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 What is Wild Cards? A book series. An experiment. That other thing George R. R. Martin does because he hates writing anything that will make you happy. A thing it's surprisingly hard to find a good logo for. Back in the eighties, GRRM and some other writers played a tabletop RPG about superheroes and decided to make it into one of those shared world things that were popular around then. It's gone into dormancy a couple times. It was revived again in 2002 and the new version is still running. They tend, roughly, to work in sets of three: two books composed of interconnected short stories, then a third that's a "mosaic novel," where everybody works together to write a (somewhat) coherent story that must be an almighty bitch to coordinate. What are the books about? In the forties, an alien virus got released on Earth. (It was initially supposed to be in the eighties, but Howard Waldrop, the guy writing the first story, wanted it to be set in the forties, so eventually everybody shrugged and said fine. This is the first instance of the characteristic Wild Cardsian ethos of not giving a crap.) The virus is called the wild card, because it comes in several different flavors depending on how much god hates you.  The outbreak looked kind of like this. I like the fat dude sailing gracefully through the air. Fly on, fat dude.  Most people don't contract it all at. They're called nats.  90% of people draw the Black Queen, meaning they get the fancy magic alien mutation that does nothing but make you die horribly.  Of the 9% who don't die, they mutate into horrible monster-things called Jokers. This came form the observation that most natural mutations aren't beneficial, so why should the alien superhero ones always give you superstrength instead of making you grow eyeballs on your foot? These end up being an oppressed minority, because nobody wants to give a job to the guy with eighteen spider legs. This is actually an interesting concept when it isn't used for lazy attempts at social commentary and cheap grossout! (It is mostly used for lazy attempts at social commentary and cheap grossout.)  1% get superpowers! They're called Aces.  Not surprisingly, the aliens who made it come from the Planet Douchebag. Get to the point: are the books any good? No. Dear god, no. Then why are you talking about them? Because they are a special kind of beautiful, fascinating bad. They are a beautiful, unique diamond of bad decisions. They are kind of like the Wild Card virus itself. The majority is sort of boring. A tiny minority is good. But the best part is that 9% of pure, tentacle-flailing batshit crazy.  This guy is awesome, though. This was back in the days when comics were just beginning to realize what they could get away with. The people behind Wild Cards looked at that and thought, "Hey, we can take superheroes and make them dark and mature! And by that we mean have people dismember and rape each other a lot!" It's the first glimmers of the ridiculous grimdark nineties comics trend, but in a medium that flies under the radar enough that you can pretty much get away with anything. The collaborative writing aspect also had its problems. One issue is that people drifting in and out of the project means that few characters get resolved arcs. Often they peter out, go nowhere, or suddenly drop out of existence. But the main problem is, see, at the beginning, there were good writers and bad writers. As it went on, it became clear that the good writers were busy and had better things to do, so more and more of the work was done by the guys who had nothing better to do. If you want to get to the tiny, intermittent bits of GRRM and Zelazny, you'd better be ready to swallow big chunks of whoever the hell Lewis Shiner is.  He writes Neanderthal-brow there. The reason for the forehead bulge? The magic power of his sperm. Dear god, I wish I was joking. Another notable point is that GRRM loves them. He has a habit of posting news updates about them on his blog far more frequently than the stuff anybody cares about. I've read the other GRRM threads, and I was sad to see that was Wild Cards was a running gag, it appeared that no one else had been bored enough to trawl used book stores and find them. I've got seven of the drat things, and I'll go through as many as there's interest for. For more information: A comprehensive character guide The Wild Cards Wiki Let's Read Index Book 1: Wild Cards Part 1: Thirty Minutes Over Broadway! (Jetboy) and The Sleeper (Croyd) Part 2: Witness (Golden Boy) and Degredation Rites (Dr. Tachyon) Part 3: Shell Games (The Turtle) Part 4: The Long, Dark Night of Fortunato (Fortunato) Part 5: Transfigurations (Captain Trips), pseudo-Tom Wolfe interlude, and Down Deep (Sewer Jack, Bagabond, Rosemary Muldoon) Part 6: Pseudo-Hunter S. Thompson interlude and Strings (Puppetman) Part 7: Comes a Hunter (Yeoman) Between-Books Thoughts: Why well-defined powers are important Book 2: Aces High Part 1: Pennies from Hell 1 (Fortunato) Part 2: Pennies from Hell 2 (Fortunato) Part 3: Pennies from Hell 3 (Fortunato) Part 4: Jube 1, Unto the Sixth Generation Prologue (Modular Man), Jube 2 Part 5: Ashes to Ashes 1 (Croyd) Part 6: Ashes to Ashes 2 (Croyd) Part 7: Unto the Sixth Generation 1 (Modular Man) Part 8: Unto the Sixth Generation 2 (Modular Man) Part 9: Unto the Sixth Generation 2.5 (Modular Man) Part 10: Unto the Sixth Generation 3 (Modular Man) Part 11: Unto the Sixth Generation 4 (Modular Man) Part 12: Jube 3 and If Looks Could Kill (Spector) Part 13: Jube 4, Unto the Sixth Generation Epilogue (Modular Man), Winter's Chill (The Turtle) Part 14: Jube 5 Part 15: Relative Difficulties 1 (Tachyon, Captain Trips, The Turtle) Part 16: Relative Difficulties 2 (Tachyon, Captain Trips, The Turtle) Part 17: With a Little Help From His Friends 1 (Captain Trips, Tachyon) Part 18: With a Little Help From His Friends 2 (Captain Trips, Tachyon) Part 19: With a Little Help From His Friends 3 (Captain Trips, Tachyon) Part 20: Jube 6 Part 21: By Lost Ways 1 (Water Lily) Part 22: By Lost Ways 2 (Water Lily) Part 23: By Lost Ways 3 (Water Lily, with some Fortunato and Tachyon) Part 24: By Lost Ways 4 (Water Lily, big giant pile of basically everybody else) Part 25: Mr. Koyama's Comet (exposition), Half Past Dead 1 (Yeoman) Part 26: Half Past Dead 2 (Yeoman and Fortunato) Part 27: Half Past Dead 3 (Yeoman and Fortunato) Part 28: Jube 7 and post-book analysis Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 11:26 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Aug 14, 2012 20:44
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Wild Cards Volume 1 Part 1, because this got long as poo poo  Say one thing and one thing only: the covers are consistantly kickin' rad. Look at that snake guy with the guitar. Since the only thing resembling description is a throwaway bit about how the Lizard King has a power that makes him able to transform into a reptile onstage, it is entirely possible that is Jim Morrison. We start out with some excerpts from "Wild Times: An Oral History of the Postwar Years by Studs Terkel." Here and there they use real people like that, probably hoping that nobody cares enough to sue. There's some military guys talking about how some alien crashed in a spaceship and told them about how the other aliens are constantly fighting, so they made this virus thing as a superweapon. But, and credit where credit is due, this is pretty clever, they don't want to test it on their allies, because it makes a lot of people dead and/or monsters, and don't want to test in on their enemies, cause it gives some people superpowers, so they decide to try it on some jackoffs nobody cares about, i.e. us. In the hallowed tradition of lazy lovely sci fi, the aliens happen to be physically exactly the same as humans. Convenient! So he tells the guys how he shot down the other aliens and the virus thing is around somewhere and they really should find it, and the military guys are all, shut up, alien. The first story proper belongs to  Jetboy Thirty Minutes Over Broadway! by Howard Waldrop We go straight from the action to some guys who will never be seen or matter again talking about how Jetboy is neato. quote:"Hell, he must have flown faster and farther, shot down more planes than anyone - five hundred planes, fifty ships! He did it without a pilot's license?" And he fought in WWII when was around around 15, had the world's first jet plane, farts hummingbirds, etc. Then Jetboy shows up. After WWII he got stuck on a desert island for a while why not, and now he's back to civilization. There's a scene break and we get a few paragraphs about a guy named Dr. Tod getting off a boat and meeting some other guys and chatting about how during the war he was doing stuff and Jetboy shot missiles at him and now he has a metal plate over half his face, then they head off to the Bed and Breakfast for Obvious Bad Guys and we're back to Jetboy. He goes to see his girlfriend from when he was at the orphanage, because of course he was an orphan, and gives her a couple copies of kids books she used to love that he has gotten signed by the real Christopher Robin and Beatrix Potter. She thanks him and then friendzones him  On his way out he discovers she is a whore who sells her body to broad stereotypes. quote:As he was going down, a guy in a modified zoot suit- pegged pants, long coat, watch chain, bow tie the size of a coat hanger, hair slicked back, reeking of Brylcreem and Old Spice- went up the stairs two at a time, whistling "It Ain't the Meat, It's the Motion." He goes off to see the guys who make Jetboy Comics so he can get money from them and tell them off for making the comics too unrealistic. He goes home, puts his plane up for sale in the classifieds, and mopes around for a while looking about books. The only notable thing here is that a couple of the best-sellers are The Grasshopper Lies Heavy and Growing Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Rooms, so at least that's a couple of fairly clever obscure references. Then he writes a couple of pages of his own book, which is all stuff like Three planes, two ME-109s and a TA-152, came out of the clouds at the crippled B-24. 