Fanfic / Pound the Table

"If the facts are against you, pound on the law. If the law is against you, pound on the facts. And if both are against you, pound on the table!"

— Legal aphorism

Finding oneself transported into a fictional universe is hard enough, especially when it's the Marvel Universe. Being thrown into the Marvel Universe in the 80s, decades earlier than you were born, is even worse. Add in being a mutant on top of all of that? Not fun.

So what do you do? Join the X-Men, and become a protector of the world, trying to change the way people view your kind? Join Magneto, and fight to make the world accept mutants or else?

Well, if you're Noa Schaefer, the answer is neither: you get your law degree, become a legal representative, and fight for the rights of other mutants like yourself from the courtroom.

Pound The Table by October Daye is, as you may have guessed, a Marvel Self-Insert fic with a rather... unusual take on the genre. Notable for being written by a real-life lawyer, and thus averting Artistic License – Law, and its use of Deliberate Values Dissonance.

It can also be read here, here, and here.

See Lamarckian by the same author.

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This Fanfic Contains Examples Of:

• Adaptational Badass: In our world, Stormé DeLarverie was a patron of the Stonewall Inn, whose supposed fighting words of "Why don't you guys do something?" started a slew of LGBTQ-fuelled riots. In this Marvel world, DeLarverie, after saying that, immediately followed it with "Well if you won’t, I will.", revealed her mutant powers, and turned herself into a martyr that allowed everyone else to go free that night.
• Adaptational Heroism: Magneto is firmly an Anti-Villain and has not (yet?) given up on humanity. Pyro is an innocent student.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Legally as defined by the Ninth Circuit court, the four classifications of metahumans are Machinist (capabilities enhanced via technology), Master (learned skills, including magic), Mutant (born with powers) and Mutate (gained powers from an outside source). Why do they all start with "M"? Jurists have a sense of wordplay, will make puns at any opportunity, and since they all believe they're the funniest person in the room, their jokes better stick.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Defied; Noa's religion is never called into doubt or questioned. She also speaks fluent Yiddish.
• Ambiguous Situation: Judge Andrews and DA Young die in a freak car accident shortly after trying to railroad a young mutant into prison. Many readers believe that this was Magneto's doing, but it's never specified in the text.
• Amoral Attorney: Another Defied Trope, as the story is written by an actual lawyer, who knows better. Well, Noa is. Time will tell if this gets applied to other characters.
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Peter Parker meets Noa in person for the second time, he instantly puts up an air of belligerent defense because he sees her as just another JJJ ally who sees Spider-Man as an illegal vigilante. The defense doesn't last beyond Noa calmly pointing out how she could throw out all of Spider-Man's "crimes" as valid citizen's arrests, as well as saying how JJJ is anything but impartial when it comes to the wall-crawler.
• Arrested for Heroism: When Quicksilver wants to come forward after learning that the city wants to honor him for using his Super-Speed to save a large number of people during Galactus’ arrival, Noa points out that he technically broke several laws during this and his status as mutant means that there is a good chance of someone framing all of his actions as crimes to get him arrested on trumped up charges.
• Artistic License – Law: Averted for the most part, given the author's own knowledge of legal matters. If not, there will be reasons given why things wouldn't go the way they'd go in real-life court.
  • For the Jacques Canter case, there are two things that the author admits would not happen in reality. The first is the speed of the pretrial proceedings, which would normally take several months to process and not just two. In-universe, it is justified by the fact that American professional sports have ground to a halt as an indirect result of the lawsuit, meaning there is a massive push from all financial and social sectors for a quick resolution. Secondly, the judge engages in "additur" (increasing monetary damages rewarded in a lawsuit) in a single instant, where in real life deciding damage takes as long, if not longer, as the actual trial, and occurs very rarely. In-universe, this is because the judge wants Noa to owe him a favor for a friend of his.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • When Katherine Pryde is asked to testify at St. John Allerdyce's trial on his behalf, many readers were worried that the stress would activate her mutant gene, reveal her powers on the stand and torpedo Noa's whole case. Kitty doesn't, but in the kerfuffle after St. John is declared guilty, Noa's glamor is broken and her mutant features are revealed for all to see.
  • Invoked for St. John's retrial. Everyone knows what a media circus it would be and crowds the New York County Supreme Courthouse to watch. Knowing this, the presiding judge secretly moves the trial to the chambers of his friend, who is also a sitting judge... on the New York County Family Court.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: Norman Osborn is smug as a bug when Noa announces that she no longer can represent Ben Parker in court, exactly what he wanted... and then things turn on their head when Sam Lieberman walks in and Noa clarifies that he is her replacement counsel and that she and a few other plaintiffs (organizations like Stark Industries, NASDAQ and her own office that have now linked a computer virus in their systems to Oscorp) are now filing suit against Osborn.
• Bespectacled Cutie: Invoked example for both genders; Noa makes both St. John and Katherine wear spectacles in court, the former during voir dire and the latter during her witness testimony, so that they look less threatening and more sympathetic.
