The Blessed and Holy City of Embrace, also known as Per'Shorn Jot, whose ancient name cast in a virtually dead tongue means 'To Embrace'. Population; 4 million. Head seat and spiritual center of the Rystianizm Branch And Blade Of The Enduring Faiths, known to non-practitioners as 'Risers' or 'Raisers'. Primary shrine and seat of worship known as the Nine Jewels, a temple overseen and guarded by three central and six surrounding towers to match the primary names of worship and their six most known aspects that blessed the world with their presence. Temple capable of seating 30,000 comfortably.
Current Arkhierei: Diana I, blessed speaker for the nine and mother of champions, healer of the sacred blood who the foulest hands could not spill without consequence or taint. Commands an army 500,000 strong who will ensure the safety of her, her chosen, and her flock. Speaks with the voice of God and his glory, and his mercy, and his love, and his wrath. She who saw demons and foul liars attempt to twist the words of the Nine to bring ruin to all who heard and believed them, who tore down the walls of Embrace and laid the towers low, and who raised them back not only in ever-greater glory, but made her people see their brothers in the other Enduring Faiths as such, and allowed once-closed hearts to build their own temples to their own words and worship of God....
And so on, and so on. Hyperbole was always important in religion. But actions spoke louder than words.
This was not the Nine Jewels, the central temple of Embrace, or even one of the larger temples that surrounded it. Embrace had nearly two hundred seats of worship for Rystianizm alone, let alone the other faiths that worshiped there, and to Diana, each was as important as the last. Some members of her higher Ecclesia would disagree with her, in that polite yet somehow non-understanding way; for the most part, she believed it was because they feared for her safety. They had feared for things before, and been proven wrong more than right. When the Twilight War had dissolved the feared tension of allowing the other Branch and Blades into their city, all speakers of their own words uniting to declare they would not die willingly or easy, they had been amazed to the point of stupefaction. It simply went to show that no one, no matter what, had a limit to what they could learn.
So she did not perform her service at the Nine Jewels, but at this small church, the seats only half full. Diana did not tell anyone where she would be performing her services, lest she provoke mobbing and riots, and her lone rule was that once she had entered, she preferred that no one leave lest the secret get out. They did not have to hear her preach, but until she had left, neither could they. So far, her request had not been tested; the church may have only been half full, but everyone there was hanging onto her every word.
But faith existed to be tested. If not one way, then another...
For instance, the construction of this church happening to provide good natural soundproofing, which kept her from realizing anything was wrong until her soldiers got thrown through the main door. The words from the Clasp, the main book of her Branch, grew quiet as everyone either turned around in confusion, froze in surprise, or both.
"You the one sticking shields on these assholes?"
The Magpies had some odd rules. One was that you couldn't take a 'special' name that described your powers unless you did something to earn it, and giving yourself one outside of your own head before you got official permission would get you anything from dirty looks to violence, depending on who found out. The four people who entered the church, as a result, were stuck with their birth names, though the speaker, one Horace Scott, suspected that would change soon.
"Because it REALLY! MAKES! THIS! A! CHORE!" Horace said, as he slammed the piece of limestone he'd pulled out of the street onto the soldier, something that should have crushed the soldier to pulp, but only made him groan and try and crawl towards the front of the church. "I hate doing my chores."
The screams were silenced as soon as they started, albeit not for any reason on behalf of the screamers. It was because of Doreen Shaw, whose lower-class command of sound allowed her to literally shut down the wavelengths human beings made their louder noises at. The last two, Brett Wilkerson and Greg Holland, who respectively controlled chromium and rock salt, brought up the rear.
"My lady..." The soldier groaned, before Horace just dropped the stone onto him. Behind him lay the fallen, beaten forms of the forty soldiers the four lower-ranked Magpies had beaten to get into the church.
"You the Ark hearing?" Horace said.
"...I am Arkhierei." Diana said. Horace was not impressed. The stories he'd heard on his way here had all been about this woman's voice, but she sounded like any old woman to him. Her robes were a simple purple with a white sash and hood that covered her head, her black hair going to gray and crows' feet having long taken up residence on her face. She didn't even have any jewelry, a far cry from the yahoo they'd beaten the location out of, whose hands were so covered in rings he had trouble using them.
"Great! You're the bigwig hotshot here! You probably know how to use the Steam better than these losers! Tell us everything!"
"...You wish for me to...train you in the healing arts?"
"Fuck no! I wanna know how to blow things up! Like your loser soldiers! Except, you know, not a bunch of losers!"
"...my people. Let them go, then." Diana said, indicating those she had come to speak to, who had begun to back away and look for the exits.
"...we don't need them, Horace." Brett said.
"Like hell! What we NEED is to be taken seriously! Or the second we don't have any leverage this old fart's going to..."
"You should not do that." Diana said.
"Huh?"
"Draw such judgments. You're angry. All of you are angry. Is this what you want?"
"What is this, truth or dare? I want you to know that if you don't start talking, this is going to be even more of your people!" Horace said, and shattered his limestone block before hurling the pebbles outward like a thousand bullets.
It was an eerie thing, watching people scream in mortal terror without making a sound.
The limestone bullets proved equally impotent, impacting on empty air and stopping. Horace frowned, and then growled when his repeated efforts to make the rocks go forward was completely blunted.
"OH FUCK THIS SHIELD SHIT! HOW ARE YOU DOING THAT?!" Horace said, not noticing how Diana's hands were gripping the alter before her. "You know what, I changed my mind! Brett, go kill her!"
"What?!" Doreen said, her blonde hair flying around as she snapped her gaze towards Horace.
"What?!" Brett said in a near-echo. "Horace, Saguaro told us to get stuff, like magic things! Info! She didn't say go around killing people willy-nilly!"
"You don't get it, do you? Don't you see what this place IS?' Horace said. "It's a churchtown! A super mega church town! This is Chaktown with a different paint job! This is where all the assholes gather up and decide who should die and be tortured because they think God wants them to take all their money in between wanting them dead for being gay!"
"That is not true." Diana said.
"Like FUCK it's not! How many damn kids YOU raping, bitch?"
"...If those who claim to speak for God have done you harm, then I am sorry. Please...rage is a poison, you do not need to suffer in its grip here..."
"Suffer THIS! Brett, go stab a bitch."
"...I don't know, Horace..."
"Hey asshole, I'm TELLING you."
"You are NOT my superior!"
"Yeah, you can't give us orders, Horace." Doreen said.
"We aren't here to relieve YOUR grudges." Greg said.
"Hey, asswipes, you forgetting whose side we picked?"
"I felt Kou was being timid, that doesn't mean I'm now a mass murderer, Horace." Greg said.
"We're the MAGPIES, Holland. Morality is for OTHER PEOPLE. You think Saguaro is going to think you wanting to play nice is good? No, she'll kick you back to the Nest, and since you turned on Kou you'll get stuck with one of the other Seven. Probably Muerto."
"You are welcome here." Diana said.
"What?" Brett said.
"Oh don't fall for this! Brett go kill her before I have to just tear this whole place down and see what happens."
"Anger shackles you, it blinds...it is not something easily borne, and you all bow beneath its weight...if you feel trapped, you are welcome here, all are welcome...there is no suffering that cannot be endured and learned from togeth-"
Brett went for center of mass. He still couldn't look as he threw the blade of metal he formed, and he hoped it would be quiet and quick.
It wasn't. But not for the reason he expected. He felt the mental feedback as the blade struck flesh and impaled deep. The silence became even deeper. In the corner of his eyes, Brett could see the shock and outrage of the semi-trapped congregation, some actually bursting into tears.
"...If you wish it, there is no door here closed to you."
The voice was pained, but strong. Brett vaguely was aware of Horace's shocked face before he turned back to see the woman, her hand on the long thin blade of metal sticking out of her chest, her purple robes staining red as she began to slowly withdraw the blade.
"Rage is a part of you...but just...one part. Those who let it be their whole...cannot be whole. Whatever torments your soul...will not be found in anger, or hate...if that is all you know...then my door is open..."
"ARE YOU SERIOUSLY FUCKING KIDDING?!" Horace said. "WE DON'T NEED YOUR DAMN RELIGION!"
"You are hurting. We...bring peace, to those who desire it...no matter what their reasons may be. We are all...loved...we merely have to decide by who...to see it ourselves."
"For the love of...Brett, get her damn heart this time!"
"I..."
"NOW! YOU THINK SHE'LL TAKE YOU AND MAKE YOU ALL SHINY HAPPY? THESE PLACES EXIST FOR ONE REASON ONLY! THE EXACT REASON WE DO! EXCEPT WE DON'T MAKE UP STORIES!"
"I..."
"YOU WANNA BE FED TO THE FUNERAL KING?!"
Brett's face paled, and he recalled his blade and threw it again. This time, he hit the heart. He knew. He felt it.
...Her face barely changed. There was pain there, and sorrow. Yet...she did not mirror the hostility directed at her.
Instead...she reached up and began to draw the blade back out. Brett somehow went even whiter. Her heart was still beating, around the impalement. Brett knew enough about anatomy that even if that worked, it must have been agony...
"They suffered for our sins. As their voice, if I must suffer, then mine pales..." Diana said, as she again worked the blade free. It dropped to the ground.
It was around then that Brett realized that Horace hadn't stopped slamming his pebbles against the shields erected against them. And he hadn't gotten anywhere, even now.
"...guh...wuh..." Horace said, before he finally regained his fire. "YOU SUCK, BRETT! Doreen, pop her head!"
"And if that doesn't work?" Greg said.
"Then we'll break things until it does! Doreen!"
"No." Doreen said.
"What?!!"
"No! This is wrong, Horace! We...she's right, why are you so mad?"
"MAD HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. I'M JUST THE ONLY ONE OF YOU HERE WITH STONES." Horace growled. For a moment he debated re-directing his limestone bullets, but ultimately decided he didn't want to risk some trick. Instead, he stalked over to the fallen soldier he'd bashed into the floor and relieved him of his sword.
"Horace, come on! Stop! We can just go...!" Brett said.
"The doors remain open."
"YOU LET THE WRONG ONE IN, BITCH." Horace said, as he drew close and raised the sword. "GO TO HELL!"
The blade came down.
The blade bit deep.
The blood flew.
Then it landed on Horace, and it all went wrong. Suddenly he felt like every single part of him was having red-hot needles jammed into it, and even as he recoiled and screamed, the sword flying from flaming fingers, he had a sudden second, and worse, revelation. He was not on fire. His skin, his combat clothes, didn't have a mark on them. Save the blood.