'Why would anybody wants to read pages of planesperg?' wonders he, as behind him the author edges perilously close to self-awareness. He thinks about how he doesn't really have anything to do now and listens to some girls outside sing jumprope rhymes, then goes and sees some movies. If you're wondering how any of this could possibly matter, the secret is it doesn't! Wait, things happening! The lackey bad guys, who I can only image as those guys from the old Batman show who wore black watchcaps and t-shirts that said GOON, were dumping a body in the woods when they found an old homeless guy with a giant round thing that turns out to be the alien virus bomb. The old guy exclaims, quote:"Outta my way, boy! I killed a man over a can of lye hominy once!" making him my favorite character in this story. the bad guys wave a gun around and give him twenty dollars for it. A hired scientist character is introduced to test it, but he drops it or something and within a page he is a monster-thing making skwooshing noises over the phone. quote:"Guh. Hep. Hep. Guh." Naturally this gives Dr. Tod an idea and he sends the government a message saying to give him 20 million dollars or he'll release the virus from a zeppelin over a major city, because when you've got a metal plate over half your face and your name is 'death' in German you don't just not release deadly things from zeppelins. One of the goons has a balloonist's license! Instead of paying, the government sends Jetboy to shoot down the blimp. quote:Chunder chunder chunder chunder went his 20mm cannons. He gets into the blimp, reaches desperately for his gun, and promptly drops it. One of the bad guys reaches for his gun and sucks a lot less at it.  quote:"Die, Jetboy! Die!" said the man. Another admirable sentiment. However, first Jetboy gets out his last words, which will become legendary and would be stupid even if they weren't taken from The Three Stooges: quote:"I can't die yet. I haven't seen The Jolson Story." Then we get a bit from a biography of Jetboy, which includes, quote:When people in new York City looked up and saw Jetboy blowing up the attacking aircraft, they thought their troubles were over. Anybody who can tell me what the christ that is supposed to mean gets a shiny dime. So the point is Jetboy dies and the virus gets released over New York City. Looking at the wiki (there is a wiki), it mentions that he was set up in order to show you that this is the kind of series where anybody can die. I'd honestly never gotten the point of the whole thing; it makes no sense to spend so much time setting up a bunch of characters who don't actually matter. But in that light, one explanation is that it's a kind of shaggy dog story. You're supposed to figure that Dr. Tod will be a major villain and everybody will be recurring characters, so that you're shocked when they get killed off. However, what you're left with after the flimsy punch line is the awareness that you've just wasted a lot of time. It's like when your friend starts telling you that story that goes on for two hours and ends with "Better Nate than lever!" except you can't reach to punch Howard Waldrop in the face. Anyway a memorial is built, and the tradition is set for everyone in the future to periodically remember Jetboy and pretend he wasn't boring. Croyd Crenson The Sleeper by Roger Zelazny aka The Other Guy You've Heard Of I'm going to have to commit geek heresy here and admit that I'm not a big Zelazny fan. However, he is inarguably competent, and by the second or third volume, you are gonna be seriously hurtin for competent. He sets off here on the wrong foot by being the inevitable dick whose character's power is that he has lots of powers. However, there's enough drawbacks to balance things out: Croyd stays awake for a few days and then sleeps for a few months, and when he wakes up, he's got a new power, but sometimes he's unlucky and gets to have a hideous deformity for a while instead. We start with Croyd as a freshman in high school on Wild Card Day. poo poo's going down so the teacher leaves, so him and his friend say screw it and go home through streets that are packed with people and blobs and puddles and stuff that used to be people. More attention is paid to how difficult it is to get through all the people than any reaction to crazy deaths and deformations. Zelazny doesn't like to talk about feelings much, so it all comes across sort of vague and detached. Here's the first guy dying on the street they encounter: quote:Pedestrian traffic eased near to the center of the next block, and it looked as if there was a large open area ahead. They sprinted toward it, then halted abruptly. For as much grist as you'd think a day when people start turning into deathblobs and Spiderman would provide to write about, the book's treatment is sort of scanty and unsatisfying. We only get glimpses here and there throughout the book, never a total picture. This is either to reflect how the people affected by huge, world-changing events only experience that tiny, disjointed piece of it that intersects with their own life, or because all the writers thought somebody else would do it. Croyd makes it home, is suddenly really tired, finds out his dad died, and passes out. He wakes up a month later and is all hairy. He figures out that he can change the color of the hair, right down to turning paler and paler until he's invisible. Neat. He eats everything in the house, then realizes, whoops, the city could be in a state of emergency with food rationing in effect and he just cleaned out everything his family has. He goes out and eventually runs into a dogman who can smell him even when he's invisible. Dogman is a criminal sort and gets Croyd to steal stuff, so he ends up with plenty of money and starts on a life of supercrime. Croyd settles into a pattern of being awake a few days, sleeping for weeks, waking up with new powers, and using them to steal stuff to provide for his family. Eventually Dogman goes to see Dr. Tachyon, the alien, who turns him back to human because aliens have a cure for being a dog. Croyd tries going to see Tachyon, who tells him that he can probably put off his transformation comas for a while with caffeine or speed. He also tells him that it's possible the sleep could go bad and Croyd could die. Aliens are lovely doctors. Sleeping doesn't always go well. quote:When he awoke he was hideous, and he had no special powers. He was hairless, snouted, and covered with gray-green scales; his fingers were elongated and possessed of extra joints, his eyes yellow and slitted; he developed pains in his thighs and lower back if he stood upright for too long. It was far easier to go about his room on all fours. When he exclaimed aloud over his condition there was a pronounced sibilance to his speech. Props to Zelazny for resisting what must have been a persistent, unholy temptation to make a bunch of Kafka jokes. Since every time he goes to sleep he has to make a saving throw against dying or being transformed into a lizardmonster with bad hips, and the primary reminder of him being a teenager is residual poor decision making, he approaches the problem of sleeping with the solution of speed. Eventually he gets paranoid and kills some guys. Luckily, he changes shape whenever he sleeps so he's pretty tough to CSI, and anyway nobody cares. Between all the drugs and shapeshifting Croyd's personality is tough to get a handle on, but one nice touch is that he has a lot of sympathy for jokers, since he never knows when he might be one. By now all the people with gorilla heads or handclaws have started congregating around the Bowery and calling it Jokertown. Somebody more acquainted with New York can say whether that's hilarious or not. Whenever Croyd drops by, he's nice to them. There but for the grace of God go I, guy with a giant snail for a butt. While I suspect that the reason for Croyd spending so much time asleep is so Zelazny can get out of doing these books when he doesn't want to - "Whoops, my guy's in a coma that week" - a side effect is that most people Croyd knows go on without him. Suddenly his little sister's getting married. He goes to the wedding, even though his transformation wasn't quite finished when he woke up and he's mostly normal except all itchy. In the middle of the ceremony he rips out of his skin, turns into a batmonster, and flies through the window, cutting him off once and for all from the human world he once knew and making it the most metal wedding ever. Up next: Superheroes during McCarthyism, and the alien gets a girlfriend. Edit because BBCode is not HTML. Way late edit to remove a joke that seemed funny at the time, because Fortunato actually calls Tachyon that in canon later, but it's making me cringe in retrospect. Sorry dudes. Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Aug 14, 2012 20:50
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I kind of disagree, I think the first 3 books are actually really good. You also have to think about the time period where they came out. They were comparatively pretty awesome.
