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Can we just skip ahead to Mark, the hippie ace who makes hallucinogenic drugs that he can use to bring out his multiple personalities all with their own ace powers? Love that guy. Orrrrrr we could go to the guy who took over Roosevelt island and could convert his own body mass into whatever he could imagine. But that's getting way ahead to the super terrible books. Or the jumpers and how they are created since that is an especially hosed up story.
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Aug 23, 2012 16:20
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Sexpansion posted:Actually Zelazny got out of wild cards by dying. So there you go. Well, yeah, there is that. In looking up exactly when he died (1995), I found the awesome fact, "The ostracod Sclerocypris zelaznyi was named after him." Bhodi posted:This right here sums up the weird mary sue undercurrent of the entire story(ies because he just won't go away forever) Wild Cards couldn't just have the kind of Mary Sue who is universally beloved for being really pretty. Victorkm posted:Can we just skip ahead to Mark, the hippie ace who makes hallucinogenic drugs that he can use to bring out his multiple personalities all with their own ace powers? He is next, actually!
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Aug 23, 2012 22:34
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Thinky Whale posted:Well, yeah, there is that. In looking up exactly when he died (1995), I found the awesome fact, "The ostracod Sclerocypris zelaznyi was named after him." Wouldn't that just be Peregrine? Not that she is a main character. Victorkm fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Aug 24, 2012 |
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Aug 23, 2012 23:50
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Victorkm posted:Wouldn't. That just be Peregrine? Not that she is a main character. Good point, I forgot about her. I'd say she's also one of the very few female characters whose power is not vagina-related, since her whole thing is having wings, but when Fortunato bangs her he mentions that they're both aces with sex powers  As I recall, the second book, the one with the horde of alien blobmonsters, specifically says that all she does is fly around helplessly because she's too weak to do anything useful. Woo, Wild Cards and women.
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Aug 24, 2012 01:21
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Thinky Whale posted:Good point, I forgot about her. I'd say she's also one of the very few female characters whose power is not vagina-related, since her whole thing is having wings, but when Fortunato bangs her he mentions that they're both aces with sex powers Wasn't there something about Peregrine actually being a joker instead of an Ace? What with wings and hollow bones.
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Aug 24, 2012 01:37
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Here's a picture from a WILD CARDS signing of some of the readers of this book series. Just kidding it's a picture of the authors. Seriously.
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Aug 24, 2012 02:17
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Please, please tell me Lewis Shiner is either the guy on the far right, or the one with the terrifying grin on the left.
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Aug 24, 2012 05:49
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^^^ I don't know who the woman furthest left is, but from left to right the others are Victor Milan, Caroline Spector, Daniel Abraham, Carrie Vaughn, Michael Cassutt, GRRM, Ian Tregillis, Melinda Snodgrass and John J Miller.Thinky Whale posted:Good point, I forgot about her. I'd say she's also one of the very few female characters whose power is not vagina-related, since her whole thing is having wings, but when Fortunato bangs her he mentions that they're both aces with sex powers She doesn't have sex powers, he's just able to draw more power from sex with her because she has an ace ability. Given the postulate that all ace powers have a psionic basis, this actually makes sense. quote:As I recall, the second book, the one with the horde of alien blobmonsters, specifically says that all she does is fly around helplessly because she's too weak to do anything useful. Woo, Wild Cards and women. In the same book Mistral is literally ripping said horde of alien blobs to pieces and Moonchild kicks the everloving gently caress out of one of the deadliest fighting machines in the universe. Woo, Wild Cards and women. Jedit fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Aug 27, 2012 |
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Aug 27, 2012 20:34
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Jedit posted:Woo, Wild Cards and women. Just wait until we get to the book with the psionic equivalent of a crack whore whose ace power is that she can cure jokers' deformities with her magic vagina.
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Aug 27, 2012 21:05
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Jedit posted:^^^ I don't know who the woman furthest left is, but from left to right the others are Victor Milan, Caroline Spector, Daniel Abraham, Carrie Vaughn, Michael Cassutt, GRRM, Ian Tregillis, Melinda Snodgrass and John J Miller. Thanks for the IDs. Jedit posted:She doesn't have sex powers, he's just able to draw more power from sex with her because she has an ace ability. Given the postulate that all ace powers have a psionic basis, this actually makes sense. I thought he said that specifically, but now looking it up, I was mistaken. Jedit posted:In the same book Mistral is literally ripping said horde of alien blobs to pieces and Moonchild kicks the everloving gently caress out of one of the deadliest fighting machines in the universe. Woo, Wild Cards and women. Mistral is really cool. I wish we got more of her, but she's a background character more than anything. I'm not sure how to count Moonchild, since she's a guy's alternate personality (and the write-up of his story is coming, really. I'm just being a slowass). There's a lot of things arguable about Wild Cards, but that they have some serious woman issues is tough to deny. Unfit For Space posted:Just wait until we get to the book with the psionic equivalent of a crack whore whose ace power is that she can cure jokers' deformities with her magic vagina. That's far ahead, but it's only a couple more stories before Succubus! 
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Aug 27, 2012 22:22
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Thinky Whale posted:That's far ahead, but it's only a couple more stories before Succubus! I forgot all about Succubus! That'll be a fun one for you to explain. I think every Wild Cards book has at least one rape scene in it. Occasionally it's male-on-male rape, but still.
