Brendan Rizzo

There are a couple things I wish to make clear before starting. The first is that these next few articles will not be sporks. They are going to be reviewing a work that I genuinely enjoyed. The second is that this work is not a book. It’s a webcomic, namely, minus.¹ by Ryan Armand. Now, as far as I know nobody on here has reviewed a visual medium before, but I think I can pull it off. ;-)

Since it is a webcomic, I will not be using direct quotes like in my previous spork. Instead, I will simply link to the first strip and allow you to follow along with me. The comic is pretty short; one could probably read through the whole thing in about an hour or so.

So why am I doing this, reviewing something I liked instead of providing (occasionally) humorous commentary on something I don’t like? Because, simply put, Ryan Armand is a genius. He is able to do what so many amateur writers try and fail to do — make an immensely powerful protagonist who isn’t a Mary Sue. Therefore, this review will also have the purpose of showing that it is possible to write the situations often lambasted on this site, but you have to know what you’re doing and be skilled enough to win an award for your work,² so one should focus on improving one’s writing skills before even attempting such.

As promised, here is the link to the first strip.

Now, to be fair, I should point out that the creator of this comic does have one inherent advantage over most of the writers sporked here that has nothing to do with skill, namely, that this is a comic and therefore nothing needs to be described in text. Thus, it’s a given that there is neither Purple Prose nor Beige Prose, so I will discount that. The most annoying thing about bad writing is often the characterization, anyway.

So the comic opens with the title panel, which showcases a girl playing with a ball. This is our main character. After a couple panels of her playing with the ball, the scene pans out to two older boys. They say they want to take the ball from our protagonist, and they do just that. What jerks. The as-of-yet-unnamed lead doesn’t seem to understand that they have no intention of giving it back, thus providing some insight into her character. Instead, one of the boys throws the ball in her face and laughs. Gee, could it be that we are not supposed to sympathize with them? They begin to walk away laughing, only for them to be swallowed up by tree branches that literally appeared from nowhere, and confirming that this is an Urban Fantasy setting, albeit one more like The Twilight Zone than your cliché Urban Fantasy setting, as will be seen shortly. Which is good, I mean, clichés are annoying at the best of times.

Our protagonist sees all this, and continues playing with her ball as though nothing had happened, thus giving more insight into her character: she does not appear to understand the implications of events around her. Now, this is the first strip, so it isn’t at all clear why everything happened. That won’t be clarified for a few more strips.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a review of a comic if I didn’t mention the art style, and here’s where the work really shines. Armand is certainly a talented artist, and he tells the readers that all the strips are painted on the type of boards that professionals use, which by itself proves that he put more work into this than most webcomic creators, who just copy and paste the same static faces into Microsoft Paint over and over again.

Now onto the second strip. I must confess that I don’t really want to review this strip, because it makes no sense to me at all; Armand had not hit his stride at this early point. I mean, even with my spork I was able to criticize how inept Rummel’s story was, but with this strip I can’t even do that, because things happen for literally no reason at all. It is certainly not one of the better strips. But for completeness, I must provide at least a cursory summary.

Our main character, whose hair changes color every strip, is in a cemetery on a snowy day. It is never explained why; it isn’t like she lost a loved one or anything. Instead, the angel carved onto one of the headstones comes to life and gets into a snowball fight with her, traumatizing a few senior citizens who are also at the cemetery. That’s it. There is nothing more to this, and so we will just move on to the third strip.

Now things are starting to get interesting. On the Internet, this particular strip is infamous, because it shows more of the protagonist’s character, and it isn’t very flattering.

The protagonist gets a balloon from a vendor, and within two panels it inexplicably pops.³ The vendor’s a nice guy and gives her another one. That one pops, too. Now, it is never clarified how old the main character is, because it is shown that she likes the sound of balloons popping or something. She has a million-watt smile and everything, acting like a four-year-old about it (yet, as will be seen in a later strip, she attends school.) So she’s all happy about the balloons popping, which causes some of the balloons that the vendor is still holding⁴ to pop, much to his surprise, because, you know, balloons don’t just suddenly pop for no reason. Then, our protagonist picks up a rock from the ground and throws it at the balloons, popping all the rest of them. Yeah, she’s a jerk. As shown, the rock’s trajectory is completely impossible, which is the whole point, because in this strip, it is shown that the main character possesses supernatural powers.

DUN DUN DUUN!

Yes, Armand is actually justifying the use of cartoon physics. The reason that things happen the way they do in cartoons is because the protagonist is messing with reality with her supernatural powers.

Naturally, the vendor freaks out and yells at the main character to go away. And here is where the strip derives its infamy. No sooner has the vendor yelled at the protagonist, then, in the very next panel, he begins to transform into a balloon. Let me repeat that. She turns him into a balloon because he justifiably yells at her. And in the very last panel, the vendor-turned-balloon pops.

This is why the protagonist of this comic is so infamous. She is Chaotic Neutral to a T. This could easily have gone horribly wrong. However, at no point does Armand state or imply that the protagonist is in the right. She just acts the way any young child would if they could do whatever they wanted with no regard for the laws of physics, because children are too young and innocent to understand what goes on around them. The main character isn’t outright malicious; she just doesn’t understand the consequences of her actions. This is why “It’s a Good Life” is a horror story. And because this is a visual medium, the readers are able to see every character’s expressions and so sympathize with the people who suffer because the protagonist is playing around without a care in the world.

The fourth strip is not nearly as dark as the one before it. We see the main character, presumably at her house, overlooking some loaves of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly. It should go without saying that once again her hair has changed color. I will not mention this again, because now it should go without saying. For some reason, she animates the food, goes outside. and plays with them. We see Frisbee, drawing with sidewalk chalk, and exploring the landscape. Speaking of landscapes, one major trait of a comic is that the story is conveyed by the images as much as by the text. In this, Armand succeeds par excellence. In the middle of the strip is a beautiful landscape, of a river that runs through a forest, with oak trees in the foreground. It really shows off Armand’s ability as an artist.

Well, in the next panel, we finally learn the main character’s name. It is… (wait for it) …minus. Poor kid, named after an arithmetical operation. She’s probably teased in school. Well, at least now we know why the webcomic is called that.

We learn this because minus’s mother yells at her from off-panel,⁵ presumably not to play with her food, and is surprisingly unfazed by her kid having the ability to bring the food to life. I wonder if she knows anything about what happened to that balloon vendor. minus actually complies (revealing something else about her: she never directly disobeys any request that anyone asks of her, except for that poor balloon vendor) and tells the food that they can’t play anymore because her mother says that she has to eat them. Because What Measure Is A Non-Human, amirite? The food is now sentient. I mean really. That being said, the line is truly hilarious, simply because I could imagine it actually being said with all seriousness. After a beat panel, in which the food is clearly distressed, minus leads them back to her house, with the story to be continued on the fifth strip.

Yes, this comic does have some continuous story lines. This one is pretty short, though.

The next strip opens with some random guy about to eat a sandwich. It is never explained who he is, and he isn’t important at all. The comic’s recurring characters have not shown up yet. So, just as he’s about to take a bite of his presumably delicious sandwich, who should pop up from out of nowhere but minus.⁶ For absolutely no reason at all, she telekinetically lifts the man’s sandwich and slaps him in the face with it. Yes, minus is just a child, but that is still jerkish behavior, and her youth is no excuse for it. The loaf of bread from last strip jumps onto the table, and minus follows by taking a flying leap, clearing the table in a single bound like she’s Tony Hawk or something. The man’s expressions in the background are just priceless. He is not the first person to be terrified of what is going on, and he certainly will not be the last.

minus and the food go away for the time being, leaving the man alone on-panel. Now, there are no words in this strip at all. The story is told entirely through his expressions, which I mention here because it is the most noticeable at this point. Adding words to this strip would ruin it; the pictures themselves perfectly capture just how confused the man is. His respite lasts for only three panels, as minus apparently found some more food and animated it, and they all throw themselves in the man’s direction, pelting him so much that in one panel they cover him completely, and then the last panel just has minus and the food run back the way they came, while the man is lying on the floor behind the overturned table.

This basically showed how minus acts when nobody gets in her way. There are a lot of strips like this.