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Aug 15, 2012 02:02
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It does its potential and high points. The interesting concepts are enough to make me power through a bunch of the things. However, it also has Fortunato.
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Aug 15, 2012 02:34
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I never read the original ones but the new Tor Revival books are pretty entertaining. Inside Straight and Busted Flush reminded me of the Runaways comic mixed with Ex Machina.
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Aug 15, 2012 03:59
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I have every Wild Cards book. Yes, anything involving Fortunato is poo poo. He's a stupid character, often fleshed out by lovely writers. I do like a lot of the social commentary nonsense though. The whole Jetboy introduction is meant to be sort of old-timey. I don't think you're supposed to look at it as what actually happened, but as what Hollywood turned the Jetboy story into. I definitely enjoyed how the books later handled McCarthyism.
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Aug 15, 2012 06:20
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The social commentary is actually my favorite part. Usually it's just a lazy and obvious "a minority that's weird and scary is treated badly," but when they take it a little farther it can be really interesting, like a bit Xavier Desmond has talking about how the key difficulty is that every joker has a different deformity, so it's doubly hard to have unity and cohesion among them. It's glimmers of intriguing ideas like that that make the series hard to give up on, even when huge swaths of it are really dumb. I'd be interested to hear more about the later volumes, since I haven't gotten to those.
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Aug 15, 2012 18:28
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particle409 posted:I have every Wild Cards book. Yes, anything involving Fortunato is poo poo. He's a stupid character, often fleshed out by lovely writers. I do like a lot of the social commentary nonsense though. The whole Jetboy introduction is meant to be sort of old-timey. I don't think you're supposed to look at it as what actually happened, but as what Hollywood turned the Jetboy story into. No, you are supposed to look at it as what actually happened. Thirty Minutes Over Broadway! is all about contrasting movies with the reality. When I was a boy we used to play Fighter Planes, sticking our arms out straight from our sides and chasing each other around the playground yelling "DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA!". Jetboy is playing that game for real, but because his life is so close to a movie it's hard for him to step out of the role. When he comes back to the US he starts watching three or four movies every day, when he visits his childhood crush only to find out that she's a prostitute he bitterly compares it to the way it would be in a movie. Even the title of the story is a movie reference, riffing on Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. Then you have the realities: the company publishing Jetboy Comics are turning his real life stories into surreal fantasy because "that's what the kids want", and when he starts writing stories of actual combat action for his biography he feels like a boring braggart. At the end, Jetboy is put into a movie scenario for real where he's the only one who can stop a metal-faced megalomaniac - called Dr Death, for gently caress's sake! - from destroying New York with an alien virus. This is where we see what happens to movie heroes in real life. Does Jetboy shoot down the blimp and return to earth? No. He tries to shoot it down, but his guns aren't designed to work at that altitude. He crashes into it, hoping they'll both explode, but it doesn't because helium balloons don't do that. He gets out of his cockpit to hunt the villain down movie hero-style, but drops his gun because it's holstered awkwardly and he's wearing heavy gloves. Finally, he doesn't even manage to stop the villain - he fails, and the virus is released. Worse, instead of being scattered over all of New York as Tod planned, it's sucked into the jetstream and affects the entire world. And Jetboy's last words? If Waldrop didn't mean for Jetboy to be quoting the Stooges (which would be anachronistic, as the short in question was made in 1948 and he dies in 1946) then he was drawing from the same source as the Stooges had, the poster tagline that read "You haven't lived until you've seen The Jolson Story!" I don't have too much to say about the other half of the review except that Zelazny is more accurately described as "The Other Guy You've Heard Of Who Wasn't Script Editor For Star Trek: The Next Generation And Isn't The Guy Who Also Has Two Nebulas And A Dozen Other Nominations For Major SF Awards".
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Aug 15, 2012 19:41
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I remember the 'here's what really happened to Marilyn Monroe' story arc pretty interesting. And you haven't mentioned the goon who came straight out of E/N, The Turtle. There are some silly characters like that hipster dude, Capt'n Trips, the Lizard King, along with staples like that Hawkeye clone who has no special powers. But I wouldn't call it bad. The story and fall of Golden Boy and the exploration of McCarthyism was done well. There are really some gems. Hartmann (?) the puppetmaster and his eventual switch into a Joker and redemption I liked. Hiram as an allegory to superstar drug addiction and consequential life ruination. Of course as you say, there are some bad characters and stories, Fortunado at the top of the list. The completely unlikable Tachyon, Blaize, the eye-rolling stereotype of Peregrine and that robot guy who I forget the name of, and maybe it's because I read them in my teens, but I thought the series was pretty cool. I think I really liked that there were multiple full story arcs, where heroes rise up, fall, are killed or are shunted into irrelevancy and ultimately life moves on. It's something that was extremely new to me as a person growing up in the era of episodic format tv and books and had never really been explored before in a super-hero universe. A 'what happens after the end' type thing which I think was way before it's time, literary speaking. Edit: The fact I remember all this detail about a series I haven't read in 15 years, with literally hundreds upon hundreds of books in between should definitely count for something. It made an impression. By and large, a good one. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Aug 15, 2012 |
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Aug 15, 2012 20:31
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I'm not sure if you can get much of a good story from the basis of "In reality these things wouldn't make a good story." Though I do like the point that in the end the closest thing they have to a hero fails his rear end off. Jedit posted:the poster tagline that read "You haven't lived until you've seen The Jolson Story!" Oh, hey. That explains that. I might be too hard on Jetboy. There's definitely a lot worse.
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Aug 15, 2012 20:33
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I think you forgot to mention that the guys who got superpowers are called Aces. Another here who read nearly all of the original series. I got to about book 14 or 15 with Captain Trips using one of his aces as a spy in 'Nam and stopped because the books were getting tough to find affordable and really weren't very good.
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Aug 15, 2012 21:00
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Victorkm posted:I think you forgot to mention that the guys who got superpowers are called Aces. Aw, crap, I did! That's a pretty important thing. I'll edit that in.