• Better as Friends: Noa met her best friend Cate Caine at the Stonewall Inn and they tried dating once, but didn't work out as neither of them was the take-charge type in a relationship. They still maintain a very close friendship.
• Big Damn Heroes: Bullseye has just cornered Noa, smashed her mezuzah magical focus, is about to put a bullet through her skull - and then Dr. Strange shows up.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: If Bullseye had not spent a few extra seconds kicking the dog by smashing Noa's magical focus and making a one-liner about how he finds her efforts at defending herself annoying before trying to shoot her, then Dr. Stephen Strange would not have arrived to save her but instead to avenge her.
• Bothering by the Book: After the discussion about settling the case between Norman Osborn and Ben Parker doesn't go well and the case proceeds to the discovery page, Noa returns to her office to find that Osborn "pulled an IBM". In other words, they responded to her request for documents by sending her them in loose-leaf pages, all mixed up in one single box, that her beleaguered paralegal Jeremy is painstakingly sorting through.
• Break the Haughty: Norman Osborn planned to just steamroll over the old punk who gave him a black eye and that pest of a lawyer defending him, and maybe even rough them up for good measure, only to have him and his company flattened under an avalanche of legal lawsuits from even bigger companies, and him hogtied to a chair with metal cables while the lawyer and her magnetic friend promise that if he ever steps out of line, he dies.
• Brown Note Being: Because of Noa's magical potential, she is able to see just a glimpse of Galactus beyond the purple-helmeted humanoid form, and the glimpse is enough to lay her out on the ground with a Psychic Nosebleed. She is barely able to crawl to her purse, grasp her mezuzah focus and pray for her life.
• Bullying a Dragon: Noa is understandably uneasy about possibly deposing Norman Osborn during his lawsuit against her client, since she has just seen proof that he could be a superhuman (with Super-Strength at the minimum). Sam advises her to not let her fear hold her back and grill him like a roast under oath and in front of witnesses, where his supposed strength means nothing, document it when he retaliates, and when he inevitably slips up, call every ally she knows and come down on him like an avalanche.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: For Cassie, the young mutant whose job application was rejected by Noa, being rejected by her was probably one of the top five worst days of Cassie's life. For Noa, it was just one of many applications she had to go through, and she doesn't even recognize Cassie later when the latter works at a grocery store.
• The Cameo: Stan Lee makes his usual Marvel appearance in Chapter 13, as a newsie that Noa buys a paper from.
• Chekhov's Gunman: During the trial of St. John, there is made mention of an oversized man in a Conspicuous Trenchcoat and hat in the observer's gallery. When the verdict is finally handed down, the man is the first out of the courtroom to face the reporters, and after revealing himself as the recently-thawed Steve Rogers, declares how ashamed he is to be a New Yorker if their judicial system can so easily convict a mutant boy for the crime of being different. On another level, when the case first started, Noa read a newspaper article about Cap's recent thawing.
• Chekhov's News: One chapter where Noa buys a newspaper, she notices but doesn't really acknowledge an article about a tennis star being accused of cheating with suspected mutant powers. The next chapter, the tennis star, Jacques Canter, shows up to ask her to represent him in his lawsuit.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • When Noa was interviewing Joshua as a possible hire for her firm, the latter mentions he was getting his Masters in Computer Engineering. Following the vandalization of Noa's office, Joshua ends up to first to recognize a major issue with the computers, and while he can't solve the problem, he does know an expert in the form of his professor. Said professor not only recognizes the issue as a computer virus, but has seen the virus before in the computers of major firms.
  • Then there comes a subversion. After Noa becomes a Nervous Wreck due to Nick Fury Trespassing to Talk in her home, Dr. Strange teaches her an alarm spell that will signal him no matter where they are. When Noa is suddenly attacked by Bullseye, she attempts to use the spell to signal Strange... but she is so panicked that she makes the gestures in the wrong order, and the spell fails without her even knowing why.
• Chilly Reception: Peter Parker gives Noa this response when she shows up to take up his uncle's case against Norman Osborn, because his first impressions of her were a televised court appearance a year prior where she called Spider-Man's actions illegal vigilantism, and him seeing her in J.J.Jameson's office.
• Consummate Professional: Despite her reputation for Courtroom Antics, Noa has a sharp air of professionalism about her when it comes to presenting a case correctly, mostly due to the need to be above-par at her job just to be recognized. After she strikes out on her own after being outed as a mutant and being fired from her firm, when a woman walks into her office and hands her a resume for the open secretary position with mutant telekinesis, Noa firmly tells her to come back in a week for a proper interview with all the proper references, and an actual suit. She's also not very impressed when her old boss calls in a few of her favours to get his son a job as her paralegal (however sympathetic she might be, she hates Nepotism).
• Conviction by Contradiction: An aversion. In St. John Allerdyce's assault case, the prosecution's first witness, one of the victims, is caught in a lie about how the events went down and chooses to invoke his right to remain silent, causing the prosecution to withdraw the other victims from being witnesses. The Allerdyces are ecstatic since it proves that their whole case is built on a lie, but Noa and Matt have to throw cold water on their joy, since that in no way stops the whole trial.
