance that violence and authority are related.

There is an unspoken understanding in Autumn that crossing certain lines will get violence enacted upon you. The vast majority of Freeholds - even failing Freeholds - do prohibit members just killing one another without at least prior approval from the current Crown, but as a genie in a Disney sequel once said: you’d be surprised what you can live through. Despite this, the act of violence is much more rare in Autumn politics than the threat of it. Occasionally hot-headed Autumn youngbloods figure their elders can’t be as scary as all that and end up learning a cruel lesson, or a bid to remove a rival or a hated enemy goes badly (or, depending on the Courtier, very well), but more often Autumn’s political maneuvers are undergone with a certain understanding that everyone involved is a killer, will be a killer again in the future, and is quite capable of making even your victory over them cost a pound of flesh.

How Autumn selects the bearer of its Crown varies from Freehold to Freehold, and how that bearer organizes their Court will likewise vary, but some trends and consistent titles do appear in addition to the local ones. You can broadly classify the Autumn Crown as follows:

Rule by Fear - It’s an obvious leap, really. Autumn is the Court of Fear, so from a certain perspective the scariest person there is Winning At Autumn. The Court’s casual attitude about violence definitely helps foster this style of rule, as does the fact that life under a master of Fear is likely to keep the Court flush with fearful Glamour that can be invested in further power. Now at this point you may be asking, quite reasonably, what the Court does about the usual attendant issues of attempting to rule through violence and fear, and the answer is: absolutely fucking nothing. An Autumn monarch that seeks to rule by fear needs to balance their ruling style with a certain amount of consent from the people they are ruling, because everyone they’re reigning over is playing the same game they are. Callous brutes who try to run roughshod over a Court of killers and witches find themselves nailed to a door and left to die alone.

Witch-Queens  - The other obvious candidate for the Autumn Crown is a talented sorcerer of some kind. This approach tends to be somewhat more nuanced than rule by fear; a powerful witch granted the Autumn Crown has also likely been selected for a reputation for wisdom, cunning, and leadership acumen, even if another person might be acknowledged as a more powerful witch. It’s easy to think of such Courts as more stable, considering the track record of autocrats that rule through terror, but that’s not necessarily the case. As much as Plato and people who still think it’s okay to wear fedoras in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Eighteen would like to think otherwise, ‘intellectual’ and ‘good ruler’ are not synonyms; such figures can be and often are vulnerable to manipulation by more savvy Courtiers, and sometimes to straight-up being murdered by those who would prefer to rule through fear. A wise or at least self-aware Autumn Court takes steps to protect a good witch-queen from those events, and to quietly replace a bad one, but unfortunately ‘self-aware’ and ‘powerful’ are also not synonyms when it comes to Autumn.

An Actual Politician

(Zoe “Zippo” Morris, the Queen of Bonfires. Credit to @lidijadraws)

Finding someone who runs their local Autumn Court because they’re a legitimately competent politician with a functional understanding of human and/or post-human society is like finding an albino raven: it’s rare in the first place, they probably die before they reach adulthood, and if they didn’t it’s because someone else helped to shelter and nurture them. Despite the prevalence of Lost in Autumn quite willing to kill these fledglings in their nests and the seeming non-obviousness of them taking power, wise Autumn rulers of the other two types - generally those who have lived long enough to come to some kind of terms with their own abuse and trauma - will put in the work to raise these politicians so that they can be succeeded by someone who will keep the Court stable and prosperous in the long term. Managing Autumn through a mix of careful alliances, threats, and support from the other three Courts helps such rulers get away with not having the personal power to fight off all comers, and more importantly ties Autumn into the rest of its local society so that it gets a reality check more than “sometimes, when people can screw up the courage to actually show up”. In that way it’s better for the ruler too; without the might to trample over those who disagree with her, she must instead keep the members of her own and other Courts in mind, and be aware of her own bullshit lest she leap up on it and get herself killed.

Lords of Summer details a method of ruling Autumn that it labels as the Palace of Dust, in which Autumn is a wholly secret society hidden even from the rest of the Freehold, who acts to cause Fear and protect its fellows in secret. This is naked fucking stupidity. Even if Autumn could do such a thing without shredding its Clarity all to hell (which it can’t) or get a crack at recruiting new members without the other three Courts mistaking them for privateers or loyalists (which, again, it can’t), Autumn still has to run the god damn Freehold for 1/4th of the year, which among other things means having a person with a big obvious crown on her head, to say nothing of all of her Courtiers and their Mantles, or needing to be physically present to accept tithes of Glamour and oaths of vassalage. I encourage you to discard this idea entirely; it has no relation to how any society functions, and is riddled with logistical, psychological, and thematic problems. Autumn jockeys with Spring for the title of “most dramatic and theatrical Court”; don’t waste that opportunity trying to be the edgiest version of what is already the edgiest Court.

Not even the mightiest Witch-Queen rules alone. Lords of Summer presents some potential titles denoting status and responsibility in the Autumn Court. Not all of them will be present in every Court, and they aren’t necessarily called by these titles (in New Avalon, for instance, the Witch of the Bitter Wind has been called ‘Baba’ for many years, an allusion to Baba Yaga). Each has a role in Autumn’s society that is expanded on below:

Twilit Page - Broadly, the Twilit Page is in charge of neophyte Autumn Courtiers, but this is a more difficult prospect than you might expect. Where Winter is perfectly willing to leave its Flowing Pages out in the wind to die if they can’t form a relationship with a more senior Courtier willing to save them, Autumn is somewhat more likely to attempt to come to the rescue. Some of this is simply because Autumn is more likely to form personal attachments, and some of it is that you don’t bother gathering immense personal power if you aren’t going to use it. The Twilit Page has to keep tabs on aspiring and young members of Autumn, try to teach them the local culture of the Court, and hopefully palm them off into a more formal apprenticeship as soon as possible. Bad Autumn Courts emulate Winter’s example and give this job to a more junior Courtier to keep them busy with paperwork; wiser ones promote more powerful Courtiers to this position so that aspiring members of the Court know what they might become and can be certain that if they call for rescue, rescue will actually arrive.

Paladin of Shadows - Frightful warriors who for some reason don’t want to be in Summer end up in Autumn under this name. Paladins drive Winter mad, given that they’re a role specifically for Autumn Courtiers who are, seemingly, bad at being members of Autumn. Paladins embody the threat of physical violence and death, and are often a natural role for battle-sorcerers in Autumn; Ogres and Elementals especially fall naturally into this method of serving Fear.

Hedge Ranger - Hedge Rangers represent a sort of practical occult knowledge that few people immediately associate with Autumn. Rare is the person who hears the words “Court of Fear” and immediately thinks of a survivalist with a crossbow, but such is the nature of the Thorns: a land of magic that demands practice to go with your theory. Hedge Rangers rarely lack for work; the Hedge is a source of fear and doubt to almost all of the Lost, and those who must brave it will pay dearly for an expert’s guidance. More importantly, Hedge Rangers may be the Freehold’s first line of intelligence against an imminent invasion of the True Fae, privateers, or hostile hobgoblins.

Legate of Mists - Oddly enough, this is one of the positions potentially unlikely to be filled in a healthy Freehold. It sounds counter-intuitive; surely a diplomat is a valuable role in keeping friendly relationships between Courts? But when things are going well, members of the other three Courts generally go directly to the Autumn Courtiers they need for various services. Why cut a finder’s fee to some random asshole to direct you to Jack the Ranger when you can just find Jack or a member of his Motley yourself? But in an Autumn that is less trusted by its fellows, or a Freehold with sharp conflicts between the Courts in general, having someone more outwardly collected and socially savvy as a point of contact can be essential in not escalating conflict to a place people are going to regret. In a Freehold that doesn’t necessarily need a Legate, someone with a related skill set (such as a Baron of the Lesser Ones, or a member of the Legacy of the Black Apple) might have the title bestowed upon them in recognition of their skills, or to formalize their role in negotiating with those other beings.

Fool of First Frost - Any idiot can put on a clown suit and chase people with knives. The role of the Fool is not to spread fear directly, but rather to spread Autumn’s self-awareness of its own deliberate evil to the other Courts. When Spring, Summer, and Winter begin to grow toxic or to cause social issues in the Freehold, it is the Fool and their comedy that first holds them to account through dark parody, scathing rebukes, and the occasional terrifying mystery. Fools also hold Autumn to similar account. A good Fool is socially adept, cunning, and politically aware; a bad Fool is generally killed in their sleep by a slighted noble.

Lord/Lady Scrivener  - Perhaps one of the most inconsistently filled positions in Autumn, the Scrivener writes things down. The Lost have an uneven relationship with the idea of writing things down, in part because writing things down has a bad habit of getting people killed, and in part because of a strong oral tradition and the presence of the Eternal Echoes (Lords of Summer). Some Freeholds never learn the grim stories of When It Goes Wrong and install a Scrivener to keep records of the Freehold or the Court; others follow Winter’s example and record their histories in code. An Autumn Court involved in the aforementioned magazine-publishing and lectures keep a Scrivener in charge of their creation and distribution, but beyond that this title is often quite empty, and infrequent attempts to install it are generally shut down hard.

Ghul - In a Court whose role in the Freehold is often ‘odd jobs, but especially the horrible ones we don’t want to do’, the Ghul is the person who does the most horrible things. In theory, the Ghul’s role is that of assassin to the Court of Fear, but a Freehold that maintains and tolerates one likely also employs them as an executioner and a Jack Ketch. In many Freeholds, the Ghul may be a secret position, kept quiet so that the other Courts don’t know Autumn is willing to retain a paid murderer.

