They re-shackled and re-hooded me and left me there. A long time later, the truck started to move, rolling downhill, and then I was hauled back to my feet. I immediately fell over. My legs were so asleep they felt like blocks of ice, all except my knees, which were swollen and tender from all…
Taking a break from Doctor Who stuff since there doesn’t seem to be any activity from that quarter just to say that unhaunting’s takedown of Internet Web Celebrity Cory Doctorow’s epic Little Brother is a thing of beauty. And yay! He’s finally posted a new segment. Highlights: mocking Doctorow’s hammy villain ball technique, and also the idea that the US military wouldn’t have some high school kid’s cell phone unhacked in a New York minute.
Here’s my take: the nonsensical threats “Severe Haircut Lady” throws at Marcus are just OOC for even the most secretive and ruthless of US military organizations. The problem with our official thugs isn’t that they like throwing their weight around for the lulz, it’s that they totally believe in the sanctity of their mission. This power can be used for great good or evil… let’s just say telling our main character that even if they find him innocent they’ll always be on his back is just not done and here you can tell that Doctorow is not an American. (He’s Canadian.) It’s more likely that they’ll give him a laundry list of things they suspect him of to intimidate him. Threatening him with Inevitable Doom will just give our main character (oh—his name is Marcus BTW) the idea that nothing he says will matter so he might as well tell them to go fuck themselves. (This is not realistic, it’s American. We are not a realistic people.) It would be more in character—and would get actual results—if they told him he could go scot free if only he gave them the info they wanted. (Even if it was a lie. Still, you never tell the people you want information from that they won’t get anything out of it. This is the country of the plea bargain, FFS.)
The other thing: like I mocked above and unhaunting expressed disbelief about: the idea that the US military would have to go to all this trouble just to get a civilian cell phone unlocked. No, Cory, geeks are not more clever and do not have more resources than the US military. These are the goddamn bad facts. How the scene should have gone is: the interrogators confront Marcus with the fact that they’ve unlocked his phone and discovered all his little hacks and secrets and they prove this by listing each one. I mean, come on.
