I Hate Lily From Duolingo

A while ago I decided that I needed to replace some of my spiraling social media time with something more productive and decided to give Duolingo another go. Duolingo has a lot of problems and I could probably complain about it for the better part of an hour, but all of those problems are mere pebbles in the shoes of life compared to Lily who is a giant boulder falling directly on your car at the exact same moment your engine caught on fire and Ed Sheeran came on the radio.

God, I hate this bitch so much.

Why is she even here? What, exactly, is her purpose? All of the other characters are encouraging and supportive. They do little dances when you get answers right and try to give you a high five through the screen. Even the fucking bear manages a little shoulder wiggle. Meanwhile, the only reactions correct answers elicit out of this caustic Daria-wannabe is a huge fucking eyeroll, or – and this is the one that really makes me want to strangle her to death – an over-the-top sarcastic ooooo and hand wave. Not only does Lily not give single half-shit that you’re learning a new skill, she actively hates you and is probably waiting for this lesson to be over so she can go talk shit about you on TikTok.

God help you if get an answer wrong in front of her. I am 1000% certain this girl has a knife on her somewhere and is simply biding her time.

I tried to do some lessons in Duolingo to get screenshots for this article and all the characters were suspiciously absent from the questions. What are you trying to hide Duolingo?

Oh. Never mind, I know. How much Lily is a garbage person.

Like, I get that these people exist. I think I was one for a while in high school, although I definitely didn’t have the confidence to be this bitchy. I just don’t understand why you would want to create a person like this in a very specific situation where someone is trying to learn something very new, and very hard, and they need a lot of encouragement.

And they definitely could have made her that bitchy teenager and still made her encouraging. Or at least neutral. Which I think she used to be, basically a non-reaction. But now it’s obvious that she doesn’t want to be there and she hates her life and she hates you and she would prefer it if you didn’t do stupid things like ‘learn a new language’ around her and instead went off somewhere and died.

Do you know how hard it is to learn something new, especially as an adult? You have to find the time to do it, make the habit and keep it, and – this is probably the most important piece – get over the embarrassment of trying something new and failing for a while. Humans will do anything to avoid embarrassment, and even the possibility of embarrassment, up to and including trying literally anything that might make them seem foolish in front of other people. Even if they think they might like it, even if it looks fun, a fully grown adult might still decide not to try it because they would be trying it front of other people and what if they look silly? What if they can’t do it right away? What if they fail in front of other people? It’s a ridiculous mental block but that doesn’t make it any less tough to get around and we all have it.

The nice thing about a learning app like Duolingo is that you get to try and fail at something new in the comfort and privacy of your own home, so why the fuck would the creators include a character who has all the reactions people are afraid of? Who is this helping?

The lore (yes, there is Duolingo Lore) says that Lily and Zari are friends, and I mean, absolutely the fuck not. I’m not saying I’m a Zari, but I would need two hands to count all of the Lily’s I’ve cut out of my life. That sort of constant negativity can sour your own outlook, even if it’s not directed at you. And I refuse to believe that Lily isn’t somehow also being a complete bitch to Zari every now and then. If they’re both teenagers this is probably that situation where they’re friends simply because they’re stuck together in high school, and then second Zari goes to college and meets people she actually wants to hang out with she’ll realize that Lily was completely toxic to her their entire school career and she’ll start to do the slow fade.

Yes. That’s correct. I have fucking head-canons about the fucking Duolingo characters because I hate Lily so much and want so much better for Zari. I don’t think about the other characters like this. I don’t even know their names because they’re all exactly the sort of bland, personality-less cheerleaders I expect from this sort of bullshit. I don’t know why Lily needs a personality, and I don’t know why Lily needs this personality, but the only thing she’s motivating me to do is learn ‘Please fuck off and die’ in every language possible and I don’t need Duolingo for that. I can Google that shit.

The Distance Between Family

She scoffed. “This sort of thing doesn’t happen here!”

“But it did! It did happen! There!”

Mary glanced at the screen displaying the face of her son as she poured tea into her cup. Andy was always panicking about something. It was just another Sunday.

“It’s fine! You worry too much. Anyway, I was talking to your Aunt Barbara, and-”

“No, Mom, you can’t just change the subject. Not this time.”

Mary rolled her eyes to herself, hidden behind the fridge door as she put the milk away.

“Andrew, seriously. It’s fine. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“Well, I do.”

“Well, I don’t, and I’m your mother, so-”

“No.”

Mary started, almost sloshing tea right onto the floor. Mary and Richard hadn’t seen eye to eye with their son since he was a pre-teen. Mary didn’t know what happened, but she suspected it was that damn computer. One minute he was a dutiful son, going to church and listening to everything his parents had to say on any subject with rapt attention, and the next his hair was long, he wouldn’t leave the house on Sundays except to find his friends, and everything had to be an argument. Everything.

At least those had stopped. Sometime when Andrew was in college. There wasn’t a last straw, a big final blow-out that left everyone hurt and needing time to cool off. No, Andrew simply…drifted. He stopped arguing about needless things like politics with them and they were all better for it. Now if he would only do something about his anxiety.

Any time things got too deep for Mary all she had to do was change the subject and Andrew would go along with it. That’s how things were supposed to work. He wasn’t supposed to fight her on it. He wasn’t supposed to raise his voice at her.

“Don’t talk to me with that tone,” she snapped at him, approaching where the tablet was fixed on the counter.

“I have to because you’re not listening to me! You never listen to me-”

“I always listen to you! I’m listening right now!”

“-and that’s okay, I’ve accepted that,” he continued, like she hadn’t just tried to shut the conversation down again. “I’ve accepted that this is the best our relationship is ever going to be. But you have to listen to me this time, Mom. This isn’t theoretical. This isn’t happening somewhere else, or so slow you don’t notice. It’s happening there, and now, and fast. You are being poisoned right now.”

Mary shifted her weight and forced herself to keep her eyes on the tablet. They wanted to dart to the kitchen window, but there wasn’t actually anything to see out there, no, definitely not, so she didn’t.

“I think being in Hollywood has made you something of a drama queen,” she said.

Thousands of miles and inches away on the screen Andrew hung his head in much the same way his father did. He’d asked about Richard. Mary had said he was watching television, which was mostly true.

“Mom, please. The recycler, it never should have gone like that. That wasn’t normal. Didn’t you say you could see the explosion from the kitchen?”

Now Mary did look out the window. Not that there was much to see. Despite the new colonization the moon was still rather lifeless. She missed her begonias. No flowers at all. Just moon rock and the harsh of space and the place near to the horizon where the air scrubber station used to be.

“Well, yes, but the government said it’s fine. Everything is fine up here. We have air up here. I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“Sure, right. How’s your asthma?”

She glanced at her inhaler sitting on the kitchen table before she could stop herself.

“It’s spring, Andy. I’ve got allergies.”

“Allergies? On the moon? Wasn’t that one of the reasons you and dad wanted to move up there?”

“Well, there’s still dust! Honestly, Andrew, this is getting ridiculous! Everything is fine up here! If something were wrong the news would have said so. The mayor would have said so!”

Andy ran his hand over his face, a gesture he hadn’t picked up from either of them. “I want you and dad to come down to California.”

“Andrew.”

“For at least a few weeks. Until this whole thing is sorted.”

“It is sorted.”

“We’ve got the mother-in-law suite above the garage, it’s basically its own little apartment. Please, mom, just until they actually give an all-clear. A real one.”

Mary drew herself up to her full height. “I’m telling you, Andrew, they have. They wouldn’t just lie to everyone. They wouldn’t just let everyone up here get sick and die, and for what, exactly?”