The pain vanished as quickly as it came...and his energy went with it, Horace Scott suddenly feeling like he'd run the whole way to this city at a sprint. Within a second, he couldn't stand. Within another, he couldn't move.
"...Hell is not just a final fate." Diana said. Once again, she hadn't taken one step back, even as the blood soaked her.
Then Horace was gone, carried away by the dark.
----
The dark he came back out of. No one was more surprised than Horace.
He was back outside the city...and there was about three thousand or so VERY angry troops glaring at him. He was also soaked in water.
"I cannot have you put my people at risk."
Her. That damn woman, a simple white cloak over her robes, primary to hide the damage...and there were his three 'fellows', looking dully at him.
"You do not have to be alone. For no one behaves this way if they're alone." Diana said. "Is solitude your will?"
"...you ASSHOLES! You know what the Magpies do to traitors!"
"We're not defecting. We resign." Doreen said.
"Hostile work environment." Brett said.
"Screw you. SCREW ALL OF YOU. These shits will screw you, and SCREW you, and then we'll come back, and we'll skin you fucks alive, and I'll stick YOUR HEAD ON A POLE TO WATCH!" Horace said, pointing at Diana.
"I will pray for you."
"Save your breath." Horace said, getting up and stalking off. He expected every step for the next ten miles to be the one that triggered the ambush. It was hard to say if he was more surprised or angered that it never came.
"Some need more time. Some..." Diana said, having turned away. "We can shelter you for a time, but it would be best if you could discover a means of employment so you can have freedom. You will, however, have permanent sanctuary from those who would wish to prosecute you. The door is not open for revenge or hatred. Any who wishes to bring it to our gate will find our shields firm and our blades terrible and swift."
"...Our guys...they're strong, miss...and we found some stuff..."
"They shall reap what they sow." Diana said, heading in through the gates of Embrace, passing the statues dedicated to her son and daughter and their allies who had crushed the vile evils of Schwarz Spinne. "May some break off their shackles and turn to the light and the way, or a better path for them. Thanks be to God."
"Amen." Said the legions surrounding the three ex-Magpies.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing was there wasn't a single angry eye when they did not echo it.
Saturday, 14 February 2015
Sunday, 8 February 2015
Fool's Gold
Once upon a time, the isolation would have been the worst part. The lack of contact. Hell, that would have been the smart thing to do...
But people didn't always do the smart thing.
"Okay, let's start from the top."
Godfather idly swirled her wine, keeping her back to the prisoner. Keep them guessing, that was the trick. Keep them nervous. If they can't see your face, they can't tell what you're going to do, and nobody likes an enemy who's predictable...
"You have information I want. Information about your world and the way it works. I could use some of that, and save myself a lot of time in messing about with technology only half my men understand. And, obviously, I can't just beat it out of you, because I'm not a hired thug."
Turn, slowly... perfect. Flash those pearly whites...
"So... How about it? A cosy draft job with any of my boys, hourly wages and all the clams you can eat. In return, you tell me anything and everything, and I only listen to the good bits. Sound fair?"
"No."
A brief pause.
"That's in regards to the offer, by the way. Though it's also an answer to your last question."
That was the problem with a giant organization, after all. Too big, too complicated, too many moving parts. The left hand stopped knowing what the right hand was doing. Really, the smartest thing to do would have been to keep doing this. The cell, sealed off in a box, barely able to touch the outside world. Isolation was hell on social animals...
But mankind, and especially its evils, rarely understood the subtleties...
Eh, they always refuse the first one. No matter. Keep calm, keep smiling.
"What about a management position, then? Don't even have to go out to earn your pay, and you get somebody to press your suit! And you get discounts at all the fancy restaurants!
"...although all the waiters get nervous when we show up. Really, what's with that?"
"No."
Metal, and thick at that. Even if whatever weirdness they'd hacked together wasn't crippling him, he probably couldn't have punched his way out. Even if he COULD have, it would have taken time, and time was not on his side, especially in the heart of enemy territory. The only way in was a handprint scanner...
The smart thing would have been to let him stew in the isolation.
The human heart and mind were often at loggerheads that way.
Alright, arschloch. You're making it hard to keep composed, especially when we can feel the wine glass cracking in our grip. Those things are expensive.
"How about this? Joint leadership, with me. Half of the criminal underworld would stab their own mothers to share my dinner table, and that's just on a professional level."
"...Since it is clear I have to spell it out, NO. I will NOT betray my world, my friends, my PEOPLE, for you, even if you offer me everything in this world, the next, and throw in every single damn star in the sky. GO. TO. HELL."
The funniest thing (but not ha-ha funny) was, that hadn't earned him this. You would expect otherwise...
Crack. Aaaaaaand there it goes.
If Godfather was capable of it, she would be jetting steam from her ears. As it is, the gathering shadows were enough to make the two armed soldiers present take a nervous two steps back.
"I don't think you realize," she hissed through gritted teeth, "just how lucky you are. If you had been who my men thought you were, I would have come up and killed you myself. And just in case you mistake me for the average brain-dead tyrant, I have done my best to make you at least adequately comfortable. The least you can do is give me this one favour."
She let the glass shards trickle from her hand. There wasn't a drop of blood on them.
"Am I going about this wrong? Please, tell me! Am I asking too much, when all of this has practically gift-wrapped itself and all I need is the price tag cut off?! Do I have to start singing?!"
"...You could have treated me worse, yes. Thank you for that."
A pause.
"...but no. If you're not the average brain dead tyrant, you'll understand that I won't betray my world and its people. I...won't. No matter what. Singing? Fine. Do it."
Did she notice the tremble? It was definitely there. But...how could he give any other answer?
"You don't wanna do that, man," piped up one of the guards. "It's like if Niki Minaj-"
Too late. Godfather threw back her head and what came out of her mouth was worse than Niki Minaj with a head cold. It was more akin to a very bad impersonation of Kylie Minogue, if the impersonator was an elderly crow with a throat full of nail files. The guards actually cringed and covered their ears at several points.
Thankfully, it was over in a scant minute. A minute that probably seemed like an hour, especially to the shaking soldiers, who picked themselves up and exchanged nervous glances.
Perhaps the reaction from the stranger surprised them.
"....um...look, I'm a shit liar. That was terrible, but I can't sing either, so I'm not one to judge talent. If you were going to brainwash or break something in my head, it doesn't work. Plus, I endured being near the queen in yellow...that's kind of a step down."
Godfather snorted, clearly unimpressed. "Whatever. But you do realise, of course, that you don't have any other options? It's not like I'm going to let you wander all around my top-secret headquarters and stumble upon all my deadly secrets, like in Dracula. And my boys aren't going to release you even if you ask nicely. So either you tell me what I want, or you stay here and become part of the furniture."
The shadows around her dispersed slightly - a sure sign she was regaining her composure again.
"...is this really necessary? Is the only way to get what you want pillage and conquest?"
"Oh, really!" Godfather huffed, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "You make it sound like that's all we do! No, mostly we're in the shady deals and smuggling business, like any good criminal empire. Just think of this as us branching out into new markets, that's all! But to answer your question...
Her eyes flashed dangerously.
"It's a start. Then I was thinking of kicking back and watching half the world retcon itself whilst the money and booze rolls in."
"Then why am I here?"
"Wrong place, wrong time. Besides, that was only a trial run! When we get this thing going, we're going to do it properly!"
"Then please. Please. Just let me go and leave my world alone."
Godfather paused, raising a finger to her lip.
"Well, you know, I'd love to... Except. Point one. You put down fifty of my boys without breaking a sweat, and why would I let someone that dangerous out when I've got him under control? You might try to warn people about us, even, and that would just make things complicated.
"Point two. Saguaro's a bitch and cut off all communications in the name of building a facility. So I just have to take what I'm given, at this moment in time. Once she stops goose-stepping for five seconds, I'll try and whip her into line... but at the same time, might as well make use of these weird minerals we're getting from the feed pipes, right?"
"...fine. Lock me up, then."
"Heh. You'll see it my way, soon enough. You've got all the time in the world to think this through!"
Godfather turned and began strutting out of the cell, the soldiers reluctantly following. At the fame, she paused, causing the other two to screech to a halt, and turned back, flashing a grin.
"Or, should I say... my world?"
Then she left. As did the guards. The door hissed shut as though it were an audience member in a pantomine, and the lock beeped and clicked into position.
Just as it opened now.
"...You again." Ash said.
The godslayer had seen better days. True, that was his natural state half the time, but at least it was tied to getting something done. Now here he was, stripped of everything, Erdrick AWOL, wearing dull black prison clothes.
A contrast to the suit of metal of his visitor.
"Ash Marsello. Ceremonial Knight-Glorious of The Realms. 12, 12, 12...I honestly no longer have a serial number if I ever did. You ARE aware your boss ordered humane treatment and isn't always going to be asleep at the switch?"
Behind the metal faceplate, Ivan Vanko, codenamed Mr. Silver, cracked a dry grin.
"You assume too much, little man."
The classic haymaker. Dangerous even if done by a normal man. By a large man in armor? That could even be fatal.
Ash didn't IGNORE it, but the fact that he only took one step back was notable. The second one managed to knock him down, but he was already off balance.
"You know, you really shouldn't have a problem. You came crashing into my town and I defended it. It's not like I pantsed you in front of your buddies."
An ugly chuckle, muffled by the mask.
"Oh, so you forget the part where you humiliated me? Denied me my target? Please, allow me to refresh memory!"
A vicious kick for the ribs. Felt, but Ivan distinctly didn't feel certain things. Like bones breaking. Or air exploding out of lungs.
"And what did Sam ever do to you, anyway? Why care so much if you were just hired?"
"I could ask same of you! You have no stake! Nicodemus was my target, and my only target! You did not know him, yet you interfered!"
Rage taking over for a moment, Ivan thumped the wall with one massive fist. The clang echoed for quite a bit, even as the metal-clad Russian kept ranting as Ash got up.
"It is my job! My life! And I was happy! Then you come and make me look like pathetic weakling! Just like my father and Stark thieves!"
This time, a massive swinging clothesline.
"...if this...is how you handle it...then they're still making you weak...and you...beating on an unarmed man incapable of fighting back...will not restore your lost face..."
Ivan snorted, a harsh grating sound.
"You think I am weak? Loyalty is weak. That is why I take job - I survive by taking what comes my way. It is you, who defend complete strangers based on childish morals, who are weak."
"Oh really? Then why are you here?"
Ivan firstly responded with a sharp jab to the face. Mostly out of spite.
"You are not listening!" he snapped. "To survive! I care not for Godfather's idiotic plan! But better this than cold streets with no bread and being beaten with sticks! And if I must work for mad woman, then so be it, but will not march in step to her tune!"