The story line is not over, though. It continued on the sixth strip.

The scene cuts to one of those cartoony sailboats out at sea. Because we’re at sea, all the colors are tinted blue, yet Armand doesn’t make this completely saturated. The character of the day this time is the ship’s captain, who sees minus and the bread loaves through his spyglass. Apparently minus conjured him just to be entertained, because he opens fire on her, with cannons and aircraft and everything. Of course, since he is just on a little sailboat, it is obvious who is behind this. After a few panels of the missiles’ trajectory and of minus watching from a pier, they are revealed to be harmless fireworks. So minus did all that just to have something pretty to look at. It is clear that she doesn’t have the longest of attention spans. The firework panel is nice, though.

And that’s the end of this story line. It isn’t as ambitious as later ones.

The seventh strip begins the sub-plot of minus at school, interacting with children her own age. There is very little dialogue in this strip, and it isn’t necessary.

The kids are playing baseball, and minus is at bat. Of course, she hits the ball, but just as some kid in the outfield is about to catch it, the ball’s trajectory inexplicably changes so it falls to the ground immediately. The remaining panels are the hapless outfielder trying to pick up the ball while it moves away from him, interspersed with minus making it all the way around the diamond. When she reaches home plate, there is a sequence of drawings of her doing a victory dance, leaving the other kids pissed off. Apparently, they know that she has supernatural powers and caused the ball to take that wonky path, and force her to leave. During all that, there wasn’t a single word of dialogue. I think it’s clear what Armand’s philosophy of comics is.

The eighth strip is another one that does not have much for me to talk about because not much happens. We see minus drawing on a wall of her house, which again makes me inquire as to her age, because most people stop doing that in preschool. Her mother yells at her from off-panel to wash it off, and so minus, naturally, blanks out everything… including the picture that was hanging on that same wall. So of course, she doesn’t restore the original picture, but magically puts her own drawing in the frame. Our heroine, ladies and gentlemen. Even when she’s well-meaning, she focuses only on her own desires. As for the strip’s artwork, even when the wall is completely blank, Armand shades parts of it blue, so that it has some texture and is not just nothing there. Again, you don’t see that often in webcomics these days.

The ninth strip continues the minus-around-other-kids sub-plot. I must say, I really like the texture of the sky in this one. It starts off with minus approaching two identical twin girls who are tossing a ball back and forth. These are our first recurring characters. There is only one problem: they do not have names. In this respect, Armand is the polar opposite of Rummel; whereas the latter named every character no matter how minor, the former doesn’t name anybody except the protagonist and a few gag characters, no matter how important the other characters are to the story. It can get frustrating in a review like this.

So anyway, minus asks the twins if she can play with them, and their response is what makes the readers like them. They call minus out on the cavalier use of her powers. And here is an example of what I said at the beginning of the review, that Armand is good with characterization. He has characters who criticize the protagonist, and they are not faulted for it in-universe. In fact, the readers are allowed to agree with them. It isn’t a case of a Strawman Having A Point. If only more writers were able to separate themselves from their characters and have them be criticized for their actions, then maybe this site would not need to spork so many stories.

The twins bring up a very good point: that minus used her powers in that baseball game in order to turn a pop fly into a home run, so it is no fun to play with her, even though they are just playing catch. So they get minus to leave, and nothing bad happens to them.

But in the very last panel, we see minus playing catch with an angelic being she made real, and we can clearly see she is upset. So this strip also confirms that minus does experience the full range of emotions as anybody else. This is also some amount of foreshadowing.

The tenth strip introduces some more recurring characters: a red-haired girl with a ponytail, another girl with hair that looks white or greenish, and a Hot-Blooded, brown-haired boy. The latter’s introduction is as an Incoming Ham, with him pretending to be a running-back, not caring who is in his way, and knocking the two girls over. The ponytailed girl, who to Armand’s credit, looks different from the red-haired twins, yells at the boy, and the two of them get into a shouting match. We know that they’re yelling because their speech balloons are jagged. The boy says he will grow up to be a hotshot football star, to which the girl retorts that she will grow up to be president, and outlaw football.⁷ The boy, since he is still firmly in the Girls Have Cooties stage, says that no girl could ever be president.

And here is where minus relates to the comic. The ponytailed girl, who is just as Hot-Blooded as the boy, retorts that she will become president thank-you, because she has the help of minus. It should be pointed out that from what we have previously seen, minus does not hang out with the other children because they dislike her.

So of course, the boy calls her bluff, going up to minus and asking her, and I am not making this up, if she will be the ponytailed girl’s “tool” when she’s an adult. Oh, children, not understanding what those words can mean…

minus ignores both of the others, and says that when she grows up, she will be an elephant. Now, this leaves the other two deeply confused, with the boy trying to explain to her that this is impossible.⁸ Pshaw, like that’s stopped her before. She promptly turns into an elephant, much to the boy’s astonishment. The strip ends here, but it’s the beginning of another story arc.

The eleventh strip isn’t just minus., it’s minus. the elephant. This is something that Armand will do whenever minus transforms herself into something else, which happens several times. So minus leaves school and walks around as an elephant, thus leading to a bunch of onlookers confused as to why there is an elephant around town, again, with no dialogue when such is not strictly necessary to tell the story. Once again showing no regard for other people, she enters somebody’s pool without permission, and tries to ride on a Ferris wheel. Even though she is currently an elephant. Don’t question it too much.

The Ferris wheel conductor (or whatever they’re called) doesn’t question it too much either, and says that the ride is too small for elephants. Dayum, if I saw an elephant walk up to an amusement park ride and try to get on, I’d evacuate everyone and try to get out of its way, not tell it to stop as though it could understand English. This guy gets points for sheer ballsiness. Distraught, minus goes to an ice cream vendor, but he refuses to serve ice cream to elephants, for some reason. So minus is upset, changes back into a human, and walks away. Now that she is a child again there is nothing stopping her from getting the ice cream and going on the ride, but whatever. There are a few panels where she sees a dove fly away, and then turns into a dove so that she can join it. The last panel is a beautiful panorama of the town. And that’s the end of this story arc.

I will only cover one more strip in this part of the review, but this is an important one so it’s all good. Strip twelve introduces another recurring character, who is far more important than most other recurring characters.

It opens with minus drawing with sidewalk chalk while the red-haired twins walk by. They stop to point and laugh at her, for no real reason. So I take back what I said earlier, they’re kind of jerks. Seems like everyone is in this comic. But somebody else was following them, a girl who, for some reason, has green hair. She is certainly going to screw the rules of how this comic works, as she walks up to minus (after a few panels of the latter working on her chalk drawing) and introduces herself. After a Beat Panel, minus makes the subject of her drawing come to life. Of course, the green-haired girl is frightened, so what does she do? Make her own sidewalk chalk drawing, her expression daring minus to bring it to life as well so they can play together. Which is exactly what happens. If females were capable of ballsiness, this would rival, nay, surpass, the actions of the Ferris wheel conductor.

As will be seen later, the green-haired girl and minus become fast friends.

Well, this is the end of Part 1 of the review. Please leave comments below.

Footnotes

¹ Yes, the title is given in all lowercase letters, with a period at the end, no matter what its position in a sentence. This could take some getting used to.

² Which Armand actually has, for this comic.

³ Trust me, a lot of things are inexplicable in this comic.

⁴ What is truly hilarious about this is that the comic is grounded enough in reality that the vendor is not lifted away by the force of his hundreds of balloons, but at the same time, supernatural things happen in every strip.

⁵ By the way, we never actually see either of minus’s parents on-panel; only from them yelling.

⁶ Who, for some odd reason, is drawn differently in this panel than in preceding or succeeding ones. She looks more like a manga character, in this panel only. She even has blue hair!

⁷ They appear to be in elementary school, and so can be forgiven for not knowing that the President does not have that kind of power.

⁸ And again, Armand is really good at drawing quizzical expressions.

Comment [5]

I hope you enjoyed the first part of this review. But again, this is basically me just gushing about a work I like, so if this isn’t as entertaining as my spork, I apologize.

