Nerd Cred

So I've been thinking about something that's going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. Good. If you're comfortable with this topic, something is wrong with you. We live in a world where we like to pretend that the monsters are hiding in the bushes outside the playground. That they're the creepy stranger in the van. And sure, some of them are. But historically? The monsters wore crowns, sat on thrones, held titles, and were celebrated by the very societies they preyed upon. And the pattern hasn't changed nearly as much as we'd like to believe. Let me take you on a little tour through history. Not the sanitized version you got in school, but the version where we actually look at what powerful people did when nobody could stop them. The Ancient World: "It's Culture, Not Crime" The Greeks had this lovely institution called pederasty. An older man, the erastes, would take on a younger boy, the eromenos, in what was dressed up as mentorship. It was considered a civic duty. A rite of passage. Educational. And it was baked into the culture of one of the civilizations we credit with giving us democracy and philosophy. Let that sit with you for a second. The same people who gave us Socrates and the concept of ethical reasoning also institutionalized the sexual grooming of adolescents and called it enlightenment. Go look up the Sacred Band of Thebes. A selection of soliders. Couples. Grouped by Age. The Romans weren't much better. Emperor Tiberius, the second Emperor of Rome, retreated to Capri and, according to the historian Suetonius, engaged in horrific abuse of children. I referenced this in my last blog post about internet safety, and I wasn't joking. The dude had literal pools where children were made to... you know what, go read Suetonius yourself. I'm not your history teacher, and frankly I need to keep my lunch down. But here's the thing that matters: nobody stopped him. He was the Emperor. Who was going to tell him no? And guess what, there wasn't much leeway in the other's either. Plutarch accused the Persians of the same thing. The Byzantines had it. Feudal Japan had it. This wasn't one civilization's sin, it was a feature of power across the ancient world. Now this is not to say I frown upon the love of a man for a man or a woman for a woman. I am merely frowning upon the continued pederasty that seems to have arisen from our ancient roots as primates... anyway, what about we get a little more... Medieval? The Medieval Period: God's Representatives on Earth Let's talk about the Catholic Church, shall we? And before anyone starts clutching their rosary, I'm not attacking faith. I'm attacking an institution that has systematically protected predators for over a thousand years. In 1049, a monk named Peter Damian wrote to Pope Leo IX about the widespread sexual abuse of boys and adolescents by priests and bishops. 1049. That's not a typo. Nearly a thousand years ago, someone was already screaming about this problem. And Pope Leo's response? He was willing to punish the worst offenders but minimized everything else. Sound familiar? It should, because it's the same playbook the Church has been running ever since. Pope John XII, who reigned in the 960s, was accused by his contemporaries of turning the Papal palace into a brothel, ordaining children for favors, and committing incest. His papacy is considered one of the darkest periods in Church history. Pope Benedict IX, who took the throne around 1032 through bribery, was so spectacularly corrupt that the Romans literally drove him out of the city. He eventually sold the papacy to his own godfather because he wanted to get married. These were supposed to be God's representatives on Earth. Then there's Gilles de Rais. A French nobleman, Marshal of France, companion-in-arms to Joan of Arc. A legitimate war hero. He was convicted and executed in 1440 for the rape and murder of over a hundred children, mostly boys between 7 and 15. For eight years, he operated with near impunity because he was wealthy and powerful, and the families of his victims were too poor and too afraid to challenge a nobleman. His servants were seen disposing of children's bodies at one of his castles in 1437, and it still took three more years before anyone with authority did anything about it. That's what power buys you. Time. It buys you time to keep doing what you're doing while everyone around you looks the other way. Hollywood and the Entertainment Industry: The Open Secret Fast forward to the modern era, and the pattern is identical. Just swap castles for studio lots. Roman Polanski pleaded guilty to the sexual assault of a thirteen-year-old girl in 1977, then fled the country to avoid sentencing. He's been living comfortably in Europe ever since. And Hollywood? They gave him a standing ovation at the Oscars. In 2003. Let me repeat that. A man who admitted to assaulting a child received a standing ovation from an industry that claims to care about victims. Victor Salva was convicted in 1988 for sexually abusing a child actor, videotaping the abuse, and possessing child pornography. He served his time, got out, and Disney released his movie Powder. Disney. The company whose entire brand is built on children's entertainment hired a convicted child predator to make a film. Because talent, apparently, trumps the safety of children. Jimmy Savile in the UK is perhaps the most stomach-churning example of institutional protection. A beloved children's TV presenter and DJ who abused hundreds of victims over decades. The BBC, hospitals, charities... everyone around him either looked the other way or actively covered for him. It wasn't until after his death in 2011 that the full scope came out. The man was knighted. He had access to children's hospitals. He was untouchable because of his celebrity and his connections, and every institution he touched chose their reputation over the safety of children. And then there’s Nickelodeon. You know, the channel we all grew up watching. All That, Drake & Josh, iCarly, The Amanda Show. If you watched the Investigation Discovery documentary Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, you got a front row seat to what was happening behind the scenes of your childhood. Brian Peck, a dialogue coach on The Amanda Show, pleaded no contest to sexually abusing a child actor. That actor turned out to be Drake Bell, who came forward publicly in the documentary. Jason Michael Handy, a production assistant, was charged with lewd acts on a child under 14. Animator Ezel Channel was sentenced to over seven years for committing lewd acts on a 14-year-old boy. These weren’t random strangers who snuck onto the lot. These were employees. People who were hired, vetted, and given access to children as part of their job. And the environment they operated in? Show creator Dan Schneider, once called “the Norman Lear of children’s television” by The New York Times, built an empire on kids’ TV. He’s since apologized for some of his behavior, including asking staff for massages and being volatile on set. Former iCarly star Jennette McCurdy wrote an entire memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, describing her experiences with an abusive figure widely reported to be Schneider. The documentary showed clips from his shows that, viewed through adult eyes, are deeply uncomfortable. Young Ariana Grande in sexually suggestive bits. Jamie Lynn Spears getting hit in the face with goo. Content that was written, approved, filmed, and broadcast by adults who knew exactly what they were putting child actors through. Schneider is currently suing the documentary’s producers for defamation, claiming it implied he was a sexual abuser. He denies that. But here’s what he hasn’t denied: multiple convicted predators worked on his shows, and Nickelodeon’s own investigation only addressed verbal abuse. The network’s statement? They “can’t corroborate or negate allegations from productions decades ago.” Can’t. Not won’t. Can’t. That’s a hell of a thing to say about the safety of children on your sets. Gary Glitter. R. Kelly. Jerry Sandusky. The names pile up. And in every single case, there were people who knew. There were warnings. There were red flags the size of billboards. And in every single case, the response was to protect the institution, protect the brand, protect the money. The children were an acceptable loss. The Catholic Church: A Thousand-Year Cover-Up I need to circle back to the Church because the scale of it defies comprehension. In France alone, an independent commission found that approximately 216,000 children were abused by an estimated 3,000 clergy members since 1950. That's one country. In Australia, seven percent of Catholic priests were accused of abuse. Seven percent. The John Jay report in the US found that more than 4,000 priests were accused of abusing children between 1950 and 2002. And the institutional response, for decades, was to reassign predator priests to new parishes. Fresh hunting grounds. A priest would get caught, and instead of turning him over to the police, the Church would move him to a new community where nobody knew what he'd done. They treated child abuse like a sin to be forgiven rather than a crime to be prosecuted. Pope John Paul II's initial response to the American abuse scandal was to talk about the "power of Christian conversion" for the perpetrators. Not the protection of victims. The conversion of the people who raped children. Pope Benedict XVI, before he was Pope, was found by an independent investigation to have failed to act against abusive priests when he was archbishop of Munich. His response was to express "pain and shame" while his lawyers argued he wasn't directly to blame. The playbook never changes. The Boy Scouts: Badges, Campfires, and Perversion Files And because the Catholic Church can’t have all the fun, let’s talk about the Boy Scouts of America. Over 82,000 sexual abuse claims. More than 7,800 former leaders identified as having been involved in sexually abusing children over a 72-year span. Twelve thousand alleged victims documented in the BSA’s own records. And the kicker? The Boy Scouts kept internal files on known and suspected predators going back to the mid-20th century. They called them the “Perversion Files.” Not a joke. That was the