The Concrete Tomb of Hradzka

Newtown: a tactical assessment

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:01:03 GMT

I'm going to talk about the Newtown, Connecticut murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in two posts. This is the first one. In this one, I'll talk about the murders themselves, from a tactical viewpoint. Another time, I'll talk about the things people are proposing we do about them. For now, though, the important thing is to talk about tactics. I write about mass shootings from a tactical standpoint, because that's a crucial operational level for those who, God forbid, find themselves at the scene of a murderous attack.

In the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary, there are two sets of tactics to consider: the attacker's, and the defenders'. I'm going to spend much more time on the latter than on the former, because from a tactical view the perpetrator did not do anything complicated or intelligent. That is not necessarily a function of the fact that the late Newtown perp was reportedly gravely mentally ill. The surviving Aurora perp is, by all reports, gravely mentally ill, but he is also a very, very intelligent dude, and his murder operation was extremely well-planned. That the bomb trap at the Aurora perp's apartment didn't get tripped is a miracle, or we'd have been talking about way more dead people there. By contrast, the Newtown perp did not do anything particularly clever. He broke in and made his way through the school shooting people, mostly children. The police showed up twenty minutes later; on seeing their approach, the perpetrator committed suicide.

The murders were committed using a Bushmaster AR-15, in .223; he also carried two handguns, reportedly a 10mm Glock and a 9mm SIG Sauer, but used only the Glock, and only on himself. Another long gun, a shotgun, was left in his car. The firearms belonged to the perp's mother, who apparently had been preparing to place the perpetrator in a mental institution. He murdered her before his killing spree; I don't know which firearm he used for that. Police reported that he had attempted to buy a firearm before, but had been turned down in a background check. It's unclear why he was a prohibited person -- age, perhaps. So he stole the guns from his mother. It's not clear how, or if, the weapons were secured, but you'd think that if they weren't then stealing one would have been the first thing that he did, and he wouldn't have tried to buy his own gun at all. There's more to learn here.

Much has been made of the perpetrator's use of the AR-15, and a lot of people are saying that it was the reason for the high body count; this is the rationale behind Senator Feinstein's proposal of a new "assault weapons" ban. My review of previous mass shootings suggests that the major factors affecting body count are not so much armaments as tactics. It's not about what they're using as much as it is how they're using it and who the intended victims are.

All else being equal, IMHO the single biggest determinant of fatalities in a mass shooting seems to be whether the perpetrator shoots victims multiple times. Perpetrators who shoot a victim once and move on can leave a surprising number of survivors. Perpetrators shooting victims who are already down and wounded max out the body count. That's what the Newtown perp did. It's what the VA Tech perp did, too, and he didn't have an AR-15. He had two pistols, one of which was in .22LR.

The other, probably even more crucial, reason that the body count was so high at Newtown was victim selection: who they are, where they are found, how they are arrayed in space, what resources are available to them.The perpetrator selected a target population whose movement was restricted (the classrooms apparently each had one exit, though some had bathrooms) and who fell into two groups: 1) a large number of people who were too physically and mentally immature to mount a defense 2) a smaller number of physically and mentally mature people whose capacity to react was going to mostly be taken up with taking care of group #1. In the face of these details, it is not surprising that the body count was so high. The surprise, given the vulnerability of the victims and the fact that police response took around fifteen minutes, is that the body count was not much higher.

It could have been. So why wasn't it?

For the answer to that question, we have to look at the defensive tactics employed. The defenders at Sandy Hook met with varying levels of success. Let's look at what they did, and see what worked and what didn't. This is not a criticism of them, but if we're going to practice security drills we should make sure they're good ones, and it's important to learn lessons from what has gone before.

Bear in mind the restrictions of the scenario and of the potential victims. There were not a lot of strong options here. There are really only three responses to an attempted mass killing: run away, hide, or jump the gunman. By running away, I mean "get outside of the kill zone." Hard to do in a school, given that classrooms have one exit and that opens onto a central hallway. Hiding leaves you within the kill zone, ideally in a secure location. This is what most of the survivors did. Some of them hid well. Others were lucky.

There is also the possibility of attack. More on that in a moment.

The first defense was the locked front door. One thing that's often overlooked is that Sandy Hook had a security strategy. At 9:30 AM, the school's doors were locked from the inside. That was a good step. If it had worked, the interior of the school would have been rendered a secure zone. It didn't work, because the perpetrator shot his way in. Note that he did not shoot his way through the door. Shooting a door or a lock open is more for the movies than for real life; typically, cops or soldiers breaching a door with a firearm will use a shotgun with slug rounds, not a rifle, and they will shoot in the area of the bolt, not on the lock itself. This guy tried it with padlocks, and his results give you a pretty good idea. The perp had a shotgun, but he had left it in the car. There was a glass window beside the door. He shot that, reached in, and opened the door from the inside. (Lesson #1: *do not put windows beside secure doors.* People willing to kill do not shy at breaking a window.)

Dawn Hochsprung, the principal, and Mary Sherlach, the school psychologist, left a faculty meeting to investigate. By some reports, they chose strategy #3 and tried to jump the gunman. I don't know if that's correct or not; Natalie Hammond, the vice-principal, was in the meeting room and survived, but she has not yet given a public interview. If they did attack, it was a brave thing to try. They didn't know what they would be facing; the perpetrator knew exactly what he could expect. These defenders left an area under their control and entered an area under the perpetrator's control. He was ready for them. (Lesson #2: *when possible, control circumstances of an attack.* It is entirely understandable why they felt they could not retreat to strike on better ground, if they had time to consider such an action.)

The perpetrator tried to get in the meeting room, but Hammond barred the door. He fired through the door, wounding her. He still could not get the door open, so continued to a first-grade classroom, where he killed substitute teacher Lauren Rousseau and all students except one girl. (That girl played dead, and was *very* lucky.)

Rousseau's classroom saw no defensive action. Either they were completely surprised, or were frozen in shock, or lacked options available to other classrooms. They huddled together and were shot. Other teachers stood in front of their students, and were shot, along with the students. First-grade teacher Victoria Leigh Soto hid her students in closets and cupboards and confronted the perpetrator alone. Several students could not stand to remain in hiding and tried to make a break for it; they were shot and killed, as was Soto, but other students who remained hidden survived. Soto's tactics -- and the time the first killings gave her to conceive and act on them -- made a difference. Fourteen children were murdered in Rousseau's classroom; six died in Soto's. (Lesson #3: *Tactics matter, but if they're not ingrained people will need time to create or adapt them.*)

The perpetrator was still roaming, but that's where the killing stopped. Everyone was hiding and blocking the killer's path to them, unless they were escaping the building, or running around alerting others to the killing and warning them to stay hidden or evacuate. A nurse and a secretary hid in a closet. Two librarians hid children in a secure area the school used in lockdown drills -- yes, the school had lockdown drills -- but discovered the secure area's door didn't lock, so they went into a storage room and barricaded the door. Another first-grade teacher took her students into a bathroom, and barricaded the door. A music teacher went into a supply closet with her students, and barricaded the door. The perpetrator banged on that door to no avail. And that's where things stayed. When the perpetrator saw police coming, he committed suicide using the 10mm pistol.

All told, the barricades probably saved more than thirty children's lives.

Here's my big takeaway from Sandy Hook: if you can't get out of the killing zone, and you don't have weapons with which to engage the perpetrator, *barricading yourself into a secure area works.* It worked pretty well at Virginia Tech -- at least one classroom kept the perpetrator completely out there -- and though the horrific body count in that first classroom hides it, given that most of the defenders were children the barricading tactic worked *amazingly* well at Sandy Hook. Circumstances pretty much dictated a turtling response, and after the shock and horror of the first classroom the defenders did remarkably well. It helped that they were security-minded and had had lockdown drills. Dawn Hochsprung deserves a lot of credit for that. If not for that glass window next to the locked front door, the perpetrator would have been stuck outside. The bad news: there was a glass window that offered easy breaking and access, and once the outer perimeter was breached the defenders had to improvise.

There have been a lot of suggestions for policy in the wake of this massacre. I'll talk more about this later, but one thing does readily spring to mind that does not involve guns at all: strong, securable, classroom doors that can be locked or (if not) open inward and can be barricaded could save lives in a lockdown situation. (Fire code might have something to say about the latter -- outward opening might be required.) In a fire, you want people out of the building quickly; in a mass shooting, main thoroughfares in the building are dangerous, and you want people to be clear and safe until the perpetrator is downed. Going to a central location for a central lockdown takes time and poses hazards when there is an active threat; being able to turn a classroom into a secure location by closing a door is faster.

One additional note: lunatic theories aside, there may yet be more to the story, as police requested and were granted sealing of the case's search warrants for an additional 90 days. Given that the perpetrator is dead, I'm curious as to why. It could just be tamping down on the media circus, or they might think someone had known the perpetrator was planning something.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

dear Yuletide author

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:44:19 GMT

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Here's the part I type every year:

I'm pretty much a genfic guy. Light romance is okay, especially if it's funny, but for the most part I'm the farthest thing possible from a relationshipper. I don't want characters to get smooshed together; I want to watch them interact. I'm not a big fan of pure romance, and I really don't want porn. My big thing is that I like seeing the characters relate as friends. This applies even if they're in a romantic relationship -- grand falling-in-love stuff bores me, particularly if it's emotionally fraught, but the quiet day-to-day of characters doing things puts a smile on my face. I love plot, but I definitely don't mind lightly plotted fic if it's fun to read.

These are the fandoms I'm requesting this year:

1) No One Survives - NEKROGOBKLIKON (music video)

Nekrogoblikon is a metal band that does songs about Goblins. And also bears. When they teamed up with filmmaker Brandon Dermer to make a music video for their song "No One Survives," the result turned out to be a *brilliant* music video. It's an absolutely marvelous short film with effective characterization, development, and storytelling. I'll sit down later and make a long post about how great it is and why I think it's so magnificent, but in the meantime, please watch this:

What I would like is a story in which Goblin comes to appreciate that his actions at the climax of the video were not for Kayden, but for himself, and that rather than an outrage that could not be borne what he saw was an *excuse.* I do not think that this should be cause for Goblin's self-hate or recrimination, and I really do not want Goblin to question himself and repent. What I want is a story about someone realizing that the moment that made him feel the happiest he has ever felt in his life was not heroic, not honorable, not justified, but a deliberate and evil act *about which he continues to feel good.* Build something around that. Preferably avoiding the necessary legal fallout -- not through handwaving, ideally, but because there is some kind of an out for Goblin. (Not goblins as a species; Goblin in the video represents not minority persecution but sidelined masculinity, and it would be easy to get offensive very fast by getting away from that.)