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Aug 27, 2012 23:23
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Thinky Whale posted:There's a lot of things arguable about Wild Cards, but that they have some serious woman issues is tough to deny. "They", though, is tough to define. The Wild Cards Consortium has had more than thirty members since 1986, and it's not really fair to paint them all with the same brush. I don't know what you'd find if you totted up all the female characters who exist to get shat upon, but because of how the writing works it could be a small number of writers being misogynistic or a large number of writers independently adding their own take on the same theme. In either case, it's hardly fair to make it a general criticism of the books when you also have female characters who are powerful aces or who are strong women in their own right. For that matter, it's not fair to criticise Peregrine for being helpless in the face of the Swarm. She's not helpless because she's weak, she's helpless because she's outclassed. There are male aces by the score who would be equally useless.
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Aug 28, 2012 00:00
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Thinky Whale posted:That's far ahead, but it's only a couple more stories before Succubus! Now I think about it, wasn't there a character who murders her lovers with her poison vagina? And she's called 'pussy killer' or something? And a cat burglar who can walk through walls, but of course she has to be NAKED  to do it? Christ, these books ...
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Aug 28, 2012 03:00
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Clipperton posted:Now I think about it, wasn't there a character who murders her lovers with her poison vagina? And she's called 'pussy killer' or something? And a cat burglar who can walk through walls, but of course she has to be NAKED Yep, those are both in the third book. The walking through walls girl doesn't have to be naked, though- but in a bikini. So she spends the entire drat book running around in a bikini with random guys catcalling at her. The vagina murderer is known as Roulette. You know, like Russian Roulette.  Jedit posted:"They", though, is tough to define. By "they", I meant the books, not the writers. Jedit posted:The Wild Cards Consortium has had more than thirty members since 1986, and it's not really fair to paint them all with the same brush. I don't know any of these people personally. They could be lovely people. In the books that are connected short stories, it's reasonable to say they might not have anything to do with the content of anybody else's. However, once you get to the collaborative novels, everybody involved had to have said at some point, "Oh, a story about a guy who gets his powers from raping and murdering women and uses a vagina-assassin to kill people having a big fight with the sorcerer-pimp? I am fine with participating in that!" Jedit posted:I don't know what you'd find if you totted up all the female characters who exist to get shat upon, but because of how the writing works it could be a small number of writers being misogynistic or a large number of writers independently adding their own take on the same theme. In either case, it's hardly fair to make it a general criticism of the books when you also have female characters who are powerful aces or who are strong women in their own right. Okay, let's see what I can remember. Chrysalis, she's pretty cool! Except for that dumb thing where she has Green Arrow Guy pay her for information by banging her, and then later she gets murdered. 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. Blythe is there to be fragile and delicate and then die so Tachyon can be sad. Oh, Water Lily was neat! Then she got that parasite-crack-addiction thing, and got over it by getting a new power - curing jokers with her vagina. Then she dropped off the face of the earth. There's....Bagabond and Rosemary, I guess? A collaboration has an overarching atmosphere and overarching running themes, and when it comes to women, Wild Cards' ain't good. The fact that the list of women who have powers that aren't vagina-related is vanishingly small tells you volumes. Creepy, creepy volumes. Jedit posted:For that matter, it's not fair to criticise Peregrine for being helpless in the face of the Swarm. She's not helpless because she's weak, she's helpless because she's outclassed. There are male aces by the score who would be equally useless. It's been a while since I've read the second. Do we hear about any helpless male aces?
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Aug 28, 2012 04:14
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gently caress I am so rereading these books so I can contribute to this wonderful wonderful thread.
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Aug 28, 2012 07:24
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Thinky Whale posted:The vagina murderer is known as Roulette. You know, like Russian Roulette. And it's not a nickname, it's her real name. (Her parents were using the rhythm method, and her father had Opinions.) quote:It's been a while since I've read the second. Do we hear about any helpless male aces? It's also been a while since I read it. I know Kid Dinosaur was there, if he counts. However, the point is moot. Peregrine still strapped Wolverine-size blades to her arms and went out to fight. It doesn't matter who else did or didn't - either she's as good as the men, or she's doing what they wouldn't. As for your other examples: Blythe and Water Lily I will grant you, but not the others. Chrysalis was insecure with good reason but was also intelligent, strong-willed and resourceful. Peregrine outright told her boyfriend to gently caress off if he couldn't cope with the fact that he wasn't the first guy she'd slept with. You can also add Cordelia Chaisson and Cody Havero to that. The list of women without "vagina-related powers"? That would be every female character you haven't already named. Look - only a special breed of idiot would suggest there aren't a few eyebrow-raising things in the books as they relate to women. But throwing up your hands and yelling "It's all rape!" isn't any more accurate. Instead of arguing the point further, let's get on with reading the stories and call them out as and when they deserve it.
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Aug 28, 2012 08:41
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Jedit posted:The list of women without "vagina-related powers"? That would be every female character you haven't already named. Wait a second, I think I have another one! Wasn't there a story where everyone gets kidnapped by aliens, and there's a woman there whose power is basically 'making guys want to bone her', and she uses it to seduce her way off the spaceship? We've probably got enough for a vagina-themed Justice League at this point. Also: I was a bit worried by the news that the vagina-assassin was named Roulette, which implied that 'pussy killer' was something my own brain had come up with (which was unsettling), so I tracked down a copy of book 3 and someone does indeed call her 'my sweet pussy killer' (  ) at one point. What a relief!
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Aug 28, 2012 09:14
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Clipperton posted:Wait a second, I think I have another one! Wasn't there a story where everyone gets kidnapped by aliens, and there's a woman there whose power is basically 'making guys want to bone her', and she uses it to seduce her way off the spaceship? Oh, yes, I'd forgotten Fantasy. Still, I'm pretty sure she's the only one not yet mentioned unless you count corner cases.
