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Unfit For Space posted:The Syfy Channel actually has plans now to make a movie and TV series out of Wild Cards due to the success of Game of Thrones. Supposedly Croyd is one of the characters they plan on using. Interesting. I wonder how it will turn out? Really, I'd think animation would be the best route, since that way you could have fun with all the crazy powers and weird jokers without busting your budget in half. Like in Heroes, where all the interesting powers took too much special effects budget so the one that got the most use was the psychic guy because all he had to do was squint at things. kcroy posted:I don't know if you mentioned it in the starter post, but here is a character reference for the series: http://www.wildcardsonline.com/characters.html I wasn't aware of that. It is indeed an excellent resource. I'll add it to the OP, along with the Wiki I've been using for pics.
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Aug 31, 2012 11:57
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I got out an audiobook version of Aces High from the library yesterday. Unfortunately, the narrator made the poor artistic choice of using separate voices for all the characters. Hiram Worchester sounded like Gandalf, Fortunato sounded like an elderly sharecropper, and when he delivered the line, "Fortunato, I'm going to gently caress her out of your mind" in falsetto as one of Fortunato's
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Aug 31, 2012 17:20
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Please rip that one quote to the internet. Please.
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Aug 31, 2012 18:03
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Thinky Whale posted:Interesting. I wonder how it will turn out? Really, I'd think animation would be the best route, since that way you could have fun with all the crazy powers and weird jokers without busting your budget in half. Like in Heroes, where all the interesting powers took too much special effects budget so the one that got the most use was the psychic guy because all he had to do was squint at things. I could almost imagine them doing a sort of human-level story about maybe a few people dealing with the outbreak the first season to keep costs down: Most of the stuff we see of Jokers comes from news footage, newspaper photos, etc. Hide a lot of low-quality effects behind static, blurs and grain. We'll get glimpses of Jokers and Aces in the background, out of focus, too.
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Sep 1, 2012 06:35
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Thinky Whale posted:
Seriously funny. Thanks for writing this.
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Sep 2, 2012 13:24
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Unfit For Space posted:I got out an audiobook version of Aces High from the library yesterday. That sounds beautiful and amazing. Please do upload some if you can. JediTalentAgent posted:I could almost imagine them doing a sort of human-level story about maybe a few people dealing with the outbreak the first season to keep costs down: Most of the stuff we see of Jokers comes from news footage, newspaper photos, etc. Hide a lot of low-quality effects behind static, blurs and grain. We'll get glimpses of Jokers and Aces in the background, out of focus, too. That could work. Could make for some interesting stories, too, if they have to focus on the social stuff. kcroy posted:Seriously funny. Thanks for writing this. Thanks! I'm almost done with Puppetman's chapter, and it is astoundingly hosed up 
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Sep 3, 2012 00:09
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I can't really remember, but how many people died in the NYC area as a result of the initial virus release given that 90% of the infected died?
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Sep 3, 2012 04:13
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I don't know if it says a number straight out. According to the wiki, including people dying from riots and the general chaos, after a month there were 20,000 dead.
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Sep 3, 2012 04:50
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Interlude: Fear and Loathing in Jokertown Doing your universe's version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a cool idea until you realize that, like Elvis, Hunter S. Thompson has such a distinctive voice that almost all attempts to imitate it are going to overdo it and end up cartoony. It doesn't help that this is where we get into the grimdark Jokertown as Hellhole of Hellholes stuff, or, as it's described here, "the rear end in a top hat of America." quote:It's like wandering through a Nazi death camp during a bad trip; you don't understand half of what you see, but it scares the piss out of you just the same. "I AM HUNTER S. THOMPSONING AS HARD AS I CAN." Croyd climbs through his window and has "a complexion like Count Dracula, and a snout on him like the Big Bad Wolf." He asks for speed, which I like, because if you're a spider-armed wolf-monster who needs some drugs, Hunter S. Thompson is the right place to go. He talks about the Jokers' Anti-Defamation League (though on second glance, here it's "Jockers'"), which is run by a guy named Xavier Desmond who has a kind of elephant trunk. He gives it a bunch of crap because "if they were blacks they'd be Uncle Toms, but the jokers haven't come up with a name for them yet...but they will, you can bet your mask on that." Desmond gives a speech and some of the crows watching has "eyes as ugly as their deformities." quote:It's a mean young bunch out there, and a lot of them are wearing gang colors, with names like DEMOND PRINCES & KILLER GEEKS & WEREWOLVES ... suddenly Desmond just shuts up, right i the middle of a boring declaration about how aces & jokers & nats is all god's chillums under the skin I haven't read too much HST. Was he really this much of a dick? quote:and when I look back over they're throwing peanuts, they're pelting him with salted peanuts still in the shell ... and Desmond is just standing there gaping. He's supposed to be the voice of these people, he read it in the Daily News and the Jokertown Cry, and the sorry old fucker doesn't have the least little turd of an idea of what's going down... (most of the ellipses are mine where I cut bits out) There's the introduction of the Jokers for a Just Society, which is like the JADL except crazy and violent. A couple interesting points are brought up, like a girl "with a face like a bag of smashed assholes" saying she's not going to wear a mask like a lot of jokers do, because this is what she lives with, why should she go out of her way to spare anybody's delicate sensibilities? Then he and Croyd go looking for "a half-black all-ace pimp who's supposed to have the sweetest girls in the city," but thank god they don't find him any Croyd ends up getting all paranoid and throwing HST through a window. Oh, and the cops show up, and Croyd climbs up a building and pees on them all. So there's that.  Puppetman aka Gregg Hartmann Strings by Stephen Leigh    HERE BE SOME SICK poo poo. IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO READ ABOUT RAPE AND CHILD PROSTITUTION, SCROLL DOWN TO YEOMAN Thus marking the first time in history in which, to avoid explicit content, you are advised to skip to the guy in the gimp mask. Puppetman has an interesting power with some well-defined limits. He can psychically control people, but he has to physically touch them once to establish the contact, and he can only enhance or tamp down emotions that are already there. As a politician, he makes very good use out of this. Unfortunately, Wild Cards is morally opposed to going anywhere that isn't over the top. Instead of appearing to be a good guy while amorally using his powers to twist everything to his advantage, he has to appear to be a good guy while secretly being a crazy murder rape monster. Here we go. quote:The death of Andrea Whitman was entirely Puppetman's doing. Okay, not a bad start. quote:Without his powers, the sullen lust that a retarded boy of fourteen felt for a younger neighbor girl would never have been fired into a molten white fury. BAD START! BAD START! I'm going to go ahead and not quote the rest of this page. Suffice to say Puppetman used his powers to make the boy do it because he'd said he liked her and she laughed at him, there is rape and murder, and there is detail. We skip to years later, when Hartmann is at the Aces High restaurant meeting with the leader of the Joker Black Panthers. We learn that he's one of the few people in the government not a total dillhole about wild card people. There's a convention going on, and he's trying to get the Democrats to come out in support of people with glowing butts and dogfaces, which, as conventions go, is still less bizarre than Clint Eastwood arguing with the furniture. The two people there representing the crazy radical Jokers for a Just Society are an old lady named Sondra and a dwarf named Tom Miller who