“Profits, Mom.”

Mary tutted. “There you go again with your…your…commie bullshit!”

The silence hung between them, between the planet and it’s moon, between a mother and her son.

“Fine,” Andrew said, his voice hollow. “Stay up there. Do what you want. The suite is here if you want it. Just…please keep an eye on yourself? And Dad?”

Mary said she would and cut the connection. She loved her son, but she hated him at the same time. How dare he talk to her like he knew better than her? Like he was clued into something and she was some passive idiot wandering around without a clue what was going on around her? Mary knew a thing or two he didn’t. Like the people in charge wouldn’t let an entire moon colony slowly die just to make a quick buck. Of course she knew people were mostly motivated by greed. But how could this sort of greed work out for these rich fatcats in the long run? No, no, they were surely okay because if they all died up here they’d lose the whole colony and their profits would dry up and that was the truth.

Mary took a hit off her inhaler and rubbed her chest as she went up to the bedroom.

Rich was dozing in bed but opened his eyes when he heard Mary come in.

“I heard you yelling,” he said, half-shouting to be heard over the oxygen mask pressed against his nose and mouth.

“Just your son again, thinking he knows better than his mother.”

Rich opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a hacking, wheezing cough that went and went and went until finally Mary walked off to get ready for bed.

Fear

“You can’t live your whole life in fear!” the old man said, shaking his fist.

But of course he knew that wasn’t true. Way down deep within his brain, on a level he would never actually acknowledge. It was a simple fact that he iced out the way he and his drinking buddies could get anyone they decided didn’t belong taken out of the bar.

The old man was afraid all the time, and always had been.

He was afraid of anyone darker than him which meant he was afraid of most people. He saw them all as threats to his home, his job, his well-being, even if they were simply driving in the other direction. Even if they were on the television, in a completely different country that historically had exactly zero bearing on his own.

He was afraid of a lot of white people, too, because you could never fully trust that another white person was as afraid of darker people as they should be. Hell, when the time finally came they would probably help bring him down!

He was afraid of people who thought they were smarter than him.

He was afraid that they were right.

He was afraid that those people who thought they were smarter than him would find out that he was afraid of them and use that to their advantage.

He was afraid they would take his guns. He had thirty-six of them, displayed lovingly on the wall of his basement. He used exactly two of them, to target shoot in his backyard.

He was afraid of trans people and drag queens, but the fact that he didn’t know why was buried even deeper than the fear itself. They turned his stomach. Made him want to puke. Made him nervous for his kids, always glancing around in public looking for them. The neighbor’s boy had begun transitioning the year before and he was a great kid. This fact had not interacted with his general fear of trans people a single time.

He was afraid the government would tax him into homelessness, which is why he had sent most of his retirement savings to the political party of his choice.

He was afraid of the government in general.

He was afraid of the usual conspiracies. They were controlling everything. They were coming for him and his family simply because they were white. They would force a civil war and the shooting would really start and he would fuck it up somehow and his family would end up in some sort of camp.

He was afraid that all of his conspiracy theories were completely made up. He was afraid he didn’t actually have a secret insight to the way the world worked and he was just paranoid. He was afraid the people telling him these conspiracies were real were simply stealing money from him.

He was afraid if the people who believed these conspiracies with him discovered his fear that they were all wrong, they would shun him and he would be even more alone than he already was.

He was sure he was a good Christian and would go to heaven, but he was still afraid he was going to hell for reasons he’d never discover before he was burning.

He was afraid of the disease and also afraid of the vaccine and also afraid of not getting the vaccine because he was scared of it and then getting the disease and dying while he watched vaccinated people continue to live like normal.

The old man was afraid all the time. But he’d been afraid all the time, his entire life, and so it doesn’t even register. It is the normal. It is the way everyone feels, he thinks.

“You can’t live your whole life in fear!” the old man said, shaking his fist at the couple wearing masks in the grocery store.

They ignore him, and that makes him afraid, too.

Maybe You Should Play Death Stranding

Hey, did you see the trailer for Death Stranding 2 (working title) that dropped at the Game of the Year Awards a couple months back? If you haven’t played Death Stranding then you probably had no idea what was going on. Well, good news! I did play Death Stranding and I was pretty fucking lost, too! It kept up the grand tradition of ‘I am confusion Kojima explain’ from the first trailer.

Death Stranding is a game by Hideo Kojima, legendary creator of the Metal Gear series and Guinness World Record Holder of The Most Plot in Any Story Ever Written. And while Death Stranding is, in fact, fully weird and convoluted and over-plotted and contains what is, potentially, the single worst line in the history of video games and I know that’s a loaded category but I am not fucking around here it’s so hideously terrible it’s begun to echo out through time and space and if there is intelligent life out there they ain’t coming…anyway, I think it’s actually way more accessible than people might realize. So let’s go over some reason you might actually want to play Death Stranding.

You Like Being Assigned Tasks, and Then Completely Those Tasks

While the story of Death Stranding is, to put it lightly, poo-flinging bugfuck crazy, the actual mechanics of the game are straightforward. Once you get through a literal movie’s worth of insane cutscenes, you will finally be in charge of piloting Sam Porter Bridges, the Best Deliveryman in the Apocalypse.

Yes, really.

America has separated itself into cities and individual preppers in their doomcaves, and the main crux of the game is you are delivering needed packages from points A to Z in an effort to reconnect the country and avoid another extinction event.

Yes. Really.

There is some combat in this game but the majority of it is super tame and the rest of it is fucking weird but still relatively easy to get through. There is a lot of driving, but all of it is in service of delivery packages. I know, I know, it sounds like I’m full of shit, especially if you watched the trailer up there. Plenty of people were actively mad when the game came out because no one watched that baby up there and expected this sort of gameplay. People began derisively calling it a ‘walking simulator,’ which is sort of funny because…

It’s Probably the Only Actual Walking Simulator in Existence

The term ‘walking simulator’ can be an actual descriptor of a game. It can also be used as an insult. A lot of walking simulator games involve playing as a first person character and – surprise – walking around and exploring both the location and the story, usually through picking stuff up and reading about it. These games hinge entirely on the story hooking players, because the gameplay itself is basic on purpose.

Walking simulators are basically visual novels with extra steps.

Sometimes fucknuts on the internet use the term as an insult for a game they think is boring, and this criticism got leveled at Death Stranding, but the thing is they are technically correct, the best kind of correct.

In actual walking simulator games, the walking is just a way to get from story point A to story point B. You usually can’t even see your character, the way the world bobs past you the only visual indicator that you are an actual person on legs instead of a camera on a dolly. The walking doesn’t matter, the story does.

Well, if you’re playing Death Stranding buckle the fuck up, and I mean that literally because you don’t want to fall and hit your head. For large swaths of the game, the walking is the only thing that matters.

Unlike other games where the amount you can carry is only limited by your heart, in Death Stranding the packages Sam carries all have actual weight and dimensions. Put too much weight on Sam and he’ll struggle to stand. Stack your packages too high and Sam will start to fall over if you turn too sharply.

Is the terrain flat or rocky? Is the slope gentle or steep? In other games: who cares! Video game characters will sprint through the world at the same improbably speed through rivers and snow and over fields and giant boulders for as long as you press the run button. In Death Stranding, you have to pay attention to what’s in front of you, because Sam can and will trip over a single rock in his path and eat shit and damage everything he is carrying if you are not careful.

In some games there is a stamina bar when your character sprints, eventually running out and leaving your character to jog casually for a few seconds until the stamina bar replenishes and you can go back to sprinting. Meanwhile, Sam eventually gets so exhausted that if you don’t go home and sleep for a night the stamina bar becomes nothing more than a nub and he will pass out in the middle of a river.