• Courtroom Antics: Zig-Zagged. Noa at the start of the story is stated to have a reputation for these kinds of things, earning her the vitriol of several judges. That said, Noa also explains that this kind of thing is a lot less common in real life than on TV, and when she does it it's always well-rehearsed beforehand, and intended to draw a specific reaction from the jury. She is a theatre kid, after all.
  • She also extends this to scheduling trials; during a case for a defamed tennis star, she plans to file the case right before the Australian Open, both so that it'll piggyback off the tournament's media attention, and so that it'll take up all the time the defendants have to prepare and respond to the suit, making mistakes in either more likely.
• Crime of Self-Defense: The impetus of the story's first case. A 16-year-old boy was mugged by 4 fully grown men, took a blow to the head that could've killed him, and still managed to chase them off, with one mugger even breaking his leg as he ran away. So why is the boy being charged with assault? Because the boy is St. John Allerdyce, and he chased them off with his mutant power of pyrokinesis.
  • Ben Parker was almost charged for assaulting Norman Osborn when the former was protecting Harry from the latter. Even if Ben avoided being charged, Norman is suing Ben.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Magneto vs. Green Goblin is not much of a contest. Dr. Strange vs. Bullseye is even less of one.
• Death by Adaptation: May Parker was the one to die in this story instead of Ben Parker.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: This version of the Marvel Universe is chronologically in the 1980s when Noa begins her law career, so views on a lot of things like race, homosexuality, etc. are realistically portrayed, with the treatment of mutants being tied into that. Noa is forced to hide both her abilities and her sexuality for the sake of her career.
  • As an example, when Noa's new goddaughter Lorna Dane finds out her new guardian is a lesbian, she immediately shuts herself in her room, refuses to talk to her for days later, and took the first trip back to the Xavier Institute that she could. Scott and Jean, who picked her up, apparently had some prejudicial opinions about homosexuality that Charles and Logan had to take them to task for.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat:
  • DA Lou Young was up for election, and was already leading in the polls. However, he decided he needed to be seen securing another conviction in order to make his case to the voters that he was tough on crime, no matter what, so he went after the 16-year-old mutant St. John Allerdyce. Because of his actions during the trial, his poll numbers collapsed. He wasn't voted out however, because he died before that could happen.
  • Norman Osborn had Oscorp's legal council take up his case against Ben, and they were very capable of really making things difficult for Noa. Even so, his Green Goblin personality drove him to have Noa's office ransacked, making it seem like she was targeted by Neo-Nazis. But because he decided to have the computers in the office infected with the virus also used in corporate espionage, he'd inadvertently gave Noa a way to deny him his lawyers when they are forced to drop representing him in order to take up Oscorp's defense against the espionage charges. Granted, there was no way Norman could have known one of Noa's paralegals would have discovered the issue with the computers, or how that same paralegal was acquainted with someone who would recognize the virus as the same one being used against Oscorp's competitors.
• Disregard That Statement: A common statement in the courtroom towards the jury, both for and against Noa's case, to which she usually thinks, "No, they won't. They never do." with appropriate levels of satisfaction or bitterness.
• Distant Prologue: The fic opens in 1996, where Hank McCoy is on trial, only for Noa to unexpectedly arrive to represent him. In private, Hank accuses Noa of betraying both the professor and the X-Men, only for Noa to mention that Charles was the one who hired her. The fic then cuts back to 1987, and Noa's first meeting with Magneto.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Noa is completely gobsmacked when Betsy Braddock walks into the same tea shop that she's in, before becoming even more self-conscious about her looks.
• Draconic Humanoid: Downplayed; Noa's true, mutant form (which she normally hides behind her Glamour power) is based on the writer's Final Fantasy XIV character, who is an Au Ra: humanoids with a few draconic traits like horns, scale patches, and a tail, but are otherwise fairly human-looking. However, dealing with a tail she can't let anyone see is difficult, and while she has no body hair that needs shaving, her scales do shed.
• Driven to Suicide: Noa's origin as a Self-Insert is her being inserted into the body of the Marvel universe's native Noa Schaefer, when her soul "vacated the premises". Word of God is that the original Noa Schaefer, under the combined stress of being a woman in a high-intensity lawyering profession, the sole woman at her office, talked down to by her coworkers for her gender and her potential sexuality, not to mention her hidden identity as a mutant, eventually cracked under the pressure and added herself to the high suicide rate for female attorneys.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Jameson reveals to Noa that he knows there's no way Peter Parker, a teenager, just happens to be capable of getting good pictures of Spider-Man when professional photographers with experience in everything from disaster areas to warzones can't. The conclusion he reaches, however, is that Spider-Man is blackmailing a powerless kid into being his personal photographer to aid in his glory seeking. Heartwarmingly, though, he has also opened an account containing all the royalties Peter is unknowingly earning for his photographs, to be paid out when he turns eighteen, so he can "get away from that menace."
• Epic Fail: When Osborn sending thugs to Noa's house fails to do anything, the Green Goblin decides to pay her a personal visit, only to fly head-first into the Sanctum Sanctorum's wards (Noa lives in Greenwich Village, close enough to the Sanctorum). The next day, the news has the headline "GREEN GOBLIN’S GLIDER GLITCHES OVER GREENWICH".