calls himself Gimli, which indicates he's the burly bearded Tolkien sort of dwarf instead of the realistic Tyrion Lannister kind of dwarf, though oddly enough GRRM doing that Hunter S. Thompson impersonation described him as not having too bad a draw because dwarves were around for a long time before the wild card, so who knows. Though he gets to make a couple good points, he is an angry rear end in a top hat and at no point contributes his axe to anything. Gregg comes to meet them, and we get the first inklings of the worst subplot. quote:Sondra understood how she had come to love this man. It's not you who loves him, it's only Succubus. She's the one Gregg knows. To him, you're just an old, shriveled woman whose politics are in question. He'll never know that Succubus is the same person, not if you want to keep him. All he'll ever see is the fantasy Succubus makes for him. That's what Miller said we have to do, and you'll obey him, won't you? It reminds me a lot of that part in Stranger in a Strange Land where Character Who Is Pretty Much Just Robert Heinlein goes on about the terrible tragedy of women getting old, because ever moment they must bear the agony of not being hot anymore. While she could have a perfectly good reason to hate her old body, like that being this superwhore has sucked her life away and now she hurts and ends up with very little life of her own, it's pretty much stated that what she really hates is that she isn't pretty and if Hartmann sees the real her he'll be grossed out. But that and the honeytrap who falls for her victim cliche are small potatoes in the long run. The dinner's tense, with Hartmann being calm and polite while Gimli is an rear end in a top hat. One nice touch is not getting these scenes from Hartmann's point of view, so you can imagine how he's quietly controlling things without being told straight out. Gimli wants to have a big joker march to Jetboy's Tomb, Hartmann says he shouldn't because there'll be a big conflict with the police. Eventually Gimli flips out and Hiram restrains him by doing his gravity power thing, and they get thrown out. Then Sondra goes home and thinks, and after some more woe about how her "breasts were empty sacks hanging flat against the bone ribcage," she looks at a picture on the wall, and this is where things get horrible. quote:The picture was that of a young girl perhaps twelve years old, dressed only in a lacy camisole that slipped over one shoulder to reveal the upper swell of pubescent breasts. The shot was overtly sexual-- there was a haunting wistfulness in the child's expression and a certain affinity to the eroded features of the old woman. Hey, you know what's a phrase that when you write it, you should sit down and think for a very long time about whether this is a good idea? Pubescent breasts.  quote:Twenty years. In that time, Sonya's[yeah, her name changes for a sec there] body had aged two-and-a-half times as much. the child in the photo was Sondra, the picture taken by her father in 1956. He'd raped her a year before[quote] (HERE IS THE WORST PART) quote:though she'd been born five years earlier in '51.  Ahhhhhh why why why would you write this why would you think this is a good idea what could you be loving thinking to think "Oh, a five year old getting sexually abused because of her sex magic, that is just the source of pathos this superhero story needs!" what the gently caress is wrong with you  Then we go straight into tonight's encounter! There's no space between these lines. The writer really thought it was fine to go straight from that into a sex scene. I'm not sure what the etiquette here is for this, I'm not sure if there is an etiquette for this, so I'll put stuff behind spoiler tags to be safe. quote:Careful footsteps sounded on the stairway outside her apartment and halted. Sondra frowned. Time to whore again. drat you, Sondra, for ever letting Miller talk you into this. drat you for ever coming to care for the man you're supposed to be using. Even through the door she could feel the faint prickling of the man's pheromonal anticipation, amplified by her own feelings for him. She felt her body yearning to respond sympathetically and she relaxed her control. She closed her eyes. I said it before but it bears repeating: Also, nipples do not work that way!  I'll spare you the rest of the sex scene, except a couple more choice horrible bits, because gently caress if I am facing this alone. quote:"Gregg," she said, and the voice was that of the child she had become. "I was afraid you weren't going to be able to be here tonight." quote:"Succubus," he breathed. She chuckled softly, a child's giggle. So yeah, his ideal lover is explicitly childlike. You'd think if you were trying to avoid falling in love with somebody, them being a pedophile would go ahead and do the job for you. One interesting thing in this pile of horrible is that during the whole Succubus thing, Sondra thinks of things in very similar ways to how Hartmann does later when we get his POV, like thinking of emotions in terms of colors, and thinking of Succubus as a separate personality from her, like Hartmann does with Puppetman. This is either a clever hint that that psychic connection that lets her know what he wants in bed (  ) also connects her subtly to her powers, or just that the writer can only think of one way of describing things. Afterwards, the creepy's not over: quote:This was the part of it that Sondra despised, the part that reminded her of the years when her parents had sold her body to the rich of New York. She's been Succubus, the best-known and most expensive prostitute in the city from '56 to '64. Nobody had know that she was only five when it started,  quote:that a joker had been attached to the ace she'd drawn from the wild card deck. No, they'd only cared that as Succubus, she would become the object of their fantasies--male or female, young or old, submissive or dominant. Any body or any shape: a Pygmalion of masturbatory dreams.  Pygmalion was the sculptor! The statue was Galatea! Or maybe they were really thinking of Proteus but couldn't quite get there.quote:A vessel. No one knew or cared that Succubus would inevitably collapse into Sondra, that her body aged far too rapidly, that Sondra hated Succubus. You know, if you got creative, you could use this power to do a bunch of things, just by having some accomplices around to look at you and think about what they find hot. Best thief in the world, never the same face twice! If you want to get into some place with heavy security, find somebody who has a rush on somebody who belongs there and walk right in! Find some freaky furry who digs giant dragons and then do whatever the gently caress you want! Infinite possibilities, as long as there's somebody near you with a boner! Anyway, the jokers' rights thing gets voted down and all the jokers try to march on Jetboy's Tomb, but the cops are dicks and block them and there's a riot where a couple people die. I am not entirely sure why they don't just let them go and hang around the Monument to Captain Boring, but whatever, that kind of bad decision is realistic enough. Puppetman has a couple paragraphs about how much he loves Jokertown: quote:There was all the hatred and anger and sorrow that he could ever wish to see, there were minds twisted and sickened by the virus, there were emotions already ripened and waiting to be shaped by his intrusions. The narrow streets, the shadowed alleys, the decaying buildings swarming with the deformed, the innumerable bars and clubs catering to all manner of warped, vile tastes Maybe I'm taking this all too seriously, but as I see it Wild Cards squanders a lot of potential with the idea of jokers because it can't handle not doing anything 100% full-tilt 90s-comic grimdark. I'd be fascinated by, say, a story about jokers eking out progress, identity, and a place in society, facing the difficulties and prejudices that come with having a blowfish for a face. But the possibility for stories is hamstrung because Jokertown has to be the pit the devil shits in, every single one of them must be miserable and self-loathing, every single nat must be unwilling to piss on them if they are on fire. If it has to stay 100% horrible permanently, there's no place for a narrative to go. As boring as unrealistic as it would be if it were total sunshine and roses, everybody is nice to the blobmonsters and we all get along, it is just as boring and unrealistic to say that only hate and misery is possible. It's that sort of childish thinking that if dark is realistic, darker must be more realistic. It's the same genre problem of mistaking rape and violence for maturity. End soapboxing. quote:Puppetman could not force any of his puppets to do anything that went against their will; his power was not that strong. No, he needed a seed already planted in the mind: a tendency toward violence, a hatred, a lust-- then he could place his mental hand on that emotion and nurture it, until the passion shattered all controls and surged out. They were bright and red-hued, those feelings. Puppetman could see them; even as he fed on them; even as he took them into his own head and felt the