#(and will doubtless say the same thing in a decade about current me)

[skollwolf]

I know I wrote Blinding back in like 2013 but even to this day my villain origin story is when people comment that they're glad Tony has a happy ending in it

[zephyrthejester]

Steven Universe Future: A Predictive Wish List

The future is now. And by that, I mean that the debut of Steven Universe Future is at hand! A super special "limited series" (whatever that means) that will ultimately wrap up the greatest cartoon to grace television this decade. Indeed, all good things must come to an end. Regardless of what the Future holds, it is doubtless that I'll love and continue to love this show forever... So! Let's have a good ol' chat about what we want to see in the upcoming episodes!

I'm going to divide this wish list into two distinct sections, both of which should be self explanatory. Things that I "need," that my heart burns with desire for, and things that I "hope," that would be cool if it happens but it's no big deal if it doesn't.

This is going to be a loooooong post, so click Keep Reading to see it all!

What I NEED to Happen

Lars needs closure for his three ongoing story arcs. From Lars, I hope we see him expressing how much he and his life has changed, and how he's dealing with the return to tranquil life on Earth and his zombie status. Secondly, he and Sadie need to have a good, long chat. Their relationship was in turmoil at the time Lars got abducted by Aquamarine, and since then Sadie has redirected her life with a self-empowering attitude. There is a lot that remains unsaid between the two of them. Thirdly, Lars and Ronaldo were once childhood friends and had a feud as kids that lasted into their teens. I hope that gets touched upon, even if it's something as simple as the two apologizing to each other.

When it comes to Jasper... I don't want the show to handle her story in Future like a "redemption." Being redeemed is not what her character is about, and it's not what she needs. No, Jasper has lived her entire life clinging to an ideal and the perception of her strength. Both those things were ripped away from her. What Jasper needs is to learn acceptance of her reality, to embrace that even someone who is "flawless" can be fallible, and to become responsible for herself. The happiest ending for Jasper, I think, is not to become friends with the Crystal Gems or even to like Earth, but to accept herself.

On the subject of Jasper, the last thing I want are any positive interactions with Lapis Lazuli. In the best case scenario, the two won't interact at all. They were each other's mutual abusers and were both responsible for the most painful days of their lives. Some might say you need to confront the past to move beyond it, but Lapis already has and Jasper can learn to do the same. To cut someone toxic out of your life and move on without them should be celebrated. Could you imagine if Greg tried to reconnect with Marty? Yuck, right? That's how I feel about Lapis and Jasper.

Fusion Experiments and especially the Cluster need to be formally dealt with. While bubbles can keep them in stasis for eternity, Steven's not the sort of person to abandon those who suffer (unless you're a Ruby floating in space). The question is, how? Can he repair the shattered? Or will he give them the best lives they can get in their state? And how could the Cluster be removed from inside the Earth?

Speaking of those who remain in solitude... Pink Diamond's Zoo needs to be dealt with. There are dozens of Zoomans, a skeleton crew of Quartzes (including Holly Blue Agate, most likely) and most importantly of all, the entire Gem population of Rose Quartzes. REAL Rose Quartzes. We've never actually seen a real Rose Quartz, and it's high time we do. What do they sound like?! Dude, it’d be super funny if the real Rose Quartz voice sounds super distinct and Steven would wonder how Pink Diamond’s disguise fooled anyone.

We need an episode dedicated to Nephrite! She's technically been in the show longer than Lapis and Peridot, debuting in episode 01, and she's represented the entire Corrupted Gem plotline! We need to learn more about her! See her interact with people, including Steven! If not a whole episode for her, than at least some hearty screen time!

Spinel and the Diamonds need some screen time. It's a safe bet since they were all in the new intro, so to take a riskier request, I'm going to hope that the Diamonds come out and directly admit how horrible of monsters they've been. Their crimes are infinitely cruel, in both number and scale. And so far, the only thing they've done about it is to make an effort to... not commit more crimes against humanity. Err, Gemanity? Perhaps in their experience with a free Gempire they can actually get context for what they did, recognize the night-and-day difference between suffering and not-suffering, and get a little introspective about themselves.

Pink Pearl... Just, Pink Pearl. Like, hot dang, dude. If anything, make her the poster child of the above point about the Diamonds' crimes. Simply for wanting Pink Diamond to be happy, White overwrote Pink Pearl's individuality, even scarring her form, and kept her that way for thousands of years. How does Pink Pearl feel about that?! How will she deal with Pink Diamond being gone? What's next for her?

This last one tows the line between the two categories and might even be a bit selfish, but... I hope we see Mystery Girl again. I know Pearl's been "playing the field" since she met her, but it'd be cool to catch up with Pearl's relationship(s). It's not something we need to see, but just a quick line or two to reference it would be cool. Although, there is the unresolved hint that Mystery Girl might be Kevin's ex...

What I HOPE Will Happen

It'd be a crime not to introduce a fusion that involves Lapis, Peridot, and/or Bismuth. And, well... My take might surprise you. I'm hoping that Peridot will remain fusionless, because she is my oh-so-precious Ace representation. As for Lapis... I dunno. Is fusion something she desires? Could there possibly be a threat big enough to warrant fusing for combat purposes? It's hard to imagine either, though it would be sweet if fusion could become something more than Malachite for her. And that leaves Bismuth! To that I say, HELL YEAH! We heard tell of Bismuth once fusing with Garnet back in the Rebellion, and I can only dream how incredible that would be. Alternatively, maybe Bismuth and her best buddie in the whole world, Biggs, would make a good pair.

I want an episode that's a good ol' Space Adventure. Hopefully with Connie along for the ride! There's a massive galaxy out there ripe for exploring. The possibilities are endless! An episode of this nature would be a good excuse to see more of certain Gems such as Nephrite, Emerald, the Zircons, and maybe Lemon Jade.

It'd be cool to see some characters from the games, even if only as background easter eggs. I'm talkin' the Prism, Hessonite, Squaridot, those new garnets from the recently announced game I forget the name of (Unleash the Light?)...

At least one episode to meet and greet the Little Homeworld denizens, specifically Bismuth's big three (Biggs, Crazy Lace, and Snowflake). But especially Snowflake Obsidian. She looks super cool.

Finally, I'd like to see some light shed on the many, many unexplored mysteries. I'd be surprised if we got any of the following, but I can dream: What is the origin of Gem Species and/or The Diamonds? What is the deal with the Crystal Heart? What is the Geode? What's up with the space outside Warp tunnels? What's the latest on Watermelon Island? What are the rooms in the Temple like for most of the main cast Fusions, + Ruby and Sapphire's rooms? What has become of Pink Diamond's palanquin in Korea? Can Steven kiss up the Kindergartens to heal it like he did for Beach City in the movie? What's the deal with Rose's lion pride in the desert near her leg ship? And most importantly: WHAT WAS IN THE FREAKING CHEST?!?!?!?!?!?!?

WHAT WAS IN THE CHEST, SUGAR?!

...Okay. That’s it. That’s everything I want to say. Hmm. Looking back, I’m surprised how little Amethyst, Garnet, Connie, and Greg figure into my desires. I guess I��m totally complacent about their current status in the story.

So, I hope you’ll join me tomorrow when we take our first look at Steven Universe Future! Until then... Check out my analysis of the new Opening, if you haven’t already!

[homespork-review]

Spork Introduction

CHEL: Hi! I go by Chel, they or she pronouns, and I’m the one spearheading this project. I still like at least a fair percentage of Homestuck, but after the ending disappointed me a great deal, I got bitter, and when Hussie pissed me off further by Godwinning himself, I decided to do something about it. I’m no longer angry about it, but I felt I’d benefit from picking out what I hate from what I love so I can focus on the latter without annoyance getting in the way, and also to benefit my own writing efforts.

