|
Unfit For Space posted:What's the reference on that? That sounds so wrong to me. They drew the character naked and then gave it to his wife to play? And credited her for creating it even though she didn't? quote:Other characters that made the transition to the written word include George's Great and Powerful Turtle, Gail's Peregrine (although as originally conceived she didn't have wings, until Vic drew a picture of a naked Peregrine with wings and suddenly it seemed like a good idea) MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Sep 18, 2012 |
#
?
Sep 18, 2012 01:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 18, 2024 20:55 |
|
|
I have the feeling that whoever wrote that was either remembering it wrong or meant that they weren't going to give her wings in the books until that unfortunate incident took place. The airbrushed Peregrine on her shirt pretty clearly has wings, and that would have been from before Wild Cards was conceived as a book project.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2012 15:47
|
|
|
Unfit For Space posted:I have the feeling that whoever wrote that was either remembering it wrong or meant that they weren't going to give her wings in the books until that unfortunate incident took place. The airbrushed Peregrine on her shirt pretty clearly has wings, and that would have been from before Wild Cards was conceived as a book project.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2012 22:10
|
|
|
I hope that's true, because it's so beautifully Wild Cards. While Jedit's doing Deuces Down, I'm working on a sort of interlude about how superpowers function in narrative. I'm looking forward to volume 2 in a sort of masochistic way, because I just opened it up and on the first page there's Fortunato and about twelve different things a story shouldn't do.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2012 04:50
|
|
|
Thinky Whale posted:I hope that's true, because it's so beautifully Wild Cards. Might be a little while before I start, Thinky - I hadn't realised that effort posts take so much effort. I'm also about to start a document control course, which may impact on my free time. It might be an idea if we use it as an interlude between several books rather than do it all at once.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2012 19:00
|
|
|
MadScientistWorking posted:Errr... That is exactly what he is referencing. The next sentence actually tells how you won't see slut cycle anytime soon in the books. Would you mind quoting it?
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2012 19:00
|
|
|
No worries, Jedit, I'll do my thing and you can jump in whenever you feel like it. Interlude - Why Well-Defined Powers Are Important Or: Another Reason Fortunato Is Terrible SF and the Bouncing Spaghetti Principle In order for the conflict to have any tension, we have to know what your hero can and can't do. This is a challenge SF has that fiction about reality doesn't - we know basic physics and a normal human's limits. That part of the work is done for you. You don't have to construct or tell us about a system of physics and biology that functions and doesn't have glaring holes or contradictions, because we already have one of those. You don't have to tell us that the detective's in trouble because the other guy has a gun and he can't move faster than bullets. We know that, so we know there's real danger to the character and that he'll have to do something unexpected and clever to get out of this one. Therefore, if you say, "He jumped over the desk and punched out the gangster before he could get a shot off," we feel cheated. Now, if the detective's impervious to bullets, the scene's coming from a completely different place. If the reader knows this beforehand, then they know the hero's not going to be hurt, so the tension has to come from someplace else. That's not so hard. In fact, it could be interesting if, say, the bad guys finding out that the hero is bulletproof would be catastrophic, so you've got a guy desperately trying to avoid getting shot but for a different reason than usual. But if the reader doesn't know the hero's power, and the tension culminates in him being shot but ha ha! Bullets don't work on me!, then the whole of the scene has become a cheat. There are certain ways to do this decently as a way to introduce a power, or for comedic effect, but it's still pretty cheap, because it means there was never any danger in the first place. Now, if it happens repeatedly with the hero pulling powers out of nowhere to resolve the problem, you're just a cock. As the old saying goes, if anything is possible, nothing is interesting. In order to be invested in seeing your character work around or overcome his limits, we have to know where the limits are. In a story, especially a written one, anything you say goes. You can make the laws of the universe whatever you want, but the agreement with the reader is that you will follow them. Notable crazy person Terry Goodkind once said: Terry Goodkind posted:When some readers want magic to exist, they simply leap to the assumption that it somehow can, and then become befuddled when the inconvenient facts of reality — the laws of identity — keep popping up. They pop up because that reasoning part of their consciousness — the part which deals with the laws of identity of those things that exist — keeps making its presence known. It keeps saying to them “But wait, that can’t work.” A baby cries when spaghetti pushed off its highchair won’t bounce the way a ball would. He cries because he wants the spaghetti to bounce. He cries because he wants his mother to fix it, to make the spaghetti bounce. Yes you can, and if you've established that in your story's world spaghetti bounces, when somebody tosses their lunch at the wall the room had drat well better be a war zone of ricocheting semolina or you're not doing your job. When the reader opens the book, he or she is making an implicit investment of time and energy into your world. They're making themselves vulnerable in a way, saying, "I'm willing to care about these people and let you influence my emotions through what happens to them." If their abilities are vague and change to suit the convenience of the plot, it's disrespecting that investment in the same way as if they're standing on the cliff looking down at the wreckage when we know they didn't get out of the cock-a-doody car. Doing It Wrong and Doing It Right In a world like Wild Cards, where there's a virus that can do anything and there's a ton of main characters, you need to establish how yours works quick. Zelazny does a good job of handling this efficiently with Croyd and his shifting powers; he wakes up, looks in the mirror to see what he is this time, and after a while gets in the habit of running through some tests to see if he can turn invisible or hum in a way that shatters glass this time. In origin stories it's not too tough because all you have to do is show us the character discovering his own power, which is an interesting part of it anyway. Walter John Williams does it well with Golden Boy: quote:By the time I got to my apartment I figured there had to be some kind of emergency going on, and I turned on the radio to get information. While I was waiting for the Philco to warm up I went to check the canned food in the cupboard - a couple cans of Campbell's was all I could find. My hands were shaking so much I knocked one of the cans out of the cupboard, and it rolled off the sideboard behind the icebox. I pushed against the side of the icebox to get at the can, and suddenly it seemed like there was a shift in the light and the icebox flew halfway across the room and drat near went through the wall. He gives you the basics of superstrength-with-a-glowy-aura straight up, then fills in details as they come up naturally. We find out that he can bend a tank's gunbarrel but needs good leverage when he does it, and that a speeding car won't hurt him but will send him flying when he tries to do that. They don't come out of nowhere, because they're things you could reasonably extrapolate from "He's really strong." The story introduces a bunch of powered people, so the first