The thirteenth strip immediately introduces three new characters. Unlike what has been going on for a while now, these three are not recurring characters. They will never be seen again. Interestingly, one of them has green hair, so apparently green is a natural hair color in the comic’s world. Equally oddly, the only boy in the group has a very strangely drawn nose, with the skin directly underneath it strangely shadowed. Armand does not draw anybody else with a nose like this at any other point in the entire comic, and it just looks extremely weird. But I digress.

So these kids are walking along, and from out of nowhere the one with green hair¹ brings up the subject of magic. The following panel is a close-up of the third kid, all by herself, saying that magic “sure does suck”.

Oh no. My irony meter. It’s gonna blow!

So it turns out that all three children agree that magic is stupid and that they are all glad that none of them have magical powers, reasoning from works of fiction in which the magical characters just want to be normal, or some such. It’s so ridiculous that it comes off as a bit of a straw man; the oddly-nosed boy slams the notion of immortality and saying that people enjoy life only because they know that they will die someday. It’s as though Armand anticipated the complaints that people would have with his comic, since its hero is pretty much omnipotent.²

Now, we will see the significance of these children shortly. While these existentialist children are talking, minus flies by them in a cloud, over three beat panels, in which we see them reduced to speechlessness. As soon as minus leaves, the scene cuts to the three kids making clouds out of cardboard and presumably trying that trick themselves. We will never know how they’ll feel once they find out that they cannot duplicate it.

So now I think we now know what Armand thinks of all those stories where magic is not what it is cracked up to be. Even though that was a Writer On Board moment, it does not make it any less entertaining.

On the other hand, the fourteenth strip goes in the opposite direction. minus and the green-haired girl from the twelfth strip are gazing up at the stars, causing the green-haired girl to remark that she wishes she could reach out and grab one. In a Beat Panel, minus looks at her as though she had two heads or something, as her friend has apparently forgotten that minus can do whatever the hell she wants. So she does exactly that, and has a star in her hand. Again, this part of the strip is told only through their movements and facial expressions.

Since she is just a child, in the next panel minus does something monumentally stupid and careless. She opens the hand that is holding the star. I think you can guess what happens next.

Fortunately, before everyone on Earth gets burnt to death, minus turns back time, or something (?) to before the green-haired girl wished she could touch the stars. So of course, the panel is reversed and wavy in order to depict this.

Then the exact same scene happens, but this time, minus agrees with her friend’s sentiment, and doesn’t do anything.

So wait, did minus see what was happening and hurriedly changed everything back to normal before it was too late, or did she know this would happen all along but did that on purpose, just to show her friend how stupid her desire was? This is another example of her behaving much like a trickster figure, and the audience cannot tell whether she is well-meaning or just in it for the lulz. And again, since there isn’t any narration told from any character’s perspective, the readers are not expected to automatically think that anything the main character does is justified, which is good writing, or drawing, as the case may be.

After that rather macabre setup, it’s onto the fifteenth strip, where, surprise surprise, the Earth isn’t a scorched wasteland! The first panel has chibi-minus and her equally chibified friend playing basketball. They revert back to normal art style in the very next panel, so I can only assume this was a stylistic choice in order to emphasize how high up a basketball hoop is compared to a child. This goes on for a few panels, until this guy walks onto the court, who, I should point out, is already spinning a basketball on his finger like those people who are trying to be cool. Now, he sees the two kids playing with their own ball, so what does he do? Kick it away from them with all his might, of course!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Everybody in this comic is a jerk, the green-haired girl excepted. Sometimes, I think that Armand sets up these situations just so that the readers can cheer minus on when she inflicts some horrible punishment onto her Victim of the Week.

So of course the green-haired girl and minus are really angry at this guy. We can see how upset minus is because she is just looking at the ground. So the green-haired girl confronts the guy, and he says that he is commandeering the court so that he can practice basketball. To their inevitable protestations, he states that since they suck at basketball, they have no right to be playing there. What a douchebag. Of course they’re not gonna be good at it; they’re little kids. And it’s a basketball court, there’s probably an unused hoop at the other end this guy can practice with. To her credit, minus just rolls her eyes at this, and I just love the way Armand handles subtle facial expressions. It really shows that you are reading a comic and not a text story.

So the douchebag goes on about how the kids can play with the trash can and stuff, blissfully unaware of the fact that he is shrinking. (But of course!)³ Once he gets to the point where he is no taller than minus’s ankle, he notices his surroundings and naturally freaks out. The kids wonder what they should do with him, and (all without any dialogue, mind you) minus decides to shrink them all down to the size of ants, so that she and her friend can ride one and chase the guy, thus leading to the next story arc.

The sixteenth strip is minus. warrior queen of the ant people. It starts off with two adult characters who aren’t that important. We see some characters later who look like them, but I don’t think they’re meant to be the same. Turns out they’re on a picnic, and we see another beautiful landscape. The woman goes to get the stuff that they left in the car, and unfortunately for the guy left behind, the very next panel depicts minus and the green-haired girl in full medieval plate armor, brandishing swords, and riding practically a whole colony of ants straight toward the site of the picnic.

So the man is minding his own business for a few panels when all of a sudden the ants show up. Of course he tries to stomp them, but minus goes back to normal size and blocks his foot with her shield. Then, she holds him up at swordpoint and takes the picnic basket, before returning to the size of an ant. What the hell? The guy didn’t even provoke her!

Now, if I was on a picnic, and I saw this kid just appear from out of nowhere, point a sword at my neck, and leave from out of nowhere, I would think I was having a psychotic break. So of course the man goes into a crestfallen expression reminiscent of those troll comics (though as far as I know, this predates them) only for his girlfriend to come back, very disappointed. She probably thinks that he ate all the food, and it is all minus’s fault.

The story arc continues onto the seventeenth strip. This strip has no dialogue at all, and is nothing more than the ants building a miniature city on somebody’s lawn. At the last panel we do get to see some kid looking at it quizzically, but that is all. So onto the next strip.

An ant tells minus⁴ about this guy who stomps on ants for the fun of it. In the flashback, we see that the ants care for one another, and are aggrieved when fellow ants die. I guess minus gave them human-level intelligence or something. Gee, it’s a good thing they won’t do anything without her permission, right?

So minus takes pity on the ant and gives her⁵ super strength, and orders her to take revenge on the guy.

We see that the ant-killer is a kid, and the next panels are of him silently going about his morning routine. No sooner does he go outside then the ant tackles him to the ground and presumably drags him off to parts unknown. Now granted, he’s another Asshole Victim, but I shudder to think of what the ants might do to him.

The nineteenth strip is another short one, and the last one of this story arc. minus and the green-haired girl are standing atop the pyramid that they built, with minus addressing the ant army. But in the background, we can see that the green-haired has kind of had enough, and she tells minus this. So minus brings them back to normal size, and you gotta love the artwork in these panels; minus’s cape flowing in the wind and the green-haired girl’s somewhat sheepish expression. I know that I’ve praised the art in this comic a lot, but that’s ‘cause it’s breathtaking at times, in spite of looking like it’s been done in watercolor.

The strip ends with the two of them playing basketball again, and bringing this arc full-circle. But this does raise some questions. If her friend hadn’t said anything, would minus have just done this forever? She showed no indication of wanting to stop, and what we’ve seen of her character up to this point suggests that she doesn’t care at all about the wider world. Also, what became of the ants? Apparently they have some level of intelligence, so did minus change them back, or did she just leave them to their own devices? Either option is disturbing. It’s another one of those things that makes you think.

In any case, the twentieth strip introduces yet another recurring character. The unusual thing about this one is that… she’s a ghost. Ghosts in this comic look like humans from the waist up, but have the stereotypical wispy tail, I guess so the readers know they’re ghosts, or something? Apparently, minus is the only one who can see ghosts. Well, this ghost just shows up in minus’s house when she’s asleep and wakes her up. That’s kind of rude. The next panel is them up miles in the sky looking at this dandelion-like thing. Even though it’s clearly a dandelion, the ghost thinks it’s a strange balloon that aliens made. This is foreshadowing. But that’s not important right now.