BRIGHT: Howdy! I’m Bright, and I got into Homestuck fairly recently. After ploughing through the archive and digesting for a while, I realised that I was thoroughly annoyed by how something enjoyable had fallen apart so comprehensively. I am looking forward to the time-honoured practice of ripping the story apart to identify its weak points and shout at them.

FAILURE ARTIST: Hello, I’m Failure Artist (call me FA for short), she/her/herself pronouns, and I’m so old-school they burned the school down. I was introduced to Homestuck via Something Awful’s Webcomic thread. I checked the old mspadventures.com site and the latest update was [S] John: Bite Apple. After watching that bizarre piece of animation, I had to know what the hell happened before then. I found I enjoyed the wit of the comic though I didn’t really care much about the plot. It was only when Act 5 came around that I became a serious fan. I currently have 122 Homestuck works on Archive of Our Own. I have a lot of free time, you see. I am very disappointed in how Homestuck ended. Possibly there was no completely satisfactory way it could end but it still could have been better. I feel like Hussie was a juggler who threw a lot of balls into the air and ignored them as they fell to the ground and some fans think not catching them was a master move since you’d expect he’d try to catch at least one. Sadly, lots of the problems with the ending are embedded deep within the canon.

TIER: Hi hi. I am Tier, a very late newcomer to the wonderful world of Homestuck (2018 reader!) and average fan overall. I love this webcomic to bits, but the low points are deep and I enjoy seeking out what the heck went wrong. Not particularly analytical myself, hope that's cool!

CHEL: Cool by us! We’ve already done plenty of analysing before we started, as you may realise from my Tumblr’s “homestuck ending hate” tag (at @chelonianmobile).

FAILURE ARTIST: But let’s put that aside for a moment and talk about the good stuff. 

Homestuck is incredibly innovative. It is the first true webcomic. It’s not just a print comic posted online. It uses not just still images and words but also animation, music, and interactive games.

Homestuck is the latest adventure in the series MS Paint Adventures. MS Paint Adventures started as a forum adventure. In forum adventures, the OP acts as a sort of Dungeon Master and other forum members give them prompts. Andrew Hussie’s previous works under MS Paint Adventures were Jailbreak (which is little more than Hussie dicking with the prompters in scatological ways), Bard’s Quest (Choose-your-own-adventure), and the actually-completed Problem Sleuth. Problem Sleuth lacks the music and animation and despite the weird physics shenanigans is a simpler story than Homestuck. The characters aren’t even two dimensional.

Homestuck (and the previous MS Paint Adventures minus Bard’s Quest) are set up like adventure games. Adventure games are where the player is a protagonist in a story and are usually focused on puzzle-solving though sometimes there’s combat. In the beginning, these games were purely text. The player would type what they wanted to do and the game would spout back text describing it - assuming the computer parser understood you.

CHEL: Oh god, I HATED that. I wasn’t around for the heyday but I’ve played a couple and

Pale Luna

was barely an exaggeration (horror warning).

FAILURE ARTIST: As graphics improved, adventure games started using them, but the commands were still in text. Only later was the point-and-click interface created and players didn’t have to guess what exact sentence the computer wanted them to type. Homestuck and the other MS Paint Adventures play with that frustration while paying tribute to the genre. The game within the comic uses RPG elements but the comic itself is set up like those good ol’ adventure games. In the beginning, Homestuck was guided by commands from forum members. Even after he closed the suggestion box, he used memes and fanon created by readers.

CHEL: How good an idea this was varies, as we’ll be showing.

We probably don’t need to describe Homestuck much more. Everyone here who hasn’t read it will doubtless have heard of it. Almost everyone with a Tumblr will have seen fanart, almost anyone at a convention will have seen cosplay. Shoutouts have been made to it in professional works such as the cartoon Steven Universe, and the Avengers fandom latched onto “caw caw motherfuckers” as a catchphrase for Hawkeye to the point that it’s now often forgotten it didn’t originate from there.

FAILURE ARTIST: The Homestuck fandom term “sadstuck” for depressing stories/headcanons somehow leaked into other fandoms. Using second-person is actually cool now and not just for awkward reader fics. Astrology will never be the same again.

CHEL: Now, in the interests of fairness, we will say that when Homestuck is good, it’s amazing, and it’s good often. The characters at least start out appealing and are all immediately distinguishable; even with the typing quirks stripped, it’s easy to tell who said what. The magic system is one of the coolest I’ve ever seen, who doesn’t love classpecting themselves and their faves? Hussie also shows a lot of talent for the complex meta and time travel weirdness, and it is fascinating to watch a timeline thread unfurl. And whatever else one says, it’s a fascinating story that’s captivated millions. I think it is deserving of its title as a modern classic.

However, as the years have passed, we have ended up noticing problems, big and small, and they nagged at us until we decided it had to be dissected. Our intention here isn’t to tear apart something we loathe entirely. It’s to take a complex work and pick out what works from what doesn’t. As I said, when Homestuck is good, it’s very very good. But when it’s bad, we get problems of every scale from various offensive comments to dragging pace to characters ignoring problems and solutions right under their noses to an absolute collapse of every theme and statement the comic stood for before.

The comic is ludicrously long; eight thousand pages, or thereabouts, to be specific. Officially one of the longest works of fiction in the English language, in fact. Naturally, we can’t riff that word by word in any timeframe short of decades, and we can’t include every picture, even if that was permitted under copyright law. Instead, as comics have been done here before, we’ll recap most of the time, and include sections of dialogue and pictures when particularly relevant to a point.

Here are the counts we’ll be using, possibly to be added to later if we find we forgot anything. Most of these counts will only start to climb post-Act 5, but we’ll be keeping track of them from the beginning. Most of them could have been fixed with a decent editor, which is sadly a hazard of webcomics, but still frustrating to read.

TIER: Note: we started this endeavor months before the thought of a "technically not but still we'll count it" set of canon epilogues were a twinkle in the eyes of the fandom. That is, by the way, a whole 'nother can of worms that will be dealt with at a later date if that ever comes around. We're judging Homestuck the Webcomic as a whole, so no after the credits stuff is to be noted for whatever reason.

