YMMV / Agency (2020)

• Anvilicious: While The Peripheral tiptoed around the issue, Agency has Lowbeer admit outright that what she does to the stubs is effectively temporal imperialism, even if instead of standard colonization, the big stub instead extracts entertainment (most "hobbyists") and historical knowledge (Lowbeer) from the stubs they spawn.
• Paranoia Fuel: The manner in which Lowbeer deals with one of Lev's relatives who's plotting against her, and his co-conspirators. She waits until they meet in person in a hotel, then annihilates them on the molecular level, using the assemblers to change the room they were in into a broom closet. The message is very clear: if you defy her she can get you anywhere, at any time. Yet more proof that she's essentially running God Mode in real life.
• The Un-Twist: The whole book long, the reader is led to believe that Eunice is going to take over the world in order to prevent the otherwise-inevitable nuclear apocalypse. In the end, however, it turns out that the US government is actually capable of clearing up its own messes, and Eunice only had to control for one small overlooked factor to ensure a deescalation.

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