slow building of a heat that was sexual in intensity; as the pounding, shimmering flare of orgasm came while the puppet raped or killed or maimed. So yeah. That's Puppetman's thing. The jokers try marching, then Hartmann talks Gimli into holding off for a day. They go back to Roosevelt Park and hang out and have a kind of joker picnic, which is pretty awesome. But around nightfall everything's lovely again and then they have the real riot. The other one was just riot rehearsal. It's a big one, fighting everywhere, stuff on fire, people getting shot. There's a cameo from the Turtle, who's going around telekinetically shoving rioters and police away from each other. Mostly it's chaos. Sondra hides in her apartment. Gregg shows up and she starts going all Succubus cause he's turned on. Then...oh, god, this is hosed up. quote:Gregg was masked, his entire head covered with a grotesque smiling clown's face. It leered at her as he pushed his way inside. He said nothing; his hands were already unzipping his pants, pulling out his stiffening cock. He did not bother to undress, engaged in no foreplay at all. He pushed her down onto the hardwood floor and jammed himself into her, thrusting with gasping breaths as Succubus moved under him, matching his ferocity and cooperating with this loveless rape. He was brutal: his fingers dug into her small, firm breasts, the nails tearing small, bleeding crescents of skin. He crushed her nipples between thumb and forefinger until she cried out--he desired pain from her tonight; he needed her to cringe and cry and yet be the willing victim. He slapped her face; when she brought her hands up to stop him from doing it again, her nostrils drooling blood, he twisted her wrist viciously. why would you write this So...this all makes her more psychically connected to him for a second, and she sees that he's totally getting off on the riot and feeling "a sense of proprietary accomplishment." She's okay with this I guess? The next day the riot's organized a little and Gregg goes to check it out. He's got some tenuous control; he shook the hands of a lot of joker leaders, so he can manipulate them. He's got them all riled up, and now if he can publicly be the one to talk them down and turn them back, he'll be a hero and get the presidential nomination. It's a pretty clever plan! While the jokers are marching, Sondra tries to tell Gimli about Hartmann. quote:"He thought he was controlling all of this. I swear it, Gimli." "I don't have any hard feelings towards the psycho rapeclown." Gimli's a busy dwarf, he's got an unruly mob to handle, and was pretty much the worst one to tell anyway. They're all walking slowly toward a ring of national guard. Then they hit the line and poo poo goes down. As poo poo in the process of going down, Sondra tries to get out, but somebody hits her in the head with a club. With the head injury, she starts losing control of Succubus's power. quote:Desperately, Sondra tried to place the controls back on Succubus, but her head rang with the concussion and she could not think. Her body was in torment, shifting fluidly in response to everyone about her. Succubus touched each of the minds and took the shape of its sexual desires. She was first female, then male; young and old, thin and fat. Succubus wailed in confusion. Sondra ran, her shape altering with each step, pushing against the hands that reached out for her in sudden odd lust. Succubus responded as she had to; she took the thread of desire and wove it into passion. In an ever-widening circle, the rioting ended as jokers and Guardsmen alike turned to pursue the quick tug of desire. Succubus could feel him as well, and she tried to make her way toward Gregg. She didn't know what else to do. He controlled this; she knew that from last night. He could save her. He loved her--he had said so. I'd say something about how books like this always consider "I love you" to be a magic switch that makes women's brains stop working, but when you're caught between psycho rapemob and psycho rapeclown, what are you gonna do? Meanwhile, Hartmann's getting up and calling to Gimli, and using him power to calm down his anger and make him scared of what's going on. He's just getting control when he sees Succubus and...yeah, gory and , so more spoiler tags.quote:Someone caught her from behind. Succubus twisted away, but other hands had her now. With a shrill scream, she fell. Gregg could see nothing of her then. There were bodies all around her; shoving, striking each other in their fury to be near her. Gregg heard the grotesque, dry crack of bones snapping. "No!" Gregg began to run. Gimli was forgotten, the riot was forgotten. As he came nearer to her, he could sense her presence, could feel the pull of her attraction. Yeah. His deepest desire is the girl that he had raped and murdered when he was eleven. quote:she had been his. She had been his without having to be a puppet, and they had taken her from him. They had mocked him; as Andrea had mocked him years ago, as others had mocked him who had also died. He had loved her as much as he could love anyone. Gregg grasped the shoulder of a Guardsman who stood over the body, his cock hanging down from unzipped pants. Gregg jerked him around. "You rear end in a top hat!" As he shouted he struck the man in the face repeatedly. "You goddamn rear end in a top hat!" He flips out, and with Puppetman's power, everybody else flips out too. In the end, Jimmy Carter gets the nomination, and we are all left wondering what the gently caress is wrong with you.\  Brennan, aka Yeoman Comes a Hunter by John J. Miller There's a quick interlude with quotes from people around the world regarding aces and jokers, which is a neat thing that I wish they'd had more of in following volumes. I especially like, quote:"Is it my fault that everyone likes me, and no one likes you?" -David Harstein (to Richard Nixon) Then we get to Yeoman's story. A funny thing about Wild Cards is everybody has their pet hates. Mine are Fortunato and Yeoman, but you know, compared to that last parade of horrors, his blandness now strikes me as wholesome and endearing. Actually, I'll get to him in the next post. This got a lot longer than I expected and I could use a couple dozen showers again. Next up: Yeoman, really, and the end of the book. Edit: Oh my god, you guys, the riddle Yeoman's zen master challenged him with is honest to god "what is the sound of one hand clapping" Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Sep 3, 2012 05:35
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Thinky Whale posted:Edit: Oh my god, you guys, the riddle Yeoman's zen master challenged him with is honest to god "what is the sound of one hand clapping" And his answer to it is the best you will ever hear. Meanwhile, why are you complaining about the level of dubious poo poo in a story that is explicitly about a psychopathic sexual sadist? Though not a paedophile - Hartmann isn't into children. Succubus-as-Andrea looks like a child only because the real Andrea never grew up and that's how Hartmann remembers her. You see that a lot in psychopaths; they choose their victims based on resemblance to their first victim. In Hartmann's case he has Succubus, who is the perfect target for his obsession because she can look exactly like Andrea Whitman and she won't say no.
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Sep 3, 2012 08:35
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Well, thanks for that. I had COMPLETELY glossed over all that poo poo in my mind. Allow me to present the supposed author's thoughts? quote:Politician with a literal dark side, but how can we make him more evil? Subtle psychological manipulation, the readers might miss that, so let's just tick off every single sociological taboo and cram them all into one guy. And to make sure the point is hammered home, I'll advance pages and pages of pedo rape prose. People are just going to hate this guy! It's going to be a masterpiece! He's and evil and hosed up psychopath with zero redeeming qualities. We get it. Every taboo box was checked. I'm surprised he doesn't also drink a delicious slurry of mashed kittens and babies for breakfast. But in your haste slash ineptitude you've also made him into a caricature, which puts an altogether more horrible slant to this entire story. Because Hartmann was made so effectively one dimensional and transparent, the addition of such graphic scenes into your story is 100% completely wasted. Scenes, which could have crafted depth and subtlety and meaning were rendered pointless by your own ineptitude. Instead of the reader's emotions being impressed onto your character in the story, the scenes are instead used as a window into your own soul. The only thing worse than going back and reading that would be listening to the story in the audiobook mentioned few posts up. I'll be avoiding that one. Edit: added more thoughts. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Sep 3, 2012 |
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Sep 3, 2012 20:24
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The worst thing about Hartmann is that he has a redemption arc later in the series.