ALL THE LUCK - Vriska Serket constantly gets a pass or gets favored over every other character. This count is added to every time she pulls some shenanigans with which others wouldn’t get away. ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY? - Sometimes it’s not entirely clear whether a thing is supposed to be taken seriously or not. We don’t require hand-holding through every joke, but when, for example, we’re supposed to take one instance of violence seriously while a similar case is supposed to be funny, this count goes up. CALL CPA PLEASE - Instances of creepy sexual behaviour (and perhaps particularly gratuitous acts of violence) from the thirteen-year-old cast. Now, mileage may vary on this one. We won’t pretend that thirteen-year-olds are perfect pure angels, especially thirteen-year-olds growing up in what is openly supposed to be a nightmarish dystopia. However, when full pages focus on said behaviour, there comes a point of it being very uncomfortable to read. Clarification: does not refer to cases where the adults do something heinous, this is strictly when the kids do. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS - When an offensive joke or comment is made, particularly when not justified by the personality of the character involved, or presented in the narration as being okay. GET ON WITH IT! - When the pace drags. ‘Nuff said. Hazard of the format, but it makes archive bingeing very annoying. GORE GALORE - For unnecessary and/or excessive torture porn which is treated less seriously because it features troll characters, and therefore less “realistic” blood colours. HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC - When the comic does something mentioned in How Not To Write A Novel, and it isn’t justified by the webcomic format. HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING - Characters repeatedly neglect to do something about or even react to terrible happenings, either because they don’t care even if they should or they forget they have the capacity. Not necessarily anything to do with their magical powers, either - characters ignore personal problems that are right under their noses, too. IN HATE WITH MY CREATION - For reasons that are unclear, Hussie chose to create characters he apparently hated writing, or at least ignored in favour of others. Every time he’s clearly disrespecting one of his own characters, this goes up, whether it’s by nerfing their powers or changing their personalities. RELATIONSHIP GOALS? - Romantic relationships in particular get fumbled quite often. Ship Teasing is used with skill, but that skill tends to be lost when the characters actually hook up. Fumbled friendships and family relations can also come under this heading. SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER - When characters other than Vriska get away with something morally questionable. Covers everything from sexual harassment to not trying to save people from the apocalypse. SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS - Later on in Homestuck’s run, Hussie tried to make up for the offensive humour and casual -isms counted by Clockwork Problematykks above. How successful he was at this varied. This count goes up whenever an attempt at progressivism is waved in front of the reader but doesn’t stand up under scrutiny. WHAT IS HAPPENING?? - When the already confusing plot kicks it up a notch. Admittedly this is as much a selling point of the comic as it is an issue, but either way, we’re going to keep track. Points will be added to when it gets confusing, and taken away when a previous confusing thing is explained adequately. WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM - What is shown about Alternia repeatedly contradicts what we’re told about how different it is from Earth. For example, trolls still use heteronormative terms even after it’s established they reproduce bisexually, and the demonstration of the class structure doesn’t always add up. This count goes up every time that happens. It also goes up every time something happens which strongly implies Hussie was envisioning the human kids as white, despite his later claims that they were always supposed to be “aracial”, and every time their economic statuses don’t add up either.

[writesandramblings]

The Captain’s Secret - p.73

“Where Once Was Light”

A/N: Covers the remainder of episode 9, "Into the Forest I Go." Sorry for the delay, I wrote the chapter one way, then decided to scrap it and do it over. And then went for a third go to restore some of the content I regretting losing from the first revision! Also, it took a long time to figure out the exact code Lorca keyed into the console, but I think I got it right in the end.

Cornwell fans: I know this is probably a rocky road for you since "The Stars, Broken," but I promise you, you're going to get what you need by the time this journey is over.

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << 72 - All the Fears You Hold So Dear 74 - Now Darkness Falls >>

On the surface it seemed like there was no way out, but command politics, like space battles, were largely a question of advantageous positioning. Lorca was too good a strategist to accept a no-win scenario on any front. Not when he had so many other victories to fall back on.

In the past day alone, he had destroyed the Sarcophagus, protected Pahvo, and inadvertently rescued Cornwell. There were doubtless captains out there who would rather see Lorca leading the fleet then Terral. Coupled with his unparalleled ability to utilize the spore drive, removing him from Discovery at this critical junction could only be seen as tactical folly. The remaining admiralty had to recognize that.

Problem was, as the number of admirals shrank, Cornwell's voice became louder and louder. Never mind that she and Terral were demonstrably buffoons when it came to military strategy. She might get her way if she poured honey in enough ears.

He had to neutralize Cornwell. She had been tortured by Klingons for weeks. He could make the case she was not in her right mind and had conflated or misremembered events as a result. There was O'Malley's report to consider, but it was entirely nonspecific. What if he convinced Lalana or Mischkelovitz to claim the report was about one of them? He could doubly frame Cornwell as a jealous ex-lover with an axe to grind. O'Malley might be a hard sell, but supposing Mischkelovitz were game, the colonel could be pressured into compliance. He would do anything for his sister.

Cornwell had tried to come after his command. It would be interesting to see if her career could survive the accusations Lorca was prepared to level at her.

The comm sounded. "Culber to Lorca. You asked to be informed when Lieutenant Stamets was clear to return to duty."

There was a cold formality to Culber's words. "Thank you, doctor."

"Captain, I'm going to say something, and I need you to listen to me and hear what I'm telling you." Culber waited for acknowledgment, half expecting Lorca to close the channel.

"I'm listening."

"Paul could have died." As formal as the initial contact had been, it was now clearly entirely personal. "I warned you it was too dangerous."

"He didn't," said Lorca. Stamets had been exhausted by the ordeal, but the exhaustion passed, and he was now back to normal, or whatever passed for normal nowadays. "Dr. Mischkelovitz said he'd be fine and he is."

Culber exploded, but quickly pulled himself back to a more measured tone, aware he had to curtail his emotions the given the current audience. "He isn't fine, captain! We are talking about cumulative neurological damage."

Damage so unremarkable, Culber had not noticed it for weeks despite living with Stamets. That implied something a little different to Lorca. "Changes," said Lorca. "We're talking about neurological changes, the extent of which, by your own—"

That Lorca would downplay the significance of this made Culber want to throw out the Hippocratic Oath and sock Lorca in the jaw. It was probably a good thing they were speaking over the comms. "Captain! When we reach Starbase 46, I intend to lodge a formal complaint."

Lorca was still holding the cookie in his hand from the end of his conversational with Terral. His fingers tightened, cracking it unintentionally. He dropped the broken pieces onto the desk. "If you want to do so, that's your right, but let me make something clear, doctor. I didn't order Lieutenant Stamets into that spore drive. I merely asked. He got in there to save the aliens down on that planet because your husband is the sort of man who would do anything to stop an injustice against an innocent species." Stamets had proven as much when he subjected himself to a lateral genetic transfer rather than let Ripper suffer one more jump as the spore drive's biocomputer. "For what it's worth, I'm proud of him. There aren't many people would make that choice and risk themselves to save a planet of strangers. All I did was provide the opportunity for him to show exactly what kind of man he is. That's all I've ever asked from my crew: for them to be exactly who they are."

The sentiment left Culber stunned. That Lorca had said or thought any part of it did not remove the fact Stamets' brain was fundamentally changed in ways none of them fully understand, but it certainly gave Culber pause on his stated course of action.

Lorca continued, "Now I understand you're upset because you love him, so if you want to blame me, fine, but I won't stand in the way of Stamets being who he is. I have to believe that's part of why you married him."

Lorca listened to the dead air on the other end of the line with some degree of satisfaction. To underscore the assertion being made about who was in the right and who was wrong here, he added, "I appreciate the heads up on your complaint. If there's nothing else?"

"I want to go on record and state it is my medical recommendation that Lieutenant Stamets not conduct any further jumps with the spore drive," said Culber firmly, back to full professionalism. "To do so would be an undue risk to his health. We need to make do without the drive until after Paul has been cleared by Starfleet Medical."

"Duly noted. Lorca out." Lorca looked down at the crumble of cookie pieces on his desk and extracted the fortune from the mess. Your future is as boundless as the lofty heaven.

So long as he had the spore drive, the universe, like this little slip of paper, sat in the palm of his hand. All he had to do was make sure the spore drive, despite Culber's medical advice, still remained in play. Besides, if anyone was a hero in what they had just done, it was Paul Stamets.

He drafted up a communique and directed it to Admiral Terral.

Decline Legion of Honor. Give Lt. Paul Stamets, instrumental in Discovery success. The message was practically in pidgin. Lorca was going to take back all that power over Terral, Cornwell or no, and an intentionally terse, bordering on grammatically unsound missive was a step in the right direction.

Aware the clock was running, Lorca went to Lab 26. O'Malley was on the door. He offered Lorca only a cursory grimace and "captain" in greeting; they were both too overly conscious of and disappointed in O'Malley's recent ineffectuality to be in any mood to speak to one another.

Mischkelovitz, on the other hand, was excited to see Lorca, immediately dimming the lights and conjuring up the map. "It's done! What do you think?"

"It's incredible," said Lorca, reaching up to touch the holographic display as if to make sure it was real.