actual name. They tracked these people, documented what they did, and instead of handing the files to police, they used them as an internal blacklist. Except the blacklist didn’t even work, because predators who were removed from one troop would show up in another. The story of Richard Turley is a masterclass in institutional failure. A Canadian who abused children in California, Turley was caught, and the Boy Scouts of America’s response was to tell him to go back to Canada. They didn’t warn Scouts Canada. They didn’t call the police. They just... sent the predator home. In 1996, Turley was convicted of assaulting four more boys in Victoria, British Columbia, three of whom were Scouts. In Canada, the pattern continued. In Ottawa, a former Scouts Canada leader was sentenced in 1997 for abuse that spanned from 1979 to 1985. In Kitchener, Ontario, another former leader pleaded guilty to 27 counts in 2001. In Ireland, a 2020 report found that the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland and the Scout Association of Ireland protected at least 275 known or suspected predators over decades. In 2020, the BSA filed for bankruptcy. Not because they were ashamed. Because they couldn’t afford the lawsuits anymore. A $2.46 billion settlement was reached. The largest sexual abuse settlement in American history. And as of late 2025, just over $164 million had actually been paid out to survivors. An organization that was supposed to teach kids about honor, duty, and service was keeping secret files on child rapists for a hundred years. If that doesn’t crystallize the thesis of this entire post, nothing will. The Pattern Here's what connects Emperor Tiberius in his villa on Capri to a priest being quietly transferred to a new parish in 2002 to a Hollywood producer whose behavior was an "open secret" for decades: Power insulates predators. Every. Single. Time. The more power someone has, whether it's political, religious, financial, or cultural, the longer they can operate. The more people will look the other way. The more institutions will choose self-preservation over the safety of the most vulnerable. It doesn't matter if it's a Roman emperor, a medieval pope, a French nobleman, a British TV personality, or an American film director. The mechanism is identical. And we, as a society, keep acting surprised when it happens again. We keep treating each case as an isolated incident instead of recognizing it for what it is: a feature of how power operates when it's unchecked. So What Do We Do? I don't have a neat answer, and I'm suspicious of anyone who claims they do. But I know what doesn't work: trusting institutions to police themselves. The Catholic Church had a thousand years to get it right and didn't. Hollywood had decades and didn't. The BBC had decades and didn't. Penn State had years and didn't. What I do know is that the single most important thing any of us can do is refuse to look the other way. Refuse to let celebrity or authority or wealth or talent be a shield. When someone tells you that a powerful person is hurting children, believe them. Because history has shown us, over and over and over again, that the accusations are almost always the tip of the iceberg. I wrote in my Tenets of Incorrigibility that you should speak the truth even if it hurts. This is one of those truths. Power protects predators. It always has. And it will continue to do so until enough of us decide that no amount of talent, no amount of prestige, no amount of money, and no amount of spiritual authority is worth the safety of a single child. And for the love of all that is holy, stop giving standing ovations to people who hurt kids. It's really not that high a bar. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

So, I’m old enough to remember the pre AOL days. The days before that horrible screech of dial-up modem. I remember trying to find stuff on the then blossoming interwebs. I also remember working at Electronics Boutique and selling Net Nanny and other products to adults to “protect their children from the horrors of the internet.” Never mind that those children already knew more about the computer than their parents did. I grew up with a Nintendo Entertainment System, and I swear a 386… certainly a 486. Because my father worked in Military Intelligence. He could tell me more, but my security clearance hadn’t cleared yet. That joke was never not hilarious, to him. But the point is, I grew up between Sneakernet and now. And I recall all the security that pr0n sites had. The need for credit cards and the like and the pinky promise you were 18 years old. And now the world has gotten less dangerous. Wait, let me check my notes. Oh, no it’s actually not. With Roblox hosting child predators, a certain drugged out soon to be trillionaire’s constant abuse of their chat bot making borderline child pr0n and now the age gate keeping for the children. Won’t you think of the children? Please? Just think about them… while we write half assed laws that don’t actually do anything but piss off the customer base. This blog is brought to you by Discord. For all the years I’ve been on the internet I’ve known the only person who could keep my data safe is myself. That’s why outside of government websites and things that linked to the government I had purposefully seeded misinformation into the digital profiles. No two profiles for my name are the same. This is intentional. I have next to no images of my physical self online. I’ve hated how I’ve looked since I was about… 10. It’s one of the reasons I have the fursona of a Fennic Fox Mimic Hybrid wearing a cowboy hat. I mean… if you saw what I wore through high school it wasn’t because I was ashamed of my fashion choices. Flannel, doc martens, and cargo pants were a lifestyle choice. One I’m pretty sure my elder sister would kill me for if she had ever taken me to school. She was kind enough to buy me preppy kid clothing from Abercrombie and Aéropostale and the like. But here’s the thing. Discord is basically saying “Trust us bro” with our data. Even though they just lost 70,000 government issued IDs. And they’re telling us that they’re basically training AI to recognize faces, oh and they’re feeding everything we do on Discord into the AI to determine if we are of a consenting age. Now, I get it. I fully and 100% endorse the protection of the wee ones from folks like a certain sex trafficker in a position of power that shan’t be named… I am of course talking about our Lord and Savior… Emperor Tiberius. What? Go read about the dude’s retreats. Those Romans I tell you what man. But the thing is, the internet cannot be safe AND anonymous. And I say this as someone who just ironically was saying how I purposefully seed bad information so that if data breaches happen it’s less impactful for me. The safety of being a fly on the wall means that it’s hard to prosecute and apprehend bad actors. Roblox is going through some serious heat right now over all that. Now keep in mind, there is no easy fix to this. Like with the UK’s CCTVs on virtually every corner there are going to be people who be cry “my freedoms! Don’t step on snek!” and then flood the message boards to complain. But as we saw with 9/11 in the US we were quick to start giving up our freedoms for what we perceived as safety. Now I’ve not done the research on this, but I’m pretty sure no one felt any more safe with TSA in our airports than without. But given a sufficient enough trigger point we’re happy to trade freedom for security. It’s like a Pavlovian thing. The bottom tiers need to be met for the top stuff. So, I know you’re wondering if I’ve thought about how to make this system “safe” for us. And you won’t like it. It’s every site, regardless of its age, regardless of its origin, regardless of its purpose, needs an ID, a Bank Account and a secondary authentication each and every time. I’m thinking you biometrically authenticate. A gallon of blood per site, that should do it. Now you’re fooling yourself if you think that they don’t already have the information and can’t pull it up when they want. There’s entire sites dedicated to scraping Facebook, Twitter and other sites and selling it. Your entire search history is cataloged and sold to the highest bidder. Your phone is listening and reporting to the corporations. Your driving data is recorded, in newer cars, by the GPS trackers in the car, and sold to insurance agencies. Or… maybe we should take the chance and stop letting the village of idiots raise another idiot. See I recall when that “It takes a village to raise a child” came out. And that thinking needs to stop. Yes it’s nice to have help raising your child, but so far we’ve divested so much of the responsibility of raising our spawn to others that we cannot for the life of us figure out how to get them back. Cause the thing is, when an idiot raises an idiot you get Idiocracy. And we’re on a fast track to that nightmare right now. Look, I’m not saying the internet isn’t dangerous. It is. It’s always been dangerous, just like the real world has always been dangerous. But no amount of age gates, AI face scanners, or “trust us bro” corporate promises are going to replace a parent who actually sits down and teaches their kid how to navigate this stuff. We didn’t need Net Nanny in 1996 and we don’t need Discord’s AI babysitter in 2026. We need parents who give a damn. And until that happens, the village is just going to keep churning out idiots. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