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Sep 3, 2012 20:50
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Bhodi posted:Well, thanks for that. I had COMPLETELY glossed over all that poo poo in my mind. Before accusing Stephen Leigh of ineptitude, you really need to read Hope We Die Before We Get Old in the most recent volume, Fort Freak. It deals with what happens when one of the three personalities in the Oddity develops Alzheimer's, and is one of the best stories in the entire canon. Thinky Whale - sorry if I seem to be barging in on your party, but do you think it would be a good idea if the two of us took alternate books throughout the series? It would give you more time to read up, and it'd be interesting to interweave the concurrent plots of Ace In The Hole and Dead Man's Hand if we got that far.
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Sep 3, 2012 23:59
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Jedit posted:Meanwhile, why are you complaining about the level of dubious poo poo in a story that is explicitly about a psychopathic sexual sadist? I don't see anything weird about being horrified by a story about child rape. The real problem is that Wild Cards authors have a very hard time with the concept of restraint. They tend to turn things up to eleven whenever possible. That Oddity story sounds interesting. I like the concept, and the Oddity one in One-Eyed Jacks was pretty good. I don't wanna get too complex about planning this - might as well just start out with Deuces like you were saying before, while I gear up for #2. Could have them going at the same time, even. The obscure RPG thread has a bunch of different people covering different things at once and it seems to work out all right. I'll make an index in the OP if there's enough to warrant it.
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Sep 4, 2012 01:05
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 Brennan, aka Yeoman Comes a Hunter by John J. Miller A while back somebody mentioned that Brennan seems like he got lost on the way to a men's adventure novel from the 40s and decided he might as well stick around, and it's really true. A whole lot of Wild Cards is pretty obviously initially meant to be something else and then had a couple things replaced so it'd fit. In the Afterword to Aces High, the second book, GRRM talks about how Howard Waldrop had been talking about doing a story about this Jetboy guy for ages, and he talked him into putting it into the Wild Cards world, so the reason it feels like a whole bunch of it has nothing to do with anything is that it doesn't. I would not be surprised at all if Yeoman was meant for some generic crime-fighting story, and then JJM just found/replaced a couple things. Look at that pic and tell me it doesn't belong next to Weasels Ripped My Flesh. Brennan's kind of endearing just because of how ridiculously dull he is. It's like that Man vs. Wild game, where it's so boring it wraps right back around to hilarious, especially because of how obviously the Wild Cards stuff is stapled on to what is at heart every eighties action movie ever. He doesn't have a power, and balances that out by not having a personality. The thing he uses to shoot arrows really fast is Zen, because that was the only book left in the Mystical Asia Bullshit section of the library after Lewis Shiner checked out all the ones about dicks. It starts with a quote: quote:"If you wish to find the unclouded truth, do not concern yourself with right and wrong." This is a real quote from a real thing! That is a pretty low bar, but kudos on passing it. We start out with him riding a bus. gently caress YEAH. He is going from nature to the city and cities suck. Now, for Brennan himself, take a minute to think of a generic hero guy and see if this is not exactly what you come up with. quote:Not that there was anything about him to cause someone to glance twice. I love that the narrative pretty much shrugs and says "Yeah, he's pretty dull-looking." In this sort of thing that's always intended to contrast with the inner totally rockin badass, (and also because describing somebody as something other than average-looking requires  ) but here is great because the secret badass side is as exciting as a tax accountant.quote:He merged into the flow of the foot traffic, allowing it to take him into an area of Manhattan that was only slightly less seedy than some of the more polite parts of Jokertown. "Its seediness quotient equaled half of that of Jokertown after tripling and subtracting ten. Show your work." He goes to the shittiest hotel he can find and thinks about a letter he got from an old friend named Minh. The letter warns that "he" is here, and that Brennan should come to Minh's restaurant. It isn't signed, but Brennan recognizes the handwriting as being from a guy who'd helped him hide when he came back to the US three years ago. What's he been doing since then? Where did he come from just now? I don't know and I already stopped caring. By the scare chord that went with the word, Brennan knows that "he" means somebody named Kien who is evil, apparently. quote:He closed his eyes and saw a face: masculine, lean, predatory. He tried to make it vanish. He tried to blank it from his mind by conjuring from the depths of his consciousness the sound of one hand clapping. He tried, but failed. The face smiled, mocking him. It began to laugh. Well poo poo, son. If the zen koan from the miniature golf episode of the Simpsons doesn't help, I don't know what to tell you. (Note: If you're on your way to tell me that that episode came out in 1990 and this is from 1986, this is a cosmic sign that you should chill.) Then he hangs out until nightfall. Oh, wait, now we're told that Brennan has spent the last three years "in the mountains." That confirms that I don't care, then. He goes to the restaurant but it's closed and some generic punk guys are hanging out in front. He gets nervous. quote:He ran through a series of breathing exercises that had been Ishida's first lesson to him when he had decided to give direction to his life by studying the Way. Apprehension, fear, nervousness, hatred-- these would do him no good. He needed the ineffable calmness of an unbroken, unclouded mountain pool. I like to think Ishida is just some guy who decided to gently caress with him, like the guy teaching Kyle the blues in Party Down. quote:Kien was still alive. Of that he never had a doubt. Kien was a cunning and ruthless survivor to whom the fall of Saigon was merely an inconvenience. It would have taken him some time, but Brennan knew that he must have built a network of agents as potent and relentless as his network in Vietnam. These agents, given the few days that it took the letter to be written, delivered, and acted upon, could have tracked Minh down. (By also knowing his handwriting and where "the restaurant" is. Astounding, the competence of offscreen goons.) You don't know that! Maybe he gave up ill-defined crime and went into real estate! You can't pigeonhole people, man. He goes to an alley behind the restaurant and opens up his briefcase thing. quote:He set his case down and flicked open its latches. He could barely see in the gloom, but he needed no light at all to assemble what lay inside. He snapped on and dogged down the limbs, upper and lower, to the central grip, and with sure, practiced strength slipped the string over the lower tip, stepped through, set the tip of the lower limb against his foot, bent the upper limb against the back of his thigh, and slipped the string over its tip. "I looked up how to do this and by god you are going to hear it." quote:He held a recurved bow, forty-two inches long, made of layers of fiberglass laminated around a yew core. Brennan knew it was a good bow. He had made it himself. "He did this in between recaning a rocking chair and building a front deck out of timber he hewed with an axe he also made himself, because he is a man." quote:It pulled at sixty pounds, powerful enough to bring down a deer, bear, or man. "Or the most dangerous game of all - Deerbear Man." He goes inside and finds some bad guys holding all the waiters and customers hostage while other bad guys beat the crap out of his friend. He is able to do this because it did not occur to the bad guys to lock the door. Oh hey, some backstory. quote:Kien had recognized Minh and ordered him hunted down. Minh was one of the few people in America who could identify Kien, who knew that he had methodically and ruthlessly used his position as an ARVN general to betray his country, his men, and his American allies. Brennan, of course, also knew Kien for what he was. He also knew that whatever place Kien had made for himself in America, those in authority would respect, listen to, and probably even fear him. "It was convenient that he knew this, as otherwise the author would have to do stuff." quote:Brennan, on the other hand, since he had walked away from the Army in disgust during the debacle of the Fall of Saigon, was an outlaw. No one in authority knew that he was back in the States, and he wanted to keep it that way. What do you know. I was right about not caring. quote:He