Witch of the Bitter Wind - Quite possibly the only title as ubiquitous to Autumn as the Crown itself, the Witch is the Court’s most prominent sorcerer. It isn’t enough to have raw power (represented with high Wyrd and Mantle); the Witch of the Bitter Wind needs to have broad and deep knowledge of magic, including things no one really wants to know but sometimes has to. The nature of their work means that Witches often shed Clarity to an alarming degree, but replacing a Witch of the Bitter Wind is no simple thing; Lost who can do what they do are not a dime a dozen. Keeping a leash on their Witch is often one of the Autumn Crown’s most important ongoing duties.

Magister of Nightmares - You know what would be nice? If White Wolf could write one god damn thing about this Court consistently for five minutes straight. In Lords of Summer, the Magister is purported to capture and maintain the target of the Ashen Hunt...a ritual in which the entire Freehold goes riding out to kill any of its enemies that it can find. One of these things has to be wrong, and on the balance considering that the Lost have severe problems with imprisoning anything or anyone for any reason, I am inclined to advise you to throw this title out, shake your first at the sky and scream White Wolf’s name at the top of your lungs.

Ashen Notary - One of Autumn’s more surprising roles, the Ashen Notary is an expert in Pledgecraft and is charged with maintaining and, if need be, recording knowledge of powerful Pledges sworn in the Freehold. In a society that sometimes has to establish trust between people who have understandable trust issues, an expert in Pledges is a powerful asset and a vital cog in the smooth running of said society. The Ashen Notary’s knowledge empowers them to check in on Lost who have sworn powerful Pledges, advise them on keeping said Pledges, and to offer their services to broker Pledges between parties who might not otherwise be inclined to do so. The Notary serves another purpose in Autumn itself: they force loners of the Ashen Court to actually participate in society, even if only on the pretext of checking up on their oath of service to the Freehold itself. Autumn Courtiers more inclined to counsel rather than terrify, with a talent for putting people at their ease, thrive in this role.

Aside from these largely internal roles, Autumn Courtiers thrive in the Freehold itself as advisors, viziers, and hatchet men. Though Autumn trends towards skill in violence and magic, its lack of an overall required skill set (in sharp contrast with Summer and Winter) means it often makes its bones doing odd jobs. Need a family of Fetches murdered? Autumn is looking for work. Need a guide through a dangerous Trod? Autumn has a man. Looking to learn Contracts that might help you in your day job? Autumn knows them. While Autumn joins Summer as one of the Courts that spends money rather than makes it, it funds its internal expenses by tithing from these services and otherwise making itself available to its peers.

The Promise of Autumn

What does Autumn offer to potential members, and to those that keep faith with it? UNLIMITED POWER is the answer that springs to most people’s minds immediately, and this is true to an extent, just as it is also true that Autumn provides a haven for those who have fallen in love with magic and struggle with the awkward feelings of shame and self-doubt that said love engenders. But neither captures the entire story. Alone among the Seasonal Courts, Autumn is not offering recruits the chance to heal, not as such. Where Spring holds faith in its renewal, where Summer promises to create something good and noble of the evil done to you, and Winter quietly sells a new life built on your own terms, the children of Fear seem, so often, to leap screaming into an abyss from which there is no return.

So why join Autumn?

Just as every Lost is scarred by Sorrow, so too is each and every living Changeling a child of Fear; Fear of the Others who may come calling to drag them back, Fear of what they have or might become, Fear of rejection by mortal society or mortal loved ones, Fear of betrayal, of privateers and loyalists, of the Thorns, of the things that live in their dreams, and this doesn’t even get into more mundane or personal Fears that may stalk them. Autumn’s offer is simple but compelling: join with the Ashen Court, and you can come to understand your Fear, and to master it. Autumn does not promise to make you unafraid; such a promise would be a lie, and counter to the Court’s ideals in any event. To join with Autumn is instead to develop a relationship with Fear, to confront your abuse directly and thus to lift some of its terrible power over your life. For many drawn to the Court of Fear it can be a relief to be told that it’s okay to be afraid, that even the grim demons that sit the high seats of Autumn are afraid, and that life can go on in the face of that Fear. This quieter, more intimate side of Autumn doesn’t get a lot of press, in part because Autumn prefers it that way, and in part because it can be genuinely hard to talk about. Fear is an intimate emotion, and for those of Spring, Summer, and Winter who go to Autumn for help with their Fears the idea of gossiping about those who guided them, aided them, even befriended them, can be unthinkable.

Other Lost join Autumn because they are in love with magic and they want more of it. The reasons can vary, but Autumn generally puts in quite a bit of effort to recruit such Changelings. Many assume this is because Autumn wants to retain its status as the foremost practitioners of magic, and this is to an extent true, but the Ashen Court also considers this a service to the Freehold. Unwise use of magic is dangerous; just as Autumn takes in the fearful and teaches them sorcery, so too does Autumn take in reckless sorcerers and teach them fear. Magic for magic’s sake is like the pursuit of any form of power for its own sake: foolish and likely to get someone killed. Autumn puts leashes on such Lost until they learn better.

Both sorts of recruits are ultimately made the same offer by Autumn, often unspoken but powerfully present: Autumn can give them the power to no longer be victims. Many Lost were helpless in the face of the evil which claimed them, abused them, and ultimately transformed them. The Court of Fear provides not just the personal power to fight back, but the knowledge and presence of mind to act, not without Fear, but with courage. For many, whose lives are defined by the Fear of going back to the Fairest of Lands, Autumn represents the ability to live with themselves again, in a way the other Courts can’t.

There is a certain ironic selflessness in remaining in Autumn. The Court of Fear purposefully takes on the evils needed to keep the Freehold running and safe, and as a result its active members are often, not to put too fine a point on it, evil. Autumn doesn’t just employ killers, thieves, and abusers, it cultivates them. For Lost whose skill sets fall into these shady categories, Autumn can be a place to belong; for others, remaining in the Season and deepening their relationship to it means asking hard questions about what they’re willing to become, and how hard they’re willing to work to avoid becoming something worse. Autumn’s peers are vital in keeping some semblance of an even keel on its Courtiers, to remind them both not to get lost in the vicious madness of power for the sake of power, and of the joys, pleasures, and sorrows of life that exist outside of the context of Fear. Autumn, in turn, helps hold its peers to account and provides both a spoken warning and a living example of what it means to slide into darkness.

Fear Itself

Autumn’s relationship to Fear is more complex than the other Courts often think it is, and definitely more complex than Autumn itself advertises it as. Just as someone who spreads Sorrow but does not feel Sorrow is a bad Winter Courtier, so too is the ideal Autumn Courtier someone who feels Fear in addition to spreading it. The dance between an Autumn Courtier’s public persona (something at least partly artificial and theatrical) and their private one is a complex affair that can be harsh on Clarity if not managed correctly, but it is absolutely vital to maintaining some semblance of sanity and perspective.

Outwardly, Autumn practices Fear of all kinds. They learn to cultivate and project images that fit their personal brands of Fear (in New Avalon, the local Autumn Court puts its apprentices through drama and theater classes specifically for this reason) and to sow Fear upon others. Only rarely is this visceral, violent terror, for a host of reasons. While the Court could create a glut of Fear by, say, killing an entire fraternity in its frat house on campus and leaving the excessively gory scene to be found by their friends and loved ones, such an event has repercussions beyond the emotion created: mortal police will investigate, bereaved loved ones seek closure or revenge, the school itself might be shut down, and such a vicious assault is certain to take a toll on whatever unlucky Courtiers are expected to carry it out. Much more common are activities such as spreading rumors and urban legends, telling terrifying stories, stalking mortals out alone on lonely nights, blackmail, and acts of violation such as breaking the locks on someone’s house or leaving unsettling ‘gifts’ in their personal possessions. Autumn’s own need to exercise a light hand in cultivating their passion in the mortal populace. Fear, while an effective emotion for manipulating others, can be difficult to predict and control; those Lost who don’t understand that spreading Fear can have unforeseen consequences soon learn better when they bite off more than they can chew and get someone hurt or killed. This is one of Autumn’s harshest and most necessary lessons: you, ultimately, are responsible for the desperate actions of those upon whom you spread your Fear.

Inwardly, Autumn Courtiers seek to relate to their own Fears, to understand them, and to take action about them. Fear can be a healthy response, and the Lost live dangerous lives in which vigilance and caution are quite reasonable daily activities, and the Fears that inform these behaviors are among the more universal to Changelings, but all things Fear more than just the Others. To be Autumn is to ask yourself questions like, “why am I afraid?”, “can I live my life with this Fear?”, “do I also love or Desire the object of my Fear? Does it make me angry?” and, “am I okay with the power this Fear has over me?”. There are many answers to these questions; Autumn encourages its Courtiers to make their own decisions about their Fears, to excuse themselves from projects or tasks where their Fears would cripple them and to seek out those professions where their Fears can be helpful to them. Many a Hedge-Ranger starts their career by acknowledging that they are afraid of the Thorns and seeking to overcome the darkness of that Fear with the light of knowledge, and Autumn knows well the power of desperate terror to turn a cornered rat into a vicious killer. Just as mortals seek out horror movies to experience a visceral thrill, so too does Autumn put themselves in a position to be afraid so that they can teach themselves to live with Fear, to act in spite of or even aided by Fear, and to prove to themselves that they are stronger than their own Fear.