Death Stranding isn’t a walking simulator because it’s boring, it’s a walking simulator because the entire point of the game is analyzing every little detail about what you are carrying and where you take your next step.

You Like Cozy Games

A lot of the time when people think of cozy games they think of Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, the sort of games with cutesy animation and anthropomorphic animals and lots of farming and no violence. I think the definition, though, is broader than that, and the term simply means any game that lets the player relax and unwind. This definition ultimately means that what counts as a ‘cozy game’ depends on the person. I’ve never picked up Animal Crossing myself because just the thought of having to permanently build and then decorate my home and island and get everything exactly right is enough to give me hives.

My ultimate cozy game is Breath of the Wild, because I have spent hundreds of hours wandering around and collecting apples and mushrooms and when I did build my house it came with a handful of very specific options that I didn’t need to stress over because, like, you have Bolson build you the shield mount or you don’t. That’s it. Those are your options.

That makes it no surprise, then, that I consider Death Stranding a cozy game. You roll into a prepper’s station, you find out what they want you to deliver, you find a way to carry everything, and then you fuck off across the game map. It’s quiet. It’s scenic. There’s stuff for you to find and pick up along the way, like other packages that will net you even more points with the people you are delivering to. You can avoid fights. Hell, you can mostly avoid people entirely. The only NPCs also wandering out in the world are other Porters, and the only thing you can do with them is exchange packages and thumbs up.

Everyone else is sitting in their underground bunker, waiting for you to arrive with fresh underwear.

Also, when Sam gets really exhausted and you don’t want to go a private room, you can pick a nice spot in nature and nap for as long as you want.

If taking cute naps next to a creek isn’t cozy then I don’t know what is.

You Like A Tiny Amount of Social Interaction

I fucking hate multiplayer games where you play with people you don’t know because it’s basically social interaction and why the fuck would I want social interaction in my video games when video games are supposed to be my escape from the real world?

That said, I love the social interaction in Death Stranding. Here it is:

Another player in their game builds a bridge because they need it. Then the bridge shows up in your game, in case you need. If you want, you can spam the Like button to give the other player lots of love for building a necessary bridge. The other player gets the Likes and feels appreciated. Otherwise, the two of you never meet.

It’s great. It’s basically fostering a sense of community but I never have to get on a headphone set and try to chat with someone halfway across the world while some virulent twelve year old spouts slurs like some sort of sludge-gargoyle. You can even directly friend one of these other players and it doesn’t change much. There’s no chat feature at all. You just keep sharing structures and Likes until one of you logs off forever.

Santa Hat

Sam can wear a Santa hat.

You Enjoy Being Assigned Tasks, and Then Fucking Off and Doing What You Want for Several Hours

Unless it’s a timed delivery you don’t get penalized for how long it takes you to deliver something because generally the recipient doesn’t know it’s coming so sometimes I will carry a single package for eight hours while I do everything else under sun and then spray the container down with repair juice before dropkicking it into the prepper’s delivery slot and only because I happened to be in the area chasing down chiral crystals.

The moral of the story here is if you’re able to either enjoy or ignore the Kojima-ness of it all, Death Stranding is mostly a chill little game where you wander around delivering packages and trying not to trip over a cliff. It’s chill, it’s cute, it’s moody, it’s the best way to calm down after a long day of talking to people you don’t know who definitely wouldn’t gift you a Like, and you wouldn’t give them shit either.

What is in a Name

It wasn’t that the location of her home was secret. On the contrary, both her address and phone number had always been listed in the phone book, right next to her real name. Well…real name…what does that even mean? Could she even remember her ‘real’ name?

No matter, she was listed under the name everyone knew her under and that was all that mattered. Still, no one came to her home. And why would they? She had worked very hard to curate a specific persona. Only the ones very desperate or very dumb ever graced her door.

So when her buzzer rang she was only a little surprised. Mostly annoyed. She had been crafting a delicate spell and had become so lost in thought that when that wretched BBZZZZZZZZT came out of the tinny little speaker near the door her entire body lurched in shock, causing the beaker of purple, sizzling fluid to go all over her workbench. She stared in dismay as the purple ate into the wood, burning holes half an inch deep before finally dissolving completely.

“Third time this month,” she muttered to herself.

BBZZZZT! BBZZZT! BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

“I’m coming!” she screamed at the buzzer, as though the channel were already open and whoever was standing forty-six stories below could hear her.

BBZZZZZZT!

“What?” she barked after finally pressing the button.

“Is this the home of the Crow Witch?” asked a voice so delicate she immediately imagined its owner to be made of silk.

“Fucking speaking,” she said, keeping her voice gruff. Maybe if she was scary enough whoever this was would kick rocks and she could go back to work.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Make an appointment on my website.”

“Your next available time is in June.”

“And? Will you be dead by June?”

“Not quite. But by then I’ll have pricked my finger on a spinning wheel and will be a deep, unwaking sleep.”

The Crow Witch blinked.

Has it been so long?

She pressed the button to open the door downstairs without another word.

It took long enough for the girl to get to the penthouse suite that the Crow Witch began to wonder she had lost her nerve and fled. But, no, she finally heard the elevator on the other side of the hall spring to life. Having the entire top floor of the nicest building in the city was nice. Sitting on top of forty-five floors of neighbors was not.

The Crow Witch made the girl knock on her door before answering.

Standing in front of her was not the girl the Crow Witch expected because, she realized, she had been expecting a princess. Fine clothes, bubbly demeanor, royal countenance, perhaps a lady in waiting or two behind her, trailing nervously. Instead, the girl in front of her was just that – a girl. If it wasn’t for her mother’s eyes and her father’s hair the Crow Witch would have been inclined to believe the girl was an imposter. There was a slouch in her shoulders as she stood there at the doorway, and her clothes weren’t that of royalty. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

“Hi,” the girl said.

“Princess Amelia?” the Crow Witch asked, raising an eyebrow.

The girl shrugged. “So they tell me.”

Mother’s eyes. Father’s hair. And swarming with the Crow Witch’s very own magic. This was the lost princess, all right.

“Come on in.”

The Crow Witch led her deeper into the apartment. The living room was in the corner, panes of glass on both sides, the entire city opening up below. The girl crossed to the north window and stared out. Not at the city. At the palace on the other side of the city. Like a toy this far off. Small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand.

“I have to admit,” the Crow Witch said, going to the wet bar by the television. “I thought you were dead. When they announced you had been sent away for your safety, I assumed they simply drowned you in the river.”

“Maybe they would have, if your curse hadn’t been so public,” the princess said, still staring across the sea of lights. “I grew up watching the videos on the internet. Same as everyone else. You can’t really see the baby in any of them. Even if I could I doubt I would have figured it out.”

The Crow Witch nudged the girl’s arm, making her jump. But the only thing the Witch had in her hand was a glass. The girl eyed it like it might start sizzling.

“It’s a martini.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Maybe you should start.”

The girl took the glass and, after a second, a sip. The Witch had put in a lot of olives.

“Where did they stash you, anyway?” the Witch asked. “Some sub-basement below the palace? Or maybe Mars?”

“Nah.” The girl pointed behind her. Not north. West. Across the river. “I was in Pleasant Point.”

The Witch sneered. “That ghastly suburb? But that’s so…so…boring. Please, at least tell me you were living in a basement or something.”

“No. I lived in a house on Pine Street, and my bedroom is on the second floor. It faces the back yard. We have an above ground swimming pool, and the old playset from when I was a kid. Trying to get rid of it was a huge problem so they just gave up.”

“They?”