So, a potentially charged topic here in America since there was a man who allegedly shot a malicious and disgusting serial murderer. I mean a healthcare CEO. Allegedly. And they still held the meeting without said CEO and put in a call to get his position filled like halfway through the meeting. If you want to know what a corporation thinks of you as a human being, that's your answer right there. You're not even cold yet and they're updating the org chart. If you read my last post, you know I'm currently navigating the delightful experience of finding a new endocrinologist while my insurance cosplays as actual coverage. But my personal frustrations are a symptom, not the disease. So let's talk about the disease. This system wasn't actually in place back in World War II. See, when we were having our second go at destroying the European continent, companies were told, "No, you can't change the values on wages and salaries. In case you didn't notice, you unpatriotic cur, we're in a war." It totally was like that. FDR was channeling Teddy Roosevelt energy. So in order to attract workers, companies started throwing in benefits. Covering health insurance as part of the salary. Vacation days. Sweetening the pot by saying not only will we pay you five pittances a day, we'll cover your insurance too. Fast forward eighty years and the system is so ingrained with the American workforce that no one can go without it. Your healthcare is chained to your employment, which means your employer has leverage over you that goes well beyond your paycheck. Quit your job? Lose your insurance. Get laid off? Good luck with COBRA, which costs roughly the same as a modest car, monthly, for the privilege of keeping coverage you were already paying into. Though I guess considering a “modest” car is sitting at 40K it’s actually cheaper again. But it certainly wasn’t for the year I was unemployed back in 2008, thanks housing bubble. I recall some film guy named Michael Moore making a movie about this. Sicko came out in 2007. That was nineteen years ago. And the situation has gotten worse. Not stagnant. Worse. We now have companies using AI to automatically deny patients. We have so many hoops and leaps to get through to see a doctor that the process of getting healthcare has become its own part-time job. And I recall even as early as 2008 people were taking trips to Mexico or Canada to get their prescriptions filled. Normally the folks on Medicare. The retired ones. The people who spent their whole lives paying into a system that now tells them their pills cost more than their mortgage. And speaking of pills, finding out that my heart medication is forty-five dollars at the Wally for a thirty day supply would make me go crazy... you know, if I wasn't already probably borderline. No one ever said writers maintain a firm grip on sanity. Have you seen our history of substance abuse? We're only one good book deal away from getting a dealer on speed dial. Now, am I advocating for the chaos of the tax-based system that our European neighbors have? Not necessarily. Like many things in life, I see a problem and I want to paint it b... sorry, I see a problem and think we can start fixing it. One of the biggest gripes people have is that prescription drugs are expensive. In most other countries the government can argue on behalf of the people. Last I checked there are 330 million people in America. If we could allow the government to start arguing for that buying power, we'd start getting some relief. But the principle applies to more than just prescriptions. Insurance as a whole is "safe" because largely the numbers work out that the more people in the pool, the less danger there is of catastrophic payouts, and so the prices can stay mostly low. It's sort of the inverse of the Walmart Law. See, there are roughly 5,000 Walmart locations in the US alone, and police get called there three to four times as often as other retailers. Why? Because there are tons of them. The number skews because of the sheer volume of locations. They're not any more unsafe than your local Jack In The Box. So the more people in the insurance pool, the less you pay and the "safer" it is on the whole. Only, as we're seeing in California and Florida, home insurance is pulling up stakes faster than a peregrine falcon diving. The housing market is getting brutalized by weather events and insurers are having to pay out. Le Gasp! What grew out of the market trying to attract workers has become a keep-all-the-money-for-themselves operation. Which has led to automated denials, hoops aplenty, and eventually the murder of a CEO. Allegedly. There's a new trend emerging in our medical system, which is darkly humorous because it already happens in countries outside of America. Direct Provider Care Membership, or DPC. If you're not familiar, it's a subscription-based system where you pay your provider a monthly fee for access to them, usually within a day or two. But here's the thing: this is exactly the sort of thing Mexico does for the retired Americans living in the resorts. Roughly ten percent of the AAFP surveyed in 2023 admitted to being on DPC. And you can find these services in Belize, Mexico, Ecuador, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Canada. Our healthcare system has become so terrible that our providers have given up on taking insurance and are moving to a subscription-based service. And I don't know if that's the ultimate expression of the capitalist way or if that's just the natural evolution of a broken system. Thanks Private Equity. You came for Toys R’ Us and now our healthcare! Most of our insurance companies, and a lot of corporations in general, have moved to maximize profits and minimize costs. And one thing many have tried is subscriptions. Why have a single transaction once or twice a year when you can have twelve sixty-dollar payments? Twelve ninety-dollar payments? Hell, even gym memberships have moved to a "lower cost" model by going from monthly to biweekly billing. It's not actually lower cost. See, you stop being billed sixty dollars a month, which works out to 720 dollars a year. Instead you get billed twenty-seven dollars every other week. So technically in a four-week period you're saving three bucks. Not huge. But when you do the math, you're actually being charged 1,404 dollars a year for that same gym membership. Twenty-seven dollars times fifty-two weeks divided by two... times two. See what they're doing? The healthcare system, the insurance industry, and the subscription economy are all running the same play. Make the number look small. Make the billing frequent. Bury the real cost in complexity. And if someone gets sick, deny the claim and let the algorithm sort it out. I don't have a clean answer for this. I wish I did. But I know the current system isn't it, and I know that nineteen years after someone made a whole movie about how broken it is, we're still here. Only now the CEOs are getting shot and the AI is doing the denying. But you’re mad if you thought they’d let you go. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

So last month, Janurary 2026, I was told that my endocrinologist was leaving the practice I've been going to for ten years. Ten years. That's a relationship longer than most marriages in Hollywood, and it ended with a form letter. Thanks for the memories. Good luck out there, soldier. Now picture Ron Swanson slinging his backpack onto his back and fleeing his work. That’s the vibe I got. Now, for those who don't know, I've worked on the back end of healthcare for about twenty years. Most of my adult working life has been squandered creating interfaces to move results, orders, and patient demographics through electronic systems. Tracking down anomalies in billing on the inside of insurance companies. Setting up laboratories throughout the continental United States. I know how this system works. I've seen the guts of it. And I still can't make it work for me. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about American healthcare, I don't know what will. Let me back up and explain why I even need an endocrinologist in the first place. Technically, I'm diabetic. I say technically because once the system has flagged you, you're ALWAYS a filthy disgusting diabetic. It's not a best of three situation. You don't get to appeal. You have one really bad day where you're like, "Stand aside Cookie Monster, that bakery and me have business." Which isn't exactly what happened, but it might as well have been. I drank a lot of the Zero Sugar Crystal Light stuff the day before I went to get my blood test done. And it spiked into the high range. One test. One bad day. But here's the thing. For my entire adult life, when I was jet setting around the US, drinking entire bottles of Johnny Walker Blue at parties, eating pamcakes, and having sweets, I was always prediabetic. Always right on that borderline. And ever since that one diagnosis, repeated tests have put me right back at borderline prediabetic. Where I've been my whole life. But the flag doesn't care about context. The flag is permanent. And that flag does a number on you. If I lose my insurance for whatever reason, and the Affordable Care Act drops the stipulation that insurers have to take people with preexisting conditions, I'm locked out. One bad blood test on one bad day, and the system has branded me for life. Welcome to American healthcare, where the points are made up but the consequences are very real. But fear not, average US citizen tied to your job! You have healthcare! Or do you? Well, as I discovered today, my insurance is woefully inadequate for the task of getting me what I need. I started calling practices from the list of in network providers for my insurance. Most of the ones listed as accepting "open patients" had never heard of those providers. So that was a fun few hours of my life I'll never get back. Nothing in network, at least not within spitting distance. Which is an accurate south western term for measurement, like crow flies. Technically my primary care isn't even in network, so I'm paying specialist rates for the privilege of having a doctor who knows my name. And the cherry on this particular sundae? I found out that medication I need for everyday life is about a third of the cost on GoodRX. A third. Which kinda makes you question why you're paying ninety bucks a paycheck for insurance, plus the High Deductible Savings Account, right? And hey, if you didn’t know this. Most insurances have 2 moops. In Network and Out of Network. Better hope you know which ambulance/hospital you’re going to so you can file the paperwork correctly and get that deducted from the right moop pool. Last year I had to get my heart looked at. And I was told, "Congratulations, you've reached your MOOP!" That's Maximum Out of Pocket for those of you lucky enough to not know that acronym. Great, I thought. At least I'm done bleeding money for the year. Then a week later they told me, oh no, you didn't actually reach it, it's actually this other number. Then another week later, congratulations, you reached