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • John Jonah Jameson may be a sharp-tongued, hardass reporter with a raging grudge against Spider-Man, but he will not tolerate kids being messed with. After the first day of witness testimony, when he hears that DA Lou Young is railroading 16-year-old St. John Allerdyce into prison, mutant or no mutant, JJJ instantly rakes him over the coals with his next front-page article titled "YOUNG IS RECKLESS: UNHINGED DA BULLIES TEEN ARTIST". Noa plans to have that article framed.
  • When St. John is declared guilty anyway and Magneto ends up breaking him out of the police van, not only does Captain America (who was watching the trial in disguise) not stop him, but JJJ says on the record that if Spider-Man had been the one to break him out, he'd have shaken the wall-crawler's hand and called him a true hero.
    • In the ruckus, Noa is revealed to be a mutant in the middle of court, but before anyone can start shouting imprecations, JJJ declares that anyone who starts spreading baseless rumours about Noa or dragging her through the mud will become the full target of his ire.
• Exact Words: During voir dire of St. John Allerdyce's case, Noa tries to invoke the case of Batson vs. Kentucky to prevent DA Young from using his peremptory challenges to exclude any mutant from the jury pool. Judge Andrews overrules her on the basis that the case ruling prevented exclusion based on ethnicity like race, and mutant status and sexual preference are not ethnicities. That said, he does prevent Young from doing the same based on sexual preference. On appeal, Justice Smith agrees with Noa that this was one of Judge Andrews's many points of misconduct, as Andrews should have understood that since the case was about the treatment of a minority group in jury selection, it should be equally applicable to all minority groups.
• Fantastic Racism: Dealing with this as a mutant, but legally, is one of the selling points of the story. Also, Noa has friendly relations with Magneto.
• Friend on the Force: FBI agent Catherine "Cate" Caine, Noa's best friend in NYC and also captain of the local roller derby team. She and Noa have interacted a few times on both a personal and professional basis, and Noa feels bad about lying to her to protect Erik and St. John, who are both on the run after St. John's conviction.
• Frivolous Lawsuit: One of Noa's cases as a lawyer involves her defending Ben Parker, who is being sued by Norman Osborn for injuring him while intervening to stop him from physically abusing his own son.
• Gaydar: Noa and her new assistant Joshua are able to ping that their new client Jacques Canter is gay, due to how well-groomed he is and who he checks out. This causes their other colleague Sophie to realize a few things about her youngest son.
• Glamor Failure: This is a constant worry for Noa, whose hard-light glamor is quite fragile and can be broken if anyone hits her with a solid-enough blow. When she tries to get Judge Andrews to reverse St. John's guilty verdict, the judge orders the bailiff to remove her, and in the resulting struggle, her horns hit his chest and end up breaking her glamor. She also avoids the crowds at Rosh Hashanah celebrations for this reason.
  I was small and huggable, and that congregation was filled to the brim with Jewish mothers. My glamour wouldn't last ten seconds.
• Guile Hero: In a world of superheroes and mutants, Noa's main weapons (other than her weak glamor and magic) are her wits, her words and the law.
• Hanging Judge: Judge Philip Andrews, who is up for re-election and wants a good conviction case on his record, no matter who he has to railroad into jail to do so. He can't look overtly partisan or preside over a Kangaroo Court, but he gives quite a bit of leeway to his fellow election-mate DA Lou Young over Noa. Then he gets really blatant by, right before closing statements, charging an officer with contempt for carrying a cigarette into a room where the defendant is a pyrokinetic mutant (thus reminding everyone of the potential danger of his powers), and over Noa's objections, not calling a mistrial despite prejudicing the whole jury.
• Hate Crimes Are a Special Kind of Evil: In a story in the 80s where minorities are a large theme, this comes as no surprise. Noa breaks down in tears when she finds that her new office has been trashed and swastikas have been spray-painted everywhere, with particular artistic attention given to her mezuzahs and Jewish accoutrements. A suspicious amount, as Noa's FBI friend Cate notes.
• Height Angst: Noa barely reaches five feet in height, which doesn't make it any easier for others to take her seriously. She avoids getting into elevators (often filled with other lawyers with overstuffed suitcases, briefcases and egos) for obvious reasons, and one time, she has to hold back her irritation at another woman who has the luxury of walking around in flats rather than heels.
• Hidden Depths: Schmoel "Sam" Lieberman, senior partner at Noa's law firm and the one who hired her in the first place. At first glance, he seems like the textbook sexist boss who only hired Noa to be the "token female", holds her back because of her gender, calls her a dyke under his breath, and has a beef with her because she has stock in the "iron monger" company of Stark Industries (he's a Mondale supporter). But later, he tells her that she hasn't been made a partner because her Courtroom Antics piss off too many judges and he's had to placate more than a few of them by throwing several golf games, and he can't risk her getting sanctioned or disbarred. The reason he gives her the pro bono case for Judge Andrews (one of the aforementioned pissed-off judges) is because he needs to know she can handle a high-profile case like this with delicacy, and not end up on the Bugle's front page again. He is also regretful that despite two days of arguing and effort, he couldn't save Noa's job nor get her a better severance package after she suffers a Glamor Failure in court, outright saying that she deserves better.