"Shakespearean," said a voice, and Lorca jerked his hand back in surprise. Lalana was standing in the doorway to her room. He could see the map reflected in her eyes as she stepped forward.

Lorca closed the map. "Sorry. Classified."

"Really? I believe my clearance is as high as yours." A kind lie; in actuality, because of the intelligence work she had done over the past decade, hers was technically higher.

"Eyes only," he clarified.

Lalana came right up to the workbench, grabbing the edge of the table to steady herself in a standing position. "Will you not make an exception for these eyes? I have already seen it, after all, and who would I tell? The two people I know best are in this room."

Stamets had seen the map, too, though not in its completed form. "All right." Lorca brought the display back up. "It's a map might take us to other universes."

"Definitely," said Mischkelovitz.

Lalana could not interact with holographic displays correctly so she relied upon Mischkelovitz to manipulate the map for her. Mischkelovitz deftly displayed the map's features: the locations of previous jumps, the color-coded navigable routes, the lines that curved away into another universe, or perhaps infinite universes.

"Truly it is amazing," said Lalana, "though are there not enough stars in this universe for you to explore? Must you also have another?"

"Who knows," said Lorca. "Maybe there's a universe out there where I'm an emperor, and Mischkelovitz is Einstein, Hawking, and Curie combined."

"Or at least a universe where everybody doesn't think I'm a monster," said Mischkelovitz bitterly.

Lorca's expression softened and he looked at Mischkelovitz with something approaching pity. "Maybe. Assuming you can find a way to implement these coordinates."

"There's nothing to implement. I don't know if our spore drive can get us there, but technically it's the same coordinate set," said Mischkelovitz.

"Oh? Then, there's nothing stopping us?"

"I wouldn't say that exactly... It isn't as easy as just jumping within the reference frame of a single universe."

"Is it dependent on particle resonance?" asked Lalana.

Mischkelovitz looked at Lalana with a confused expression, not because the question made no sense, but because it made too much sense. "The coordinates are farther away in a nonlinear dimension so it would take a lot more processing power than we have to reach them," she explained, then started to think aloud, "though, particle resonance could be used as a targeting component, and explain how multiple realities can exist in layered instances of spacetime connecting to the mycelial plane as a singular, unified frame of reference."

"Can the box do it?" asked Lorca. The lului box, ostensibly the focus of Mischkelovitz's current non-map research.

Again, Mischkelovitz looked at Lalana, this time with a faint expression of panic.

"We have good and bad news about that!" Lalana announced. "The good news is, the box is operational. The bad news is, the internal battery is still charging. We cannot confirm it will be effective until it is charged."

"Then let's get it charged."

"It is charging itself already! It uses an exotic and rare particle, so it will take some time."

"How long?"

"Twelve years."

Lorca stared. "What?"

"That is not very long to a lului," pointed out Lalana.

It was not, but it was entirely too long for them. "Then can we find some more particles?"

"Alas, the particles only exist in subspace, and we have no way of extracting them."

"The technology to do so is only theoretical at present," offered Mischkelovitz, sounding as uncertain as anyone could be. "Maybe in a few years I can have a prototype extractor designed."

Lorca leaned against the worktable. "One step at a time," he sighed. "Speaking of, I have a favor to ask. Two, if you'd be so kind."

"Is one of them sex?" asked Mischkelovitz.

Lorca realized he had inadvertently created a new kind of monster. Was this going to happen every time he encountered Mischkelovitz from now on? Part of him wished he had stuck to cookies. Her social ineptitude was only fun when it was at the expense of someone else's time and sanity. "No, but hear me out, and nothing's off the table."

"Nothing?" asked Lalana, perking up.

"Enough!" said Lorca sharply, and made his first request.

Mischkelovitz turned out to be entirely amenable to playing a role in Lorca's ploy, sympathetic as she was to the plight of requiring special sleeping accommodations. Her acceptance was compounded by Lorca's seemingly offhand but entirely calculated use of the words, "Consider it pulling one over on the adults back at Starfleet Command." O'Malley would be furious when he found out, but Lorca could handle him easily enough. The colonel had essentially served up his loyalties on a platter with that QORYA story.

The second request turned out to be the harder sell. "Now, I don't mean to alarm you, but we have Klingons headed our way from almost every direction. Normally, it'd be a three-hour trip by warp to Starbase 46, but we can't take a route that direct, not with the Klingons between us and there, which means we gotta take a route a little more scenic. This increases the likelihood we run into more Klingons, or that they try and head us off."

"Then let's jump," said Mischkelovitz.

"Unfortunately, Dr. Culber has advised no more jumps."

Mischkelovitz stared. "But why?"

"That jump sequence took a lot outta Stamets and Culber doesn't trust the changes in his brain. You might say he's been spooked. Unfortunately, without a safe jump to un-spook him, it looks like we're taking the long way. Unless..." Lorca's eyebrows raised and he looked at Mischkelovitz with an expectant smile. "Perhaps you could convince Dr. Culber?"

The confusion on Mischkelovitz's face deepened. "Me?"

"You're friends now, right? All I need you to do is go and cry some of those beautiful tears at him, let him see how upset you'll be if we don't make it to our destination in one piece. We are beset on all sides, Mischka. It'd be a damn shame if that cloaking algorithm you and Saru worked so hard on never saw the light of day. An even bigger shame if we all got blown to smithereens."

Lalana watched them both with rapt attention. Her hands were still gripping the edge of the table, or else they would have been spinning with delight. She had missed watching Lorca at work firsthand. It was her favorite thing to watch in all the universe.

"You won't let us get blown up," said Mischkelovitz, with the fervent loyalty of the child she so frequently expressed herself to be.

"We've been lucky so far," said Lorca, reaching his hand up and cupping Mischkelovitz's cheek. "Luck can run out. Do you want to risk it when we have a safe way to travel right here, if only Dr. Culber can be convinced to let us use it?"

"I don't think I can cry on command," said Mischkelovitz.

The one thing she could be counted on to do and she doubted it. "Want to know a secret? All you have to do is find the thing that's true in what you're saying."

"It is true," said Lalana, "that it would be a terrible shame if we all ended up like Milosz did back at the Battle of the Binary Stars. Myself, Gabriel, John, and Macarius. Can you picture it? All of us, dead or dying, right in front of you."

Tears began to well in Mischkelovitz's eyes. Lorca smiled. "That's my girl," he said, patting her cheek. "Now run along and don't let your brother see those tears."

Mischkelovitz nodded, wiped at her eyes, took a deep breath to steady herself, and fled.

"Don’t forget about the algorithm," Lorca called after her as the inner doors closed. He leaned against the worktable and fixed Lalana with a wry frown. "Really, Lalana? Milosz? I don't know if you needed to go that far."

"It helped you attain the desired result, did it not?"

"Still. That was overkill." Probably invoking O'Malley would have been enough.

"Better overkill than half-measures," said Lalana cheerily.

Lorca smirked at her. He loved it when she expressed herself in pithy platitudes. "We should put that in a fortune cookie."

"The important thing is we get you in front of someone who better understands this," said Culber, giving Stamets' shoulder a squeeze. They were in sickbay still, going over Stamets' scans.

"I didn't realize it was this bad," said Stamets. "I feel..." He shrugged. Fine wasn't the right word, but he also didn't feel bad. Different worked, but even he was not sure what it meant in this context.

"I know how important your work is to you," said Culber, the beginning of a consolation he felt Stamets needed.

"Forget that," said Stamets. "You're more important. I'm sorry I kept it from you, I just..."

Culber slid his arm across Stamets' back, pulling Stamets in and leaning his head against Stamets' shoulder. "The important thing is we're going to get through this together."