it again! Only for the new year to roll around and they hit me with a "LULZ JK, you totally didn't, and you owe the hospital a surprise grand. CYA LATERZ." I work in this industry. I build the systems. And I cannot tell you with any confidence what my actual out-of-pocket maximum is at any given time, because the insurance company apparently can't either. To see my new PCP after my last one retired? That was a year wait. A neurologist for migraines I've had for thirty years, because it's a family problem? Six month wait. And these aren't exotic specialists. These are bread-and-butter medical needs. But sure, the system is working. It's fine. Everything is fine. I need to find a new endocrinologist to handle meds that I don't technically need because I got flagged once on a diagnosis that was, frankly, bullshit. Because I'm an idiot who drank too much Crystal Light. And anyone who knows me knows I'm an absolute menace in the kitchen. I once mixed oatmeal with eggs because I thought that might be quick and easy for breakfast. Spoiler: it wasn't. So yeah, the idea that I was out there destroying bakeries is laughable. But the system doesn't care about context. It doesn't care about repeated tests. It doesn't care that you work inside it and know exactly how broken it is. The flag is the flag, and the flag is forever. I've got more to say about this. The systemic stuff. The history of how we got shackled to our employers for something as basic as not dying. But that's a longer rant, and this post is already long enough. Consider this the personal side. Next time, I'll zoom out. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

So I finally did it. I finished The Way of Kings. All forty-five-ish hours of it between the Kindle and the audiobook during cardiac rehab drives and walks around my neighborhood. And you know what? The ending was actually pretty good. For about two hours. Two. Hours. Out of forty-five. That's roughly 4% of the book that felt like it was actually going somewhere. The other 96%? Setup. Endless, grinding, "trust me bro, it'll pay off" setup. Which eh… wasn’t really a trust me bro. That’s like everyone being oh by season three it gets really good. Listen, if it’s not decent by episode 3, you have a problem. You know why video games are always so stellar at the beginning? Because people peter out at like the 50 to 60% mark. But I get it. It can’t ALL be a non holds barred action packed thrill ride for 95 of a 120 minute movie. The Tower: When Things Finally Happened Look, I'm not going to lie. When Sadeas betrays Dalinar at the Tower, abandoning him and his army to die on that plateau, I sat up straighter. Finally. FINALLY. Someone did something interesting. A villain emerged from the political muck and actually made a move. Sadeas, you magnificent bastard, where have you been this whole book? And his reasoning? He’d agreed to protect the kingdom. He’s not a bad guy, his idea of protecting the kingdom is just different than our soon to be Philosopher King Dalinar. And Dalinar's response? Chef's kiss. The Blackthorn showing up and reminding everyone why he earned that name was genuinely satisfying. All those chapters of him being a brooding honor-bound philosopher finally cashed out into something visceral. Watching him carve through Parshendi while his army rallied behind him? That's the content I signed up for. Sure we saw him save Sadeas a bit ago, but this one. This was the charge of the light brigade. This was a for Sparta moment. But here's the thing... we could have gotten here sooner. We didn't need forty hours of bridge crews and library scenes and "I wonder what these visions mean" to earn this payoff. Some of us have cardiac rehab schedules to keep. Kaladin Becomes He-Man And then there's Kaladin. Our brooding bridge boy who I've been frustrated with for turning down perfectly good power armor finally does something cool. He goes full Air Jordan across that chasm, practically hanging in the air, and becomes a Radiant. All that was missing was him grabbing the Sword of Grayskull and shouting "I HAVE THE POWER!" while lightning crackled behind him and Syl turned into a magical steed or something. It was so tropey, so perfectly Saturday morning cartoon, that I couldn't help but enjoy it despite myself. I actually expected Kaladin when he ran up to check that Sadeas and his company was leaving to be like “I killed a mofo in shardplate once. And I didn’t have magic.” Crack his neck and be like “Time to reap the whirlwind.” But apparently I’m just a blood thirsty warmonger who would have launched myself at the guy without a second thought and driven his own dagger into his faceplace and Necromongered that. Keep what you kill right? Did it make narrative sense after all his "I won't become like the lighteyes" angst? Eh. Kinda. The whole "protect instead of conquer" thing gives him an out, I suppose. But let's be honest, it's the fantasy equivalent of refusing a promotion for thirty chapters and then accepting it anyway when the plot demands you stop being stubborn. The Soulcaster Twist So Shallan and Jasnah can both Soulcast as their Radiant power. No magical artifact needed. They just... do it. With their minds. Or souls. Or whatever. And Shallan seeing the sprin of… art? They still haven’t told us what the squiggled head folks are. And I don’t know if I care. Finding out Sly was Honor Sprin is meh. Finding out that the ones who follow Shallan around are soulcaster sprin or whatever is probably going to be silly obvious in hindsight when they tell us what they are. But you know what? That's actually kinda cool that they’re able to magic like that. I'll give Sanderson credit here. The whole "the soulcaster was fake/broken and Jasnah was doing it herself the whole time" thing retroactively makes some of the library scenes slightly less tedious. Slightly. Don't get too excited, Brandon. It also means Shallan's entire heist plot was doomed from the start, which is either brilliant irony or a waste of my time depending on how generous I'm feeling. Today I'm feeling... moderately generous. Let's call it clever. But here’s a bit of stupidity. Shallan put the dots together when she realized that Jasnah soulcast the jam into something, destroying the antidote, and then the bread. We should have seen some stormlight leaking. And her needing the gems from Shallan’s soulcaster to keep changing blood, which isn’t organic so it’s cool and easy bro, constantly is a bit of a narrative oversight that I guess I can over look. The Parshendi Are What Now? Oh, and the Parshendi are the Voidbringers. Or connected to them. Or will become them. Whatever the twist is supposed to be. Holy Hoping Crabmen Sanderson! Here's my confession: by the time this reveal dropped, I had stopped caring. I'd spent so many hours wondering about the mysterious crab people and their singing and their weird carapace armor that when the answer finally came, it landed with all the impact of a wet napkin. "They're the ancient evil." Cool. Sure. Add it to the pile of things I'm supposed to remember for book seven. You know what would have made me care? If we'd spent more time with actual Parshendi characters instead of just fighting them and wondering about them from a distance. Give me a Parshendi POV. Let me understand their culture before you tell me they're secretly apocalyptic. But no, we get more Shallan drawing pictures and Kaladin brooding in the rain. You gave us a chapter of a fisherman walking across a lake. You couldn’t put in 2 minutes on Shin? He’s literally with Kaladin so it’s like it’s adjcent to the story. He could have been like “Stars of my people! You’re wearing the dead! The evil evil dead of the voidbringers! My papas!” or you know… something. God's Dead, By the Way Oh right. The Allfather, or high father or whatever is dead. We don’t even get his name, not really. It’s sort of implied that he’s Honor. Cause that’s what the Way of Kings is and the Knight Radiant and all that. It’s about Honor. The god that's been sending Dalinar visions is a corpse, and his power is fractured, guess he’s never heard of the Jedi Holicorn Crystal, and there's this other god called Odium who's apparently the real threat, and... You know what this reminds me of? When you're playing a JRPG and you beat the final boss only to discover there's ANOTHER final boss behind them. And then another. And you're forty hours in thinking "I just want to finish this game" and the game is like "LOL no, here's more mythology to absorb." Mizayki be praised! Look I get it. I have spent a lot of time watching Dark Souls and Elden Ring lore videos, but that was because it interested me. I don’t know if I can be bothered to find out about the other gods in the cosmere. I'm sure this matters. I'm sure it'll be crucial in books two through ten or however many Sanderson is planning. But right now? Right now I'm just tired. Dalinar's Big Brain Moves So after all that, Dalinar gives up his shardblade. To Sadeas. The guy who just tried to kill him. Bold move, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off. Actually, I kind of respect it? In a "this is either 4D chess or complete insanity" kind of way. Trading your legendary weapon to the man who betrayed you in exchange for all the bridge crews, including Kaladin's boys? That's either the most honorable thing anyone's ever done or the dumbest. Possibly both. Probably both. But ultimately… ultimately. It’s stupid. You’re not making Sadeas stop throwing away bodies on these bridge runs with that wager. And he even asks Kaladin the price of the blade and the price of a life. Both are supposedly priceless. But wait, there's more! Dalinar then proceeds to kick his nephew Elhokar's shit in, dude goes into his chamber and beats him within an inch of his life. And I fully expected him to just straight up snap his neck and sit on the throne and be like “Here lies your king, anyone else wish to object?” Instead after teaching him a lesson on what a warrior can do he makes himself Highprince of War. Takes over the whole military operation. And THEN gives his Shardplate to his son Renarin. So now Dalinar's walking around with no blade, no plate, just vibes and the sheer intimidation factor of being the Blackthorn. Oh and the massive fucking balls it takes to be Dalinar in a