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Aug 28, 2012 09:40
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kcroy posted:gently caress I am so rereading these books so I can contribute to this wonderful wonderful thread. Hooray! Your icon is from one of my favorite of the batshit covers. I love it more every time I look at it. Jedit posted:And it's not a nickname, it's her real name. (Her parents were using the rhythm method, and her father had Opinions.) That I forgot about, but it's still the writer who decided it. It's like all those comic writers who keep making up in-universe reasons that Power Girl has a boob window - the real reason will always be "because the artist wanted to show her boobs." Mt problem with Peregrine is that while she has awesome Wolverine-claws, she never gets to actually use them to fight. We get sex scenes with her, though. Jedit posted:Peregrine outright told her boyfriend to gently caress off if he couldn't cope with the fact that he wasn't the first guy she'd slept with. I didn't want to get into how awful Peregrine and her boyfriend are in Aces Abroad. Isn't he the one who keeps shoving her against walls and practically yelling, "HI I AM AN ABUSER"? But then he says "I love you" and she's a girl, so she's fine with that. Jedit posted:You can also add Cordelia Chaisson and Cody Havero to that. Cordelia, I forgot her. Cody, well, it's funny right after this you say it's wrong so say these books have a lot of rape in them, when her introductory story is her almost getting raped by a tentacle monster. (She's also gets the thing where the woman has a gun, so she's a Strong Female Character! Then, as always, she can't get to it or gets it knocked out of her loving hand!) Jedit posted:The list of women without "vagina-related powers"? That would be every female character you haven't already named. Actually, after thinking about it for a second, I realized I forgot about the dancer with the power that she can mesmerize men and make them want to bone her, and one of Fortunato's hookers who is converted to lesbianism by her psychologist (yeah) and develops the power to psychically make men nauseous. These books are seriously hosed up when it comes to women. I didn't mean to spend a lot of time outside the recaps on it, because I didn't think that was even something anybody would argue. Edit: and Clipperton mentioned Fantasy while I was typing this. But dude, isn't one woman with vagina-powers creepy and goony enough, let alone several?
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Aug 28, 2012 09:49
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You know, as horrible as this sounds, I sort of like the idea that the world of Wild Cards is full of sexually deviant powers and personalities. It sort of paints everything as just more screwed up where it comes off as 'normal' for the world they live in. Given the implied subconscious determination of powers and how much people probably think of sex, the number of sex-based powers out there is probably about right. Also, I think it does sort of potentially lend itself to some interesting stories, too, if told right. Given how sexual behavior is still sort of a taboo subject, a character with a power that is sexual in nature might give way for stories about how someone with a magic penis or vagina deals with balancing the use of that power, their personal lives and the social mores deal with it all. A heterosexual man who discovers his ace power is to only make men sexually attracted to him might give a story about a dude who uses that power not for sex but to blackmail people, or a lesbian woman who can make women she has sex with pregnant (but only with daughters) might give a story about how a community and character who've never had to worry about such things now have to deal with issues of accidental pregnancy and birth control for the first time.
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Aug 28, 2012 10:00
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It could be interesting, if it was handled very carefully and there were also men who got sexual powers that could make them uncomfortable instead of adolescent I GET TO BONE LOTS OF CHICKS fantasies. There's no guys with powers that, say, make them have to deal with potentially unwanted advances, especially not gay because that would be icky. But it would have to be done very deftly and with a great deal of thought and insight. Like they say, anything could be a good story in the right hands. (There's a couple offhand mentions that the weregator is gay, I think, though, which is pretty cool.) Oh, and I forgot about Kim Toy, the lady with pheromones that make you want to bone her.
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Aug 28, 2012 10:08
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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. Blythe is there to be fragile and delicate and then die so Tachyon can be sad. Oh, Water Lily was neat! Then she got that parasite-crack-addiction thing, and got over it by getting a new power - curing jokers with her vagina. Then she dropped off the face of the earth. Bizarrely enough, all these characters are written by women! Roulette, too. quote:Cody, well, it's funny right after this you say it's wrong so say these books have a lot of rape in them, when her introductory story is her almost getting raped by a tentacle monster. (She's also gets the thing where the woman has a gun, so she's a Strong Female Character! Then, as always, she can't get to it or gets it knocked out of her loving hand!) Not only is she a Strong Female Character, but she's written by Chris Claremont! quote:(There's a couple offhand mentions that the weregator is gay, I think, though, which is pretty cool.) It's not just offhand; in a later book he contracts AIDS, so he has to stay an alligator 24/7 to keep the disease from killing him (because alligators are immune to human AIDS, apparently). I don't know if there are any other aces with magic penises besides Fortunato, but the incidence of male characters with rapey mind control powers (who are frequently also literal rapists) is quite high. Each of the first ten books features one as a major villain. Edit: Scratch that, I just thought of another character with a magic penis whose ace power is that he gives other people superpowers by raping them. He isn't going to get a writeup for a long time to come, unfortunately. All this being said, I actually like the Wild Cards books a lot and have bought and sold them all multiple times. I know the OP rags on him, but Walter Jon Williams is one of my favorite writers in the series. His stories are usually pretty funny and all of his main characters are good: Golden Boy, Modular Man, and Black Shadow. Servoret fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Aug 28, 2012 |
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Aug 28, 2012 12:42