“My moms and my aunt Judy. Mom’s the school nurse at the elementary school and Mama ran a flower shop on Main Street. Aunt Judy was a seamstress at a dry cleaner’s. I went to public school. I’m still at Pleasant Point High. I’m supposed to graduate this May. I played violin in the orchestra and I was on the track team. I applied to a bunch of colleges and I was still waiting on hearing if I got into any of them. Then, last week, the three of them sat me down. Told me they had something important. I thought I was going to get a car. Instead I found out my whole life is a lie.”

The girl threw back the martini in a single shot before the Crow Witch could stop her and grimaced. She held the empty glass out, and the Crow Witch switched her for her own, still full.

“Hiding you with magic, right out in plain sight,” the Crow Witch said. “What a bunch of shitbirds.”

“They said I was always safe, because you’d never come to a place like that.”

“And they were right,” the Crow Witch said. “Disgusting.”

The Crow Witch looked the girl up and down. Plain, yes. Entirely plain. Living her plain little life, only to find that the nasty Crow Witch had taken it away before she ever known it was gone.

“So, what the hell do you want? I’m not in the business of apologies and a curse is a curse. Couldn’t lift it if I wanted to.”

“I know,” the girl said. “And I don’t want you to, anyway.”

“Come again?”

The girl drained the second martini and put the glass down on the coffee table. Whilst she turned to stare moodily out of the window the Witch snuck the glass away before it could damage the wood.

“My whole life is a lie,” she said again. “Worse than that, my whole future is a lie, too. They kept encouraging me to apply to colleges and programs, knowing I’d never get to go to them.”

“If they were hiding you in a suburb, surely they also got rid of all the spinning wheels in town?”

“I’m not talking about the curse,” the girl said. “I’m talking about my life after I managed to dodge the curse. My eighteenth birthday comes and goes, not a spinning wheel in sight, and then what?”

“I guess, then, you go back to your old life. Your real one.”

The girl laughed bitterly. “My old life. The one I lived for exactly three weeks before I was whisked away. And my real life?”

She turned around and gestured to herself, her clothes, her hair.

“This is my real life! I’m not a princess. I don’t know what I’m doing! No one ever trained me to be royalty, or the head of state, or any of that shit.”

“As I understand it, you’re still betrothed to the prince from-”

The girl rolled her eyes and made a jerk-off motion. “Prince Wallace, yeah, I’ve seen him on the internet. He looks like a real peach. Thing is, I already have a boyfriend. And friends. And a job. I have a life! And they want me to drop it all and walk back into the palace like nothing happened and I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that.”

The Crow Witch nodded slowly. “So, you’ve decided going to sleep for a hundred years is better than a life as a princess?”

“At least I won’t have to marry Prince Wallace.”

“You’re looking for a spinning wheel?”

The girl shook her head. “I’ve found one. My moms and Aunt Judy…excuse me, the fairies…they don’t know. It was abandoned in the woods, on the far side of the dump. I had to Google it to make sure I was looking at the right thing. If I can’t have the life I want, I’d rather take my chances in the future.”

“Then why did you come here?”

“I wanted to apologize.”

The entire conversation had been like getting punched repeatedly in the stomach, and this was the KO. The Crow Witch gaped. A sight not many had seen.

“Girly, you have nothing to apologize for,” the Crow Witch said. “In fact, I’m sorry I dragged you into this. When I get mad, I don’t process it very well.”

But the girl was shaking her head. “Like I said, I saw the videos online. And we talked about it in PoliSci sophomore year of high school. My parents were complete assholes.”

The Witch raised an eyebrow. “This is what your teacher said?”

“Oh, sure. Wait, do you not know? Most people don’t really blame you, not anymore. I mean, the most sycophantic royalists do, sure, but out in the ‘burbs? Everyone knows my parents should have invited you but didn’t on purpose. They used my Christening as a giant middle finger. They fucked around, and they found out. And in another week, they’ll find out again.”

Maybe the suburbs aren’t such a bad place after all.

“So…yeah…I’m sorry my parents suck.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

She let the girl get halfway to the door before calling after her.

“Why don’t you come here, when it’s time? It’ll be safer. I’d hate for you to prick your finger on some rusty spindle and end up with tetanus while you sleep or something.”

“Is that possible?” the girl said with wide eyes.

“Probably. I don’t know. You can stay here, in my guest room. God only knows where they’ll stash you if you go to the palace. Or who will be there when you wake up.”

The girl shifted her weight. “But you’ll be there?”

“Unless one of these bastards finally manages to kill me. Which they won’t, because for the most part they are very, very stupid. You don’t have to. Keep the other spinning wheel safe. But if you want to. And if you can. Come back here.”

The girl who was supposed to be Princess Amelia said she would think about it, and went out the way she came. It was only hours later, while the Crow Witch was watching Late Night and eating cheese that she realized she had never gotten the girl’s real name.

The Warped “Minds” of Corporations

You ever look at a corporation and think, “What is going on in their head?”

The answer of course is yes, you do, because corporations are making increasingly erratic decisions that don’t make any sense in any direction. Like, yeah, every decision ever made by a corporation is one that’s going to ruin lives and the planet, that’s old news, whatever.

But now they’re doing things that actively seem to be hurting their own company’s bottom line and while it’s hilarious it’s also concerning because it’s like…what’s going on? Do you know something we don’t? If you guys are going to burn the Amazon can you at least make obscene amounts of money doing it so something is happening here? Please?

Anyway, you’d think this is about Twitter but it’s actually about Netflix. I don’t know what – if anything – is going on inside Elon’s head at any given moment but it’s clear the man is some combination of stupid and insane and while this doesn’t excuse his actions it does explain them.

I have no idea who’s at the rudder at Netflix and don’t care to find out but I think they need some therapy and maybe some business classes because what the fuck.

Like, yeah, the password sharing thing. They’ve been threatening to crackdown on password sharing for a decade now. Always the same. It’s like your mother constantly threatening to get rid of your dad’s project car in the garage but it never goes anywhere because it’s way more hassle to actually get rid of it so it just leaks oil onto the cement forever. They’ve been bitching about all the money Millennials are ‘stealing’ by sharing passwords for forever but doing fuck all about it because they know the second they do a bunch of people who are already pissed off are simply going to cancel their subscription.

And why are they pissed off? Maybe it’s because they decided to add a Basic plan with advertising after years of never having advertising. And I know, Netflix, you were super jealous that other streaming services like Hulu and Amazon always had ads in their services and no one was complaining about that! First of all: yes, they fucking were. Second of all: you fucking started this shit, and you started it without ads, so of course people are going to be pissed if you add them to your cheapest option and then bump the price on the non-advertising option because – and I know this is going to be a shock to you corporate bungholes – humanity as a whole is so entirely exhausted of being advertised to from every single corner of existence that if anyone ever manages to get an ad on the moon I’m fairly confident the whole thing will be blown out of existence within the week.

Surprise, surprise – that Basic plan is doing nothing for their bottom line because fuck you, that’s why.

At least the Basic plan with ads people can ignore. At least you kept the plans without ads, even if you do jack up the price occasionally. Whatever. I’ll keep pretending ‘inflation’ is something that’s currently happening naturally and isn’t those same corporate bungholes raising prices simply because they can because our entire government – the Entire. Fucking. Thing. – is beholden to you flaming fucknards. At least I can still pay the going rate to not have to watch white people having fun in the desert, or at the beach, or in an abandoned subway while second-tier pop music plays and then the Pepsi logo graces us with its ugly presence. At least I don’t have to listen to a Sam Elliot-type choke on all his lines trying to equate buying a big Fuck Off truck with being Super Patriotic and Strong and Manly and Big-Dicked. At least I can bribe these losers to let me watch Wednesday in peace without having to sit through some famous celebrity pretending crypto isn’t a giant scam in a constant state of imploding in on itself.