time they come on stage he gives us a basic rundown of the power, its drawbacks, and an example of how the character uses it. This is one case where telling, used in moderation, can be stronger than showing: it's quick and clear, and it fits in the framework of the story, since it's from the point of view of a guy giving you the highlights of his history. There's nothing wrong with introducing a power by showing it at work, but if it's done badly, you end up with no idea what is going on. Aces Abroad has a scene where one of the Boring Twins is in a fight and is described as suddenly being behind somebody, in the disjointed way that's often used in battle scenes to show you it's scary and chaotic. I had to look it up on the wiki to find out that they were trying to tell us his power is teleportation. How far can he go? Can he take anybody with him? Can he only do it so many times before getting tired? Who knows! When Fortunato finds out he's magic by reading his goth hooker's mystical Asian porn collection, besides making me sad by being a thing that happens, it doesn't actually tell you anything. It's just a list of vague things that may or may not apply to Fortunato, and god do I wish "sodomy that revives the dead" was one of the ones that doesn't, and then it's pointed out that all his indepth reading took him twenty-five minutes. I honestly thought that this meant there wasn't really all that much to read or something. It wasn't until rereading for this thread that I realized this is supposed to tell you that he can slow down time. Among the other stuff. What Are You Fighting and How? I'll admit I'm biased; my favorite kind of power is a single, specific ability that the hero uses it clever ways. For example, in Ex Machina by Brian K. Vaughan, the hero's power is he can talk to machines. That's really all you need to know. The fun is in how it's applied. He can tell a gun to jam, or distract somebody for a crucial moment by having their bluetooth headset scream in their ear, but if somebody draws a bow and arrow on him he's in deep poo poo. But if you don't know the limits of what a character can do, you have no idea when he's really in danger. The narrative has to stop dead and inform you that's he's in trouble because he doesn't have enough sperm-mana to do whatever, and it's always going to feel arbitrary. Tension in a story comes from close shaves and desperate fights, and from the reader not being sure if the hero's going to make it out of this one, but you can't have that if one of the hero's abilities is Solution Drops Out of the Author's rear end. This is primarily for stories where the conflict is "Can this guy beat up this other guy?", because for those the doubt about the answer needs to come from the honest place of an even matchup, not from having the cards in either player's hand hidden from you. Consider: Superpowered people A and B are going to fight. They both have super toughness. Versus: Superpowered people A and B are going to fight. A can control water, and B can control electricity. Even if I only let the details of exactly what I mean by "control" come out during the fight, the second is still a lot more interesting, because you can start imagining things from that description alone. Maybe A can be clever and keep the water from ever touching himself, so B can't use it as a pathway to electrocute him. B has what seems to be the stronger and deadlier power, but maybe he's a sitting duck if he gets soaked. You have some ideas of what could happen, so you want to see what will. In the second and third Wild Cards books, the heart of the conflict comes down to Fortunato and a guy called The Astronomer, who is Evil Fortunato. What can The Astronomer do? gently caress if I know. Some psychic stuff I guess. It's never real clear, but don't worry, there is plenty of effort spent on making sure you understand he gets mana from raping people to death. (His motivation and reason for this is, because, see, he's evil.) When you've got a matchup like that, all of the trappings of a story fall away, and you're left knowing that this is all fake and the one who wins is determined by who the writer wants to win. The curtain falls down and you're staring at the greasy guy pulling the strings and making funny voices. Hell, even a suite of nebulous powers in itself isn't a dealbreaker. You just have to move the conflict elsewhere. Take Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. He can do pretty much whatever he wants, so the problem becomes, how does he decide what he wants? Does he count as human anymore? Does he even care? Tweaking just a couple things makes it possible for Fortunato to have a meaningful conflict. You can even keep him a (sigh) sorcerer-pimp. But face and use the ridiculous teenager fantasy of his premise. Make him have grown up thinking being a pimp is awesome and sexy, make him full of juvenile dreams about being totally tough and banging a bunch of chicks and all those things that conflate sex and power. And then when he gets it, he gets to be glamorous and important and impress people by saving them from muggers. But with great spermpower comes great obligation, because the accolades and attention will turn on him the minute he takes a break, and now he has all the girls he wants but now it's dawning on him that this is a chore, and maybe he has to face that for all the fancy geisha-ness and sensuality or whatever he's painted over it, what he thought was the specialist and most magical thing in the world is a job for these women, they are on the clock, and maybe, maybe even has to deal with how using them as bangable mana potions is deeply, deeply hosed up. Next up: with all those  out of my system, we get a start on Aces High: Sumerian Creation Goddesses Are Not Space Cthulhu, You Dickwad
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2012 12:39
|
|
|
Thinky Whale posted:He can tell a gun to jam, or distract somebody for a crucial moment by having their bluetooth headset scream in their ear, but if somebody draws a bow and arrow on him he's in deep poo poo. Wait, so a mechanical tool like a gun can be jammed, but an equally mechanical tool such as a bow can't be broken (by say, string getting unhooked)? That's...odd. Also if my very hazy recollection of Mesopotamian creation goddesses are correct, Tiamat (which is who it is, right?) honestly could kind of be Lovecraftian. I mean, the entire universe is her dismembered corpse. Waking her up would be starting all kinds of poo poo beyond human ken. I'm sure that Wild Cards didn't get anywhere near making that basic idea not horrible in execution, but it doesn't seem self-obviously ridiculous.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2012 13:08
|
|
|
Thinky Whale posted:As the old saying goes, if anything is possible, nothing is interesting. In order to be invested in seeing your character work around or overcome his limits, we have to know where the limits are. This is why I hate magic in comic books generally, except for Ditko Dr. Strange which worked because Ditko was brilliant and also because he really only used a couple of special abilities usually. Wild Cards suffers a little bit by letting the writers use whatever level of fantasy they want to describe ace abilities, so Williams making jokes about Superman's powers encountering the laws of physics sits side by side with people turning into sentient subway cars.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2012 19:08
|
|
|
Unfit For Space posted:This is why I hate magic in comic books generally, except for Ditko Dr. Strange which worked because Ditko was brilliant and also because he really only used a couple of special abilities usually. Turning into a sentient subway car doesn't actually break the laws of physics, though. I can only think of one or two powers in all the books that do, and even then they can usually be handwaved by the assumption that an as yet unproven theory is correct.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2012 20:40
|
|
|