The next panel cuts to a completely different scene with minus on a rowboat with a different ghost, who is apparently teaching her how to fish. In fact, this strip is mostly a set of one-off panels in which minus interacts with a different ghost. There’s another unimportant one before we meet yet another recurring character, also a ghost. This one stands out by her red hair and freckles, as opposed to the other ghost, who has brown hair. So the ginger ghost is having minus torment some bystander for their own amusement, and minus thinks it’s all a game. This, too, is foreshadowing. After playing around some more, minus’s forever off-panel mother yells at her to get in bed, because it is a school night, young lady.

So the next panel is minus conjuring yet another ghost, to read her a bedtime story. Gee, I wonder what her relationship could be with her parents?⁶

The twenty-first strip shows minus in class. See, there’s continuity in this comic. The last strip said it was a school night, and in this strip, minus is at school. The teacher, who is also always off-panel, asks minus a question and she answers with a character from a book. You mean to tell me that minus can do whatever she wants, but never once thought to make it so that she would always know the correct answer to questions that she is asked at school?

Anyway, she looks very crestfallen and starts writing something down, while the teacher calls on somebody else, a girl named Clary.⁷ Oh my God, another character has a name! It’s unfortunate that Clary will not appear in any strip after this one.

So Clary correctly answers the history question, which is deliberately vague because Armand wanted to make the setting vague, only for the teacher to say that minus’s answer was correct all along, meaning that minus is now recklessly altering history. Oh Crap.

So Clary looks at her textbook in utter confusion, only to find that that’s what is written there. The next few panels are of her looking utterly embarrassed, all while the teacher is changing her story. As we will see, this is because minus is writing the whole thing down. Okay, that’s kind of vindictive of her, but it further demonstrates how she does not seem to be aware of the wider consequences of her actions.

The twenty-second strip is, as you can probably guess by now, something completely different. It begins with this guy at a restaurant eating cake, only to gag on it. Again, I love the facial expressions here. It then cuts to minus walking along, only for the ghost of a chef to show up. He tells her that the restaurant (which he no longer owns because, you know, he’s dead) is now serving terrible desserts, so minus must make new ones, or something. He can’t just ask her to use her powers to make the desserts good; she has to go to the restaurant herself and bake them, or something. Screw you, child labor laws!⁸ As is usual by now, none of the cooks in the kitchen find anything unusual about a kid working there. So minus telekinetically does everything, and the others applaud her instead of, you know, freaking out.

Once this is done, the ghost chef tells minus that she must now impersonate one of the waiters, or something, and she makes her now-default surprised face. Since nobody, not even the customers, question why there is a child waiter, they ask her for whatever she recommends, and of course she gives them a milk carton. Because, you know, she’s a kid. The customers don’t look too happy though, but that doesn’t matter because that’s the end of the strip.

The twenty-third strip is a short one, but it’s also kind of painful to read, and you’ll see why. That does not mean it is bad, though.

So minus is playing Cupid and randomly firing arrows at people. These arrows travel right through their skulls and out the other end. So of course, the random guy we see doubles over in pain because there’s an arrow lodged in his skull, while minus happily looks for her next victim, a woman. She gets shot through the stomach, freaks out, notices the man (who is still alive after all that) and the two instantly fall in love, and go off somewhere, even though they should probably be getting to a hospital a. s. a. p. So because minus means well, nobody is hurt, and she flies off, to shoot arrows everywhere, even at things that aren’t even alive. We have trees falling in love with cars, houses falling in love with each other, and a woman falling in love with a very suggestively drawn lamppost. Urgh… let’s just be glad that the strip ends here before anything else happens.

The twenty-fourth strip begins the way many of these strips do, with someone walking down the street. In this case, it’s minus. All of a sudden, this ugly garbage monster shows up from out of nowhere, and tells minus that she must face a set of trials. minus, being omnipotent, passes them easily. (So is this what she does when she’s bored?)

She goes along her merry way, and then another kid shows up, along the same path. This is not going to end well, is it? The garbage monster shows up and she screams in terror. Geez, minus, you could give someone a heart attack with that! And I should also point out that one of the trials is fighting a dragon. No one could pass that. Again, this is minus being blissfully unaware of the feelings of anyone else.

Now, the next strip is a rather momentous one, so I will save its review for Part 3.

Footnotes

¹ Not to be confused with minus’s new friend from the last strip.

² Again, it is a sign of his genius that this does not completely ruin the plot.

³ Apparently, minus has a thing for poetic justice. Who knew?

⁴ Wordlessly, but still, how?!

⁵ It’s a worker; I’m assuming it’s a she

⁶ Of course, this is never explored further.

⁷ Yes, I’ve noticed that there are a lot more female characters than male characters in this, even when they’re just extras. Maybe it’s because the main character is a girl, too? I don’t know.

⁸ And the face minus makes when she here’s of this is just hilarious. You know of the :0 emoticon? Yeah, she does that.

Comment [2]

The twenty-fifth strip is the one I alluded to at the end of the last part. I would consider it to be one of the turning points of the comic.

The primary characters in this strip are the red-haired twins who haven’t been seen for a while. Now, this was not obvious in their previous appearances, but they can be told apart by the length of their hair. So anyway, the two of them apparently have a bet going depending on the results of a coin flip, which the longer-haired of them loses. Apparently, the penalty for losing the bet is so bad that she yells that she will never do it, even though she agreed to the terms to begin with.¹ Her twin objects, but the long-haired one is so sure in her decision that she runs off to ask minus to send her back in time and convince her past self to choose differently. Gee, this is a little extreme for losing a bet, don’t you say? This will NOT end well.

As it turns out, minus is making a flower grow in concrete when the loser of the bet gets to her. What happens next is a little bit confusing. Even though minus is looking right at the girl when being asked to send her back in time, for some reason she only listens to the first half of the request, and sends her to a random time period. In the next panel, we see her looking at her plant, which has now grown quite tall. Yet again showing that minus simply does not have her priorities in order. Sure, one of her classmates has just disappeared, but she has a plant she has to look after!

Now, exactly where did her classmate end up? Well, we next see her, quite scared, in front of some sort of carriage in a place where the men wear top hats and grow handlebar mustaches, and the women wear long dresses and carry umbrellas around when it’s sunny. I think you all know what this means.

Strangely, in that panel and in that panel alone, the temporally displaced redhead seems to have thicker outlines than under normal circumstances, thus providing a greater, and kind of unnatural, contrast compared to the rest of scene. I don’t know if Armand intended this or not.

So naturally, this strip is the beginning of another story arc.

The twenty-sixth strip is one of the unusual ones that does not focus on minus at all, but rather one of the people who have been affected by her powers, in this case, the red-haired twin. The first five-sixths of this strip have no dialogue whatsoever, instead showing, in extra small panels, what happened to her after she arrived in the Victorian era. Briefly summarized, she’s obviously quite scared, so she grabs the attention of this guy, who sends her to an orphanage (which is apparently co-ed even though this is Victorian times) where she befriends the other kids, and eventually grows up, leaves the orphanage, gets married, has a kid, and lives out her own life in the past. You know, considering she was stuck in a Victorian orphanage, I’d say she wound up very lucky that nothing bad happened to her. She was able to adapt pretty well, actually.

Cutting back to the present, her sister is of course freaking out, begging minus to tell her what just happened. You know how in TV shows and the like one character will start shaking another character when they’re really stressed out about something? Something similar happens here, and minus just has a blank look on her face, as if she suddenly realized the consequences of what she had just done. The final panel of the strip has the remaining twin face-to-face with a very old woman. I think you can guess her identity, right? In any case, the mystery continues in the twenty-seventh strip.

So this strip begins with a bunch of minus’s classmates from earlier strips frantically telling each other what just happened. One boy asks another boy if their former classmate is really an old woman now, and he replies that she is the oldest. This sounds like childish hyperbole, but when you come to think of it, she really is the oldest person in the world, because she survived from the Victorian era all the way to the present. So they gather around their former classmate, who tells them (fortunately, without words) about her experience. This only takes up a few panels, mind you, so it’s really not annoying at all, and doesn’t even qualify as an Infodump. See, this is the right way to bring characters up to speed on things.

She then goes to talk to minus in private. minus is still caring for that plant as though nothing had happened. It is now a tree, and she has made herself giant in order to continue caring for it. Which reveals that even after it hits the fan, minus will just forget all about it after a few minutes.