But I can’t fucking watch anything if Netflix keeps canceling shit.

I really don’t get it. This is the part that’s baffling to me. Why go to all the trouble of listening to the pitch for a show, approving the show, paying the money for people to make the show, advertising the show, and finally putting the show on your app only to pull it in a matter of weeks, sometimes days? If you want to burn money, you know you can just do that, right? There isn’t a law about it. Get all your ill-gotten gains printed up in sequential one hundreds, pile it all up in a warehouse or on a beach or in the middle of a forest, douse it all in kerosene and let that baby rip. Who the fuck cares? Not Netflix, clearly.

This article from Forbes (fun fact! If you hit that ‘I disabled my ad blocker’ button enough times without actually disabling your adblocker, the message gives up and goes away) goes into how Netflix is screwing themselves in the long run, curating a selection of shows that has essentially turned into Russian roulette. Anytime someone in the future wants to start a Netflix show the first thing they’ll have to do is research if it got cancelled on a cliffhanger lest they be burned.

I can only come up with two possibilities here, and they are not mutually exclusive.

The first is that Netflix isn’t interested in creating a selection of complete shows people can enjoy for years to come. No, the only thing Netflix wants is a Mega Hit. Another Stranger Things. A show with a small but devoted fanbase is completely uninteresting to them, and they’ve never even heard the phrase ‘sleeper hit’ before. They want the hype machine and they want it immediately, and like a little kid with a box of Russel Stover they will take a bite out of every chocolate and toss them if they don’t find the caramel inside.

The other thing I think is going on got brought to my attention by author and expert Tumblr shitposter Neil Gaiman over the summer after The Sandman was released:

It’s a perfect example of the first point: the only thing Netflix seems to want is everyone to be so fucking jazzed for their new show that they can’t help but watch the entire ten-ish hours in a single sitting. It’s a model they championed back when they were the only game in town and releasing an entire show at the same time was a novelty.

I don’t know if viewers in general are over binging, but I’m getting the sense that the other streaming services out there now aren’t about it. Disney+ has been releasing their biggest Marvel and Star Wars shows weekly since they got started. Amazon, if I remember correctly, used to drop their shows at once but in the past year or two have switched to a weekly release model with their big stuff. Hulu and HBO both have a stronger relationship with traditional television models and I’m not sure either have ever released everything at the same time.

I could be wrong, don’t fucking quote me on any of the last paragraph.

Dropping a show all at once seemed like it was the way of the future with television, but its increasingly starting to look like it was simply a fad and I don’t think Netflix likes that. In fact, I think they’re digging their heels into the mud and being an absolute bitch about it. It would be one thing if they continued to drop entire seasons of a show and simply let viewers figure out how they wanted to watch. But no. They’re going to drop the whole damn season, and you’re going to watch the whole thing this weekend, because if you don’t that means you don’t love it and you don’t deserve it and fuck it! It’s already cancelled! Fuck!

This plan is terrible for the long run. And terrible for the short run, too, because people are getting real sick of their shit. So for when, exactly, is this plan for? What is happening here? Who is making these decisions? Do they think they’re good ideas? Is the entire planet run by nepo-babies and we’re just starting to find out what that actually means for everyone?

I don’t know, but I do think it’s fucking rich that Netflix made a show about Blockbuster hanging on by a thread when they can’t even stop cutting their own fucking rope.

Sir Alfred Quick, Knight Errant

Mine is a hard road, but I travel it faithfully, for my calling is just and true. I am meant to travel from the largest city to the tiniest hamlet and offer my services to any who might need them. Forever I shall roam these roads, righting wrongs, helping the helpless, and wooing damsels, armed with nothing more than my wits, my gut, my faithful squire Frankie, and Rosie, our trusty Buick Skylark.

For I am Sir Alfred Quick, knight errant.

“Hark!” I say, pointing ahead to a shining spot down the road through the crystal windscreen. “What yonder?”

Next to me, valiantly piloting Rosie like the true sailor he is, Frankie peers deeply in the direction I am pointing

“What, the Hardee’s?”

“Yes, yes! The Hardees!” I say, infusing my tone with the jubilant praise my squire so rightly deserves. “Let us steer ourselves in such direction! This will be a place where we can slake multiple thirsts: we shall surely find someone who needs help in this nestled community, and of course such victuals that will fill our empty stomachs!”

“Yeah, man, sounds good,” Frankie says. “Only, you mind if we stop at the Taco Bell next door instead? I could totally do a Mexican Pizza.”

I look at Frankie in astonishment. “A Mexican Pizza, you say? Why, I’ve never heard of such a wonderous thing! Are the Italians aware that their creation has been taken by another country and, though I do assume, improved upon?”

Frankie shakes his head in a way that tosses his locks in every direction. “I’m pretty sure both Mexican pizzas and regular pizzas are American foods. I don’t know what the Italians think.”

“A mystery! We must do research, my good boy! The next time we are in such a place to do so, of course.”

“Sounds sick.”

My squire is quite the enthusiastic lad! Ever since the day I met him, standing next to the entrance of the Fifth Interstate with his thumb out and a poorly scrawled sign, he has been my constant companion. Never complaining, always ready for a new challenge! And he seems to have a supernatural sense at finding people who need our help.

Indeed, as he parks our trusty Rosie in the parking lot between the two inns, I can see through the windows that there are far more people in the Taco Bell than the Hardees. Which means far more people who might need my services. Yes, today is a good day!

“What ho, madam!” I call as we enter through the glass doors. The young woman, as pretty as a painted picture in her turquoise shirt and matching visor, stares at me in wonder. It is a reaction I am quite used to, I assure you. It is a sad statement of today’s world that I appear to be the only knight errant traveling the wilds.

“Welcome to Taco Bell,” she says in a voice perfectly made to match her soft brown eyes, her shiny brown hair pulled into the most perfect pony tail, and her perfect shape, which of course did not need description as all women come in the most perfect shape. I wished to serenade her, to shower her with all of the descriptors of her beauty she so rightly deserves. But Frankie has recently informed me that women today find this ‘off-putting and a little fucking sketchy,’ so I keep my admirations to myself. No woman shall ever find Sir Alfred Quick ‘sketchy!’

“My dear Gloria,” I say, reading the stately nametag affixed to her polo. “I have been told my by Squire Frankie that I simply must try this Mexican Pizza. But I am unsure as to what else I shall have. Do you, perchance, have a menu?”

Gloria wordlessly points up above her head. Such an efficient woman! I had expected a paper menu I may hold, but the words hanging above her head are big enough for me to read and filled with such wonderous things the names of which have never graced my ears!

“Franke? What is a…cha-luhp-a?”

“Chalupa, man, long u. Why don’t you let me order? I’ll get a bunch of stuff for you to try?”

“Excellent idea, lad, excellent idea! You are far more knowledgeable of this place of tacos and bells.”

While Frankie and Gloria discuss the finer details of our upcoming meal I allow my eyes to gently scan the dining room. Beautiful, such shades of blues and pinks blending together as though a master artist had designed this room! And filled with half a dozen of people. Surely one of them would need something from a knight errant.

“Tell me, Gloria,” I say while Frankie deals with the payment machine. “We are travelers of the world, looking to help whoever and however we can. Is there anyone here in this inn who could use a hand?”

Gloria fixes those gorgeous eyes on me I almost melt on the spot.

“Help with what?”