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Aug 15, 2012 21:13
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Victorkm posted:I think you forgot to mention that the guys who got superpowers are called Aces. That would be the last book of the original run, Turn of the Cards. Along with an original edition of Death Draws Five (which is cheaper now it's available on Kindle), it's the only Wild Cards book that's actually expensive.
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Aug 15, 2012 22:42
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How much control does Martin have over the stories? Because holy poo poo are these books rapey. I bailed after whichever book it was where the Freemasons pick up a hooker, then rape and dismember her at the same time. 
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Aug 16, 2012 01:03
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Clipperton posted:How much control does Martin have over the stories? Because holy poo poo are these books rapey. I bailed after whichever book it was where the Freemasons pick up a hooker, then rape and dismember her at the same time. That's probably the second or third, since those are the ones where the Masons are the main bad guys. Yeah. They go downhill very, very fast.
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Aug 16, 2012 01:27
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Jedit posted:That would be the last book of the original run, Turn of the Cards. Along with an original edition of Death Draws Five (which is cheaper now it's available on Kindle), it's the only Wild Cards book that's actually expensive. If that was the last one then I must not have been able to get the one before it very easily.
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Aug 16, 2012 02:26
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Part 2 Jack Braun, Golden Boy of the Four Aces Witness by Walter John Williams Out of the few other people I've run into who've read this, a lot hate this guy, but I find his story to be the best in this volume, and a great example of how Wild Cards is capable of firing on all cylinders and exploring the possibility and limitations of superpowered people affecting history. The bulk of his story takes place in the 40s and 50s, which the series initially wasn't supposed to cover, because when Wild Cards has a good idea it's usually by accident. He's an actor whose power is super-strength that comes with a gold glow around him, hence the name and the inevitable hamhanded clay feet stuff. Before that he was a farmer's kid growing up in the Depression and fought in WWII. After he gets powered, he's recruited by a government guy, Holmes, to be on an American superhero team to fight for freedom and democracy and such. One of the other guys on the team is Earl Sanderson, or Black Eagle as people start calling him and he's not real thrilled about. During the Depression he was a bit of a revolutionary: quote:Two years into college, he joined the Communist Party. When I knew him later, he made it sound like the only reasonable choice. ... In WWII he becomes one of the Tuskegee Airmen, and there's some cool history about the 332nd fighter group. The wild card virus turns him into an ace who can fly, is bullet-resistant, and can shoot out shockwave things that knock people around. He's not so easy to talk into joining the team: quote:Holmes had talked to him before and asked him to make the same kind of deal that Branch Rickey later asked of Jackie Robinson: Earl had to stay out of domestic politics. He had to announce that he'd broken with Stalin and Marxism, that he was committed to peaceful change. He was asked to keep his temper under control, to absorb the inevitable anger, racism, and condescension, and to do it without retaliation. So what Earl does is use being a superhero to try to make himself a symbol, a perfect guy to point to and rally around. It works pretty well for a while. The third guy is David Harstein, The Envoy, who walks right in the door and joins up. He's got an interesting power: pheromones that make you like him and want to agree with him. He can talk you into anything, but it only lasts as long as he's in the room. It'd gently caress things up a bit if people knew, so they keep it a secret and spread the rumor that he's got some kind of sneaky spy power and he can phase through walls or something instead of waltzing up to the guards and saying howdy. The three of them head over to Argentina and toss out Juan Peron and "his blond hooker." Between that and grabbing a bunch of the Nazis who fled to South America, they become big ol famous heroes. They pick up a fourth, Blythe van Renssaeler aka Brain Trust, who can absorb people's minds. Fortunately it doesn't leave them a shambling zombie or anything, just gives her everything they know. So she picks up Einstein and such and goes around providing borrowed scientific expertise. Jack's getting a bunch of great acting jobs and banging chicks all over the place (wakes up married to one in Tijuana, and hey why not?), magazines are lining up to interview them, everything's great. They go to China to try to straighten out the thing with Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao, it doesn't really work out, and things are less great. Then the Red Scare starts up. They're called in front of HUAC. Holmes, the guy who organized them, goes up to testify and gets eaten alive. Sanderson says gently caress this poo poo, he'll fly out of the country, cementing his status as a badass, but it's not that great a solution. The narrative goes a good job of making you feel how trapped they are, and it's convincing that this is what would've happened if there were superheros in the fifties: people would've been scared. What's happening isn't constitutional and isn't legal, but that doesn't matter. Either they sell out every principle and everybody they know, or they're hosed. quote:Richard Nixon of California kept asking after names- he wanted to know the people Mr. Holmes consulted with in the State Department so he could do to them what he'd already done to Alger Hiss. Mr. Holmes didn't give any names and pleaded the First Amendment. That's when the committee really rose to its feet in righteous indignation: they mauled him for hours, and the next day they sent down an indictment for contempt of Congress. Mr. Holmes was on his way to the penitentiary. One guy on the committee is so over the top that I had to look him up to confirm he was real. The story borrows the "Jewish gentleman" comment for Harstein. However, when Harstein's called, his power gets them to call off the whole thing and everything's fine! Then after he leaves, they recover, and it's back on again. This time they put him in a glass box so his pheromones can't work. He's going to jail, too. quote:We were bound by the law and by decency, and the committee was not. The only way we could fight them was to break the law, to rise up in their smug faces and smash the committee room to bits, laughing as the congressmen dived for cover beneath their desks. And if we did that we'd become what we fought, an extralegal force for terror and violence. We'd become what the committee claimed we were. And that would only make things worse. You can't throw cars at everything. So Jack does what his lawyer and wife have been telling him to do the whole time: he goes up as a friendly witness. He's terrified and ends up blabbing everything. They ask about any Communist associates Earl had, and Jack tells them about a girl in France, so now the perfect hero is ruined because the world knows he cheated on his wife. He lets slip that Blythe absorbed Dr. Tachyon's brain and therefore knows the name of every ace that's ever been to his clinic. Basically he fucks everybody over, and ends up known and loathed as the Judas Ace. It's heavy stuff, and harrowing. gently caress. Let's go on to another view on the event, except laced with doses of stupid.   Dr. Tachyon Degradation Rites by Melinda M. Snodgrass Tachyon's a drunk busking with a violin in France when a page of the Serendipitously Character-Relevant Times blows by and he reads that Blythe aka Brain Trust has died in a nuthouse. We get an extensive description to remind us that his clothes are still exceptionally gay, then he drinks and weeps himself into a flashback. He met her around when the virus broke out and she'd discovered her powers by accidentally absorbing her rear end in a top hat husband's brain. He uses alien psychic magic to help her separate out the two personalities stuck in her brain now, then takes the opportunity to check her out. quote:Her mind had already delighted him, and her body sent his pulse to hammering. Shoulder-length sable hair cascaded across the pillow onto the women's breast, a perfect counterpoint to the champagne-colored satin of her thin nightgown and the alabaster quality of her skin. Long, sooty lashes fluttered on her cheeks, then lifted, revealing eyes of a profound midnight blue.  Over the next few days he gives her psychic not-going-crazy lessons and flirts with her. She looks "absurdly young and vulnerable" sometimes and that's totally hot. quote:Close contact with [her husband] Representative van Renssaeler's mind had brought little enjoyment, and in truth he was jealous of the man. He had a right to Blythe, mind, body, and soul, and Tachyon craved that position. He would have made her his genamiri with all honor and love, and kept her safe and protected, but such dreams were fruitless. She belonged to another man. Dr. Tachyon, intergalactic Nice Guy. Immediately after this paragraph about how he can't have her is one about him dumping a bunch of roses on her and then they make out. They flirt some, she points out that he is well known to be a total manwhore, and he teaches her an alien dance. Takisians do a lot of dancing, because they are the aliens the other aliens give noogies to. One day he's hanging around his apartment in his boxers because it's hot and Blythe shows up at the door. He checks out her clothes because he's into women's fashion. Really, that's what it says. quote:The bodice was supported by two thin straps, leaving most of her back bare. He liked the way her shoulder blades moved beneath the white skin. There was an answering movement from within his jockey shorts. "Daaaaamn girl your scapulae are HOT." Her jerk husband threw her out because he doesn't like that she has Nobel prize winners' brains in hers and also she knows everything about him now so she must win the hell out of every fight. It would kind of suck to have somebody around who knows about that time you stepped on your hamster when you were six. Tachyon says she can stay with him. quote:"One last thing. I'm not a saint, nor one of your human monks." (If you're an alien, do you have to constantly fight the urge to attach that to everything? "I SHALL HAVE ONE OF YOUR HUMAN DIET COKES!") quote:He gestured toward the curtained alcove that held his bed. "Someday I'll want you." In between banging he tells her about the alien lifestyle. They're pretty much humans but extra dicky. They have elaborate eugenics programs and assassinate each other lots. quote:
"Using the underclass as sex slaves must be neato." quote:“Want to be my sex toy?” There's a kind of interesting mention that because Takisian culture hates deformity to the point of killing imperfect babies, even while he's trying to help them Tachyon is more repulsed by jokers than anybody. Blythe's not handling having a bunch of people in her head real well. Sometimes she argues with herself. She isn't real good at holding the walls between them and her because she is a delicate frail flower of girl. She talks Tachyon into letting her absorb his brain so he'll have at least one other person on the planet who understand where he's coming from, but the author probably noticed she was taking up too many pages because what we get of Blythe's reaction to having an entire inhuman culture in her head is a big pile of nothing. When Blythe is called up in front of HUAC, they know she has Tachyon's memories, so they badger her until she's ready to give up the names of every ace there is. Tachyon gives her a psychic poke in the brain so it all falls apart and she goes babbling crazy before she can name anybody. She's hauled off to a nuthouse. Tachyon doesn't cooperate. He's deported for being an illegal alien. 