It seems like they're making more of an effort to have them conform to the laws of physics like mentioning that Peregrine flies through telekinesis rather than with her wings. It's been a while since I read the early books but I believe they didn't mention that until some of the later books. Also that when Mark transforms into a friend with more mass, he gets the extra mass from the air and objects around him rather than just popping it into existence like Bloat. Also thanks for the writeup Thinky Whale! I remembered Fortunato and the Astronomer bothering me but I couldn't really put it into words. Uh, aside from the whole rape and sperm magic stuff. That's pretty much a gimme.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2012 21:20
|
|
|
Tagichatn posted:It seems like they're making more of an effort to have them conform to the laws of physics like mentioning that Peregrine flies through telekinesis rather than with her wings. It's been a while since I read the early books but I believe they didn't mention that until some of the later books. Also that when Mark transforms into a friend with more mass, he gets the extra mass from the air and objects around him rather than just popping it into existence like Bloat. Bloat doesn't just pop matter into existence. For smaller things he converts energy from his body; for large things, he accesses a parallel dimension and draws matter from there.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2012 21:48
|
|
|
whowhatwhere posted:Wait, so a mechanical tool like a gun can be jammed, but an equally mechanical tool such as a bow can't be broken (by say, string getting unhooked)? That's...odd. It's established somewhere that it has to have a certain level of complexity. quote:Also if my very hazy recollection of Mesopotamian creation goddesses are correct, Tiamat (which is who it is, right?) honestly could kind of be Lovecraftian. I mean, the entire universe is her dismembered corpse. Waking her up would be starting all kinds of poo poo beyond human ken. I'm sure that Wild Cards didn't get anywhere near making that basic idea not horrible in execution, but it doesn't seem self-obviously ridiculous. The exhaustive scholarly research of flipping through Wikipedia and this funky old book I have called A Guide to the Gods tells me that a bunch of these myths could be turned into something really cool. One story about why there was the war with Tiamat is she and the sea god were pissed off at the other newer gods for not shutting up, which is awesome. You're right, she could be taken in a creepy Lovecraft direction too, if you made use of her being basically the mother of creation, but also a chaos-monster who tried to kill everybody, and now her body's the world. But in Wild Cards it's just a mindless space monster summoned by Egyptian Masons.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2012 08:20
|
|
|
Actually, the fact that Fortunato (alright, how the gently caress does a half-black, half-japanese pimp with no interest in Italian get a name like Fortunato? I just...what?) gets his power in the same way that George Costanza becomes smart brought up a creepy question in my mind: what would the female equivalent be?
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2012 08:50
|
|
|
whowhatwhere posted:Actually, the fact that Fortunato (alright, how the gently caress does a half-black, half-japanese pimp with no interest in Italian get a name like Fortunato? I just...what?) gets his power in the same way that George Costanza becomes smart brought up a creepy question in my mind: what would the female equivalent be? There isn't one. It's a circle thing; women can awaken the power but can't use it, men can use the power but can't awaken it. It's not exactly an equal relationship, but it makes the point that a man is nothing without the love of a woman.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2012 10:25
|
|
|
Jedit posted:Turning into a sentient subway car doesn't actually break the laws of physics, though. I can only think of one or two powers in all the books that do, and even then they can usually be handwaved by the assumption that an as yet unproven theory is correct. My point isn't the laws of physics, but that Wild Cards varies considerably between harder SF and Fortunato and the Astronomer doing whatever the gently caress it is they do, which lets in some really stupid poo poo like people turning into subway cars. I know the supporting material in the first book essentially handwaves everything by saying it's all telekinesis and telepathy somehow or another, but it's still lame. Jedit posted:There isn't one. It's a circle thing; women can awaken the power but can't use it, men can use the power but can't awaken it. It's not exactly an equal relationship, but it makes the point that a man is nothing without the love of a woman. Unrelated to that idea, the latest Wild Cards book has a female character with kundalini powers that she charges up by sexy dancing and loses by having sex. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2012 21:54
|
|
|
Jedit posted:There isn't one. It's a circle thing; women can awaken the power but can't use it, men can use the power but can't awaken it. It's not exactly an equal relationship, but it makes the point that a man is nothing without the love of a woman. Well I just twitched in a bunch of new and interesting directions.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2012 01:12
|
|
|
Unfit For Space posted:Unrelated to that idea, the latest Wild Cards book has a female character with kundalini powers that she charges up by sexy dancing and loses by having sex. Something slightly related this, I have an 80s comic book somewhere that I think is called "Codename: Danger" about a guy who puts together a team of people with special skills. One of the characters is a woman who can master years of skills and knowledge from others in a short period of time, but she loses them if she has sex. I only have the one issue, but it didn't seem like they tried too hard to overtly sexualize it other than to have the main character's assistant sort of make a mention of it as a friendly bit of warning to him in regards to their upcoming mission.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2012 01:37
|
|
|
Thinky Whale posted:Well I just twitched in a bunch of new and interesting directions. Don't look at me, blame the Hindus.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2012 10:06
|
|
|
Wild Cards Volume 2: Aces High  We continue with the tradition of kickin' rad covers. The grinning robot punching the dragon monster is Modular Man, not that great a character but whose story has what may be my favorite line in the whole series. I'm gonna try to do this in shorter sections, since trying to do two stories in one post turned out long and unwieldy. This volume's set up pretty much the same as the first, with short stories that progress an overall narrative, but sans the fun interludes, which is too bad. We do get an ongoing story about Jube, though, and he is a walrusman who sells newspapers. All right! Let's start reading! Pennies From Hell Lewis Shiner All right! Let's start drinking! Fortunato (1 shot) is surrounded by a dozen gang members (2) armed with pool cues and car antennas who we are straight-up told are so generic they're hard to tell apart(3). (The population of Wild Cards New York is 80% interchangeable gang members.) He says he's looking for somebody named Gizmo(4). The gangsters try to beat him up for no reason(5). Fortunato slows down time so he isn't hit with a pool cue, then uses pimp-jedi mind powers to tell some of them to run away. This includes gremlin guy, and now Fortunato has to chase him and does not seem to understand this is his own fault for being stupid(6). He gets tired, so he "let out a burst of energy that lifted him off the path and sent him sailing through the air," which is unclear whether it's supposed to be a sperm-wizard move or just jumping like a normal person(7). He lands on the kid's spine like a dumbass and kills him(8). But he finds a weird copper coin in his pocket! Apparently he's been looking for these highly secret, mysterious artifacts for years, and the other night the kid dropped one in a bar(9). He could have found out which one was Gizmo or what he knew by telepathy, but the writer forgot he has that (10). All right, that's the first page! Oh this is going to be a long book. By the way, though he's only ever killed a person once before that we know of, killing a guy who's done nothing but be in a stupid gang and drop some change on the floor just makes Fortunato mildly chagrined at losing his lead. On the bright side, he didn't do necrophilia divination this time.  