Hallo! I’m back. I’m sorry it’s been so long. I was really hoping to do one sporking per month, but it didn’t quite shake out that way. I apologize.
Also I turn 30 in like a week and let me tell you THAT is a weird feeling.
Now normally I do a quirky opening and then look at the first line of the chapter and complain, but I don’t know this chapter doesn’t have a very cringe-worthy first sentence. It’s a bit of dialogue in which Coyote asks how Atticus knew that Mary would be around. When Atticus replies that he had faith, Coyote questions him, as after all, Atticus isn’t Christian, and our “hero” responds that he had a friend pray for him.
“Well then, why didn’ she just pray for Jesus to come down and smite the demon or somethin’? We coulda slept in.”
That’s… actually a really good question. Instead of asking that a saint bless their stuff, why not just have Jesus or a saint show up and start blasting the demon? Wouldn’t that work just as well? The answer Atticus gives us is this:
“‘Cause Jesus don’ like to come down very much. People keep thinkin’ of him bein’ nailed to a cross or wearin’ a crown of thorns, or else he’s got huge bloody holes in his hands an’ feet, an’ that’s just gotta be damn uncomfortable. Plus they think he was a white guy with straight brown hair, but he was dark-skinned.
Did Not Do Homework: 10
[rubs forehead] I don’t… okay, let’s break this down.
ONE: I can’t imagine that most modern Christians, Catholics or otherwise, when you ask them to picture Jesus necessarily think of him as crucified. If you ask people to imagine Jesus showing up today, they would generally think of him as appearing as a normal man, albeit more compassionate than ordinary men tend to appear. I suppose a traditionalist Catholic might picture him crucified, or with the Five Wounds, as we have a lot of that imagery in our churches. But the Leprechaun isn’t like that–she goes to Mass inebriated, after all. And when asked to describe Mary, she specifically depicts her in modern, not-overtly-religious dress. If Atticus asked her to describe Jesus I imagine she’d do the same.
If this was something like the American Gods television series, in which different denominations and nationalities all have different incarnations of Jesus walking around, and the Catholic Jesus is this way, then yeah. Maybe this would work. Given that we’ve already been told that every incarnation of Thor exists, this would provide an easy out for Hearne. But he doesn’t.
So basically, a character asks why they don’t use what seems to be a perfect solution to their problem, and Hearne handwaves it away with something that doesn’t really make sense. Chances are he just didn’t feel like writing Jesus into this story, though I’m told that Jesus does appear in later books in the series.
TWO: …why is the complaint about white Jesus here? I mean, I do get it, but basically no Christian ever (outside of very select groups) is going to be surprised if you told them Jesus wasn’t a white man. People around the world tend to view Jesus as their own nationality. And I’m not going to pretend that there isn’t a lot of European colonialism BS rolled into this being the dominant image of Jesus, but Christians who aren’t in a Eurocentric culture tend to imagine him as looking like themselves.
Like, lookey here:
Chinese Jesus:
Haitian Jesus:
Nigerian Jesus:
Here’s a priest/artist who made images of Christ depicted as American indigenous.
The little jab about “everyone pictures Jesus as white” doesn’t seem like an authentic thing from a Druid who’d been alive for thousands of years traveling the world. It reads more like a modern guy was reading a grumpy post on the Internet somewhere, assumed it was advanced knowledge, and decided to mention it in his book.
Atticus compares manifesting as crucified and white as Coyote manifesting as a sandpainting, and Coyote admits that did that once and it was disorienting.
My body was so stretched out I completely lost track o’ where my ass was.”
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 7
…I will admit though, I did find this follow exchange kind of amusing:
“So how many fallen angels you killed afore this, Mr. Druid?”
“This’ll be my first, I reckon.”
“Shee-it.” Coyote shook his head with a rueful grin. “We’re gonna die.”
If it weren’t for the stupid accent being seared into my brain I’d say this was a little bit funny. Atticus takes this line seriously and asks Coyote if he actually plans to survive this fight, because if this is meant to be a suicide mission, he’s out. Coyote reassures him that he’s only pointing out that fallen angels are tough customers and this one won’t go down easily.