As our time traveler is walking, she is accosted by her sister, now a stark example of the twin paradox. The younger one asks the older one if minus is going to change her back into a child, only for the older one to say that that is not what she wants.² Naturally, the younger one is totally confused, and, judging from her facial expression, really sad about this. The older one has lived a full life and can’t just go back to being a kid and doing it over again. In contrast, her younger counterpart is acting as though one of her loved ones just died, and from her perspective, that’s exactly what happened, so you can’t blame her. The older one comforts her, saying that everything will be all right, hugs her, and then the scene pans out to them alone, with text that cannot be read.

The final panel is somewhat confusing. The readers do not have enough context to really figure out what happened. We see six children playing, the two red-haired twins among them. I don’t know if this is supposed to be a flashback to happier days, or if minus sent the other girl back in time so that the two twins would grow up together. All that is certain is minus did not turn the old woman back into a kid, because they said that wouldn’t happen. No matter what happened, we will never see those two characters again.

Now, let’s look at it like this: the characters who disliked minus wound up being Put On a Bus in spectacular fashion, one that precludes them from ever appearing again, and also means that they and whatever loved ones they have will never see each other again. Yet despite this, it is actually a genuinely powerful scene, and not just the writer’s attempt to punish those characters whom he decided would dislike the main character, which is almost certainly how the writers whom we spork here would have handled it. The readers actually feel pathos for the characters, and they get some final development. Despite how childish they acted as well, children, they do grow up and they do care about each other. They acted like jerks before not because they were mean, but because they were children, and children are immature. I must say, if you are going to set up some characters whose only fault is that they’re kind of rude to the main character, and then later want to get rid of them because they’ve fulfilled their narrative purpose, this is how you do it. I’ve never seen it done better. To this day, this is one of the most powerful scenes I have ever read in any work of fiction.

So naturally, this review must continue to the next strip, where it’s back to wacky hijinks.³ This is another one that has no dialogue at all. minus is playing with some ghosts, including the red-haired and freckled one we’ve seen before. Turns out that their idea of play is going up to random people and scaring the daylights out of them. Presumably minus makes their unwittingly victims able to see ghosts for the duration. Yep, it’s back to business as usual. minus herself resists character development until the very end of the comic series, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

As it turns out, one of the victims of their pranks is a little old lady.⁴ Apparently, minus did not know that old people are frail, because she has the ghosts prank her anyway, and the old lady is terrified and, well, gives up the ghost. Once she realizes what has happened, she gets her revenge by chasing them. Even minus is concerned only with running away, but the ginger ghost stops to stick her tongue out at their elderly pursuer. So there is one person who is an even bigger jerk than minus, and it’s the ginger ghost. This will be important later, but for now, it’s onto the twenty-ninth strip. That one had just been a breather between two important story lines.

minus is drawing on a wall again. This time, it’s in a public place, outside. She’s not intending to deface the wall with graffiti, though. She’s drawn some sort of rocket car and actually steps into her drawing to drive it. This goes swimmingly until she hits the edge of the wall. Oh, cartoon physics, it’s been such a long time! Glad to see you’re back. This does not deter minus, and she magically extends the wall so that she can continue to race, even through the city streets, and up into the sky.

As an aside about the artwork, the way conveys the speed at which minus is traveling is with wider brush strokes, to convey that she’s going so fast the bricks of the wall are just whizzing by and blurring together.

Now I said this was a story arc, so of course it will continue on the next strip. minus has brought her rocket car far outside the Earth’s atmosphere and lands on an alien planet, planting a flag with her name on it, and completely oblivious to the alien city that is directly behind her. That’s literally all there is on this strip, the story is continued on the
next one.

I’m just breezing through these things today, and with good reason: while minus is on the alien planet, there is no dialogue, except for strange symbols from the aliens’ speech bubbles, which of course cannot be read. This strip’s title is minus. the alien, meaning that at some point between the end of the last strip and the beginning of this one, minus noticed the city and turned into an alien to blend in. She’s actually doing something smart, for once.

These aliens look vaguely like tear drops with faces, and come in a variety of colors. minus is one of the aliens, but we can’t exactly tell which one, for obvious reasons. First things first: this strip is weird, even by this comic’s standards. After a shot of the aliens and a view of their city, which has flying cars and the like, one of the aliens regurgitates some red mass that looks like a tomato after it’s been thrown at something, onto one of the other aliens. This alien is not upset at all. In fact, he is laughing as he does the exact same thing. A third alien, behind them, does not look happy. From the context, I suspect that this is minus. She observes all the aliens doing this rather disgusting ritual, and then tries it herself. However, once she does so, the aliens get angry with her. They all stare at her, angrily, and once she leaves they go back to their… you know. Okay, this culture is just bizarre. Which was probably the point: a culture of non-humans would probably have completely different standards of etiquette, which minus violated, because even though she can make herself look like an alien, she doesn’t know how to behave like one.

minus remains on this planet for the thirty-second strip, where she sees some more aliens, who are apparently on a date. minus tries to talk to one, they blow her off, and she gets in trouble and is put in some sort of metal tree. I can’t make heads or tails of this plot either. The next strip⁵ is even more confusing. The only thing I can make out of it is that minus breaks out of the building in a huge explosion, escapes the city, and turns back into a human. Or was she there all along and that alien we were following for the last few strips wasn’t minus? I don’t know. That arc was confusing and didn’t really add anything to the enjoyment of the story, to be honest with you. It wasn’t one of the better ones. Nothing is explained, and not in a good way.

The thirty-fifth strip is back on Earth. The aliens are not gone forever mind you, it’s just that they won’t be seen for a while, and that’s okay with me. The strip opens with this guy at an office freaking out over how much work he has to do. Hey man, I can relate. Suddenly he has a nervous breakdown and runs out of his work station, and jumps out the window of the office building, despite being on a high floor. Of course, he regrets this immediately. Fortunately for him, who should show up but minus, as… a fairy? Anyway, she does something so that when this hapless office worker hits the ground, he does not die. Instead, he splits into a bunch of smaller copies of himself, unharmed, all of whom together can handle his massive workload.

Did minus just use her powers to help somebody?! Yeah, I think she did. That’s more than Anthony Fremont can say!

So the thirty-sixth strip opens with a vendor offering free ice cream to all the children. Of course, being the ice-cream-loving kid she is⁶, minus is in line, and when she gets her ice cream, the vendor calls her a boy. She is so shocked by this that she stands still, in her surprised face for three panels; the only change among those panels is the other children in line for ice cream.

So what does minus do? If you answered, “transform that vendor into something horrible as revenge”, then you are wrong! Instead, she grows her hair really long, wears a bow in her hair and a frilly dress, and makes it so that her footprints leave flowers behind. So now it is abundantly clear that minus is in fact a girl. Whatever.

The next strip also has some level of Internet fame, so of course I’m gonna wait until part 4 to do it.⁷ Stay tuned!

Footnotes

¹ We never find out what the loser has to do, because the long-haired one interrupts her twin. Of course, we get to see Armand’s highly expressive faces again.

² Strangely, the older of the two calls the younger one dear, even though she’s never done that before.

³ Yay, wacky hijinks!

⁴ Just to clarify, this old lady is completely unrelated to the events of the previous strip.

⁵ Which is actually two strips posted at the same time on the same page, for some reason.

⁶ To such an extent that I think it might qualify as her Trademark Favorite Food.

⁷ I’ve been getting kind of lucky that this has been happening every twelve strips, so that I can review the same number of strips each time.

Comment [3]

Now, it’s a fortuitous coincidence that once again, the strip I am reviewing has a reputation. It opens with a shot of an observatory. Again, because it’s at night, everything is tinted blue. The astronomer looking through the telescope is horrified by what is seen. No words are necessary; his facial expression tells all. After checking to make sure that it’s not a fluke, he comes to the horrible realization that A HUGE ASTEROID IS ON A COLLISION COURSE WITH THE EARTH!¹ Now, in real life, astronomers know about these sorts of events years before they happen, but Armand is using artistic license, and you will see why at the end of the strip.