“With whatever!” I say, raising my hands to indicate that I could help with the entire inn, if need  be. “I am Sir Alfred Quick, knight errant, and I am dedicated to helping anyone who comes to me with any problem, if I can. And I rarely can’t.”

“I don’t know. No one’s here I know,” she says, looking around the dining room. “Order’s up.”

As I pick up the tray with our delectable-looking food, I overheard Gloria and Frankie talking.

“Your grandpa’s weird.”

“Yeah, I guess. He’s also really cool, though. Last week we spent an entire day hunting down this dude’s lost puppies. Dude was so happy when we came back he threw up.”

It is only after we are halfway through our midday meal – the chalupa was so scrumptious Frankie had to stop me from immediately ordering a second – when one of the other patrons of the inn approaches our table. She is a woman with the most perfect shape and face. A baby sits on her hip and she is holding the hand of another young child.

“I heard you say you do odd jobs?” she asks.

“My dear woman, I do all sorts of jobs, whether one would consider them outside societal norms or not.”

She glances between me and Frankie.

“He says yes.”

“Well, I don’t know if this is the sort of thing you do, but I got a family of raccoons living in my crawlspace. Animal control won’t come out because they say they’re not dangerous and no one else will come out because they say they are dangerous. I don’t even want them dead. I just want them living somewhere else.”

“Racoons! Living in an crawlspace! Such an adventure I don’t think I’ve ever had. What about you, Frankie?”

“We moved squirrels out of a lady’s attic a couple of months ago, that’s similar,” he says. By his tone I can tell he is not downplaying the exciting afternoon that now lies ahead of us, but only assuring this woman that we are indeed capable of moving small, energetic mammals out of human habitation.

The woman shifts the weight of the baby on her hip as the look of relief fades. “What do you charge?”

“I-“

Frankie gives me a look and I stop. He has warned me in the past that offering my knightly services for free will only make people suspicious. I did not believe him at first, but he has spoken the truth: ever since I started charging even a paltry amount I have had fewer people turn down my services. It is insanity! But I do what I must to help people.

“How many raccoons?” Frankie asks.

“It’s a family. So two large ones, and I think three small ones. I think. They don’t come out much.”

“How about this: a hundred bucks for all of them, or fifty bucks and dinner when we’re done?”

The woman smiles at us. “I make a good casserole?”

“My good woman!” I say, putting a hand to my chest. “The day I turn down a casserole is the day I’m dead! What say you, my squire?”

Frankie gives me that devilish grin of his. “I say we’re hunting raccoons.”

“Huzzah!” I say.

“Huzzah!” Frankie repeats.

“Huzzah!” comes from the child at the woman’s side.

These are the moments I truly cherish. The moment where a knight errant has once again discovered his purpose. The light in the woman’s face is truly payment enough, but Frankie is correct that most motels do not accept happiness as payment. Such a shame.

A Character Actor Trapped in a Leading Man’s Body

You may have seen this phrase floating around the internet for the past few years and wondered what the hell it meant. Are Hollywood’s movie stars roaming the Hills, luring unsuspecting character actors back to their lairs with the promise of reading for a Wes Anderson part and then devouring them wholesale under the pale moon light?

No. I mean, probably not? I feel like if there was a cannibal epidemic in Los Angeles Damien Chazelle would have already written a whimsical love letter about it. That’s the part about that adrenochrome conspiracy theory I don’t think those Q-nuts understand: Hollywood physically cannot shut up about itself long enough to keep anything a fucking secret. If they were eating kids there would have been recipes in fucking TMZ.

Turns out this phrase is merely a metaphor, which makes for a less interesting but also less bloody world so let’s roll with it.

Leading Man vs Character Actor

I’m sure someone who is more intimately knowledgeable about the inner workings of Hollywood and acting could give a more nuanced and thorough take on what the difference is between the two, but from where I’m standing it seems the only thing that’s different is fuckability.

To be a Leading Man, a real Movie Star, an Above the Line type, you have to be Very Attractive. And not just any sort of Very Attractive. You have to be Traditionally Attractive, which seems to mean (according to Hollywood, anyway):

  • White
  • Tall
  • The appropriate amount of built
  • A good head of hair any color (but not red)
  • Symmetrical face
  • Crazy amounts of charisma, but this can be substituted for being able to make that pouty-fish face while talking

If you check all of these boxes, congratulations! You get to be Joe America in the newest movie Joe America Saves America and Has Sex With Sexy Lamp. And then you get to be Joe America for the rest of your career or until you lose one of the checks, at which point you age into a character actor.

If you cannot check even just one box, you do not get to be Joe America. You can be Joe America’s sidekick Ron Average, or the villain Potentially Gay Evil, both of whom have far more interesting backstories, motivations, and lines but do not get to fuck Sexy Lamp so it evens out.

To reiterate: this is what Hollywood has traditionally seen as the Ideal Male and doesn’t align with, well, anyone’s actual tastes as far as I can tell:

But (shockingly) there’s a big problem with this system. Well, there’s a LOT of problems with this system. But let’s look at this one:

Just Because You Check All the Leading Man Boxes Doesn’t Mean You Are Good At Playing Joe America

While it may seem like a limited role, playing any sort of Joe America still takes skill. Because Joe America is ultimately pretty fucking boring. He’s a good man who loves women and America and his family and drinks beer and works hard and smoked marijuana once in college where he did not inhale. Joe America is the male equivalent of all those Young Adult heroines: very pretty to look at but ultimately stripped of any meaningful characterization so the viewer can project themselves onto that perfect figure and face.

So if you’re going to play Joe America effectively you have to be able to be bland and charismatic at the same time. You have to know how to put in the right amount of personality. Enough humor or charm or danger to keep the ladies hooked but also generic enough that Gary from Tucson can totally see himself in your dreamy blue eyes.

A lot of men who check all the Leading Man boxes cannot improve Joe America to something watchable but Hollywood doesn’t seem to care. They just want fuckable men playing Joe America and if they can’t be charismatic about it then they can make that male model face and be done with it.

There is another important factor:

I Don’t Think Most of These Leading Man Types Even Want to Play Joe America

At least not forever. Chris Evans almost literally played Joe America for ten fucking films until finally he had enough money and clout to raise his hand and say ‘I want to get off Mr. Bones’ Wild Ride.’

Joe America might be a good role to coast on your good looks if you need a quick couple million to buy a new house or a pony farm for your kid Zagnut or whatever, but if you actually care about the craft of acting at all I can imagine good old Joe gets really boring, really fast. And I think, generally speaking, people want to be remembered for more than being a pretty face with a tight butt.

Let’s look at some actors and their relationship with Being Joe America.

Brad Pitt

THE guy people are talking about when they use the ‘character actor trapped in a leading man’s body’ phrase and thus the perfect place to start. He’s been checking all the Leading Man boxes since the beginning of his career. Also since the beginning he has absolutely sucked at playing Joe America. Wait, does playing Death actually count as playing Joe America? Whatever, I’m rolling with it, because he phoned in that role so hard I think he actually fell asleep standing up a couple of times. I vaguely remember Brad Pitt being written off as a bad actor floating on his good looks in the nineties.

And then they finally let him be the weird icky man in stuff like Fight Club, Snatch, 12 Monkeys, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and you suddenly understand why he keeps showing up to work every day. He was bad at being Joe America because he found the role boring. Once you put something interesting in front of him he wakes the fuck up and does his job.

Jake Gyllenhaal

Being a nepo baby obviously has its perks because despite being one of the most conventionally attractive white dudes on the planet he mostly plays guys you absolutely do not want to be stuck in an elevator with.