They arrive at the school and camouflage themselves (but NOT turn themselves completely invisible). There’s some good prose of them snooping around that I’m skipping because it’s fine, before they see the fallen angel on a rooftop, munching on what’s left of some kid. Which should be played with some horror, but the text is more like, “Yeah, that’s gross, I guess.” I won’t take off points or anything because we could chalk this up to Atticus being desensitized to this kind of thing after being alive eons, and he does refer to him as “poor kid”, and Coyote points out that they really can’t do anything for the person.
There’s also this bit of dialogue which isn’t bad:
“I’ll put my first arrow through his head; you go for the heart,” I whispered back. “Then just keep shootin’ until he fuckin’ dies.”
“Wow, you learn all that strategy from the U.S. Army men?”
Unfortunately, this is immediately ruined with this following bit of stupid dialogue.
I grunted in amusement. “No, I learned it from Attila the Hun, who lived an’ died without ever knowin’ you were here.”
What? Why does it matter that Attila the Hun didn’t know about North America? Who cares?
So the two make their move, splitting up in different positions, and Atticus touches the ground somewhere so he can draw upon the Earth’s power. He counts down with Coyote, and they both shoot at the same time. Atticus’s arrow hits the demon’s eye, and Coyote’s hits him in the chest. Being a massively powerful supernatural creature, Basasael is hurt, but not killed, and he pulls out the arrows and roars at them. It also turns out that Basasael can see straight through Atticus’s magic camouflage.
“How many arrows we gotta use to kill this thing?” Coyote yelled.
“All Mary said was we’d have to pierce it more’n once.”
“Yeah? Well maybe you shoulda pinned her down to a specific number there afore we left, dumass!”
If I liked these characters, and didn’t hate the accent, then I would like a lot of the dialogue in this chapter? I am happy to see someone calling Atticus an idiot often though.
They shoot him again, and it knocks aside one arrow and takes another in the gut before leaping up and diving at Atticus.
The eternal whine of self-pity–why me?—flashed through my brain
I don’t have much to add other than Atticus sux and it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that he’s got an “eternal whine of self-pity” in his head.
After loosing another shot, which misses, he draws his sword and another arrow and hides behind a steel post on the roof, thinking that the demon will have to go one way or another to get around the post. Not so! The demon’s strong enough to rip it out of his path without much effort. It breathes some hellfire at him, and he dodges and the heat of it doesn’t hurt him because screw you, he has a magic amulet that fixes everything.
Also he yells this:
“Hey!” I shouted…“You’re the bastard who made a deal with Aenghus Og! You’re the one who’s been behind it all!”
…what?
How is he behind it all? What is he behind? Is he supposed to be behind Aenghus Og’s evil plan in the last book? That doesn’t make sense because Aenghus was after Atticus long before he started making deals with Hell. This guy isn’t behind anything at all, as far as I can tell. He’s just some mook on the loose.
The school office doors open as someone comes out to investigate, and Basasael sees that it’s a distraction for Atticus and tries to stab him with his claws. Atticus tries to dodge, but the claws graze him. Atticus gets him back though by stabbing the demon’s hand with one of the blessed arrows.
The person that came out of the office is a school administrator, and she is very confused because she can see the damage and hear the growling demon, but she can’t see the demon, because she can’t see through cloaking magic like Atticus can. Atticus yells at her to get back inside while preparing to continue fighting.
It’s at this point that Hearne Atticus thinks, “Wait a minute, isn’t Coyote also supposed to be in this scene?” And he realizes it’s entirely possible that Coyote ditched him and left him to die. Which would serve him right, but then we wouldn’t have a book series. Also, he’s immune to death. Atticus wonders if the Morrigan’s death immunity would still work if a fallen angel ate him, and also if angels poop (because if he was eaten would the Morrigan resurrect him from the poop?) or even have buttholes.
And then Coyote proves he hasn’t ditched Atticus by hitting Basasael in the butthole.
No really.