reached into his back pocket, withdrew a hood, and slipped it on, covering his features from his upper lip to the top of his head. Good thing, too. "That philtrum! I'd know it anywhere!" Also he's got some hella big back pockets. quote:He rose silently to his feet and stepped through the door, sank down on one knee behind a table and drew his first shaft. Heh heh heh. You said 'shaft.' Look, I'm taking what I can get, here. quote:The quiet, assured words of Ishida, his roshi,  quote:filled his mind like the somnolent tolling of a great bell. "No, seriously you guys, grow a long beard and do the Mystical Asian voice and they will eat up any bullshit you come up with, it's hilarious. White people." Brennan shoots a second arrow before the first hits. Read enough fortune cookies and physics ain't even a thing. quote:The first arrow hit while he was shifting his aim to take in the third target. They realized they were being attacked by the time the second arrow had struck and the fourth was released. By then it was too late. "If a fifth arrow hits the third Asian mob guy before a train leaves Cleveland traveling at 70 miles per hour, you will conclude this is the dumbest word problem ever." quote:The shaft struck him in the back, high on the left side. It skewered his heart, sliced through one lung, and burst out half a foot from his chest. The impact hurled him forward, astonished, into the arms of a waiter. They both stared at the bloody aluminum shaft protruding from his chest. ... The last, the one who had been questioning Minh, whirled around and was struck in the side. The arrow angled upward, slipped between his ribs, pierced his heart, and punched upward through his right shoulder. Violence can be made boring by being weirdly specific. quote:Nine seconds had elapsed. I'm...glad you were counting? quote:The sudden silence was broken only by the pained weeping of the man nailed to the wall. Well now I just feel bad for that guy. I hope you feel like a heel, Brennan. quote:Brennan took no pleasure in their deaths, as he took no pleasure in killing deer to provide meat for his table. It was just something that had to be done. Neither did he waste his pity on them. Feeling things is for ladies and the gays. Just for once I'd like to see one of those eighties action movies where a guy mows through a horde of bad guys and then feels bad about it. Brennan finishes off the crying pinned guy by walking up and slashing his throat with an arrowhead, in order to be certain you notice he's manly. Then he goes and talks to his beat-up friend.  Brennan...what are you...doing here? Saving you. No, I mean, what was the point of waiting for nightfall? This whole fight took place indoors. If you'd come straight here, you might've arrived pre- me getting tortured. Nightfall is important. For that matter, how did you manage to get here exactly at the same time as the bad guys were invading the restaurant? "They might have traced the letter at some point" is pretty drat non-specific. They could've come here yesterday or two weeks from now. Hell, if they're so smart, how do you know they wouldn't've gone where I live? Sometimes stuff works out. Sometimes it doesn't. It is the will of the cosmos, before which we are all as reeds between the lips of a fish in the wind. If happening to drop by while they're here wasn't enough, somehow arriving at the moment when they've beat the crap out of me enough to kill me but not enough that I can't gasp out a few dramatic last words first is a heck of a coincidence. Shut up and say some cryptic stuff to move the plot along and then die in my arms.quote:"You must listen. Scar has kidnapped Mai." *taking notes* The guy from Fullmetal Alchemist or the cartoon lion?quote:"I was following him, trying to get a lead to where he had taken Mai, when I saw him and Kien together in the back of a limousine. Go to Chrysalis, Crystal Palace. She might know where he's taken her. I couldn't...find...out." His last sentence was interrupted by bloody fits of coughing. All we need to reach the singularity of action movie cliches is for Mai to be Harrison Ford's wife. quote:"Why did they take her?" Brennan asked gently. Oh, poo poo, right, this is supposed to have crazy superpowers in it or something. Brennan's old friend dies and he acknowledges that that kind of sucks. The restaurant staff and customers have been awkwardly hanging around all this time, and they are kinda freaked out by crazy arrow-shooty bondage mask man, for which I cannot fault them. What do you say to the terrorized innocents in the wake of this carnage? quote:"I need a pen," [Brennan] said. As I said, I'm working around to loving this guy. He decides to leave: quote:The police would only ask awkward questions [like "who murdered all these guys?"]. Like his name. There were plenty of people who would like to know that Daniel Brennan was still alive and back in the United States. Kien only one among them. ... He scrawled a message next to the man nailed to the wall by his arrow. It said: "I'm coming for you, Kien." He stopped before signing it. His name wouldn't do. It would take the fear of the unknown from his attacks and give Kien, his agents, and his government contacts too concrete a clue to follow. "I must leave before the police arrive, for they may want to know my name, and that must be a closely guarded secret. Perhaps I should not write it on the goddamn wall." quote:The code name of his last mission in Vietnam, when Kien had betrayed him and his unit into the hands of the North Vietnamese, had been Operation Yeoman. Oh. I guess that's why he's mad at Kien.  But see, the problem with holding back parts of backstory is you have to keep enough back to keep from infodumping and keep the reader curious, but you have to also ensure that the secret is interesting enough that I give a poo poo.Hey, you know what might be interesting? A story about a Vietnam vet coming back to an America full of weird monster things, maybe one who'd been around that Joker Brigade thing, maybe something about vets finding commonality with jokers as fellow outsiders. What about people who come back with missing limbs? How do they interact with a guy whose head is on backwards now? Do they sort of get lumped in together? Would they resent that, or use it as a way to get jokers covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act? Never mind, we're still talking about Brennan doodling on the wall. He has chosen the name Yeoman, which is hilarious because it is a hero alias that is somehow even duller than his real name. He declares it "also an appropriate name in a grimly ironic way," I like to think not because of the yeoman archer connection but because he is secretly a 17th century peasant landowner. In a "burst of final inspiration" he draws an ace of spades, "the Vietnamese symbol of death and ill-fortune." According to the great arbiter of knowledge, Wikipedia, this isn't actually true, but something that a bunch of Americans in Vietnam believed for some reason, so they scattered the cards around as history's only melding of psychological warfare and 52 pickup. Seeing this, the Vietnamese employees in the restaurant mutter to themselves in what is either fear and unease or "for gently caress's sake, white people." The guy Brennan borrowed the pen from is like, "Yeeeaaah, you keep it." You know what else would be interesting? A story from the view of one of these guys, who's waiting tables and trying to make ends meet and then some rear end in a top hat comes in and beats the crap out of his boss, and then some other rear end in a top hat barges in, shoots people up with arrows, and starts doodling ominous stuff with a sharpie. I always wonder how these things look to the guys who only get one piece of the story and then get on with their lives. I think Astro City had a couple cool stories about things like that. Astro City's great. Most of the entertainment in Yeoman stories comes from all the ideas he gives you for things you'd rather be reading about than Yeoman. In accordance with pulp novel cliche, the next stop is INSERT BAR WHERE INFORMANT IS HERE. In this case this is about where he got the call with the premise of the series, so it's the Crystal Palace in Jokertown. There are a couple of atmospheric touches that are nice, like a singer with two heads onstage doing harmony with himself. He sits down, and the guy on the next stool happens to be Gimli. quote:He was a dwarf, about four feet tall and four feet wide. His neck was as tall as a can of tuna fish and as thick as a man's thigh. That's...one way to describe that, I guess. Gimli says hi and seems a lot calmer than we saw him last, but he's only around for a couple paragraphs and then Brennan goes over to Chrysalis, but before any description of her we see that she's with - oh christ. quote:A woman sat at a corner table with a slim, light-skinned black man who was wearing a red kimono splashed with yellow dragons and embroidered with what Brennan took to be mystical formulae. He was handsome, but for the bulging forehead that marred his profile. Why yes, it's Fortunato! Hi, guy we last saw raping a corpse! Fancy meeting you...anywhere. I