• Hope Spot: When the jury returns with their verdict, St. John almost collapses with relief when they find him not guilty for assaulting the first three muggers. However, for the assault on the fourth mugger, who broke his leg trying to run away, they do find him guilty.
• Housewife: A woman named Sophie Walsh shows up to apply for the job of Noa's secretary, with Noa taking particular interest given that she put "stay-at-home mother" as the largest chunk on her resume. Sophie explains that in addition to previous secretary work, she wanted to work for the notorious outed mutant lawyer because she wanted a job almost as interesting as raising triplet teenage boys (who are now in college). Noa is so impressed at the acknowledgement of stay-at-home-motherhood as a full-time job and the chutzpah to put it on her resume that she hires her on the spot.
• Human Furniture Is a Pain in the Tail: Noa often has to sit in an odd way on chairs and pass it off as her personal habits, because human chairs are just not built for people with tails. It's a small touch that when Lieberman calls her into his office after she suffers a Glamor Failure, he gives her a chair with an open back.
  • Similarly, she either has to deal with pants or skirts not having tail holes, or spend a bundle on custom tailoring for them.
• Humiliation Conga: Happens to Boris Becker et al. When Becker loses to a newcomer Jacques Canter at the US tennis open, he accuses Canter of cheating with a mutant power, backed up by the officials, resulting in Canter being stripped of his awards and sponsors and barred from competing. When Canter decides to sue them for defamation, the resulting media attention grinds practically all sporting in the US to a halt as they await the verdict, and then Becker has to suffer through videos of college-age athletes recreating shots that he and several other tennis professionals, officials and analysts agreed were "impossible" being played as evidence (as well as having several of his promised experts decline to testify). Losing the case and being forced to pay damages is bad enough, but then the judge decides that the initial damages are chump change to a company as big as Nike, who could easily foot the bill as the cost of doing business, so he ups the damages to a $250m amount that even Nike will feel in the morning.
• Hypocrite: Mystique expresses disdain towards Noa for hiding her mutant status, only for the latter to turn that accusation back at her.
• Internal Reveal: Noa reveals to Norman that she associates with Magneto, and that she knows he's the Green Goblin. All to cow him from further attacks on her or the Parkers.
• Ironic Name: Lachland MacIntosh, computer expert and die-hard IBM loyalist. There's a reason his office nameplate has the quote ”Do Not Mention The Fruit”.
• Jewish Mother: Downplayed; Noa often calls herself a "yenta-in-training" on account of her taking a lot of young charges, from Peter Parker and Matt Murdock to Pietro Maximoff and Lorna Dane under her wing, fussing over them, and making sure they are well-fed and healthy. That said, while arguing is in her blood and profession, she doesn't usually do it around the kids.
• Kangaroo Court: Avoiding this is one of the goals of the prosecuting Attorney and the Judge of the first act. While there are obvious attempts to sway the jury and the Judge is pretty blatant in his favoritism, nothing illegal happens in the court. After all, you can't make an example if the trial is a sham, not so close to re-election season. However, Judge Andrews' antics of prejudicing the jury (by charging an officer with contempt for carrying a cigarette into the courtroom and reminding everyone of St. John's pyrokinesis) and not declaring a mistrial make it clear to everyone watching of the prejudice in the courtroom, especially after the jury returns a guilty verdict.
• Karmic Death: After all of Judge Andrews and DA Young's efforts to run St. John Allerdyce into jail, Andrews does one more instance of running after his retirement... running over Young with his car.
• Kinky Cuffs: A variation. With a bunch of unconscious thugs in her apartment that need to be restrained, Noa gets out some red silk rope from her closet. Erik is very amused while Noa is very embarrassed.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After Noa's case ends with Young and Andrews successfully getting St. John convicted, Jameson later sends Noa some framed news articles about Young getting shellacked in his re-election polls, a newcomer into the DA race becoming an instant front-runner, and Andrews accidentally running Young over with his car, with the frame's plaque titled "Karma".
• Lesbian Jock: Noa plays Roller Derby on her rare days off, and went on a date with the team captain (whom she met at the Stonewall Inn).
• Look Both Ways: Judge Andrews ends up running DA Young over by accident right after Andrews retires.
• Make an Example of Them: With re-election coming up for both Judge Philip Andrews and District Attorney Lou Young, with the latter eyeing a mayoral run, both of them want an eye-catching, decisive conviction case on their records to beef up their reputations. Something like putting a "dangerous" mutant in jail, even if the mutant is a 16-year-old theatre kid.