The next thing Ash knew, a massive paw of a hand clamped around his throat and lifted him up into the air. From the angle presented, he could clearly see the flickering, repressed anger in the man's eyes.
"I work here for as long as it suits me. And when I have what I need, I take leave of Magpies. I illiterate this from memory and be Ivan Vanko again. Not Mister Silver."
"...Obliterate."
"What?"
"...I think you mean obliterate."
"What?"
"Obliterate. You said illiterate...that means you can't read. Props for trying to increase your word power, though." Ash said. "Ivan, you want peace? It's not..."
That's as far as Ash got before a roar of anger nearly blotted out his hearing altogether. Next came the sickening lurch, and the world span crazily for a moment before he impacted, shoulders-first and quite painfully, with the floor of the cell. Such was the force of Ivan's throw that the poor warrior actually folded up accordion-fashion, before he properly collapsed to the ground completely, head ringing and spine complaining vehemently.
There was a long, awful pause, punctuated by the rattling of Ivan's breathing.
"...I will have my peace when are dead. Presumptuous brat."
And it came as something of a mixed surprise and blessing when the footsteps moved away instead of towards him. Evidently, the fun of beating up an old enemy had been lost to the now aggravated Russian.
Ash, with some effort, managed to crawl up onto his bed. He was vaguely aware of them on the other side of the door.
"...you'd best get that locked...no sense...getting him mad at you too."
And so the door did close.
"...Name...rank...serial number..." Ash mumbled.
Ash Marsello.
Would-be hero.
Prisoner of the Magpies.
But people didn't always do the smart thing.
"Okay, let's start from the top."
Godfather idly swirled her wine, keeping her back to the prisoner. Keep them guessing, that was the trick. Keep them nervous. If they can't see your face, they can't tell what you're going to do, and nobody likes an enemy who's predictable...
"You have information I want. Information about your world and the way it works. I could use some of that, and save myself a lot of time in messing about with technology only half my men understand. And, obviously, I can't just beat it out of you, because I'm not a hired thug."
Turn, slowly... perfect. Flash those pearly whites...
"So... How about it? A cosy draft job with any of my boys, hourly wages and all the clams you can eat. In return, you tell me anything and everything, and I only listen to the good bits. Sound fair?"
"No."
A brief pause.
"That's in regards to the offer, by the way. Though it's also an answer to your last question."
That was the problem with a giant organization, after all. Too big, too complicated, too many moving parts. The left hand stopped knowing what the right hand was doing. Really, the smartest thing to do would have been to keep doing this. The cell, sealed off in a box, barely able to touch the outside world. Isolation was hell on social animals...
But mankind, and especially its evils, rarely understood the subtleties...
Eh, they always refuse the first one. No matter. Keep calm, keep smiling.
"What about a management position, then? Don't even have to go out to earn your pay, and you get somebody to press your suit! And you get discounts at all the fancy restaurants!
"...although all the waiters get nervous when we show up. Really, what's with that?"
"No."
Metal, and thick at that. Even if whatever weirdness they'd hacked together wasn't crippling him, he probably couldn't have punched his way out. Even if he COULD have, it would have taken time, and time was not on his side, especially in the heart of enemy territory. The only way in was a handprint scanner...
The smart thing would have been to let him stew in the isolation.
The human heart and mind were often at loggerheads that way.
Alright, arschloch. You're making it hard to keep composed, especially when we can feel the wine glass cracking in our grip. Those things are expensive.
"How about this? Joint leadership, with me. Half of the criminal underworld would stab their own mothers to share my dinner table, and that's just on a professional level."
"...Since it is clear I have to spell it out, NO. I will NOT betray my world, my friends, my PEOPLE, for you, even if you offer me everything in this world, the next, and throw in every single damn star in the sky. GO. TO. HELL."
The funniest thing (but not ha-ha funny) was, that hadn't earned him this. You would expect otherwise...
Crack. Aaaaaaand there it goes.
If Godfather was capable of it, she would be jetting steam from her ears. As it is, the gathering shadows were enough to make the two armed soldiers present take a nervous two steps back.
"I don't think you realize," she hissed through gritted teeth, "just how lucky you are. If you had been who my men thought you were, I would have come up and killed you myself. And just in case you mistake me for the average brain-dead tyrant, I have done my best to make you at least adequately comfortable. The least you can do is give me this one favour."
She let the glass shards trickle from her hand. There wasn't a drop of blood on them.
"Am I going about this wrong? Please, tell me! Am I asking too much, when all of this has practically gift-wrapped itself and all I need is the price tag cut off?! Do I have to start singing?!"
"...You could have treated me worse, yes. Thank you for that."
A pause.
"...but no. If you're not the average brain dead tyrant, you'll understand that I won't betray my world and its people. I...won't. No matter what. Singing? Fine. Do it."
Did she notice the tremble? It was definitely there. But...how could he give any other answer?
"You don't wanna do that, man," piped up one of the guards. "It's like if Niki Minaj-"
Too late. Godfather threw back her head and what came out of her mouth was worse than Niki Minaj with a head cold. It was more akin to a very bad impersonation of Kylie Minogue, if the impersonator was an elderly crow with a throat full of nail files. The guards actually cringed and covered their ears at several points.
Thankfully, it was over in a scant minute. A minute that probably seemed like an hour, especially to the shaking soldiers, who picked themselves up and exchanged nervous glances.
Perhaps the reaction from the stranger surprised them.
"....um...look, I'm a shit liar. That was terrible, but I can't sing either, so I'm not one to judge talent. If you were going to brainwash or break something in my head, it doesn't work. Plus, I endured being near the queen in yellow...that's kind of a step down."
Godfather snorted, clearly unimpressed. "Whatever. But you do realise, of course, that you don't have any other options? It's not like I'm going to let you wander all around my top-secret headquarters and stumble upon all my deadly secrets, like in Dracula. And my boys aren't going to release you even if you ask nicely. So either you tell me what I want, or you stay here and become part of the furniture."
The shadows around her dispersed slightly - a sure sign she was regaining her composure again.
"...is this really necessary? Is the only way to get what you want pillage and conquest?"
"Oh, really!" Godfather huffed, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "You make it sound like that's all we do! No, mostly we're in the shady deals and smuggling business, like any good criminal empire. Just think of this as us branching out into new markets, that's all! But to answer your question...
Her eyes flashed dangerously.
"It's a start. Then I was thinking of kicking back and watching half the world retcon itself whilst the money and booze rolls in."
"Then why am I here?"
"Wrong place, wrong time. Besides, that was only a trial run! When we get this thing going, we're going to do it properly!"
"Then please. Please. Just let me go and leave my world alone."
Godfather paused, raising a finger to her lip.
"Well, you know, I'd love to... Except. Point one. You put down fifty of my boys without breaking a sweat, and why would I let someone that dangerous out when I've got him under control? You might try to warn people about us, even, and that would just make things complicated.
"Point two. Saguaro's a bitch and cut off all communications in the name of building a facility. So I just have to take what I'm given, at this moment in time. Once she stops goose-stepping for five seconds, I'll try and whip her into line... but at the same time, might as well make use of these weird minerals we're getting from the feed pipes, right?"
"...fine. Lock me up, then."
"Heh. You'll see it my way, soon enough. You've got all the time in the world to think this through!"
Godfather turned and began strutting out of the cell, the soldiers reluctantly following. At the fame, she paused, causing the other two to screech to a halt, and turned back, flashing a grin.
"Or, should I say... my world?"
Then she left. As did the guards. The door hissed shut as though it were an audience member in a pantomine, and the lock beeped and clicked into position.
Just as it opened now.
"...You again." Ash said.
The godslayer had seen better days. True, that was his natural state half the time, but at least it was tied to getting something done. Now here he was, stripped of everything, Erdrick AWOL, wearing dull black prison clothes.
A contrast to the suit of metal of his visitor.
"Ash Marsello. Ceremonial Knight-Glorious of The Realms. 12, 12, 12...I honestly no longer have a serial number if I ever did. You ARE aware your boss ordered humane treatment and isn't always going to be asleep at the switch?"
Behind the metal faceplate, Ivan Vanko, codenamed Mr. Silver, cracked a dry grin.
"You assume too much, little man."
The classic haymaker. Dangerous even if done by a normal man. By a large man in armor? That could even be fatal.
Ash didn't IGNORE it, but the fact that he only took one step back was notable. The second one managed to knock him down, but he was already off balance.
"You know, you really shouldn't have a problem. You came crashing into my town and I defended it. It's not like I pantsed you in front of your buddies."
An ugly chuckle, muffled by the mask.
"Oh, so you forget the part where you humiliated me? Denied me my target? Please, allow me to refresh memory!"
A vicious kick for the ribs. Felt, but Ivan distinctly didn't feel certain things. Like bones breaking. Or air exploding out of lungs.
"And what did Sam ever do to you, anyway? Why care so much if you were just hired?"
"I could ask same of you! You have no stake! Nicodemus was my target, and my only target! You did not know him, yet you interfered!"
Rage taking over for a moment, Ivan thumped the wall with one massive fist. The clang echoed for quite a bit, even as the metal-clad Russian kept ranting as Ash got up.
"It is my job! My life! And I was happy! Then you come and make me look like pathetic weakling! Just like my father and Stark thieves!"
This time, a massive swinging clothesline.
"...if this...is how you handle it...then they're still making you weak...and you...beating on an unarmed man incapable of fighting back...will not restore your lost face..."
Ivan snorted, a harsh grating sound.
"You think I am weak? Loyalty is weak. That is why I take job - I survive by taking what comes my way. It is you, who defend complete strangers based on childish morals, who are weak."
"Oh really? Then why are you here?"
Ivan firstly responded with a sharp jab to the face. Mostly out of spite.
"You are not listening!" he snapped. "To survive! I care not for Godfather's idiotic plan! But better this than cold streets with no bread and being beaten with sticks! And if I must work for mad woman, then so be it, but will not march in step to her tune!"
The next thing Ash knew, a massive paw of a hand clamped around his throat and lifted him up into the air. From the angle presented, he could clearly see the flickering, repressed anger in the man's eyes.
"I work here for as long as it suits me. And when I have what I need, I take leave of Magpies. I illiterate this from memory and be Ivan Vanko again. Not Mister Silver."
"...Obliterate."
"What?"
"...I think you mean obliterate."
"What?"
"Obliterate. You said illiterate...that means you can't read. Props for trying to increase your word power, though." Ash said. "Ivan, you want peace? It's not..."
