Moe Lane's Blog, page 628
December 7, 2021
12/07/21 Snippet, THE STARS ARE WRONG.
There are some weird things about this culture, huh?
Patreon!By the time I could assemble enough time for even a squad of Guardians, there was no point to it. Jefsin-Fankin had wriggled away from his usual haunts, and none of our informants or rumormongers had any idea where he had gone.
Jak was eager to go looking for him anyway. The rioting had left him choleric and awake, used to staving in skulls to keep the peace — and restless, now that peace had come. “We should kick down some doors, anyway,” he muttered over his beer one night. “A good shaking, and a Kee will tell you everything you want. A knife at their brat’s throat, and they’ll do anything you want, too.” He glared at me. “Or would that make things less quiet for your liking, Ward?”
“It would,” I agreed, with a scowl for his tone. “We just had a flood wash over the city, Jak, and now a lot of old fights and grudges are wriggling out of the muck. Some of them, we do not want flopping over our own boots. And the Kee were hardly meek and mild in the riots, were they?”
Jak flushed; he, too, had seen what had happened to one notorious gang when they had tried to make the Kee pay for protection from the riots. How could he not? Every gallows in town had borne new fruit. “Even scum will fight when it’s at their doorstep,” he muttered; I forbore from pointing out that he had just contradicted himself.
12/07/21 Snippet, THE DOOM THAT CAME TO LUNA CITY.
Ad hoc meetings!
Patreon!Luna under lifeboat — or Lifeboat — rules was a mix of the old and new. Tobias theoretically could give orders to everybody in the bus and expect them to be obeyed; and as long as they were smart orders, they would be. But more than one facility had gotten wrecked by bad orders, given by officers and managers who weren’t flexible enough to understand that rules had fundamentally changed, including some of the ones involving physics. The line between prudence and insubordination was razor thin these days, and a smart officer never tried to grab it.
So… Tobias had a war council. “A month ago, Luna City shut down all life support in order to stop an… infestation. The site was monitored until the reactor went offline. Now there’s power again. We have enough life support on our own to investigate and get back safely, but no communication channel to Heinlein base. And we’re temporarily out of communication range of Luna City.”
12/07/21 Snippet, TINSEL RAIN.
I can still hear the soundtrack.
Patreon!PS: My books make great Christmas gifts! #commissionearned
There is a room, deep in the heart of the Billy. In it are some things that I can’t talk about, a few I won’t talk about, and a couple of things that nobody cares about now but nobody dares throw out. And there’s also the Driving Machine. It’s a wonder of the Old Americans, used I guess to teach their kids the basics of driving. It’s coin-fed, probably because the Machine’s got it all: a steering wheel, a lever, two pedals, and electronic courses to drive on. It even has a soundtrack!
Anyway, all Shamuses trained in Cin City will have fond memories of being brought down there, and taught how to drive fast. And not to brag, but I was a natural. The Loremasters even gave me extra training: most Shamuses got an hour or two, but I was allowed a whole ten. Ten! And they were ten of the best hours of my teenage years.
…Actually driving one of these glorious monsters into the city was a little different than the Machine. Starting with all the screaming. I bet the pedestrians outside were yelling a lot, too.
The VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE Honest Trailer.
I did in fact pick up on the gay elements in VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE. Or at least some of them: the video snapshot below points out one I missed (yeah, I don’t know how that eluded me, either). Honest Trailers also points out that it’s a fun movie, which I agree with completely. Almost operatic, as I’ve said elsewhere. They should sing arias in the next one.
Seriously.
#commissionearned
December 6, 2021
I need to track down my poetry.
My mom wants copies of all of it, and damned if I remember where I put some of it. Does anybody remember if I did Halloween poems for 2020 and 2019? My tags are… not as good as they could be.
Moe Lane
PS: Is there any interest in a poetry chapbooHAHAHAHA what a silly question, Moe. What a silly question. I’m gonna need people to buy a lot of books to be able to fund that…
#commissionearned
12/06/21 Snippet, THE STARS ARE WRONG.
Shore leave!
Patreon!It started in the port district. One galley of Voyagers had pulled into the harbor to discover another galley of Voyagers, only from a different realm or tribe or whatever it is they use to tell each other apart. That was a recipe for trouble; but we Guardians knew that, and so did the captains of the two galleys. Seacity should have been big enough for the two ship’s crews to stay away, particularly since no Voyager likes to stray far from its ship.
But there had been a meeting in a bar close to both galleys, and then there had been a fight. The Guardians had gone in, doing our best to find stubborn heads to beat some sense into, and that should have been enough. But word soon came out that Voyagers from each galley had been found dead in alleys, slain by the weapons those people use.
And once that happened, our goal became keeping the city from being burned down. The Voyagers go wild when they are killed, and doubly so when they are killing each other. There were two nights of rioting, with fifty Voyagers slain, and three times that many deaths among the bilge-tramps and guttersnipes, with fires and looting to match. And it only ended because the Voyagers suddenly decided to end the fighting, which is of course how the Voyagers are. Both galleys sailed out that night, and I hope they both sank in strange seas.
12/06/21 Snippet, TINSEL RAIN.
Shamelessness!
Patreon!“This,” Pedro said, “is what the old Americans called a 1974 Dodge Monaco sedan. It’s got its original motor, over four hundred cubic inches in size. It has restored tires, reproduced suspensions, rejuvenated shocks. The engine has been converted, so it’ll run fine on vegetable oil.”
“Nice,” I said. “Does it have anything wrong with it?”
Pedro shrugged. “The cigarette lighter does not work.”
Look, I didn’t say I wanted Pedro’s gate keys. If I was going to get downtown in time, I needed something with more speed than a running man. And that meant… the car in the King’s stable he’d be least likely to mourn. Pedro had walked me past the Jaguar without losing a step, but this one he’d let me sign out, since the Hermosa did give me that note.
The “Oh [BLEEP] Me I Am THERE” SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (PART ONE) trailer.
These kids are adorkable.
Miles Morales’ story and the #SpiderVerse web expands. Take a first look at Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One). Exclusively in movie theaters October 2022. pic.twitter.com/EvnFkTruBg
— Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (Part One) (@SpiderVerse) December 5, 2021
12/06/21 Snippet, THE DOOM THAT CAME TO LUNA CITY.
Lifeboats!
Patreon!Is this how your military usually operates? Asenath whispered in his ear. It seems remarkably informal, considering the contents of your service manuals.
That almost jerked Tobias’s eyes back open. Don’t tell me you felt you had to read those!
It seemed an appropriate way to try to understand how the base currently operates. Asenath gave him one of her deliberate pauses. I take it this was a waste of time?
Pretty much, Asenath. It’s hard to sub-vocalize resignation and regret, but Tobias tried. We’re not an organized military force anymore. We’re a bunch of survivors with a common background who are trying to escape certain death. My ‘troops’ still follow me because I have a plan, and I know what I’m doing. He almost chuckled. That, and everybody who couldn’t work well with others has died already.