like that his clothes are tacky enough that Brennan notices him before the lady with seethrough skin. quote:She wore pants that clung to her lithe figure and a sheathlike wrap that gathered over her right shoulder, leaving half her chest naked. Her skin was completely invisible, exposing vague, shadowy muscles and the organs that labored underneath them. Brennan could see blood pulsing in the network of veins and arteries that ran through her flesh, could see her ghostly, semitransparent muscles shift and glide at her slightest movement, could even see, faintly, the beating of her heart within the cage of her ribs and fluttering of her lungs as they labored evenly and unceasingly. Hey, a woman who has a cool look and gets a whole paragraph of description without anything egregiously stupid! Doing pretty good! quote:Her exposed breasts[sic] was totally invisible, save for its fine network of interlacing blood vessels and its large, dark nipple. Oh. Right. Semi-invisible titty. Wild Caaaaaarrrrdds  Brennan sits down and says hi. Chrysalis introduces Fortunato. quote:There was, Brennan realized, an aura of power about this man. He was an ace, of that Brennan was suddenly sure. He can also tell your credit score from a firm handshake. He and Fortunato look deep into each other's eyes and have an impromptu Mary Sue-off. Fortunato tries to read his mind but is foiled by the fact there's nothing in there. quote:He took a deep breath, held it, and let all thought drain from his mind. He was back in Japan again, facing Ishida, trying to answer the riddle the roshi has posed him when he had first sought entry to the monastery. "How do tenses work?" quote:"A sound is heard when both hands are clapped. What is the sound of one hand clapping?" "No, the point is-- seriously, haven't you-- oh, just come in before the neighbors see you." quote:He called upon that training now. He entered deeply into zazen, the state of meditation where he emptied himself of all thought, feeling, emotion, and expression. A timeless time passed and, as if from a long distance away, he heard Fortunato mutter, "Extraordinary," and he brought himself back. Then Fortunato leaves because there wasn't much reason for him to be there besides to remind you that in this world a sorcerer-pimp with a forehead full of magic sperm exists. Madame Exposition gets down to the business of shoving the plot along. She tells us that Kien is Vietnamese and a bad guy who controls the drug market and other crimey crime things and bribes all the cops to leave him along. He owns a bunch of drycleaning places to go with the drugs. Scar's his miniboss. Thinking about the badguyness makes Brennan mad, and the psychic bartender gets feedback from it or something and some guy faints from the backwash of Brennan's manly, stubbly-jaw-clenching rage. quote:"Tell me more about Scar."  ?Hey, you know what would make more sense than that? Him being called Scar because he has a scar.  Also, anything. quote:... Chrysalis shrugged. He watched muscles shift and bones rotate in their sockets. The nipple of her exposed breast bobbed up and down on its pad on invisible flesh. YOU MUST NOT FORGET THE INVISIBLE TITTY. IT IS IMPORTANT. quote:"He supposedly got the idea from an anthropologist from NYU who was studying his street gang, Something about urban tribalism." It makes even less sense that way! An anthropologist studying street gangs is another thing that would be more interesting to read about than Yeoman. quote:"Anyway, he's one mean dude." "Perhaps even to a president-rescuing degree." (Note that we were told two pages ago that she affects a cultured British accent, which I can't imagine lends itself well to talking of mean dudes.) She says he's unbeatable because he can teleport around, and also he's an rear end in a top hat. He likes killing people lots. She asks Brennan if he's an ace and he says nothing, so she reads his powerful beige aura of bland and figures he's not. quote:"You have nothing." Truest thing in this chapter. quote:"You're just a man. A nat. What makes you think you can take Scar?" she repeated. "I'm a loose cannon with nothing to lose. It's all come down to me. They took my badge and now I'm here to take revenge. We're out of time and I work alone. This ends now. This is something I need to do alone. It's time to sign the bottom line...IN BLOOD. I want my family back. Now GET OFF MY PLANE!" Wait. Oh my god. He actually says this. quote:"Besides" --he stopped for a moment and looked back ten years, "this is personal." John J. Miller reaches continual new heights of not even trying. Chrysalis remembers she's not in the exposition business pro bono and tells Brennan he'll have to pay her in an undefined way later if he doesn't die. I'd say it's weirdly dumb of her not to get paid up front, but in this case, that's a win-win. quote:"He has a big place on Castleton Avenue, Staten Island. It's isolated and fenced in and sits on extensive grounds. He likes to hunt. Men." "He also enjoys punching kittens in the face and growing fine, luxurious mustachios in order to twirl them." You know, I may be wrong here, but I get the feeling that if you are abducting and murdering people for fun, no matter how much money you have, sooner or later someone is going to be upset with you. Oh, then because it's been three minutes since something stupid happened, Chrysalis clarifies that she'll give him the address, but the price is banging her. Wild Cards! quote:"If," she said so softly that only she[and the narration, though everywhere else it is limited to Brennan's point of view] heard the words, "you can do the impossible. If you can beat Scar." Brennan goes to Scar's house and thinks about how to get inside. He could either do something sneaky and clever or walk in the front door like a dumbass. quote:It didn't look as if the security would be very difficult to breach, but the mansion was definitely too big to search room by room. Like a dumbass it is. There's a booth where the guard is watching Peregrine's show. We are informed several times that her cleavage is impressive. Brennan says he was sent by "the boss" for the guy we're gonna call Zell because it's marginally less stupid. The guard lets him right in. Well. That was easy. quote:Brennan rammed his palm, hard, in an upward motion against the guard's nose. He felt bone buckle and shatter at the force of his blow. The man convulsed once as splinters of bone knifed through his brain, and then went utterly slack. WHAT THE gently caress, DUDE. He let you in! He was just doing his job! And he wasn't very good at it! Brennan hides the guy he just straightup murdered for no reason in the bushes, and also puts his bow there "regretfully," perhaps regretting that there's no reason for that either. He brings an extra bowstring instead. That's the important part of the bow, right? He goes to the front door and is confronted by a heavily armed scary punk! quote:"Come on in. Scar's got a client. They're with the girl." You have the worst security, Zell. quote:What was going on? Prostitution? Weird sex? In Wild Cards? Yes. On the way he notes that Asian mob boss Zell's garden and house are poorly maintained. That fiend!  quote:The marble parquet floor was filthy, and there were stale odors clogging the air that made Brennan sick. Why bother to have a big fancy house if you're not gonna take care of the upkeep? A drug mansion is a responsibility, people! quote:He was afraid to breathe too deeply, lest he find himself able to identify some of the odors. "My god. I know this urine stench." He has to go through a metal detector. Good thing he thought to get rid of his weapon made of fiberglass and wood. They go in a room that has four other people. quote:One was a tough, identical for all practical purposes to the one who had met Brennan at the door. Then there's some masked blonde lady and also Mai. She is Asian and pretty and looks tired. quote:The last was Scar. He was tall and lean, dressed in tee shirt and black chinos. His face was a nightmare. The patterns tattooed on it in black and scarlet turned it into the leering, bestial face of a demon. His eyes were sunk in black pits, his teeth inset in a scarlet cave. So he's Darth Maul Zell in chinos. quote:"What's your name, man?" he asked in the thick argot of the inner city. "I ain't never seen you before."  HE MEANS HE TALKS LIKE A BLACK PERSONquote:"Archer," Brennan lied easily.  