2) Fraggle Rock.

Boober and Sprocket team up to accomplish a mutual goal, as Wembley helps them out. Red is skeptical of the whole affair, but pitches in when she's needed. And Travelling Matt sends a surprisingly relevant postcard.

(Short explanation: my girlfriend and are deeply fond of FRAGGLE ROCK. Sprocket is my favorite Muppet ever. My girlfriend is frequently Wembley. Boober is, essentially, me. So if you decide to write me a Fraggle Rock story, I'd love all three of 'em being front and center. If you haven't seen FRAGGLE ROCK, it's on streaming Netflix if you have that.)

3) Sailor Steve Costigan Stories - Robert E. Howard

Steve Costigan is my favorite REH creation. More than Conan, more than Kull, Steve Costigan *lives* for me. He's a rough-and-tumble sailor who makes his way around the world having prizefights and getting roped up into adventure. The characterization is delightful, the fight gimmicks are superb, and Costigan himself makes for a great hero. I would love a straight-up Steve Costigan story in which Steve gets roped into a bizarre prizefight.

You can download a bunch of Steve Costigan stories here.

4) HOLMES ON HOMES RPF

HOLMES ON HOMES is one of my guilty pleasures: it's the rare home improvement show that I actually enjoy. In keeping with the premise that Mike invariably finds disaster on top of disaster, I'd enjoy a story in which Mike Holmes, charged with rehabbing a home, finds a Cthulhu-esque set-up designed to funnel dark energies from another universe.

Thanks so much!

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

and yeah...

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 08:23:33 GMT

I'm still around. Just really busy.

Apparently everybody is on tumblr now? Is that where fandom happens?

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

belated Aurora post

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 08:06:10 GMT

At the midnight premiere of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES in Aurora, Colorado, a theater patron exited the theater through the emergency door and went to his car, where he equipped himself in tactical gear that included a gas mask, helmet, and reportedly body armor. (I have not seen detailed citations on the body armor, though, and would really appreciate a link to manufacturer and level if anyone has one, as well as a transcript of the original source for this particular report. I have seen the receipt for the perp's tac-vest, which cost a hundred and six bucks, wasn't bulletproof, and is of the sort used for carrying mags. I've also seen a picture of what could be a ballistic vest lying on the ground in an AP photograph; if anything, it's probably a IIA, which is the lowest form of body armor, so that might explain why the perp surrendered when cops showed up with rifles -- even a pistol with sufficient velocity would defeat IIA body armor, and the blunt force trauma from being shot by something that couldn't penetrate would be pretty painful. Again, though, I've seen no print confirmation of this anywhere, and it's also possible the perp surrendered just out of curiosity, or in a lucid moment.) The perpetrator launched two gas bombs and then opened fire with a Colt AR-15 that had a 100-round drum mag attached. When the rifle (or, more likely, the drum mag) jammed, he went to other weapons: a .40 Glock and a shotgun. The perpetrator murdered twelve people and wounded fifty-eight.

Police were on scene very quickly. The perpetrator, though apparently well-prepared for a shootout, surrendered, and let it drop to police that there were bombs in his apartment. He wasn't kidding. The cops evacuated the surrounding buildings and spent a long time figuring out how to even get inside, given that the place was thoroughly booby-trapped. The eventual police entry involved a couple of controlled detonations.

Let me emphasize this first: this was a very, very, VERY well-planned shooting. That is noteworthy, because most spree killers are emotionally motivated and do not think about tactics at all. They may fantasize about their killing for long periods beforehand, they may glom onto previous mass shooters, but what they almost never do is look at previous mass shootings and think about what worked and what didn't. An Australian forensic psychologist has a different take than mine; I would disagree with him about how well mass shootings are planned, because I think there is a distinction between fantasizing and planning; very few of them put any thought into tactics beyond producing a gun and blazing away. (This is what makes Anders Breivik, the Norwegian perpetrator, so scary and so important: he not only thought about it, he *told others how to do exactly what he did.* It's an amazing relief that no one has yet taken Breivik up on it.) I would also disagree on the Australian's remedies, which include 1) massive gun control and 2) monitoring what internet sites people visit. (Of course, he admits, lots of *innocent* people will get caught up in those sweeps, and the trick is "separating the sheep from the goats.")

I'm still trying to figure out to what degree the perpetrator studied other shootings, because (on the one hand) he is clearly influenced by Anders Breivik even as (on the other) Breivik did a ton of stuff smarter and better than this guy, so I honestly don't know if he read Breivik's manual or not. But the shooter was smart and well-equipped, and (more importantly) identified victims with horrifying effectiveness. A movie theater on premiere night contains a dense crowd of people who are deep in Condition White -- i.e., completely unaware of their surroundings and any hazards -- because they are focused intently on the film and not on their immediate surroundings. Moreover, their movement is restricted by the narrow aisles and the seats, being padding and plastic, do not provide cover. The theater prohibited the carrying of firearms; the perpetrator paid about as much attention to that as you'd expect.

The initial news was all over the map. This is common to mass shootings, but Aurora in particular was been unusual. There were the usual rumors of multiple shooters, which turned out to be bunk. (I'm pretty close to advancing Hines's Rule of Mass Shootings: *there is only ever one shooter.*) But the motivation was harder to come across. In my opinion, mass shootings are either ideological or emotional; ideological shooters have a cause and plan to kill a large number of people to serve it or to draw attention to it, while emotional shooters are after catharsis and power, and they invariably find it in a place that has personal significance to them. Dr. Amy Bishop, denied tenure, murdered people in her faculty meeting. Jiverly Wong had issues with folks at the citizenship center; that's where he did his shooting. George Sodini was deeply fucked up in his attitudes towards women and despaired of ever not being alone, so he shot up the gym he worked out at, where he saw unattainable women and envied couples. Seung-Hui Cho targeted his college campus. And so on. Even among people who are mentally ill or deeply unstable -- which reports say Wong was, and which Sodini's blog would indicate, and which Cho *definitely* was -- there is a tendency to target the familiar. But people don't have deep ties to movie theaters, unless they work there, and workplace shootings tend to target co-workers. Too many were dead for a fight breaking out. So my own immediate reaction to the shooting was that it had to be ideological: it was carefully planned, intelligently staged, and (of particular importance) the perpetrator had no evident ties to the place of the killing.

And I was wrong. It's looking more and more like the perpetrator, James Holmes, is gravely mentally ill. I suspect the victims suing the movie theater should instead be suing the university Holmes attended, because it appears the university knew something was deeply and gravely wrong, and even suspected Holmes was dangerous to others. His tie to the theater seems to have been an obsession with Batman. Even if Holmes was inspired by Breivik, he would not appear to share any ideological comparison. Whether he is legally culpable for his crimes or not, Holmes probably will need serious medical help coupled with lifelong supervision.

I've recently read Clayton Cramer's MY BROTHER RON, which is self-published because he couldn't find anyone to publish it. It's an odd book, but an interesting one, a combination of personal memoir and legal history, and that neither-fish-nor-fowl combination is probably what doomed it. Cramer, a historian, software engineer, and gun nut, is best known for his writings on the history of firearms laws in America, and he's *better* about writing law, but emotionally he couldn't separate the two. Cramer's brother Ron is schizophrenic, and in the book Cramer alternates chapters between 1) how America has dealt with the public health problem of the severely mentally ill throughout history and 2) how Cramer's family dealt with his brother's severe mental illness, and the difficulties they faced in compelling Ron's treatment. Cramer deals with the tension between public health and civil liberty, and brings up some very interesting things along the way. (Example: did you know that threats of violence against neurosurgeons played a role in the ending of lobotomies as medical treatment? I had not.) The issue is not only one of how to pay for care; it's one of enforcing it, because while most people who suffer from a mental illness are perfectly capable of monitoring themselves, there are a lot of folks who aren't, and we need to figure out how to help them, too, because as Cramer points out untreated mental illness has contributed quite a lot to our high imprisonment statistics and our homelessness problem.

A side note, about reactions to the news: as the news was coming out, I did a quick google search and found a Tea Party Patriot page for a James Holmes in Aurora, but also a MyLife page for James Holmes in Aurora who was 30. The press was reporting the perp was in his early twenties (he turned out to be 24), so I commented on Twitter that either the news had the age wrong or there was more than one James Holmes in and around Aurora, Colorado. It turned out that I was far more cautious than Brian Ross and George Stephanopoulous of ABC News, because Ross mentioned the Tea Party guy on live TV, and Stephanopoulous went along with it. And they weren't alone. A lot of people on the left had been merrily pointing out that Bane, the chief villain of the movie, had a name that sounded like Bain Capital; Rush Limbaugh had even griped about it (prompting utter puzzlement on the part of Bane's creator Chuck Dixon, a staunch conservative). Once the shooting occurred, there were a lot of people publicly wondering if a conservative shooter was protesting the movie by murdering people.

This is not the first time this kind of jumping the gun (so to speak) has happened. Gabriel Malor noted a bunch of these, ranging from the census-taker in Kentucky who'd committed suicide and staged the scene to look like a killing for life insurance reasons, to the guy who'd flown his plane into an IRS building and left a suicide note quoting the Communist Manifesto, to the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords. All of those and more were blamed on conservative rhetoric, and none of them had anything to do with it. It is a little disturbing, not just that people are ready and eager for that story, but how easy it is to push it.