So the governments of the world give a press conference saying that everyone is doomed and just to keep calm and wait for the end and stuff. The next few panels are once again wordless, showing people’s reactions, and including dialogue here would likely have ruined the gravity of the scene. There’s a family watching the news, and hugging each other in terror, some Chinese monks praying for a miracle, … and a UFO cult welcoming the damn thing with smiles on their faces.² Even a strip as serious as this one has some levity.

Of course, there are the inevitable riots in the streets, too, but that’s not all. Another panel shows a young couple in a field, probably discussing their worries of what will happen to the other once the asteroid hits, and, heartwarmingly enough, a crowd of people in a city which has not had riots, all holding hands and waiting for the end with dignity. It’s really a poignant scene about how humans can work together in the face of tragedy.

The very last panel explains why the asteroid has arrived so quickly. minus is standing at the top of a mountain, defiantly holding a baseball bat, looking straight at the oncoming asteroid, and waiting for it to come within reach.

Now, in any other comic, that panel would be inspiring, but here there is just one problem. minus is all-powerful and probably summoned the asteroid there on purpose just so that she could hit the greatest home run of all time. But out of context, I could easily see that panel being used in a motivational poster (the serious kind, not the sarcastic kind that have proliferated with the Internet). After all, it depicts a child plucky enough to try to save the world with a baseball bat, because nobody told her it was impossible. And even bearing in mind what minus is capable of, to me it doesn’t make the scene any less poignant.

So of course, it’s onto the thirty-eighth strip, where all is well and nobody cares that they almost got killed by an asteroid. This comic’s episodic nature often results in things like that.

The scene is an amusement park, where we see minus, carrying a red balloon. Pay attention, this will be important later. She gets in line for the roller coaster, and of course uses her powers to lift everybody else away so that she’s the first in line. You know, I’m sure that a lot of people in her town really don’t like her, even if she saved them all from an asteroid.³ So minus goes on a bunch of rides all by herself, including the crane game attraction, and then leaves the park on her red balloon. But the strip is only halfway over; minus actually wasn’t the main character of this one. Her whole existence here was just to set up the punch line. Other than that, we just learn that she enjoys amusement parks like any other kid.

After she leaves, there is a panel containing only the crane game. A really young kid goes up to it and says she’s gonna win, by golly. Unfortunately for her, the moment the crane grabs her prize, it starts screaming in pain! Of course, the kid is really freaked out, and doesn’t win. The prize sighs relief that the crane is no longer grabbing it, and the kid’s face is just “oh my God, what did I do?” So after a beat panel, the kid bows to the crane machine, and says that she’s sorry. So, she’s Japanese? Well, she is drawn kind of like a manga character, though the comic itself is not drawn in that art style.

All in all, I guess the purpose of this strip was to show that people do get negatively affected by minus’s hijinks. It would not be at all fun to live in her area, and Armand acknowledges this.

The thirty-ninth strip stars some asshole hunter, dressed like a Victorian, on an African safari, shooting big game in defiance of the law. He tells his servant to bring the body back, and as the servant runs into the bushes, we see minus, in the distance, on her red balloon, flying by. She doesn’t actually land, though, and she only appears in that one panel. But that’s all that is needed. There’s a panel just of the hunter staring in the direction his servant went so that we know that time passes. Sometimes, something like that is needed in a comic, especially when a story is told largely without words. Anyway, the servant runs back with a pair of boxing gloves, which he gives to the hunter. Of course the hunter is perplexed, but he plays along, only to discover that he has to box the lion he shot. Turns out he was hunting endangered species, so nobody has any sympathy for him. All the animals are watching the scene and egging on the lion, and their expressions are just priceless. Even the lion’s prey, like rabbits and zebras, are cheering him on. Of course, the hunter’s servant is also a spectator, making an ass of himself.

So I guess minus cares about animals. She isn’t all bad, then. Just immature.

The fortieth opens with minus kind of sad. We never learn why, this is only to set up the main point of the strip. Some guy dressed like a vaudeville performer walks up to her, tells her that she should take life with a smile, and walks off. minus gives a very toothy grin, presumably just to get him to go away, because as soon as he does, she goes back to her normal expression. Good thing too, because that smile just looks creepy. It’s got More Teeth Than The Osmond Family, for Pete’s sake.

minus starts walking someplace, and when she meets someone else, she grins. This causes the person she meets to start doing it, and when he meets someone else, that person does it too, and so on and so forth like a chain letter gone horribly wrong. Soon the whole town is filled with smiling zombies that are creepy as hell, and minus flies off on her red balloon.

minus’s destination in the forty-first strip are some steep mountains, high enough to touch the sky, and which she probably rose herself, since they do not look anything like natural mountains. She’s scaling them straight up without any mountain climbing gear, and when she reaches the summit, a cloud starts talking to her. Apparently this cloud and minus are friends or something, and the cloud invites her over to see its friends. But minus is bored and turns down the invitation, and walks straight down the sheer face of the mountain. The cloud is lonely, and tells another cloud about what happened. Apparently they all love minus,⁴ so the second cloud tells the first cloud to go back and tell her they’ll be playing petanque. And now I’m laughing hysterically over the image of clouds playing lawn bowling. minus still doesn’t care though. (I guess she’s not into lawn bowling?) and walks away, losing her red balloon in the process. I guess Armand just wanted to get rid of it.

Now, there was really nothing to discuss in that mini-story arc, because really, it was just minus walking about, causing some weirdness with her powers, but that’s about it. I guess it’s supposed to show a typical day in her life or something, and it’s nice to look at, but not really conducive to writing a review. Fortunately, the forty-second strip remedies that problem.

The scene opens at a diner frequented by children. This may come off as a relic of a bygone era, but those places actually still exist, though the kids are always accompanied by their parents. But that’s not important, though it raises the question of why minus’s parents are always off-panel. But I digress.

The waitress asks a girl with glasses what she wants, and the girl orders a “super soft cream”, whatever that is. It’s probably ice cream, but for all we know, it could just be whipped topping. The waitress shows off some mad ninja skillz ™ and brings the bespectacled girl her order instantly, twirling on one leg for maximum showiness. It’s a shame the wait staff don’t do anything cool in real restaurants… but I’m digressing again. On another note, the bespectacled girl is so surprised that we actually see lines of surprise⁵ around her head, which is unusual for this comic.

Unfortunately for the kid, minus is sitting at the booth next to her, and notices her order. Once again, she displays her default surprised face ™. So minus, beaming like a lighthouse, asks the wait staff for a super soft cream. Unfortunately for her, her waiter is an old man who does not possess any mad ninja skillz. He can’t give her a super soft cream from Hammerspace like the waitress did, because apparently, the bespectacled girl got the last one!

OH NOEZ!

minus is despondent, so she crawls over the booth and asks the bespectacled girl if she can have her ice cream. Of course her neighbor angrily refuses, I mean, that’s just expected. Why should she be forced to give up her super special awesome dessert?

minus thinks for a moment, and then, in the next panel, FALSE CAMERA EFFECT! She makes the whole panel Deliberately Monochrome and everything distorted, especially her own head, which now looks gigantic, particularly since she is staring down at the bespectacled girl. She asks again for the super special awesome soft cream, and her speech bubble is in boldface, suggesting reverberation. Of course the bespectacled girl gives up her dessert in terror, which minus goes to town on. minus spends three panels gesticulating about how delicious it is, in the manner of cartoons, with her hand over her heart and everything. Then, she stares at the empty bowl, and conjures another super soft cream from thin air. You mean to tell me she could have done that all along, and yet she still took it from the other kid? WHAT A JERK!

Of course the bespectacled girl is watching her, and minus is like… oh. Then she gives the other one to the girl, and everyone is happy.

minus comes off as one of those badly behaved kids that you just want to ignore, but then cause such a scene that you can’t ignore them. And yet, she remains likable.

The forty-third strip is another one that is completely silent, which is good for me because I can review it in like a few sentences. She turns herself into a mermaid and creates a whole underwater civilization in her bath tub, with fish and coral reefs and everything. She befriends one of the inhabitants, and they have some fun playing together. minus eventually leaves the tub, and we see her new friend react in horror as a giant hand reaches into the water, and pulls the bath plug! Cut to minus brushing her teeth. The entire underwater civilization is destroyed, and minus doesn’t even think to preserve it, even though she befriended one of the inhabitants. That’s just horrifying. There are rarely any more graphic indications of the fact that minus does not understand the consequences of her actions. And yes, this will be glossed over as soon as the strip is done.