Yes! Now we're talking! They say Mai's going to demonstrate her powers. The lady takes her mask off and turns out to look "for all the world like a Gila monster with long blond hair." Yes! Finally! Lizardpeople is what I am here for! Mai puts her hands on lizardlady's face and they bleed all over her. Mai's face turns into a copy of lizardlady. Then lizardlady's turns normal, and she's really happy, and Mai looks really tired. Nothing is said about Mai's turning back to normal at any point, so she could be spending the rest of this with a lizardface. In fact I have no idea why the step of her transforming is even necessary. So it turns out that Mai's ace power is she can fix jokers. At least she does it with her hands and not her vagina. (There is one later who heals jokers with her vagina.) So the mobsters are having jokers pay lots of money to get healed. Where the guys who are mostly there to be grindingly miserable are getting the cash, who knows. Stop looking for sense here. Brennan is a dumbass and blows his elaborate cover story of being some guy who walked in here because somebody said it was okay. Mai is grabbed by generic thug in the standard female disabling lock, that is a hand on the upper arm, and there's a fight scene. It's boring, so let's list things that would be more interesting to read about than Brennan. quote:Brennan moved. Sharks. The history of Estonia. How a bill becomes a law. quote:He saw a flicker at the edge of his vision and felt sharp pain as Scar chopped down on his wrist, knocking the gun from his grasp ... He reappeared between Brennan an the gun, smiling crazily. Carnivorous plants. The Cuban embargo. Socks. Why you should never talk about yourself in the third person. quote:Scar would cut him to ribbons, laughing, as he tried to reach the gun. He breathed deeply, calming his racing mind, drawing, as Ishida had taught him, into a state of serene tranquility, and he knew what he had to do. Scar slashed his back as he turned, ran, and hurled himself through the French windows in the rear of the room. He burst out of the light onto a dark patio. The difference between "knit" and "purl." Whether or not there is such thing as dog heaven. Those flowers that smell like rotting meat. How many times you tied people to train tracks in Red Dead Redemption. quote:"Hey, nat!" [Scar] called out. "Where are you, man? I tell you what. You give me a good hunt, I'll cut you a few times then finish you fast. You disappoint me, I'll cut your balls off. Even the gook chick won't be able to grow you a new pair." The voyages of Vasco de Gama. Why it tastes so bad to drink orange juice right after brushing your teeth. People with superpowers. quote:And from nowhere, a ghost silent among shadows, Brennan rose from his hiding place, his waxed nylon bowstring wrapped around his fists. He looped the string around Scar's throat from behind, yanked, and twisted. Flesh and gristle crumpled and Scar vanished. ... Brennan watched him flicker crazily among the trees, desperation on his face, teleporting madly, nonsensically. Finally he appeared spewing blood from his mouth, staggered against a tree, dropped his razor, and fell face up. Brennan approached cautiously, but he was dead. So the trick to defeating an unkillable teleporting guy is to be sure he is as smart as a teenager in a slasher movie. Brennan takes his borrowed waiter pen and draws an ace of spades on his hand, then puts his hand over his face "to be sure that Kien wouldn't miss it." quote:He made his way back through the trees silently, like the ghost of a forest animal. Mai was waiting for him on the patio. She didn't seem surprised when it was he who emerged from the trees. She knew him, and what he could do. "Well do I know the power of your pseudozen bullshit magic." He takes Mai home and ruminates over his vendetta with the Kingpin of Boringopolis. quote:Kien had to be brought down. It was up to him, one man, alone, with nothing but the strength of his hands and the cunning of his mind. "So he was fairly hosed." quote:It would take a long time. He needed a base to operate from, and equipment. Special bows, special arrows. "I must construct a Boringcave, and get a least a dozen of those arrows with boxing gloves on them." quote:He drew back into the shadows of the Jokertown night, waiting for a certain type of man to come by, a street merchant who exchanged packets of white powder for green bills crumpled in sweaty desperation. "Black market cake mix dealers were a rare and dangerous breed." This is where the writer starts making painful efforts at being noir. quote:The night stank with the countless scents of seven million people and their myriad hopes, fears, and desperations. He was one of them now. He had left the mountains and returned to humanity and he knew that this return would bring with it disappointment You don't say!  quote:and grief and lost hopes. And comfort, some part of him said, wondering at the warm touch of invisible flesh and the sight of a visible heart beating faster and faster with growing passion. Can't send off Wild Cards without a last touch of freaky sex. So he goes to murder a drug dealer and bang Chrysalis I guess. Thankfully the story ends there, with a promise of lots more Yeoman to come, so look forward to zzzzzzzzzzzzz The moral of the story is, basing your stories around a character whose defining characteristics are stoicism and the ability to make himself indifferent to everything is a terrible, terrible idea. Epilogue The very last part is a bit by Lewis Shiner (bad sign) about a kid in his room reading that Jetboy comic that was mentioned back in the first story. quote:Hidden in the back of another box of comics was the Playboy that had Peregrine in it. Lately, looking at those pictures had made Arnie feel strange, kind of nervous and excited and guilty all the same time. Is there a reason we need to be talking about pubescent sexuality here? quote:Arnie crept quietly back to bed and lay on his stomach, pleasantly aware of the pressure on his groin. One page! One page without being creepy! Can we have that one nice thing, Wild Cards? Arnie likes dinosaurs a lot. Let's talk about that instead! Yep, sure likes dinosaurs. A couple of his family members were around at the wild card outbreak, and his mom has some very weak telekinesis, which he thinks is lame. He thinks about dinosaurs, and we get this wonderfully ridiculous final paragraph: quote:And deep in his brain, inflamed by the rich, yeasty endocrine soup in which it floated, the wild card virus hovered over a cell, paused, then pumped out its alien message and died. And so, on and on it went, spiraling down through the years in a double helix of fear and ecstasy, mutilation and miraculous change... There's an appendix with a couple more excerpts from things about the virus, but they're mostly stuff we already know. Thus concludes the first volume of Wild Cards, full of potential, weirdness, and magic dicks. After taking a break for a bit, I'll start volume two, if there's interest. I thank you for reading and leave you with this promise: The next is worse. Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Sep 9, 2012 03:50
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I found one of these books at the laundromat and was horrified when I started reading it. This is nothing like Game of Thrones. 
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Sep 10, 2012 10:36
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The laundromat is the best possible place to stumble on one of these. Just lying there, waiting for some poor fool to recognize the GRRM name. Then you start and you can't stop because you have to see if the terrible keeps escalating. (It does.) Before I get started on the next, anybody have requests or anything about how to cover it? Things you'd like more of, things you'd like to see less?
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Sep 11, 2012 10:00
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Thinky Whale posted:The laundromat is the best possible place to stumble on one of these. Just lying there, waiting for some poor fool to recognize the GRRM name. Then you start and you can't stop because you have to see if the terrible keeps escalating. More Yeoman and Fortunato, please.
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Sep 11, 2012 12:37
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More of the horrible, horrible poo poo. The people have to know, man.
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Sep 11, 2012 15:47
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Thinky Whale posted:Peregrine's entire raison d'etre is to be hot, and when she's put into focus in Aces Abroad, it's awful in a dozen ways.
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Sep 11, 2012 19:09
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MadScientistWorking posted:Yeah if you actually read the Wild Cards setting book you actually found out that she got her wings because someone decided that Peregrine needed them after looking at a nude drawing that they made of her. You sure about that? Peregrine exists because she was one of the original PCs in George R.R. Martin's Superworld campaign. She was played by Gail Gerstner-Miller, so I don't think there was anything super-skeevy about her creation. I think Peregrine's mostly kind of useless because she was created as a low-powered character by someone who wasn't a professional writer. I've been enjoying people decrying the Wild Cards books in this thread, but most of the skeevy supposedly anti-feminist stuff in Wild Cards comes from female writers. I've been catching up on the books in the series that I've missed since Death Draws Five (which I'm never going to read because I can't get past how hacky the prose is), and all the rapey, women-with-superpowers-that-make-people-want-to-have-sex-with-them stuff I've encountered so far is from female writers. 