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Unfit For Space posted:Edit: Scratch that, I just thought of another character with a magic penis whose ace power is that he gives other people superpowers by raping them. He isn't going to get a writeup for a long time to come, unfortunately. Wait, does he have to rape them for it to work, or is it that he is a rapist and he has a bad case of superpowered gonorrhea? Not that the latter isn't a really hosed up thing for a writer to talk about, but the former is a special kind of
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Aug 28, 2012 13:44
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whowhatwhere posted:Wait, does he have to rape them for it to work, or is it that he is a rapist and he has a bad case of superpowered gonorrhea? Not that the latter isn't a really hosed up thing for a writer to talk about, but the former is a special kind of I don't think he has to, but he chooses to do it that way. Did I mention that he exclusively does this to teenage kids? Edit: By the way, this plot development is Chris Claremont's major contribution to the Wild Cards universe. Servoret fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Aug 28, 2012 |
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Aug 28, 2012 13:46
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Thinky Whale posted:It could be interesting, if it was handled very carefully and there were also men who got sexual powers that could make them uncomfortable instead of adolescent I GET TO BONE LOTS OF CHICKS fantasies. There's no guys with powers that, say, make them have to deal with potentially unwanted advances, especially not gay because that would be icky. But it would have to be done very deftly and with a great deal of thought and insight. Like they say, anything could be a good story in the right hands. Kim Toy's ability is identical to the Envoy's but much stronger. Feel free to bang on about David Harstein's vagina-based powers, however. As for the women who do have overtly sex-based powers, they all have character-based reasons for developing them. Succubus came from an unimaginably abusive home; children from that kind of home often wish to be a different child that their parents would love, and that's literally her power - to be whoever someone wants most. Roulette turned her ace after her husband kicked her out for giving birth to a joker baby and she was coerced into giving sex for a place to stay. From her POV it's clear that she has to be reminded of that before she can produce her poison. And Water Lily had been forced to both have sex and kill with her wild card ability. It's not a reach to suggest her new ability was a reaction to the combination of the two, purifying sex and her power at the same time. On the subject of people with strange sexual powers: someone with a tiny power like that would be a deuce. There are a few deuces in the stories - and volume 16 is devoted to them - but mainly they disappear into the background.
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Aug 29, 2012 00:36
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Jedit posted:Succubus came from an unimaginably abusive home; children from that kind of home often wish to be a different child that their parents would love, and that's literally her power - to be whoever someone wants most. I was going to say something here, but I don't want to step on any more of Thinky Whale's jokes. More write-ups, please!
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Aug 29, 2012 01:26
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Unfit For Space posted:It's not just offhand; in a later book he contracts AIDS, so he has to stay an alligator 24/7 to keep the disease from killing him (because alligators are immune to human AIDS, apparently). If this thread has proved anything, it's that I have a really bad memory. I think Tachyon cures his AIDS? Unfit For Space posted:All this being said, I actually like the Wild Cards books a lot and have bought and sold them all multiple times. I know the OP rags on him, but Walter Jon Williams is one of my favorite writers in the series. His stories are usually pretty funny and all of his main characters are good: Golden Boy, Modular Man, and Black Shadow. Actually, he's one I like. You may be confusing him with John J. Miller, whose name has a similar pattern and who is really, really boring. Jedit posted:Kim Toy's ability is identical to the Envoy's but much stronger. Feel free to bang on about David Harstein's vagina-based powers, however. That right there's a perfect example. The man's pheromone power is about making people like him and get along, so he gets to use it in clever ways to resolve disputes. It is never made sexual whatsoever. The woman's pheromone power is about making people go OMG I WANT TO BANG HER. Do you seriously not see a double standard at work here? Jedit posted:As for the women who do have overtly sex-based powers, they all have character-based reasons for developing them. That is TVTropes logic. All of those reasons come from the writer. It is not a thing they saw and are objectively documenting, it's something they made up and put in intentionally. The character did not need to have sexually abusive backgrounds, it's something the writer wanted them to have. It's mentioned that Succubus can even change gender if it's what the customer wants - why not have her be a guy who as a kid was neglected and wanted attention and then becomes sexually exploited? (Not that I want more child prostitution of any gender in these stories, but we'll cross that horrible, horrible bridge when we get to it.) Because that's not the way the writer wanted it. And that says a lot. Deuces Wild is one that I wish I could track down, because I love the concept. One of my favorite applications of the superhero concept is people with limited powers using them in creative ways. Anyway, the write-up of the next two stories is almost done.
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Aug 29, 2012 02:34
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Thinky Whale posted:Actually, he's one I like. You may be confusing him with John J. Miller, whose name has a similar pattern and who is really, really boring. I got Williams mixed up with your "who the hell is Lewis Shiner" riff in the OP. John J. Miller is pretty bad though. The Yeoman stories belong in a 1970's men's adventure paperback, not a science fiction series, and the apparently incredibly rare solo book that he did is when I got off the Wild Cards train because it was so incredibly awful. The stories I hate the worst though are the ones centered on Bagabond and Sewer Jack. Nobody on Earth cares about these boring loving characters, and the stories just get loopier and loopier with New Agey bullshit as the series goes on, until finally they're all about the wisdom of the prehistoric peoples and who knows what the gently caress. It turns out that in the Wild Cards universe Buddy Holly survived his plane crash and became a shaman with magic powers who sits on a council of aboriginal elders that meets in the Dreamtime!