He goes to Aces High to talk to Hiram who is a coin collector now I guess. He mentions he found the last one ten years ago from the guy who killed his hookers, and the narrative reminds us that his last word was TIAMAT in allcaps, but gracefully elides that it was a last word cajoled by corpserape. quote:Fortunato didn't need magic to know that the fat man was uncomfortable. Fortunato's open black shirt and leather jacket weren't really up to the dress code here. Aces High looked out over the city from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, and the prices were as steep as the view.  Button your loving shirt, Fortunato! You're asking the guy to do you a favor! Being a spermwizard is no excuse for rudeness! quote:Then there was the fact that he'd brought along his latest acquisition, a dark blonde named Caroline who went for five hundred a night. She was small, not quite delicate, with a childlike face and a body that invited speculation. She wore skintight jeans and a pink silk blouse with a couple of extra buttons undone. Whenever she moved, so did Hiram. She seemed to enjoy watching him sweat. Yep. That's how long we went before the first instance of being  creepy. Page loving two. I don't want to hammer on this too much because it takes me from funny-angry to angry-angry, but jesus, it keeps coming up, and professionalism is supposed to mean keeping your hands out of your pants for five drat minutes. The rest of the scene periodically interrupts itself to remind us there is a hot girl here. Hiram gives him the name of a lady who runs a little museum and writes about local occult stuff. quote:Fortunato stared at the coin and for a half-second felt like he was falling. The leaves of the wreath turned into tentacles, the ends of the ribbon opened like a beak, the loops of the bow became shapeless flesh, full of too many eyes. Fortunato had seen it before, in a book on Sumerian mythology. The caption underneath had read "TIAMAT." Hey, a cult identifying itself with a coin that looks like a normal antique but turns brain-breaking and Lovecraftian when you concentrate on it too long. That's a decent idea! Except when you think about the details for twenty seconds and it melts back into crap. 1) No he hasn't seen that, because old art of Tiamat looks like this:  (I did also find some neat art projects a guy does with different world mythologies, as a nice bonus) 2) In the ten years Fortunato has been intermittently investigating the other one of these he has, he has never attempted the steps of taking it to an expert or looking at it real close. Every piece of plot we get makes no sense. This isn't a story. It's holes knit together with mystical pubic hair. Anyway, he goes to see museum lady. quote:Eileen Carter was in her late thirties, with flecks of gray in her brown hair. She looked up at Fortunato through squared-off glasses, then glanced over at Caroline. She smiled. A serviceable description that isn't creepy! I spoke too soon, we might be be getting- quote:He put the penny on the counter, tails up.  While Fortunato is drooling over her for not being like those vapid whores he bangs all the time, she tells him it's a copy of ones made by a guy from the nineteenth century named Black John Balsam. quote:She studied the back of the cioin intently for a few seconds, biting her lower lip. Her lips were small and strong and mobile. He found himself wondering what it would be like to kiss her.  quote:On the train back to the city Croline said, "You want to gently caress her, don't you?" Dames, am I right fellas? If you're wondering if there turns out to be a purpose to having Caroline around in these scenes, there isn't. She's just there to be a hot flighty broad and remind us that Fortunato is a pimp who gets laid a lot. Eileen calls him a week later while he's sleeping next to Caroline, because like hell are we missing a chance to have a naked lady around, and he and Eileen go out to a church in the country to talk to another lady. She's old, so she at least gets a noncreepy description. Progress? She shows them John Balsam's grave, which is engraved with a refreshingly honest "May He Burn In Hell," and talks about how he was a foreigner who lived by himself so he got called a witch and blamed for everything, so when a girl went missing they got torches and pitchforks and charged into his house, where it turned out he was an evil witch who had the girl on an altar and was standing over her with a knife. Good police work, angry mob. So they strung him up and found a bunch of the weird pennies in his basement, and stick them in his grave. quote:"You see how red it looks? Supposed to be from a high iron content or some such, Folks at the time said he put human blood in the copper."  Then we leave spooky lynching story old lady, which is too bad, cause she's the best. Credit where it's due, there's a small nice character moment when Fortunato notes he's not comfortable outside of cities. He goes back with Eileen and they chat some, with her talking about how she's into occult history but thinks it's all fake. He laughs. He knows magic is real, because he does it with his dick. He tells her about his powers through the usual list of vague nouns. quote:"It gave me a lot of power. Astral projection, telepathy, heightened awareness. But the only way I can direct it, make it work, is through Tantric magic, It has something to do with energizing the spine-" "I also subscribe to Pseudoeastern Sexmagic Bullshit Weekly." quote:"You're talking about real tantric magic. Intromission. Menstrual blood. The whole bit." This is the worst Revolutionary Girl Utena duel song ever. By the way, the part about menstrual blood? That's foreshadowing. Why do you foreshadow the worst things, Lewis Shiner? Fortunato tells her he's a pimp but it's okay because quote:"My women aren't just hookers. My mother was Japanese and she trains them as geishas. A lot of them have PhDs. None of them are junkies and when they're tired of the Life they move onto some other part of the organization." Note the idea that women with PhDs are lining up to be hookers. "Sup, baby, you lookin for a good time with a doctor of marine biology?"  I guess the girl from before was Vapid Whore Stereotype, Esquire. Eileen mentions that this sounds like a lot of self-serving bullshit. He says it's okay because Alistair Crowley said morality is dumb. There's a moment of plot where she says she showed the Cthulhu Cent to some other guys and one at the subtly named Miskatonic Bookstore invited her to an Obviously Evil Cultist Hoedown. Fortunato says she's hot and he wants to do her, but she mustn't associate with him anymore, because he is so mysterious and dangerous. Has that ever actually worked? She still doesn't believe him, because "I can do penis sorcery" is on the third page of the Pick-Up Artist handbook, so he nearly gets them into a crash by making his astral body appear on the windshield, to prove both that he is magic and that sooner or later he's going to get her killed by doing something incredibly stupid. quote:She started the car and pulled back onto the road. It was a quarter of an hour, back on I-87, before she said, "You're not quite human anymore, are you? That you could scare me that badly. Even though you say you're interested in me. That's what you were trying to warn me about." "The terrible truth is that I am a jackhole." Next time: Tolstoy was trying to tell us that Masonry is for summoning Cthulhu. Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Jul 13, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2012 06:40
|
|
|
Now I'm curious as to what other parts of Fortunato's organization could possibly exist to employ all of these PhD ex-hookers. Is there a Fortunato Institute for Marine Science or something?