Servoret fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Sep 11, 2012 |
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Sep 11, 2012 20:08
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Victorkm posted:More Yeoman and Fortunato, please. whowhatwhere posted:More of the horrible, horrible poo poo. I opened Aces High to a random page near the beginning. quote:"Come to bed." It is safe to say you will both get your wish. MadScientistWorking posted:Yeah if you actually read the Wild Cards setting book you actually found out that she got her wings because someone decided that Peregrine needed them after looking at a nude drawing that they made of her. Did she? That's amazing. Unfit for Space, that picture is double amazing.
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Sep 11, 2012 20:16
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If you still want me to start in on Deuces Down, Thinky, I can put up the first story tomorrow. Two a week after that will give you three weeks.
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Sep 11, 2012 20:24
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Unfit For Space posted:You sure about that? MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Sep 11, 2012 |
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Sep 11, 2012 20:29
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Jedit posted:If you still want me to start in on Deuces Down, Thinky, I can put up the first story tomorrow. Two a week after that will give you three weeks. Sounds good! I'm interested to see a readthrough of one of these books by someone who, well, likes them. Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Sep 11, 2012 |
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Sep 11, 2012 20:39
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I remember picking the first Wild Card's book up one hot summer. It was a pretty interesting read with some interesting stories and some boring ones, but then came Puppetmaster. Put the book away after reading about the white hot fury of the retarded boy's lust. And thank god I did.
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Sep 11, 2012 23:34
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Well, I'd certainly like to see your review of volume 2. This thread actually got me reading some of the Wild Cards stuff I had hidden in storage and it get so so much worse later on. I'm on Jokertown Shuffle now and it just keeps hitting new heights of hosed up. Underage sex goes without saying but how about incredibly disgusting jokers? Sure, here's Bloat! An ace manages to kill someone by remembering a convenient infomercial on scrambling eggs. But wait, where are my terrible metaphors?quote:Exaltation filled him like a gush of semen: I have triumphed! And then there's the part that actually made me say "what the gently caress?" out loud; Blaise switches his grandfather's mind into a teenage girl's body then rapes him repeatedly until he becomes pregnant. Then he rapes him some more. According to Wikipedia there are still a dozen Wild Cards books left, I can't even imagine how they can go further but luckily GRRM et al can.
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Sep 12, 2012 00:47
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I'm surprised people are singling out Peregrine here when she works pretty well in the universe, illustrating the strange celebrity-like status Aces occupy in the world and how they build careers around their powers instead of becoming superheroes. That said, this might come across better if there were more (any?) women in Wild Cards that weren't a) male writers' creepy wank fantasies or b) female writers' creepy Gaia-avatar sexy princess fantasies. I can think of very few who aren't fawned over somehow...and it's mainly Bagabond, Rosemary and C.C. loving Ryder.  Unfit For Space posted:I've been enjoying people decrying the Wild Cards books in this thread, but most of the skeevy supposedly anti-feminist stuff in Wild Cards comes from female writers. This doesn't stop it being skeevy or anti-feminist.
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Sep 12, 2012 15:41
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I don't know...Water Lilly starts out with a pretty raw deal until she grows her magic vagina. Also Captain Trips' female personality whose name I have once again forgotten.
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Sep 13, 2012 02:38
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Moonchild. I remember she's prominent in the second series when he's in South America (?) and starts getting sick from being her so much.
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Sep 13, 2012 03:16
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Bhodi posted:Moonchild. You're thinking of the last book in the first series. Apologies for the delayed post, I've not been in a mood to make it. I'll do it before I start reading the new Terry Pratchett, or I'll never get it done.
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Sep 13, 2012 08:18
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Jedit posted:And his answer to it is the best you will ever hear.
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Sep 13, 2012 23:21
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coyo7e posted:Is.... is the answer, "one pound of rape"?? No, he clenches his fist. The sound of one hand clapping is this guy punching you in the face, which is appropriate from a guy who is literally the Punisher with a bow.
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Sep 13, 2012 23:41
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Jedit posted:No, he clenches his fist. The sound of one hand clapping is this guy punching you in the face, which is appropriate from a guy who is literally the Punisher with a bow.
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Sep 14, 2012 00:13
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coyo7e posted:I dunno, the Punisher was pretty pissed, and had a family and stuff that he lost. This guy just has. Well.. Brennan was in Vietnam, he had a family who were killed by criminals, and he now hunts and kills said criminals. He's also a non-powered character in a world with superpowers. Brennan has a limited mission and a calm emotional centre, but that's the only difference.
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Sep 14, 2012 00:20
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Tagichatn posted:According to Wikipedia there are still a dozen Wild Cards books left, I can't even imagine how they can go further but luckily GRRM et al can. Sorry to disappoint, but Jokertown Shuffle is the nadir of Wild Cards as far as grim and gritty goes. Double Solitaire is a pretty straight sci-fi/fantasy adventure and then Dealer's Choice is probably the closest Wild Cards ever comes to a straight up superhero team-up story. Turn of the Cards is pretty unobjectionable and then after that the series starts over with an author change-up. Something that occurred to me the other day: what would comic books and SF fiction be like in the Wild Cards universe? Usually when they get mentioned it's basically the same as in ours with the occasional inclusion of jokers or Takisians but it's got to be weirder than that. For that matter, what's the place of rationalists like James Randi or Richard Dawkins in a world where the What the Bleep Do We Know quantum hoodoo people are basically right?
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Sep 14, 2012 20:17
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I don't mean to rag too hard on Peregrine. There's stuff I like about her, like how there would definitely be places and careers for powered people that don't involve beating up bad guys, and how she points out that the line between aces and jokers can be really arbitrary. There's a nice bit when somebody asks her what flying is like and she replies with a line about how it's the second-best feeling in the world and you don't have to change the sheets afterward, and whoever she's talking to notes that it sounds like something she's said a million times before, and for a second you can see that the sexy bird girl thing is a schtick with a real person beneath it. But man it is cruel to hang the notion of sweet flying Wolverine claws over the mantle and never use them. quote:For that matter, what's the place of rationalists like James Randi or Richard Dawkins in a world where the What the Bleep Do We Know quantum hoodoo people are basically right? I hadn't thought about that. It would be a huge task to try to deal with what a huge change there would be in society just to know that aliens exist, so it's not a surprise that that gets pushed off to the side. The fascinating frustration with Wild Cards is that it bites off so much, then goes and rapes somebody instead of chewing. Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 11:46 on Sep 16, 2012 |
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Sep 16, 2012 11:26
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Thinky Whale posted:. The fascinating frustration with Wild Cards is that it bites off so much, then goes and rapes somebody ...with the food.
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Sep 16, 2012 18:12
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Unfit For Space posted:You sure about that? Peregrine exists because she was one of the original PCs in George R.R. Martin's Superworld campaign. She was played by Gail Gerstner-Miller, so I don't think there was anything super-skeevy about her creation. I think Peregrine's mostly kind of useless because she was created as a low-powered character by someone who wasn't a professional writer. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Sep 18, 2012 |
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Sep 18, 2012 00:47
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What's the reference on that? That sounds so wrong to me. They drew the character naked and then gave it to his wife to play? And credited her for creating it even though she didn't?
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Sep 18, 2012 01:47
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