camp of people who are about to get their murder on. You know what? I actually love this. Dalinar's out here playing the game without any of the cheat codes and still winning through pure "I will end you with my bare hands" energy. It's the fantasy equivalent of a retired gunslinger hanging up his revolvers and still being the most dangerous person in the room. Like when they came after Afro Samurai and he’d been “retired” but his reflexes and skills were so top notch that after who knows how many years he basically blinked and the guy was dead. That’s the energy that Dalinar is spitting out right now. The Storm on the Horizon And now Szeth, our favorite gravity-flipping assassin, has been sent to kill Dalinar. You remember Szeth, right? The guy who murdered the king in the prologue by hookshoting his way through an entire palace guard? The dude who's killed three shardbearers as a casual aside? Plus others on the command of the healer king. Who apparently has world domination plans, or at least likes the world all messed up and not united. Yeah. That guy. Coming for Dalinar. Who just gave away his shardblade and his shardplate. Part of me hopes book two opens with Szeth doing his whole "stormlight flip, pull gravity, lash lash lash, I have a shardblade" routine and Dalinar just standing there like, "Bitch, I'll take you without a blade. Come at me." Because honestly? I'd believe it. The Blackthorn earned that energy. The Hermit Crabs Update Still not enough giant hermit crabs though. I demand more chulls in the sequel. The chasmfiends were cool during the fight scenes, I'll admit. Giant lobster kaiju battling dudes in power armor is exactly the kind of ridiculous I can get behind. But the everyday giant crabs pulling wagons? Those are my boys. Those are the real heroes of Roshar. Speaking of which, my brother wants to run the Cosmere tabletop RPG. And you know what? I'm in. But I'm not playing some noble shardbearer or brooding soldier. No, I'm going to be a spren wrangler who rides a chull. Just some absolute nobody living their best life herding magical emotion sprites while mounted on a giant hermit crab. That's the Roshar content I've been craving. Forget the Knights Radiant, give me the Chull Herders of the Shattered Plains. That's the real story. Have an exhaustion spren hanging around all erory like giving off a “well, it could be worse,” vibe. Because in this world it could. You could end up a slave running a bridge for an asshole. Now, about those RPG books... my brother dropped roughly $200 on the Cosmere RPG set. Had them for about two months. The gold lettering on the covers is already rubbing off. Two months. Two hundred dollars. Gold flaking away like it's some ancient tome that's been sitting in a crypt for centuries instead of on a bookshelf in an air-conditioned house. Look, I get it. Fancy collector's editions are meant to be displayed, not manhandled. But these are game books. They're supposed to be used. Flipped through during sessions. Referenced when your spren wrangler needs to know if her chull can trample a Parshendi. If the gold lettering can't survive two months of existing, how's it going to survive actual play? Maybe Sanderson's publisher should take some notes from the Dungeons & Dragons folks, because my 3rd edition books from twenty-plus years ago still look better than these allegedly premium products. Which by the way. Full collection, still in good condition in my library. Still read occasionally. But hey, at least we'll have pretty... slightly less pretty... okay, increasingly shabby books to reference while I live my best chull-herding life. Final Verdict Here's where I land on The Way of Kings: it's not a bad book. It might even be a good book for people who aren't me. But it's absolutely, definitively, not a book for someone who reads in small chunks, prefers sci-fi pacing, and wants their villains to show up before the 90% mark. Sanderson can clearly write. The action sequences, when they finally happen, are genuinely exciting. The magic system, once you stop thinking about the physics, has some cool applications. And the worldbuilding is dense enough that I'm sure superfans have wikis dedicated to cataloging every spren type and Highprince genealogy. But forty-five hours is a lot to ask for a setup book. And let's be honest, that's what this is. Setup. The real story, whatever it is, hasn't started yet. We're still in the prologue of a ten-book series, and I just spent a month of reading time getting through it. Will I read Words of Radiance? Maybe. Eventually. When I've recovered from this one and my brother has sufficiently guilted me into it. Or maybe I'll just absorb the lore through osmosis during our tabletop sessions while my chull-riding spren wrangler avoids all the main plot nonsense entirely. For now, I'm going back to sci-fi where the spaceships go fast and the villains have the decency to show up in act one. Rating: It Gets Good Eventually/10 Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

It’s been four whole blog posts without a film review… I was jonesing to review some. And somehow I got three in back to back order. The 2 Zootopia posts and this transformers one. It’s been a productive Thanksgiving. The Nostalgia Problem Now, I grew up on G1. I grew up on “Megatron must be stopped, no matter the cost.” The goosebumps that break out when I hear Peter Cullen speak that. Even now in my forties. I admit it. I loved G1 for all its problems. But here’s the thing about being me. I know when the Nostalgia blinds me. I know because I still force myself to watch Starvengers and Gaiking and other Force Five monsters and boy, let me tell you. Without that nostalgia lenses those are arguably terrible cartoons to watch. But just like Destro telling Serpentor that Cobra Commander is a World Class Buffoon there is something to be said about the things from the 80s. Now, I’m not saying all the new stuff is terrible. My brother was a big fan of the Beast Wars stuff. Not me, mostly cause I didn’t like the animation. He was a fan of Reboot too, which I enjoyed more because of the villains. Megabyte’s voice is just oh so sexy. I read through all the old G1 comics, preferred the comics to the TV show to be honest, but I still have all the seasons of it, and the movie. I liked the movie enough I bought it in multiple places, mostly because I forgot I had it on another platform. Don’t judge me. Transformers are forever. I liked transformers enough to make an Epic Rap Battle distrack between Coach Boomer from Sky High, Present Mic from My Hero Academia only to have Blaster and then Soundwave come in to end the fight. So I take my robots serious. The Voice Problem And one of the first problems with the series is the voices. Peter Cullin is still doing work. Frank Welker might be as well. And when you have Soundwave and you distort reverb and whatever to his voice it doesn’t matter who the voice is. But Chris Hemsworth as Optimus? No. Sorry. That’s Thor. At least Scar Jo did a little better in not making me think it was Black Widow as Elita-1. But every time that Optimus opened his mouth I was just thinking it was Thor. And picking Steve Buscemi for Starscream is a choice. Not one I would have made. I don’t know who I would have picked to be honest. You’re not going to get Chris Latta, as the man died in 1994. But you don’t have to keep the same voice. The Pacing Problem But my complaints aren’t necessarily with just the voice acting. There’s a lot to niggle over this. I think the biggest complaint is that this easily and really should have been two movies. It’s fun to see Megatron be born. It’s great they decided to reboot and give us yet another continuity for the birth of the transformers. But they should have made the finding out about what happened to the Primes be the cliff ender for the first movie. Megatron and Prime have fundamentally different philosophies and the writers of this one basically make Prime just kinda meh or non-confrontational when Megatron, rightfully angry, decides it’s high time that the king’s head come off in a spectacular fashion before the populace. But they deflect away from that, you can’t build tension between these characters for reasons. The Philosophy Problem But that’s fundamentally everything that is different between the two of them. And having a fundamental fight about justice should be the core as to why Prime is willing to let the system do it’s thing. He’s got the evidence he’s going to present it and he’s going to let the people decide. And Megatron knows better, he knows that he’s too dangerous to live, that the courts are in his pocket. That Sentinel Prime is The Senate… dun dun dun! Oh um… spoiler. Sentinel Prime is evil. But here’s the part that really doesn’t make sense. We’ve seen time and time again in the movie that Prime has these idealistic ideas and it ends up hurting everyone but him. How can the dude have any respect in the system anymore? Megatron isn’t the villain here. He’s the hero we need to break the broken system. Prime is just that poor miner who if he dreams big enough, scratches enough energy scratchers or whatever passes for their lottery, he’ll get a transformation cog and become one of the rich bots. But it doesn’t work like that. The Rushed Ending Problem Instead we rush a fight where Megatron does his thing, pulls the Seekers… sorry The High Guard to him and then Prime is like “Get out, you’re not wanted.” And then basically credits roll. Like, the hell it does. You’re telling me you just wanted Sentinel Prime to stand for justice and when you kill him you just kick the offender out and not make him see justice? I get it. Writing is hard, and more so when you’re not sure if you’re getting a sequel. But if you did it properly you wouldn’t have had to worry. Instead we have this rising action and then a quick sweep up that makes no sense. Those of us familiar with the lore know that Megatron waged war for so long that the planet basically ran out of energy and they had to go to other places looking for it. Which is how we get the Headmasters and in all the comic follow ups we get the various groups who had enough and started their own Transformers societies off of Cybertron. The Cash Grab Problem But this was never going to be a series. This wasn’t War For Cybertron