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2012 14:26
|
|
|
Maybe when they get tired of sex work they move on to the IT department. Pennies From Hell Part 2 Eileen calls Fortunato and they meet for lunch at Aces High. Eileen is described as dressing in a way that "made the most of what she had" while not being as glamorous as his hookers and wearing very little makeup. It is not stated if Fortunato wears a drat shirt this time. Fortunato says he went to visit Cultshop Guy and he didn't know anything about no cults, really, even when mindread. Eileen says she looked in a magazine that's "sort of a Reader's Guide to occult publications" and found some articles by Marc Balsam, who's probably a descendant of the aforementioned evil witch guy. You'd think he'd rebel against the family business by running away and joining the Methodists or something. I'm happy to see enough break from cliche that the guy orders a salad and the girl orders meat. I'm taking my victories where I can find them. It turns out Hiram is Eileen's ex-boyfriend from years back. Fortunato mentions that she's hot and he wants to do her. Eileen says he has "all this sexual power and charisma," the latter attribute of which must be shown offscreen. She at least makes the token mention that the idea of intimacy with a guy who you know can do crazy tantric mindshit to you is creepy. Fortunato's sex-magic-overdosed life meaning that he could find the most intimate, human relationships with women if they are nonsexual would be interesting, so it doesn't happen. The odds of Eileen not sleeping with him by the end of the story are pretty much nil by now. Hiram comps their lunch, making him Good Guy Gravityman. They go back to Fortunato's apartment and follow various namedrops through books until they figure out that John Balsam = Giuseppe Balsamo = Count Cagliostro, and he came to the US and invented something called Egyptian Freemasons because he went somewhere in the English countryside and found something that made him mumbo jumbo crazycakes. Now we need to make a bunch of old guys with secret handshakes sound scary. quote:"Okay," Fortunato said. "Now listen to this. This is Tolstoy on Freemasonry: 'The first and chief object of our Order ... is the preservation and handing-on to posterity of a certain important mystery ... a mystery on which perhaps the fate of all mankind depends.'"  I have a feeling a lot of War and Peace went over my head, but as far as I remember, the point of the part about the Masons was that they didn't have the answer to finding meaning in life anymore than anybody else did, and all the rituals and rhetoric and ostentatious mysticism were used for contrast to the banality of the members using it for political and business connections. It was not about space monsters. We continue skipping merrily along bullshit bend: quote:"There's one more piece. The thing that's on the back of the Balsam penny is a Sumerian deity called TIAMAT." Yes, it is written in caps every time, so I like to imagine they're suddenly shouting sometimes for no reason. quote:"It's what Lovecraft took Cthulhu from. Some kind of huge, shapeless monster from behind the stars." The myth is that the earth and stars are made from Tiamat's dead body. You cannot possibly get farther from 'beyond the stars' than that. quote:"Lovecraft supposedly got his mythology from his father's secret papers. Lovecraft's father was a Mason." It wasn't Lovecraft's dad who joined the Masons, it was his grandfather, who also joined just about everything else. Jesus, Shiner, you've got a guy who spent his childhood having horrific night terrors and whose dad died insane when he was three, and you have to make poo poo up whole cloth? Oh, hey, he didn't! Googling 'Lovecraft Mason' takes us straight to a list of misconceptions. It turns out it all comes from stuff some other guy made up. The most logical explanation is when he was gonna write a story inspired by the Lovecraft mythos, instead of reading any Lovecraft or Derleth or any of the other guys who wrote in that world, he skimmed through a book that said it was about them and called it a day. I'm not saying Lovecraft is some sacred thing that can't be touched or changed, when the whole idea was a playground that a bunch of writers could use however they wanted, but this is just lazy. You can make up whatever you want, but if you're going to attribute it to a real person, whoever they are, have some care, decency, and respect. If you're going to throw together whatever you want, acknowledge that's what you're doing, and at least have the grace to be some drat fun. Despite how much a monster that's called like Cthulhu figures in the plot, it never occurred to me before now that Shiner might be trying to do a Lovecraftian story, because the whole tenor of it is all wrong. The part of Lovecraft stories that's interesting, the reasons nerds are still nerds about it to this day, is the whole concept of a monster that's so unimaginably bigger than humankind that we can't begin to understand what it is: not evil, but so far beyond us that good and evil don't even apply. It doesn't hate us. We don't register. Like the infamous Cthulhutech, all Shiner's imagination can extend to is "yarr evil rape rape." And that's worse than offensive: it's boring. drat it, I promised myself I wouldn't rant this time. Should've known better. Anyway. quote:"Put it together," Fortunato said. "Suppose the Masonic secret has something to do with controlling TIAMAT. Cagliostro learns the secret. His brother Masons won't use their knowledge for evil, so Cagliostro forms his own order, for his own ends." Sure, why not. When you hear about a giant mutant death-thing in the sky, the first thing you wanna do is make it land on you. Fortunato walks Eileen to a cab and makes out with her. She leaves. Somehow talking about tentacle monsters hasn't put her in the mood.  The next morning the cops show up at the door to ask about that guy he killed at the beginning of the story. Consequences! Nice! quote:He stood by the door, holding his robe closed with one hand. If they came in they would see the pentagram painted on the hardwood floor, the human skull on the bookcase, the joints on the coffee table. I like that "human skull" is in the same rank as "weed." You'd better not have ruined the floor, Fortunato. Wood floors are nice. He jedi-mind-tricks the the cops away, for now. quote:It suddenly occurred to him that the apartment was empty. He couldn't remember the last time he'd spent the night alone. he almost picked up the phone to call Caroline. It was only a reflex and he fought it off. What he wanted was to be with Eileen. "Sleep with a lady" appears to be Fortunato's go-to solution for anything. quote:Two days later she called again. In those two days he'd been to her museum in Long Island twice, in his astral form. He'd hovered across the room, invisible to her, just watching. he'd have gone more often, stayed longer, but he was taking too much pleasure in it.  Yeah. That would make it creepy. Eileen says that Cultguy has invited her to an initiation to the Sacred Brotherhood of Halfassedly Kludged Together Stuff. She comes over to Fortunato's place and they make out. I guess she doesn't notice the skull. I hope it has a candle in it. Fortunato suggests banging, she says she'd like to but the whole is-that-ancient-sorcery-in-your-pants-or-are-you-just-happy-to-see-me thing weirds her out, so no. Fortunato accepts this and is decent about it. That lasts until after a few paragraphs of exposition, when he finds a reason that they need to have sex. No seriously. It's important. Next time: The Fortunatohood of the Traveling Psychic Sperm
