Fresh Grated Nutmeg

An innocent man is home with his family instead of spending his kids' whole childhoods in jail for "resisting arrest" when none of the cops could agree on why he was being arrested in the first place. (But it definitely had nothing to do with him being a Black man in a nice car, honest! 🙄)

And it still took like two hours of delibration after we'd heard all the evidence because one lady was so gung ho about believing everything the cops said, even when not a single goddamn one could agree with their own testimony, let alone their colleagues'.

Pointing out all the inconsistencies and admitted misconduct and letting people slowly come to their own conclusions as the trial played out was fucking hard, I won't lie. I can be patient, but it doesn't come naturally to me.

But. Yelling about how this was obviously a bs case would have shut everyone down and made them stop listening. Asking questions and letting people discuss how the cops tried to make xyz sound suspicious but it was totally normal, or about how if things played out the way the cops said then logically events should have proceeded in a totally different direction, and positing different theories that actually lined up with the evidence presented?

That got people thinking, and everyone realized that for a variety of reasons we all had reasonable doubts that the defendent had committed any of the crimes of which he was accused.

How to work your Pole: tips for Sellsword Arts (and anyone else who’s having trouble)

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

But here? This reveal? This is a Big Reveal for us, Peter B Parker, and Miles, all on different levels. We and Peter both know Doc Ock is a portly dude, not a woman. We know the name Octavius… Otto Octavius. But when she says her name is Olivia Octavius we’re clued in to the fact that Doctor Octopus is a woman in this universe. And she has Peter captive.

Miles, if he was paying attention in science class earlier in the movie, would have known her name was Olivia Octavius, but that doesn’t mean anything to him, why would it? Liv has apparently been very good about keeping her supervillainy a secret. She’s in educational videos shown in high-schools. So to Miles, the reveal here is this scientist lady, who he knew enough about to know was the head scientist at Alchemax, is a supervillain. He gets the reveal a second or two after Peter.

And the movie? It was dropping hints the entire time, confident in our expectations blinding is to the truth. Olivia’s name was partially visible when Miles got to science class. Her glasses are octagonal. The lights in her lab are octagonal. We know she’s working with the Kingpin. Why wouldn’t she be a supervillain? Because she’s hot? Hell, Peter even says he needs to reexamine his internal biases. Maybe he was telling us that we should too.

Yes! And this is such an interesting trope! 🤩

I was actually thinking about this a while back but never got the chance to draw it! I hope you like it 😊