The good news is that the press doesn't admit mistakes much, but does learn; it has gotten more cautious since the Giffords shooting. The bad news is that the media still reports complete bullshit and speculation (see: two shooters). In any breaking news event, information changes lots and quickly. That's doubly true of mass shootings.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

what I really did like about THE AVENGERS

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 17:56:11 GMT

I did not expect that I would come out of it with the two most interesting characters being Hulk and Black Widow. Black Widow got a lot of action and important stuff to do, but for me the most interesting thing was that the character worked 1) *as a spy* and 2) as a person with believable human reactions. I think there were points where Johansson played it a little too remote, but I liked her performance quite well overall, and I was amazed at how much I liked the friendship between Black Widow and Hawkeye. (It really hit the Modesty-Blaise-and-Willie-Garvin button, which series I have only lately read all the way through and OH MY GOD is it ever awesome.)

And Hulk -- ) look, the Hulk is the Marvel superhero I always identified with growing up, and still do, so I was predisposed to like Hulk. But Mark Ruffalo really nailed Banner, better than anyone since Bill Bixby. And this may seem strange, but you know something shallow that I really liked? *Mark Ruffalo looks like a grown-ass man.* He's not a pretty plastic boy; he's good looking, but he's got a very masculine face. And Whedon writes the part like a Banner's a grown-ass man, too: Banner isn't macho, he's gentle, but he doesn't glorify his emotions, either: he understands them, and accepts them, and learns to deal with them. And that's terrific. (I wonder, actually, if Whedon's sister-in-law Maurissa Tancharoen's ongoing battle with lupus informed the writing of the Hulk -- Banner's confession that he's *always* angry strikes me as being *very* true to chronic illness, and Tancharoen's blogging of her condition has not skimped on her anger.)

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

Captain America (and Thor) gen recs and fanart request

Sat, 26 May 2012 07:05:25 GMT

OK, y'all, here is the situation: 14-year-old girl, longtime friend of the family and of me, is totally into THE AVENGERS and *especially* into Captain America. She likes that he's polite, old-fashioned, and a butt-kicker, and she has apologetically confessed to even liking Cap's hair, which notion she was sure that I would find weird and incomprehensible. She finds Cap inspiring enough to try writing a couple of poems about him. She draws, and has asked me to choose a good picture of Captain America so she can try to draw from it, though she specifically requested that it not be a picture of Cap shirtless.

As you may be able to tell, she's at a point where there are vague stirrings but she is not particularly comfortable with sex. That's all fine. My problem is that she is a 14-year-old girl, and I am a grown-ass man, and Captain America fanfic (like AVENGERS fanfic in general) is full of porn. Even if she were into that, it would be horrifyingly inappropriate for me to send her recs of it (for reference: see again "*14-year-old girl*" and "*grown-ass man*"). The Pit of Voles doesn't stock porn, but the AVENGERS recs I've seen have all been of fic on LJ, DW, or AO3, and I don't have time to weed through the dross at FF.net to find good stories, so that doesn't work. (EDIT: I was considering bowdlerizing a few stories, but no, that really wouldn't work, either. I'm going through AO3 with character and content filters on ATM.)

So I would be very grateful if anyone could please pass on some gen or at least non-pornographic Captain America recs, fanart included.

Also, I'm not as close to her 16-year-old sister (oddly, given that the 16-year-old and I have *remarkably* similar personalities, we mainly communicate through the 14-year-old), but can report that she is into Thor, so if anybody has some extra for Thor that'd be well appreciated too.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

question: which looks worse? ELEMENTARY, or the new BEAUTY AND THE BEAST?

Fri, 18 May 2012 15:21:23 GMT

I've been cautiously curious about ELEMENTARY, the American version of a present-day Sherlock Holmes, starring Johnny Lee Miller as Holmes and Lucy Liu as Watson. I'll watch Liu in almost anything, but my first reaction to her being cast as Watson was that she would make a far better Holmes because Liu is great as chilly, remote, and cruel, but her screen persona doesn't do warm and sympathetic. She's magnetic, and you love *watching* her characters, but you don't love her characters as people very often. But I figured I'd tune in to watch her, anyway.

Then I saw the preview trailer. It's ghastly.

What's interesting about this is that we're getting farther and farther away from the concept of the key ingredients of Sherlock Holmes and Watson as characters. It's not the Watson genderswap; it's the characterizations are very much a second-generation lift. ELEMENTARY isn't an updating of Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes at all. It's a new take on Robert Downey Jr.'s Holmes, and an Americanization of Moffat's Holmes. The writers seem not to have thought very much about Sherlock Holmes as a concept at all.

At one point, for example, Holmes deduces that a victim gave the perpetrator a drink because the volume of broken glass on the floor suggests two glasses. That is not an interesting deduction. There is no story to it. It comes off, in short, like stupid people trying to write someone smart.

The only bit where Miller comes off well is when he is talking to a woman who claims to have been strangled, and plays hardball in the conversation. It's the only thing that gives a sense of his Holmes's oddness, and even that basically a straight lift from Moffat's SHERLOCK, rather than a Conan Doyle Holmes.

I thought that was pretty bad. Then I ran across the remake of the Hamilton/Perlman BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Folks, that was a great show. Romantic, beautifully acted, and the leads managed to keep a simple, profound feeling in what could easily have degenerated into schmaltz. The writing team was solid, but it was the casting that *made* that show. The show was emotional, literate, and had a heart and sense of wonder to it that made you love it even when it was ridiculous. Hamilton's Catherine Chandler was an attorney who was abducted and slashed by criminals who had mistaken her for someone else they had meant to intimidate. Near death, she was rescued and nursed back to health by Vincent, a gentle, book-loving giant, who lived with his father and friends in a secret city below New York, and whose appearance was so horrific (courtesy of a *brilliant* make-up design by Rick Baker) that he could never hope to lead a normal life or even pass for human. Catherine and Vincent lived in completely different worlds and could never hope to bridge the gap, but their love of each other, good books, classical music, and a growing psychic connection made sure they were never far apart. I am the world's biggest anti-shipper, guys, but I gotta tell you it was a great romance and a great show.

(Until it got screwed over and retooled by circumstances and network, but hey, I loved it.)

Here is a publicity still of Hamilton and Perlman in costume, and damned if it doesn't make you go, "Holy crap, that is unique, I want to take a look at that show."

The remake stars SMALLVILLE's Kristin Kreuk and some pretty plastic boy (ETA: *looks up* er, Jay Ryan, from TERRA NOVA). Here they are, in character:

Oh, shit. HE'S GOT A SCAR. ON HIS CHEEK.

Here's the logline for the Kreuk version:

Detective Catherine Chandler is a smart, no-nonsense homicide detective. Several years earlier, Catherine witnessed the murder of her mother at the hands of two gunmen. Catherine would have been killed too, but someone – or something – saved her. No one has ever believed her, but she knows it wasn’t an animal that attacked the assassins…it was human. Years have passed, and Catherine is a strong, confident, capable police officer, working alongside her equally talented partner, Tess. While investigating a murder, Catherine discovers a clue that leads her to a handsome doctor named Vincent Keller, who was reportedly killed by enemy fire while serving in Afghanistan in 2002. Catherine learns that Vincent is actually still alive and that it was he who saved her many years before. For mysterious reasons that have forced him to live outside of traditional society, Vincent has been in hiding for the past 10 years to guard his secret – when he is enraged, he becomes a terrifying beast, unable to control his super-strength and heightened senses. Catherine agrees to protect his identity in return for any insight he may have into her mother’s murder. Thus begins a complex relationship between Catherine and Vincent, who are powerfully drawn to each other yet understand that their connection is extremely dangerous for both of them.

Everything that made the original awesome is gone. Wow. I mean, I would expect differences, absolutely, and plenty of updating. But it's at the point where I don't even understand why they're billing it as a remake at all.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

possibly of interest

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:27:45 GMT

The upcoming interactive web sitcom DIRTY WORK, about three young crime scene cleaners, looks funny and quite well-budgeted. Potentially of interest to folks is that one of the three regulars, Michelle, is a transwoman and is played by a transwoman actress (Jamie Clayton). Not to overshadow the other characters or the rest of the cast, but that's pretty noteworthy; I'm trying to remember the last trans regular character I've seen on any continuing show, and the only one that comes to mind is Officer Brubaker from the 1986 sitcom THE LAST PRECINCT. Brubaker, played by actress Randi Brooks, was a transwoman whose transition was played mainly for awkwardness (she wasn't entirely out to everyone, especially those from her past) and for cheap jokes ("she used to be a guy and now she's A HOT CHICK! That's FUNNY!").

I don't know about the interactive gimmicks they're pushing for DIRTY WORK (this Ain't It Cool article goes into a little detail on that; I'm skeptical on how interesting or how much fun they'll be), but it seems like an offbeat show that's worth a look.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

female athletic poses

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:25:11 GMT

I've thought for a while that scanty female clothing in comics isn't nearly as much of a problem as the porntastic posing. There are male superheroes who wear scanty clothing, but the way they're posed is athletic or dynamic or casual, whereas the women are invariably lightboxed out of Maxim or some such. (Also, as I've mentioned in a post I can't find now, it's interesting to note that the male characters who go about scantily dressed are monstrous (Hulk, Thing), or they look weirdly alien (Hawkman, Martian Manhunter), or they're from Somewhere Else Where They Dress Funny (Namor, Hawkman sometimes, Thor). I figure that this ties into the cultural issue that women can show more skin in everyday life without getting laughed at than can men, so the "here and now" male characters show little skin compared to the freaky dudes or the dudes from Somewhere Else. Meanwhile, male artists who like hot women amp that up to eleven. It's amazing how much better women were drawn before the sexual revolution.)

I've mentioned on Twitter that if I were a superhero comic artist in search of reference, I would *screencap the shit* out of female athletes at the Olympics. Not just for the different body types and emphasis on athletic over hot, but for the action poses. Case in point: I just ran across this 1988 Steve Landis picture of Florence Griffith Joyner, and I've seen a lot of "women crouched over" drawings in comics, but they invariably tend toward the sexy and FloJo is in a pure action pose. It's a seriously great picture; somebody should photoshop it so she's wearing a Wonder Woman costume.

(This is me passively-aggressively linking it so somebody can do that.)