The forty-fourth strip opens with minus reading a comic book, also called minus. How meta! Turns out, this is a superhero comic, in which a Captain Ersatz of Superman called Victory-Man saves the day from bad guys and the like. Being the impressionable child that she is, minus instantly rushes off to do this herself.

In the next panel, there is something that has not existed at all before. A caption. Specifically, one that says nothing but the word “meanwhile”. In this panel, we see people running and screaming in terror because a costumed supervillain is attacking people with tops. Yes, tops. As in, the child’s toy. He gives a cliché speech about being laughed out of the toy factory, before being confronted by minus, wearing a costume just like that of the hero Victory-Man. Of course, the villain, Top-man, throws some tops at her, but of course, she effortlessly destroys all of them and defeats him, all with written sound effects because this strip is a homage to superhero comics. The people all thank her, and she tries to recite the closing lines of Victory-Man’s speech, but is clearly nervous, and flubs it. She almost calls herself Victory-Man, even though she isn’t a man, much to the townsfolk’s confusion. The final panel is minus writing possible superhero names in a notebook, but rejecting them all.

You know, I think this strip is supposed to poke fun at how overpowered minus is, and how, if this comic did try to have a plot rather than just be Slice Of Life, she would be a total Sue who could just resolve the plot instantly, which is why this comic has to be Slice Of Life in order to work.

The forty-fifth strip is just weird. minus apparently has an act as a magician, and shows off her powers to an audience, on stage. She has an adult woman as an assistant, whom she slices in half lengthwise just by saying “Alakazam!” The next panel then cuts to the crowd, in shadow, who are dressed like people from Victorian England for some reason,⁶ and are understandably horrified. But not to worry, everybody, because minus rejoins the woman back together by saying “Abrakadabra”,⁷ and brings the woman back to life. She’s just fine, and everybody cheers. That’s a… different take on the whole “saw a woman in half” trick. I won’t count that as Comedic Sociopathy, because she clearly intended to bring the woman back.

The forty-sixth strip shows people fleeing a museum in terror. Why? Because minus brought a dinosaur to life, that’s why! I’ll count that as Comedic Sociopathy. Fortunately, the dinosaur is a sauropod and so only eats tree leaves. Thus, nobody gets hurt and it becomes an attraction for children. That museum will show up again in a later strip.

Unfortunately, I gotta cut it off here, because I don’t want to split up a story arc. Oh well, it was bound to happen eventually. Just stay tuned for part 5.

Footnotes

¹ That is an exact quote; it just had to be used.

² It’s quite nice that Armand is able to show that this group is welcoming the asteroid, without having them appear at any previous point.

³ Speaking of these people, I like how they’re all distinct, and not just the same person repeated over and over again in the background.

⁴ Suggesting that though she’s a jerk to people she doesn’t know, she’s nice if she’s your friend. Much like most children, really. She is every bit the typical child except for that one thing.

⁵ Or whatever those are called. You know, where in comics, they sometimes draw quadrilaterals radiating from someone to denote surprise?

⁶ I think Armand has a thing for that.

⁷ Was using that spelling an intentional Shout Out to Pokémon, I wonder?

Comment [2]

By now, the comic has reached the point where it has truly hit its stride. I consider these strips to be the transition from the early style of the comic to the middle, where characters start getting development and story arcs get longer, and better in quality.

Speaking of story arcs, the forty-seventh strip begins a very important one. It begins with minus in a library¹ actually behaving herself for once, and reading a book. Meanwhile, this shifty guy, with a washed-out color scheme, is nearby and asks her what book she is reading. Turns out its a children’s picture book. So the man dismisses minus as just some kid, and when she asks him what he is reading, he says it’s one of those New-Agey books about spirits and stuff. minus asks him about the spirit world, and says that she does not think that an afterlife exists. But… she hangs out with ghosts; how can she not believe in an afterlife? There’s Arbitrary Skepticism, but this is ridiculous. The man obstinately says that there just has to be one, for some reason, so minus invites him on a trip there. …But she just said that she didn’t think the spirit world exists. I am so confused.

The last panel is of minus flying through the air, carrying the bemused man as they look at this bizarre universe that runs on Art Major Physics. I’m talking about houses built on tree branches that are just suspended in the air, as ghosts look on in amazement, and leading into the forty-eighth strip.

It starts off with the man from the library being quite understandably confused and frightened about his surroundings, and a cheerful minus telling him that they are in the spirit world.² This will be very important later. We get to see the man’s shocked expression as he struggles to take all this in. It’s quite a sight.

So they’re walking along, and who should show up but the red-haired ghost. She says something about how cool it is that minus made this world for them³ and invites her over to play tennis. We now learn that the afterlife is much like real life. Unfortunately for the man from the library, he’s not invited. So, he’s left alone in the spirit world for the next few panels. He walks around in this world that has no respect for the laws of gravity, and encounters an elderly ghost, who asks if he can spare any change for the old veteran. They use money in the afterlife? That’s the sort of thing I was talking about when I said the afterlife is just like real life. The man says he doesn’t have any money, and walks away, leaving the elderly ghost to sadly explain that he lost his legs in the war. Heh, it’s funny because none of the ghosts have legs.

After that experience, minus and the red-haired ghost come back, and the three of them go out to eat. Yes, they eat in the afterlife. After two Beat Panels, the man gets very angry, and explains to minus that this is not what he expected the afterlife to be like at all. minus is honestly surprised to hear that the spirit world should be different from the living world, and somehow, even though they are no longer in the library, starts poring over the books that her tag-along guest had been reading. This goes on for four panels (all the while, with the man wondering what the heck is going on) until minus says that she has it, and in the final panel of the strip, the two of them are in a boat, being ferried across the River Styx by Charon. The man is understandably creeped out, while minus is just smiling without a care in the world. Disturbingly enough, the ghosts from earlier are now submerged in the water. Just when you thought that minus could go a single strip without harming others by accident.

In the next strip, they have made it to the other side of the river, and now approach the gates of hell, which is apparently guarded by a member of the alien species minus met earlier, named Pete. Now, when I said they were at the gates of hell, I meant it. The man is visibly disturbed to see some people suffer the punishment of the lowest circle of Dante’s Inferno. According to minus, they were bad people. One unfortunate is getting eaten by a crocodile, because apparently some people’s greatest ambition in life was to be crocodiles.

They walk down this huge flight of stairs, past the damned souls, and then minus shows the man a candle, which is tied to his life. When it goes out, he dies. The man is perturbed, but minus has such a cheerful expression on her face that one can’t help but laugh. It’s like, hey, look how cool this thing is! You die when the light goes out; isn’t it interesting?⁴

We get a shot of the gigantic lotus blossoms that minus says make up the spirit world, and Armand is able to draw nice-looking rainbows even with the rest of the panel being mainly of a single color.

Then some ghosts accost minus, saying that they’ve been getting complaints about how the afterlife is run, and they have formed a governmental committee to get minus to change some things. Just before they start, the ghosts finally notice that there’s a living person with them, so minus sends him back to the library alone. As proof that he wasn’t hallucinating the whole thing, he is still holding his life candle, much to his distress. In the final panel, the librarian explains to him that candles are not allowed in the library, leading to his humorously over-the-top response. With that, the story arc is over. We will never see that guy again. Despite being a minor character, he actually had a personality.

The fiftieth strip begins with the brown-haired boy from the tenth strip, alone, looking at the sky. The next panel pans out to show that all of the kids from minus’s class are there. They are all waiting for her, as she arrives back at school by some kind of beanstalk. By this point, the kids are so jaded that they don’t even see how this is at all unusual. One of them (who I think might actually be Clary) demands to know where minus has been this whole time. Before she can say anything else, the next panel is the green-haired girl saying hi to her, which serves the purpose of reintroducing herself to the readers, as well. Clary does not like that, and says that a bunch of crazy stuff’s been going on, namely, all the events of the previous strips.⁵ See, there is continuity in this comic.