They made him be Joe America in Love & Other Drugs and I guess Source Code and he was so mad about it he immediately made End of Watch and Prisoners back to back. It’s really telling that they got him to be in the MCU as a character that uses his good looks and charm to trick everyone into thinking he’s a hero while actually being a spiteful, sociopathic villain who will kills thousands of innocent people just to get revenge on a bad boss who is notably already dead.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

This is actually a case study in the reverse: a man in a character actor body who somehow got himself into non-stop Joe America roles for over a decade through sheer force of will alone. You might be inclined to believed he physically threatened Hollywood until they let him play Cop Dad Who Just Wants to Protect His Kids and America but actually he invited Hollywood over for a nice homemade dinner and charmed the pants off them and the next thing Hollywood knew they woke up to a world where he was the Kindergarten Cop.

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise checks all the Leading Man boxes and he’s happy about it because by now he would have actually, legally changed his real name to Joe America but no one will let him. It’s often said he’s America’s last real movie star and that’s because he’s really the last person who wants to be. His dream in life is obviously to be the handsome, lovable every man who always saves the day and that’s all he’s ever played since the eighties, minus the handful of times he’s agreed to play a villain, and let me tell you something: his villains fuck. He needs to play villain roles more but he won’t because people thinking he’s the bad guy, even in fiction, makes him sad. He will continue to take on Joe America roles right up until the day he achieves his life’s goal: dying in the middle of filming an outrageous stunt for the next Mission Impossible movie.

The Exo-Beast

The human Steve put his hands up to his face and made a sound Xix previously thought humans only made when they were in fear. It was high pitched, something the humans would call keening. Except the human Steve didn’t appear to be fearing for his life. He should have been. They all should have been. They all were.

Except the human Steve.

“What is it?” he asked, sounding the way humans did after they had done several minutes of physical exertion.

“That,” Rnollo said as he barely looked up from his clipboard, “is what we’re here to find out.

“There was once a thriving civilization on this planet,” Bob said, scratching between his fin ridges with a long claw. “It’s entirely possible that is what made it cease.”

The human Steve looked at Bob with a face twisted in many directions. The human Steve was the first human Xix had personally worked with on an expedition before, and there were many things about the species Xix was still learning. Xix’s own people, the Xmoxmies back on planet Exxo, showed emotion through fluctuating shades of color on an otherwise still face. The human Steve’s face changed colors rarely in very specific situations. All other emotions were worn as his face was pulled and twisted in different directions like he was made entirely of pliunt fibers.

It made discussions…difficult.

The expression the human Steve was currently wearing was, if Xix remembered the training correctly, incredulity. As though he couldn’t believe that the new exospecies standing across the clearing was capable of destroying an entire civilization. This did not make sense to Xix. The human Steve had been exploring with the Union for nearly twice as long as Xix had. Surely he knew the sort of dangers that lurked in every well of the universe.

“But it’s so cute,” Steve said, staring at the animal.

On Xix’s other side, Rnollo burbled in exasperation.

“I don’t like having humans on expeditions,” Rnollo had told him some cycles before. It had been the two of them, drinking in Rnollo’s suite during their off-time, and Xix had been sure that if Rnollo had not already consumed four glasses of purple ripple he would not have said such a thing out loud. Nor the things that were to follow.

“It’s the problem with interacting with species from other galaxies, you see? These humans did not evolve in Nlax galaxy and therefore they are too different. Too difficult to understand. Too excitable. Barely more evolved than your average animal. They cannot even regulate their emotions! They are ruled by them. It is obscene.”

Xix hadn’t said anything. He could tell Rnollo didn’t want him to, and anyway he hadn’t met the human Steve by then so he didn’t have anything to add.

Since meeting the human Steve, he had found that Rnollo was not wrong. But he liked the human Steve, at least the way you would like a small child or animal. Something nice, friendly…something you had to protect.

“Human Steve, please do not approach the wild beast,” Xix said, his face turning the color of caring.

Steve made a snort sound that Xix had come to learn was some sort of humor sound. “Wild beast? What are you even talking about?”

The animal on the other side of the clearing was roughly half the height of Steve. It had vicious teeth which it bared toward them, and four giant paws which clearly held retracted claws. It was staring at all of them, a low growl emanating from its throat. Xix had the weapon issued by the Union up and ready. So did Rnollo and Bob as they slowly backed up to the edge of the clearing.

Meanwhile, the human Steve’s weapon was still in its holster. And he was taking steps toward the ferocious, snarling animal.

“Human Steve, please,” Xix said, his face turning the color of fear for another.

The human Steve stopped in his tracks and turned to face the rest of the team. The hairs above his eyes went up in a way that Xix now knew meant surprise.

“What the hell is the matter with you guys?”

“There is a beast ready to attack not thirty lihs away, that is what is wrong,” Rnollo said, his tone unkind.

“Man, can’t you guys tell? It’s not ready to attack. It’s scared. And hungry. And I think hurt.”

The exospecies was, indeed, very thin. Bones were protruding from under its skin and thin fur. And as it paced back and forth on its side of the clearing there was an obvious limp. One of its paws seemed mangled, as though something larger had stepped on it.

“We should put it out of its misery,” Rnollo said as he lifted the weapon.

“What? No! Stop! For fuck’s sake, Rnollo, just give me a second with it, will you? Damn, man.”

Rnollo hesitated. If the human Steve knew how to read Bloonhert faces, he would have known that Rnollo only put the weapon down because he hoped that the exospecies would tear the human Steve apart and relieve him of what Rnollo had privately called babysitting duty.

But of course the human Steve could not read Rnollo the way others from their galaxy could, so the human Steve offered genuine thanks before going back toward the beast.

It was so terrifying Xix could not look away. The human Steve slowly worked his way across the clearing toward the beast. He kept his hands up with palms down, an expression of safety, and made soft noises as he slowly pressed forward.

The beast paced and growled, its eyes occasionally switching from the human Steve to the others. It became more and more agitated the closer the human Steve got, until Xix was sure it would lunge.

The human Steve stopped. With slow motions, never stopping the soft noises, he pulled his pack around to the front and blindly rooted around inside. When he pulled his hand back out, he had one of his human snacks in his hand. Something he referred to as jerky. He broke the packaging and held up a piece. Xix’s face turned the color of anticipation as he waited for the beast to attack the human Steve.

The beast smelled the jerky.

The growling stopped.

The beast’s fangs disappeared, and it’s eyes widened. Xix did not know what this meant, but the human Steve smiled which Xix took as a good sign.

Xix, Rnollo, and Bob all watched in wonder as the beast limped its way toward the human Steve. The human Steve held out the jerky, and the beast shied back, but then lunged forward. Xix nearly screamed, sure it would have the human Steve’s arm in its mouth.

It only took the jerky.

While it was eating, the human Steve reached out and put his hand on the beast head. The beast did not tear his limb off. Instead it allowed the human Steve to gently stroke between its ears.

Bob hummed in relieved confusion.

Rnollo only grunted.

“How did you know it was a friend?” Bob asked.

“It’s face and it’s paws, mostly,” the human Steve said, now on his knees and rubbing the giant beast’s belly. “While it looks similar to the other species we’ve seen on this planet there are some differences in paw shape and even the arch of its back that indicates to me that this animal had been domesticated in the past and changed to fit the prevailing species needs. You know, before their civilization crumbled. While the species has obviously gone feral since, I assumed they still retained their need for companionship and affection.”

Xix’s face changed to the color of being impressed. And embarrassment. Sometimes it was easy to forget that, despite their childlike nature, there was a reason humans were allowed in the Union at all. Their open faces and easy-going nature sometimes hid their intelligence, both intellectual and emotional. Without the human Steve, they would have surely shot the creature now making happy noises at Steve’s feet. Humans truly were worthy of admission to the Union.