• Metaphorically True: When Jameson's investigations into Peter and Spider-Man bear some fruit, Noa explains the connection between them to be about both Peter and Spider-Man bearing guilt about the fatal consequences of Spider-Man's inaction during his first outing, while saying nothing about secret identities.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Charles Xavier is very cautious about how he uses his telepathy for this reason; according to Erik, he was more cavalier about it when he was younger, until he accidentally caught a glimpse of what is implied to be Erik's memories of the Holocaust. He hasn't casually read anyone's mind since.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: For the last year or so, a computer virus has been showing up in the systems of various big companies and organizations, from Stark Industries and the Baxter Building to NASDAQ and Bristol Myers Squibb, that appeared to transmit their data over the dial-up lines bit by bit. No-one could figure out where the data was going or who was responsible, until it showed up in the vandalized office computers of one Noa Schaefer, who recently took up a case opposing Norman Osborn...
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The moment Noa elaborates that she could argue all of Spider-Man's vigilantism to be considered as citizen's arrests, Peter Parker immediately flips from cold suspicion to earnestness so quickly that Noa finds it adorable.
  • Noa is walking out of the courtroom, having witnessed St. John's conviction be overturned, and is talking to a new Assistant District Attorney who's proving to be quite affable - and then an arrow goes through her new friend's head.
• Mugging the Monster: A few thugs show up at Noa's house to rough her up, only to find out that Erik Lehnscherr was house-sitting while she was out. The thugs that show up to the Parker residence have a similar encounter with Spider-Man.
  • And then later Osborn himself tries to do the same when he's alone in the courtroom with Noa, only to find himself hogtied with metal cables and Magneto making his appearance.
    Noa: You are not the most dangerous person in this room.
• Muggle Sports, Super Athletes: Noa's second case involves a tennis star who, after an upset tournament win, was accused of being a mutant and had all his achievements revoked, and now wants to sue his accuser and the association for defamation.
• Mundane Utility:
  • Thrown back to the 1980s, Noa takes advantage of her future knowledge to both pad her stock portfolio with companies that will be big in the future, and also catch Freddie Mercury live in concert.
  • Noa is happy when Pietro comes over to be her kitchen assistant.
• Mythology Gag: During Noa's law seminar at the Xavier Institute, she spots that Peter Parker had snuck in and is sitting between Bobby Drake and Angelica Jones.
• Nazi Hunter: Noa and Magneto meet while tracking down a former Nazi, who turns out to be HYDRA and form a friendship based on that.
• No Badass to His Valet: Despite his inclinations towards violence and terrorism to promote his pro-Mutant cause, Noa doesn't see Erik "Magneto" Lehnscherr as anything more than a spirited debate partner who constantly invites himself into her house and eats all her mint chip ice cream.
• No Endor Holocaust: Averted in this story's depiction of The Coming of Galactus. The Arrival of Galactus caused the deaths of 102,975 people in New York City. Noa and other lawmakers had been very busy in sorting out the deceased's inheritances.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Noa and her client Ben Parker have this reaction when their opposition Norman Osborn gets incensed enough to crack the arms of a mahogany chair with his bare hands, meaning that they are going up against a potential superhuman.
  • All of Norman Osborn's legal representation (excluding Osborn himself) has a mass panic attack when Sam Lieberman, one of the most dangerous litigators in the country, walks into the courtroom with some papers to serve him.
• One Degree of Separation: When Noa goes home for Rosh Hashanah, her father introduces her to an old friend and fellow Auschwitz survivor, Max Eisenhardt a.k.a. her old Nazi-hunting buddy Erik Lehnscherr. Both of them are pretty flummoxed at recognizing each other, and Noa isn't impressed when she finds out that Erik is there to pick the brains of his fellow survivors for info, and dredge up bad memories in the process.
• One Super One Powerset: Averted. Noa's mutant powers include her draconic features and her hard-light glamor, but she also takes magical lessons from Dr. Strange. Erik has popped in to get some off-the-books magical healing once or twice.
• Orgy of Evidence: When Oscorp sent goons to trash Noa's offices, they tried to make it look like a Neo-Nazi attack with swastikas everywhere and her Jewish religious symbols, like her mezuzahs, wrecked and arranged "artistically". However, Cate notes that the focused desecration reveals far more knowledge of Judaism than the average skinhead would have, positing that the hate crime is just a backdrop for a very personal attack.
• Outside-Context Problem: Galactus's attack has the same impact on the story that a natural disaster would have on a sitcom - a massive, earthshaking event that the main characters can do absolutely nothing to affect; merely hunker down, pray for survival, and pick up the pieces in the aftermath.
• Peking Duck Christmas: Noa has a personal tradition of getting Sichuan beef takeout from the same Chinese restaurant every Christmas.
• Perspective Flip: The sidestory From the Other Side does this for Cassie Flye, the young mutant whose job application was rejected by Noa due to her not looking the part and not following interview etiquette. She was living on the streets, had scrounged up the best clothes she could find and afford, spent what money she had to get her resume printed out, cleaned up in nearby restrooms to get ready for the interview, hoped that showing off her powers would get her sympathy... only to get turned away by who she thought to be her idol for not reaching a standard she'd never known existed and would never be able to achieve even on her best day (and overhearing Noa tear up her resume was just salt in the wound).