The doors slid open and Mischkelovitz came skidding in and rushed over to them, oblivious to the fact she was interrupting a private conversation. "Hugh!" she exclaimed at Culber with wide-eyed fear. Then her eyes shifted to Stamets and her expression became a disturbing scowl. "And... person."

"Paul," Stamets scowled back at her. He had not forgotten their altercation over the spores. "But to you, it's Lieutenant Stamets."

Culber was well aware of that altercation. As much as he had tried to explain to Stamets that Mischkelovitz required a little more patience than most, it seemed she and Stamets were intent on picking back up right where they had left off.

But then Mischkelovitz stopped herself, stared down at the floor, and her jaw began to tremble. She squeezed her eyes shut and started silently crying.

"Dr. Mischkelovitz?"

"I don't want everyone I love to die!" she wept, balling her hands into fists and pressing them to her face.

Culber and Stamets exchanged a look. All of Stamets' ire had vanished, replaced by a concern matching Culber's. "Why would you say that?" asked Stamets.

"That's not going to happen," promised Culber.

Mischkelovitz let out a plaintive wail. "But there's Klingons everywhere! We'll never make it! And I don't—I don't want to watch him die, too!"

Another look passed between Stamets and Culber. The question, unvoiced, was plain to both of them: was she crying about Lorca? (She was not, of course, but neither of them had any cause to know any better.)

"They know we killed the Ship of the Dead! They're coming for us! And they'll get us, they'll get us!" She directed this last bit at Stamets.

Culber gently put a hand on Stamets shoulder. "I'll take care of this," he said.

"Hold on," said Stamets. He hunched down slightly, craning his neck so he was level with Mischkelovitz's downturned face. "We won't let that happen. Will we, Hugh?"

For a moment, Culber thought it was an empty consolation, but then he realized what Stamets meant. The color drained from Culber's face but he plastered on a smile. "That's right, we won't. Everything's gonna be fine... Mischka. One jump." His eyes were unsteady as he locked his gaze with Stamets.

"One jump," said Stamets.

Lorca found Stamets in the shuttle bay staring out at the view of the planet Pahvo and its lovely reddish-hued star through the bay's forcefield. "They wanted to give me a medal," Lorca said as he took up a position next to Stamets. "For... leading the mission, saving Pahvo. If you can believe the irony." He looked at Stamets, unable to contain the smile on his face. Lorca still preferred stars to planets, but Pahvo was not just any planet, it was a planet that continued to exist because they had saved it.

In a sense, saving Pahvo had also saved Starfleet because saving Pahvo meant upholding the virtues upon which Starfleet and the Federation were founded. Virtues Admiral Terral had been willing to throw away. Virtues which were also something Stamets and Lorca now realized they had in common: that spirit of exploration, that desire to display the sort of upstanding character that compelled you to rush to the defense of the weak. Uniting disparate skills and species into a whole that was universes better than the sum of its parts.

The smile on Lorca's face held a genuine paternal affection. "I told them to give it to you."

"That's, um..." Stamets blinked. "Not necessary, sir."

"You made the jumps, you risked everything. None of it would have been possible without you. You did so well, the Klingons are on their way, hell-bent on revenge. I wish we could stay and fight, but Starfleet wants us back at Starbase 46."

"Do you need me to jump?"

"No," said Lorca, shaking his head, "I would never ask that of you. You've done enough. We'll warp to Starbase 46. We'll be fine."

"But—the Klingons—" Stamets seemed almost to stammer a moment. "I'll do one more jump to get the crew back to safety. They've risked enough already."

"If you're sure," said Lorca, and Stamets nodded. "Thank you." He looked back out at Pahvo then. "We're gonna win this war on account of you, Mr. Stamets. After this, it's a whole new chapter for Discovery. You've opened a door to a whole new era of exploration. The data provided by the micro-jumps will push us closer than we've ever been before to understanding the mysteries of the universe—"

"No, captain," said Stamets. "I mean only one more jump. After we get back, I'm done."

Lorca stared. This was not happening. He had thought Culber to be the sole barrier to their continued use of the spore drive, that Stamets' passion for his work outweighed everything else in his life, the way Lorca's thirst for the stars did. He realized mushrooms were not the thing Stamets loved most. He had misjudged the astromycologist.

Stamets mistook Lorca's look for a personal judgment and tried to explain himself. "Traveling the mycelial network is like comingling the most abstruse blips of our celestial existence. I've seen these stars through a lens no one else has access to, and that has to be enough for me. Because I need Starfleet's best doctors to examine my condition and figure out what's been happening to me."

There was tremendous fear in Stamets' expression. The idea that something was happening to him outside of his control was terrifying.

First Landry, then Ripper, now Stamets. Lorca's monsters were vanishing one by one.

Of course, Stamets was more than a monster. He had been a human first. He seemed to desire to return to this state now. Lorca turned to Stamets, smiled. "One last jump, then. You have served the Federation honorably, lieutenant."

"Well, I'll always have you to thank for the view."

"Hm!" went Lorca, surprised by the sentiment. "You ready?"

As they walked towards the shuttle bay doors, Lorca kept his face as level as possible. Stamets was a crucial part of what made Discovery so important and what made Lorca himself so effective. If Stamets was gone, he would be without the leverage he needed to stave off the forces seeking to strip him of his command.

One jump. He was only going to get one more jump. Everything depending on what was on the other end of that jump. If they docked at that starbase, Stamets would walk away potentially forever, Terral and Cornwell would take Discovery, and Lorca did not know where his place was in this universe without the ship.

No, he realized, without Discovery, he had no place here at all. He knew it as surely as he knew the stars were shining and space was largely empty and black.

They reached the junction where Stamets went right and Lorca left. Lorca extended his hand. "See you on the other side."

Stamets shook Lorca's hand and smiled. So many times in the past they had been momentarily on the same page and then slipped right off and ended up odds with one another. Stamets was gratified to think they were ending this journey on the same page at last. "Thank you again, captain."

"No, thank you," said Lorca, and Stamets could tell Lorca meant it.

As they headed their separate ways, Stamets suddenly paused, turned back, and said, "Captain? I know it's not really my place, but... Dr. Mischkelovitz came into sickbay crying? Maybe you should, I dunno, check on her?"

"I will," said Lorca.

He had to act fast. The timer was still running and it was fast approaching zero hour. Absent time, he needed more space. Mischkelovitz was still in sickbay, sharing a cup of hot tea with Culber, apparently calm enough for a regular conversation now. She and Culber were even laughing, though Lorca immediately noticed her laughter was an attempt at polite reinforcement and not at all genuine.

All he had do was say her name and beckon to her and she put down her tea and trotted after him obediently.

"I cried," she said when they were in the hall, as if the red, puffy state of her eyes were not proof enough.

"We have a problem," said Lorca, glancing to make sure the corridor was deserted. "I just received word from Terral. Now that the cloak is solved, they don’t need you on Discovery, so they're gonna send you back to some laboratory behind the lines and make you work on someone else's projects. Unless we can give them a reason to keep you here."

Mischkelovitz's eyes went wide. Leave Discovery? Discovery was her home. There was no captain that would have her but Lorca, and for reasons that went deeper than anything Lorca could ever know, she did not want to be anywhere but on a starship.

"We need to give them proof that your map is real." Lorca swallowed. Everything depended on how she took this next piece of information. "Particular resonance targeting," he said in a way that made it feel like he had spoken those exact words before. He removed something from his pocket. It was shiny and gold. "Can you get me the resonance coordinates for this?"

It was an insignia, but not one she recognized. At its center lay a circle of red and black patterned to resemble the continents of a planet. A sword stabbed through the planet, and two smooth, wing-like protrusions reminded her of the Starfleet insignia turned upside-down.