or even Armada or any dozen other versions that have been soft reboots and the like over the years. This was Hasbro coming in and saying “Hey this is our continuity. Make a movie.” Cool, we can work with that. But you gotta, I don’t know, lead with it. You can’t have bored-sounding actors who are playing your pivotal roles. You can’t have this building tension between friends you completely gloss over that you’ve been building this entire movie. You can’t have actions without consequences. There’s a lot of setup and no follow through in this movie. And I think it’s because halfway through they realized they had no idea how or what to do and just wanted to finish it and get their money. Which is sad, cause now Hasbro is like “You can make movies of our stuff, we’re not ponying up any cash.” Which is sad, the new D&D movie is actually a really good movie. It’s a fun adventure and a great popcorn flick. So what went wrong here? It’s a cash grab, plain and simple. They grabbed some big named actors playing voices hoping to get the star power to sell it. Thor, Black Widow, Don Draper, Morpheus, you have fucking Laurence Fishburne in an almost throw away point, Mr. Pink. The budget was estimated at 75 to 150 million. How much was in the voices alone? It earned 129 million, not terrible. But if a third of your profit went into the voices and then a third into the cgi and who knows how much into marketing… you can tell why Hasbro is like we’re done here. What Could Have Been Which is sad. Transformers has so much room to live and breath and this could have done it if it had been two movies or hell a limited series. 6 episodes could have done so much for this movie. Could it have saved it? Maybe. The writers in question did work for Marvel, Ant-Man and Wasp, Thor: Ragnarok and Thunderbolts, not all hits but not all tanks either, depending on your views of how that property is going, could have been good. If Hasbro had given more direction than just print us money. As we saw with their entire D&D Beyond and Magic The Gathering stunt the corporate bigwigs were in charge and the production suffered. The Shockwave Problem But that’s just one humble transformers fan girl opinion. I’m certainly not giving this a terrible rating and telling you to avoid it even if it was free because of how they ruined my favorite character Shockwave. No, certainly not. I’m not jaded. I’m clarity of thought before rashness of action. It’s not like I thought the character was badass enough to adopt his very motto “Clarity of Thought Before Rashness of Action” into basically my own mantra. My own INTJ rallying cry. Having him being emotional and reactive is just not something the fan girl in me can tolerate. Calm, cool collected dislike for a sub par movie that had the bones to be a good movie if it had cooked longer. Incorrigibly yours, J. E. Flint

Film Review – Zootopia 2: Chinatown Edition If you haven't read Part 1 of this review covering the original Zootopia, go do that first. I'll wait. And don’t worry, no spoilers cause if you haven’t seen it yet, what’s wrong with you? Because we're about to dive into the sequel, and you need to understand why Chief Bogo might just be the most incompetent, or cunningly villainous, police chief in animated film history. The World Gets Bigger In Zootopia 2: Chinatown Edition, and yes, just go watch Chinatown, you'll save yourself 40 bucks; seriously, 2 tickets and 2 waters was 40 bucks, we add in the secret reptiles hiding in the Marsh District with walruses, sea lions, a dolphin, and the discovery that there's a whole other continent that apparently the reptiles noped out to. And uh... spoilers. At the end of the movie, we see a bird feather. But if you were paying attention to the problems you might remember in Gazelle's song "Try Everything" about how "Birds fly." We had no indication in the first movie there were even birds outside of this one lyric which is kind of weird if there are no birds. Now the human audience doesn’t think twice about it, but in the world building scheme? It’s kind of big. Now this is probably because the folks who did Zootopia had absolutely no clue how big of a hit this would be. It would have been a quick-as-heck fix to just have an ostrich or a peacock or a dove in the background. Hell, a damn pigeon would have gone the distance to address that you have other things. The environment could then have been used to explain why there aren't reptiles. Outside of the jungle or desert zones they're not likely to just hang around. But we’re not here to talk about the animal population problem, which part 1 addresses. Seriously, it’s like a 40K hiveworld, only alive by the Emperor’s will. Yet Another Twist Villain Anyway… you know there's going to be a twist villain, it happened in the first movie, and if the first movie wasn't strong enough to stand on its own without a plot twist, you know this sequel is going to be the same, it's still so meh. Like, who cares who this plot twist of a villain is? Other than we get a "cool" shot, because I guess someone's a Kubrick fan, a shot-for-shot recreation of Jack Nicholson entering the hedge maze from The Shining. To quote Willie from The Simpsons, because I don't want to get sued. The Case for Bogo as Villain But here's where it gets interesting. Zootopia 2 continues to point toward Bogo being a villain, albeit an incredibly incompetent one. Because we get yet another twist villain. And we see that corruption runs deeper in the ZPD. Our villains are talking directly to the police UNDER Bogo and giving them orders. Now, no spoilers, it could be argued that this is because of what happens to our chief. But if you had set up a proper police hierarchy this could have been avoided. Seriously, where’s the commissioner or other police chief? So what does this make of our water buffalo, or is he a cape buffalo, police chief? That he's only interested in maintaining the status quo. Which doesn't make him a great chief. We see no push from above, the mayor isn't in there busting his chops, we have no commissioner setting policy. And I get it, Hopps and Wilde are pretty terrible cops. Unless you take into account they're movie cops. They "Aim for the Bushes" like in The Other Guys. They blow up buildings like in Die Hard or Lethal Weapon, they're basically the same movies. So they live up to the trope. They don't have Arnold's charm in Last Action Hero though, which is fine. The Villain Bogo Could Be Think about it. Think about what fun opportunities you could have if you opened up and made Bogo a villain across both films, even if he's just the henchman who gets lucky and gets away. In the first film, Bellwether needs someone on the inside. Someone who can make cases disappear, who can assign a bunny rookie to this missing person case without proper resources, who can slow-walk investigations until the damage is done. Bogo fits that bill perfectly. In the sequel, the corruption goes deeper. Villains are giving orders to cops under Bogo's command. Either Bogo is the most oblivious police chief in history, or he's letting it happen. The second option is more interesting. The second sets up a sort of HR situation like you see in Person of Interest, which if you’ve not watched it stop reading and go binge 5 seasons. You’ll thank me. The paperwork, the bureaucracy, the system crushing down on all these mammals? It makes perfect sense if Bogo is so jaded and tired that he just wants to watch the world snuff itself out because they can't feed themselves. Because when you have 81 million bunnies in the suburbs, rodents breeding like... well, rodents... and a city that statistically should have thousands of missing persons cases but only ever seems to notice 14… Maybe Bogo figured out a long time ago that this whole "predator and prey living in harmony" thing was a ticking time bomb. Maybe he's just waiting for the inevitable collapse. Maybe he's helping it along. It might be time for just a bit more predation. Final Thoughts Zootopia 2 isn't a bad movie. It's just... more of the same. Another twist villain. More world-building that raises more questions than it answers. Like seriously where did that feather come from? Are you going to tell us the birds are in a flying city above us? Cause let’s not get into how the logic behind that is going to wreck the world. And a police chief who continues to be either incompetent or complicit. Disney could have done something brave here. They could have made Bogo the long-game villain. The one who's been pulling strings across both films. The bureaucrat who decided that if Zootopia was going to collapse under its own unsustainable population, he might as well be the one controlling how it falls apart. Instead, we got another sheep in wolf's clothing. Figuratively speaking. Now let’s be honest they could have gone in a different direction, of sorts, they could have used this movie building up a more sympathetic Nick. We saw Judy’s opening to her life, we could have seen Nick constantly trying to be a good guy but the system, maybe by folks like Bogo, who kept reminding him he’s a filthy predator. Hell the new mayor flat out calls him a criminal cop in like the first few minutes of the movie. Now we know that in real life it had to be at least five months Nick was in the Academy, cause it takes almost half a year to go through police academy in real life, but the movie says one week. So which are we dealing with? Letting anyone into the academy and out without the skills? Because our villain Bogo doesn’t care. Or that someone didn’t do their research? So maybe. Just maybe they should be eating mice. At this point, the math says they might have to. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