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

the Breivik trial

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:31:50 GMT

Anders Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011, has gone on trial. The information that'll come out as the case is presented will be interesting, but at the moment I'm mildly horrified at the ineptitude of the press covering the event. Breivik is a lot of things, but opaque is not one of them; he believes in the virtues of clear communication, particularly as he's seeking to win people to his cause, and he plans his actions very carefully in order to help communicate his messages. Breivik is not a guy who wants to create mysteries and have them figured out. He is, as he described his occupation at the start of trial, a writer, and he follows a writer's maxim: tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, tell 'em, tell 'em what you told 'em.

For reporters covering him, this is useful. Or it would be, if they bothered to use it.

Breivik, for example, offered a closed-fist, straight-armed salute at the beginning of his trial. Some reporters described this as a "right-wing salute." It is more accurate to state that this was the salute that Breivik specified in his manifesto for his self-designed movement. Ideally, he writes, it should be given with the hand wearing a white glove. He did not just think, "I'd better throw up a salute," as he was walking into court that morning. No. Look at him. The motherfucker *practiced.* He got his arm at a good height and angle. His posture is assured, confident. He threw up that salute in the mirror over and over again, preparing for this moment. He looks very good giving it, and deliberately so. He's going for iconic. The salute means something to him, and it's not hard for the press to explain what it actually means.

Another item of note: Breivik was notably devoid of emotion during the accounts of his actions and playing of victims' desperate phone calls for help, but when the court played the propaganda video he had uploaded to YouTube before his murder spree, Breivik started crying. The press was amazed by this, and found it strange and puzzling that he should be so moved by his own words. But if you'd read Breivik's manifesto, the explanation was obvious. It wasn't the words. It was the music. As he explains in his manifesto:

Embracing martyrdom is not something you suddenly decide to do, but it is a process that takes time and requires effort and self contemplation. This is a factor that a majority of resistance fighters ignore and is why a majority of novices become de-motivated after a certain period. They are not doing what is required of them due to lack of training, knowledge and eventually lose the will to fight due to lack of motivation. I do a mental check almost every day through meditation and philosophising. I simulate/meditate while I go for a walk, playing my Ipod in my neighbourhood. This consists of a daily 40 minute walk while at the same time philosophising ideologically/performing self indoctrination and the mental simulation of the operation while listening to motivational and inspiring music. I simulate various future scenarios relating to resistance efforts, confrontations with police, future interrogation scenarios, future court appearances, future media interviews etc. or I philosophise about certain articles in the book. This daily mental exercise or ritual keeps me fully motivated and charges my batteries. And I’m sure it can work for other people as well.

And so his manifesto contains a suggested iPod playlist. Guess what's on it?

The piece in question is Helene Bøksle's "The Dreaming Anew - Memories of Cimmeria" from the AGE OF CONAN soundtrack. In his manifesto, this is what Breivik wrote about it:

Imagine the following; at the end of your mission, when you have completed your primary objectives - imagine fighting for your life against a pursuing pack of system protectors (or as I like to call them: armed defenders of the multiculturalist system, also referred to as the police). You try to avoid confrontation but they eventually manage to surround you. You hear this song as you push forward to annihilate one of their flanks, head shotting two of your foes in bloody fervor trying to survive. This angelic voice sings to you from the heavens, strengthening your resolve in a hopeless battle. Your last desperate thrust kills another two of your enemies. But it isn’t enough as you are now completely surrounded; your time is now. This voice is all you hear as your light turns to darkness and you enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. This must surely be the most glorious way to claim the honour of martyrdom in battle.

Of *course* Breivik started crying. He's completely surrounded by armed defenders of the multiculturalist system, with no hope of freedom. His time is now. He has imagined this moment for years. He has fantasized about it, planned for it, rehearsed for it, and what happens? *His enemies start playing his martyrdom psyching-up music for him.*

I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, this is the biggest trial in Europe in years, and apparently the only person paying attention to it who has actually read the perpetrator's fucking manifesto is *me.*

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

for Marvel movieverse fans

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 21:15:24 GMT

Oh look, it's an auction of props from CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER. You can bid on such items as Steve's draft applications and exam sheet, Howard Stark showgirl costumes, the Camp Lehigh flag, USO girl costumes, Steve's USO cue cards, and one or two of Steve's shields (I picked the untraditional ones, but they have more).

Also, a couple of items from THOR, including Jane Foster's science journal.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

the shooting of Trayvon Martin

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 23:38:05 GMT

I tend to be very cautious in following the news stories of major shootings, because you have to watch out for 1) information changing and 2) narratives getting locked. The shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman is heading into the narrative lock stage. It's not just our conjectures that crystallize, but the *stories* we believe the event is telling. And Martin's death involves dueling narratives, not just about the meaning of his death, but about the legal circumstances. But the meaning and the circumstances have very little to do with each other at this point, because Trayvon Martin isn't just Trayvon Martin anymore. People aren't just pissed off about his death, they're pissed off over a *lot* of deaths, and about stuff that doesn't just involve death, but being hassled due to walking while black. For the folks who have these stories it's a major point of identification.

The legal issues at hand are 1) the actual shooting and 2) the performance of the police department. This is where the narrative can get thorny. Both legal issues have the same political narrative: Zimmermann is racist. The police department is racist. This conflates the two problems into one, which is compelling, but mechanically and from the POV of our institutions -- and for me, as a civilian with a carry permit -- these are two distinct problems. The Sanford PD has handled the case appallingly, but at the moment the state of Florida and the city of Sanford seem to be responding to the political pressure in appropriate ways, with the appointment of a special prosecutor and a vote of no confidence in the police chief. It is important that the politicos recognize the seriousness of this situation; at the same time, just because the public *thinks* Zimmerman guilty does not automatically mean that he *is,* and not only due to Florida's "stand your ground" law. There was a hell of a compelling narrative in the Duke lacrosse case, after all, and that didn't exactly turn out as everybody thought.

That said, looking at the evidence available, my most charitable assessment of Zimmerman (which is difficult to make) is that he is almost certainly criminally liable. (I will explain the "almost certainly" shortly.) It's surprising he wasn't arrested that night, though the initial police report makes it clear he was cuffed and the case was investigated as potential manslaughter. It's also worth noting that the most damning facts (Martin had left home on a brief errand to get some snacks) didn't come out till later, though they bloody well should have come out that night, because *Martin had his cell phone on him* and the cops still took three inexcusable days to notify his family. To me, that is item number one on the police malfeasance list.

Worse, as facts did come out they looked worse for Zimmerman. The Zimmerman family's initial statement was that Zimmerman did not pursue Martin. That, we shortly learned, was a blatant lie. It was also a stupid lie, because Zimmerman knew he had told the 911 dispatcher that he wanted to follow Martin, and he knew that his statement to that effect had been recorded. Either Zimmerman's family went out on their own limb, or Zimmerman lied to his family about what he did. Dumb move, either way. Moreover, the police foot-dragging on the arrest made it look a hell of a lot like they had sympathies for Zimmerman over Martin.

Zimmerman had been generally agreed to be the neighborhood watchman at a meeting of the neighborhood association with the Sanford PD, and took his gig seriously. It's worth noting that Zimmerman majored in criminal justice in college, which is usually a great big sign that he wanted to be a cop. Times are tough all over, and a lot of police agencies are on hiring freezes right now, meaning Zimmerman had no chance to get hired. So he was taking that neighborhood watchman job very seriously. He was, in short, what gun nuts refer to as a mall ninja. Think Seth Rogen's character in OBSERVE & REPORT, a guy who wants to be a cop more than anything in the world and who should never ever for the love of God come to hold such a gig. My guess is that Zimmerman probably hoped to use the neighborhood gig as a springboard into the police force, when hiring started up again. He may have lobbied for the position; when his neighbors held a meeting with the Sanford PD, they volunteered Zimmerman for his unpaid, unofficial position. I wonder if the cops knew Zimmerman's ambition, and if so what they thought of it. Reporters should be digging into that. Nobody seems to know what he did for money; they should be looking into that, too.

The short version of what happened next is that Zimmerman saw Martin "acting suspiciously" and called 911. When Martin evaded, Zimmerman, determined to not let a potential malfeasant get away, pursued him. He caught up to Martin again and confronted him. They reportedly fought. Then Zimmerman shot Martin and killed him.

There were several 911 calls reporting the incident, but two are of particular note. One is Trayvon Martin's last phone call to his girlfriend; the other is an eyewitness account of the fight. Martin's girlfriend told ABC News that Martin told her he was being pursued, thought he lost the guy, and then as she listened the guy found him again. Then she heard pushing, and Martin dropped the phone. When she called back, no one answered. Most of the 911 calls describe hearing the yelling and shots, but a man who gave his name as John told a local station that he actually saw part of the fight, and when he went to call 911 Zimmerman was on the ground, and Martin was on top of Zimmerman and beating the crap out of him. While John was on the phone to the cops, Zimmerman shot Martin with a 9 mm Kel-Tec PF-9, which the police report states Zimmerman carried in an inside-the-pants holster. The police arrived and held Zimmerman at gunpoint. He complied with police directions. The police report noted that Zimmerman had a bloody nose, a cut on the back of his head, and stains on the back of his shirt consistent with him having been lying in the grass. Martin was face down and wasn't moving. Police attempted resuscitation to no avail. Paramedics responded and had no more luck. At this point, the detectives were called in.

The exact scenario of the shooting is necessarily murkier. Much has been made of Florida's "stand your ground" law in this shooting (see, for instance, this very badly reported Tampa Bay Times article decrying the law), and the governor has promised to review it. I don't mind reviewing laws to see how they're working out, but what's curious about this is that the "stand your ground" law does not seem to have applied to George Zimmerman's choices at all. There are a few different scenarios that could have played out, but under none of them was Zimmerman dependent on the "stand your ground" law in the slightest. Zimmerman was not standing his ground. He was *pursuing* Martin. This is the thing that people are forgetting: *Trayvon Martin had the right to stand his ground, too.* He was pursued by a man for reasons he didn't know, and then that guy showed up again. Zimmerman wasn't standing his ground in this case. Martin was.

The most annoying part from an analytical, rather than moral, point of view, is that some relatively minor questions are extremely important to the case, but *none of these are questions that the press is asking.* These are the things I want to know:

1) How many times was Martin shot, and at what range, and how many bullets were there in Zimmerman's gun when the police arrived?