That's as far as Ash got before a roar of anger nearly blotted out his hearing altogether. Next came the sickening lurch, and the world span crazily for a moment before he impacted, shoulders-first and quite painfully, with the floor of the cell. Such was the force of Ivan's throw that the poor warrior actually folded up accordion-fashion, before he properly collapsed to the ground completely, head ringing and spine complaining vehemently.
There was a long, awful pause, punctuated by the rattling of Ivan's breathing.
"...I will have my peace when are dead. Presumptuous brat."
And it came as something of a mixed surprise and blessing when the footsteps moved away instead of towards him. Evidently, the fun of beating up an old enemy had been lost to the now aggravated Russian.
Ash, with some effort, managed to crawl up onto his bed. He was vaguely aware of them on the other side of the door.
"...you'd best get that locked...no sense...getting him mad at you too."
And so the door did close.
"...Name...rank...serial number..." Ash mumbled.
Ash Marsello.
Would-be hero.
Prisoner of the Magpies.
Friday, 30 January 2015
The Eternal Recurrence
Sine knew how easy it was to get ahold of some things, but even she surprised herself sometimes.
"Daniel, for the LAST time, get over here. I need to make sure your fillings aren't ferrous metal."
"Fuck no," growled Daniel, hunched in a corner. "I'm not letting you stick lasers in my mouth! I had enough of that shit at Rutledge!"
Carol rolled her eyes. "Ugh, here we go. You want me to go fetch him?"
"Yes. I'd rather be sure that when we do the MRI scans, we don't accidentally pull his teeth out."
Carol nodded, and then walked over to where Daniel was crouching, hackles raised and spikes drawn. She knelt down next to him and looked him dead in the eyes.
"Look, Danny," she began, in her sweetest voice. "If you be a good boy and let Sine check your teeth-"
"Keep that shit up," snarled the older man, "and I'm gonna-"
"-and I'll pay for next week's Jack. Interest free."
The spikey-haired mutant was in the chair in two seconds. The process was, thankfully, just boring.
"There. See? Now, if you want to be REALLY safe, you'll get in the MRI machine and lay there still for...three hours." Sine said, flipping through some papers. "...hmmm. A sedative might be the best way..."
"Ugh, sedatives." Daniel shuddered. "I mean, it beats being strapped to the table, but I always wake up feeling like a car accident victim."
"Got any other alternatives?" was Carol's response. Daniel paused to consider this, then shrugged - an obvious no.
"I'll be honest with you, Daniel...this isn't NEEDED, but...the thing with mutations, you might be stable today, but five years from now you wake up and find you're melting. Trust me...I lived in a world with mutations that gifted superhuman powers, and was witness to a few very considerable scares. A clean medical bill NOW means something to compare it to down the line. Or if you wake up and find yourself turned into a sweater." Sine said, as she kept flipping through pages.
"...fine." Daniel got out from the chair and headed over to the MRI. And for once, he had no snarky 'but' to add to this as he lay down on the mat.
"What's our current delivery list?" Sine said, activating the machine.
"Hmmm... A crate of peanut sprouts to Pachyderma Major, fifty gallons of salt water to the Finneous system - poor guys are having a drought - some pizzas to Mr. Harold Finklemann and his family on Colony Beta and a consignment of Green Spice for the Screebles on Willus.
"Also, a rubber chicken, no name given."'
"Simple work. Simple is good. You should have been here when I had to deliver a meme. Took me seven weeks to scrub it out of my brain. Daniel, breathe deep, I'm administering the sedative." Sine said. "Well, now for three hours of nothing because he has to stay stock still. Any ideas how to pass the time?"
Carol blinks. "...how does that even work? Like, did you have to put it on a floppy disc or what?"
Daniel does as told, but grunts a little as the sedative is administered.
"Movements scrambles the image, beyond the most basic twitches. It needs to be clear. Since Daniel has such compact bones, it takes a really long time. In a few days I'll be getting my biyearly brain scan...I'll need to be under for seven hours due to the house of cards this grey matter is." Sine said, tapping her head. "At least whatever changed me was considerate enough to give me proper equipment for it."
"...well, good luck with that. Can't imagine having to sit still for seven whole hours, myself. Yeesh!" Carol said.
"Price of being...whatever I am. And having no clue what it is." Sine said.
Carol shrugs. "Well... Could always watch a movie. Wanna see what's on Sky Box Office?"
"Probably porn."
"SBO doesn't show porn!"
"Based on its most popular shows you could have fooled me."
"Hey, Danerys is cute," Carol retorted. "Sue me. Or don't, because that would be a legal nightmare."
"But since I...don't...oh dear...leak...Carol hold your breath...the sedative...drifted over here..." Sine said, sitting heavily into a chair. "Go ahead and watch TV...just watch Daniel too...this is gonna put me out for...mgrgrgfurrr..."
"Ugh, why do you do this to yourself? Wear a mask, at least! Special brain, my butt, dozing off so easily..."
"Illmakesur du complanesoonis I remember whodithuissssshhhhh..."
---
????
"The Immutable. Yes, for the sake of convenience, we'll go with that word layout."
"This is beyond foolish. Using it at all, let alone..."
"We have gone long beyond our basic behavior and even our aberrant behavior. Lunacy is now the defining norm. This is no longer a scenario where failure can be tolerated."
"But a random number?'
"Will be as likely to fail as our best agent. Show him in."
"Her, my liege."
"Whatever. She has the capabilities?"
"Last we checked..."
"Then get it in motion."
A door opening.
"...stop."
Footsteps coming to a stop.
"Remove your helmet."
Hesitation, then obediance.
"Sheena Traverse, of Triangle Delivery. You have something you want to deliver, sirs?"
"Daniel, for the LAST time, get over here. I need to make sure your fillings aren't ferrous metal."
"Fuck no," growled Daniel, hunched in a corner. "I'm not letting you stick lasers in my mouth! I had enough of that shit at Rutledge!"
Carol rolled her eyes. "Ugh, here we go. You want me to go fetch him?"
"Yes. I'd rather be sure that when we do the MRI scans, we don't accidentally pull his teeth out."
Carol nodded, and then walked over to where Daniel was crouching, hackles raised and spikes drawn. She knelt down next to him and looked him dead in the eyes.
"Look, Danny," she began, in her sweetest voice. "If you be a good boy and let Sine check your teeth-"
"Keep that shit up," snarled the older man, "and I'm gonna-"
"-and I'll pay for next week's Jack. Interest free."
The spikey-haired mutant was in the chair in two seconds. The process was, thankfully, just boring.
"There. See? Now, if you want to be REALLY safe, you'll get in the MRI machine and lay there still for...three hours." Sine said, flipping through some papers. "...hmmm. A sedative might be the best way..."
"Ugh, sedatives." Daniel shuddered. "I mean, it beats being strapped to the table, but I always wake up feeling like a car accident victim."
"Got any other alternatives?" was Carol's response. Daniel paused to consider this, then shrugged - an obvious no.
"I'll be honest with you, Daniel...this isn't NEEDED, but...the thing with mutations, you might be stable today, but five years from now you wake up and find you're melting. Trust me...I lived in a world with mutations that gifted superhuman powers, and was witness to a few very considerable scares. A clean medical bill NOW means something to compare it to down the line. Or if you wake up and find yourself turned into a sweater." Sine said, as she kept flipping through pages.
"...fine." Daniel got out from the chair and headed over to the MRI. And for once, he had no snarky 'but' to add to this as he lay down on the mat.
"What's our current delivery list?" Sine said, activating the machine.
"Hmmm... A crate of peanut sprouts to Pachyderma Major, fifty gallons of salt water to the Finneous system - poor guys are having a drought - some pizzas to Mr. Harold Finklemann and his family on Colony Beta and a consignment of Green Spice for the Screebles on Willus.
"Also, a rubber chicken, no name given."'
"Simple work. Simple is good. You should have been here when I had to deliver a meme. Took me seven weeks to scrub it out of my brain. Daniel, breathe deep, I'm administering the sedative." Sine said. "Well, now for three hours of nothing because he has to stay stock still. Any ideas how to pass the time?"
Carol blinks. "...how does that even work? Like, did you have to put it on a floppy disc or what?"
Daniel does as told, but grunts a little as the sedative is administered.
"Movements scrambles the image, beyond the most basic twitches. It needs to be clear. Since Daniel has such compact bones, it takes a really long time. In a few days I'll be getting my biyearly brain scan...I'll need to be under for seven hours due to the house of cards this grey matter is." Sine said, tapping her head. "At least whatever changed me was considerate enough to give me proper equipment for it."
"...well, good luck with that. Can't imagine having to sit still for seven whole hours, myself. Yeesh!" Carol said.
"Price of being...whatever I am. And having no clue what it is." Sine said.
Carol shrugs. "Well... Could always watch a movie. Wanna see what's on Sky Box Office?"
"Probably porn."
"SBO doesn't show porn!"
"Based on its most popular shows you could have fooled me."
"Hey, Danerys is cute," Carol retorted. "Sue me. Or don't, because that would be a legal nightmare."
"But since I...don't...oh dear...leak...Carol hold your breath...the sedative...drifted over here..." Sine said, sitting heavily into a chair. "Go ahead and watch TV...just watch Daniel too...this is gonna put me out for...mgrgrgfurrr..."
"Ugh, why do you do this to yourself? Wear a mask, at least! Special brain, my butt, dozing off so easily..."
"Illmakesur du complanesoonis I remember whodithuissssshhhhh..."
---
????
"The Immutable. Yes, for the sake of convenience, we'll go with that word layout."
"This is beyond foolish. Using it at all, let alone..."
"We have gone long beyond our basic behavior and even our aberrant behavior. Lunacy is now the defining norm. This is no longer a scenario where failure can be tolerated."
"But a random number?'
"Will be as likely to fail as our best agent. Show him in."
"Her, my liege."
"Whatever. She has the capabilities?"
"Last we checked..."
"Then get it in motion."
A door opening.
"...stop."
Footsteps coming to a stop.
"Remove your helmet."
Hesitation, then obediance.
"Sheena Traverse, of Triangle Delivery. You have something you want to deliver, sirs?"
Thursday, 22 January 2015
Blush: Super Human
An opening note: I am writing a fair bit of this in a vague way in due to the small chance of not spoiling Watchmen if you have not read or seen it. Just so you know.
So what kind of person wants to be a superhero?
So what kind of person wants to be a superhero?
 |
| Sorry Kamala, you don't count, I'll get to why in a bit. |
 |
| Words. Picture. Number ending in three zeroes. Something about value. |
And their deeds are commendable, if not admirable, but half the people on the list are more colorful community activists than anything else. Only a few of them actually attempt to 'fight crime' in a vein their comic book counterparts do (I won't count wandering up and scaring people as FIGHTING crime, though it's still attempting to stop crime and that deserves credit) and you won't see them trying to throw down with criminal gangs. So, the question of applied realism is, what kind of a real life person would want to try and be a superhero in the vein of how superheroes and vigilantes are presented in comics?