So, I'm actually a little surprised I didn't make a Zootopia review when it came out. I watched that movie a lot and bought it pretty much instantly. Hell, I recall biking home to "Try Everything" many evenings. Looking back through my backlog of film reviews and not seeing one is probably a disservice. Probably because I was busy working on The Chronicles of Loth or something. Anyway, since Zootopia 2 came out today and I saw it for Thanksgiving, along with Transformers One, more on that garbage later, I figured it was time to remedy that oversight. The Scale Problem Here's a bit of scale for those who might not be in the know. Zootopia is supposed to be six times bigger than San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6. Population and area wise, we have no good clue about San Fransokyo's exact numbers. But assuming it's based on the dimensions of San Francisco, which is more or less what Big Hero 6's movie was based on, we're looking at roughly 47 square miles with a population of about 815,000 people. Now Zootopia, take it with a grain of salt, population wise is probably much more massive since we have the tiny critters. Six times 47 square miles gives us roughly 282 square miles. That's about the size of New York City or Chicago land mass wise. And that's just the city proper. Which, is going to cause problems when you look at the numbers we have below. Bunnyburrow, as Judy is leaving, has 81,435,816 rabbits. We're not privy to how much space Bunnyburrow takes up, but we can assume it's not a small land mass set aside for this. And we're told that the city follows a 10 to 1 population distribution. So for every 10 prey animals, there is one predator. Only, that's not exactly true. Because in the animal kingdom there are no true herbivores, everything, if it's hungry enough, will eat meat. Remember the video of the cow eating that snake? Or how about hippos that take a bite out of stuff just because? You telling the most prolific killer in Africa it can't? Go on, I'll wait. Without predation, this is a world that is ultimately doomed to fail. Now enough of the scale problem... because we have oh so many more problems to point out. The Horror of Stats Zootopia's pivotal story hinges on a city of, assuming using the math from Big Hero 6, roughly 6 million mammals. But in actuality we're probably looking at 15 to 25 million, remember the suburb of Bunnyburrow has 81 million on its own. And you're telling me rats, lemmings, mice, and other small rodents aren't breeding prolifically? Yeah... not happening. But anyway, the plot hinges on the missing persons of 14 mammals. You're telling me in a city that's at almost the population of New York City (8,478,072 pop), or the population of Los Angeles (3,878,704), Chicago (2,721,308) AND Houston (2,390,125) merged, we have 14 missing animals and that's a crisis? NYC has roughly 13,000 missing persons cases reported a year. Some get found, sure. Some wind up in morgues, but not all of them are found. We see where this is going, right? Welcome to a new type of Disney flick. No Bambi's mom being shot in the field, no Simba's dad being pushed from a cliff by Scar. No, we have the horror of stats. Zootopia crushes itself under the numbers. The Night Howler Problem The story is plucky bunny has to prove she's got the right stuff. We get her history and see how she overcomes giant odds, which, keep in mind, we have fucking mice in this movie at like centimeters in height, while we also have damn elephants. Elephants that weigh in at roughly 12,000 pounds. You realize how much damage these things can do? A savage elephant in Little Rodentia isn't just a threat, it's an extinction-level event for that district. Officer Jumbo gets hit by the night howler, a plant that Judy's parents and her fox bully Gideon recognized immediately. And Mayor Lionheart, with an entire fucking hospital system at his disposal, couldn't figure it out. A drug that so fundamentally changes the person hit with the poison they never seem to recover, even though Judy's folks say that the affected person came around eventually. Yeah, welcome to the 40K hive world. Is Bogo the Real Villain? Now... we have 14 mammals that our Mayor is finding, because remember, it's the mayor's aide Bellwether who's causing this, rounding up and locking these predators up to try and cure them. So it's possible she's feeding tips. But setting aside that, the Lionheart has his own security forces operating in the city. He's got mercs. Kidnapping citizens before the ZPD ever gets wind of some of these. Which implies that either this police force is grossly incompetent, or that Chief Bogo is our secret villain. I know, I know... WHAT? Two twist villains? But how? Why? I mean, seriously consider this. Bellwether is the mastermind who acts sweet and innocent but wants all predators to pay, because I guess they stole her cookies or something. But Bogo runs the ENTIRE ZPD. We see no commissioner, we see no other districts. So we have to assume this guy, in a city of 8 to 15 million, is handling all of this. Now, I'm not saying Bogo is a good villain, he's something of an idiot. Because if he was any good, with what would in theory be about 13,000 missing persons cases annually, these 14 mammals would be lost in the shuffle. Boom, Zootopia 1 becomes a boring-ass movie about Judy Hopps trying and failing to be impressive in a city with so much minor and petty crime it makes Sandford in Hot Fuzz seem normal. But think about it. Think about what fun opportunities you could have if you opened up and made Bogo a villain, even if he's just the henchman who gets lucky and gets away. The paperwork, the system crushing down on all these mammals? It makes perfect sense if Bogo is so jaded and tired that he just wants to watch the world snuff itself out because they can't feed themselves. Because when you have 81 million bunnies in the suburb alone, it might be time for just a bit more predation. So, should they be eating mice? Part 2 coming soon, where we dive into Zootopia 2: Chinatown Edition and see if Bogo's villainy continues... Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

So I'm back, still trudging through The Way of Kings. I've made it to Part 4, which means I've survived all the library shenanigans with Shallan and more of Kaladin's bridge-running adventures. According to my Kindle, I've got about 12 hours left. I've also picked up the audiobook so I can listen on my drives to and from cardiac rehab, which means I'm getting hit with this story from multiple angles now. Lucky me. But now I know how someone pronounces these names. The "You Caught Something Others Missed" Problem Apparently I'm some kind of savant because my brother informed me that I caught something most readers don't notice until the third book. Jasnah's ward, Shallan, the girl who steals the soulcaster, has a shardblade. When she's being chased by the symbol heads, she starts counting her heartbeats, which we've seen the other shardblade bearers do. Ten heartbeats to summon the weapon. My brother seemed impressed. I was mostly just like... okay? Cool, I guess? Same thing with figuring out that Kaladin's slurping up stormlight to heal himself. Apparently that's supposed to be some big revelation but come on. We already saw the assassin doing his hookshot routine by sucking the light from lanterns. It's not exactly quantum physics to connect those dots. Sure he's not lash, hop, lash, hop, gravitying his way through battle but is it a stretch to use magical storm juice to heal yourself? And you know what? That right there highlights one of my biggest issues with this book. When you only read a chapter or two a day, these "clever" setups that are supposed to pay off hundreds of pages later just... don't land. Maybe Sanderson's books are better consumed in those massive page-turning marathon sessions where you're devouring 200 pages at a time and the foreshadowing is still fresh in your brain. But when you're reading at a normal human pace? It feels less like brilliant setup and more like homework you forgot you were assigned. The Shardblade Scarcity Problem (That Isn't Actually Scarce) Can we talk about how shardblades are supposed to be these incredibly rare artifacts that can destabilize entire economies if they're bought or sold? Because the math isn't mathing here. Dalinar, our badass who's going mad with visions, finally gives us actual numbers. Maybe 60 shardblades total? Twenty in his kingdom, twenty in the opposing kingdom, and the rest scattered throughout all the other kingdoms in dribs and drabs that might equal what the first two have combined. But wait. In Dalinar's fever dream vision memory thing when the Radiants give up their oaths, there are 200 shardblades and shardplates just... laying around. And they mention there are other orders, so if every order has 200 blades that's 2,000 shardbearers with plate and sword. Where are they? Did our rock monsters eat them? Is that why the soulcasters can turn the very rocks into food? Because the Kaiju ate magic armor and blades and can now become food for the nations? And please note this is sarcasm bout the kaiju eating the shards. And our boy Szeth, the king-killing assassin, casually fights, and kills, three shardblade bearers as an aside. Just a little throwaway. We have no idea what kingdom or whatever these three blades belong to and what power dynamic it might be shifting. Stay tuned for book 10! When we find out that they were part of this one worthless kingdom named in passing. So which is it? Are these things rare or not? Because from where I'm sitting, this is like the difference between a Google Pixel and an iPhone. Sure, technically one costs more than the other, but they're only "rare" to people who don't have money. If there are potentially 2,000 of them at one point and now there are 60, where did the other 1,940 go? Did someone lose them between couch cushions? Are they sitting in some warehouse waiting to be rediscovered by a plucky adventurer? The worldbuilding here is trying to have it both ways. These weapons are supposed to be SO rare and SO valuable that possessing one instantly elevates your social status and military power. But also they're common enough that random assassins are collecting them like Pokemon cards. And I'm not going to be surprised to find out there's some whole established black market economy around selling them or something. Point is, 2,000 mythical weapons that change the tide of battle and you've found 60? The hell happened to them? Where's My Grand Admiral? I keep asking myself why I'm struggling with this book, and I think I've figured it out. Where's this book's Thrawn? Where's my tactical genius who's three steps ahead of everyone, making calculated moves that matter? Where's the villain who makes me want to keep reading just to see what brilliant bastardry he pulls next? Instead