While they are rarer than those Autumn Courtiers who also spread Fear upon others, some Autumn Courtiers relate to their Season only in terms of their personal fear, and their journey into Autumn is founded on understanding and choosing to nurture or overcome their individual Fears. The Ashen Court puts a lot of value in these more gentle, introspective Courtiers, in part because someone has to be around to tell the supervillains when they’re up on their bullshit (again), and in part because these are often those Autumn Courtiers who most openly serve as counselors and healers to their fellow Lost. Many of the Court of Fear’s most talented oneiromancers fall easily into this image of a kinder Autumn.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice - Organizing Autumn

The basic unit of Autumn is the Courtier, but the basic plural unit of the Court of Fear is the Master-Apprentice bond. While individual Courts do likely organize by appointing nobles and people to assist those nobles (such as, say, a Mistress of the Harvest in charge of the Court’s stores of Goblin Fruits and Harvestmen to assist her), Autumn’s basically selfish organization naturally breaks it up into those who do not yet have power - personal, social, magical, political -  and those that do. The most basic function of a Twilit Page is to help connect potential apprentices to potential masters, who take over the role of educating those apprentices, attending to their personal safety, and ensuring that they don’t starve to death on the streets. These apprentices in turn assist their masters with various projects, enabling them to focus on purely occult matters rather than attending to inconveniences like laundry, cooking meals, or replacing the sinister cobwebs that just won’t stay up in the corners properly. It is during this stage in their life that youngblood Autumn Courtiers learn about the divide between their work face and their friend face, the ideals of Fear and magic, and - hopefully - learn to Fear themselves as well as others. The results can be a bit disorganized, but it keeps Autumn in possession of broad skill sets that appeal to many potential new members who are looking for a place to belong in their new society.

Early adopters of Autumn are often somewhat lonesome by nature and don’t necessarily join Motleys straight away, but as they calm down and start to grow into their own the Court subtly or not-so-subtly encourages them to do so. While Autumn doesn’t have a formal commandment to join diverse Motleys the way Winter does, a sane and stable Autumn Court usually encourages it; Autumn needs the perspectives of its peers if it intends on surviving the journey to power with some semblance of its sanity intact. A Motley also represents a power group that a budding Autumn Courtier can use to further their interests within their own Court, both because a Motley is capable of defending itself from (and committing) greater violence than one Courtier, and because the interconnection of the Courts means pissing off an entire Motley is a much different political prospect. As the Autumn Courtier rises in power and ambition they find themselves with descriptive titles bestowed upon them in honor of their expertise, and with nervous members of the Freehold coming to them for their unique services (prophecy, assassination, occult knowledge, guidance through the Hedge, etc).

What happens from here depends on the Court and the Courtier. The higher echelons of Autumn are staffed by survivors and killers who have seen and done things they would rather not have seen and done. Lost can live for a long time if they’re not killed, but in a Court that respects these elders those lusting for a high office may have no choice but to hone their own skills and wait for the incumbent to finally die. For some positions - especially the Crown or the Witch of the Bitter Wind - there’s a certain “you kill it, you bought it” understanding, in which some degree of personal and magical violence is a permissible method of advancement. You can bet your ass that the Court keeps a careful eye on such usurpers, however; it doesn’t do to encourage random murder with leniency.

Mark Me Down As Scared And Horny

Autumn Courtiers are still (post) human people, and passionate people at that; Autumn’s self-awareness and caution don’t come even close to Winter’s deliberate culture of stoicism and self-denial. Just as much as any of the Lost, Autumn’s own crave personal bonds with others; they want friends, family, lovers, and the respect of their peers. To split the difference between the figures of dread their Court expects them to be, and the more vulnerable and human person such bonds require, Autumn is of necessity somewhat two-faced.

Ultimately, to be friends with a member of Autumn is to accept that you can’t talk about the person you know that others don’t. It’s more than just a PR problem, though that definitely factors into it. Fundamentally, it’s about trust. Just as you sharing your intimate Fears with your friend in Autumn means trusting a known monster and professional abuser with knowledge they can use to hurt you, so too does that Autumn Courtier trust you with their own feelings in a way that could hurt them. A friendship built on mutually assured destruction is no friendship at all, not even in Autumn, and if the children of Fear have to think of their close friends and family in that way then they’re already on the fast way down to staging slasher flicks in real life. For those who can respect their friend’s public persona in public (which does not necessarily entail pretending not to be their friend), Autumn can be among their staunchest allies and most protective supporters. It can be hard to have friends in the lands of Fear, and Fear’s children guard the ones they have with a ferocious will.

Romance, for those Autumn Courtiers inclined to practice it, is similar. Unlike Winter, which is more likely to seek out its own members to love, Autumn relationships with other Autumn Courtiers generally end in a certain amount of blood; each feeds the toxic traits of the other, generally creating a downward spiral of Fear. Summer and Autumn end up together quite a bit, bonding over a common interest in direct action and the similar problems of those who have made a career in violence, but Spring/Autumn relationships can be some of the strongest and most surprising. The renewal Spring believes in and offers to others can give Autumn something to live for besides power, and Autumn in turn provides support and love through the times of Fear and doubt that can sometimes cripple a Spring Courtier. Either way, loving someone in Autumn means to some extent accepting that they have chosen evil when they did not have to. Relationships that last involve both the non-Autumn partner making peace with that choice, and the Autumn one remembering that evil is the tool with which they do their job and not a toy that they play with for fun. If either side can’t swing their role, the relationship often fails.

If you go leafing through the published books you might notice a trend of Autumn Courtiers getting written as femme fatales that betray their lovers and/or murder them. Throw this in the garbage where it belongs. While a certain amount of backstabbing is endemic to Freehold society in general, Autumn being “the people who betray you all the time” leads us back to that idea in the introduction where if this was a thing that happens Autumn would have been killed to the last man a long time ago. This trend in the writing seems to be the meeting point between ‘Autumn is a social Court’ (true), ‘Autumn is often deliberately evil’ (still true), and ‘White Wolf didn’t bother reading their own books’, without stopping to ask about the psychological toll, how Autumn fits into a society, or even the fact that this stereotype fits Spring and Winter’s MO insofar as it fits anyone’s. Even if you were inclined to go here, White Wolf has done it to death. Please don’t.

Lords of Dust - Making Autumn Courtiers

When making your own Autumn Courtier, think about the events in their life that drove them to make this decision. Did their mind bend and then break beneath a particularly cruel Durance? Do they see Autumn as a way of bringing wonder into a world that can so often feel thin and grey? How do they respond to the fundamental questions at the heart of their Court? Autumn deliberately does not command answers to those questions. After all, it doesn’t do to sell yourself as the Court of scholars and wisdom only to discourage questions. Some other helpful considerations to keep in mind include:

What Do You Want?  - Autumn encourages ambition in its Courtiers, and offers power as a method of fulfilling it. What is the throne of your character’s ambition? Why do they seek it, and what will they do or what do they think they’ll do to achieve it? How does their ambition relate to their Fears, and to their own Court? “Keep my family safe” is a perfectly valid ambition, after all - especially given how dangerous it can be to love the Lost, as is joining a prestigious Entitlement, or even using the power of Autumn to reform an aspect of Freehold society.

What Do You Fear?  - The Ashen Court is defined by its relationship to Fear. What things and ideas inspire Fear in your character? How do they react to and relate to those Fears? Which Fears are they trying to shed, and which are they trying to cultivate? How does your character spread their Fear on others, and why? Do they treat the Fears of their friends and loved ones the same way they treat their own?

What’s Your Specialty? - As alluded to earlier, “magic” is an incredibly broad field of study. What sorts of lore attracts your character? Why did they become interested in the sort of magic they practice? What risks are they willing to take for the sake of knowledge, or to use their knowledge? Do they see magic as something mysterious? Spiritual? Scientific? Does your character prefer to keep their lore secretive, or do they perhaps like to foster a more general interest in magic?

What Are Your Sins? - Plenty of the Lost emerge from Arcadia scarred by the things they did to survive. To join Autumn means accepting that further acts, made more questionable by your newfound freedom, will be added to this tally. How does your character feel about Autumn’s deliberate, self-aware evil? Have they been asked to do morally questionable things? What lines do they draw, and how do those lines affect their relationship to their Court? Do they nurse doubts about the morality of spreading Fear?

Chaos Reigns - Autumn In Your Freehold

While Autumn boasts a diverse skill set, ultimately their dual role is to know things, and to do unpleasant things. Other Courts will come to Autumn for these needs, especially where they intersect, which gives you a place to start; figures such as Paladins of Shadow should be the exception, not the rule, unless you have a highly unusual Autumn (perhaps one that exists in relation to a relatively weak Summer). Likewise, Autumn is the Court where the line between a healthy Autumn and a toxic one is most heavily blurred, and where each vision of the Court will have elements of the other. Is your Autumn counterbalanced by a strong Spring and/or Winter that can help keep it on the straight and narrow? How does it relate to the mortal society around it, and what do the other Courts think of that relationship?

Though Autumn is not among the Courts that generates most of the Freehold’s money (as mentioned before, they join Summer in the caste of ‘retained killers’ that costs money), think about the social venues or businesses that your Autumn Court maintains anyway. An Autumn Court that operates a movie theater has access to a steady supply of Fear that also gives them an excuse to hang around normal people and reality check themselves; contrast this with an Autumn that has its claws sunk into a local university, or a Court entwined with a criminal family. Autumn joins Spring in being a Court whose members likely own and operate their own businesses as some kind of front, from book shops to stores catering to the modern witch; these locations can provide a pop of flavor to your Autumn and its Courtiers, as well as fronts through which the Freehold might launder money or stash sensitive objects or knowledge.

I welcome all questions, comments, feedback, and criticisms on this article - send ‘em my way! Next up: Summer

#Changeling: The Lost #autumn court #rpg #worldbuilding #abuse #violence

[sanctuaryforalluniverses]

Macgyver 2016: Why Reboot!Jack Dalton is WAAAY more messed up than he appears to be on the show (Updated to include up to the Season 2 finale)

At first, second and third glance, Reboot!Jack Dalton seems like the human version of a golden retriever - loud, fun, kind of dumb and incredibly persistent. The writers certainly like to play up that angle, sometimes to the point of parody.