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Aug 29, 2012 03:00
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Thinky Whale posted:It could be interesting, if it was handled very carefully and there were also men who got sexual powers that could make them uncomfortable instead of adolescent I GET TO BONE LOTS OF CHICKS fantasies. There's no guys with powers that, say, make them have to deal with potentially unwanted advances, especially not gay because that would be icky. But it would have to be done very deftly and with a great deal of thought and insight. Like they say, anything could be a good story in the right hands. That sounds exactly like Aisha from Misfits, which actually treated 'everybody wants to have sex with you' as a horrible curse. She couldn't even have sex with her boyfriend without raping him. Fortunato could be an old Mage character if you just focused on the Tantric elements or an Unknown Armies character if you focused on the sleaze. Good writeups but I wish the OP didn't use 'faggy' so much.
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Aug 29, 2012 04:24
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 Mark Meadows aka Captain Trips Transfigurations by Victor Milan Okay, I think I've recovered. Let's keep this thing moving. Though the Turtle puts up a good fight, Mark wrestles away the hotly contested, disturbingly sticky crown of gooniest. He's studying at MIT, is referred to by several people as a "square," and spends the whole story failing to get a hippie girlfriend. He's another dick whose power is having lots of powers. However, the setbacks are pretty unique: his multiple personalities are the ones with the powers, not technically him, and what brings them out is taking certain combinations of drugs. How'd he figure out what drugs do what? Trial and error. Lots of it. So he wrecks his life and in every story after this one, instead of the genius biochemist he could have been, he's a burned-out hippie. Victor Milan's a middling writer, but definitely one of the better of the crowd that's consistent about churning out the pagecount. I have a fondness for him because he has a special gift for bizarre similes that livens things up. Within the first couple pages Marks legs are "like triffid tendrils", his coat hangs on him "like a dead dwarf," and words fall from his mouth "like gumballs from a broken machine." So the writing tends to be fun and endearingly goofy. At the beginning of this story he's still a student at MIT, and he goes to a club to study druggie hippies. He's clumsy, so he runs into somebody. quote:He realized there was a certain softness of the person his skinny hands were clinging to so fervently, and a smell of musk and patchouli detached itself from the general miasma and drilled its way right up into his sensorium. He cursed himself: You had to go and run over a beautiful woman. At least she smelled beautiful. This makes the first time in history someone has referred to patchouli as smelling 'beautiful' and not as 'jesus christ Neal, quit spilling your bong water on the carpet.' Turns out this girl is Kimberly Ann, the girl who used to live down the street and who he's had a crush on since he was five. She was, of course, stuck up and dated jocks (  ) and made fun of him for being a dweeb. But now she's a cheerful hippie who hugs him. Her name is Sunflower now. quote:He stood there blinking like an idiot. No female who wasn't a relative had ever hugged him before. He swallowed spastically. What if I get an erection? What did I tell you? Stone cold gooniest. Kimberly spends the entire story talking like this: quote:"It's just that since my eyes have been opened, I've realized that everyone's beautiful in his own way, except the pigs who oppress the people. And I see you--still straight. But you haven't sold out, man." like Victor Milan hit the Triple Hippie Cliche Score tile on WriterScrabble. So Mark hangs around with the hippies while being too nervous to try any drugs himself and pining after Kimberly. There's a whole lot of Mark mooning around about being a square not wanting to date Kimberly, while never doing anything crazy like expressing his interest to her. She goes through various hippie boyfriends. They go to some concerts, and I have to admit I'd misremembered about the Lizard King way back - he's actually a pretty big participating character here. He's a singer named Tom Douglas, basically Jim Morrison except he can transform into a snake-headed thing that gives people hallucinations. Neat! Another character is Wojtek Grabowski, a Pole who fled to the US after WWII. His pregnant wife left a few months before him, but in twenty-three years he hasn't been able to find her. Now he's a construction worker listening to reports of the Kent State shooting, saddened and baffled at how his adopted country is tearing itself apart. He's sort of the antagonist of the story, but he's painted very sympathetically, and I like him. quote:Later, walking the beams up above the world so high, he reflected on the tragedy of it all. American soldiers were fighting to defend American values and rescue a brother nation from Communist aggression--and here were fellow Americans spitting on them, reviling then. Ho Chi Minh was portrayed as a hero, a would-be liberator. It's pretty heavy-handed, especially when he decides aces and jokers are all tainted by the devil, but effective, showing again how Wild Cards is best when it intertwines history with snake-headed dudes. Grabowski grabs a girder and finds out he has supder-strength when it bends in his hand. He considers jumping off the building to end his devil-baby existence, but instead decides that with great power comes the great responsibility to punch Snakehead Jim Morrison. Said lizardface is leading a hippie rally that is surrounded by the National Guard and is on its way to becoming a hippie riot. Mark's there too, and he's finally gotten the guts up to try some LSD! Bad timing. The guards fire some shots. quote:Triumphant an eyeblink before, the crowd came apart in screaming panic. The noise of the shots struck Mark like a giant pillow and spun him backward along endless, twisting corridors. But the scene stayed before him, light at the end of a tunnel, terrible and insistent. No one had been hit by the burst, but the protestors, like Mark himself, had come up for the first time against the reality their prophet Mao had tried to impress on them; where power comes from. People freak, but the Lizard King grabs the APC gun barrel and twists its up, cause he also has superstrength I guess, that tends to come free with powers. Then Wojtek shows up and hits him in the back of a head with a wrench. quote:Thinking he had killed him, Grabowski felt strength ebb. He needed rage to stay in the meta state, but all he felt was shame. Desperate, he turned to face the crowd. "Go home," he shouted in his hoarse, harsh English. "Go home now. Is over. You must not fight no more. Obey your leaders and live in peace." He gets dubbed Hardhat, because he is wearing a hardhat and angry mobs aren't creative. Some kid in the crowd shouts back and calls him a fascist, which, when your friends and family have been killed by actual fascists, would understandably piss you right off. Then Snakedude gets up and they fight some more, and Grabowski's winning, until a shirtless blond guy shows up and fights with him. Grabowski goes attack the onlookers in berserker rage but stops for a second, and the blond guy smacks him in the back of the head with a peace symbol medallion.  