He let her take it, his fingers shaking faintly as she did, because he had not let anyone else touch it, much less see it, in two years. She turned it over and gasped at the inscription on the back.

"It's proof, Mischka," he said. "At least, I think it is. That's why I had to get Burnham. To make sure."

The letters on the back were as plain as day: BURNHAM. MICHAEL. A service number which was not Starfleet in origin.

"The thing is, they'll never believe me unless we can show them, without any doubt, that you're right, and I'm right. Even with this algorithm, we are still outnumbered and outgunned against the Klingons, but maybe we can fix that if we can find more guns and more people. So tell me, right now, can you provide me with the origin of wherever this came from?"

"I need a few days, but... yes."

Lorca's face fell. This was not a time problem that could be solved with one hundred and thirty-three jumps, not when he only had the one. He would have to take Discovery on the universe's most insane "evasive maneuvers" to buy her that much time. That was not likely to fool anyone for very long.

Finding Lorca absent any elation, Mischkelovitz asked, "You need it sooner?"

"I need it now," he admitted.

"Then let's go," she said, and started off the hallway, taking the lead for once.

"Put it in your pocket," Lorca told her, falling into step beside her.

O'Malley noticed her puffy eyes on her return, of course, and started to try and engage her, but Mischkelovitz held up a hand. "Wait here," she said to them both, and stepped into the lab.

The door closed. They waited.

Forty seconds later, Mischkelovitz emerged again, strangely very calm. "Okay," she said to Lorca. "You can come in now."

The insignia was on the worktable. The mycelial map floated above, but it looked different now. There were two maps overlaid on one another, half a centimeter apart. There was no sign of Lalana, thank goodness. Lorca picked up the mysterious insignia and slid it into his pocket as he stared at the map.

"You're a miracle worker," he told Mischkelovitz.

"No," she said, "I'm a hard worker and a smart worker. Miracles are for fools."

However she wanted to describe it, it was a miracle. He reached up and encrypted the second map under a personal command code, FKECG.

"This probably goes without saying, but not a word of this to anyone. Promise me. This stays between us and the higher-ups at Starfleet Command when we brief them, all right?"

"Yes, captain."

Honestly, she had her own reasons for not wanting anyone to know what she had just done.

"Captain, there was a strange data surge from Lab 26," said Saru when Lorca stepped onto the bridge. Lorca wondered exactly how much processing power Mischkelovitz had siphoned from the ship's data centers to get the results as fast as she had.

"We'll look into it after we arrive safe and sound," said Lorca, and went to the captain's chair.

In the engineering lab, Culber looked at the spore drive chamber, features clouded with worry. He heard footsteps and turned. Stamets strode straight up to Culber, cupped his hands against Culber's face and kissed him with a fervent passion. It was a kiss that lingered and broke only when Lorca's voice came over the comms.

"Mr. Stamets? Shall we dock this weary vessel?"

"Yes, Captain," said Stamets, gazing at Culber with adoration. He could see Culber's reluctance, the fear. "There is a moon near Starbase 46 and I understand they have the most esteemed Kasseelian opera house where they are currently performing La bohème. I could be your date."

Stamets had always hated opera, but he loved Culber so much more. His love for Culber was the single greatest force in his version of the universe. Culber's face broke into a smile. "Are you saying you'll actually sit through that with me?"

"Just this jump," said Stamets earnestly, "and then I'm going to have a lot of free time on my hands."

Culber reached up, drew his hand across Stamets' cheek, and then let Stamets go. Stamets entered the spore chamber, smiling. At the drive controls, Tilly initiated the spore release.

Up on the bridge, Lorca looked at the viewscreen at the stars. If he did this, there was no going back from it, but then, there was no going back now anyway. Lorca brought up the encrypted command override of the navigational controls on the console in the armrest of his chair. His fingers danced across the keypad. F-K-E-C-G.

"Let's go home," he said.

The spores swirled about the spore chamber, a cloud of pale blue dust, and still Stamets was smiling at Culber.

Then he screamed. Everything on the ship began to flash as the power systems fluctuated far beyond the capacity of the regulators to compensate. The ship shuddered. The force of it drove Culber back against Tilly's console on the opposite side of the room from Stamets. Crystals of ice formed on the surface of the spore chamber.

A moment later, all was still. The lights returned.

"Talk to me, cadet," said Lorca.

Tilly's voice was a panic. "The computer is reading it as an incomplete navigational sequence!"

Stamets staggered out of the spore drive and collapsed onto the floor. Culber and Tilly rushed to his side. Culber rolled Stamets over. Stamets convulsed, his eyes closed.

"He's crashing," said Culber, voice small and desperate. "I'm detecting white matter hyperintensity." Stamets' eyes popped open. They were suddenly pale, the blue obscured behind a cloud of milky white.

"What's wrong with him?" asked Tilly. As Culber's voice had shrunk, hers had risen in panicked alarm. "What's happening to his eyes?"

Stamets spoke. "So many... I can see them all! Infinite permutations. It's... magnificent!" His eyes twitched back and forth.

"Paul? Paul?" Culber called out, but Stamets did not respond.

Part 74

[mrmichaelchadler]

The Feminine Grotesque: On The Warped Legacy of Joan Crawford

This review was originally published on May 4, 2016 and is being republished for Women Writers Week.

“No wire hangers!”

That’s what comes to mind when most people think of Joan Crawford, more so than the professionalism and remarkable performances that mark her four decades long career. 

Shortly after her death in 1977, Crawford’s adopted daughter Christina published “Mommie Dearest,” a memoir detailing her mother’s alleged abusive nature, alcoholism and neuroses. Katharine Hepburn, Myrna Loy, her first husband Douglas Fairbanks Jr., her two youngest daughters and others close to her denounced the book. But with Frank Perry’s 1981 film adaptation, featuring Faye Dunaway’s shrieking, hollow, larger-than-life performance, the damage was done. In just 129 minutes the film unravels what Crawford had been building for herself since first gracing the screen in the late 1920s. It turned the image of Crawford in the cultural imagination into a monstress, a soulless camp icon to be mocked and reviled but rarely respected, and a cautionary tale of what happens when women put their careers first.

This misses how layered and beguiling Crawford could be—she’s a woman who embodies all the dreams every young girl has when she looks at the glimmer of Hollywood and thinks “I want to be a star!” and the cold pangs of yearning when the spotlight leaves. The image I hold of Crawford is one crafted from her various roles and interviews that have far more complexity than “Mommie Dearest” and her current legacy do. She’s one of the finest examples of how stardom works and is a powerhouse of an actress, despite the sexism and obstacles she faced from the same industry that made her a starlet. 

Although many stars from classic Hollywood struggled as they aged and the studio system that shaped them went to rot, actresses carried a heavier burden. Towards the end of Marlon Brando’s life he was an absolute embarrassment professionally and personally, but that hasn’t stopped new generations of actors from exalting him, as if screen acting didn’t matter until he showed up.

The 1962 Robert Aldrich film “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” reinvigorated Crawford’s career, along with that of Davis, her co-star. It also spawned the dubious “hagsploitation” genre, which is exactly what the word conjures. There is a visceral thrill in watching these aged divas and older cinematic titans hash it out in horror rather than be regulated to playing bloodless, supporting roles far beneath their talents. Films like “Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte” (1964), starring Davis and Olivia de Havilland (in a role originally meant for Crawford) let these actresses form fascinating roles, and often disregard the rigorous expectations of beauty in order to deconstruct their own images in a metatextual manner. But the films in this genre often look down upon the leading characters rather than empathizing with them. In the last few years of Crawford’s career we see this strain of pure Grand Guignol. In films like 1964’s “Strait-Jacket” and 1970’s “Trog” (her final screen appearance), Crawford is positioned as a punchline.