• Point of Divergence: One result of Jameson's successful investigation of Spider-Man and Peter Parker is that he now holds PI Mac Gargan in high esteem, so there will not be an impetus to turn him into the Scorpion.
• Poor Communication Kills: Noa would've been kinder to Cassie if the latter was able to explain her circumstances.
• Prank Punishment: What does Cate do when she has to learn from the local Jewish deli owner that her best friend had an adopted goddaughter and not from Noa herself? Declare that she won't give her a merino wool sweater for Christmas, and will instead give it to said goddaughter Lorna.
• Promotion to Parent: After Noa finds out about Lorna Dane being Erik's biological daughter, she makes arrangements to become her godmother and house her when Xavier's is on break.
• Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: Magneto briefly loses control of his powers after Noa reveals that Pietro and Wanda are his children.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The aftermath of the trial People of the State of New York v. S.J. Allerdyce, at least for Judge Andrews and DA Lou Young; their designated "dangerous mutant" St. John is found guilty, and the opposing counsel Noa Schaefer is outed as a mutant and is forced to resign from her law firm, but Steve Rogers a.k.a. Captain America, who was observing the case incognito, gets the first word to the press and completely lambasts the judicial system for doing to mutants what the Nazis did to minorities, and then a mutant and Auschwitz survivor appears and not only publicly agrees with the Captain, but rescues St. John and spirits him away. Between those two and JJJ having a full head of steam, Andrews and Young end up getting shellacked in their re-elections (which was the whole reason they railroaded the case in the first place). Not to mention, Noa has plenty of evidence and briefs filed to bring both of them up on judicial misconduct charges.
• Rags to Riches: After getting fired from her old firm, Noa gets a windfall after winning Jacques Canter's lawsuit, mainly because the judge upped the damages to be paid, resulting in her cut becoming $75 million. The judge happened to be one of Noa's old teachers, and he would later ask her a favor to defend Ben Parker, an old war buddy of his, pro bono.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: After witnessing the trial and wrongful conviction of an innocent boy for the "crime" of being a mutant, Steve Rogers walks out to the press and rakes the entire city of New York over the coals for the miscarriage of justice, including the very pointed statement, "I am ashamed to be a New Yorker."
• Refuge in Audacity: Noa namedrops the trope when she learns where Magneto brought St. John to hide out after his conviction - he was Hidden in Plain Sight, as a regular high school student, in a place no New Yorker would ever want to go - New Jersey. When Noa tells Sam, he falls over laughing for a quarter hour.
• Religion is Magic: Downplayed; Noa's Jewish faith doesn't give her any special powers, but she does use a set of atezi chaim (Torah scroll rollers) as magical foci. Dr. Strange later gives her a mezuzah he made himself as a better focus.
• Revenge Before Reason: Norman Osborn goes out of his way to engage in extra-legal attacks on Noa for defending Ben Parker, including an attempt in his Green Goblin persona. This only backfires on him as one his attacks, a virus uploaded into the computers of Noa's lawfirm, was discovered to be the same virus found in the computers of major companies. This opens him and Oscorp up to legal attacks from the affected companies and the FBI, resulting him in being unable to retain Oscorp's legal council in his lawsuit against Ben.
• Rule of Three: Noa gets worried when her secretary pages her three times during an important meeting, and heads out after the third page. She's calling to tell her that her office has been vandalized with Nazi symbols.
• Sacrificial Lamb: ADA Tim Finnigan, who represents the city in St. John's retrial and exoneration, selected because of how he is an Identical Stranger to the accused. Bullseye snipes him with an arrow just as he and Noa are leaving the courtroom.
• Sexual Euphemism: It's revealed that Mystique used this when talking to Noa without the latter realizing.
• Shaming the Mob: At the end of St. John's case, Steve Rogers himself emerges to deliver a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the court, the gathered crowd, and the city of New York as a whole for allowing an innocent kid to be convicted on trumped-up charges just for how he was born, outright comparing them to the Nazis he fought against. The arrival of mutant criminal and Auschwitz survivor Magneto to break the kid out just punctuates his point.
• Shout-Out: Noa mentions that she frequently sees a massive rat that always seems to be carrying pizza when taking the subway.
• Stunned Silence: This is Peter and Ben's reaction when Noa tells them about the sizable trust Jameson has set up for Peter's full Spider-Man photography earnings, causing Peter to lose his Tetris game and Ben to almost burn his steaks on the grill.
• Shown Their Work: Overlaps with Write What You Know. In this case, a legal professional is writing courtroom drama.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Ben Parker is among the living in 1990. However, he is mentioned to be a widower, which basically means the opposite is true for May Parker. As it turns out Ben and May's roles were switched in this timeline in regard to Peter Parker becoming more responsible about being Spider-Man.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: Jameson jokingly asks why he can't do this very trope when he sends Noa a framed news article collection depicting the Laser-Guided Karma falling on DA Lou Young after he convicted an innocent mutant boy, including how he was run over by Judge Andrews.
• Squee: Noa has this reaction after getting a very sympathetic judge for her case. Sam, who is on the phone with her, complains that he gets enough of that from the wife.