So Hippie Liquid Snake saves UnJimMorrison and everybody goes and parties. In the morning he disappears. It turns out Grabowski realized he was about to hit a girl who looked enough like his wife that she could've been his daughter, and Tachyon helps him try to find her, but they never do, and Grabowski vanishes from the world and the series, which is too bad. After a while, UnJimMorrison decides he's going to stop being a singer and stop being an ace, so he takes a drug of Tachyon's that can make acehood go away about thirty percent of the time, and it works for him. Then it turns out being an ace was the only thing that kept drugs and booze from turning his organs inside out and he dies. He was not a very smart snakeman. As for Mark, he wakes up in an alley with vague memories of the whole thing, and finds out Kimberly is now totally in love with the guy he was for a few hours that she doesn't know was him. He tries taking more LSD and hoping it'll turn him into exactly the person he wishes he was again, but it doesn't work. So he keeps trying and trying. quote:For a week he didn't leave the apartment, living on moldy crumbs, slamming down increasing doses of acid as fast as the effects of the last charge faded. Nothing. When at last he staggered forth for more drugs he's already taken on a blur around the edges. The story drags in places, but it's good setup, all in all, with a lot of possibility, and I like that it's not the powers themselves but the way Mark pursues them that wrecks his life. Fortunately we'll see a fair amount more of him as the series goes on. There's a couple pages of an interlude of what's supposedly an article by Tom Wolfe, and someone who's read Tom Wolfe could tell if he's supposed to be kind of swishy and annoying. It's about a swanky part at the restaurant Aces High and "the era of Wild Card Chic," where being an ace is cool and makes you a star. Oh hey, a new very minor character: quote:So beautiful. Aurora, sitting on Hiram's bar, showing the long, long legs that have made her the toast of Broadway, the men clustered around her, laughing at her every joke. Remarkable, that red-gold hair of hers, curled and perfumed, tumbling down across her bare shoulders, and those bruised, pouting lips, and when she laughs, the northern lights flicker around her and the men burst into applause. Another woman whose power is being pretty. Where does a bitch have to go to get some goddamn heat vision? Another woman shows up who can change what she's wearing by clapping her hands, including, awesomely, making herself "armored head to toe in black metal that gleams like ebony," before making herself an evening gown. Also she's pretty. We never hear of her again, though. We also don't hear anything now or in later stories of how the jokers feel about this, though you'd be able to get a lot of interesting mileage out of "You having fancy chic wind magic comes at the cost of me having all these crabclaws in my armpits" if you wanted. They almost start to talk about the thing about all the jokers in Vietnam, but then, dinner! That's actually pretty funny since it's an intentional jab at them for being self-involved. Aces High is run by Hiram Worchester, who's showed up in the background of a few stories and is a consistent running character. He's a big fat guy with the power to alter gravity, so he can make you float up to the ceiling or smash you under the weight of your own skull. He tried fighting crime as Fatman for a while, but it was kind of ridiculous and didn't work real well so he said screw it and opened a restaurant. He is a pretty cool guy.  Bagabond, Sewer Jack, C.C. Ryder, and Rosemary Muldoon Down Deep by Edward Bryant and Leanne C. Harper As you can see from all the names up there, this is sort of an ensemble thing. The focus is pretty evenly split between them. Sewer Jack's the only one I can find a picture of because I guess werecrocodiles are more fun to draw than social workers. These stories are odd because they have some of the most  ideas, and yet somehow the effect is still boring. I don't know how you make a manic-depressive vigilante subway car dull, but they manage. In keeping it to the highlights it may end up sounding totally awesome, but in practice it doesn't work so well.We start with Rosemary, a social worker, going to meet and try to help out Bagabond, a homeless lady. Bagabond don't want none, son, and the two giant cats that hang out with her hiss and claw at Rose until she goes away. How do you help someone who doesn't want to be helped and is an animal telepath? That is a good question! A social worker trying to help people get by in a world full of weird, especially if some of her clients were jokers, would be totally awesome in a more serious take on Ugly Americans sort of vein. I would read the poo poo out of a story about a seven foot tall chitinous mutant eking out acceptance and trying to find job placement. However, the social worker thing drops quickly into the background, because Rose's real name is Rosa Maria Gambione and she's the daughter of a mafia don.  If Wild Cards is at its best when it's about history and society, it's at its worst when it's about mafias, and it loving loves mafias. There's the Italian mafia, the Asian mafia run by ArrowShooty McBoring's even duller nemesis, a joker mafia or two, and if you bet that when they drop by Japan they run into the Yakuza you win nothing, because of course they loving do. Rose is engaged to some underling of her dad's. All the members might as well be called Stock Mafia Guy #37c and there's just enough of them that they're hard to keep track of, so I think of them as either  or  While she's trying to deal with crazy cat baglady, her fiance, let's call him Squit, is on the subway platform late at night. There's nobody else there but an old lady and he tries to steal her purse, because the union mandates at least three acts of open stereotypicality per diem. Then some other people show up and Squit lets go of the purse and jumps onto a subway car, which turns out to be a bad choice because it eats him. Later Rose is also trying to get on the subway and thinking about her friend C.C. Ryder, who vanished from the hospital where she was recovering from being attacked and raped. As Wild Cards  goes, it's fairly tastefully handled and not sensationalized much, at