The news articles I've seen report that Martin was shot once, but these were recounted before the release of the 911 tapes. On the 911 tapes, I hear a muffled sound that could possibly be a gunshot, followed by screaming, followed by a definite gunshot. To me, that screaming doesn't just sound panicked; it sounds *hurt.* Two gunshots with a delay in between could spell Zimmerman coldly finishing off a wounded man. And that'd be murder, which is why the answer to this question is so important. It's also obvious and dramatic, which, given the fact that Zimmerman wasn't arrested ages ago, makes me think one shot is far more likely. There are questions about the circumstances of the shot, though. (See my most charitable reconstruction, in #4.)

2) What's the geographic relationship between the store, Martin's house, the site of the shooting, and where Zimmerman first saw Martin? What path was Martin taking before Zimmerman eyeballed him?

I don't ask this because I think Martin was at fault here. It's America, fer Chrissakes; he had the right to stroll anywhere he damn well liked on a public street. What I'd like to know is just how much Zimmerman fell down on the job by not knowing who Martin was. How big was Zimmerman's turf? Did Martin live in it, or near it, and did he pass through occasionally? I mean, call me crazy, but if I get appointed neighborhood watchman I'm not going to camp out in my car with my Glock, I'm going to go around knocking on doors, handing out my business card, and getting to know *who the fuck lives in my neighborhood.* If Zimmerman didn't know Martin, and he should have, then that's a serious problem right there.

ETA: He shouldn't have. I forgot that Martin was visiting family in Sanford, but lived in Miami. Zimmerman wouldn't have recognized him.

3) Did anyone document Zimmerman's injuries? Did Martin have any injuries other than the gunshot wound?

Much has been made of the fact that Zimmerman was not tested for drugs or alcohol. I think it's as important to know if he was injured, and to what extent. I'd also like to know if Martin had any injuries other than the gunshot wound. They reportedly fought. I'd like to see some corroboration of that story. It's extremely important, and the police need to produce it, because right now nobody trusts the Sanford PD's word on anything.

4) Did Zimmerman have his gun drawn when he confronted Martin, or did he draw it during their fight? How did the fight start?

This is the big question, because I think it pretty much decides whether Zimmerman is on the hook for murder. Let's assume the scenario most charitable to Zimmerman:

Zimmerman sees Martin, who strikes him as suspicious, because Martin is outside walking in the rain and looking at various houses. Zimmerman can't quite tell Martin's ethnicity at first -- but he realizes Martin is black pretty quick, and possibly utters a racial slur ("fucking coons") as he's getting out of his car. The neighborhood has had a bunch of burglaries recently, and racial tensions are exacerbated by a new minority influx. Zimmerman, a naturally aggressive and confrontational personality who hopes to become a police officer, is not going to allow any crap on his watch. He calls 911, and is told an officer is en route. Zimmerman is told not to pursue and initially heeds this order, though he complains these guys always get away. Then he gets off the line with 911, and figures, "Screw that, I'm going to keep watching him."

Martin notices Zimmerman is following him. Martin puts his hood up and tries giving the man the slip. He succeeds, briefly. Martin's friend (girlfriend?), on the cell phone, tells him to run, and Martin says that he will walk fast. When he thinks he's clear, he starts to make a break for it. Then Zimmerman intercepts him. When Martin says, "What are you following me for?" Zimmerman ignores the question and challenges him: "What are you doing here?" The phone call ends as their fight starts.

If Zimmerman has a gun drawn when he confronts Martin, then Martin is legitimately terrified and he believes he is in a fight for his life.

If Zimmerman does not have a gun drawn, but he attacks Martin first, Martin may not believe he is in a fight for his life but has every right to defend himself.

If Martin just gets pissed off or scared and decides to clock this asshole, then *Zimmerman* believes that this is just further proof he was right to be suspicious, because Zimmerman knows himself to be the neighborhood watch and so obviously *the guy attacking him must indeed be a dangerous criminal.*

One thing is clear: whatever started the fight, if we believe the one eyewitness by the time it was well underway Martin had knocked Zimmerman down and was on top of him beating the crap out of him. Zimmerman could have turtled and yelled, "I quit, I quit, I'm sorry!" But if he's pegged Martin as a dangerous criminal who is beating the crap out of Zimmerman when *Zimmerman* believes himself to have done nothing wrong, then Zimmerman would be certain that surrender wouldn't work. So if Zimmerman did not have his gun drawn, he drew it now.

And then he shot and killed Trayvon Martin.

I don't mean to paint an equivalency between them, because whether or not Zimmerman legally culpable (which, as I said, he almost certainly is; only one of the three potential one-shot scenarios I buy comes down to a horrible mistake and two of them come down to Zimmerman inciting violence and putting Martin in the position of defending himself), Martin was a guy on his way home from the store and Zimmerman is *the guy who killed him.* But it's a little eerie to see how each's thinking about the other would have fallen into similar lines. Trayvon Martin wasn't just killed by George Zimmerman. He was killed by the Prisoner's Dilemma. Martin could have surrendered to Zimmerman, but he didn't know who the hell this guy was or what he wanted, and he was justifiably scared of him. Zimmerman could have surrendered to Martin, but (under, I repeat, the most charitable presumption), he believed Martin to be a dangerous criminal and didn't think that it would work. Neither of them felt safe cooperating, so they both defected. And now Martin is dead and folks are posting "George Zimmerman: Wanted Dead or Alive" posters because, legally culpable or not, Zimmerman was a fool and a bad neighborhood watchman who would have been a bad cop.

This is the confrontation with Trayvon Martin that George Zimmerman should have had:

"Hey, man, I'm George! What's your name?"

If Zimmerman had done that, Trayvon Martin would be alive, and Zimmerman a better man, today.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

moving stuff update

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 21:48:15 GMT

Managed to hurt back and leg, and got an eye problem requiring medical attention, which put cramp on ability to pack, which meant I had to cancel moving truck, which meant I am not moving stuff down this time, which meant things get delayed, which means I am deeply annoyed.

OTOH, I have enough bills this month that I don't need any more, thanks. So, I saved money on the truck and on loaders to help me. Yay?

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

working my way through folks' recs...

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 00:41:13 GMT

And it's interesting. A lot of stuff doesn't work for me, which is okay and was expected, but one reason I asked folks to provide current recs is because I wanted to see to what degree my sense of what fandom was writing was more or less representative. I was surprised to find that it was a lot more representative than I'd expected, in terms of the kind of things folks are writing. I didn't see any *kind* of fiction that struck me as really new. The surprise comes because, in my nineteen-odd years in fandom, I've seen fanfic change quite a bit. When I started, fanfic was mostly gen; you had slash and porn, but it was much less common and was confined to dedicated forums, which was still an increase for that stuff over earlier years. RPF used to be completely anathema, but then became accepted and wildly common (my sense is that it really took off with bandom, because it would be hard to write anything but, but I don't know LOTR fandom at all and I know RPF was *huge* over there, so that might've been where the change occurred -- timelines, anybody?). Fandoms used to start off writing the more gen stuff, and then start to collect more porn and slash as they grew older, whereas now folks come home from the theater and start a kink meme. Fandom used to just write about the pretty white boys, and now fandom still mostly writes about the pretty white boys but there are chromatic challenges and more calls for representation from fans of color. And so on.

Lately, though, I haven't seen fanfic change as much. The change I keep expecting to see is more female-character-focused fic, but while there's been more in recent years it's still lagged behind what I've been thinking I'd see, given feminist fandom's increasing activism. To me, the biggest change in recent years is the increasing prominence of flashfic, with kink memes. But that doesn't seem to have changed the type of things that folks are writing so much as it's changed length. The recent popularity of texting fic is interesting, but I don't know how much of a change it represents. With tumblr, fannish activity has changed -- the popularity of fannish memes is a new kind of fannish activity all its own -- but this still hasn't changed the kinds of stories folks seem to be writing. Fanfic is wildly popular, and it's in more places than ever, but I don't know if it's still changing. Or if it's on a path to being subsumed by something else.

So is fanfiction in stasis? What do y'all think?

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

from gay-for-pay to MMA

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 23:37:07 GMT

So, apparently one of the finalists to become a contestant on the new season of mixed martial arts contest/reality show THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER has starred in hardcore gay pornography.

To the people that know him best, Dakota Cochrane's secret wasn't a secret at all. It's not something he kept from prospective business relationships, either. As his mixed martial arts career took off, his friend Kirk Schuster, who was looking after his career, would often receive phone calls from other management companies about representing Cochrane. They would try to woo Schuster with promises of a UFC contract for Cochrane.

Do me one favor, Schuster would tell them, Google his name and call me back if you're still interested. A return call never came. Not once.

Everyone has a past. But in the testosterone-filled sports world, Cochrane's past proved impossible to outrun. What he describes as a temporary lapse in judgment from his college days continues to revisit him. It did again this week, shortly after FX announced that he had been chosen as one of the 32 finalists that will compete for a chance to be on that network's first season of The Ultimate Fighter. Within 24 hours, the news was all over the MMA blogosphere: while in college, he had participated in gay pornography.

Cochrane says he was gay for pay; he's engaged to be married now and has two children. It remains to be seen what broadcasting network F/X will make of it, or if he'll be chosen to be on the actual show. They have to be nervous about fan reaction, and the attitudes of sponsors and other fighters (former champ Brock Lesnar made some famously nasty anti-gay remarks and stayed top dog until he was revealed to be just a bully who never really learned to take a punch), but comments on the article are surprisingly supportive, and UFC President Dana White has expressed his hope that gay athletes in the organization will come out of the closet. So we'll see what happens.

ETA: via hjcallipygian, my resident MMA guru, some more links on the subject, with commentary from Dana White:

"I'm not out here trying to make something like, 'We're going to make friends with the gay community. We're going to do this and that,'" White said. "It is what it is. The guy was in a gay porn. Whether he's gay or not gay, I don't give a [expletive] one way or the other. I don't give a [expletive]. It doesn't matter. He's a good fighter. He made it into the house on his fighting skills and what he's accomplished."