• Summon Bigger Fish: This is Sam's advice to Noa when she deals with Norman Osborn, and it invariably comes to pass. His vandalization of Noa's office brings up evidence of corporate espionage targeting other big companies, including Stark Industries and NASDAQ, giving them cause to bring their own legal armies to bear against Osborn and Oscorp and making them too busy to care about suing Ben Parker. And when Norman Osborn tries to accost Noa alone, she introduces him to her friend Magneto.
• Survival Mantra: After her glamor is broken in the middle of court and she basically suffers a panic attack, Noa can't do anything more than repeat her motion for arrest of the judgment (as St. John was found guilty).
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: The Canter v. Becker et al. case involves a sports star getting a major win and then getting accused of being a mutant and barred from competing. While this case is underway, many of the top sports leagues put their major competitions on hiatus, since no athlete would dare to perform their best if a simple accusation of playing too well could strip them of their livelihood. The amount of lost revenue and public pressure is the in-universe reason why this case rockets through the bureaucracy unrealistically fast.
• There Are No Therapists: Averted. After Peter loses Gwen, Noa takes him to Xavier for some sorely needed therapy.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Chapter 29 throws St. John two bones - he gets a welcome home party from his friends and a kiss from Kitty, and his prior conviction is overturned by a new judge.
• Tomboyish Name: Although "Noa" is a popular girl's name in Hebrew, Noa herself has tossed away envelopes the minute she sees them addressed to "Noah". It doesn't help that her middle name is Hava, meaning that her name can be written as "Noa H. Schaefer".
• Too Qualified to Apply: The foundation of Noa's second high-profile case. Jacques Canter is an upcoming tennis star who managed to place four times in major tournaments in only 5 years of professional playing, and just had the best run of his life when he outright won the US Open. Then, his higher-seed opponent accuses him of being a mutant and cheating because of his supposedly "impossible" win, and he is stripped of his titles and sponsors and banned from playing in any ATP tournament ever again. He comes to Noa to help him sue his opponent, the tennis associations, and all his sponsors for defamation, and she helps proves his case by showing off normal college-age players performing all his "impossible" moves.
• Trespassing to Talk: One of the biggest Oh, Crap! moments for Noa (aside from Galactus' visit) is when she arrives to her house to discover Nick Fury broke in, is waiting for her in her kitchen, and then shows her that S.H.I.E.L.D. has begun to assemble a pretty hefty dossier on her (and they suspect heavily that Noa has some degree of future knowledge, although they don't know how), that they are worried about her being one of the closest confidants to Magneto, and that they are going to keep an eye on her. Adding insult to injury is how (well, by his standards) casual he is about it. She is understandably more than a little furious at discovering that Stephen Strange's protective spells for her home were accidentally set to allow Fury to get in because Strange trusts Fury.
• Twofer Token Minority: Noa Schaefer, female, Jewish, lesbian, mutant. Oh, and less than five feet tall. She mentions that it only took her six months to notice that she was hired by her law firm to be the token woman hire, to be seen and not heard.
• Wham Line:
  • During the closing moments of Jacques Canter v. Boris Becker et al.:
    Judge Nolan: Does plaintiff consent to grant this court the power of additur?^note "Additur" is where the judge decides that the jury has not awarded enough damages. The initial amount was $40 million; Nolan increases the total sentence to $253.7 million, reasoning that since one of the defendants is Nike, the original sentence would've been a drop in the bucket for them.
  • During the last part of Chapter 16 when Noa learns the name of her next client, who is being sued by Norman Osborn:
    Judge Nolan: My friend’s an old widower from Queens, name of Ben Parker…
  • The end of of chapter 21:
    So instead,I leaned back in my chair and looked back over the city, and watched as Johnny Storm flew after what looked for all the world like a shooting star.
  • Chapter 32 ends with the Blob entering Noa's office and asks to turn state's evidence against someone. When asked who he's turning against, the identity he says stops Noa cold.
    Blob: The Kingpin.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Noa is livid when she realizes that, in the aftermath of Galactus's invasion, the added workload has caused her old boss Sam to start using cocaine to keep his energy up, and only gets more furious when she sees his son Joshua doing the same.
  • Noa has some choice words for Stephen Strange after Nick Fury meets her in her living room so soon after she had another home invasion, and his alarm ward didn't warn her. And she doesn't appreciate "I trusted him" as an answer.
• Worst News Judgment Ever: Inverted example. The day after the trial date for the first arc's case is set, Noa is expecting the media to be all over the story of a "dangerous" mutant being charged for assault, only for the front page to display a much more positive story: Captain America being found, thawed and rescued.
• Wrong Assumption:
  • Due to how Noa lies about how she knows Magneto, Cate thinks Magneto is a rogue Mossad asset.
  • Norman Osborn, due to several misunderstandings, comes to the conclusion that Noa is a mind controller.
• You Owe Me: Part of the reason that Noa takes up Ben Parker's defense pro bono against Osborn's civil suit. Ben is an old Korean War comrade of Judge Nolan and Noa knows that her improved financial status is the result of Nolan upping the damage claims awarded to her client Jacques Canter.

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