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 8
When an understandably upset Basasael chases him, Coyote turns into, well, a coyote and runs to keep the fallen angel distracted. Atticus uses this as a chance–despite being magically cloaked–to grab the school administrator that wandered out there and demand that she put the school on lockdown (explaining that American schools tend to have emergency procedures) because someone’s already been killed (the kid the angel was munching on earlier). The school administrator is very confused and wonders who has been killed.
“Take attendance and you’ll find out. It’s what you’re best at, because the gods know it’s not teaching them English. Damn kids don’t know the difference between an adjective and an adverb!”
This is a really random and stupid thing to yell? And Atticus does admit that it’s dumb, but in the worst way possible.
Stress was making me take my frustrations out on this poor frumpy lady who probably never got laid.
For both of those, giving it a:
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 9
I get that Hearne was a high school English teacher, so he cares about these things1, but there’s no reason for Atticus to do so? Yeah, the American education system has a lot of problems, sure, but out of everything to randomly complain about under stress, this is by far one of the strangest to pick out for someone who isn’t an English teacher. Heck, if you were an English teacher, I’d think issues about how to compose an essay, how to understand themes, the difference between subject and predicate would all be more pressing?
And of course, because Hearne Atticus is a perv, he runs on the assumption that a woman who is understandably confused and terrified about her workplace being attacked by a monster she can’t see and being addressed by a douchebag she also can’t see, it’s because she needs to get laid.
She asks why she can’t see Atticus, who just yells at her, and slams the doors. He runs back to where Coyote is dodging fireballs and picks up his bow, healing himself as well. He has two arrows left, and he shoots one of them through Basasael’s wing. This causes him to collapse to the ground. Really? One arrow in the wing is all it takes? Well whatevs.
Because Basasael’s on the ground, Atticus can now use the Cold Fire spell, which is SUPER EFFECTIVE
Wait, hang on: okay I didn’t put this in the sporking, but it’s established earlier in Chapter 4 that Cold Fire, the anti-demon spell Atticus learned in the last book, wouldn’t work because it requires the enemy to be in touch with the ground, and this demon flies. With that in mind, you would think that taking out the demon’s wings would be Priority Number One. Especially since Mary told them that it would take multiple arrows to kill this thing. After the shot to the head didn’t work, they should have worked on grounding Basasael as soon as they could, and THEN Atticus could whammy him. In a bit we see it’s unclear how effective the spell is on the fallen angel, but this is never brought up before and it’s clear that Atticus thought it would work, so why not try it as soon as possible? It’s not really discussed.
Basasael is in pain but not down yet, the school announces lockdown over the intercom system, Atticus makes a joke about how badly high schools teach English, and Atticus is tired because casting Cold Fire takes a lot out of him. Atticus tells Coyote to shoot him again while the fallen angel’s down, because he doesn’t know how well his spell hit. So while Basasael is pulling arrows out of himself, Coyote shoots him in the throat.
I was thinking, It’s too bad we’ll never get a chance to talk over a cup of tea. Besides the Morrigan, I rarely had conversations with beings older than I was, and I treasured them whenever they happened along.
“I mean, he’s a demon from Hell that eats children, but it’s kind of a bummer we didn’t have a chance to talk.” What the fudge!
Also, we established in the opening chapter of this book that all the gods know where you live. Plenty of them are ages older than you are. So you should have had plenty of opportunities to talk to beings older than yourself. Come on Hearne. We’re not even halfway through the book, and you’re not keeping the continuity from the first chapter straight.
Basasael explodes into goo, leaving slime and remains of his last meal everywhere. It’s raining now, which apparently is enough to wash away the spiritual taint the demon leaves behind, so Atticus doesn’t have to do his job as a Druid and cleanse the Earth here, I guess?
Make It Easy!: 7
But it does leave a physical mess, and Atticus wonders how to clean it up. Atticus points out that they can’t call a bunch of ghouls to eat it, and decides the mortals will have to figure out a way to rationalize this on their own. And he makes Ghostbusters and X-Files references because pop culture references, that’s what cool people do, I guess? Coyote doesn’t get it, and so Atticus moves on and decides that they’ll assume it was aliens, and that he and Coyote should pick up arrows.