"Of course I knew. Listen, the kid’s a fighter. He did what he did. He didn’t break any laws, he didn’t do anything illegal. When we do background checks on guys, we look for stuff that’s illegal, we look for criminal stuff, we look for stuff we just don’t like. " (Video)

Finding that stuff doesn't automatically *exclude* anybody, mind. Quinton "Rampage" Jackson lived up to his nickname with a stint that saw him nearly get shot by cops after a mad chase in which he caused a car accident that led a woman to suffer a miscarriage, and he had continuing success in the UFC and a big-budget movie role. But it's interesting to note that being in gay porn doesn't fall under stuff that the UFC "just doesn't like." At least, they don't dislike it *enough.* Interestingly, I just realized that they've canned a number of ring girls when it turned out said ring girls had done porn or naked shoots, though there may have been issues of disclosure there. (A non-UFC promotion, on discovering that its ring girl did porn under another name, essentially responded, "Hey, more power to her! What name was she using again?")

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

strong backs or suggestions for obtaining same needed, DC-ish

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:44:43 GMT

Folks, a request: I am up at Ma's for a few days (Silver Spring, MD) to load up a moving truck with a bunch of my stuff from her house to drive down to NC. Unfortunately, the folks who we thought we had lined up seem to have hit a snag with their schedule and probably won't be available to help load on Saturday. (I've managed to partially herniate a disc and have been forbidden from lifting more than 10 pounds, which is why I need some help.) Anybody in the area have recs/advice? I would totally throw a "help me load the truck" party, but it's not just going to be lots of boxes of books; there'll be some fairly heavy furniture. I don't know where I could get a couple-three folks on short notice though.

Comment below, or drop me a line at my username at gmail. Thanks in advance.

ETA: Movers found! Thanks.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

fanfic continues going pro

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 02:25:00 GMT

TWILIGHT fanfic author turns to originals, writes BDSM novels that catch fire among Manhattan mommy set.

Michele Yogel devoured all 1,200- plus hot-andheavy pages of the “Fifty Shades” trilogy in less than two weeks.

“I couldn’t put it down,” admits Yogel, 33, who shooed away mom friends at her son’s school pickup because she didn’t want to be distracted from her reading.

“I’d be sitting on my couch at 7 a.m. with my two kids while they’re watching cartoons and drinking milk, and I’d be reading it on the Kindle app on my phone,” she says.

Which wouldn’t be a big deal —except for this Upper East Side mom was engrossed in a triple-X novel about a 27-year-old billionaire, Christian Grey, who seduces college grad Anastasia Steele and trains her to become his submissive sex slave.

“The last book I read was ‘The Help,’ ” says Yogel. “You know ... normal, mainstream stuff.”

“Fifty Shades,” an erotica trilogy dubbed“mommy porn” by some, is rapidly becoming a cult hit among Manhattan women, who are exchanging well-worn paperback copies and excited whispers about the book’s “red room of pain” (a sex playroom) while meeting at Fred’s at Barneys or parent-teacher conference nights at school.

It’s like “Twilight” for the grown-up set. Except, you know, with lots of sex instead of vampires and abstinence.

I cannot decide which of the above sentences is my favorite. (No, actually, I can. But it's not one of those sentences. It's this one, from deeper in the article: "The second and third books explore Grey and Steele’s deepening bond as they find true love outside the constraints of a BDSM contract, with a few plot points like an attempted kidnapping and lots of private-jet travel (don’t fret, the sex barely misses a beat).")

The author, E.L. James, is from the UK, works as a tv executive, and has two teen sons. The books are "Fifty Shades of Grey," "Fifty Shades Darker," and "Fifty Shades Freed;" they're published as e-books and print on demand by what the article describes as "a small Australian publishing house." Has anybody optioned "The Captive Prince" yet?

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

more thoughts on the Bullshit Reversal, and some case studies

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:49:21 GMT

Earlier, I talked about the Bullshit Reversal (better known as Refusing the Call). This occurs when the hero is presented with the opportunity to do what we know he's going to do because we bought our ticket to see him do it, except the hero initially says no and a variable amount of additional dialogue is required to talk him into it.

I hate the Bullshit Reversal for two reasons: first, it's a waste of time. Of course the hero is going to do the thing he initially refuses to do: the audience wants the hero to do it, and has tuned in based on the ads trumpeting the hero's doing of that very thing. The second, deeper, reason is that characters are defined by their choices. Thus, as a general principle, it is more interesting to see people doing things that they choose to do, things they *want* to do. You learn a lot more about the character that way. The Bullshit Reversal is bullshit because it is a falsification of two choices. For a Bullshit Reversal to be not bullshit, the hero has to have a good reason to initially refuse. A good, strong reason, not just "I don't wanna." The hero then has to have an even *better* reason to reverse this decision. The best Bullshit Reversal I have ever seen, one of the few that actually works, is in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. This is it:

Note that it's not a pure Bullshit Reversal, in that our primary identification is not with the character making it. It's not the hero who's refusing the call, but a supporting character who initially refuses and then answers the call of the hero. This builds the hero up, because he bends the supporting character to his will. But note this: it also builds up the supporting character. Because Lawrence traps Auda abu Tayi into agreeing, not by simple greed or extortion, but by *appealing to the core of who Auda abu Tayi is.* That appeal would not necessarily work on a different character. But it works on Auda abu Tayi. That tells us quite a lot about Auda abu Tayi, and it makes Lawrence all the more impressive to us for his ability to see that.

One argument in favor of the Bullshit Reversal is that it lampshades a particular difficulty authors face: adventure is dangerous! Lots of people would prefer to avoid it unless it is thrust upon them. But speaking for myself, I am very uninterested in reading about these people. I want to read about people I can admire, wish I was like, and see aspects of myself in them so I can imagine that I *am* like them, as opposed to the weak, cowardly thing that I am. I want my adventurers to *like adventure.* If I do have a hero who doesn't want adventure, then I want that hero to *act* like someone who doesn't want adventure. (See: the first DIE HARD.) If the hero initially refuses, then takes up the adventure as if he'd meant to all along, why did he refuse in the first place?

I think part of the persistence of the Bullshit Reversal is that it helps frame a lazy answer to a question that bedevils all writers: how do you get your protagonist involved in the adventure? This is particularly a problem for series fiction. Crazy shit can happen to anybody -- once. The more adventures the protagonist has, the harder it is to come up with new ways for them to get involved, unless the series is so designed so that it is designed to funnel adventure to the protagonist. (This requirement probably explains why so many paranormal/urban fantasy novels involve private detectives. Authors of these books tend to want their fictional world to strongly resemble our own. This means that magic is relatively rare or at least kept secret from the mundanes, and the hero is one of the special people who know about it. This poses a problem: if magic is obscure, how does the hero find out about such secret and special problems? Obviously, the hero has to be someone to whom such secret and special problems are brought on a regular basis, which problems may lead to danger and adventure. Ergo, the hero is a private detective. Simple.) The Bullshit Reversal comes in as part of one such answer: how does the hero know about the problem? Somebody brings it to him. You can see the conversation play out: But the protagonist wouldn't give a shit about somebody else's problem! That's okay, we'll shoehorn the protagonist into it.

Here are some more approaches that avoid the cliche of the Bullshit Reversal and still get your hero involved in the problem, possibly while telling us something about him:

1) The hero LIVES FOR THIS SHIT. Two words: Indiana Jones. The thing that sets Indy alight isn't the money, or the fact that only he can help, it's that *somebody has found the lost city of Tanis.* You could almost say that the job of Refusing the Call is passed onto Marcus Brody in RAIDERS, except for the fact that while he's telling Indy that the ark is like nothing Indy's ever gone after before, he's also saying he thinks the trip is awesome and he wishes he were going too.

2) Captain Exposition lies. Carl Weathers does this to Arnold Schwarzenegger in PREDATOR. Hey, look, Dutch, it's a mission! To rescue hostages! You like rescuing hostages! …oh, whoops, there aren't any hostages and the mission is actually a CIA black book op to bust up some guerrillas, and now we're getting stalked by an invisible alien hunter? MY BAD.

3) Captain Exposition tells the truth! The initial task at hand is a simple, uncomplicated little affair, just as promised. It's what happens AFTER that occurs that everything gets hairy.

4) The hero actually needs the object of the mission, or has no choice but to get it, and not because Captain Exposition has a gun to his head or has threatened the hero's family. The hero is not accomplishing anything if his struggle is to get back everything and everyone he had at the beginning of the movie. That's not a character arc; that is stasis. (It's like all those fantasies that involve the hero trying to get home, just because it was in THE WIZARD OF OZ. If you got zapped to a fucking awesome fantasy kingdom where you were powerful and important, would you want to go home? For most people, the answer is FUCK NO, because turnips are not that awesome (Oglaf, NSFW).) Maybe the hero just *wants* it badly.

To illustrate, let's consider two separate works: Richard Adams's novel WATERSHIP DOWN and the Hayes/Miller/Hannant film THE ROAD WARRIOR (wr. Terry Hayes, George Miller, and Brian Hannant; dir. George Miller). Two very different properties: one is about the survivors of a terrible apocalypse who struggle to forge a new life and defeat cruel, brutal enemies; and the other is a movie starring Mel Gibson. But they both do a great job of making the characters accept difficult choices believably.

WATERSHIP DOWN is one of my favorite novels, a book so brilliantly plotted and characterized that there are only two minor false notes in it. It's the story of several rabbits who leave their warren after one of their number has a horrifying premonition of disaster. (Most of them do so, not because they believe the premonition strongly, but because they are discontented.) But the premonition comes true, and the rabbits and a couple of stricken survivors must find their way through the dangers of the open land to join or found a new warren. Along the way, they encounter a warren populated by decadent rabbits kept for food, who dare not speak of the horror of their existence, and Efrafa, a brutal juche-style dictatorship in which every aspect of existence is brutally regimented. The choice I wish to talk about comes at the start of the third act of the novel. The rabbits have just escaped from Efrafa in a thrilling action sequence that pays off a lot of stuff from earlier in the book. But now the story cries out for resolution: it's not enough to escape the bad guys; we want to see our heroes beat them. But it's a ridiculous idea and the odds are overwhelming. *Why the hell would any sane rabbit possibly go back there?*

And the answer is: because they *have* to. They need does. They know that the does of Efrafa are discontented, and many of them would want to leave. The new warren is a sausagefest, and if they don't get more women and start making baby rabbits they'll all just be dead in a few years anyway. There's no question that does would come with them willingly. There's also no question that General Woundwort, the ferocious rabbit running Efrafa, is not going to let that happen without blood.