But there’s also this vague, persistent sense throughout the show that Jack is convinced he’s Not A Good Person. He was convinced that the breakup with Sarah was his fault, though I don’t remember him ever being able to point to a specific reason why, and it’s straight-up canon that he actively fled from Riley and her mom because he was convinced they’d be horrified that he beat up her abusive dad. You don’t immediately jump to that extreme a reaction unless you’ve got a lot of shame you’re carrying around. They’ve tried to avoid bringing it up as much as possible in season 2, but even then the writers have never really been able to shake the feeling. You could even argue that the extremely weird on-again, off-again thing with the con is proof that’s all he thinks he’s good for. And that’s not even including the undertone in a lot of the action scenes, where despite his complaining it’s hard not to notice that he seems to think of himself as disposable on some level.

For the longest time, it completely baffled me. How could he POSSIBLY see himself as anything but the goofball he tries to hard to be?

But… well, think about just how hard he tries to be that goofball. He throws himself into it with a dedication you’d expect from a college-age stoner, which made me start thinking about WHY he tries that hard. We know from the high school reunion episode that Jack has a deep, fierce need to be liked, but a goofball isn’t the most generally accepted personality out there (and we have canon proof that he drives plenty of people absolutely nuts with it). Why not go for a more generally appealing persona, if he really wants to be liked that badly?

And then you think about his canon resume, which includes time in Delta and several years as a CIA agent. More importantly, he seemed to be pretty darn good at both. He joined the CIA after his stretch in Delta, aka Army Special Forces (the show hasn’t stated that specifically, but it’s not an uncommon jump. Also, he was older in the CIA, and recently enough that he wouldn’t have time to qualify for Delta). Delta might do black ops stuff, but it's not exactly the kind that would give you the exact skills the CIA would be looking for. He must have distinguished himself pretty hard, and in very specific non-traditionally Delta ways, to be considered a worthy candidate.

As for his CIA record, I look to the fact that Matty, who complains about every single other thing about him she can, has never questioned his ability to do his job. She yells about his recklessness, his unwillingness to follow rules, his impulsiveness, but she’s never once called him a bad agent. Since Matty was his supervising officer during the Incident that caused him to no longer be in the CIA, it suggests to me that whatever happened wasn’t because he screwed up. Also, he must have had a pretty darn good record for the higher ups to let Mac Sr. add him to the Phoenix Foundation in the first place. The government, just like everyone else, doesn’t like hiring people who already left their employ in a spectacular fashion. The only possible reason they’d have let him back in at all is that he’s darn good at his job.

(Also, I think Matty must trust his skills enough to be the one to have mentioned his name to Mac Sr. in the first place. No matter what Mac Sr. implied, he's coolly logical and efficient enough I can't IMAGINE someone like Jack was his first choice for Mac's partner, successes be darned. He probably only took the suggestion after two or three of his candidates all went bust, and only told himself it was his genius plan all along when Mac and Jack refused to leave each other's side.)

So all evidence points to the fact that Jack Dalton was a Good Spy. And there’s one thing all Good Spies are good at - pretending to be something they’re not.

Because there are a few things that just don’t fit in with the goofball persona. That trick in 2x20, where Ethan led all the bad guys into one room with that heartbroken “plea” to his Dad? That was elegant, manipulative and a little bit ruthless, and more importantly it was clever in an “I understand people” rather than an “I understand science” way. Though he knows the inside of Jack’s head pretty well, the show has never given us any sign that Mac has any sort of real insight into how the majority of humans work (if anything, it’s shown us the opposite). So that part of the plan… well, it probably wasn’t Mac’s.

Then there’s that time Mac got arrested for supposedly killing that guy, and Matty’s most immediate priority was making sure Jack didn’t do anything super dangerous? And it wasn’t even in a whole “Jack, don’t do anything stupid” way. It was more of a “Jack, you’re not allowed to cause an international incident IN OUR BACKYARD” kind of way. And the way Jack looked so ANGRY, like he was seriously considering that international incident. Like, in his head at that moment, there wasn’t a lot of difference between the local cops and enemy soldiers.

And remember when he essentially offered up Jill and Riley’s dad as sacrificial lambs because he needed to get into Matty’s safe? Yes, he was offering them up to Matty, which meant their actual lives weren’t on the line. But the destruction of Jill’s career and Riley’s dad going back to prison were very real options if things didn’t go EXACTLY the way Jack wanted them to, and that fact didn’t seem to bother Jack all that much. Given how fiercely protective he is of HIS team (and how much he worries about them), it stood out.

And then there’s the ending of that episode, where the ONE painting that wasn’t crooked was the one hiding the safe. (This did indeed turn out to be bad writing, because no one who’d been a spy as long as Jack had would make such a rookie mistake. Given how “stellar” the writing the show has been at various other points -- I’m looking at you, the completely logic-defying resolution of the Nikki and Patricia plot lines -- it didn’t even surprise me.)

But still, how did she know it was Jack? He can't be the only person who'd want to get at her secrets, and given the level of security she would no doubt have on her own secrets it makes no sense that her immediate assumption that it was him would be a comment on his lack of intelligence. The most logical conclusion, then, is that he was that she knew he was one of a very small number of people GOOD enough to pull it off, and the most likely on that list.

The most interesting moment in this category, however, came in the finale. Remember when Matty basically told Jack "Hey, you also need to make sure you save Mac Sr."? It doesn't make any sense for her to have meant "You need to make sure you also save people who aren't Mac," because Jack does that anyway -- he gets to Mac, and then together they get everyone else out. It's literally their standard plan, and Matty knows it. It goes without saying that these two will do every single thing in their power to get everyone else out of danger.

So all I can think is that what Matty was *actually* saying was "If you're tempted to let Mac Sr. die for everything he's put Mac through, you should not do that." And after mentioning that the world needs Mac Sr., and Jack absolutely not responding to that at ALL, she throws in that he also saved her life a bunch of times. And it's that last bit that finally does indeed respond to in the affirmative, like it's a good thing for Mac Sr.'s health that there's one person Jack likes who he hasn't screwed over. Yes, he didn't get the chance to do anything about it, but Matty's warning (and the fact that she felt she needed to give him a warning) was 100 percent serious.

And let’s take a closer look at Jack’s timeline. Though we haven’t gotten specific dates, the logical order of various incidents suggest that beating up Riley’s abusive Dad and the Incident that caused him to part ways with the CIA couldn’t have been more than five or so years apart. Riley and her mom came first, since he was definitely still working for the CIA when he was with them. We’ve also seen signs of some of the ops Jack used to run with Matty that were deep cover enough, and long-term enough, there’s no way he could have maintained a cover as a tile salesman or a relationship with a civilian. Since we know Matty was definitely his supervisor at the end of his CIA career, it’s not ludicrous to say that Jack fled Riley and her mom and immediately ran into deep cover gigs.

And let’s look at what happened AFTER the CIA incident. There, the timeline is more firm - Mac’s military career has been canonically stated as running from 2009-2012, which means Jack also had to be back in the army sometime in 2011 to 2012. Which is a weird place for him to end up, looking at his resume. He wasn’t even back in Delta - he was with a group babysitting bomb techs, which as far as I can tell seems to be the army’s version of busy work. And yet, he had enough pull that he could state “I’ll only come back if you permanently assign me to this one guy” and they LET him. Army officials do not, as a rule, like it when random underlings tell them what to do (even with the persuasion of a creepily manipulative spy dad).

If Jack could choose to keep working with Mac, he probably had some choice in getting dropped into babysitting duty in the first place. And it hit me that, if you were a career fighter looking to spend a couple of years in a job where you could 1) cause the least amount of damage and 2) be certain you were doing the morally right thing the majority of the time, then babysitting bomb techs is a pretty smart place to park yourself. The army’s full of moral grays and blacks, but keeping alive the people who are keeping bombs from hurting other people is a pretty solid Good Guy gig.

Also, he clearly wasn’t looking to make a career out of it. Looking at Riley’s age and a few other checkpoints, Jack couldn’t have been on babysitting duty pre-Mac for more than a few years at most. And once he got sprung, he was going HOME. He was going back to Texas, and he was going to be DONE with the army and the CIA and shooting people and everything. He’d been in since just after high school, and he was SICK OF IT. Like he’d maybe spent a couple of years in the army to find his feet and get his head back on straight, but that was all it was.

That smells like burnout to me. Not just general burnout, but the kind where the person who’s flamed out Absolutely Does Not Want to Hurt People Anymore. Jack had spent his entire career in the Army Special Forces and the CIA, which meant that he’d spent most of his adult life dropped directly into the shittiest, most violent situations possible. Decades of hurting people, by that point, and by then you’d have to build up some kind of tolerance if you wanted to function at all. And yet, somehow, it got so bad that he flamed out dramatically enough to cause the Incident. 

Given all that, I’m pretty sure I’d try like hell to convince everyone I was just a goofball, too. 

#macgyver #jack dalton #macgyver 2016

[riaasam]

... because they know exactly what they are doing

Jair stepped onto the spacious terrace of the Presidential Villa, his official residence in the government capital Brasilia. The architecture of the villa did not suit his taste. Too simple. Too detached. So he preferred his finca in the rainforest in an elegant, down-to-earth colonial style and his city palace in the style of modern Sun Kings. He smiled at the thought, then his eyes began to dim. How greedily the people cried out for democracy. Acting as if something had changed beneath him. As if the rainforests had not been cleared for hundreds of years, to the advantage of the most successful, because cleverest. As always. Like everywhere. He was glad that the road was now too arduous for old Batista to audition personally at the villa. He laughed up his sleeve at the thought of how cleverly he had managed to pull this off again. Old Batista had the unbearable charisma of a self-made man who looked down scornfully on all those who were already born into a privileged position through the achievements of their forefathers. As if he had chosen it! The old man unpleasantly reminded him of his father who never missed an opportunity to point out the ridiculousness of all his Jair's successes in relation to his own, his life-giver and founder of the family dynasty.