This is why Kamala Khan, nee Ms. Marvel II, doesn't count. Beyond being fictional, she's an aspiring superhero in a superhero-based universe. She has legions of real life (for her) data to call on when considering such a thing (not to mention, you know, actual superpowers). Someone who lives in such a world is not going to be faced with the same developmental mindset. Watchmen asked the question of 'What kind of a person would think, want to, and be successful in such a profession in a real world scenario?'
You probably already know the answer, but let's break it down.
First of all, to seek such a position, one would have to have no faith in society's actual mechanisms to prevent crime and injustice. Fair enough, plenty of people have that. You then have to have the willpower to teach yourself how to 'overcome such things' where society itself failed (and if you lack physical talent or resources, you have to compensate with willpower EVEN MORE), as well as overcome basic fear instincts, and you have to do it under amateur trainers or, more likely, by yourself. You then have to dedicate yourself to constantly facing dangerous people, fighting through injuries, fatigue, and mental weardown, the fact that both the police and the criminals will be opposed to you if not outright after your head, and that odds are all it will take is one bit of luck from one random punk to get yourself killed (after which you'll likely be condemned and dismissed, and anyone connected to you subjected to misery and harassment, if not worse). And if you're actually successful, you have to have done all this with physical and mental gifts, explicitly the mental ones, to realize that there was probably a better way to make fuller, long-term changes, and have instead dedicated all that talent and effort to going out and fighting the scum of society in the name of making the world 'better'.
The answer, of course, is that a person who would want to be an actual comic book superhero would have to be insane, whose talents are overridden by a series of logical fallacies and emotional issues. Cut away from a world where extraordinary events are far more ordinary than our world, a superhero is pretty much a lunatic, working through their own issues rather than helping society with any great cause. If Lee's characters were human, Moore's Watchmen concept had characters who were super human, with all of humanity's traits magnified to excess. Considering how human brains can be wired, it's not surprising the negative is presented first and foremost.
But if Watchmen was solely about 'normal' people on costumes, it would be a very different story. The crux that Watchmen turns on is the other half of the superhero coin. Specifically, having superpowers, and how reality would work if applied to them. Hence, Dr. Manhattan.
 |
| Dah ba di, dah ba die. |
Dr. Manhattan is the lone person with actual superpowers in the Watchmen world, and in some ways he's actually very admirable, in terms of human strength and willpower. He does not end up corrupted by his powers (and they're immense), and then there's the fact he exists at all, showing a human will so strong that he was able to survive being disintegrated (under very specific circumstances) and rebuild himself a whole new body. Moore, however, chooses to apply realism another way; Manhattan may have survived (and never become evil) because of the best of human traits, but Manhattan is no longer human. His senses have been expanded in ways incomprehensible to us; plot points suggest that Manhattan no longer experiences time in a linear fashion and is experiencing all of the events of his life at once, and even if that's not wholly accurate, his viewpoint had completely changed from interpreting light waves to being able to perceive everything in between, and at a scale no human can match. A theory about the dangers of artificial intelligence is that a lot of people think that an evolving AI evolving past humanity means 'a very smart person building a fancier gun' if the AI turns hostile towards us. What is more likely based on our own evolution and the advantage it gives us over animals, goes the theory, is that to us, the AI would be using MAGIC, as we would as incapable of understanding what it was doing as the average animal is of understanding a gun. Manhattan is a god trapped within the framework of reference of a normal man, and unlike Superman, his senses are even more potent, and worse; he can't turn them off. While a lot of inhuman god types immediately swing towards misunderstood Nietzschean concepts, Manhattan perhaps manifests as a more realistic result; incapable of caring about anything. It eventually gets to the point where Manhattan, outside of public appearances, doesn't even wear clothes, walking around naked. He simply does not see any point in doing otherwise. To him, everything is the same. Equal. There is no more adventure in life. No discovery. Everything that is and will be is all for hin, all the time.
A tragedy...and at this point, human nature will make it worse.
This fact is what the third part of the triangle of Watchmen's plot revolves around; what would happen to the world if a superman (hell, a GOD) appeared...in the middle of the Cold War, his ascension having left him with no real desire to do much of anything himself because by the nature of his perception, he's already doing everything he will ever do all at the same time? While this is a sort of a plot device, one only has to try and apply realism to that degree of superhuman power (and the effects it would likely have on the mind) to realize that such a path is the most likely one such a world would take. If Watchmen had other superhumans with lesser powers, it would be a very different story. As it stands, it is an examination of what would drive people to be 'superheroes', what it would be like to really be powerful enough to make a difference, and how the world would respond.
Watchmen is not a world in a good state. While Manhattan's presence has had positive aspects (battery-run cars due to him being able to play philosopher's stone and synthesize rare elements easily, which means less pollution), the insane advantage he has given the United States in the Cold War has left the Soviet Union feeling cornered and angry. Considering studies show that each side of said Cold War (released after it ended) fully expected the other to wipe them out and that said other side would strike first, and with a literal godly being hanging over the Russians' head who could theoretically blunt if not completely neutralize their offensive efforts and aid the return fire to completely annihilate them, the Soviet Union is rapidly approaching the point of nothing left to lose, where pride twists into the insanity of M.A.D. The old saying went 'Better dead than red'; in Watchmen, it is more accurately 'better dead than impotent red' (It will not be the only point in the story that allegories about impotence will be made; heck, one of the most famous black comedies about the Cold War revolved around impotence). As a result, the Watchmen world (set in the mid 80's) is a world of passive fatalism, as most of society has concluded on some subconscious level that Manhattan's disruptive presence is eventually going to overturn the boat and cause everyone to drown. Its 'heroes' are either neutered and broken dolls, or black and white absolutists, with no agency to save anyone, let alone themselves. Its 'villain' might very well be its greatest hero, and the events that play out suggest that the world should just be grateful the costs were so low and that the villain was completely right. And that maybe it was all for nothing. Watchmen, as per one definition, is about failure.
And yet...
It's very easy to dismiss Watchmen as a purely cynical 'The world is fucking doomed because we're all fucking broken stupid apes' type of story; the elements that support that type of view are very strong. But what a lot of people tend to forget is that to see humanity at its best is not to always look at the Mother Teresas or the Oskar Schindlers of this world (as it is very easy to scratch the surface and discover their unfortunate traits, which has a weird effect on human brains where it will make them go 'They're not a saint, ergo they're nothing'), but to look at humanity at its absolute worst, and see where it still shines (The Christmas Truce is a good example). To dismiss Watchmen as wholly cynical nihilism is to ignore that the story is also about two damaged people finding each other, or a lunatic seeing what cast him in his form and holding back his more-than-justified urge to scratch the rage and hatred itch, even if just one time. It's to ignore a man looking into humanity at its most warped and lost, and despite being floored and metaphorically bloodied, refuse to let it change him for the worse, or a man finally realizing just how wrong his path has become and accepting the consequences of it. It's a man who's not a man who briefly remembers aspects of being a man. It's a man who in many ways has cut away everything for the sake of greater things realizing this does not mean he is no longer human (for better or for worse). Like Stan Lee's work, it is a story about human beings, at their very brightest and at their very worst, and all the myriad ways this intersects. Hell, the most prominent aspect of the story of about how complicated human beings are straddles the line between 'amazing' and 'horrible' so thoroughly that it might be impossible to tell which one it really is, beyond personal assessment. Watchmen is a dark work, it has many nasty elements, and it pulls out a few aspects of the enjoyment of comic book superheroes and shows up the things behind them we many not want to admit are there, but in the end, it's still the story of the sacrifices to try and save the world.
Hell, it even has some of the silliness, like the background minor plot point of the main character's issues with a robotic exo-suit he built (which ends in a joke so subtle most people probably need it pointed out to them), or the scene in a jail where one of the main characters is visited by The Big Figure, a crime boss in prison...and a midget. It wouldn't be out of place in any average comic about superheroes. Watchmen has its issues, but I would not consider it a wholly cynical work. It is deeply layered. It speaks of all aspects of the human condition. It is the human part of a 'super human' story (I may talk about a 'super' type later). It is, in my own opinion, be it ever so unimportant, Art.
A side note on art, while I'm here...
You cannot create art.
This opinion is about as valid as what I would consider a Jackson Pollock painting to be (as in, wholly arbitrary and personal), but this is my blog, so I'm going to write about it. I do not think Art can be created, at least not intentionally. Art just happens. Art just IS. All you can do is try and create a good work, maybe even a memorable work, and while I would normally suggest hoping for the best, in this case I think such things would be counterproductive. You cannot go into creating a work trying to make art, on any level. In my opinion, it will cause whatever artistic merit the work might have to ring false. And god knows there are enough 'artists' running around, radiating smugness and myopic arrogance about their brilliance, surrounded by sycophants and clueless hangers-on who might as well be calling a random messy room 'art', as they probably don't understand or trust themselves to try and figure out what art REALLY is. A person who does their best to craft a great work might create art. A narcissist in love with their talent can only produce works with no soul.
And hand in hand with the idea of trying to make 'art' is the idea of trying to create a work with a message. I believe such a thing falls under the same purview at art; it cannot be intentionally done without rendering the message less effective. Here, I turn to an old latin phrase I like: res ipsa loquitur, ie 'the thing itself speaks' (or 'the thing speaks for itself'); while technically a law term, I believe it also applies to virtually any argument or creative work. One should simply create a story and let any message come through organically; while it is true that there are cases where one cannot be subtle, I honestly believe they do more harm than good, especially to the message.
I took a jab at comic writer Judd Winick earlier, mainly because he's a prime example of someone being so enamored with his message he undercuts it. Winick's defining life moment of his early life was being a contestant on MTV's The Real World, where he became close friends with his roommate Pedro Zamora, a gay man afflicted with HIV which later developed to AIDS. Zamora would die less than six months after the show wrapped (and one day after the final episode of the filmed season aired). Winick would later write for DC Comics, and would place his experiences with Zamora (among other places) into his work on Green Lantern and Green Arrow, and just like with 'Hard Travellin' Heroes', it would not turn out well in the long run.