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Aug 16, 2012 03:44
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The Golden Boy story was definitely my favourite. (Least favourite would be the one with the Zen ninja/Green Arrrow guy, which was loving dreck.)
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Aug 16, 2012 04:07
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Clipperton posted:The Golden Boy story was definitely my favourite. Hooray, I'm not the only one! quote:(Least favourite would be the one with the Zen ninja/Green Arrrow guy, which was loving dreck.) Yeoman is the worst in a different way than Fortunato is the worst, because where Fortunato is entertaining in a what the poo poo kind of way, Yeoman's just boring.
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Aug 16, 2012 04:53
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I used to love the hell out of Wild Cards back in the late 80s/early 90s. While my memories of it aren't quite crystal clear, and I probably missed a lot of the subtext to stuff being a kid, I still think I prefer WC's take on an alternate superhero history more than Watchmen.
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Aug 16, 2012 06:59
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Thinky Whale posted:Hooray, I'm not the only one! Awww, I kinda liked Yeoman, but I think mostly because his stories were a constant rather than few and far between. The McCarthy story was awesome, and later when Golden Boy comes back to the Democratic National Convention (I guess? Maybe republican who remembers) he gets some more cool stuff.
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Aug 16, 2012 11:45
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I had totally forgotten about reading a few of these books, up until, I poo poo you not, the Arab Spring, specifically Egypt's civil war. I made the connection when I was reading a thread about some random psycho-goon on SA. He bought a sniper rifle, flew to Egypt, and masqueraded as a doctor, fighting alongside the rebels. One of Wild Card the books covers how some crazy Ace-backed army was basically loving around with an ethnic minority, and no one could/would stop them. Eventually, a band of reality television Aces go to fight them, and eventually Mary-Sues their way to victory. Not before a Luchador Ace is killed. It turns out he was just a little kid who's powers turned him into a big strong hero. The author was probably just killing a character to make a point about how mature and discerning of a commentary on offing brown people his book really was, but I couldn't help but think of that crazy goon. He was trying to kill people in a country that wasn't his, in a war that had to be explained to him via translator, and thought himself a hero. Really put a downer on my day. 
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Aug 16, 2012 21:05
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I always thought Popinjay had one of the better on again off again storylines. Who wrote him? Also of note, the stories about the bag lady who could aquaman animals and her friend that ended up a were-subway-car.
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Aug 16, 2012 22:20
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Victorkm posted:I always thought Popinjay had one of the better on again off again storylines. Who wrote him? George RR Martin, mostly. Melinda Snodgrass was the only other author to give him a lot of pages, when she solo-wrote Double Solitaire.
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Aug 16, 2012 22:33
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 Thomas Tudbury, The Great and Powerful Turtle Shell Games by George R. R. Martin The Turtle is, as a poster above mentioned, supremely goony. He's an effective character because the stories use the powers to make a point like Golden Boy's - being able to throw tanks with your brain isn't necessarily going to make your life not suck. He's an example of how the tabletop RPG origin can actually make for some good devices: his genesis was in that old mechanic where you get points from taking drawbacks that you can put into advantages. So, in order to have crazyass kickin rad telekinesis and a whole bunch of armor, he had to have some weaknesses elsewhere. So he can telekinesis the poo poo out of anything, but he's timid and cowardly and it takes concentration, so he can only do it when he's feeling safe and secure. His white trash friend, who I imagine as looking like the fat Elvis guy from Infamous, helps him discover this by beating the crap out of him. His white trash friend owns a junkyard, so they weld a bunch of battleship armor to a VW Bug and stick cameras and speakers on the outside. Picking it up is nothing for his TK, so he's got his own little flying fortress, including minifridge. It is a lovely mix of  and  The Wild Cards wiki lists his profession as, wonderfully, "Vigilante, TV Repairman." Being a big floating metal thing keeps his identity secret. In a nice touch, aces have started to do this, wearing masks and going by nicknames and such, not just because superheroes always do that and the standard keep-my-loved-ones-from-being-dropped-off-buildings-by-the-Green-Goblin insurance, but to protect themselves from what happened with the Four Aces and HUAC. Tom thought of calling himself the Turtle because he used to have some before some bullies used them for catch, and when he first comes out in public and saves some people from a fire, he attaches the Great and Powerful part to make it sound more impressive. In between the Turtle getting his poo poo together to start some vigilante'in, Tachyon has some scenes. He's gone from being a pathetic drunk alien in France to being a pathetic drunk alien in America again. He mostly hangs out at the Funhouse, a bar in Jokertown full of carnival mirrors because when your clientele is mostly elephantmen you need a gimmick. The owner, Angelface, lets him hang around and drink his face off in exchange for telling her stories about aliens, which nobody else is that interested in I guess.  Hey, you in the spaceship, tell us about alien technology! Don't know much about that, sorry. I'm a biologist, all I can tell you is about genetic modifications and curing diseases- Whatever, we got wars and poo poo. Angelface also gets him hookers. quote:The twins were his Christmas gift from Angelface. "You can pretend they're me," she'd told him, though of course they were nothing like her. Nice kids, both of them, if a bit simpleminded; they reminded him of Takisian sex toys. The one on the right had drawn the wild card, but she wore her cat mask even in bed, and there was no visible deformity to disturb the sweet pleasure of his erection. Fortunately the is interrupted by the first appearance of Jube, the walrusman pictured in the first post. He sells newspapers, has a sweet hat, and is the best. The Turtle is showing up in the papers, and there are rumors he's a joker, since he keeps himself hidden. Angelface is a joker, a pretty young woman for whom the lightest touch leaves a bruise and hurts like a bitch. She's pretty cheerful anyway and takes it like a man, which turns out to involve a whole bunch of heroin. Wouldn't that leave really obvious track marks?  