…In which John gets even more contemptible. This is how the chapter begins:
Not until the summer of 1908 would the time be ripe for our first intervention and, if Joy had her way, murders. She had a nicer term for that— just executions. As I’ve said before, I never really accepted it. Murder is murder, whatever whipped cream topping is put on it. (page 181)
Well John, you said it, not me. You and Joy intend to become murderers. By this point I do not expect you to practice what you ostensibly preach.
Also, why would anybody want to put whipped topping on an abstract concept like murder? The metaphors in this novel make less sense by the page.
And yes, John and Joy essentially waste more than a year and a half of time. Do they really think they can prevent a world war with only six years advance notice? We never do see them arrive at the last chapter’s destination. For all we know, they drove off a cliff. Of course, if they had, the book would be over and I would be through with this torture.1
John relates to us, after the fact, that he and his friend-with-benefits falsified documents which state that the “Tor Import & Export Company” — yes, I know it’s a stupid name — was incorporated in New York, presumably so as to give themselves more street cred. Now, I know2 that there was no Internet in 1906 and so a person couldn’t just Google it, but wouldn’t some prospective investor one day do the research and find out that there is no New York branch of their company? Wouldn’t they then suspect fraud? Wouldn’t they then find out that John Banks and Joy Phim have no past and just appeared ex nihilo? Rummel really didn’t think this through, did he?
Of course, since our protagonists invest with a brokerage firm called Leman Brothers perhaps the investors aren’t as good as John thinks they are.3 Even though they’re already stinking rich from counterfeiting, John uses the knowledge he has from the future to make even more money. Add insider trading to their list of crimes. It’s illegal for a reason. Yes, Rummel does mention that eventually the butterfly effect changes what certain stocks are worth, but by then his characters are sitting pretty, completely unaffected by any economic downturns despite their rampant investing. The sound you hear is my Sue-dometer going off, again.
John and Joy then start training Dolphy, Hands and Sal to be traders. Even though our protagonists hire 430 employees in their first two years, the three young adults with absolutely no business experience get to be managers, just because they were hired first. While I suppose that makes up for trying to kill them, it also makes my Sue-dometer react.4 Did none of their 430 other workers have any business acumen? I’m surprised they didn’t go under.
Oh, and if you’re wondering how their new managers feel about being poisoned, here is what John says about it:
Oh yes, about the poison pills we were supposedly giving our first three employees. After a year with us, they had become prosperous in their own right. We had grown to trust them. When we gave them their final antidote, we told them that it was the last one they needed. (pages 181-182)
Yep. That just ends anticlimatically in two pages, and there are no hard feelings about it. I’m beginning to think that Rummel is not actually writing about human beings. No character has exhibited any normal thought process.
John then gives an Infodump about how long-distance communication was almost nonexistent in the past, so he and Joy spend most of their time traveling to meet clients who are far away. Interestingly, even though they buy a car, John and Joy don’t actually drive it outside San Francisco. Seems like a waste of money, then. Joy likes to run horse-drawn carriages off the road. ‘Cause she’s a woman, and Asian, rite? Aren’t stereotypes so fun?
Apparently, Joy accompanies John on all his business trips. He mentions that he knew her for all of two months before they had to travel to the past, so by all rights the two of them should still be in the “high school romance” stage. Of course, the sudden time skip conveniently lets Rummel not have to depict how their relationship grows to be more than that. Not that they act any appreciably different years later, or anything.
Interestingly, John admits that Joy is unable to handle minor irritations. Of course, this is mentioned only to be brushed aside as John is too enamored with her to care that she is certifiable. Always one to sexualize Joy, he relates an anecdote of the time that she berated him for leaving the toilet seat up. Is this scene really necessary?
Rummel, through John, tries to tell the readers that Joy isn’t a Sue with the following paragraph:
I hasten to add that I’m not trying to run Joy down. With all her skills and beauty, these very faults were what made her human and a woman I could partner and live with. Who can live with a person who is a constant reminder of how imperfect one is? In part I think I loved her because this human side balanced her heart-stopping beauty and superb warrior skills. (page 184)
What human side? She hasn’t shown human emotion at any point in this story! The very fact that Rummel felt he had to tell us that Joy isn’t a Sue is the greatest piece of evidence that she is one. Oh Sue-dometer, I hope they haven’t hurt you too bad…
After a line break, we start reading about John and Joy actually doing something. Well, no we don’t; it’s just John relating the rumors about him and Joy that people have spread. Apparently, the fact that John is unmarried and Joy is his assistant makes the people of the past believe that they’re going at it. While true, I must wonder about their rationale. Does Rummel think that everyone in the early 20th century thought that a boss was necessarily sleeping with his secretary? Why are the readers even hearing about this? In what way does this contribute to the plot? I want Rummel to comment here himself and explain to me the importance of this and the previous scene.
We also learn that a “pretty, curly-headed blonde secretary”5 has the hots for John. She pretty much dresses as provocatively as a woman could before the Sexual Revolution, in a futile attempt to get her boss to notice her. We will never see this character again. She doesn’t even have a name. She is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Isn’t their plan to prevent dictators from coming to power? So why are they talking about this?
In Rummel’s defense, at least he didn’t write a loathsome love triangle. If he had, I don’t know if I could have continued the spork. Even so, it would have been better just not to include that character whatsoever, since she only appears for a single paragraph. I am not exaggerating.
Joy also gets in on the fun, loudly rejecting a male employee foolish enough to ask her out, in front of a dozen potential clients. Sure, that doesn’t drive them all away. I am truly sorry for this, Sue-dometer. Has Rummel forgotten that the characters are in 1906? Social mores were different back then. That sort of thing would not have flown, especially from someone who wasn’t white.
When John calls her out on this, Joy says “Screw you.” Should that register on the Sue-dometer? It’s completely in-character for her.
After several more pointless scenes, in which we learn that Joy is shallow enough to buy hundreds of dollars worth of jewelry that she never wears, we arrive at our ostensible heroes’ training session. I wonder how John managed to conceal all of the modern weapons that he and Joy were shooting with? We don’t actually get to see them practice, which is probably a good thing because otherwise I’d be complaining about Rummel knowing nothing about the proper use of weapons.
With some cryptic foreshadowing, the chapter ends.
Footnotes
1 Now, I don’t want you to come away thinking that I hate this. The whole reason I joined this group is because I enjoy sporking bad fiction.
2 Though Rummel evidently does not, cf. the laptops his supposed heroes use.
3 Yes, I know this was written before the banking crisis. It’s still hilarious. Rummel probably thought he was being clever by referencing a large corporation.
4 Seriously, this isn’t Medaka Box, which I think is the only series which can get away with such extreme Sue-ness.
5 page 185
Mingnon on 28 January 2013, 19:44 said:
Let me guess, did John and Joy inject all their employees with that poison as well?
And that comment about Medaka Box has made me think of something; this could very well be one of those anime shows about an ordinary guy who gets involved with an extremely talented girl, even though you could simply take the guy out of the formula. But oh noes! Who else would take over as the main fighter if something cough*thegirlgetsdepowered*cough goes wrong!?
…Sorry, needed to vent. Also, I need to vent about something actually ON the rails…
Rummel, if you have to constantly portray women as shallow and only interested in shallow women things, you need a clue-by-four to the noggin. BADLY.
Asahel on 28 January 2013, 19:53 said:
Well, in their defense, it wasn’t illegal until 1934. Hey, there’s a thought for time travelers: Should you consider yourself bound by the laws of when you came from, when you are, or both?
Taku on 28 January 2013, 20:37 said:
If your Suedometer is still working after all of this, I’m beginning to suspect that it may only be an imitation sue-dometer. A pseudo-sue-dometer. Or worse, a cheap Chinese counterfeit of an imitation of a sue-dometer. In other words, a pseudo-pseudo-sue-dometer.
On the other hand, it’s still better to have a pseudo-sue-dometer than it is to have to listen to a bad Phil Collins impersonator (pseudo-su-sudio). Or to debug a badly-programmed system override (pseudo-SUDO).
I make jokes because thinking about this book is too mentally scarring.
swenson on 28 January 2013, 20:44 said:
Yet again Rummel wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to have super-awesome fight scenes with blood everywhere, but he occasionally remembers that, oh yeah, killing is bad. So rather than come up with a reasonable way to justify all of this, he just has Jon occasionally monologue about how incredibly depressing it is that he has to participate in all these super-awesome fight scenes and save the modern world, etc. etc. Say it with me, class: “character consistency”.
I guess we now know what caused Black Tuesday…
An Asian woman? I don’t know precisely how racist people were back then, but I rather suspect your average white guy would not be interested in an Asian woman (okay, maybe he might think she was hot and want to sleep with her, but not in any formal dating thing). Interracial marriages (and interracial dating…) were typically very not-okay. Is this mentioned in the book? Or is it just assumed that Joy is so beautiful and stunning and brilliant that people instantly overcome years of internalized racism by looking at her?
In fact, I looked it up: anti-miscegenation laws in the United States (that means laws against interracial sex/marriage) were common in most states until World War II (and some retained them until 1967 when the Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional—and technically, Alabama’s was on the books (just unenforceable) until 2001!). While typically they applied to white-black marriages, in a lot of cases they also applied to black-other race marriages or white-other race marriages as well. And they definitely applied to Asians. I was able to find a story about Lettice Pruett (white) and Fong See (Chinese), who were married through a “contract marriage” (not a “real” marriage with a marriage certificate from the government and all, but basically a legal agreement) in 1897, as interracial marriages were illegal in California at the time (from 1880 to 1948, in fact).
So there you go. I know there’s a difference between marriage and dating, but… in a nation that had a Chinese Exclusion Act in effect from 1882 to 1892 and where Chinese laborers were driven out of many cities… I find it doubtful a white man would A) take an Asian woman seriously or B) consider getting in any sort of serious relationship with her. In a couple of decades, perhaps, but not then.
Brendan Rizzo on 28 January 2013, 21:43 said:
They don’t say.
Was that a spoiler with regards to Medaka Box? Because I’ve only gotten up to midway through the Minus Arc…
Huh. I didn’t know that. They aren’t lying when they say you learn something knew every day.
Well, it did break once. I had to replace it.
And it’s good to know that somebody has gotten that pun.
Mingnon on 28 January 2013, 22:14 said:
Brendan – No, no, I’m not referring to Medaka Box
specifically. I’m just referring to the generic shounen anime that tends to crop up nowadays. The girl losing her powers could also be one of many ways the girl could step aside for the guy to take over as well. :/Mingnon on 28 January 2013, 22:15 said:
Beh, I didn’t mean to make the word ‘specifically’ crossed out!
Taku on 28 January 2013, 23:20 said:
??Mingnon, underlining in Textile is with circumfixative plus signs like so:
Like so.??
Bolding is asterisks, italics is underscoresw, and deletion is hyphens. Click Textile help below, for more info.
Brendan Rizzo on 28 January 2013, 23:55 said:
Ah.
And yes, you’re onto something.
Mingnon on 29 January 2013, 00:06 said:
Oh no, you don’t mean… D:
goldedge on 29 January 2013, 01:11 said:
@Brendan Rizzo The table-top RPG, Exalted can get away this because It’s made of AWESOME. And the over the top elements in the setting can balance out the mary-sueness of the Canon characters and the PCs
Pryotra on 29 January 2013, 09:22 said:
This scares me. I don’t know why, but something about the way that this is said really, really bothers me.
It sounds to me like she’s just generally psychotic. Why would we have this detail on a character that I’m supposed to like? This is horrid!
But if she hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t have gotten to know how hot John was. After all, he’s so humble, and if he wasn’t hot, he might not be worthy of the lust of his student. (No, I haven’t forgotten that.)
It’s probably because she’s traveling around with him in time period where that didn’t usually happen.
Thus assuring me that she would later have been found in some alley, placed there by the guy and all his little friends for daring to humiliate a white man. There was quiet a bit of violence to Chinese women at this time from what I remember reading. And since she had little to no actual rights, if she’d reacted and killed some of them since she’s a Sue and can never be defeated…she would have…regretted it.
At the very least, that would have lost John a lot of business since he let a Chinese woman mouth off at a white man. A white woman would have been bad enough.
Epke on 30 January 2013, 15:28 said:
That’s pretty dark… “It’s the last you’ll need… because you are going to die.” Ambiguous lines like that are usually delivered by psychos.
… Oh, wait.
Most likely causing damage to the carriages in question, the coachman/guy with reins can take a nasty tumble, not to mention spooking the horse so it will always be afraid of the sound of a revving engine and thus pretty useless on the road… real hero you are, Joy.
If Rummel had actually given this thought he would’ve known that A) No white man would ask her and B) even if one had, a loud rejection in front of other people would most likely have earned Joy a severe beating, if not getting herself killed.