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2012 12:27
|
|
|
Thinky Whale posted:Sure, why not. When you hear about a giant mutant death-thing in the sky, the first thing you wanna do is make it land on you. Are you reading these for the first time as you go? I'd hate to spoil anything, but it's a little unfair to rip on Shiner for something that turns out to be an incorrect interpretation of what the evil Masons are doing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2012 21:01
|
|
|
Unfit For Space posted:Are you reading these for the first time as you go? I'd hate to spoil anything, but it's a little unfair to rip on Shiner for something that turns out to be an incorrect interpretation of what the evil Masons are doing. We should also point out that this is a parallel universe and the changes to history did not begin on September 15th 1946, so little glitches in the history need not be pedanted.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2012 21:16
|
|
|
Unfit For Space posted:Are you reading these for the first time as you go? I'd hate to spoil anything, but it's a little unfair to rip on Shiner for something that turns out to be an incorrect interpretation of what the evil Masons are doing. I've read it before but it was a long time ago, so I've forgotten a lot. I'll try to hold off on making assumptions.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2012 02:04
|
|
|
Pennies From Hell Part 3 I am turning over a new leaf. Less judgmental, less commentary, less negativity. Let's go! Time for Fortunato's climax! Fortunato wants to go with Eileen to the Cult State Jamboree, but the sperm-forehead is pretty distinctive. He suggests going by astral projecting, but then if somebody else is astral projecting and they see each other, it'd be awkward. Since he can't come in spirit, he decides to come in sperm. quote:"It has to be just me. There's no other way." Wild Cards: The Power Is In My Sperm quote:"Oh God," she said. "This is--there's so many reasons not to--I'm having my period, for one thing." Well. All right then. Eileen continues not wanting to have sex. quote:She grabbed her left wrist and held it close to her chest. "I told myself if I ever went to bed with a man again--and I said if--it would have to be romantic. Candlelight and flowers and everything. And look at me." "I love you": page 18 Eileen first met: page 6 Come on, come on, less negative, I can do this. Her response to this is genuinely pretty good. quote:"That's easy for you to say. I'm sure you mean it and everything, but I'm also sure you say it all the time. There's only two men I've ever said it to in my life, and one of them was my father." Fortunato's is not. quote:"I'm not talking about how you feel. I'm not talking about forever. I'm talking about me, right now. And I love you." He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. "Loving somebody doesn't mean caring how they feel." quote:He kissed her and felt her respond, almost against her will. The  begins around here. quote:He took his clothes off and pulled the covers over the two of them and began to unbutton her blouse. Her breasts were large and soft, the nipples tightening under his tongue as he kissed them. She goes to the bathroom and comes back naked with blood already visible on one thigh. I will not nitpick the mechanics of fictional menstruation. I will not. quote:She stood naked in front of him. She looked like she was afraid he would send her away. He put his head between her breasts and pulled her toward him. I love the image of just faceplanting into a girl's boobs. quote:She got under the covers again and kissed him and her tongue flickered into his mouth. He kissed her shoulders, her breasts, the underside of her chin. Then he rolled onto his hands and knees above her. If a girl keeps saying "no" and expressing reluctance, that means it's going well! quote:He held his penis in one hand and moved the head of it against her labia, slowly, gently, feeling the brittle[!] flesh turn warm and wet. She bit her lower lip, her eyes closed. Slowly he slipped inside her, the friction sending waves of pleasure up his spine. Really doing great here. quote:Tears rolled down into her hair and at the same time her hips moved faster against him. Their bodies were flushed and hot and sweat ran down Fortunato's chest. Eileen stiffened and kicked. A second later Fortunato's own brain went white and he fought off ten years of training and let it happen, let the power spurt out of him and into the woman and for an instant he was both of them at once, hermaphroditic and all-encompassing, and he felt himself expand to the ends of the universe in a giant nuclear blaze. She's better after a break. Now that the spermpower has been transferred, she feels powerful and magical, whereas he's curled up in bed feeling like crap. At least he has a regular forehead for a while. She doesn't get to do the magic herself, though. If Fortunato concentrates he can see through her eyes and use his powers through her. She goes to the cult meeting and he gets arrested. He gets thrown in a cell and can't concentrate enough to get to her for an hour. When he does she's in a candlelit temple thing with pillars at the end. She's doing okay. That younger Balsam guy, who she's met before a couple times, is presiding. quote:Over his dark suit he wore a white Masonic apron with bright red trim. He wore a tabard like an oversized bib around his neck. It was white too, with a red looped cross in the center. An ankh. I cannot imagine this in any way that doesn't look ridiculous. I was gonna try to draw it in MS Paint but googling the apron got me something too great to compete with:  From a site that implores us to "note the two pyramids in the NASA name." Trying to look up this stuff has gotten me a