least. The last subway car is empty, and she sees weirdly elaborate graffiti on the side: quote:Parsley, sage, Rosemary? Rose pounds on the doors but they won't open. In a nicely creepy detail, they feel warm and fleshy. She sees more graffiti that she recognizes as C.C.'s lyrics: quote:You can't fight the end, Then the car of emo poetry disappears into the dark. There's a scene of the crocodile eating some stuff, and then we're at Rose's house with her dad and some mob guys. Don-Dad declares that Squit must have been killed by tunnel-dwelling black people because sure why not, and he's gonna take Pesto, Joey Mousepad, Bobby, and Clamps and go blow up stuff. Rose's mother tries to get her to eat "some nice lasagna, your favorite," because she's on union rules too. We see Bagabond's two giant cats prowl through the city to get some food for her, and there's a pretty cool scene about Hiram Worchester and some jokers who were going through the trash in an alley: quote:A wedge of light spilled into the alley as a door opened. The cats smelled fresh food as a well-dressed man, larger than any of the scavengers, carried boxes into the alley. When they get back to Bagabond she's sleeping with a possum on her lap, which, let's be fair, is totally awesome. She is aware that something in the subway tunnels is killing her rat friends and goes to check it out. Her cats smell lizard, but they don't find anything. Rose tries to talk her into going to a homeless shelter again and she says no again, then Rose sees the goth poetry subway car again. It's written in a shade of red "that reminded her of blood," just to make sure you think of that. quote:Blood and bones The message is sort of undercut by how the second line makes you try to sing it to the tune of Country Road. There's also: quote:Rosie, Rosie, pretty Rosie Stop knocking on the door and let the drat subway car listen to its Linkin Park!  Then we're with the mafia guys again. "Here we are in these subway tunnels," says Don-Dad. "We are going to shoot some people," says Joey Mousepad. "We do that a lot because we are mafia guys," says Clamps. "We have guns," says Pesto. "They are for shooting people," says Bobby. "Be sure to shoot lots of people with your guns," says Don-Dad. This goes on for a few pages. Then Jack comes along, because working in the subways is his job when he's not an alligator. Pesto is about to shoot him and that makes him gator-hulk out. There's some shooting and biting and I think some mob guys get eaten before Jack falls down something. quote:The alligator smashed into a thin metal hatch that had never been engineered for this kind of force. Why isn't alligator-resistance in the building code? drat YOU, BUDGET CUTS! He falls some more and gets stuck. Bagabond heard the psychic cry of a sad lizard and comes to help. She calls a bunch of possums, dogs, and raccoons to pull and gnaw the debris away and get him out. He transforms into a naked dude and he and Bagabond become friends. They hop on the subway, which turns out to the C.C.-car, which lets <i>them</i> in. Bagabond can feel that it's something weird but also that it likes them. Jack takes her to his plush gatorcave in some other old tunnels. They chat some about how he's from the Bayou and she is actually 26 and just makes herself look like an old woman so people will leave her alone. It's too bad, since you don't get a lot of older women as protagonists. Her powers woke up in a bad acid trip, which, kind of awesomely, makes her the second ace to have powers brought on by LSD. Rose decided to wander around in the subway tunnels to look for C.C., and that has turned out to be a bad idea. She hears gunshots and so do Jack and Bagabond, and eventually they all end up together with the mafia guys and the don, who is all, "oh, my daughter, fancy meeting you in these random subway tunnels." It is not terribly coherent. Then subway-car-CC shows up. Apparently traumatic shapeshifting did not take away the internal compass everybody has that leads toward where the plot is happening. quote:Colors radiated from the spot [Rosemary] touched and then vanished. The car became black and almost vanished from the sight of the watchers. Words appeared as they had before: lyrics of songs C.C. had written and only her best friend, Rosemary, had ever heard. The watchers stood, too stunned to move. Where do they keep getting the poems I wrote in my seventh grade math notebook? Then the side of the subway car shows C.C. being attacked and running from the hospital. quote:The next scene showed another subway station, another attack, but the person in the hospital gown was a witness this time. She tried to stop the attack and was flung aside, hurled onto the tracks. The colors of pain and rage. The trash and just about anything else unsecured on the unoccupied platform - vending machines, discarded newspapers, a dead rat, everything - was sucked down onto the tracks as if pulled into the voracious heart of a black hole. A train with six cars shrieked into the station. Suddenly another car joined it. The attacker, escaping, entered the new car and - the scene turned to crimson, as though blood were washing across the phantom car. More subway stations, more crimson. Another attacker in crimson, an old woman. Rosemary and the mob guys recognize Squit! The don does the only reasonable thing and tells Clamps to blow up the subway car with a rocket launcher, but while he's aiming one of Bagabond's giant cats jumps on his back and bites the hell out of him, so he shoots the ceiling instead and water starts pouring in. Jesus, the infrastructure can't handle weregators or rocket launchers. What the hell do I pay taxes for? Jack turns gator and bites Dad-Don's leg. all the non-mafiosi hop in the C.C.-car and bail out of there. Then all the mafia guys are dead, and Rosemary is slightly troubled about her dad dying for a second, but Jack comes swimming out, so it's cool. In the wrap-up it's mentioned that C.C. is getting therapy from Dr. Tachyon with some help from Rosemary, though I'm not sure if they stand on the subway platform and chat or what. C.C. is described as continuing to create "fine, sharp-edged lyrics," which must be a lot different from the ones we got here. Sometimes Bagabond and her cats come and hang out with Jack. Aww. Overall, neat ideas, not great execution. Next up: Finishing up the book with an interlude that tries to be Hunter S. Thompson and exemplifies why you shouldn't do that, a whole lot of , and Sir Borington of Who Cares
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Aug 29, 2012 06:03
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Thinky Whale posted:Deuces Wild is one that I wish I could track down, because I love the concept. One of my favorite applications of the superhero concept is people with limited powers using them in creative ways. I do have a copy of Deuces Down. Want me to fill in if we somehow get that far both alive and sane?