One of the reasons why he got along so well with Joesly Batista, who was tormented even more by his father, who had actually made him one of the richest people in the world and his son, as he was happy to point out, would be nothing without him. It would not surprise him if Joesly would speed up the departure of the old man, who, in his mid-eighties, was still bristling with tyrannical power. His assistant, a capable but extremely ugly creature, he suspected that his wife had had a hand in this, as she knew too well how quickly he exchanged his wives for their younger model, reported that the gringos would arrive slightly late and Joesly was to arrive in five minutes. He liked Trump for his exquisite taste in choosing his women and admired his open display of his supposed wealth. And he was not one of those softies who outwardly presented himself as liberal and democratic and then, behind closed doors, euphorically shit on morals and greedily seize every opportunity for money, as the US and European democrats like to do. He shivered at the thought of the second guest who was to travel with Trump. He was reluctant to admit it but this Larry Fink frightened him. For a long time he had pondered over his motives. He was already rich and his power was one he could not flaunt. What was he interested in? Control? The guy worked 100 hours a week, did not take part in orgies, did not drink, did not take drugs, ate only white rice. Creepy. At least this time Trump left his maladjusted son-in-law at home. After the last visit they had to pay the family of the very young chambermaid a horrendous amount of hush money to comfort them over the brutal rape by the devilish gringo. A fine piss who believed the whole world had to obey him. Jair had heard rumours of goon squads, from which the said son-in-law had his opponents beaten to a pulp, and then, when the poor bastards were tied up and lying half-dead in their last trains, he would slip on a pair of gloves made of human leather, demonstrate his power with weak blows and then cut their throats in a cruel, amateurish way. Rumours. But he would not be surprised. Despite the pleasant 24 degrees that prevailed here in summer, Jair shivered again.

His assistant tore him from his morbid thoughts to report that she had led the just arrived senior Batista to the large terrace. Jair tensed his shoulders, pulled in his stomach and put on the El Presidente's jovial smile as he approached his guest. They greeted each other amicably and toasted to hopefully successful negotiations with the whisky that his prudent secretary had brought. Trump had been extremely vague on the phone, but he was immediately infected by his euphoria at the prospect of the money blessing. Joesly seemed tense as he talked about the shitty climate bitch from some shitty farm town in Europe who dared to complicate his life. "Isn't it enough that I have to deal with these retarded Indians and their backwoods tree love? And then there are those brainwashed religious fanatics from Gringoland who claim that God has a problem with us cutting down trees to grow meat. Then why did God give us the fire and the saw in the first place, if He objects?" Jair nodded sympathetically and grumbled something about plaited dictatorship, which he had picked up on the internet and seemed particularly witty to him. In fact, these rebellious children were increasingly becoming a problem. They talked about their future, even the future of all humanity, which was stolen from them by the older generation. Old that he did not laugh, he was in his prime. As a result, an unpleasant hatred of the rich and powerful also began to spread, and it took on alarming proportions. Powerful men were dragged to court for so-called sexual harassment. As if they did not all crave for it and lick their eggs with enthusiasm for even the smallest promise of success. Now these sluts all suddenly showed solidarity and spoke of abuse, even though for centuries it had been more a matter of a silent agreement of giving and taking. Sometimes he no longer understood the world. Maybe he was getting old after all. Both looked mournfully ahead and sucked listlessly on their Cohibas as the roar of an approaching helicopter tore them from their thoughts. As this ghastly bloodsucker Fink seemed to have something against sunlight, they had to leave the bright day to go to the darkened library. They allowed themselves a good sip and poured themselves into the leather couches that looked more comfortable than they were. Trump rumbled a greeting in surprisingly poor English for a native speaker, while Fink's smile seemed a little forced as usual. The two probably saw each other more as an unfortunately acceptable means to an end than as a human enrichment. Drinks were served, still water for Fink, a can of light cola for Trump and after the somewhat tough small talk had completely dried up, Fink, the initiator of this meeting, directed the conversation towards the purpose of this very meeting. "Gentlemen, I think I need not mention that everything discussed in these four walls today is subject to absolute secrecy. He looked around and everyone nodded. "The world is changing right now and not in our favour. The internet is a goldmine on the one hand, but on the other hand it is an almost uncontrollable pool of information that can be accessed by almost the entire world population. What used to be a regional scandal is now a global story that puts pressure on the courts to impose harsh penalties and forces politicians to take an official stand. Two decades ago, neither Weinstein nor Epstein would have been brought down. At the mention of these two names, all those present sighed with concern. That such cunning bastards were put on trial in public had been a shock. Especially this blackmailer Epstein had made all men in powerful circles tremble. It had been a masterstroke to fake his death, to give him a new face with a small surgical operation and to make him disappear forever to prevent all the sex videos with minors that this criminal had recorded with almost everyone in the world who had anything to report from being published on this damned internet. After a short break Fink continued: "Millions of young people worldwide have made it their business to destroy our economic system and even if they are just children, we should not underestimate the pull of their rebellion. Politicians feel compelled to make more and more green concessions for marketing reasons and consider that these children have parents who will take them on for themselves and their cause. The fear of terror is decreasing worldwide as the Islamist movements become less and less attractive and fewer and fewer young people want to commit themselves to their cause and give their lives. We need a new source of fear, a new enemy from outside, which makes authoritarian states seem necessary again, nips troublesome social and climate policy discussions in the bud and promotes nationalism. We have run various scenarios through our Aladdin Programme and our analysts have come to the conclusion that a global pandemic is the best outcome. We take a relatively harmless virus that actually exists and declare it the greatest threat to all mankind. The virus will be fatal, especially for very old people, thus reducing the burden on the health care system, and will hardly affect the production and consumption power of younger people. The initial uncertainty will turn into fear and, as a result, widespread support for rigid policies and high public spending on public health and safety. According to our calculations, the portfolios that we have created in anticipation of what is to come will have a significant increase in value in the pharmaceutical industry, medical products, safety clothing, new technologies, digital media, food industry" - he nodded to Batista, "online shopping etc. with 99% certainty". Trump, who was always nervous when listening for a long time, asked for his third can of light cola. Fink waited, with the patience of a sadistic governess for the child she had entrusted to her disturbed parents, until the little drink disappeared in her big hands to continue with his explanations: "Politics, which fortunately is globally in conservative hands, where change tends to be detrimental. "But our hands are not at all conservative behind closed doors, aren't they Jay-Jay?" Trump interjected and looked around the faces of his co-conspirators for recognition. Jair twitched slightly and forced himself to grin. That this stupid redneck could not remember a single non-English name. And Jair was really not complicated. Fink suppressed his increasing energy. Even the joint flight with this giant baby had been an intellectual imposition. But he played his role in world political affairs perfectly and had earned them billions in just one term of office, thanks to the withdrawal of bank regulations and other gifts with which he bought himself free of his debts. He cleared his throat: "Conservative governments worldwide will not question the existence of the virus when they realise how useful the situation is for them to extend their power and distract from their own political shortcomings.  And no one will risk going it alone, as science will be uncertain in the beginning, when assessing the danger of the disease and a decision against the trend could make you a murderer umpteen times over. We already have the Chinese on board. Their sensible approach to the freedom of the internet and freedom of expression in general will make it much easier to let the outbreak take place there and we have been able to convince them with the political incentives as well as the financial ones, as the unrest in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the PR disaster with the Uyghurs urgently require distraction. The international airport in Wuhan will make a rapid global dissemination look credible and the scandal-hungry press will be enthusiastic about it. Our programme sees only one problem and that is the unpleasant desire to question the decisions of the rich and powerful, which is ineradicably stuck in a part of the people. We distinguish between the factually based empirically rational criticism of the mostly academically educated, the argumentatively logical criticism of the intellectuals and the intuitive criticism of the uneducated. In order to convince the critics of the opposite, our analysts have come to the conclusion that the questioning of the existence of the virus must come from their anti-Jesus, the symbol of the rejection of rational reason and scientific facts, from them, Mr Trump and Mr Bolsonaro!Jair was unsure how to react, as the image for which he had just been described to stand did not necessarily seem positive to him. "Don't get me wrong," the diplomat of money, who became aware of his perhaps a little too businesslike way of talking about people present at that moment, reacted promptly. "of course, this is not about you as private individuals, but you as public figures with a publicity value" Both Trump and Bolsonaro seemed insecure and hurt. "What I mean is not real public opinion but the left-wing propaganda that sells you to the establishment! Larry's voice was firm and convincing as he quickly took those words from his brain. That was the secret of his success. He was simply faster than the majority of his counterparts and was able to provide the desired answer within seconds, which in turn led to the desired result for him. Larry looked at his brain in a similar way to a computer, which fed data into it and used it to make predictions. The better the data, the more precise the prognosis. When the internet was invented, he immediately saw its potential. With it he was able to build the super brain, the real time super brain that was closest to a collective memory and therefore knowledge store, the Internet, scouring for information and being able to make the most precise predictions about the possible future. A real boon to financial investment, whose weakness is its dependence on insecure political systems, rebellious people and natural phenomena. The earlier an investor can predict the occurrence of major changes, the earlier he can react to them by either selling or buying shares affected by these changes, depending on the circumstances. An incoming uncertainty among consumers, let's say caused by a virus that can be deadly, offers the opportunity to sell shares in tourism, travel transfer, aircraft manufacturers and their suppliers, shipbuilders and their suppliers, car manufacturers and their suppliers, etc. and to buy shares in pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, safety clothing, online shopping, telecommunications, security, etc. But, why bother reacting to events only when you can trigger events? Especially if you have the perfect tool to play through all scenarios and thereby protect yourself. He was almost touched when he thought of Aladdin. For him it was like landing on the moon for others. His dream had come true. Jair was still not quite sure if he had just been insulted, but decided to listen to the bloodsucker for a while. "We already have Boris Johnson on board. He thinks the plan is brilliant. Even the Chinese will first deny the existence of the virus in order to strengthen the belief in the virus among opponents of authoritarian regimes. Steve Bannon has the political right in Europe well in hand. There are too many risks involved in opening this kindergarten, but they will probably follow your good example as always. Your followers, who are more likely to be the Uneducated Critics, will follow your example and question the existence of the virus, which in turn will strengthen the credibility of the Educated Critics Group 1, as they will instinctively believe the opposite. Group 2 of the intellectual free-thinkers is more difficult to convince but according to our calculations negligible, as they play hardly any role in the formation of public opinion at the moment, fortunately for us. If at some point it inevitably comes to light that the virus was actually harmless, group 1 will look stupid, group 3 will feel strengthened in their belief in themselves and their leaders and you will be the more or less the only ones who have seen through the situation". Fink looked around to see if his words had the desired effect. "I love it," Trump said. "Nice work, Larry." He patronisingly added. Jair was thrilled. A worldwide conspiracy and he, one of the few initiates. As far as he could see, the thing didn't even seem to be claiming any real victims, just hastening the departure of those already doomed to death. "Not uninteresting" he commented, however, with restraint at first. Larry added "In addition to the political capital, there is of course also the possibility for you to privately and discreetly make considerable financial capital out of the matter. Through Black Rock I have the possibility to invest anonymous investment packages for you, whose profit is distributed directly to an untraceable account in a country of your choice. "Who all knows?" was Batista's first words. "Few who, apart from me, know nothing about each other. There are no records, only verbal agreements. I don't need to explain to you what you or your company get out of it. Climate strikes will dry up. People will have other problems than thinking about animal welfare and veganism, and according to our calculations, the turnover of the food industry will shoot through the roof because underemployed people tend to overeat. Batista nodded in agreement that this was a well-known fact. Hooray for the holidays. Jair's mind was already somewhere else. He thought of the house on the French Riviera that Michelle had wanted for so long, the Ferrari he had secretly dreamed of for so long. All of this was served to him here on a silver platter without him having to lift a finger! And in the end it would even get him another term of office. So dreams became reality. He smiled blissfully as he rang for the maid to order a bottle of the best champagne the villa's cellar had to offer in the library. The mood was exuberant. Even Fink was persuaded to have a glass. Suddenly it didn't seem so bloodless and unpleasant anymore. He was a genius and they are notoriously eccentrics. And this eccentric would make him Jair very, very rich. He would have liked best to kiss him. Instead he raised his glass and shouted happily: "To a fantastic coming year gentlemen!"