Winick's flaws, in the end, is the classic insecurity of not allowing a work to speak for itself. In Green Arrow, Winick would create the character of Mia Deardon, who would become the latest Speedy, and was also HIV positive. Fine by itself...except Winick would write Oliver Queen, a grown man, a millionaire crime fighter, who at this point in his life had actually died and come back to life, as utterly and completely clueless over what HIV and AIDS was when this was revealed (perhaps acceptable if this was written in the 80's or early 90's, but this was written in the mid-00's). Before that, Winick would write Green Lantern, where a secondary character and friend of the then-sole-Lantern, Kyle Raynor, would be revealed as gay, and several issues later become the victim of a vicious hate crime. Again, 'fine' by itself...except the assault (which Kyle would personally avenge) would affect Kyle so deeply that he would abandon Earth (his primary protective sphere, other heroes aside) and drift off into space, lost in his crushing shock and despair over the evils of humanity. While hate crimes are exceptionally vile, the fact that an experienced superhero (who had just briefly achieved godlike power and perception in a storyline just before the attack, and given it up) would be so deeply affected by it that he would basically wash his hands of his chosen heroic responsibility and wander off to try and 'make sense' of it all (never mind Kyle's other experiences as a hero by this point) is a bridge too far. While the human mind is complicated enough that the most arbitrary things can set it off, there is also the fact that Kyle was the secondary victim of the infamous event that created the 'Woman In Refrigerators' noted aspect of comics, and this was when he had just STARTED as a superhero, and that did not drive him to fly off to soul search slash brood. Kyle had not even gone through a series of events that the gay bashing could count as a 'last straw'; in fact, the immediate event before this was an act of rebirth and creation, as Raynor would begin the rebirth of the Green Lantern corps. Yet this attack drove Kyle into space, seeking answers for the great evils of humanity, and unable to face the world of his birth. All because of a hate crime.
Does this strike you as good storytelling? Or does it strike you as what Hard Travellin' Heroes was; clunky, a square peg being forced into a round hole? Winick would raise valid issues that deserve attention, but his writing would denote a fear that these issues would not be noticed unless they were shoved into the readers' face, and perhaps more irritatedly, if the main heroes of the work were not reduced to the author's mouthpiece in complete disregard for what their characters logically should be like. The stories could still be just as easily told without such character alteration, but Winick desired above all else to get the message across, and in doing so, he provoked equal parts annoyance to any understanding, which is the absolute worst reaction a message can receive. People do not like to be lectured, and they dislike being lead around even more. The worst thing you can do for a message, in the end, is to shove it in someone's face, or worse, do so under manipulative circumstances. There are many stories of people listening to organizations like D.A.R.E make presentations over drugs in a vein only a few steps below Reefer Madness, only for young people to later experiment with minor drugs, discover the immensely negative effects do not occur, and completely dismiss DARE's still-valid message in feeling they have been lied to. A message should speak for itself, and the best way for a message to speak is for it to naturally occur in the framework of a story. Attempting to push in a message will ultimately just damage both story and message, just as attempting to create art will just ensure you don't. Moore simply attempted to do his best to explore his idea and its layers, and he would create Art. He'd do pretty well on the Message front too.
He would also destroy comics, because as I have said repeatedly, the main thrust of these articles is that everyone has their own personal interpretation of things, and that many comic-book types are insistent, maybe even desperate, to prove they are not childish. In Watchmen, they finally got their golden egg from the goose. Watchmen was not only Art, but ADULT. It was not a story for children, and by the basis of what was to come, it was not a story for a lot of comic book fans either. Unfortunately, just like how Gordon Gecko inspired legions of people to get into stocks, and how Walter White from Breaking Bad would be admired and cheered on while his wife Skyler (a FAR more sympathetic and put upon character) would be reviled, many comic book fans, and writers, would embrace its 'adult' nature...while completely and utterly misunderstanding what the hell was 'adult' about it.
And in the way of addicts, they would decide what the comic book world needed was more of it.
A tragedy...and at this point, human nature will make it worse.
This fact is what the third part of the triangle of Watchmen's plot revolves around; what would happen to the world if a superman (hell, a GOD) appeared...in the middle of the Cold War, his ascension having left him with no real desire to do much of anything himself because by the nature of his perception, he's already doing everything he will ever do all at the same time? While this is a sort of a plot device, one only has to try and apply realism to that degree of superhuman power (and the effects it would likely have on the mind) to realize that such a path is the most likely one such a world would take. If Watchmen had other superhumans with lesser powers, it would be a very different story. As it stands, it is an examination of what would drive people to be 'superheroes', what it would be like to really be powerful enough to make a difference, and how the world would respond.
Watchmen is not a world in a good state. While Manhattan's presence has had positive aspects (battery-run cars due to him being able to play philosopher's stone and synthesize rare elements easily, which means less pollution), the insane advantage he has given the United States in the Cold War has left the Soviet Union feeling cornered and angry. Considering studies show that each side of said Cold War (released after it ended) fully expected the other to wipe them out and that said other side would strike first, and with a literal godly being hanging over the Russians' head who could theoretically blunt if not completely neutralize their offensive efforts and aid the return fire to completely annihilate them, the Soviet Union is rapidly approaching the point of nothing left to lose, where pride twists into the insanity of M.A.D. The old saying went 'Better dead than red'; in Watchmen, it is more accurately 'better dead than impotent red' (It will not be the only point in the story that allegories about impotence will be made; heck, one of the most famous black comedies about the Cold War revolved around impotence). As a result, the Watchmen world (set in the mid 80's) is a world of passive fatalism, as most of society has concluded on some subconscious level that Manhattan's disruptive presence is eventually going to overturn the boat and cause everyone to drown. Its 'heroes' are either neutered and broken dolls, or black and white absolutists, with no agency to save anyone, let alone themselves. Its 'villain' might very well be its greatest hero, and the events that play out suggest that the world should just be grateful the costs were so low and that the villain was completely right. And that maybe it was all for nothing. Watchmen, as per one definition, is about failure.
And yet...
It's very easy to dismiss Watchmen as a purely cynical 'The world is fucking doomed because we're all fucking broken stupid apes' type of story; the elements that support that type of view are very strong. But what a lot of people tend to forget is that to see humanity at its best is not to always look at the Mother Teresas or the Oskar Schindlers of this world (as it is very easy to scratch the surface and discover their unfortunate traits, which has a weird effect on human brains where it will make them go 'They're not a saint, ergo they're nothing'), but to look at humanity at its absolute worst, and see where it still shines (The Christmas Truce is a good example). To dismiss Watchmen as wholly cynical nihilism is to ignore that the story is also about two damaged people finding each other, or a lunatic seeing what cast him in his form and holding back his more-than-justified urge to scratch the rage and hatred itch, even if just one time. It's to ignore a man looking into humanity at its most warped and lost, and despite being floored and metaphorically bloodied, refuse to let it change him for the worse, or a man finally realizing just how wrong his path has become and accepting the consequences of it. It's a man who's not a man who briefly remembers aspects of being a man. It's a man who in many ways has cut away everything for the sake of greater things realizing this does not mean he is no longer human (for better or for worse). Like Stan Lee's work, it is a story about human beings, at their very brightest and at their very worst, and all the myriad ways this intersects. Hell, the most prominent aspect of the story of about how complicated human beings are straddles the line between 'amazing' and 'horrible' so thoroughly that it might be impossible to tell which one it really is, beyond personal assessment. Watchmen is a dark work, it has many nasty elements, and it pulls out a few aspects of the enjoyment of comic book superheroes and shows up the things behind them we many not want to admit are there, but in the end, it's still the story of the sacrifices to try and save the world.
Hell, it even has some of the silliness, like the background minor plot point of the main character's issues with a robotic exo-suit he built (which ends in a joke so subtle most people probably need it pointed out to them), or the scene in a jail where one of the main characters is visited by The Big Figure, a crime boss in prison...and a midget. It wouldn't be out of place in any average comic about superheroes. Watchmen has its issues, but I would not consider it a wholly cynical work. It is deeply layered. It speaks of all aspects of the human condition. It is the human part of a 'super human' story (I may talk about a 'super' type later). It is, in my own opinion, be it ever so unimportant, Art.
A side note on art, while I'm here...
You cannot create art.
This opinion is about as valid as what I would consider a Jackson Pollock painting to be (as in, wholly arbitrary and personal), but this is my blog, so I'm going to write about it. I do not think Art can be created, at least not intentionally. Art just happens. Art just IS. All you can do is try and create a good work, maybe even a memorable work, and while I would normally suggest hoping for the best, in this case I think such things would be counterproductive. You cannot go into creating a work trying to make art, on any level. In my opinion, it will cause whatever artistic merit the work might have to ring false. And god knows there are enough 'artists' running around, radiating smugness and myopic arrogance about their brilliance, surrounded by sycophants and clueless hangers-on who might as well be calling a random messy room 'art', as they probably don't understand or trust themselves to try and figure out what art REALLY is. A person who does their best to craft a great work might create art. A narcissist in love with their talent can only produce works with no soul.
And hand in hand with the idea of trying to make 'art' is the idea of trying to create a work with a message. I believe such a thing falls under the same purview at art; it cannot be intentionally done without rendering the message less effective. Here, I turn to an old latin phrase I like: res ipsa loquitur, ie 'the thing itself speaks' (or 'the thing speaks for itself'); while technically a law term, I believe it also applies to virtually any argument or creative work. One should simply create a story and let any message come through organically; while it is true that there are cases where one cannot be subtle, I honestly believe they do more harm than good, especially to the message.
I took a jab at comic writer Judd Winick earlier, mainly because he's a prime example of someone being so enamored with his message he undercuts it. Winick's defining life moment of his early life was being a contestant on MTV's The Real World, where he became close friends with his roommate Pedro Zamora, a gay man afflicted with HIV which later developed to AIDS. Zamora would die less than six months after the show wrapped (and one day after the final episode of the filmed season aired). Winick would later write for DC Comics, and would place his experiences with Zamora (among other places) into his work on Green Lantern and Green Arrow, and just like with 'Hard Travellin' Heroes', it would not turn out well in the long run.