That's how you get a protagonist to go into the shit: not to get something back, but so the protagonist can build something new.

THE ROAD WARRIOR, a wholly perfect movie, faces a similar issue. Like WATERSHIP DOWN, it takes place in a post-apocalyptic landscape. But THE ROAD WARRIOR's apocalypse is even bigger: it's not just one place that's been lost, but all human order. Society has been destroyed, and all *trust* has been destroyed. The world is in complete anarchy, and the only reason humans can interact is to kill each other or to find some tenuous mutual advantage. Seen properly, THE ROAD WARRIOR is actually a Western. The constraints of civilization do not exist, and the choices the characters are not reflexive actions of their culture but tell you everything about who these people are. When Max, the protagonist, intercedes to protect a fortified refinery's crew from the deadly gang that chases them, he does so not out of any love for justice but because he can take the surviving crew member back and be rewarded with as much gasoline as he can carry. But the man he rescued dies, and now Max is stuck at the mercy of the refiners. Worse, so is Max's lifeblood, his only hope for escaping the gangs -- his car. And the refiners have no reason to give him his freedom or his car.

What changes? The gangs launch an attack on the refinery. It's foiled, but the refiners decide they want to pull out. Except their only resource is their gasoline, which is in a tanker… that they have no way of hauling. Enter Max, who saw a semi with a dead man in it a while back (at the beginning of the film). "You want to get out of here," he says, "you talk to *me.*"

And so on. But you see how neat that is? Everything proceeds logically from who the characters are, what they can do, and what information they have available to them at the time. And none of those reasons are bullshit. And when characters do act with humanity and selflessness, it's all the more noteworthy, because it's not reflexive action in civilized society, but a real and a risky choice for them to make. Especially noteworthy: none of the people who act with humanity and selflessness in ways that could materially impact them are the protagonist. Max acts out of need and revenge; his largest kindness is tossing a music box to a feral child. He doesn't choose kindness or nobility when it would cost him something. And that makes the kindnesses in the film that much more believable: they're not there to bring the audience's sympathy to a hero for whom they wouldn't make sense as actions in character. They're there to show everything the hero's not.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

meme: what would you have me write?

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 02:57:14 GMT

Ganked from everybody:

I was thinking you should tell me about stories you think I should write. I mean, if you could sit me down for a day or whatever and say, "I want you to write this story for me," what would that story be?

I'm not actually promising to *write* any of these, mind you, but it's fun anyway. And who knows if I'll be inspired!

I have multiple original stories and a fic on the burner. So, I almost certainly won't write anything suggested, but it'd be fun to see what folks want!

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

the Bullshit Reversal, how and why to avoid it

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 02:40:29 GMT

I am an extraordinarily negative person, and I have a huge list of things I hate, both in fan and in professional fiction. Interestingly, there's not a lot of overlap in terms of things I hate between the two. Fan and pro fiction have different crutches, and thus when they irritate me they do so for very different reasons. I gripe a lot about fanfic, so today I am going to bitch about something I hate more than almost anything in professional writing: the Bullshit Reversal.

The Bullshit Reversal is ubiquitous in movies and is fairly common in novels. It may even have a trope name on TV Tropes, but I don't know and I'm not wading in there. This is what the Bullshit Reversal is, and how it goes down:

CAPTAIN EXPOSITION. "I want you to do something that the audience will find entertaining."
HERO. "I'm not going to do that."
CAPTAIN EXPOSITION. *some bullshit*
HERO. "Okay, I'll do it."

A prominent recent example is Ken Watanabe's declined-then-accepted job offer to Leonardo DiCaprio in INCEPTION. This is also a rare case in which the hero actually has a compelling reason for the initial rejection. Usually, it's just that the hero doesn't want to. This is annoying from an audience perspective, because most of the time the hero is rejecting the basic premise of the movie. I have put down my money to see the hero do something, only to learn that the hero doesn't want to do it. To make this particularly vexing, a lot of the time it is something *I would give my left nut to be able to do.* So right off the bat, the movie is making its main character the enemy of the audience: I want to see awesomeness happen, and the hero is STANDING IN MY WAY.

(This problem is not confined to the Bullshit Reversal. In a lot of martial arts flicks, the hero is the one who doesn't want to fight, does everything to avoid a fight, when we're there to watch him have some fucking fights. In NEVER BACK DOWN, for example, the hero literally does nothin' but.)

The good news is that the Bullshit Reversal usually is resolved quickly. There are two ways this happens. Captain Exposition either offers the hero an incentive or threatens the hero. Either way, the hero grudgingly agrees to do what we have paid our good money to see him do, and the movie goes on from there. (Sometimes the hero has to Go Home and Think About It first.)

The biggest problem with the Bullshit Reversal is that most of the time there is no good reason for it. As an effort to create false suspense, it's pretty ineffective. I think more of its ubiquity may be a desire to hang a lampshade on the fact that the hero is nuts to get involved in a problem that is not directly in their bailiwick. Also, one should never discount the DIE HARD factor: one reason the original DIE HARD is so compelling is that its hero is panicked, desperate, terrified, and would rather be literally *anywhere else* than in that movie. So a lot of folks making movies think, hey, you know what would make this movie better? If our hero doesn't want to be in it! The problem is, of course, just because that's a great idea for DIE HARD doesn't mean it's a great idea in your movie, especially if you're making a movie about a protagonist who does have a choice to take up the cause he's offered. Because here is a paradox: if your hero is unexpectedly dropped into a situation and deals with it, that makes your hero look awesome. If your hero decides to enter a situation and deals with it, that makes your hero look awesome. If your hero decides not to enter a situation and gets dropped into it anyway, that makes your hero look *ineffectual.* Why would I want to watch this asshole try to stop the Villain, when he can't even outmaneuver the guy who fucking hired him?

The Bullshit Reversal is one of those things that it's painfully easy to write, just because it happens so often that you can trick yourself into assuming that this is how things are supposed to go. I hate this trope, and still I caught myself writing it in an original story I am puttering on: the protagonist is asked to do something, and initially demurs, then reconsiders. This is a Bullshit Reversal, and wastes the audience's and story's time. I dealt with this by realizing that the person who should be reversing is Captain Exposition. My Captain Exposition is a decent person who desperately needs help of the sort my untrustworthy and frightening Protagonist could provide, but for those very reasons would never in a million years ask Protagonist to help. So in the revised opening of the story, Protagonist sniffs out that Captain Exposition is in a jam, and then sets out to discover the problem and help Captain Exposition to the best of Protagonist's alarming ability, *whether Captain Exposition wants Protagonist to be helping or not.* Bullshit Reversal: avoided!

ETA: wordweaverlynn points out that this is probably due to the overuse of Joseph Campbell's "Hero With a Thousand Faces." And I don't know how I missed it. It's amazing how many folks are treating it as a ticky box, without understanding why or when to use it.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

on the subject of learning from what's gone before

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:15:57 GMT

A friend came over the other night and we watched a few episodes of BABYLON 5. She'd seen later episodes, but had missed the earlier ones. I was a HUGE junkie for B5 back in the day, and so we watched four episodes from the first season over the course of the evening. (For the record: "Midnight on the Firing Line," "Parliament of Dreams," "And the Sky Full of Stars," and "Signs and Portents.")

Back in the day, you were either a B5 person or a DS9 person. I was a B5 person. I *liked* DS9, mind you, but Paramount money and guaranteed viewership was behind it, so it had more resources. B5 was the little show that could. And it was ambitious as hell, despite the fact that in its first season it sometimes appeared to have a budget of roughly thirty-five cents. Long-term arcs are standard fare on TV today, but they were out of the ordinary on SFTV, and B5 took long-term planning to a level that no television series had ever attempted. And they haven't, since. Shows like THE WIRE and THE SOPRANOS take a different, looser approach, and shows like LOST inevitably fall apart because it's really just tap-dancing until the next angle, the next gimmick. In some ways, B5 is less wondrous than it was at its peak, because we've seen so many running and recurring plotlines on SFTV. It's become the norm. But there is something that B5 did that has *not* been picked up nearly as much: its use of foreshadowing and repeated imagery. Characters called shots five years in advance. Scenes called back on scenes from previous seasons in ways that you wouldn't notice unless you'd been watching the whole time. The only show I've seen since that played with that kind of thematic reverberation to anywhere near that degree was THE WIRE. You really don't see it on mainstream SFTV, maybe because producers are more interested in going straight to the well.

I wish some showrunners would do more stuff like that. But it would be hard to do something like B5 again. I saw JMS in person a number of times during the show's run, and I was at a con in about year four or five when somebody cued up a pitch videotape that JMS and Doug Netter had put together when first trying to sell the show. Everybody in that room had seen JMS in person a bunch, too, and when the camera cut to him on the promotional footage there were audible gasps. Because he looked so much younger than everyone was used to, it was *scary.* Running BABYLON 5 had visibly aged JMS about fifteen years, in five.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

plotty slash recs

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:20:53 GMT

OK, continuing the gen meta: one reason I prefer gen and am grumpied by the ever-increasing amount of slash is that I want more from my story than most slash stories give me. I have a lot of least favorite kind of stories, but one of them is the story in which characters have issues that are caused/summed up by the fact that they are not fucking, and then there is a lot of YEARNING and FEELINGS, and then there is fucking and everyone is happy. Too often, the answer to the question, "why didn't they just get to the fucking earlier?" is "because then we couldn't have the YEARNING and FEELINGS."

So give me some recs of slash that doesn't do that! Plotty slash, in particular.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

The Hines-endorsed Republican candidate

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:51:56 GMT

I figure I'll do a few political posts from time to time this election year, just so all my lefty buddies in these parts know what the righties are thinking.

