"Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope? Can you put a cord through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he keep begging you for mercy? Will he speak to you with gentle words? Will he make an agreement with you for you to take him as your slave for life? Can you make a pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls? Will traders barter for him? Will they divide him up among the merchants? Can you fill his hide with harpoons or his head with fishing spears? If you lay a hand on him, you will remember the struggle and never do it again! Any hope of subduing him is false; the mere sight of him is overpowering."
— Job 41:1-9 note
Funny Business is Brendan Rizzo's first attempt at writing a Deconstructor Fleet. It can be read here.
Jeanette Swanson is a new student at Maude Wilkins Elementary School. After an event involving untied shoelaces, she accidentally reveals to her fellow classmates that she can do anything, without regards to physics or logic. Hilarity Ensues, for a while... but things turn out to be not as nice as they seem.
Provides Examples Of:
- Cerebus Syndrome: Before and during the baseball game, the story is rather light-hearted. After the baseball game, the main character is revealed to suffer from major neuroses.
- Contrived Coincidence: Lewis's last name being Boltzmann given the importance of Boltzmann brains to the story.
- Cosmic Flaw: When Jeanette is upset about her poor performance in a math test, she alters mathematics to make the answers she gave the correct ones - physics soon follows suit, and a black hole approaches the solar system.
- Doing In the Wizard: The reason Jeanette is a Reality Warper is because she is actually a Boltzmann brain simulating the setting.
- Eidetic Memory: A Required Secondary Power of Jeanette. If she forgets anything, the time in which the forgotten event happened, as well as all later times, would cease to exist.
- Enfant Terrible: Deconstructed. As a toddler, Jeanette was like this, because toddlers don't comprehend that other people have feelings and can be hurt. Once she grows out of it, she suffers a major Heroic BSoD which continues to the time of the main story.
- Inexplicably Awesome: Subverted. Jeanette's powers are eventually explained.
- Joisey: The story is set in Maple Shade and the flashback is in Marlton; both are real townships in the state.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Jeanette's parents are locked out of the knowledge that her powers even exist. She believed that if they knew, they would never forgive her for all the trouble her powers of caused. Of course, when they inevitably do find out, they shrug it off.
- Mouse World: The scale model of Maple Shade that Jeanette shrinks herself and her friends into.
- Mythology Gag: Frederick and Coco were originally characters in a completely unrelated short story by the same author.
- Next Sunday A.D.: The main story is set in the year 2026, but the only indication of future technology is Kylie's mention of quantum computers. The long flashback is, of course, even closer to the present, but still in the future from the time the story was written.
- The Omnipotent: Lewis lampshades the extent of Jeanette's powers when he has her demonstrate the omnipotence paradox.
- Pals with Jesus: Lucy and Lewis don't care much that their friend has the powers of a god. It's deconstructed when it turns out that Lucy does view Jeanette as God, and so follows her without question.
- Parents as People: Frederick and Coco. They may be focused on their own lives and oblivious to their child's situationnote , but they still care about her, as proved when The Masquerade gets broken.
- Random Events Plot: There really isn't much connecting the various situations together.
- Shout-Out: Lewis's last name of Boltzmann, as a reference to the important plot point of Boltzmann brains.
- Science Is Wrong: Played With. Atoms do not exist, but the reason for this isn't that atomic theory is wrong, but that the world is essentially a computer simulation. Even so, a Break the Scientist situation still happens.
- That Cloud Looks Like...: Jeanette and Lucy get bored and start watching the clouds to pass the time. Eventually, Jeannette starts to make the shapes real.
- There Are No Therapists: Deconstructed. The character who desperately needs psychological help is actively preventing anyone else from learning of her problems, so they don't go away and only get worse.