Crawford took a dim view of her later career after “Baby Jane�� saying, “They were all terrible, even the few I thought might be good. I made them because I needed money or because I was bored or both. I hope they have been exhibited and withdrawn and never heard from again.” She stayed in the public eye thanks to her later film work and a prolific television career that included guest spots on “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” (1967) and “Night Gallery” (1969). Her later career is spotty at best, rarely living up to what she was still capable of as an actress. These failures aren’t enough to undo her many accolades and amazing dramatic performances. They have nothing to do with Crawford as an actress. They are a byproduct of an industry that fails to see the rich interior lives of older women and fails to offer roles worthy of their skills.

It’s ultimately “Mommie Dearest” that cemented Crawford’s legacy as a campy joke. The very end of her career highlights a grotesque femininity that Christina Crawford’s book and Perry’s film expand on.

I’m not interested in parsing out what may or may not be true about Christina’s depiction of her mother. What does interest me are the reasons the legacy was undone by the memoir and its adaptation. The hits Crawford’s image has taken after her death are the result of something that was building up before then: a resentment of professional women. People are more brazen faulting women like Crawford as mothers and romantic partners because they openly put their careers first. In this light, her work in “Mildred Pierce” (1945) gains a deeper meaning as it concerns the price women pay for caring about their careers, the tricky emotional dynamics of the domestic sphere, and a fraught mother/daughter dynamic which predicts issues Crawford would deal with personally later in life.

Joan Crawford was a good, sometimes even great actress but she was also an amazing businesswoman. She may have come through the ranks of the MGM star machine, which changed her birth name from Lucille Fay LeSeur to Joan Crawford and made sure her freckles were never seen on-screen, but she had a hand in crafting her own image.

It should be noted that the stars from this era we remember weren’t really products of the star machine in the first place and were able to retain something essential about themselves even when going through the rigors of Hollywood during their early years. Crawford pivoted from setbacks like the end of her tenure at MGM to signing with Warner Bros. and delivering arguably the best performance of her career in “Mildred Pierce." She had the uncanny skill to adjust her looks to simultaneously reflect and seem slightly ahead of whatever was the conception of the modern woman at the time. Her films particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, which often paired her with Franchot Tone and Clark Gable, showed her as a hard-working young woman on the make, able to find love and success thanks to her own intelligence and sheer will power. Looking at these roles only through Crawford’s biography do her skills as a performer, and understanding of what film actors needed to bring to the table, a disservice. But her hardscrabble, poor upbringing undoubtedly lends these roles an authenticity and edge they wouldn’t have had if played by someone else. Even after having to mount a campaign of self-promotion to get the quality roles she deserved during her early years at MGM, Crawford wasn’t the kind of star to take up issues with the studio. Unlike other actors like James Cagney and Olivia de Havilland, who rightly fought their draconian contracts, Crawford was a professional and knew her limits even as she became one of the most powerful stars in the business during the 1930s. In the “Star Machine,” film historian Jeanine Basinger offers a behind-the-scenes story about “When Ladies Meet” (1941) that illustrates this writing, “Crawford knew her own stardom depended on being professional rather than always getting the key light. She was smart about her career—and cooperative.” Basinger mentions how Crawford mutes her performance when acting against Greer Garson, who was being groomed as a star, while Crawford was already well established and a few years away from leaving MGM. Even as the production team “clearly favors [Garson]” and the politics behind her place at MGM became more fraught, Crawford was always the utmost professional. This anecdote of actresses at very different points in their careers illustrates Crawford’s own professionalism and the short shelf-life of female stars, even those as beloved and well-paid as Crawford. That Crawford was able to last long beyond this moment professionally is a testament to her own acumen.

Crawford was kind to her fans, personally signing the photographs they sent to her; she knew what they wanted from her famous remark, “if you want the girl next door, go next door.” Crawford was self-aware about the beauty politics of her role in the Hollywood ecosystem. Placing her roles through the years next to each other, we can see a startling breadth of presentation. There's the flapper with the witty smile and slick bob that led F. Scott Fitzgerald to say, “Joan Crawford is doubtless the best example of the flapper, the girl you see in smart night clubs, gowned to the apex of sophistication, toying iced glasses with a remote, faintly bitter expression, dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal, with wide, hurt eyes. Young things with a talent for living.” There’s the lustful, independent dame with looser curls and tighter clothes acting against Clark Gable. Then there’s the career woman of the 1940s moving up in the world on her own, all broad shoulders and long hair. This isn’t to say that Crawford’s only or even primary worth was in her professionalism and understanding of stardom. Her career wouldn’t have spanned that long unless she was able to speak to her audience and be believable as an actress.

While I love the bitchy, sly mistress she plays in “The Women” (1939) and the fluidity of her movement in her flapper roles, Crawford feels at her most transcendent in later roles. 

Crawford’s greatest work shares a few traits particularly in how it highlights how she used posture to indicate character. While Crawford seems like an incredible force of nature, she’s at her most captivating when actually sharing the screen with an actor that can challenge her. There’s of course Bette Davis in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”, with each woman bringing a humanity and terror to their roles in dramatically different ways. But there’s also the uncomfortable mother/daughter dynamics that create the backbone of “Mildred Pierce," the garish “Johnny Guitar” that sets her against Sterling Hayden (1954) and one of my favorites, the brief moments she shares with noir staple Gloria Grahame in “Sudden Fear” (1950). Even though Grahame and Crawford barely interact, the film goes to great lengths to position their versions of femininity as dramatic opposites. There’s the lustful, underhanded fatale that Grahame plays on one side and Crawford’s rich, caring playwright on the other, who grows more and more hysterical as the film goes on. If the film was made ten or fifteen years prior, Crawford would likely have been playing Grahame’s role. Crawford shows an incredible understanding on-screen and off of the various compromises women make in trying to find success, romantic and otherwise.

One of her most emotionally realized performances came later in her career in the 1956 drama “Autumn Leaves,” directed by Robert Aldrich. The film delves into mental illness and an older woman/younger man relationship dynamic. But my favorite scenes involve Crawford grappling with her own loneliness, like when she goes to a musical performance early in the film and the world seems to fade around her. The light stays on her face, her shoulders slump and she softens as she gets lost in her memories. These moments show a level of tenderness and self-reflection that contradict the wild-eyed monster Faye Dunaway played her as and her own daughter believed her to be. It may prove impossible to fully wrestle Crawford from this image or shift her legacy so that it portrays the full range of her skill and complications.

It’s hard for me to choose my favorite photograph of Joan Crawford. In a career spanning four decades, Crawford provided audiences with many indelible images of womanhood even if history only holds onto one. But if pressed I would pick the series of photographs Eve Arnold took in 1959. One shows Crawford studying her lines on the set of “The Best of Everything [the top photo] her hand grazing her hair in concentration. In another you can see her gazing off camera next to Norma Shearer [pictured below] her eyes alight with a smile we can’t fully see, at a party somewhere in Hollywood.

Crawford was in her mid-fifties when Arnold took these pictures. The extreme close-ups of her lining her lips, or another photograph showing the casual intimacy of her in undergarments cradling the phone while speaking to her agent, could have been framed as a grotesque representation of what happens as icons age. But Arnold was a photographer of great emotional intelligence. What’s most striking about these photographs is that they express a humanity that doesn’t exist in how many remember her, thanks to “Mommie Dearest." Most of the images deal with Crawford reckoning with her own reflection—both literally in terms of the mirrors surrounding her and metaphorically in terms of how they detail her beauty process. Crawford, perhaps more than almost any female star in classic Hollywood, understood what was expected of her. That beauty and the power it brings comes with its advantages and also a price.