Continuation followed ...

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

#blackrock #trump #bolsonaro #corona #anonymous #conspiracytheorist #terrorism

[balioc]

So if my historical sources are telling me the truth...

...and I’m synthesizing the history properly...

...then, in fact, the entire edifice of Western civilization -- all the cultural, social, and philosophical structures that define the world in which we live today -- can be traced back to a stupid loophole in Roman inheritance law.

NOTE: Everything here is taken either from Francis Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order or from a Livejournal post by the Infamous Brad that I am currently unable to find.  I get credit for absolutely nothing, except noticing the connection between Section II and Section III. 

I.

What do I mean by “the entire edifice of Western civilization?”

Here, I mean the vague-but-enormous memeplex that can be summed up in the word “individualism.”  The thing where each person is understood to be a social unit unto himself, with his own destiny and with rights to his own person, capable of charting an independent path through life.  The thing where you pick your own job and your own mate and your own friends and your own hobbies and your own ideals.  The thing where “freedom” is even a meaningful concept because we conceive of humans as being potentially free of each other. 

Obviously, this whole individualism thing has both a lot of sources and a lot of ramifications.  But an absolutely central part of it, something without which it cannot survive or cohere, is economic individualism: the idea that an individual person can own property in his own right, with full and complete title to it, including the right to alienate (sell) it as he pleases.  Without that, well, people can’t really act as free individual agents unless they’re prepared to give up all their resources, because all their resources are at least partly controlled by someone else. 

[Within any kind of historical economy, anyway.  Let’s leave complicated ideas about the post-scarcity future for another discussion.]

The main alternative to individualism is the tribe.  Within a tribal system, an individual basically isn’t a meaningful social unit, he is a component of his kinship group.  The tribe owns all the property, and you can’t sell it off, because everyone in the tribe (including all those yet to be born) have a claim on it.  You have duties to the tribe, and those duties define your life, even if maybe you personally would rather do something else.  You are bound to work, and marry, in a way that advances the tribe’s interests.  If you have wealth or power, it is incumbent on you to use it in a way that advances the tribe’s interests.  You get the idea. 

This tribe thing is the default social setup for humans.  It dominated most of the great premodern civilizations.  In India, pretty much all of society was built around kinship groups (jatis).  In the Arab world, tribal ties were always paramount -- so much so that basically every successful Arab empire had to use slaves to run the government and the military, just on the grounds that foreigners without families wouldn’t funnel all the empire’s resources to their tribes.  The situation in China was a little different, since the kinship groups got kicked in the teeth early by Qin Shi Huangdi’s massive centralized bureaucratic state, but they were always there and always fighting to hang onto what power they could.  Etc.

But not in Western Europe.  Individualism took root in Western Europe really early.  You had contracts, and common law, and alienable property, going back to at least the early Middle Ages.  Same goes for the primacy of the nuclear family over the extended family, and cultural models of the non-family-defined free man.  The Enlightenment was building on a very firm foundation. 

When people talk about the importance of the Hajnal line, this is the thing that they’re trying to get at. 

II.

Why Western Europe, and not anywhere else?

Because, right from its inception, the Roman Catholic Church -- and only the Roman Catholic Church, not (for example) any of its Eastern Orthodox counterparts -- engaged on a systematic campaign to destroy the family.

...I say that in in a funny way, but it’s true.  There were a staggering number of major rulings issued by the early Church that amounted to “kinship groups aren’t allowed to do the things that make them function.”  Most famously, cousin marriage was banned, which meant that it was extremely difficult for kinship groups to avoid diffusing into each other and that they couldn’t shore up the most important alliances across generations with family ties.  Less famous but also very important was the banning of “Levirate marriage” (the marriage of a widow to her husband’s brother), which is a really useful technology if you want to keep all your tribe members within the tribe.  The very fact that the Church pushed hard for the legitimacy of female-owned property was a big part of this, since it meant that kinship groups were risking losing some of their stuff whenever one of their members got married.  And all sorts of rules about priestly behavior, including clerical celibacy, meant that priests couldn’t continue to serve as useful assets to their clans. 

(Insofar as this stuff didn’t come from the Church directly, it mostly came from lawmaker monarchs like Charlemagne, whose agendas tended to be intertwined with the Church’s agenda.)

OK.  So, uh, why was the RCC such an implacable enemy of the kinship-group system? 

The short answer is “because it was closely allied with the social subclass of wealthy widows.”  Widows tended to give lots and lots of money, and land, to the Church.  This didn’t work so well if a widow’s stuff would all just get reappropriated by her husband’s clan.  So the Church did everything it could to support a woman’s right to keep her dead husband’s property, and the women reciprocated by donating a hefty proportion of that property. 

The question remains, though...why did this particular form of mutual back-scratching manifest only in Catholic territories?  Why weren’t the Orthodox churches, or the various Hindu temples, doing exactly the same thing? 

III.

It turns out that upper-class Roman men liked younger women.  Much younger women.  The average patrician wedding involved a man in his late twenties or thirties, or even forties, and a girl in her early teens. 

(Brief explanation: as a rule, everywhere, aristocratic men get married when their financial and political prospects have been firmly established.  Why would a bride’s family choose to roll the dice?  In Rome, for various reasons, this didn’t happen until fairly late.  But Roman medicine was super shitty and nutrition was poor, so it was generally desirable to marry the youngest possible woman for fertility-maximizing reasons.) 

This meant that, if an upper-class Roman wife managed to avoid dying in childbirth, she was almost certain to outlive her husband by quite a lot.  Aristocratic Roman society was filled with youngish widows.  There was at least one in basically every patrician family. 

The result: as civilizations go, Rome was slightly more concerned than average about the plight of women who’d lost their husbands.  Which is important, because traditional kinship-group-based inheritance law is ridiculously terrible for widows.  All the husband’s stuff gets reclaimed by the tribe, the widow is left dependent on the mercy of a family that isn’t even her family (as such things are understood), and she is very likely to die or to be functionally enslaved. 

So the Romans came up with a kludge.  Widows were, technically, allowed to keep their husband’s property in their own name...but there were a ton of restrictions on what they could do with that property.  The idea was to keep the great estates intact until the women in question either died conveniently or found a way to get married again. 

One of the very few things that propertied widows could do with their money was donate it to temples.  Unimpeachably respectable, right? 

...except that Rome was infested by this up-and-coming, wildly expansionist cult that was desperate for cash and upper-class recognition. 

A whole bunch of the early Roman bishops got their churches off the ground essentially by serving as money-laundering operations for rich widows.  The patrician women in question would “donate” vast fortunes to the Christians, with the explicit understanding that they would continue to control most of the money.  Even so, the churches were getting vastly more support from this system than they were going to get anywhere else.  And some of the widows in question even came to decide that they were actually pious. 