Once they collect all their blessed arrows, and Atticus removes any of his blood stains, they evade the arriving police cars and head back to their car, which is also surrounded by cops, so they walk home. Coyote suggests they go to another high school not too far off and steal another car, whereas Atticus plans to just call a taxi at the nearby convenience store.
Atticus then interrogates Coyote about how this whole thing shook out. Coyote pulled him into this mess because he claimed Basasael ate a girl from his tribe. Atticus asks if that was true at all, and Coyote admits it’s only been snacking on white people and that he lied to Atticus. He only approached this the way that he did because he knew if this demon kept running around, it was only a matter of time before he started eating Navajo students at the school.
For whatever reason, Atticus treats this as being played, I guess? He feels he was put at “tremendous risk” and that he would have rather confronted Basasael on his own terms. Coyote points out that he should be glad that he helped Atticus at all, and he might not have survived if he hadn’t. And also, I don’t think Coyote knows this, but Atticus is basically IMMUNE TO DEATH. This shouldn’t be that scary of a risk for him!
“Yeah, what about that? You took your sweet time getting ‘round to helpin’ when he came after me”
“Well, y’know, I just couldn’t resist doin’ it the way I did it. You know how people are always threatenin’ to shove this or that up someone’s ass, but they never really do it? Well, no there’s a new story gonna be told ‘round the fire: ‘How Coyote Shoved an Arrow Up a Fallen Angel’s Ass.’ Can’t wait to hear myself tell it! An’ don’t you worry, Mr. Druid, I’ll make sure to include how I got the best o’ you!”
I don’t get it.
I really don’t get this at all.
See, we’re supposed to be seeing this as, “Coyote managed to trick Atticus into risking his life to do something for him.” But here’s the thing: as is pointed out by Coyote when he first appears, this is Atticus’s problem. Basasael is here because of Atticus. Essentially, Coyote shows up and forces Atticus to clean up his own mess, and (quite justifiably) threatens him when tries to back out of it. That he lied about who was getting victimized by the demon is almost irrelevant? Fact is Basasael was still munching on high school kids. And Atticus was doing nothing about it.
I repeat: our “hero” has to be strong-armed into stopping a monster from eating the local children. I know that they’re high schoolers, and I get it, teenagers scare the living s*** out of me, but it’s still kids being eaten and Atticus doesn’t care. At all.
So Coyote ‘got the best of Atticus’? I mean, not really? This isn’t manipulation, really. It’s getting Atticus to do his job. This isn’t particularly clever, it’s not particularly underhanded, and it’s not even as good of a story that Coyote makes it out to be.
It reminds me of the end of the last book, in which it’s revealed that Brighid “manipulated” Atticus into fighting Aenghus Og. Except those manipulations amounted to… first telling him to do it, and then when he ignored that and went about his day like a normal person, she arranged for his dog and lawyer to get kidnapped by the villains so he would feel compelled to do something about it. Once again, Atticus is pushed into something he should be doing anyway by basic, straightforward actions, and he acts like he’s been subtly played by a twelfth-level intellect. I imagine if an elementary school teacher told Atticus, “You have to do your homework, or you’ll fail and I’ll put you in detention” as a cunning and insidious ploy.
The chapter ends with Coyote turning into animal form and running off, laughing at Atticus.
And so that was it! A random side quest boss battle with a fallen angel that has nothing to do with the Plot of the book! Hooray? Join us next time as we read the thrilling next chapter, in which [checks notes] Atticus talks to people!
Better Than You: 3
Did Not Do Homework: 10
The Kids These Days: 5
You Keep Using That Word: 7
Make It Easy!: 7
LAUGH, DAMNIT!: 9
1 About adjectives/adverbs. Not whether the administrator’s getting laid.
The Smith of Lies on 31 January 2022, 09:35 said:
Not only that, it would fit perfectly with Atticus’s character and work ethic to try and get someone else to do the job for him. I am surprised he did not try that only to get shot down. I guess it’d take a more self-conscious author to do that. But then again the character would not be Atticus if he was written by a self-conscious author… And I think I will stop this train of logic before ensuing paradox consumes us all.