She's run up a huge debt with drug dealers, can't pay up, and gets kidnapped to get raped to death at a very exclusive raping this chick to death party. I am not exaggerating in the least. This is stated straight out. 218 pages to the first mention of rape! Don't expect following volumes to even approach that record. The Turtle's trying to track Angelface down but not having a lot of luck, so he recruits Tachyon to telepathy out some info. But ever since the Blythe disaster, he can't use his telepathy powers anymore. They just don't work. If that sounds like an impotence metaphor, don't worry, he gets actual impotence a couple books from now. The Turtle yells at him over loudspeaker for being a chickenshit. Long story short, Tachyon gets over the telepathy block and wrings himself dry enough to help, and they find the guys with Angelface and have a fight scene. quote:Then the bullets were pinging harmlessly off his armor and ricocheting around the warehouse. Tom smiled. "I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TURTLE," he announced at full volume, as stacks of paper crashed down all around. "YOU ASSHOLES ARE UP poo poo CREEK. SURRENDER NOW." It's kind of messy and a guy shoots at Angelface. quote:"Noooooooooooooooooo!" [Tachyon] shrieked. Then, thanks to having his hand rolled over by a forklift and compounding it by shrieking eighteen os, he passes out. When he wakes up in the hospital, Angelface is there! Tachyon and the Turtle telekinesis/telepathy'd the guy's aim off and he hit nothing. Yay! Then she tells Tachyon that before the virus she was old and had spent her old life completely paralyzed. So being in terrible pain a lot is an improvement by her measure, because now she can move and feel stuff. Tachyon says that if he gets a lab and materials set up, he can make her a way better painkiller than heroin, and that's how he ends up starting up the Jokertown clinic that will be a fixture for the series. A good story with a sweet ending. Hell, so far the stories have been more good than bad. I'm starting to feel like I was being unfair to this series. Let's see what's up next. Oh god. This'll need a post all to itself. Next time: Fortunato. Fortu loving nato. Edit to fix a couple dumb typos Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Aug 19, 2012 |
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Aug 19, 2012 03:00
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Start storing your sperm energy in your foreheads, folks.
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Aug 19, 2012 03:47
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To prepare you, keep in mind that Chris Field, the guy often featured in the mockable RPG thread, has mentioned that Fortunato would fit right in to Black Tokyo.
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Aug 19, 2012 05:11
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I have to agree that the first three books are the best. The others all have their moments, but there just seemed to be a bit more consistency in writing and characterization at the beginning. I also found the stories pre-90's to be far more interesting than when they hit the current age, maybe because it is easier to do alternate history when you have actual history to base things on, and aren't focusing on different takes on current events. Most of the stories in the first book are okay, with Witness and Sleeper standing out as the best, and The Long, Dark Night of Fortunato being one of the worst. Some of the interludes were also pretty decent, and I'm sorry that books after the first went to a primarily running narrative format rather than stand-alone stories. One thing that is nice to mention is all the little throwaway lines about various changes in history: Fidel Castro is pitching coach for the Dodgers, James Dean survived his accident while Elizabeth Taylor was killed, Frank Zappa is a general in the army, etc. Fans of the first book should note that the most recent printing contains three new stories. Captain Cathode and the Secret Ace was decent, and I really enjoyed Powers. I haven't gotten around to Ghost Girl Takes Manhattan, but if it isn't a musical I'm going to be disappointed.
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Aug 19, 2012 06:47
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Also Buddy Holly missed his flight and mostly plays holiday inns. Also is some kind of ace.
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Aug 19, 2012 07:51
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Thinky Whale posted:Then [Angelface] tells Tachyon that before the virus she was old and had spent her old life completely paralyzed. So being in terrible pain a lot is an improvement by her measure, because now she can move and feel stuff. Which is a big part of the setup that Xenovirus Takis-A is shaped by your subconscious thought. Angelface says that when she was paralysed in hospital all she wanted to do was feel, and the wild card made her nervous system hypersensitive. Croyd Crenson was a typical teenager who had no idea what he really wanted to be and changed his mind from day to day; now every new day changes who he is. People's transformations are shaped by wishes, self-perceptions and dreams.
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Aug 19, 2012 10:14
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The next two are dragged down by the villain, who is an evil counterpart to Fortunato, so he gets his poorly-defined powers from raping people. I really liked the first book's format of interconnected short stories with pieces of in-universe literature and reports in between, and it's a shame that they almost immediately moved away from that. The bits of altered history are cool too, I agree. It's at its best when it's about how powers and deformities would change people and society, instead of Superpimp Versus The Evil Whatever. quote:Which is a big part of the setup that Xenovirus Takis-A is shaped by your subconscious thought. I like that notion, too, because it takes the old convention that heroes have some interest or vocation related to their powers and gives it a dangerous side, because if how the virus manifests in you is affected by you, it would be easy for people to start blaming jokers for their own deformities. Not much is done with the idea as far as I know, though. Edit: Diskhotep posted:Fans of the first book should note that the most recent printing contains three new stories. Captain Cathode and the Secret Ace was decent, and I really enjoyed Powers. I haven't gotten around to Ghost Girl Takes Manhattan, but if it isn't a musical I'm going to be disappointed. I didn't know that, that's pretty cool. I'd be interested to see a write up if you feel like doing one. Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Aug 19, 2012 |
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Aug 19, 2012 20:04
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Thinky Whale posted:I like that notion, too, because it takes the old convention that heroes have some interest or vocation related to their powers and gives it a dangerous side, because if how the virus manifests in you is affected by you, it would be easy for people to start blaming jokers for their own deformities. Not much is done with the idea as far as I know, though. It's mentioned somewhere as a scientific hot potato. There are already a lot of people who see drawing a joker or the Black Queen as proof of inferiority or a sign that the victim was being punished for some sin; telling the world that belief has a basis in fact would be very dangerous.
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Aug 19, 2012 22:23
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Yeah, it's referenced in a few places flip-flopping between common knowledge and superstition. Kid Dinosaur is one example, a kid obsessed with dinos gains the ability to transform into any of them. You can fit most of the Ace's powers into that framework. Maybe we can go a bit meta and and pretend all the Fortunato stories are just like the waiter in that Aces High showdown with the Astronomer where your eyes and mind just slide right off?
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Aug 21, 2012 20:07
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Bhodi posted:Maybe we can go a bit meta and and pretend all the Fortunato stories are just like the waiter in that Aces High showdown with the Astronomer where your eyes and mind just slide right off? That waiter is the Astronomer. I don't get the hate for Fortunato, beyond him being a dick. I don't think he's meant to be likeable, but he's a necessary archetype: a man suddenly gifted with immense power but who doesn't automatically gain the wisdom to use it as he should.
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Aug 21, 2012 20:27
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The thing I enjoyed most/least was the increasingly obscure poker puns they had to use. I mean, it had a pretty clever twist at the beginning, with everything have a common naming scheme, but it turned pretty ridiculous when they were running out of material.