So the Church fathers arrived at the conclusion that wealthy widows were their best friends.  And the rest is, as they say, history.

#history #speculation

[thinkinggreen-blog]

North Korea didn’t fire missile. Hackers Did.

The phone call that was to change my world and could eventually end up changing everyone’s world happened on the 4th August 2017. The day before I’d set up a crowdfunding page to raise money to help the Green Party contest a County By-election. We were looking for £2,000.00, but knew that was unlikely. I was out delivering leaflets when an unknown mobile number began calling. The caller introduced themselves as Jerry Williams and spoke with a soft London accent. He asked me how the campaign was going and said he wanted to make a donation. This was unexpected, but welcome. I informed him of the crowdfunding page and he said he was aware of it. I resisted the urge to ask how much but he volunteered the amount anyway. “Richard I’d like to make a donation of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.” I stopped walking. Was this one of the opposition parties messing around? Was it some kind of scam? Was it one of those radio pranks? Was there any chance this guy could be for real? The chances of it being real were close to zero. The one niggly doubt I had about it being unreal was the amount. A few months before someone had apparently offered the Green Party the same figure to stand down in a Westminster by-election. The offer was refused even though such a sum to a small party like ours was huge. I told Jerry he was very generous and played along a little. I joked that larger amounts are best paid in cash in person. As soon as I said it I realised that it was a stupid thing to say, if this was being recorded that ‘joke’ could be taken out of context. Before I could retract, Jerry said “Exactly what we were thinking. When can we meet?” I said for £250k I could clear my diary. “Do you know Bethnal Green at all?” Jerry asked. I didn’t, but it hardly mattered, I wasn’t being pranked into going to London. We’re about 30 miles north of Birmingham. I told him I couldn’t get there but perhaps I could arrange for someone else to meet him. There was still that tiny part of me that thought ‘if this is genuine and I don’t take it seriously, I’ve let my party down.’ I knew the rules around Party donations, everything over £50 has to be checked to ensure the donor is on the electoral register. Surely the national Party has a donation checking department/person who I could pass this guy on to. I started to outline my understanding of electoral law, if this was a test from the electoral commission, (something I hadn’t previously considered) I wanted to pass it. I asked if I could get someone to ring him from our compliance unit. He said he’ll be in touch and ended the call quite abruptly. As I tried to save the number I rang it by mistake (something I often do). I got the ‘number not in use’ response. I tried the number a few more times and got the same response. I saved the number regardless.

I carried on delivering leaflets as I thought about the call and what I should do. Whilst I was tempted to call our candidate and laugh about it, I wondered if he had set up the prank and maybe I should think of a counter-prank or something first. I resolved to do nothing until Monday but that didn’t stop me thinking about what had just happened.

The next day, (Saturday 5th August 2017), I was parking outside a café in Hednesford; I was ready for breakfast. A car pulled up behind me and two men in their early thirties got out and headed straight for me; one carried a large sports bag, the other extended his hand to me “Richard Jenking”? “Yes” I said, taking his hand. I have an awful memory for faces but was sure I didn’t know either of these men. “Jerry Williams,” said the man whose hand I was shaking “and this is Gregory Fitzpatrick.  We spoke yesterday.” I was a little shocked but pleased to see them as hopefully it would clear-up what was happening. “Is there somewhere we can talk?” asked Gregory in a soft American accent. I invited them for breakfast but they preferred to talk in my car. My car was, as ever, a mess but I made room for Jerry on the back seat and Gregory joined me in the front. “You must be wondering if we are genuine.” said Gregory. I said I was a little curious as to what was going on. Gregory unzipped the sports bag; it was full of money. I was shocked and speechless, rather than resolving what this was all about, the sight of so much money led to a hundred new questions forming instantly in my head, but I couldn’t articulate any of them. Fortunately, Gregory was doing all the talking. “We’re looking for people that share our group’s values and wanted to ask you a few questions.” They then proceeded to ask me in detail my thoughts on nuclear weapons. I’ve been an opponent of nuclear weapons for as long as I can remember. I’d never really campaigned on the issue but for me it was a no-brainer; we needed to rid the world of nuclear weapons as soon as possible. The pair threw various scenarios at me asking under what circumstances I’d ‘press the button’. There are no circumstances in which I’d ever press the button and this seemed to be the answer they wanted.

Then came the bombshell!

“What if we told you that every countries’ nuclear arsenals had been hacked and they were now all under the control of our group?” I responded that I wouldn’t believe him and enquired what group he represented. He replied that his group was called HobelGell  and that yesterday I wouldn’t have believed two men would now be sitting in my car with £250,000.00. He had a point, I’m not sure if I believed it still.

“We’re going to fire an unarmed rocket on the 29th August from North Korea over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean. Then will you believe us?” I said it would certainly help their case, but they shouldn’t be firing rockets just to convince me. They then said they’d be in touch after the 29th August. They returned to their car and drove off - with the money!

There was no contact from the two men for a few weeks. I didn’t tell anyone about my encounter (who’d believe me?) but I did try to find out a bit more about Greg, Jerry and HobelGell. I couldn’t find anything about either of them on Google and the Facebook profiles of all the people with the same name didn’t match the men I’d met. I’d assumed they had given me aliases anyway so didn’t spend too much time trawling through all the possible variations. I kept a close eye on the news; I’m a bit of a news Junkie anyway. A few days later North Korea stated it was going to fire a missile over Guam. The trajectory of such a missile would indeed take it over Hiroshima in Japan. Japan threatened to shoot down anything that crossed its airspace and Trump vowed to unleash ‘fire and fury’ if the US was threatened. Guam is a US colony/protectorate. “Now what do I do?” I thought to myself. Should I tell anyone about my visit and explain that these men are giving me the date for the missile launch and that it’s not really North Korea firing the missile, ‘just’ some hackers who have taken control of the whole world’s nuclear weapons! No-one would ever believe me! I wasn’t warned not to say anything or asked to publicise it. I tried ringing the number I had for Jerry, but it was still disconnected. I really had no idea what I should do. So, I did nothing; except worry.

As you all now know a missile was fired over Japan from North Korea on the 29th August landing in the Pacific. Japan hadn’t tried to shoot it down. Many people were stunned, but none more so than me.

I awaited contact.  I drove down to where we had last met and waited to see if they would reappear. After an hour or so they did. They pulled up alongside me and invited me into their car. I was a little worried, but these guys could apparently control missiles so if they wanted to do me ill, they could with very little effort. I got into their car and Jerry drove, seemingly knowing where he was going. We drove to Castle Ring and met another car with two occupants - one male and one female. They introduced themselves as Wally Hineburger and Mickey van Balkever (presumably short for Michelle). They both had faint Dutch accents and were both in their early thirties. Mickey now took the lead and what she told me was fascinating.

“We’re going to get rid of nuclear weapons” she told me. I was all-ears. “And we’re going to do it by democratising their use, and making them more effective.” “More effective?” I queried, “they can already destroy the world several times over, how could they be more effective and why would you want them more effective if you want to get rid of them?” My head was swimming, “and how do you ‘democratise their use’ hold a referendum before you fire one?”

The answered truly shocked me, and I was getting used to being shocked.

“We’re going to finish off retargeting every weapon and linking them all up so if one missile is fired, they are all fired and the targeting will kill every person on the planet. Anyone pressing the button will be committing suicide. Then we’re going to give everyone the button.”

Not for the first time I was speechless. Mickey continued. “If everyone knows that everyone else can press the button the whole world changes. No longer will larger powers be able to bully smaller countries. Every deployment of troops risks the destruction of the planet, but more than that, no more will governments ignore the needs of the citizenry. If they know that anyone with a grievance can take away everything you hold dear, you have the motivation to end all grievances. You’ll want the homeless homed, the hungry fed, the mentally ill to receive proper treatment. People too will also become friendlier towards their neighbours. Would you risk losing your temper over a minor road accident if the other person could get pissed-off and destroy your world?”

In theory, she made some sense, but we were talking about the placing the power to destroy worlds into the hands of everyone including drunks, crack addicts, the jilted, the sacked, the victims of crime and the mentally unstable. How was this ever going to end well?

Mickey replied that at the moment it was destined to end badly anyway and at least this way the Earth has a chance. She also said there’d be ‘checks and balances’ so the planet wasn’t destroyed on a whim; there’d be a cooling off period between pressing the button and launch to allow people to change their mind. My mind truly boggled, this wasn’t like buying a washing machine over the Internet, this was the difference between life and Hell. I started to explain the numerous flaws with their idea and mid-rant two things occurred; firstly, I now believed 100% that these people controlled the Earth’s future and, secondly, why were they talking to me? A question Wally answered. “We’re all involved in the hack and our skills are irreplaceable. We wanted someone committed to ridding the world of nuclear weapons and…(there was a pause)…expendable. Also, you’re going to be the first person outside the group trusted with the button so we wanted it in safe hands.”

I hardly ever swear, but WHAT THE FUCK??!!

I still didn’t understand how this crazy notion would rid the world of nuclear weapons. Gregory explained. “Firstly, Governments will start cancelling new projects, there is no way their citizens will accept new missiles. Secondly the existing stockpile will start to be reduced. The ‘overkill’ will be seen as wasteful and missile numbers will be reduced to those that are absolutely necessary to kill everyone on the planet. We then expect the number to keep falling by negotiation. Russia will give up half of its weapons in exchange for only half of its territory being destroyed if the someone pressed the button. Eventually, probably after some scares, the lunacy of having a system that can destroy the planet being controlled by everyone will become evident and nuclear weapons days become numbered.”