There is a lot of post-resurrection imagery of Christ, including the most iconic one, with the light beams spreading from his heart. Most of it does include the stigmata, but also most of it seems to work on assumption that they don’t bother Jesus too much. Even in the Bible in his appearances after the resurrection he treats them as a matter of course, inxluding inviting Thomas to put a finger into his wounds.
So I do not think there’s much reason beyond “cause Hearne said so” for that assumption, at least not within the framework of book’s cosmology as shown so far.
You mention the idea of multiple Jesuses later, but this was my main thought since the start of the spork. Why are there multiple Thors, including Marvel one, and multiple Coyotes as per different native cultures that include him in their beliefs, but a single Jesus? There should be more Jesuses than Elvis impersonators in Vegas. With so many different denominations and independent Churches as the US has, there would be whole spectrum of them, from hippie Jesus to “What do you think Jesus favourite gun would be” Jesus and anything in between (including my old favourite, Supply Side Jesus).
I have no idea why Hearne just assumes there is a single Jesus, given the way he set up his universe.
Honestly, most of the quotes you posted this time around are indeed pretty palatable.
Juracan on 2 February 2022, 07:47 said:
I think it’s possible that he only thought of the idea (or it was pointed out by an editor or something) after writing the last chapter, and so he had to hastily come up with an explanation afterward and insert into the text.
Again, I’m reminded of this.
That, and I think the reason Hearne said so is because he doesn’t particularly want to bring Jesus into too much of the story’s events. Regardless of authors’ religiousness, there tends to be a general blanket rule about featuring Jesus in fiction that leans towards avoiding it (unless it’s a work that’s deliberately trying to offend the religious, which you see sometimes). Like I said, I think Jesus appears in a later book in the series, but my understanding is that he doesn’t have a major role on the Plot.
I am especially fond of this sentence.
Yeah, I’m trying to figure out what’s going on here that made the writing better? It’s not because Hearne writes fight scenes better or something like that—the end of the last book proved that. Maybe because it’s a side plot NOT meant to show how clever Atticus is? That he’s writing a character we’re supposed to think is smarter than our protagonist (Coyote)? I don’t know. It’s weird.
Now if only the stupid accent wasn’t there…
The Smith of Lies on 2 February 2022, 12:19 said:
I have mulled it over a little and the whole bit with Coyote tricking Atticus into fighting the demon makes even less sense than you pointed out.
Consider the premise – the demon is eating children. This does not in any way shape or form interest Atticus, he feels no compulsion to do anything about it. Consider the modified premise – the demon is eating Navajo children in specific. It does not change anything for Atticus, he is an equal opportunity bastard and he cares not at all if the children that demon eats are white, black, native or British. He will allow all of them to be eaten.
What would change would be the reason for Coyote to be interested. And Coyote’s motivation is irrelevant to Atticus – he came and intimidated the lazy git by threat of fighting him, in multiple incarnations if necessary. If Coyote said he wants demon gone because he got struck by a passing fancy to be rid of it, that would not change Atticus’s motivation in the slightest.
Like you pointed out it is not some cunning ploy or clever lie. It is an irrelevant bit of background motivation. I’d say the whole thing makes Coyote look better actually – he went out of his way to lean on Atticus and fight the demon despite his people not being victimized. Coyote is better supernatural protector of the general population than Atticus is. And for some convoluted reason that makes difference only through Hearne’s lenses the fact that he decided to help despite Navajo children not being eaten is considered trickery.
Juracan on 4 February 2022, 21:40 said:
Maybe Hearne just has a thing about adding irrelevant motivations to characters? Remember how in Hounded that there was a subplot in which Aenghus Og had one of the witches pay Atticus to make a potion to make himself (Aenghus) impotent, and this was treated as a ploy so that Aenghus was humiliated and had public motivation/an excuse to kill Atticus? And as we discussed, it was completely pointless, because he was already going to do that.
This is similar to that, I think. Hearne is deciding to make irrelevant motivation for a character and act like it’s a big deal when it’s actually pointless.