Winick's flaws, in the end, is the classic insecurity of not allowing a work to speak for itself. In Green Arrow, Winick would create the character of Mia Deardon, who would become the latest Speedy, and was also HIV positive. Fine by itself...except Winick would write Oliver Queen, a grown man, a millionaire crime fighter, who at this point in his life had actually died and come back to life, as utterly and completely clueless over what HIV and AIDS was when this was revealed (perhaps acceptable if this was written in the 80's or early 90's, but this was written in the mid-00's). Before that, Winick would write Green Lantern, where a secondary character and friend of the then-sole-Lantern, Kyle Raynor, would be revealed as gay, and several issues later become the victim of a vicious hate crime. Again, 'fine' by itself...except the assault (which Kyle would personally avenge) would affect Kyle so deeply that he would abandon Earth (his primary protective sphere, other heroes aside) and drift off into space, lost in his crushing shock and despair over the evils of humanity. While hate crimes are exceptionally vile, the fact that an experienced superhero (who had just briefly achieved godlike power and perception in a storyline just before the attack, and given it up) would be so deeply affected by it that he would basically wash his hands of his chosen heroic responsibility and wander off to try and 'make sense' of it all (never mind Kyle's other experiences as a hero by this point) is a bridge too far. While the human mind is complicated enough that the most arbitrary things can set it off, there is also the fact that Kyle was the secondary victim of the infamous event that created the 'Woman In Refrigerators' noted aspect of comics, and this was when he had just STARTED as a superhero, and that did not drive him to fly off to soul search slash brood. Kyle had not even gone through a series of events that the gay bashing could count as a 'last straw'; in fact, the immediate event before this was an act of rebirth and creation, as Raynor would begin the rebirth of the Green Lantern corps. Yet this attack drove Kyle into space, seeking answers for the great evils of humanity, and unable to face the world of his birth. All because of a hate crime.
Does this strike you as good storytelling? Or does it strike you as what Hard Travellin' Heroes was; clunky, a square peg being forced into a round hole? Winick would raise valid issues that deserve attention, but his writing would denote a fear that these issues would not be noticed unless they were shoved into the readers' face, and perhaps more irritatedly, if the main heroes of the work were not reduced to the author's mouthpiece in complete disregard for what their characters logically should be like. The stories could still be just as easily told without such character alteration, but Winick desired above all else to get the message across, and in doing so, he provoked equal parts annoyance to any understanding, which is the absolute worst reaction a message can receive. People do not like to be lectured, and they dislike being lead around even more. The worst thing you can do for a message, in the end, is to shove it in someone's face, or worse, do so under manipulative circumstances. There are many stories of people listening to organizations like D.A.R.E make presentations over drugs in a vein only a few steps below Reefer Madness, only for young people to later experiment with minor drugs, discover the immensely negative effects do not occur, and completely dismiss DARE's still-valid message in feeling they have been lied to. A message should speak for itself, and the best way for a message to speak is for it to naturally occur in the framework of a story. Attempting to push in a message will ultimately just damage both story and message, just as attempting to create art will just ensure you don't. Moore simply attempted to do his best to explore his idea and its layers, and he would create Art. He'd do pretty well on the Message front too.
He would also destroy comics, because as I have said repeatedly, the main thrust of these articles is that everyone has their own personal interpretation of things, and that many comic-book types are insistent, maybe even desperate, to prove they are not childish. In Watchmen, they finally got their golden egg from the goose. Watchmen was not only Art, but ADULT. It was not a story for children, and by the basis of what was to come, it was not a story for a lot of comic book fans either. Unfortunately, just like how Gordon Gecko inspired legions of people to get into stocks, and how Walter White from Breaking Bad would be admired and cheered on while his wife Skyler (a FAR more sympathetic and put upon character) would be reviled, many comic book fans, and writers, would embrace its 'adult' nature...while completely and utterly misunderstanding what the hell was 'adult' about it.
And in the way of addicts, they would decide what the comic book world needed was more of it.
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| In reality, this is much more what comics needed. Both the character, and many people needing a giant fist to be applied to some part of their bodies. |
The worst part is, even if done well...the concept was doomed to begin with. In the final column on Watchmen, how it tainted comics and how, just like Gecko and White, why so many people couldn't even begin to grasp why taking anything from Watchmen was a bad idea.
Saturday, 17 January 2015
Blush: Mighty Writey
To understand Watchmen, you need to understand a few things about comics' past.
Backing into success is not unheard of. Stephen King almost threw his breakout novel, Carrie, in the trash because he felt that he, a male teacher in his thirties, had no capacity to write a novel based around the trials of teenage girls (his wife fished it out and encouraged him to finish anyway, the rest is history). George Lucas' original cut of Star Wars was a dull, boring disaster, and if it hadn't been for the skilled people with him, notably his now ex-wife, re-cutting the film, the Internet these days would not be arguing over whether or not this is stupid.
Backing into success is not unheard of. Stephen King almost threw his breakout novel, Carrie, in the trash because he felt that he, a male teacher in his thirties, had no capacity to write a novel based around the trials of teenage girls (his wife fished it out and encouraged him to finish anyway, the rest is history). George Lucas' original cut of Star Wars was a dull, boring disaster, and if it hadn't been for the skilled people with him, notably his now ex-wife, re-cutting the film, the Internet these days would not be arguing over whether or not this is stupid.
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| It's not. Don't be boring. |
Likewise, there's Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan, who almost didn't create Tarzan; Burroughs was 'a failure' for the first part of his adult life (in the sense he had half a dozen jobs and either didn't like them or do well at them), and when he started writing, he sent Tarzan into the magazine he had already sold John Carter to, thinking it 'wasn't very good' and 'probably wouldn't sell'. Mixed with the fact that Burroughs had begun to doubt he wanted to be a writer, and it's easy to see that one stray different thought might have made him throw out the idea and stop writing, and hence erased one of the defining characters of fiction. The interesting thing, however, was the mindset behind Burroughs' doubts on being a writer; rather than whether he had any talent or not, Burroughs felt that writing was perhaps something to be ashamed of, a job 'that a big, strong, healthy man' shouldn't be doing. Burroughs' mindset brings up something that seems incredibly strange in the modern day of comic books; that once upon a time, writing comic books was just that, a job.
And it was. While there's always been a thread of creative spirit running through comics, for the first decades of the medium's life, it was the same creative spirit that runs through the Garfield comic strip (whose creator has explicitly said he created Garfield as a 'good, marketable character'); anything in any way exceptional only happened occasionally, and possibly by accident.
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| I will note, I do have strips from Garfield I like. |
And for those familiar with how absurd the Gold and especially the Silver Age of comics are, the fact that they were primarily being created by men who considered writing them 'a job' says a lot about why. Imagine it; a small industry unconcerned with continuity, what a character 'was supposed to be', or whether a product was any 'good' or not, written solely by men who considered it little different from working in an office (and maybe less respectable). It was a disposable medium, stories that were meant to be read once, or at best kept briefly, and sooner or later discarded. What did it matter if they were repetitive, or ridiculous, or contradicted each other? This was a business of brief entertainments, primarily for children. No one in a year is going to care about (or remember) this stuff, let alone a decade or seven.
(I will note, of course, there are always exceptions to the concept that all comics were created as disposable nonsense meant expected to be forgotten. Ironically, the seen-as-disposable aspect of comics would create the other half of the curse that befell it in the late 80's and 90's; the collector's market. But that's another story)
Stan Lee, unlike a number of his peers (how many? Who knows. I'm sure someone does and the point of these articles isn't to try and pick through and categorize every comic writer of Ages past), actually had legitimate creative desires and wanted to write the traditional Great American Novel. His likely-planned start for such things in comics (thanks to an uncle) would ultimately change that; Lee would work for the company for over twenty years, writing in a variety of genres, creating a few superheroes (albeit none you'd likely have heard of), and ultimately serving as editor-in-chief, though his main creative contribution to comicdom before 1960 would be creating Captain America's trademark 'ricocheting shield trick' (in the very first story he ever told for Marvel, and a prose story at that). With DC Comics having experienced some success in redone superheroes after the superhero genre had fallen on hard times during the 50's, and with Lee planning on changing careers, when his boss asked him to create a new superhero team to try and claim some of DC's successes, Lee, encouraged by his wife, decided that instead of more of the same, he would try and tell the kind of story he was interested in. With that, Lee created the Fantastic Four, and told a story based around a different concept: instead of a perfect paragon, what would a superhero (or heroes) who was also a human being be like?
It's not exactly exaggeration when it is said that Lee's choice likely saved the superhero genre (we'll never know if DC's efforts would have been enough by themselves), and while Lee's stories were more or less as silly as the Silver Age's lesser known efforts, Lee was perhaps the first to try and introduce realism into the comics; his superheroes were flawed, had ups and downs in their lives, sometimes got overwhelmed by their responsibilities, and generally had more dimension. Lee, however, never seemed to forget that the roots of superherodom are inherently silly, and while every now and then he attempted something serious (his issues of Spider Man that showed the negative effects of drugs being one), they would always be matched by things like 'The No Prize' and 'The Merry Marvel Marching Society'. That superhero comics will always be silly on SOME level as a very aspect of their existence is something, unfortunately, a lot of future writers (and fans) would forget.
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| In some corners of the internet, showing this picture is a capital offense. |
Perhaps Stan understood something that others didn't; superhero comics tend to be poor mediums for real life issues. It's kind of hard to discuss sociological inequalities with men who solve virtually their problems with punching and made-up nonsense. At best, the results will be clunky...
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| Not shown: the part where Hal Jordan realizes that saving the whole world counts. Then again, Hal was never that bright. |
At worst, the silliness comic book superheroes constantly dip into will crash into the message attempt and end up producing something equally offensive.
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| Evidently, someone showed Ollie that Doom/Hulk ad. I would have made a joke here about Washington football teams, but I didn't want to date the articl-DAMN IT |
The preceding two pictures are from one of DC Comics' more famous storylines, the 'Hard Travellin' Heroes' story arc, where Green Arrow and Lantern went wandering around trying to deal with more 'real-life problems'. You see the result. When you've gone from 'true if somewhat badly implemented question based in real life' to 'white man dressed up as a stereotypical Native while shooting at a man tied to a totem pole' within the space of three issues, you've gotten a direct look at why superhero comic books are not really the medium to show these issues off, even under the 'youth need a sledgehammer to learn' reason. I will note that this arc also contains perhaps the most infamous moment in Green Arrow (if not superhero comics) history.
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| You think that's bad Ollie, wait until Judd Winick gets his hands on you. |
So, does that make you think of the plight of addicts, or are you too busy smirking at Green Arrow's rather overwrought facial expression? The link about the storyline above will show off many more of the arc's absurd moments, and while one should give credit where credit is due, things like this, especially in retrospect, remind me of a anonymous quote.
"A professor, writing on a grad student’s paper: You have reinvented
the sled. Asked to clarify, the prof said: It’s much like reinventing
the wheel, but less useful."
Which brings me, at last, to Alan Moore, and Watchmen.