I've got... what? A bunch of people running bridges. A girl stealing a magical artifact via the world's most convoluted heist that mostly involves her reading books and being awkward. And Dalinar having visions that tell him to unite people or whatever. At least the HBO Game of Thrones had sex to keep the audience hooked. I've got the windspren... windsprenning with Kaladin. Look, I get it. I'm a sci-fi girl trying to force myself through high fantasy. It's like asking someone who loves horror movies to sit through a three-hour period drama. Sure, it might be technically well-crafted, but it's just not scratching that itch. And here's the thing, Sanderson has written 30+ books. He's planning to spread this particular story across seven or eight books, whatever the full Stormlight Archive is supposed to be. I'm 30-ish hours into book one and I'm STILL waiting for a villain to emerge. Sure, we've got hints. There's Odium mentioned in Kaladin's highstorm fever dream, shhh we're not supposed to know he's the god who like got kicked off the planet by the other gods or something. There's political maneuvering happening in the background. But there's no Grand Admiral Thrawn. There's no Darth Vader choking out incompetent officers. There's just... slow-burn worldbuilding. And about five people who are bastards but they're not interesting bastards. Maybe I need to compare this to A Song of Ice and Fire to see if all epic fantasy moves at this glacial pace. Because at least in the Heir to the Empire Trilogy, the Thrawn books, there's clear rising action throughout each book. Stakes build. Tension escalates. Things HAPPEN. Hell, Tolkien gave us clear-cut bad guys. Morgoth, Sauron, Saruman. I guess technically Gollum. We KNEW who we were rooting against. We also knew the stakes. Here? I'm still hoping something will happen soon. Kaladin's Stupid Decision Speaking of not making sense, Kaladin. Our brooding bridge boy who I actually liked as a character, throws down like an absolute boss and earns himself a shardblade and shardplate. The GM, sorry, Sanderson, literally hands him the best loot in the game. And he turns it down. He. Turns. It. Down. Are you kidding me? You know what happens when the GM gives you a reward and you're like "nah, I'm good"? Your found family dies. Your remaining squad gets executed in front of you. You get exactly what you deserve for being an uppity player who thinks he's too good for the treasure drop. I've mentioned before that I'm not a nice person. This is one of those moments where I'm actively rooting against the protagonist because he's making choices that are narratively frustrating. Sure, sure, it's "in character" for his whole "I won't become like the lighteyes" thing. But you know what's also in character? Survival. Taking the tools you need to protect the people you care about. And his entire reason for joining the army was to protect baby bro, which he failed. You know what could have made saving baby bro easier? Fucking power armor. Instead, we get this martyr complex that's supposed to be noble but just reads as self-destructive to me. And not the interesting kind of self-destructive either. Just the annoying kind. The Lightsaber Problem Now when it comes to the fandom I've discovered something, and let me tell you this fun little aside. I was out at breakfast with my writing buddy, we meet up regularly to work on our respective literary projects and generally nerd out, and I'm describing how shardblades work. I call them lightsabers because that's essentially what they are, and there's this dude two tables over who looks like he's ready to Sweet Chin Music me for the comparison. He actually came over to educate me on the entire cosmere and the inner workings on the great Sanderson. He was ready to sit down and spend the rest of the day educating me. Luckily his wife had other plans. Great woman, she’s a real hero. But here's the thing. They ARE basically lightsabers with extra steps. You summon them from hammerspace, they cut through anything, and they have this weird quirk where they kill people without leaving horrific wounds, if you don't count the blackened skin and burned-out eyes, which I absolutely do count. And that's stupid. These things are assassination weapons, not battlefield tools. You want to take out a high-value target quietly? Great, use a shardblade. But in the middle of a pitched battle with armies clashing? You know who would love these weapons? Warhammer 40K Orks. Tyranids. Anyone who just wants to wade through bodies without worrying about their sword getting stuck in someone's ribcage. The Orks and Tyranids want biomass, you know what makes great biomass? Bodies that are pretty much pristine because a lightsaber just vorped away their soul or whatever, leaving fresh tasty meat behind to be consumed. The entire concept doesn't make tactical sense. If I'm writing a battle scene and I give someone a weapon that phases through armor but kills the person inside, I'm writing an assassin's tool, not a warrior's weapon. But Sanderson treats these like they're meant for glorious battlefield combat, and I just... can't. Now that power armor? That could do some serious damage, and we see that it can take a Kaiju alright, but not a spear to the face. So pro tip, avoid sharp pointy objects. It's a fair everyday life lesson anyway. The Poisoning That Makes No Sense Then there's Jasnah getting poisoned. I joked with my brother that it would be totally in her character to poison herself just to prove some convoluted point about trust or whatever. Turns out it was actually some guy, Kabsal, I think his name was, who poisoned her via her ward. With bread. And the jam was the antidote. First off, antidotes don't work instantly. You're talking about chemical neutralization, not some magical cure-all that kicks in the second it hits your tongue. Chemistry doesn't work that way. Biology doesn't work that way. Even in a fantasy setting, you need some internal logic. Second, and more importantly, what's step two of this plan? You kill the daughter of the queen, presumably while stealing her soulcaster, and then what? They hunted the assassin who killed the king across half the continent. You think they're not going to hunt you to the ends of the earth for murdering Jasnah Kholin? It's the kind of half-baked villain plan that only works if you don't think about it for more than thirty seconds. And I've been thinking about it for way longer than that because I'm reading this book at the pace of molasses in winter. The Highstorm Madness Here's something that's been bugging me more and more as I listen/read. These highstorms that sweep through the continent with the force of a Category 15 hurricane, and yes, I know that's not a real category, but Sanderson seems to think hurricanes can just scale infinitely, happen ALL. THE. TIME. I don't know if they're supposedly once-in-a-lifetime devastating storms... but it seems almost daily? Weekly? The timeline is fuzzy but they happen often enough that everyone's built their entire civilization around them. And nobody's thought, "Hey, maybe we should do something about the apocalyptic weather patterns that dominate our entire existence?" Nobody's tried to terraform? Industrialize? Build better infrastructure? Develop technology that might, I don't know, STOP the storms or at least predict them better? Sure we have these guys who can predict the storms, but they keep telling us it's not an exact science. But you know what is an exact science? Science. To paraphrase Mark Watney in The Martian, "You science the shit out of it." It's not like it destroys livelihood, or things. Instead everyone's just like, "Yep, that's a highstorm alright" and goes about their business hiding in stone buildings until Hurricane Katrina on steroids passes through and strips the land bare. Or in fucking wooden wagons pulled by our beloved crab guys. Seriously, where's my book about the crabs? Maybe these highstorms are causing the madness, you guys. Maybe Dalinar's visions aren't divine inspiration, they're just what happens when your brain gets rattled by megastorms every few days for your entire life. Fantasy CTE. It's what ends football players' and wrestlers' careers, why not badass warriors in power armor? Kaladin's got this figured out, right? Right? The Reading Experience Problem Here's the thing I keep coming back to. Maybe The Way of Kings is brilliant if you're the kind of reader who can dedicate entire weekends to devouring 500-page chunks. Maybe all these setups and payoffs work perfectly when they're compressed into a shorter timeframe in your brain. But reading/listening in daily hour-and-a-half sessions? It feels interminable. The pacing drags. The revelations that are supposed to be shocking feel telegraphed. The tactical decisions that are supposed to be clever feel stupid. I'm not saying Sanderson is a bad writer. He's clearly doing something right if my brother has read basically everything the man's ever written. I'm just saying that his style and my reading habits are fundamentally incompatible. Or maybe I'm just a grumpy sci-fi nerd who misses having characters like Miles Vorkosigan or Ender Wiggin, people who think their way through problems with actual intelligence rather than just... running at them with magical power armor. So Where Do We Go From Here? I've got 12 hours left on the Kindle, minus however many hours I'm racking up in the car between cardiac rehab sessions. I'm going to finish this book because I'm not a quitter, not mentioning Malazan Book of the Fallen and how I tapped out after a chapter, and also because my brother will never let me hear the end of it if I don't. But I can already tell you that I'm probably not going to rush out and grab Words of Radiance. Maybe that makes me a bad fantasy reader. Maybe I'm just too stuck in my sci-fi ways to appreciate what Sanderson's doing here. Or maybe, just maybe, some books are better suited for certain reading styles and I'm forcing myself through something that was never meant to be consumed the way I consume it. Either way, I'll let you know if the ending changes my mind. Though given that I already know Kaladin's an idiot who turned down legendary loot, I'm not holding my breath. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint