Chapter 17 starts off with John learning how to handle weapons. This will not end well, I’m sure. Something tells me that Rummel has no knowledge of how to handle a weapon whatsoever. John narrates the whole scene like a dumbass who does not respect the damage these sorts of things can cause.
Joy evidently believes that one should never bring a knife to a fistfight, and also that shoes can be deadly weapons. Did she suddenly start channeling Random Task or something?
…They are so gonna get killed.
One day, Joy brings a Frickin’ Laser Beam to the dojo, (where the hell did they get lasers?!) and tells John to practice with it as though it were a real gun. John shoots her with it, and sure enough, even though she is completely unprotected, Joy dodges a laser and chops the gun out of John’s hand.1 This story has officially become more absurd than Austin Powers.
“I could also have killed you,” Joy said, “with a chop to the base of your nose, between your eyes, to drive the soft bone there into your brain; or to the switch in your neck that controls the blood through your carotid arteries to your brain. (page 153)
Yep, Joy is psycho, ladies and gentlemen. Squick, squick, squick.
John’s reaction to this news is to say that if he and Joy were ever on opposite sides, that he would indiscriminately fire hundreds of rounds at her with a machine gun. Perhaps that ought to tell him something. But alas, John is still enraptured by this crazy bitch.
And with more of Joy’s ego stoking, the chapter ends. Such needlessly short chapters. It’s as if Rummel can only write long chapters if they contain a Very Special Flashback Sequence.
Here is how Chapter 18 begins:
Assassinations, bribery, frame-ups, buy-offs, and lobbying. Such was the Society’s idea of how to create a peaceful universe. We all called it The Plan. I didn’t like the idea of assassination then. Now I hate the word, fervently. We should have been honest and called it what it is—murder. (page 154)
No, John is not actually developing a conscience. He doesn’t have any actual trouble killing people when the time comes for that. Merely having him say his distaste for the subject doesn’t change the fact that he does it without reservation. Show, don’t tell, Rummel. Now, I would not object to this so much if Rummel could acknowledge that his characters are Anti-Heroes—perhaps out of necessity, but still Anti-Heroes—but he is making the same mistake as Paolini did— portraying morally grey characters as pure heroes. Not to mention that even if John were competently written such as to have genuine intrapersonal conflict over his mission, it would not change the fact that Joy takes glee in what she does. Joy is supposed to be just as important and heroic as John, remember.
Oh, and apparently John has to train for sixteen hours a day, breaking only for meals. I had no idea his training sessions were for that long, since the readers only see Joy showing off, and John having sex with her. Shouldn’t they both be far too tired at the end of the day for that sort of thing?
After wasting all this time, Tor’s groupies finally come up with an actual plan for their two time travelers. I think it would have been better to have the whole plan set up before John is even recruited, so that one can plan for contingencies and the like, but then again, I’m not the author. I am unaware of the shrewdness of the Survivor’s Apostrophe-Does-Not-Go-There Benevolent Society. Because when one sets out to change the world, just wing it!
In any case, Gu drafts up a list of people whom John and Joy must kill. Apparently John doesn’t realize how inept of a story he is in, as he says that assassinations will not be necessary. I honestly don’t know how John’s character is supposed to be portrayed. Rummel tries to make him an average Joe in way over his head, but his suggestions always get shot down and he doesn’t practice what he preaches anyway. I still consider him a sexist jerk who thinks with entirely the wrong part of his anatomy. That’s how much of a trainwreck this novel is; the main character and Author Avatar is inconsistently portrayed from chapter to chapter.
Of course, Tor’s groupies shoot him down, and I just have to quote this part:
“No, John,” Laurent insisted, with Ludger nodding at his side. “You will have to assassinate these people. You cannot doubt their ability to achieve power and kill, as we’ve seen them do in this universe. Anyway,” he added dismissively, “they don’t deserve to live.” (Ibid.)
I’m sorry, I just have to laugh. That dialogue is so funny, though Rummel did not intend for it to be. And guess what, Laurent and Ludger still exist! They haven’t vanished into the ether. Of course, they still will not play any real role in this book. Why did Rummel give Tor so many groupies when only she and Gu actually run things?
Gu convinces John of the necessity of assassination by saying that, if Tor’s groupies are wrong and kill them anyway, nothing will be lost except the evil lives of the people they killed. Hm, where have I heard this sort of rhetoric before? Seriously, in that case, why not just kill every criminal who ever lived? I’m sure that if Rummel ever watched Death Note, he’d root for Light.2
I know that the people on their hit list are mostly dictators like Hitler and Stalin. In fact, I’m kind of ashamed to be arguing on behalf of their lives right now, but that’s just how bad of a writer Rummel is.
John strokes his own ego while saying that he is a match for Joy. He doesn’t seem to realize that this is not a good thing. That Death Note comparison I just made might be more pertinent than I thought.
We then learn precisely where in history our nominal heroes will be deposited. This is the sort of thing that should be revealed at the same point as the time travel plot, Rummel! Apparently, Tor’s groupies initially wanted to send people back to the distant past, maybe even into ancient times, but rejected that idea because the world would not be ready for enlightened ideas, so they settled on the early twentieth century, specifically, shortly after the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Well, if the destination is limited only by how enlightened society is, then why not go back to the start of the Enlightenment (in the eighteenth century) and try to improve things there? It wouldn’t be too bad a choice; historically, the only reason that reactionary politics (which led to both fascism and communism) gained so much appeal among the ruling class is because of the Reign of Terror. Before then, some of the absolute rulers of Europe were willing to gradually implement ideals of the Enlightenment. Prevent the Reign of Terror, and those rulers might not be terrified of what alleged liberals would do to them.3
However, I just have a feeling that the reason the characters insist on a later date is because the eighteenth century did not really have anyone of Hitler-level evil for them to kill.
If the eighteenth century is too far back (perhaps they don’t want to risk undoing the Industrial Revolution by accident or something) then 1906 is still a terrible choice for a destination year. That gives them only eight years to prevent the First World War. The problem with that is by that point, the situation had become so dire that war was inevitable between the European powers, and if they were lucky they would only forestall the war. Furthermore, many of the world’s modern dictatorships are countries that used to be part of Europe’s colonial empires. The best way to prevent the creation of the Third World would be to prevent the second wave of colonialism in the first place, and 1906 is too late for that. If I were the one picking the date, I’d probably choose some time in the 1860s or 1870s. That gives more than a decade to avert the Scramble for Africa and more than four decades to prevent a world war. Choosing 1906 is stupid in pretty much every way conceivable. Even then, I would not expect total success for the simple reason that not even a time traveler could prevent every tragedy of history. Even if John and Joy went back to 1865 instead of 1906, for example, I doubt they could have prevented the rise of Jim Crow laws in the American South, even if they were to prevent Lincoln’s assassination or something. Even the progressives of that era could be quite racist and so would not have cared much about the situation of black people provided that they were not enslaved. Of course, there were exceptions to this rule, but they were considered radicals by mainstream society, and also by Rummel, since most of the people with more modern views on race and gender were card-carrying socialists and even anarchists. Le gasp!
I hope you will excuse my long rant, but for a historian, Rummel really knows very little about the root causes of the democides he wants his characters to prevent.4 In fact, we are told that Tor’s groupies selected the year 1906 because their historical research suggested that as the optimal year. Their research must suck.
And this is not even taking the Butterfly Effect into account.
The novel has already mentioned that our alleged heroes will bring $38 billion with them to the past, so I will not mention how badly that will crash the economy. I have already said so.
The Plan (note the capital letters) is for John and Joy to be beamed to a burned-down San Francisco warehouse in November of 1906, which, it should be pointed out, is several months after they beam their gear over there. What would have happened if some random passer-by discovered all their futuristic technology? How would they even keep it hidden to begin with? This is all completely unnecessary, and would probably have been fixed if Rummel had so much as an editor.
We learn that the reason our so-called heroes will set up operations in San Francisco of all cities is because Joy is Asian. Sure, there were many East Asians living in San Francisco in 1906. However, they were despised by pretty much everybody in power. John actually points this out, but is rebuffed, so apparently this is Tor’s groupies’ error and not Rummel’s. It still comes off as a very cheap way to include conflict once the main characters arrive in the past, which has still not yet happened.
Tor’s groupies concoct a hasty alibi to explain Joy’s presence with John: evidently, she will pose as his translator and servant. Not only do I see a problem with even this being accepted in 1906 San Francisco, but there is no way that Joy will allow her ego to be defused even out of necessity. Since she’s a Sue she is going to act all high and mighty whether that is a good idea or not, and nobody, not even those from the past, will ever call her on it. My Sue-dometer still hasn’t been fixed, but this would probably break it again.
And with Joy complaining about women’s fashion of the early twentieth century, the chapter ends.
Footnotes
1 I might remind you all that laser beams travel at the speed of light. @#$%. The Sue now has genuine superpowers. It’s happening just as I feared it would.
2 That’s the second anime reference I’ve included so far. If you want me to stop that, just say so and I’ll stop.
3 Of course reactionary politics would still arise, that is pretty much inevitable, but it might be a more fringe idea than it was in real history.
4 Oh, and just a disclaimer, but all of the knowledge of history I have expressed comes from the Internet and half-garbled remembrances of high school history classes, basically, so some of my analysis will probably be very very wrong. Unlike Rummel though, I admit this straight up, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
swenson on 10 January 2013, 19:54 said:
:D I am so terribly excited to have a new chapter of this.
I was just about to comment on that, too! In this case, using light guns is a poor substitute for real bullets… but bullets fly fast enough that they might as well be at the speed of light, considering how slowly humans can react in comparison. So I guess it doesn’t really matter.
EXCEPT JOY CAN’T DO THAT STILL.
It is truly impressive when someone can make you do something like that, yeah. I think we should make an award for it. The Annual Made Someone Defend Something Awful Award or something.
I’m willing to bet another factor is that there are fewer guns in ye olden days. More importantly, fewer cool guns. And no motorcycles.
Do tell! But please tell me it isn’t something relating to corsets, or I will get out all my corset-related rants again.
On a side note, the only novel where they went back in time to change history that I genuinely liked was Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card, and that was because they thought things out, made detailed plans (and contingency plans), and even were willing to put aside their egos and “modern ideas” to exist in the culture of the day, to the point of counting on the inevitable racism and sexism to make their plan work. (as opposed to John and Joy being East Asian and Caucasian just because)
Pryotra on 10 January 2013, 20:09 said:
Universe? What is he going to bribe the aliens or or something. Also, how is this different than anything else that politics has done in the past. This is pretty standard judging by history. I fail to see anything shocking or original.
This. It’s actually pretty amateur mistake, judging by fanfic. The fact that this is an older college professor who is more educated than I am does make me worry though.
Hitler said something similar when discussing the ‘Jewish Problem’.
Let’s just be glad he’s never found a Death Note. Light would probably seem positively sane next to him. Another thing about that show, it portrayed morally gray characters as morally gray, but still recognizably good. Not heroes.
Bismark would have been too smart for them. (He might not be Hilter level, but Rummel probably wouldn’t have liked him.)
Congratulations, you’ve just put ten times more thought into this than the author. The man doesn’t seem to realize that people in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century didn’t have the same views as we do now. I’m not even a full historian, I just research things so that if I ever write a book set in the past I’ll be able to show the right mindset, and I know this.
Er…Rummel…she’s a woman. She’s a woman from a race that was positively despised during that time period as the Yellow Plague that was take all the work away from the Good Hardworking Whites. Also, I’m not sure if the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned every Chinese man and woman from being hired by anyone had been repealed. And, back to the point. She’s a woman. Women didn’t do this kind of work.
Everyone really would think that they were anarchists or spies for the Chinese government or something.
Pryotra on 10 January 2013, 20:10 said:
Actually, I thought your corset rant was really, really interesting.
Fireshark on 10 January 2013, 20:29 said:
Welllll,
Epke on 10 January 2013, 20:30 said:
You’re popping these out like crazy, Brendan :D
Xena already did that, Rummel. Keep with the times.
… So they’re judge, jury and executioner now? Survivors Benevolent Society, my ass.
Of course not: Joy is a total psycho and if John was half-decently written, he’d express concerns NOW (or a chapter ago) about sending someone with access to deadly skills, weaponry and mental instability back in time with a hit list. Except he’s not, so we get to follow to murderers who aren’t even remotely as clever as Light or L. Bonus for the Death Note references, by the way.
Trivia: fashion in the 20s were coming down from the brief Edwardian era (which stretched to…. 09-10 maybe) and featured ankle and calf-length skirts (knee-length for special occasions), short to sleeveless and loose clothing. The ideal shape was long and straight, without an imperial waist in sight, and high collars. It’s not an unflattering look, if you can pull it off.
Epke on 10 January 2013, 20:31 said:
Double-posting: I do not know why I started writing about the 1920s as opposed to 1906. Sorry for that, my mind must’ve really wandered.
Finn on 10 January 2013, 20:58 said:
Right when Swenson said that, I knew it would inevitably be about corsets. And I was right. I mean, what else would it be about? It’s the pet fashion for people to complain about. I think I vaguely remember hearing a corset rant somewhere on impish. Would you mind linking us to it, swenson?
On a side note, some of those victorian fashions were quite beautiful. Why does everyone have to complain about them all the time?
Spanman on 10 January 2013, 21:22 said:
The fashion of that era was Edwardian, rather than Victorian, and as I recall featured a lot of sweeping skirts and wasp waists and giant floppy hairstyles – one of my least favorite eras of fashion, to be honest (save the ’90s, but we never speak of them). But Joy’s refusal to wear a corset is ignorant, silly, and could be dangerous to her safety. Even if she tries to portray herself as lower class, being a servant to a rich white man would probably require women, regardless of race, to dress respectably to reflect well on their master.
Besides, corsets are just a more metal version of bras – uncomfortable at first, but perfectly bearable if worn correctly and you get used to them within the first hour. Of course, Joy probably objects to the rampant sexism behind the concept of corsets, but if she’s going back to a time where you could be detained on the street for dressing below par, she ought to suck it up for the sake of their mission.
TakuGifian on 10 January 2013, 22:17 said:
I mean, who throws a shoe? Honestly.
Also, ‘never bring a knife to a fist fight’ is a very modern principle, founded solely and only on the legal definition of self-defence as ‘reasonable force’, usually translated to ‘equal or lesser force’. If you are genuinely fighting to your life, you can use anything at your disposal.
…
I don’t even want to start. Human Anatomy 10.
John should be dead after a week of that. 16-hour daily training sessions in high-end cardio, martial arts, and weapons use would mentally and physically destroy your average sedentary college professor. Does it say anywhere in the narrative that John has a history of long-term, high-end athletic training? 16 hour days is more than the majority of elite Olympic and Iron Man athletes do.
No. No he is not. No matter how good your teacher, 16 hours a day for a week or two does not and will never be equivalent to 20-something years of study and training.
LoneWolf on 10 January 2013, 23:33 said:
Before then, some of the absolute rulers of Europe were willing to gradually implement ideals of the Enlightenment. Prevent the Reign of Terror, and those rulers might not be terrified of what alleged liberals would do to them.
Eh, the Enlightened Despots were quite contradictory characters themselves. They were no fans of radical liberals.
The formation of Communist ideas has to do more with the growth of industrial society and labour exploitation combined with bad living conditions of industrial workers – something that Enlightenment ideas in themselves hardly would prevent.
The Russian November Revolution of 1917 overthrew not a reactionary monarchy, but a weak and pressed-from-all-sides liberal republic.
swenson on 11 January 2013, 00:44 said:
On the topic of corsets: I and I think was it Willow? talked about it in the comments a previous time. To sum up: when not laced too tightly and fitted properly, a corset is typically no less comfortable than modern undergarments. In fact, some women (typically those with larger chests) find them more comfortable, because they provide support from below, as opposed to from above as in a modern bra. The real issue with corsets is if somebody laces it too tightly, which can restrict breathing and movement. This has occasionally been popular, but mostly everyone has realized pretty quickly that it’s not good for you. Doctors in the late 1800s were worried it would cause all kinds of health problems, for example (even though we’ve later realized that no, it actually isn’t all that bad even if you do tightlace!).
However, I’m actually not quite as annoyed at this rant as usual, because I think if he had to pick a time period of more uncomfortable corsets, the early 1900s isn’t a bad one to pick. There were a few strange styles in at the time. The straightline corset, for example, did some rather unnatural things to your back (although it was better for your stomach), while some later corsets (1910s, maybe?) started to get longer and narrower, restricting movement. Neither style was popular for long, though, specifically because they weren’t as comfortable. And no matter what, you do have to admit that a corset’s not exactly conducive to butt-kicking. If only that were Joy’s reasoning.
In general, though, by 1906, alternatives to corsets would already have been around. Girdles started taking off a couple of years later, and World War I was pretty much the official end of corsets, as the metal was needed for war efforts. And I’m not even sure if an Asian would be expected to adhere to white American fashion anyway.
Although I guess I’m ignoring the real problem, which is YET AGAIN an author using corsets as shorthand for sexism against women, a completely bizarre concept. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book where a woman actually didn’t mind wearing a corset. If they’re mentioned at all, it’s always in the context of how awful they supposedly are (usually by a male author, but unfortunately also from female ones as well), and usually the wrong time period anyway. The point is that including this is lazy writing that clearly had no research put into it.
Brendan Rizzo on 11 January 2013, 11:29 said:
Wow, I didn’t expect to get this much feedback this quickly. Thanks.
I have to agree. I’ve only read a little bit of Pastwatch, and I liked it. It was far better written, for starters. Another interesting thing is that Card seems to have similar political views to Rummel, yet he was capable of writing something that isn’t an Author Tract. This also shows that I have no problem with writers with different political views to my own; Rummel is just incompetent.
Actually, Bismarck was in the nineteenth, not the eighteenth, century. It’s an easy mistake to make though.
It’s a bit of a shame that Bismarck is too early for this novel, though, because he would have been an interesting antagonist for our so-called heroes. That said, I am not too familiar with Edwardian-era European history, so I don’t know if there were any Bismarckesque Magnificent Bastards in that time period whom Rummel ignored or derailed. I hope there weren’t, just for my Sue-dometer’s sake.
But… he didn’t put any thought into this at all. Ten times zero is still zero… O______O
(Don’t take that too seriously, by the way.)
I don’t know about that. I’ve released new parts to this spork about once a week or so? Maybe a little more frequently? I mean, this novel is about average length, and I don’t want to spend a year on this spork.
Which is odd, because when I write fictional stories of my own, I wind up procrastinating for weeks or months at a time. ;)
I know that, and am no fan of them myself, but the real reactionaries didn’t really show up till after the French Revolution.
Once John and Joy arrive in the past, anyone want to take bets on how soon they will do something that would get them in deep trouble? I’ll stay out of it because I’ve read this before.
Fireshark on 11 January 2013, 12:54 said:
In the recent fight between Piers Morgan and Alex Jones, the latter mentioned Rummel’s work, as well as the term “democide.” Has anyone else heard IRL references to the guy? I’m trying to figure out if he’s actually influential, and the Internet isn’t really helping.
swenson on 11 January 2013, 13:00 said:
I haven’t, but then, I’m not a history major and I don’t pay as much attention to recent history, anyway. I know the whole Democratic Peace Theory is a relatively well-known thing (even if most people discard it), though. Wasn’t Rummel a big figure in studying/promoting it? Back when it was popular, I mean. He obviously likes it now.
Every time I see this one come up, I read the latest installment immediately. It’s just such a weird, stupid book!
Brendan Rizzo on 11 January 2013, 14:13 said:
I’m flattered.
Fair on 11 January 2013, 15:56 said:
Yeah, about Alex Jones…
He’s bugnutty batshit crazy.
Fireshark on 11 January 2013, 16:10 said:
Oh yeah, without a doubt.
Asahel on 11 January 2013, 16:19 said:
I’d say they’ll almost immediately do something that should get them in trouble if they were in the real world instead of their author’s book. How long until they do something that actually does get them in deep trouble, though? …Hmmm. Three chapters?
Pryotra on 11 January 2013, 17:07 said:
One?
Taku on 11 January 2013, 18:46 said:
No, there’s going to be at least one or two chapters of inaccurate flashbacks about the events leading to the war, and at least one chapter of the actual time travel itself, I think. I somehow doubt Rummel would pass up the opportunity for John and Joy to be trapped in a small room together, unable to leave for the next few hours.
Mingnon on 12 January 2013, 02:32 said:
And then more nookie time ensues!No, no! Don’t fall to that level! BAD Mingnon! BAD!
Also, I would guess around three pages after the idiots are sent back in time.