At the moment, there's considerable unhappiness with the candidates left. Mitt Romney has an accomplished resume and knows how to sort out problems, but he will literally say *anything* to get elected and conservatives don't trust him. Santorum has a consistent ideology, with which I strongly disagree; even people more socially conservative than I am dislike the fact that he has no compunctions about using gov power to compel his ends, rather than leave folks alone. Ron Paul, who's rumored to be suborning Romney delegates to vote for him on their *second* ballot, has ridiculous foreign policy ideas and has no compunctions against sidling up to lunacy if the lunatics'll give him money. And Gingrich, while The Smartest Guy in the Race, is unfortunately a narcissist.

Lots of folks are grumbling about a brokered convention. But who would step forward? Discontented righties have discussed it, and we think we've got a winner. Here, folks, is my chosen candidate for 2012.

Call me crazy, but I think this guy has a real crossover appeal.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

I surrender: "Jupiter Four"

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:58:05 GMT

So the "I surrender!" meme wherein you have someone assign you a basic premise to turn into a TV show is going around again. I have a theory that marina is basically my opposite fan creature -- we are in fandom for opposite reasons! She is all about the FEELINGS whereas I hate feelings! She is here for the porn and I am bored by it! Naturally, I asked her to hit me up.

Naturally, she assigned me GIGOLOS IN SPACE.

BACKSTORY

JUPITER FOUR is a space thriller series set on the Jovian moon Callisto. In 2087, the inner solar system is increasingly colonized. Mars was long where the action is; now it's becoming a suburbia. But the moons of Jupiter are still undeveloped frontier territory. The place is remote. Isolated. Sparsely populated. It is bleak and barren, and it is the last place you would expect to find three handsome young gigolos.

AND YET.

I would say "meet the gigolos" here, but the problem is that you can't, because I can't cast them. The role requires three extremely good-looking guys in their early twenties, and *these are my least favorite kind of actors on the planet,* because they are pretty much interchangeable as far as I am concerned. (I agree unreservedly with Angelica Huston, who said, "I think people become more watchable after 30, when they have something on their face and something between their ears.") I am wide open to suggestions, because I need 'em here. I will tell you about their personalities and backgrounds instead.

The gigolos are Nate, Wendell, and Lee. Nate was a relatively privileged kid who never learned to worry about money. He partied through the easiest classes in a very expensive college until his family met with some nasty reversals and left him high and dry. Faced with having to cover tuition, and housing, and food, and car payments, and the credit lines he'd run up, Nate tried for a Hail Mary. With the aid of his friend Wendell, who came from a poorer background and felt obligated to Nate because Nate's family had been unknowingly helping Wendell cover a lot of the bills, Nate ran a gambling scam that unfortunately hooked a far, far, far bigger fish than he'd realized was even in the ocean. They got off with their lives, and wound up working on the big fish's pleasure line. After a year, Nate and Wendell ran Wendell's meticulous records against the numbers their supervisor provided, and realized they were never getting out unless they made a break for it. With Lee, whom they'd met on the pleasure line, they stole a shuttle and made a break for the Jovian moons, where they promptly find themselves in a shitload of trouble.

THE CAST

NATE is a very, very, *very* good gigolo. He's an excellent actor and people-reader; he doesn't just give his clients what they want, he gives them *who* they want. Sometimes before they even know they want it. As we start out, Nate is in a pretty cynical place: he has had a big dose of The Way the World Works, and he doesn't have a lot of optimism. He will lie, he will cheat, he will do whatever the hell he feels he has to.

WENDELL is Nate's conscience. Where Nate is the leader, the gentler Wendell is the business head of the team. He's shy and soft-spoken, surprisingly warm-hearted, and very good with figures the way Nate is good with people. He has a brilliant capability for logistics and excels at identifying the weak points of organizations and systems -- not the people who have a capacity to let it down, but the flaws in how it is designed to operate. Where being a gigolo has changed Nate, Wendell is largely who he always was. More to the point, he remembers who Nate used to be.

LEE is the innocent of the team, which is odd considering he was born and raised in a space whorehouse. He's been underfoot, he's been a servant and cupbearer, when he grew up he was a sex slave, all of it in an atmosphere of decadence and luxury. To Lee, the outside world and workaday life is the most exotic thing imaginable. He's already fucked the universe. Now he wants to *see* it. He is a little bit in love with Nate, who, sad to say, brought him along in the escape only because Lee was seen as eminently trustworthy and so had access to everything they needed to facilitate their getaway. Nate manipulates Lee shamelessly. Wendell doesn't like that, because he actually cares about Lee.

THE PILOT

The shuttle lands on Callisto, the tide-locked fourth moon of Jupiter, near the Vrooman Scientific Research station. The station is under the command of DR. DELILAH COLE (Ellen Barkin), who oversees a small human crew and an enormous robotic staff. Cole initially tries to run the boys off, but Nate's charm and her crew's interest leads her to give them a chance, much to the delight of adventure-seeking geologist DR. MARGIE GREENE (Ciera Payton) and the mild befuddlement of shy roboticist ELLEN YANG (Joan Chen). Also present is the humanoid robot CHATTER-G (animatronics voiced by Maurice LaMarche), who not only serves as an interface between the humans and the robotic workers but is programmed to be the best friend a person could possibly have -- supportive, understanding, cheerful, upbeat. And it is, to the point that Cole has come to hate it.

Cole and her crew are eighteen months into a four-year mission, and the boys are a welcome distraction. But Cole points out the flaws in Nate's plan: the settlements on Callisto are tiny. Most of the ones on the dark (non-Jupiter) side are small scientific stations. They'd make more money planet-side, where a lot of the mining consortiums operate. And they'll have to pay plenty to resupply food and water. Keeping humans alive on Callisto is expensive.

Cole has business on the other side, so Nate and crew offer her a lift. They make inquiries about their own business there, and run afoul of MARIUS (Ron Perlman), the closest thing to an organized crime boss on the Jovian moons. His bar/hotel/casino, the Wall of Sleep, is the closest anyone has come to a den of scum and villainy on Callisto. When the boys go there to try to find a place to rent, or drum up clients, Marius makes it known that if there are any whores, he'll be running them. Nate won't have that: he's working for himself. No one else. It turns ugly, and the boys and Cole are forced to flee. They take her back to her base, and get ready to leave Callisto in the morning.

When they wake up, their shuttle has been sabotaged. There's only one way to get supplies: place a very expensive special order, which they can't afford. Or they can go back to Marius's place to see if anyone has parts for sale. Which they probably can't afford either. Not to mention that nobody knows who sabotaged the shuttle, so they're all paranoid as hell. And did I mention it's expensive to keep humans alive on Callisto? Cole is going to have to start going to major trouble to keep them, which means charging an exorbitant amount of rent. Also, they keep borrowing her land rover. They might wind up having to sell the shuttle and going home by charter flight and commercial transit to face the wrath of the Big Fish.

Nate swallows his pride and goes for another meeting with Marius. It doesn't go well, in part because Nate's hatred for Marius makes him unreasonable, and vulnerable. Marius still refuses Nate permission to operate. Won't buy the shuttle. But he does ask, in passing, how much Nate charges for sex. When Nate tells him, Marius puts it on the table. Nate says he doesn't need the money that badly. So Marius doubles it. And doubles it. Until there's enough on the table to fix the shuttle and fly out. Marius is enjoying himself: he knows how much Nate hates him, and he doesn't need the money. The sum is everything to Nate and nothing to him, and Marius is curious to find out at what point Nate will swallow his self-respect and take the cash.

Which, of course, Nate eventually does.

The money he gets for letting Marius bend him over the desk is enough to get the shuttle fixed, to fly out. To where the Big Fish is looking for them.

So of course he gives all of it to Cole. Bed and board, he says. He's just bought six months. He's going to build a business, earn enough to pay his own way, and upend Marius's applecart. Because no one is ever, ever, going to push him around again.

THE SERIES

-- Cole gets more and more swept up in Nate's schemes, in part because she keeps having showdowns with Marius on his behalf as the dark side's administrator. She winds up becoming the de facto crime lord of the dark side.

-- Cole and Nate manipulate the hell out of each other and have lots of sex.

-- The boys build up their business and have adventures and interactions with any number of customers ("client of the week" episodes).

-- Wendell realizes that Cole is not telling them the truth about exactly what kind of research her team is here *for.* She has secrets, big ones, and Yang and Greene may not be in on all of them.

-- Nate becomes the escort of choice for visiting dignitaries, which means that Marius is essentially forced to let him operate to a certain degree in Marius's territory. This is an excuse for any number of Lex-and-Clark-at-the-charity-ball-type scenes.

-- CHATTER-G serves as a telepresence device for all *sorts* of things. Some nefarious.

-- Lee suffers disillusionment with "normal life," and starts thinking about calling the Big Fish to come get him.

-- Wendell gathers information about Marius's network, which gives us angles for various espionage and crime stories.

-- When, under Yang's direction, CHATTER-G does its best to emulate Nate's successful social interaction, it programs other robots to do the same and Yang is alarmed to discover that she has inadvertently created a robot brothel.

-- Greene discovers a mineral pocket that is entirely ancillary to the mission, but that could make her personally quite wealthy. She desperately wants to exploit the strike, and is torn between it and her mission with Cole, the successful completion of which might keep her from ever returning to the strike.

-- That mission? The discovery of alien life beneath the surface of Callisto. It turns out that the boys' shuttle wasn't sabotaged by any of the usual suspects. This, and some other mysteries that crop up, are the result of explorations by Callistan scouts who are astonished to discover that intelligent life exists outside their great ocean.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.

The Concrete Tomb of Hradzka

Newtown: a tactical assessment

dear Yuletide author

and yeah...

belated Aurora post

what I really did like about THE AVENGERS

Captain America (and Thor) gen recs and fanart request

question: which looks worse? ELEMENTARY, or the new BEAUTY AND THE BEAST?

possibly of interest

female athletic poses

the Breivik trial

for Marvel movieverse fans

the shooting of Trayvon Martin

moving stuff update

working my way through folks' recs...

from gay-for-pay to MMA

strong backs or suggestions for obtaining same needed, DC-ish

fanfic continues going pro

more thoughts on the Bullshit Reversal, and some case studies

meme: what would you have me write?

the Bullshit Reversal, how and why to avoid it

on the subject of learning from what's gone before

plotty slash recs

The Hines-endorsed Republican candidate

I surrender: "Jupiter Four"

more thoughts and questions on gen