In my dazed state, this was actually starting to make sense but I needed more time to get my head around it. I was reassured that this was fine, nothing was going to happen overnight. There would be no ‘retaliation’ from America; the president who mocked Obama for imposing and then ignoring redlines is impotent and has no control at all over his own arsenal. At least that was reassuring.

I asked what I was supposed to do now.

“Write your experiences on your blog. No-one will believe you, of course, but one day they will.”

They dropped me back off at my car and I returned home to write up this blog. In my daze, I had forgotten to ask about the money.

#Hackers #north korea #missile #fiction?

[nationallampoon]

Goodbye to the Cancer Moonshot

“Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses.”

~ Zack de la Rocha, “Killing in the Name”

  Meanwhile, in Donald Trump’s White House…

  “You have the target?”

“Have the target. Pussy hat. Sign with black background, rainbow-colored letters. Distance?”

“Two hundred twenty-one yards.”

“Wind?”

“Seven miles per hour, from the west.”

Two clicks are made to adjust the scope on the McMillan TAC-338 sniper rifle. “Got it.”

“Take the shot.”

The protester, wearing a pink “pussy hat” and holding a homemade sign that reads “SUPER-CALLOUS-FRAGILE-RACIST-SEXIST-NAZI-POTUS,” never heard the crack of the round being fired. She was dead on Constitution Avenue, the bullet entered her back and exited through her heart, before anyone around her knew the shot was even fired.

“Got her. She’s down. Mark it in the log.”

“One more and we hit the quota. Check the action in Lafayette Park, there could a good target there and we can call it a day.”

The two sniper towers on the South Lawn, one above the Rose Garden, the other above the tennis courts, have only been operational for five days, but already the amount of protesters picketing the White House has dropped by eighty percent.

As a dozen fellow protesters scream in horror, frantically dialing 911 on their smartphones, a team of Trump private security personnel emerges onto the scene. The four man squad grabs the dead protester and flops the corpse into a gold-plated wheelbarrow. One of the men pushes the golden wheelbarrow up a ramp into the back of a Carmor Navigator armored transport vehicle. The back door closes, the Navigator drops three tear gas containers onto the street, and the White House cleanup crew screeches away from the legal-for-the-White-House-crime-scene with a cloud of burnt tire smoke left behind mixing with the tear gas.

In the Oval Office, the First Family has been summoned to get ready for the photo op coinciding with a big announcement. A Secret Service agent is stationed outside the Oval. When Don Jr. and Eric walk past, the agent says into the microphone just inside his sleeve, “Tell Bird’s Nest that Sonny and Fredo are coming in.”

Three minutes later, Melania and Barron come down the hallway. Again, into the microphone in his sleeve, the Secret Service agent says, “Trophy and Joffrey are entering the Oval.”

Two minutes after that, Ivanka appears and passes the Secret Service agent. “Myrrha is entering.”

President Trump surveys the large group assembled. There’s photographers from the Associated Press, Reuters, and InfoWars in the room. A small television crew is setting up Klieg lights. Trump says, “Okay, is this everybody? Is Tanya coming?”

There’s confusion until Reince Preibus snaps his fingers in realization and asks “Do you mean Tiffany, Mr. President?”

“Right, that’s it. Tiffany. Great girl. Is she coming?”

“Tiffany is in Barbados, daddy,” Ivanka says.

Trump says loudly to anyone listening in the room, “You know, Tiffany, she’s a great girl, like I said, great girl, tremendous, but she just doesn’t have the tits to compete with Ivanka.”

An awkward and uncomfortable silence settles into the Oval Office.

“Okay,” Trump says, “should we do this? Let’s sign this fucker.”

The bill getting Trump’s cartoonish Sharpie signature this morning is the Trump Hair Restoration Act of 2017. All of the funding that was earmarked for Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot program is being reallocated to solve the “global crisis of male pattern baldness and the total bummer of thinning, formally-beautiful and powerful hair.”

Same as the Cancer Moonshot, the budget is not being disclosed for the Trump Hair Restoration Act, but it’s believed the number is roughly $755 million. About the same amount previously going to Biden’s lifetime achievement legislation. Hidden in the bill, with complicated language and subterfuge, was funding for extravagant gifts for the Trump children. For Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, three 24-carat gold coffins for their daily naps. At $53,000 bucks a pop, it is going to be a luxurious way to rest and recharge for the rest of the day. For Barron, his own private indoor waterpark on the North Lawn. And for Tiffany, a $125 dollar gift card to zappos.com.

The golden nap coffins are custom-made to act as a hyperbaric chamber to prolong youthfulness and longevity. Also included, built into the taffeta lining, are state of the art speakers to listen to lullabies as the Trump children have a kip. Ivanka likes to listen to the Kronos Quartet album Black Angels. While Don Jr. and Eric are partial to the vinyl recording of Jim Jones preaching and narrating the Jonestown mass suicide of nine hundred people.

Another minor clause of the Hair Restoration Act is that “codeword classified” status is given to the details of how Trump’s weird, sweeping, folding hairdo is cut and styled. This guarantees prevention of a leak to the “very dishonest media” about how elaborate Trump’s hair process is. At the time of this writing, I — your intrepid White House correspondent — was unable to confirm rumors that a repurposed cotton candy machine is involved in the first stage of shaping the President’s hair.

After the photo op signing Trump Hair Restoration Act of 2017 into law, White House senior staff is planning on the President making a statement from behind the Resolute desk to be carried live on all major television networks, all the news channels, and CMT. Press Secretary Sean Spicer uses duct tape to affix a new plaque on the President’s historic desk. The sign reads “The Trump White House, brought to you by PornHub and Aqua Net!” Trump was pleased to secure “such great and classy sponsorship.”

But before Trump can give the statement, Steve Bannon needs to finish writing it. “Is Steve here?” Trump asks. “Where is he? Is the statement ready?”

Steve Bannon sees and hears Trump ask the question on one of the huge flatscreen monitors in his basement office. Security cameras and listening devices are in every nook and cranny of the White House that Bannon monitors like a pit boss at the Caesar’s Palace. A control panel with various buttons, touch pads, and joysticks is manipulated with the precision of Eric Clapton playing a Stratocaster.

The Senior Advisor, who has been orchestrating every move of Trump’s White House down to the smallest minutia, is in the middle of his morning rituals as he prepares for the day ahead.

Each morning at 7:45, Bannon arrives at the White House. He lumbers past the West Wing offices of his coworkers, and descends a flight of stairs to the dank basement. Since Bannon moved into that office, White House janitorial staff has been hanging dozens of pine tree air fresheners along the hallway in an effort to mask the harsh, acrid smell of sulfur that has settled in. Once in his office, Bannon begins his daily routine. First the coffee machine is flipped on, then a fresh bottle of Rebel Yell bourbon is twisted open. Both the full pot of coffee and the entire bottle of Rebel Yell will be consumed before noon. The beverages are often mixed together.

From a box the size of a microwave oven, Bannon takes out a seven inch tall wooden crucifix that was made in China. That whole box is full of the crosses. Bannon dips the cross in his tumbler of Rebel Yell, stands it on a his desk, and lights the cross on fire with a vintage swastika-emblazoned Zippo. Blue flames dance off the crucifix as the bourbon burns off. Bannon takes a sip of coffee, a gulp of Rebel Yell, and inhales the vapors coming off the burning cross, exhaling the smoke like a Marlboro red.

On the ceiling of Bannon’s basement office, stalactites have begun forming, hanging like grey icicles, dirty water leaking from the White House plumbing dripping off the points, adding to the dampness of the room. The family of Mexican long-nosed bats that had moved in shortly after Inauguration Day continue to occupy the Northeast corner. The bats offer occasional biting commentary, heckling Bannon about how much Rebel Yell he has poured down his gullet. They like to offer roast-style jokes about Nazi officers of World War II. Hitler’s one testicle and micropenis are favorite topics.

Having finished the draft of the President’s remarks, Bannon gives them to one of the bats, who flaps his way through the White House to deliver them to the Oval Office.

Back in the Oval, Reince Preibus takes the rolled final draft of the Trump Hair Restoration Act announcement speech from the bat’s fanged mouth. Preibus says, “Steve sent up the final remarks. He says Alex Jones insisted on some language being added.”

“Great, let’s hear it, what did Alex add?” the President asks.

“The globalists seek to continue covertly sneaking in and implementing Aleister Crowley-inspired occult Satanism into our schools and government. We won’t allow it. We will not allow a police state. We will not allow George Soros, the demonic Bilderberg thugs, and the New World Order scum to continue the reprogramming of a patriotic republic. The wicked globalists poison our water with fluoride, they poison the vaccines, they poison the food, to turn us into mindless slugs to control us. This is revolution! This is 1776 all over again! We know what you’re doing, and we’re coming for you!”

“Tremendous language. That guy gets it. And so true. So true. Put it in the prompter.”

President Trump sits down at the Resolute desk. The red light on the television camera illuminates. “My fellow Americans, good evening from the Oval Office, brought to you by our new sponsors PornHub and Aqua Net hair spray. Tonight we are announcing very, very exciting new legislation, the Trump Hair Restoration Act. We all know cancer was never going to be cured, stupid to try it, but male pattern baldness is a battle we can win if we start to fight now. That is why we are canceling the weak and soft Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot program and putting that money towards finally curing baldness forever.”

In her West Wing office, Kellyanne Conway watches Trump’s entire fifteen minute announcement. The lights are all turned off. And she sobs as she eats an entire can of strawberry cake frosting, scooping it with her fingers.

Illustration by Mikey B. Martinez

Read Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 |

Goodbye to the Cancer Moonshot was originally published on National Lampoon | The Humor Magazine Est 1970

#kellyanne conway #steve bannon #Trump #white house