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Aug 29, 2012 08:27
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Is this really the first Wild Cards thread? Also holy crap Sewer Jack and Bagabond. I don't think you got across just how boring these motherfuckers and their awful supporting cast are. I found them even duller than Not Green Arrow. Wild Cards has some insanely goony writers, but when Ed Bryant and Leanne C. Harper take over the whole world turns beige.
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Aug 29, 2012 11:14
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Jedit posted:I do have a copy of Deuces Down. Want me to fill in if we somehow get that far both alive and sane? That would be awesome! In fact, if it's standalone enough that it would make sense out of order, you could go for it whenever you want. Saint Drogo posted:Is this really the first Wild Cards thread? Also holy crap Sewer Jack and Bagabond. I don't think you got across just how boring these motherfuckers and their awful supporting cast are. I found them even duller than Not Green Arrow. Wild Cards has some insanely goony writers, but when Ed Bryant and Leanne C. Harper take over the whole world turns beige. Oh good, it's not just me. I don't even know what it is. A vigilante were-subway car that communicates in graffiti, a gay Cajun weregator, a homeless lady who can spy through the eyes of every pigeon in the city of make them peck your eyes out, those should by all rights add up to the most  and badass thing possible. It might be the plotting and pacing to blame. Looking closer at Down Deep, it really jumps around a lot and goes in fits and starts. There's not a natural sense of momentum or escalation, and characters seem to run into each other to converge the storylines out of unacknowledged random chance. In order to invest in a story, you have to be able to get a handle on how and why things are happening and how everybody involved feels about it. Otherwise it just comes out to a pile of disjointed things happening on top of each other. The characters having sort of dud personalities doesn't help. I really like the concept of Bagabond, but "grumpy, noncommunicative, and doesn't like people" doesn't make for a lot of spark in a story.
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Aug 29, 2012 11:53
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Thinky Whale posted:He gets dubbed Hardhat, because he is wearing a hardhat and angry mobs aren't creative. This is another 1960's reference. Middle-aged white dudes who hated longhaired freaky people were occasionally called this by the media. The Bryant/Harper stories read to me like fan-fiction, like they're so in love with their characters that they forget to make anybody else care about them.
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Aug 29, 2012 16:42
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Thinky Whale posted:That would be awesome! In fact, if it's standalone enough that it would make sense out of order, you could go for it whenever you want. It's pretty near standalone bar a few minor spoilers - one story is about a certain character who is a secret ace until about book 7 - and like the first book it takes place over a spread of time so it'll fit in anywhere. I don't think we want to have two books on the go at a time, though, so let me know when you want to take a bit of time off and I'll do it then.
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Aug 29, 2012 19:13
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Unfit For Space posted:This is another 1960's reference. Middle-aged white dudes who hated longhaired freaky people were occasionally called this by the media. Oh, neat, I didn't know that. drat, I actually feel young for once. Jedit, I'll take a break before doing the second, if you want to fit Deuces in then. I haven't read the second in ages so I need to read it more thoroughly instead of scanning around.
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Aug 30, 2012 00:32
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Thinky Whale posted:Jedit, I'll take a break before doing the second, if you want to fit Deuces in then. I haven't read the second in ages so I need to read it more thoroughly instead of scanning around. No probs. I'll try to get one done every two or three days, so you can maybe start in on book 3 as well.
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Aug 30, 2012 01:02
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Listening to the disappointement people feel about WC today and how characters/powers are handled reminds me a lot of the TV show Misfits: You get a bunch of people with superpowers and they never seem to use them in any awesome ways that one would think they would automatically try to use them. It's almost the end of the second season when they decides to actually use their powers to rob a bank , which surprises one of them that it took them so long to actually think of doing that. Personally, I still do wish WC would get a TV series or something made of it. Tone down the kink a bit and it could probably be done on a Sanctuary or Farscape quality of technical production.
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Aug 30, 2012 06:20
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JediTalentAgent posted:
The most interesting theme to me was the us vs them stuff ( the Jokertown ghetto, the way that even Aces were feared by humans, the hidden/shameful Aces etc ). The political convention story arc was by far my favorite - I guess my issue is that many of these themes have now been hammered into the ground (XMEN and The 4400 are two that pop to mind.. I'm sure there are tons of others). I'm not sure what original material is left to strip from these books. Characters based off of bad puns, and innovative ways of raping people? Never mind, that is probably more than enough to scoop in tv viewers, although I'm sure that alt-history related jokes would be wasted on the audience. Maybe if they focused in more on characters like Croyd - imperfect people put in really lovely situations - there could be some cool anti-hero story telling going on. 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
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Aug 30, 2012 09:54
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JediTalentAgent posted:Personally, I still do wish WC would get a TV series or something made of it. Tone down the kink a bit and it could probably be done on a Sanctuary or Farscape quality of technical production. 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.
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Aug 30, 2012 14:26
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