The academic tone in Steve’s voice changed to something almost sing-songy and childlike as he leaned all his weight on the beast and ran his hands over its fur.

“Also, just look at this guy. Look at him! Look at him, he’s so cute. He’s so cute he’d never hurt anyone. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that right Captain Rex? That’s right, I’m going to call you Captain Rex, because you’re the king. You’re the king, that’s right. Who’s a good king? Who’s a good king?”

Xix’s face once again turned to the color of embarrassment, this time for another person.

Guard Duty

Being a patrolling guard for the local rich weirdo hadn’t exactly been Isaac’s life goal, but the pay and hours were good and the benefits were insane. Isaac had all three of his kids in braces and had only had a twenty buck co-pay for each appointment. Sure, he wasn’t the pediatrician his mother had always wanted him to be, but him and Lisa were ahead on the mortgage and they were taking the kids on a vacation at the end of the month so fuck it. He hated any kid that wasn’t his, anyway.

It wasn’t a perfect job. There were…certain risks that had been outlined to him when starting. Risks that hadn’t needed any explaining, if he was going to be entirely honest. He was guarding the secret testing facility of Dr. Norman Jorgenson, and everyone knew that dude was insane. Some of the experiments Isaac had walked past had been so insane his brain hadn’t even tried to comprehend what he was seeing. The whole place was built into the side of a mountain, for Christ’s sake.

But Isaac didn’t give a shit. He clocked in, went to his section of the fence outside, walked up and down with brief pauses at each end to look around, and then after he did his eight hours with an hour lunch break (a full hour! No one offered that anymore!) he clocked out and went home to Lisa and the kids. He’d decided when he got the job that whatever went on inside the mountain was above his paygrade.

Isaac wasn’t thinking about any of that. He was thinking about the money he’d put down on the basketball game that at that moment should have been well into the second quarter. They weren’t supposed to have their personal phones on them and the last guy that got caught was tossed into some pit at the bottom of the facility so Isaac was going to have to wait until he got into his car to find out if he was taking Lisa to Ruth’s Chris or the Olive Garden for their anniversary. Lisa like cheap chicken alfredo so either would work, but-

Sounds, from ahead of him, further down the fence.

Something whizzing through the air.

“Gauughaughgh!”

Another thing whizzing through the air.

A heavy, muffled thump. The sound of something big hitting the ground.

Big enough to be a body.

“Shit shit shit,” Isaac muttered under his breath as he hustled down the fence. Mikey was supposed to be watching this area, the one near the back gate with the burnt out flood lamp. But as Isaac approached, gun up in front of him, he couldn’t see Mikey anywhere.

Until he got past the shipping boxes that still needed to be processed and found Mikey in a heap on the ground, two arrows sticking out of his chest.

“Mikey!” Isaac shouted, coming around the boxes. He looked all around, and then called out, “Hey, help! Mikey’s down!”

From farther up the dirt road he heard people shuffling toward him. Hull and Mallory arrived, leaning over the body.

“Shit, are those arrows?” Mallory asked.

“Yeah,” Isaac said, wiping his mouth. “I don’t understand how they got through the body armor.”

“Precision aiming,” Hull said. He stood up and started looking around, into the darkness. “Must be someone from the Supreme Elite Squad.”

“Yeah, I guess, it does look like…who?”

Isaac stood up, too. Suddenly the idea that someone was out there, in the darkness, taking precise aim at him, really sunk into his mind. He shivered.

“The Supreme Elites,” Hull said like it was the most logical choice of words ever. “You know, boss’s new enemy? We’re on their radar for some shit he did in London? Didn’t you read the company newsletter?”

Isaac nodded. A little. Sure, he’d read it. Skimmed it, really. While on the can. There was a lot of stuff in there about HR’s book club.

“They’re here,” Mallory said. “They’re trying to get in.”

Isaac reached for his radio. “I’ll call it in.”

“Not yet,” Hull said, holding up a hand.

“What? Why?”

“I want to see if we can catch the fuckers,” he said. He turned from the darkness and waggled his eyebrows. “Think of the bonus if we drop their dead bodies in the main office ourselves.”

Isaac took a breath. This seemed, to him, extremely stupid.  Someone was out there, in the dark, waiting, and they’d already managed to perfectly fire two arrows into the smallest breaks in Mikey’s body armor. Whatever bonuses they were going to get for finding the guy first didn’t seem worth the risk of getting an arrow in the eyeball.

But Isaac had worked with people like this at every single job he’d ever had. Opportunistic climbers. If Hull didn’t get his way, he was going to get shitty, and then there’d be breakroom drama, and Isaac just wasn’t having it. If Hull wanted to look around for a few minutes before they called it in, fine.

The three of them got into a loose formation and headed toward the gate. Nothing but the woods surrounding the mountain out there. Trees looming up into the darkness above the flood lamps, lots of clumps of that chest-high grass, and the sound of wind through the leaves.

A branch cracked to his right.

“What was that?”

“Probably a squirrel.”

“Too big to be a fucking squirrel.”

Isaac walked further into the darkness, away from the other two. Ahead was some more of that tall grass. He’d talked to landscaping about maybe cutting that shit down but they had laughed him out of their office. This was exactly what he was afraid of. There could be someone in that grass. Crouching. Waiting. And in this darkness, he’d never know.

“I think-”

“There’s nothing,” Hull said.

“Jumping at my own shadow,” Mallory said.

Isaac turned back to the other two and found they were already heading back toward the gate. The spot between his shoulder blades itched and he ran after them.

“What? What the fuck are you two talking about?”

“There’s nothing out there, Isaac,” Hull said, not stopping as he beelined for where he usually patrolled.

“What the fuck do you mean nothing? Mikey’s on the ground with two arrows in his chest!”

“I’m sure it was an accident,” Hull said with a shrug. “If there was someone out there we would have found them!”

“We looked for twenty seconds! It’s dark. There’s plenty of places to for them to hide, and…wait. Where’s Mallory?”

Hull paused and turned back to the gate. Besides Mikey’s rapidly cooling corpse, there was nothing.

Hull shrugged. “He’s back on his rounds. Which is where you should be.”

“But Hull, that’s two men down, now! You can’t seriously believe that this is all some sort of weird coincidence and that there isn’t someone in the shadows slowly killing us to get inside?”

“You’re just hearing things, Isaac,” Hull said. “Get back to work.”

Isaac stood in place, staring at where Mallory should have been. Then his eyes went back to the tall patches of grass. Then back to Hull.

How the fuck…Mikey is dead…what does he think…what is happening…what do I do?

This is insanity.

I ain’t dying for insanity.

Isaac clutched as his stomach and started moaning. Finally, Hull stopped walking and turned back to look at him.

“What the fuck is it now?” he asked, annoyed at being further delayed.

“Oh, sir, it’s my stomach. I’ve…uh…I’ve got IBS. Crohn’s. And I’ve been having a flare-up.”

To his surprise, Hull’s face changed to one of concern. “My sister has Crohn’s. Terrible stuff, that. Do you need a fifteen, or do you need to go home?”

Isaac froze for a second. His plan was to just hide in the bathroom until all of this blew over, but if he went home he’d be even farther away from it. He could find out who was winning the basketball game.

“I better just go home, sir. This is…it isn’t going to be pretty.”

“Well, I don’t need you to paint me a picture, for fuck’s sake. Just get out of here. I’ll call for a replacement.”

Immensely grateful his car was in the opposite direction of whoever was killing them, Isaac continued to keep up a pained face as he shuffled away as fast as he dared. Not that it mattered. Hull would probably be dead by the time Isaac came in for his next shift.