Whether Moore could be said to be more creative than Lee is an impossible question; the two are very different men. Moore was definitely more of a wild child, dealing LSD in school, writing under a pseudonym that was a take on Gilles De Rais (which even Moore admits was a 'sardonic joke', and will generally give you an idea of what kind of man Moore is), and having his first major works be heavily influenced by his (immensely negative) feelings for the British government of the 80's (a trait many British creative types would share). Moore did, however, still like comic books, having had them as part and parcel of his voracious reading as a boy, and like Lee, he wanted to actually write stories following his interests (which would grow more and more anomalous as his life went on, but that is neither here nor there). which, as his career caught on, included revamping characters. With DC having acquired a new crop of characters, Moore presented a proposal to use them in a story, and was politely encouraged that it might work best with original characters instead due to the exact events of idea he had. Left with a completely blank canvas, Moore would rework the idea, and in the process, do as Lee had done. Lee had asked 'what if a superhero had human traits, like the kind seen in the real world'. Moore, instead, would ask 'What kind of a person in the real world would WANT to be a superhero?'
Looking at that question for a bit kind of makes you worried, doesn't it? It's a question that becomes more and more loaded the more you look at it. In the way of things, Burroughs' Tarzan also came about asking a question that is now very unfortunate; Burroughs, interested in the now-discredited field of eugenics, wanted to know if 'good breeding' could overcome adversity.
Translation; could being a white male descended from nobility allow you to take control of your environment per surpassing (easily) the native peoples there. The answer, of course, was yes.
While not as regretful as Nation's place in the creative field (that being a horrific story that happened to be attached to presentation techniques that unfortunately had to be originated with it and whose complete assimilation into the basics of the industry would ensure the film would not be forgotten), Tarzan's popularizing of what some call the 'Mighty Whitey' archetype (Tarzan wasn't the first character in that vein, but he was the one who caught on the biggest, especially since unlike those who came before him, his creator managed to discover a head for business and trademark him before further figuring out the concept of merchandizing him) would unfortunately ensure a certain type of adventure (and its unfortunate messages) would continue into the future.
Translation; could being a white male descended from nobility allow you to take control of your environment per surpassing (easily) the native peoples there. The answer, of course, was yes.
While not as regretful as Nation's place in the creative field (that being a horrific story that happened to be attached to presentation techniques that unfortunately had to be originated with it and whose complete assimilation into the basics of the industry would ensure the film would not be forgotten), Tarzan's popularizing of what some call the 'Mighty Whitey' archetype (Tarzan wasn't the first character in that vein, but he was the one who caught on the biggest, especially since unlike those who came before him, his creator managed to discover a head for business and trademark him before further figuring out the concept of merchandizing him) would unfortunately ensure a certain type of adventure (and its unfortunate messages) would continue into the future.
Lee, on the other hand, ensured the superhero medium would. He lucked out, because Moore would as well...
And unfortunately, his contribution would end up more like Nation and Burroughs than Lee's.
And unfortunately, his contribution would end up more like Nation and Burroughs than Lee's.
Next article: I ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT WATCHMEN INSTEAD OF RAMBLING ABOUT GARFIELD AND GREEN ARROW.
Coda: Here's what's on the back of that Incredible Hulk shirt. Just in case you HAD to know.
Saturday, 10 January 2015
Blush: The Birth Of An Addiction
By 1915, filmmaking as an existing thing and the concept we know it as was barely twenty years old. Sound in film would not be introduced for another twelve years. The medium was in its infancy and molten, clay to be shaped. Along comes a man named D.W Griffith, who proceeds to make a film that would basically invent the very underpinnings of what all traditional cinema would come to do. Whether or not they were techniques just awaiting to be discovered and Griffith happened to think of them first is debatable, but whatever the case, it was his film that first utilized such techniques as moving the camera, rapid cuts (and editing in general), and perhaps most importantly, the cavalry scene, the scene of a mass of people riding to the rescue that would be stolen and adapted by hundreds of films in his wake over the decades. It was in many ways the first feature length film and the first 'blockbuster', decades before Jaws really defined that concept. You could definitely say it was the first true 'movie'. So why am I bringing this up when I should be talking about comics? Well, you can watch the now public-domain film here if you wish, but really, one image of this film says all I would really need to say.
Yes, that is the Ku Klux Klan, riding to the rescue and killing men in blackface (and being presented as the heroes for it). The film Griffith created with all these now-basic filmmaking techniques that he originated was Birth Of A Nation, a film whose message is as disgusting as its techniques were groundbreaking, and even moreso. When a film is considered racist in 1905, you know you've created a real winner of a story. Say what you will about Citizen Kane, but at least you can watch it these days without cringing through the whole experience. The vileness of the tale, however, does not take away from the reality of the framework created to present it. It is the unfortunate fact that not every created thing gets to come into existence with good intentions, and if you ever want that driven home with a bullet, do some research into how many medical advances came out of studying the records of experiments performed on the victims of the Holocaust and Imperial Japan.
Therein lies the issue of this article: groundbreaking works with a truly unfortunate pedigree (intentional or not) and most of the time, an unfortunate legacy in turn (The KKK was more or less dead before Nation's release; its defining-to-film nature helped revive the group). Hence, Watchmen.
Watchmen is Art. It is a Good Comic.
Therein lies the issue of this article: groundbreaking works with a truly unfortunate pedigree (intentional or not) and most of the time, an unfortunate legacy in turn (The KKK was more or less dead before Nation's release; its defining-to-film nature helped revive the group). Hence, Watchmen.
Watchmen is Art. It is a Good Comic.
It is not for everyone, and it falls into the traditional trap of 'reality is innately ugly' that a lot of art falls into, but much like the techniques invented to present the tale of Nation, one can assess the one without innately dismissing it because of the unfortunate aspects of the other. Watchmen might be the most defining superhero comic ever created.
It also more or less ruined the medium, at least in terms of the widespread, accessible to the greater public sense. There are plenty of people who could point out the many other stories comics have been used to tell, before or since, but to the average person, comic books are superheroes, and to the loudest, most 'dedicated' fans, that's all comic books are too.
A side note on fans, if I may. One that doesn't just apply to the comic book medium.
A lot of fans aren't.
If you've ever been friends with a drug addict (which we'll use as a basic example), you probably know how hard it is, and what likely ended it if you did end the friendship. An addict (too often sadly) isn't the person you originally befriended. The addiction had climbed into the person's skin and taken over, and it will do anything to ensure it is fed. Friendship, trust, basic human decency, all of that falls away when the demon is squatting and scratching at your brain. To be friends with an addict is to be friends with a roulette wheel, where your actions if they crap out (go go inappropriately mixed gambling allegories!) tend to be the more basic and simple; anger, rejection, and the severing of the relationship. It's difficult to overcome the basic negative emotions that come from being betrayed by a friend in some way due to their demons (theft of property being the most common one), let alone know when things have reacted a point where the negative emotions are the proper reaction. It becomes even worse if the addict, who tends to not have the most stable viewpoints in the first place, comes to see you as an obstacle to sate their addiction. Understanding such feelings and where they spring from doesn't make it any less ugly or unpleasant (if not worse) to experience.
(Side Note: I am aware there are many reasons people become addicts. I'm generalizing.)
Devoted fans of things tend to be in two camps. One are hobbyists, and one are addicts. Hobbyists are pretty much exactly what it says on the tin; they collect, they may even obsess, but their fandom does not enter into who they are as a person, at least primarily. Perhaps most importantly, they have a better grasp of what's important and what's not; they may hate to part with or lose something, they may even regret it, but they'll accept it.
Fandom addicts, as you might have guessed, are not so lucky. Like any classic addict, what they want is a fix, and just like a drug addict, they will never get it. Addiction has many roots, but a large one in many drug addicts is the eternal chase of 'the first high', the pure sensation that the person felt when their body was first introduced to the drug. This sensation will never be felt again, as the body cannot replicate the feelings when it is first experiencing the results from an outside source for the first time, but that won't stop the addict from chasing it, and potentially sacrificing everything to the chase. Much like an addict can destroy their lives, relationships, and health for their fix of something that will kill them, one way or another, the addict lacking any perspective for what they're losing solely for an impossible gain, a fandom addict in a lot of ways doesn't care about what they supposedly like; they just want their fix. But you can only see the opening to Star Wars and feel what it made you experience, just like you can only take a drug for the first time once; fandom addicts want that same feeling again, and when they don't get it, things can get ugly. As a result, you often get a person who takes the object of their fandom very, very seriously, while paradoxically not understanding it very well, if at all. More on that later.
In any case, Watchmen. If you haven't read it, I would recommend it. You may not like it, but I still recommend it. The plot is simple; in a world with masked mystery men and a superhuman, a murder has been committed. The whys and fallout will reach back into the world's past and define its future, as well as provide examinations of the human condition, the abstract reasoning of countries, and show the very best, and the very worst, of human minds, morality, and thinking processes, and the myriad ways good people do bad things, bad people do good things, and people just do things without having any idea if they're good and bad. It can be read as very dark and bleak, but it can also be read as a examination of real life heroism, how it can go wrong, and how one can avoid it going wrong. In a lot of ways, Watchmen is not very different from this.
As cheesy and silly as these comics read now, when Stan Lee wrote them, he recreated and reinvigorated the superhero genre the same way Watchmen did; he added realism. The Fantastic Four weren't a group of shiny happy people effortlessly defeating ugly, deformed criminals (or more likely, Nazis or Japanese soldiers), they were a family that didn't get along, bickered and fought, and had a team member who was not only strong, but also ugly, and also SMART. To the simple superhero field, that was as groundbreaking as Nation's cavalry rescue ride. Spider-Man wasn't a noble adult, he was a selfish teenager whose use of his powers got the most important person in his life indirectly killed, a lesson that shocked him so bad that he devoted himself to heroism as a result. Superman never had to fight crime with a cold, and the Justice Society never had a hero who looked like a monster and couldn't turn it off, yet refused to abandon the cause of good no matter how much society ostracized him. For his flaws, Lee actually made these superhuman people human, and better characters for it.
Alan Moore, who wrote Watchmen, just took the next step. Unfortunately for the genre, it was the same kind of step Nation took, albeit not for the same reasons. Nation would recreate the underpinnings of a genre, while being attached to the most unfortunate content possible. Watchmen would do the same thing, with the exception that its content wasn't unfortunate because of its innate existence.
It was unfortunate because of how its innate existence would be perceived. In my last column, I talked about how the immature desperately seek to be seen as mature (and just prove their immaturity). In my next, I'll take that and the fandom of addiction, and show how Watchmen combined with the two to cast a dark shadow over virtually every comic book that would come out ever since.
Coda: The 'villain' of Birth Of A Nation would primarily be based on Thaddeus Stevens, a man who was decades if not centuries ahead of his time. Fortunately, later films would get better actors and better lines to represent him.
This has nothing to do with comics; I just think it's a great speech.
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