lot of magnificently insane conspiracy sites in my browser history. They do some culty nonsense and people put on Egyptian god masks. A giant glowing golden man appears that nobody else notices. There is an "oriental woman, rather plain, but with an undefinable sexual energy." She's playing the devil's advocate and opposing letting Eileen into the clubhouse. This involves slapping her so hard she falls over and slides across the floor. quote:"Behold," the woman said. She touched her fingers to Eileen's eyes and they came away wet. "The fertilizing rain." Okey dokey then. One guy holds her down against the floor and another sticks his fingers in her mouth. Then he touches her face with a stick. He says a bunch of mysticky nonsense with "thee" and "thou" a lot. quote:He stood aside. Balsam bent over her until his face was only inches away and said, "Now I give to thee the hekau, the word of power. Horus hath given thee the use of thy mouth and thou canst say it. The word is TIAMAT." "I'm right here, you don't have to yell." quote:"TIAMAT," Eileen whispered. He tools around Chief Cultguy's head for a while and looks through his memories of stuff he's read and heard about Cagliostro. quote:When he met Lorenza, Fortunato saw her as Cagliostro had, naked before him for the first time, only fourteen years old but dizzyingly beautiful: slim, elegant, olive-skinned, with jet-black wavy hair spread out, tiny perfect breasts, smelling of wild coastal flowers, her throaty voice screaming his name as she wrapped her legs around him. The whole thing's about a page, and this was important enough to be in detail. Apparently this guy imagined his great-great-whatever-grandfather's sex life with a fourteen-year-old very vividly. He sees Cagliostro see a meteor or something fall out of the sky in England, and he gets close and sees it's a weird non-Euclidean thing, but then it cuts out and we go straight to him heading toward London "full of some high purpose that Fortunato couldn't read." He keeps smacking the guy's brain around hoping for something useful to fall out, but then Balsam in the present is like dude this lady's mindreading me what the gently caress. Fortunato's jail guards have well-honed dramatic timing and come to drag him off to talk to some guys. There's a cop, a guy who checks for wild card powers, and one Fortunato figures is another cult guy Eileen described. There's a kind of clever touch where the wild card-sensing guy concludes Fortunato only has some pathetically weak telekinesis, because that's all he's got right now, since all his sperm power is in a lady's vagina drat it I followed it too long and it got stupid again. They decide not to prosecute about the guy he killed, because they figure he'll say it was self defense and it was just a gang kid so nobody'll care. Murder: sometimes easier to deal with than a parking ticket. Outside, he connects with Eileen's mind and finds her blank and drooling. That can't be good. He takes a cab to the alley she was dumped in and yep, braindead. He can't bring her back so he stops her heart to make her real dead. That has got to set some sort of speed record for introduction to refrigerator. Fortunato's right next to the church full of evil cult guys but he doesn't have the mana to do anything. quote:For a few seconds he stood and shook with helpless rage, ready to go after the building with his bare, battered hands. Then he saw her, on the corner, standing in the classic pose under the streetlight. Black hot pants, rabbit jacket, fake-fur shawl. Hooker heels and too much makeup. “You look sad. Is it anything a stock photo of a whore can help with?” quote:He slowly raised his arm and waved her over. “Actually, yes.” quote:She stopped in front of him, looked him warily up and down. “Hey,” she said. Her skin was coarse and her eyes were tired. “You wanna go out?” SEE A DOCTOR quote:and in the crawlspace over the temple the black steel pipe bent and shook free of its connections. It spurted gas and fell to the floor, knocking sparks off the chicken-wire-and-plaster wall. Cool guys look straight at explosions. Then he goes home and drinks and is sad about dead girlfriends and space monsters. The lesson here to is make sure your gas lines are up to code or they are vulnerable to being exploded with sex magic. Next time: Six years later with a walrusman who rules
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2012 12:16
|
|
|
Thinky Whale posted:SEE A DOCTOR I love this so much. My mind slid right off half that story when I read it the first time, and I found it doing the same thing with those quotes. Yikes. SO very not necessary. I love how Eileen crying on the bed is just a casual mention for closure of the scene. What a textbook definition of coercion. What a charismatic stud. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Sep 27, 2012 |
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2012 20:11
|
|
|
Couldn't Fortunato just jerk off into a baggie and have Eileen carry it in her pocket?
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2012 22:12
|
|
|
Maremidon posted:Couldn't Fortunato just jerk off into a baggie and have Eileen carry it in her pocket? I'm sure he could, but he wouldn't get a very good view when he's seeing what a baggie in someone's pocket is seeing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2012 22:32
|
|
|
She could throw the bag of jizz. Nobody ever expects that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2012 03:15
|
|
|
Bhodi posted:I love this so much. My mind slid right off half that story when I read it the first time, and I found it doing the same thing with those quotes. Yikes. SO very not necessary. I love how Eileen crying on the bed is just a casual mention for closure of the scene. What a textbook definition of coercion. What a charismatic stud. Clearly she was crying with happiness. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2012 06:06
|
|
|
I'm trying to remember that this is the good guy in this book and the next. Gravityman better live up to his reputation.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2012 09:18
|
|
|
Maremidon posted:Couldn't Fortunato just jerk off into a baggie and have Eileen carry it in her pocket? Not as far as she knows, which is all Fortunato cares about. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2012 16:06
|
|
|
Fortunato always seemed extra creepy because I imagined some pasty, failed writer roll playing him. A blackspoitation character whose solution to every problem turns into a round of the classic party game 'Rape/Pimp/Bang'.... what could be awkward about that? 'So to stop this occult thing, I'm going to date rape the librarian, pimp out a 14 year old, and bang the corpse of the gang dude.'