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My NotesBeing a technical person and someone that loves to program for fun I've always wondered how it would be for someone to start a SaaS company and never know how to code. I've never thought it would be easy but I certainly never thought it would be as difficult as this. Whilst reading my partners blog post I couldn't help but think how much it related to the struggle of being an entrepreneur and just how challenging things can get and thought you guys would appreciate the read and his Journey and persistence through it all.The storyWe were sitting in the middle of our open 2,500sq ft office with no employees; it was just my co-founder and I. We had big dreams. The hardly-used ping pong table sat behind us, somewhere near the never-used office kitchen. Looking to my right, I could see the sprawling white board wall that was covered in wildly idealistic mockups, surrounded by giant bean bags that were way too big for any one person.“We’re fucked.”I remember saying those words on a daily basis. We had burned through 6 figures of our own initial capital and we had absolutely nothing to show for it, except for a giant box of t-shirts and unnecessary office overhead.There was a precise moment we realized the agency we hired to build our webinar platform prototype was completely screwing us, and it was after we flew the CEO out from Turkey, broke bread, and played tennis. Turns out, there are people out there who will look you in the eye, take your money, lie to you, and do it all with a friendly smile on their face.We had gotten access to a link, which was the first version of a test room of the webinar platform we were building. We joined and, at first, I was confused. “Why are there two Indian developers sitting in a basement on camera right now?” We just sat there and watched while our hearts sank. Up until that point, we had imagined a large team based in Turkey working diligently on our project. Nope. Our prototype was being outsourced to $10/hr freelance developers based in India.It didn’t take us long before we found the right developers on Upwork, the agency profile, and the exact hours and amounts that were paid. The agency we had paid 6 figures to pocketed the money and spent a measly few thousand dollars to build the world’s crappiest prototype, which was more like 1/10th of a prototype.Our journey almost came to a screeching halt before it even started.Fast Forward to TodayNearly 3 years later, I write this article from the comfort of my own home. Our team is spread out across the world, working remotely to continue building a great product for our growing customer base. We don’t have a ping pong table. We don’t have giant bean bags, although I miss them. We don’t even have an office. We’re no longer playing startup; instead, we’re building a sustainable company.Things aren’t perfect; they never are. But we’re happy, and we’re focused. We’re not “killing it,” but our revenue is growing. As it stands, we’re currently hovering around $42,000 MRR. More importantly, we have a great product that our customers love.Our team is spread out from the United States to Jamaica, Ukraine, and other countries in between. The Demio team is made up of 7 full-time members and a part-time contractor. It feels like we always need more hands, but we make it work. As of today, that team is broken down as follows: 2 co-founders (David Abrams, CEO, and me), 3 engineers, 1 Q/A manager/support, 1 marketing director, and a part-time designer.Neither David nor I are technical founders, and yet, we have a very technologically-heavy product based around live streaming. We’re a webinar platform, so, by nature of our product, our team has been mostly developers from the beginning. A lot of the challenges we’ve faced throughout this journey have been technical ones, and it’s definitely been stressful at times.Things seem to be falling into place for us, and we’re truly starting to feel like we’re gaining momentum, which is a powerful thing. We want to keep that momentum rolling, and we want to do so in a sustainable manner.Our Road to Get HereIt hasn’t been easy. Getting screwed by that agency was brutal, but it was really just the beginning. We’ve faced a lot of challenges in getting to this point, and there were times when we were frighteningly close to shutting it all down.We weren’t quite ready to give up after the initial fiasco. We were hurt, though. We lost a lot of our personal funds. But we really believed in the potential of our product, so we continued to self-fund the operation, maybe out of insanity. This time, however, we did it differently. We decided we were going to be in control, and we were absolutely not going to rely on an outside agency. So, we started by hiring a couple developers; we wanted to build a real team this time around.And we did. A couple of our initial hires are still with us to this day, and they are doubtless the reason we are still alive and kicking.I wish I could say it was a breeze once we started building an internal team, but that would be far from the truth. We started by scrapping everything; I don’t think we used a single line of code from the initial “prototype.” We were finally making progress…until we hit our next major wall: real-time streaming. Turns out, being able to support thousands of concurrent streaming connections in a real-time, reliable manner is not an easy task.We went from one potential solution to the next, and nothing was working for us. We were going in circles. We were also going into a competitive market, so there were certain aspects we couldn’t fall short on, such as stability, scalability, and latency. In other words, we wanted to allow business owners to reliably connect with hundreds of people with minimal delay over a broadcast. As time went on and we kept trying to make this happen, more and more it seemed impossible.What’s worse is that we continued to build out the rest of the application and all of the ideas we could fit on our oversized whiteboard wall. Time went on, our application became more robust, but the core streaming feature didn’t even exist. Basically, we built a car without an engine. It seems ridiculous to think, but we were desperate. Because we lost months of time from the agency, we were in a self-induced hurry to get to market, so we were trying to build everything all at once instead of focusing on a simple MVP.The road to Beta was paved with multiple conversations around the idea of shutting everything down and calling it a loss. It’s not that we wanted to end it, we just honestly thought it was over, that we didn’t have a choice. We were always just a few dollars away from running out of money. When we finally did hack together a solution and launch our Beta, it didn’t last. We had to shut it down and, again, set out to completely rebuild our streaming architecture.Months later and, against all odds, we were finally able to launch a successful Beta. By no means were all of our issues solved; we still basically had zero funds, but it was a step in the right direction. And we haven’t looked back since.The Next ChapterThe last 3 years have been somewhat rough; I think nearly everyone on our team has faced some sort of burn out at a certain point along the way. We were in survival mode for a large majority of our company’s existence, and that can be incredibly stressful. But things are different now.We have a great product. We have a great team. We have growing revenue that supports our costs. We’re done playing startup. We’re done setting outrageous goals. We’re not looking to get acquired. We are much more interested in the idea of building a sustainable business; we’re here to stay.Operating in a live webinar environment is extremely challenging, and I truly believe it makes this SaaS journey at least twice as difficult. Our major focus as a team for the years to come is to detach ourselves as much as possible from real-time issues. In order to do this, we’ll continue to place a major emphasis on simplicity of product, which has been our USP from the beginning. So it works out well.Between my co-founder and me, our vision is to create a great company. We want to build a business that is around for decades to come, and we want to accomplish that with people we really enjoy being around. We want to create a great workplace for our employees. We want to have time in our personal lives so we can rest and operate to our maximum potential. Lastly, we want to create a company and product that our customers are proud to support.And we want to share that journey with you.Our first goal for this journey is to bring Demio to $100k MRR. As mentioned earlier, we’re almost halfway there at this point, but that doesn’t mean it’s definite. It’s going to take time and a lot of work, and there will certainly be a number of failures along the way.Here’s Why You Should Stay TunedWe’re not the first company to embrace transparency and share posts about our journey. However, it’s our belief that the ecosystem as a whole is better with more open and transparent companies. We want to help founders avoid the same mistakes we made, and we want to share our wins along the way.Between myself and my co-founder, David, we’re going to be continuously publishing our learnings as Demio grows. While we don’t want to necessarily lock ourselves into a schedule, our goal is to post at least two or three journey-related articles per month on our way to $100k in monthly recurring revenue.Some of the next posts we already have planned include:Why We Shut Down Beta at $2.2k MRR and Started OverHow Trashing More Than 50% of Our Product Actually Saved UsProgramming Interview Questions That We Use as Non-Technical FoundersThe Grand Opening Launch Method We Used to Get 400+ CustomersWhy I Burned Out and How I Got Back on TrackIf you want to see what’s next on wyatts journey, you can subscribe to the newsletter on his blog.