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Aug 21, 2012 21:37
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 Fortunato The Long, Dark Night of Fortunato by Lewis Shiner Well, that about tells you all you need to know. That, and the very first line: quote:All he could think about was how beautiful she'd been when she was alive. I really, really hope the pretty corpse here wasn't intentional foreshadowing  Fortunato is a pimp, and the corpse is one of his girls. He is adamant they are not hookers, they are geishas. Fortunato is half black and half Japanese, and Lewis Shiner got all he knows about Japan by taking one of those books from the eighties about how the joyless buisiness-suited Asiatic horde is going to steal all our technology jobs and another about the ways of the mysterious Orient and smashing them into opposite sides of his skull until the flashing lights were pretty. Fortunato is a nice pimp and his girls are classy hookers, so it's totally cool and okay. He could hit them, but he doesn't! What a stand up guy. He gets in a car with a girl named Lenore, who he recently bought for $5,000 from a mafia pimp named Ballpeen Willie, who I already like for having a better name than Fortunato. Fortunato's family business is so sweet that the mafia wants to take it over like fancy whore Wal-Mart. quote:Lenore came from a hick town in the mountains of Virginia where the old people still talked Elizabethan. Willie had been running her less than a month, not long enough to grind off the edges of her beauty. She had dark red hair to her waist, neon-green eyes, and a small, almost dainty mouth. She never wore anything but black and she believed she was a witch. When I think high class call girl, I think inbred goth. quote:When Fortunato had auditioned her  auditioned means bangedquote:He'd been moved by her abandon, her complete absorption in carnality, so much at odds with her cool, sophisticated looks. The ripped fishnets and pale makeup are terrible couture. Goth Hooker takes him to her apartment, which is covered in pentagrams and candles and has a canopy bed with red velvet curtains and basically the 3D version of one of those Geocities websites with a black background and little spinning skull gifs. quote:Lenore knelt beside him on the bed, naked. "You have such beautiful skin." She ran fingertips over his chest, raising gooseflesh. "I've never seen a color like this before." When he didn't answer she said, "Your mother is Japanese, they told me." See, now that's a buddy cop comedy I would watch. Fortunato angsts about how a guy's killing his hookers and he loves his hookers lots. Really, being a pimp is fine, guys! quote:"Some twisted son of a bitch is killing my girls and there's nothing that I can do about it." "You could hire a private investigator, or have your girls bodyguarded, or train them with weapons because while we're having geisha-hookers we might as well have ninja-geisha-hookers--" quote:Her fingers tangled in his pubic hair. "Sex is power, Fortunato. It's the most powerful thing in the universe. Don't ever forget that." "Or we could bang. That could solve stuff, I guess." quote:She took his penis in her mouth, working it gently with her tongue like a piece of candy. "Baby, you're hung like Laffy Taffy." quote:He thought of Erika, dead, and it made him want to gently caress Lenore hard and long. Uhhh. That's one way of grieving, I guess. Then a part I have to quote in full. This is the origin story, folks. His radioactive spider. quote:“I am Shakti,” she said. “I am the goddess. I am the power.” She smiled when she said it, and instead of sounding crazy it just made him want her even more. Then her voice broke into short, rattling breaths as she came, shuddering, throwing her head back and rocking hard against him. Fortunato tried to turn her over and finish it but she was stronger than he would have believed possible, digging her fingers into his shoulders until he relaxed, then caressing him again with aching slowness. Kinky sex: it either gives you superpowers or a seizure. When he comes to, stuff is weird and he's seeing light and ripples and stuff. He's still "diamond-hard" and wants to gently caress her some more, but if he jizzes he'll lose his power. Really. That's a mechanic, here. quote:She wanted to stay with him, but he sent her to geisha class anyway. Not worth the credits, really, and you spend ages waitlisted. Fortunato does some reading while he waits. quote:He read about the Great White Brotherhood of Ultima Thule, located somewhere in Tartary. I could look that up, but instead I'm going to keep believing that it's a mystical cadre of sharks in monk's robes. quote:The lost Book of Dyzan and the vama chara, the lefthand path. The kali yuga, most corrupt of ages, now upon us. "Do whatever you desire, for in this way you please the goddess." "Behold, for we serve the Sovereign Lady of Giving No Fucks." quote:Shakti. Semen as the rasa, the juice, of power: the yod. Sodomy that revived the dead. "Oh, hey, yeah, I do have unfinished business! This is a miracle! I get a second chance to set things-- why is your dick in my rear end?" quote:Shape shifters, astral bodies, implanted obsessions leading to suicide. Paracelsus, Aleister Crowley, Mehmet Karagoz, L. Ron Hubbard. Nothing says ancient forbidden knowledge like the twelve copies of Dianetics you find in every thrift store. quote:Fortunato's concentration was absolute. He absorbed every word, every diagram, flipped back and forth to make comparisons, to study the illustrations. When he finished he saw that twenty-three minutes had passed since Lenore walked out the door. "My god. I've acquired mystical Tantric speed-reading." When the goth hooker comes back, she's sad because for all her immersion in crazy sex voodoo, it never worked for her and now it worked for Fortunato no problem. She's actually a little sympathetic here, talking about how she wanted to be something special and different to break the monotony of her ordinary life. poo poo, she's taking attention away from Zippy McDickmagic! Fix it! quote:"You said I didn't want this, and maybe I didn't, not right at first. But now I do." The difference is twenty minutes of reading books with mystical dickpics. quote:There was one picture, among the giant sex organs and impossible contortions of a Japanese pillow book: the Tantric magician, forehead swollen with the power of his retained sperm, fingers twisted in mudras of power. Wait a minute. I've heard of The Pillow Book, but isn't that like a sort of poetic, literary diary about historical Japanese court life? Five minutes of research says yes, but it's true that it created a subgenre called pillow books. Which are poetic, literary diaries about historical Japanese court life. Not sex focused, definitely no pictures of cockwizards or huge vaginas. So where the hell did this come from? The only explanation I can think of is that Lewis Shiner heard there was something Japanese called pillow books and assumed they were mysterious Orient tomes about fuckmagic. Most of this stuff is just funny and stupid, but this? This makes me legitimately angry. If you're going to incorporate things that are part of somebody's culture and religion into your story, have the decency to do your god drat homework. Not having the internet is no excuse; you can go down to the library and find a copy of The Pillow Book in translation, given that it's among the most influential literary works in Japanese history, and oh hey if Japanese heritage plays a role in who your character is maybe you should make an effort to be vaguely familiar with these things. Maybe acknowledge that Tantra is a very vague term that encompasses a huge variety of spiritual traditions that have to do with a whole lot besides boners. But no, Fortunato is only part Japanese so his hookers can be geisha and only into Tantric stuff so he can get power from his dick. There is never a single suggestion that maybe Hinduism or Buddhism might have something to do with any of this. Does Fortunato ever do meditation, chanting, or breath control? gently caress no! Those don't have any vaginas at all! Don't get me wrong, I'm all for pop culture integrating religion and mysticism, if it's treated with a modicum of thought and respect. Digital Devil Saga uses terms and ideas from Hinduism because it's the backbone of the themes of the story, and that's a loving video game about people with wacky hair colors turning into monsters and eating each other. Hell, I even love how Evangelion throws in the Sephirot and cross-shaped lasers because somebody thought it would look boss, because it doesn't pretend to be an accurate reflection of anybody's belief system or announce, "Christianity is a funny foreign thing about giant robots punching monsters." It might be excusable if it were presented as just the way he rationalizes his powers, like the aces with marvelous technological devices that turn out to be boxes full of coat hangers and gum, except with the kind of magick you learn from books by Lillith Silvermoon Belladonna Shadowraven that are sold by a hairy guy who smells like patchouli. But this is never so much as hinted at. Fortunato's "Tantric magick" is presented entirely as based on real legends and beliefs that exist, not a photocopied bullshit manual combed for all the parts about boning. It's like Stephanie Meyer taking an actual Native American tribe and declaring they are werewolves. Oh, in the Aces Abroad book, they let Lewis Shiner do the story about Japan. It is 100% bloodcurdling racism. Enough  and  . Back to the story. Fortunato goes to see Tachyon. quote:"What kind of 'abilities' are we talking about?" If you want a better idea of exactly what that means and what Fortunato can and can't do, you don't get it. Why it's crucial for a superhero story to define the powers well and how failing to do so shoots any possible tension or investment in the foot is a matter for another post. We get a glimpse of Fortunato's father dying in the wild card outbreak in a suitably horrifying manner, how "his skin split open and healed itself over and over again" until a crack went through his heart, and it kept happening even when he was dead. We go quickly to something also horrifying but probably not as intentional: quote:From listening to his mother complain about American women he came up with the idea of the prostitute as geisha; at age fourteen he brought home a stunning Puerto Rican girl from his high school for his mother to train. That had been the beginning. Way to recruit children into prostitution. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen. Note that we don't get her opinion on this, or a name. It's almost enough to distract you from how the idea of prostitute-geisha could not be created by the Japanese woman, it had to be the teenage boy, as he is one of a notoriously thoughtful and sophisticated demographic. While he thinks about his creepy past he wanders around Jokertown and runs into a performance by C. C. Ryder, who'll show up in another story later. quote:She wasn't beautiful the way Lenore was; her nose was a little large, her skin was not that good. She was in the radical uniform of blue jeans and work shirt that didn't do anything for her. But she had an aura of energy he could see without even wanting to. Oh for gently caress's sake. C.C. talks about how jokers are being sent to Vietnam in disproportionate numbers and put right out into the front to die. Walking around Jokertown, he gets an idea about how to find the hookerkiller and calls Goth Hooker to come help him. They go to the alley where the dead hooker was found and make out while some jokers watch them. quote:Fortunato kissed her. She tried to pull away when the audience of freaks started to snicker, but Fortunato was insistent, opening her lips with his tongue, moving his hands over the small of her back, and finally she began to breathe heavily and he felt the power stirring at the base of his spine. he moved his lips down Lenore's shoulder, her long fingernails digging into his neck, and then he raised his eyes until he was looking at the dog-man. He felt the power flow into his eyes and voice and said, quietly, "Go away." He astrally investigates by following trails of blood molecules and footprints, which would be fairly neat if it wasn't invoked by handjob. Then he goes too far and passes out on Goth Hooker. She takes him home and he wants to gently caress some more to fill up his mana bar, but she is tired. quote:"You build up a charge, and then the sex burns it off. You see? The power, the shakti. Except with tantic magick you absorb the energy back into you. Not just yours, but whatever energy I give up to you."  Shakti is actually the divine creative force of femininity, not female orgasm mana! It is also a surprisingly popular name for companies that make yoga clothes and whatever the hell this is. Somebody who actually knows something about Hinduism could probably tell you more. So he calls another hooker to help, with the assistance of cocaine and "some intense Vietnamese pot." She's described as "tall, black-haired, lush, the most physically adept of his women," because this guy cannot describe a woman in a way that is not creepy. Forty minutes later, quote:"That's it," she whispered. "I can't come any more. I may never come again."  MY CHAR IS THE BEST AT SEXFully charge, he goes to the apartment he tracked the killer to. quote:For some reason he was not afraid at all. He felt fifteen again, like he'd felt when he started making it with the girls his mother trained. For months he'd been afraid to try because of what his mother might say or do; once he gave in he no longer cared. These were women who were lining up to bang a fifteen-year-old, apparently. Statutory rape, schmatuschmory schmape. When he gets there a seventeen or eighteen year old pimply kid who is playing really loud Rolling Stones music opens the door. Fortunato's hypnotoad stare fails because it can do that I guess so he just rams his way into the room. quote:It was Lenore's apartment twisted into perversion, the hip, sexy fashion of occultism taken all the way into torture and murder and rape. "It was covered with black candles and Satanic stuff, but in, like, a creepy way." quote:As in Lenore's apartment there was a five-pointed star on the floor, but this one was hasty, uneven, scratched into the boards with something sharp and then splattered with blood.  Your pentagram craftsmanship is unacceptable, young man. He has Polaroids of all the dismembered hookers on his wall. Convenient! Fortunato tries to grab the kid but the kid fights back and has a switchblade, and Fortunato gets his gun stuck in his pants. He looks at the knife and thinks real hard until time slows down and then manages to get his gun out. He doesn't want to kill Satankid cause he wants to find out what's going on from him, so he shoots him in the shoulder. Satankid is like whatever man and just switches the knife to his other hand, so Fortunato panics and shoots him dead. You tried! Then....oh god. It has to be quoted in full, because I cannot paraphrase this poo poo.    NOT WORK SAFE NOT MIND SAFE NOT OKAY BY ANY MEANS  quote:
quote:Sweat ran down his face and arms. quote:He came almost immediately. It left him weak, weaker than he’d thought possible. He crawled away, pulling his pants back up, sick and disgusted and exhausted. quote:that even a few seconds of it had been too much.  Why would you think this is a good idea to write? Why the gently caress you an editor allow it? Why anything? And that's what he gets for raping a corpse! (And a possibly underaged corpse!) A single word of foreshadowing! Way to loving go. Lenore takes off because after wanting sex magic forever some other guy gets it and is using her as a mana potion and that sucks. He says he loves her, she goes yeah, whatever. When your most human, rational, and understandable character is a magick-obsessed goth hooker and she leaves because this is stupid, you have a problem. Goodbye, Lenore. May you find a better story and better home decorating sense. quote:Fortunato closed the book. Crowley knew, but Crowley was dead. He felt like the last human on a barren rock of a planet. "I bring you the corpse-raping Ubermensch!" The last paragraph is about Fortunato realizing he could help the jokers (who he has consistently thought of as gross freaks) in Vietnam and calling C. C. Ryder. This could make for an interesting story with very little about penises, so we never hear of it again. It's worth noting that Lewis Shiner was not in the RPG session that spawned this whole thing. You can imagine why. So what does your character look like? He's half black and half Japanese! Okay- His mother is a geisha and his father is a pimp! Let's move on. Any distinguishing marks? His forehead is swollen with sperm!  What? He bangs chicks and jabs himself in the dick so instead of going out it goes into his forehead. It's where he gets his powers. What kind of powers? He's a sorceror-pimp! Okay, so if we're in the middle of an adventure and he runs out of mana, what- He gets a blowjob from a hooker!  Please pay for your share of the pizza and leave. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go take a shower or seventeen. Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 11:40 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Aug 23, 2012 03:55
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I like how Fortunato gets cover portraits in later books. Thats always fun.
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Aug 23, 2012 11:53
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My god, this is wondrous and terrifying. Thank you for creating this thread.Verr posted:I had totally forgotten about reading a few of these books, up until, I poo poo you not, the Arab Spring, specifically Egypt's civil war. I made the connection when I was reading a thread about some random psycho-goon on SA. He bought a sniper rifle, flew to Egypt, and masqueraded as a doctor, fighting alongside the rebels. Um...do you mean Libya, or maybe Syria?
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Aug 23, 2012 12:38
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Thinky Whale posted:While I suspect that the reason for Croyd spending so much time asleep is so Zelazny can get out of doing these books when he doesn't want to - "Whoops, my guy's in a coma that week" Actually Zelazny got out of wild cards by dying. So there you go.
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Aug 23, 2012 15:09
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Thinky Whale posted:
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Aug 23, 2012 15:56
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