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2012 15:42
|
|
|
Acinonyx posted:Fortunato always seemed extra creepy because I imagined some pasty, failed writer roll playing him. A blackspoitation character whose solution to every problem turns into a round of the classic party game 'Rape/Pimp/Bang'.... what could be awkward about that? Rape/Pimp/Bang... is that like Fizz-Buzz-Bang? That game's not going to be the same again.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2012 17:13
|
|
|
These ones are short, so I'll cover a few together. Jube: One His titles aren't real creative, but he's a walrusman and he can do what he wants. It's 1985, 6 years after Fortunato's...thing...and Jube's out doing his late-night rounds of Jokertown, selling newspapers out of a shopping cart. quote:His pants were big enough to hold a revival meeting, and his blue short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt was covered with surfers. He never wore a coat. Jube had been selling paper and magazines from the corner of Hester Street and the Bowery since the summer of 1952, and he'd never worn a coat once. Whenever he was asked about it, he would laugh around his tusks, slap his belly, and say, "This is all the insulation I need, yes sir." I really like this part because it's fundamentally a slice of life. No gang wars, no mind control rapes, just a guy doing his job and having coffee with a club bouncer who has crab pincers. (There's a bit of conversation about a joker porn studio run by a mob family, but you can't have everything.) It takes the time to breathe and make the jokers people with personalities and mundane routines, instead of props to abuse when you want to get grittiness cred. I'd credit this to it being by GRRM, but so was the awful Hunter S. Thompson impression about Jokertown in the first volume, so go figure. We get to see Jokertown as a community, with its regulars and little social circles. Jube goes around selling papers, picking up bits of gossip, and telling jokes: quote:"You hear the one about the guy married this joker, just gorgeous, long blond hair, face like an angel, body to match. On their wedding night, she comes out in this white teddy and says to him, honey, I've got good news and bad news. He says, yeah, so give me the good news first. Well, she says, the good news is that this is what the wild card did to me, and she whirls around and gives him a good look, til he's grinning and drooling. So what's the bad news? he asks. The bad news, she says, is that my real name is Joseph."  I didn't say they were good jokes. He sells a paper to a cabbie: quote:The cabbie had a nest of thin, snakelike tendrils in place fo a right arm, and flippers where his legs should be, but his Checker had special hand controls, and he knew the city like the back of his tentacle. Made real good tips, too. These days people were so relieved to get a cabbie who spoke English, they didn't give a drat what he looked like. I like the little world-building hint that there's a cottage industry of customizing things for people with flippers. He goes and chats with Chrysalis, the lady with invisible skin who owns a club and provides plot points when needed. Jube tells her he's heard that Gimli, the dwarf who ran the Joker Weathermen, is coming back to town. Then he catches a ride home with a cop he knows. The cop isn't corrupt or abusive, just a cop. Jube's apartment is cold and has bad meat in it: quote:Under the window, pans of green, decaying meat covered the top of a card table. Jube stripped off his shirt to reveal a broad, six-nippled chest, got himself a glass of ice to crunch, and picked the ripest steak he could find. Chewing ice is bad for your tusks, Jubal. The rotten meat for a snack and a comment about how he's learned a lot about humans over the years are nice hints that he's not what he seems. Also he has a Donald Duck towel. I am only mentioning that because it's awesome. Then he goes into a secret room with something called a holocube, takes out a recording crystally thing, and starts talking in his native tongue of "barks, whistles, belches, and clicks." Yep, he ain't just a walrusman. He's an alien walrusman. Unto The Sixth Generation: Prologue by Walter John Williams This is just a couple pages long. It's about an alien being shot down by something called a Swarm Mother. He grabbed a singularity shifter, a thing that might as well have Plot MacGuffin written on it, and used it to teleport away, but it was damaged so it just got him to a dumpster. He talks about things like 'palps' and 'cilia' a lot and thinks about trying to signal Jhubben, who you can guess is probably Jube. A crazy homeless lady finds him. He tries to warn her that the Swarm is coming, but she just steals his MacGuffin cause it's shiny, and then he dies. Bye, alien guy. Jube: Two It's a Christmas party and Jube is a walrusman in a Santa suit, confirming his status as the best. In a nice touch to handle the joker poverty issue without going over the top, everybody in the rooming house puts a gift in a sack and everybody draws one out. There's a big squishy guy called Doughboy who loves toy rayguns and stuff but always breaks them, so Jube gives him a nigh-indestructible actual alien gun he took the working parts out of. Everybody's pooled their cash together to get Jube a new watch. It's a sweet scene. But his old watch was actually an alien signaling thingie, and it's not until after the party that he goes and picks it up and realizes it's been buzzing, cause he's got a message. He goes home and watches the hologram. It's a message from that other alien, just saying "The Mother!" before he warps away. He's described as looking like a furry white grasshopper and sounds adorable. There's a fair amount of background about how Jube and the space cricket came here together, working for an alien collective called The Network. They came to Earth to check out the effects of the Takisian virus, which I like because it gives the thing some effect beyond Earth, it wasn't just dropped there and forgotten about. Grasshopper-guy's job is to be in orbit, which is a pretty boring job. I also totally love the idea that being a walrus-man is perfect camouflage, because that's exactly the kind of weirdo they've got running around already. There's even a pretty good reason for Dr. Tachyon not recognizing him as an alien: the Network has over 100 species and his is pretty obscure. The next day Jube hears from Tachyon that somebody's found a dead joker that looks like a furry white grasshopper. They're sending it to him to do an autopsy. That species isn't as obscure: Jube knows that once Tachyon gets a look at it, he'll figure out he's not the only alien in town. He also doesn't want Tachyon to get the MacGuffin, because Takisians are renowned throughout known space for being enormous dicks. There's a bit of foreshadowing about a guy named Spector who was being treated for a case of being dead at the clinic, and it was successful, somehow, but probably not a good idea. Jube goes off and runs into a guy he doesn't recognize who says to give him his papers "as usual." Hey, it's Croyd. You can kind of tell we're supposed to be excited about this, since Croyd is as close to a popular character as Wild Cards has. This is a pretty decent setup for sci-fi pulp! if we'd started here instead of with Fortunato, the book would have a completely different and much less sticky feel. Next time: Croyd is hired to use mind control powers to steal a furry bug alien corpse Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Jul 13, 2013 |
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2012 09:25
|
|
|
Thinky Whale posted:The cop isn't corrupt or abusive, just a cop. That's the most shocking bit of this entire update.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2012 12:15
|
|
|
I read a couple of these books waaay back. What was the term again for people who weren't deformed, but didn't have any useful powers either? I think there was a story about a woman who could float all of two feet off the ground. Are they coming up in Deuces Down?
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2012 11:26
|
|
|
shelper posted:I read a couple of these books waaay back. They're called Deuces, so...
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2012 12:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 18, 2024 20:55 |
|
|
Jube owns, especially with what he does later.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2012 17:43
|
|
