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#it’s kind of hard to say with her because she’s usually brought on as the lawyers’ lawyer

It's kinda precisely this. Elsbeth, in The Good Wife/Fight, was most often the lawyers' lawyer, which means that she was usually deployed against regulators whom we're largely primed to see as the bad guys because they're working against the show protagonists; her very first client that we see is Peter Florrick, who we're meant to understand did most or all of the corrupt acts he was accused of, and whom Elsbeth (and her partner Daniel Golden) got off without issue, because that is her job and Peter Florrick deserved legal representation*. The proper analogue to that, in the Elsbeth set-up, would be for her to defend the NYPD against corruption or brutality claims. But that wouldn't be fun or frothy, even if it were to happen now, when we have a cast of detectives and higher-ups whom the audience likes.

So instead we have her, ostensibly, as a check against police misconduct, which is more or less the opposite of what her role used to be. This is fine on its own, but if one is meant to take all three series as a complete narrative, it is quite lacking--there needs to be an explanation for her 180, and Van Ness...does not really get the job done. I don't think there's anything that would.

* I'd really like to see the show explore what the legal process is like for the criminal Elsbeth helps catch. I'm also quite afraid of what the show would not handle it with nearly the nuance it deserves.

Man, it feels weird to have a nod to The Good Fight in the ep where it feels most obvious that Elsbeth's Elsbeth isn't really the same character she was before 2024. I realize that's kinda par for the course for side characters who get spun off into their own shows, and that Elsbeth doesn't want to get into the weeds of who Elsbeth was in The Good Wife/Fight (nor can it really do so without undermining the show's frothy feel-good black-and-white vibe), but painting her as someone who'd ever feel guilty for taking on the rich and powerful as clients, or doing all she could legally do to serve their interests, just has the effect of making her into a less interesting, less fun character. The Elsbeth from The Good Wife/Fight wouldn't have left this Van Ness stuff stop her for a second.

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Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Helena Bertinelli/Huntress in Birds of Prey | 2020

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↳ pencil tests by james baxter

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it’s such a shame that even 30 years into the reign of Gregor Vorbarra, Barrayar’s government is still fundamentally non-transparent with a tight hand on the press, because can you fucking imagine watching Ekaterin tell Richars to fuck off then propose to Miles in the Chamber of Counts live on Barrayaran C-SPAN

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Misapprehend me not. I fear not thy roughness, Lathaniel. Throw me on the bed. Tumble me in the hayloft and rifle through my skirts as if thou hast misplaced The Grail between the folds. But must thou rip my girdle in twain like a man strained upon the rack? (And what of my rack, Lathaniel? For that was the last of my bodices.)

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my mom's in a pokemon go battle right now in the other room saying a whole shonen protagonist speech

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Today is a big day on the Spanish internet. Valentine's day in Spanish is "día de San Valentín", which sounds almost the same as "Sam va lentín", which is how, in some parts of Spain , you would say "Sam goes slowly".

Hence, since a few years ago, every February 14th, the Spanish internet is full of "wait for me mr. Frodo" style memes. One of our holiest days of the year.

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The Vengabus is Coming

Alakan pinched the bridge of his nose. On one hand, certain death. On the other hand, human bullshit.

He weighed the options carefully. His self-respect fought tooth and claw with his will to live.

The will to live won. It was a near thing, but internal battles were winner take all.

“Fuck it. We need armor. Send them in.”

---

The radio crackled. It was a quiet sound, but still a welcome reprieve to the blisteringing swarm of beams from the nearby laser gatling. Alakan fished it out of his front pocket, raising it near his ear eagerly.

“Callsign ‘Ape-Mode’, do you copy? What is your ETA? We’re pinned down bad up here, if they can get a second angle set up we’re toast. ”

The speaker crackled again. There was a sound like a horn on the other end. Maybe an alarm?

“Callsign Ape-Mode, is your vehicle intact?”

There was no verbal response back, but a faint chanting could be heard in the background, just beyond the range of his hearing. Alakan cranked the volume knob to max, desperate for any possible information about when the armor would arrive. Instead, he seemed to catch the opening part of some kind of human war ritual.

“We like to party! We like, we like to party! We like to party! We like, we like to party! We like to party! We like-”

Then the radio cut off abruptly.

He took several deep breaths before pinching his nose again.

Fucking humans.

---

The Vengabus is coming! And everybody's jumping! New York to-

The chanting was back, almost incomprehensibly loud. The gatlings were earsplitting on their own, but the human war chant made them seem like whispers in a library. The noise was so loud that identifying the source was almost impossible. It seemed to be coming from all sides at once, a hulking wall of sound. He reached down to shut off his comm only to find it was already off.

Oh. They must be here then. That would explain the unwarranted assault on his earholes. He took a peek over the edge of his foxhole and froze.

Even by the standards of human bullshit, this was egregious.

The tank itself was standard DFP issue. The bright yellow paint job and makeshift stop sign definitely were not. And the speakers looked borderline illegal. Strands of copper wire poked from each of the generator sized boxes strapped, welded, and glued to random points all over the chassis. The conductor feeding each of the abominations seemed to be repurposed twinkle lights, cutting zigzags between each box before drawing into the hatch.

The gatlings stopped, evidently as taken aback as everyone else on the battlefield. The moment of relative peace was replaced by insane furor as every gun on the opposite side of the canyon seemed to realize that there was a big juicy target barreling towards them.

The tank took the swarm of beams like a champion. Faint clouds of yellow smoke trailed behind the racing vehicle as its makeshift paint job was incinerated, but that was probably a blessing in disguise. The wall of noise fell down several notches as one of the gatlings made a point of targeting the ear splitting speakers.

The tank had been content enough to just absorb enemy ammo as it barreled its way to the middle of the battle, but this was a personal affront. The railgun on the top of the vehicle locked on to the offending turret and began dropping ferroslugs. The first was more than enough to obliterate its hated foe, the other three were just to desecrate the memory. Each shot had the unfortunate side effect of distorting the noise coming out of the speakers, the voices going up like chipmunks with every thump of the MAC.

The wheels of steel are turning! And traffic lights are burning! So if you like to party, get on and move your body! The Vengabus is coming!

A kinetic slug slammed into the road just behind it. If the tank had been going anything less than max speed, it would’ve been splattered. Any sane tank operator would’ve launched their smoke cover, changed course, and avoided the slugs by serpentining.

These were not sane tank operators. The hatches for the smoke cover opened, but instead of smoke grenades getting flung from the hydraulic catapult, out flew hundreds and hundreds of gleaming chemlights. The laser gatling atop the main cannon opened fire, not at any enemy, but simply while spinning in circles at maximum speed.

None of this should have done a damn thing, but the effect was amazing. The lights, the noise, and now the laser effects-the enemy had been trained for what to do in a warzone, but they had no fucking idea what to do at a disco. All it took was one of them to break ranks, and the rest followed suit. Alakan watched in awe as the troop of 80 enemy combatants bolted up the far side of the valley, casually pursued by the still smoldering Venga-Tank, chipperly screaming out its war cry as the recording device on the inside hit a well planned loop.

The Vengabus is coming! The Vengabus is coming! The Vengabus is coming! The Vengabus is coming! The Vengabus is coming! The Vengabus is coming!

The noise, blessedly, faded to black as both made it over the hill.

He climbed carefully out of his foxhole, wiping the dirt from his palms onto the front of his pants when he was done. One of the newer soldiers jogged up to him, as baffled as he’d ever been.

“What… What the hell just happened?”

Alakan shrugged.

“Trust me, they don’t know either. Fucking humans.”

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