So Clary is freaking out, and implores minus to do something about it. minus is lost in thought for one panel, and apparently thinks that the best way to solve this problem is to summon a giant octopus to start destroying the city. Truly, she is the mistress of non sequiturs.

Of course, this is continued on the next strip.

Apparently, the octopus is effective at attacking the aliens who got really pissed off at minus and are now attacking the planet. The sight of the octopus staring down on their city also causes those smiling zombies from before to get really angry and stop smiling. It also defeats the animals (who declared war on the human species after that hunter boxed that lion) with a single swoop of its tentacles. After its purpose has been served, the octopus is that captured in a giant net. So amazingly, that actually worked.

…Only for the next panel to depict people in a refugee camp because the octopus destroyed their homes. Geez minus, you could have picked something less destructive. You can do anything you want, can’t you?

Though I must say, that couple of strips was kind of cool. It established that events don’t happen in a vacuum, and reiterates that it would not be fun to actually live in a world where somebody has supernatural powers, especially if that somebody is a child.

In the fifty-second strip, minus is drawing an octopus in sidewalk chalk. Yay for Continuity Nods! The green-haired girl shows up, tells her the octopus was finally defeated, only for the ponytailed girl and the white-haired girl to walk by. Remember them from the tenth strip?

The green-haired girl keeps talking, about how she heard that the “northern capital” was severely damaged, which causes the white-haired girl, who has not had any lines up to this point, halts in surprise, with a exclamation mark hovering over her head to show how surprised she is. She freaks out because her friend Larry lives there. So now we know the names of three characters.

They call Larry on a cell phone, and there is a cut to the ruined city. Larry is walking along, completely unharmed. It turns out that he’s an adult, who looks kind of like a used car salesman, or maybe an old game show host. It really raises the question of how he knows this girl who’s in elementary school. He says he’s doing fine, and that’s the end of the strip.

Now, Armand has said that he originally intended for Larry to feature in several strips, always emerging unharmed from catastrophes. Unfortunately, that’s the only one that ever got drawn, so it’s a Chekhov’s Gun that sadly goes nowhere. The strip isn’t completely pointless though; it develops two more recurring characters.

But we don’t care about that! Onto the fifty-third strip. minus and the green-haired girl are hanging out at that hill from before, blowing bubbles. A bubble that floats by the green-haired girl has a whole world inside of it. Gasp!

The green-haired girl asks minus if the world is inhabited; she says yes. So the green-haired girl thinks for a panel, and asks minus what will happen when the bubble pops. This catches minus off-guard, her surprise visible because her ahoge stands straight up in defiance of gravity. She had never thought about this before, and so, turns it into a snow globe.

So this is a very important strip. It establishes a new dynamic. Before, when minus created that civilization underwater, it was completely destroyed when she pulled the plug, and she didn’t even remember it. But the green-haired girl does realize the consequences of their actions. Therefore, she thinks about what could happen, and gets minus to protect her creations. The two complement each other brilliantly.

The strip is far from over, though. Even though the civilization will not pop, the green-haired girl rolls her eyes at minus and says that the inhabitants would suffocate from lack of air. minus looks genuinely crestfallen when she hears this. So she does care, once stuff is pointed out to her. Interesting. So she makes it into a terrarium after the green-haired girl’s suggestion. The last few panels are of the two decorating it with stickers like the children they are. For once, everything actually turned out okay. The general formula here is that when the green-haired girl is present, minus does something constructive instead of destructive. Either minus is immature even for her age, or the green-haired girl is unusually mature for her age. The first one seems more likely.

The fifty-fourth strip is another nice one. It’s just cute. So, minus is drawing on the sidewalk again, when this older person shows up. She could be either a teenager or a young adult; it’s not clear. The woman compliments minus’s drawing and draws a picture of her own, which the readers get to see. There’s no Stylistic Suck involved here; it’s genuinely good. minus is said, though, because her drawing isn’t as good, so the woman tells her that she is only better because she’s older, and minus can grow up to be an even better artist than she is.

The next part is kind of funny, actually. The woman suggests they get ice cream, and immediately walks off-panel to go get some. Thus, she does not see that minus has already conjured some. Throughout the strip, she never finds out about minus’s powers. She’s just an ordinary person. minus is once again surprised, that someone doesn’t know about that, and so makes her own ice cream disappear so that the woman can get some from an ice cream truck and not suspect anything.

They get their ice cream, but unfortunately, some guy is walking past and does not notice the sidewalk drawing. It’s the woman who freaks out, yelling at the man that he didn’t even notice the “masterpiece” he was about to ruin. When he leaves, the woman talks to minus some more, before heading off. And in the last panel, minus changes her hair color to match the woman’s.

All in all, it was really cute. Nothing macabre-yet-funny happened, and minus acted just like a normal kid. It’s probably the most light-hearted strip in the whole comic. Unfortunately that meant there wasn’t much I could say about it.

The fifty-fifth strip has minus, Clary, and the green-haired girl working together on a school project. I have no idea why Clary is willingly associating with her. But anyway, Clary says that maybe they would finish their project sooner if they divided the work into sections. The green-haired girl agrees with that, but minus says she wants to play, and hits her head against the table. Clary scolds her like she were her mom or something, and is even drawn to look a bit older than minus. (But that’s just an artistic effect.)

Clary looks at her paper, only for an exclamation mark to appear over her head. She is not happy. Because suddenly, the correct answers appeared on all of their worksheets! minus tries to act like she has no idea what is going on, but Clary is not fooled. She makes a display of the fact that she is erasing the answers without looking at them, points out that it would be cheating for minus to just magically give them the answers, and then gives minus a Death Glare⁶ while telling her to get back to work.

See, that’s the thing. Clary does not like minus at all. The other kids at least tolerate her, but in her three appearances so far, Clary has been 1) upstaged by minus because the latter cheated, 2) yelling at minus to solve a problem that minus caused, and 3) saying that they can’t just use magic to solve all their problems. She would probably fit right in with those three kids from the thirteenth strip. And, since Armand is a good writer, the readers end up liking her immensely, even though she comes off as manic-depressive, as opposed to most antagonists of this type who are just annoying sticks in the mud,⁷ thus providing some depth to this comic.

But no sooner have they resumed their work then minus’s ahoge picks up a radio signal. She says it’s the Shining Beacon and has to go, giving her an excuse to leave. Clary looks to the green-haired girl for answers, but the latter has none. After all, she’s just minus’s friend; she doesn’t know anything about the inner workings of her friend’s mind.

The following panel is reminiscent of those eyecatches on Super Robot shows, describing the “Shining Beacon”. The last panel shows two gigantic Transformers-esque robots duking it out in the middle of the city, that was only recently rebuilt after that giant octopus attacked it. Won’t someone please think of those refugees? minus isn’t— she came up with this just to get out of doing schoolwork!

The fifty-sixth strip starts with minus relaxing on a beanbag chair, reading a book. Then, her mother yells at her from off-panel to do the dishes, right now. Now, minus could easily just snap her fingers and have them done, so what does she do? She astral-projects herself so that she can read her book while a copy of her does the dishes. Presumably as a visual aid, her copy is tinted blue. Her copy cleans the dishes in about a second, and then, just for fun, assembles all the dishes into a humanoid being, and gets into a fencing match with it. This goes horribly wrong. At first there’s some classic Hollywood movie-style Flynning going on, but then, minus’s copy gets run through by the dish man’s sword. The copy actually dies, while the dish man leaves, not caring that he killed somebody with household implements.

The fifty-seventh strip is a three-for-one deal, as Armand uploaded three strips on the same page. The first one has no dialogue at all and is just the dish man mastering martial arts. The second one starts off with an action shot of the dish man brutally defeating his opponents in matches. He now has a smiley face drawn on himself, to express how he is feeling. He is always happy beating the crap out of people, and worse, is pretty much invincible. What was minus’s copy thinking?⁸

The dish man has attracted the attention of the sports world, such that minus is watching a TV special about him, narrated by two sportscasters who call him “Dishface”. So that’s his name. Huh. Now, minus did not make Dishface; her copy did. So she realizes that something is amiss, and conjures up a sword, then leaves her house, clearly pissed off. We then cut to Dishface building a sculpture out of the martial arts signs he has won from dojos. Things are looking up to a confrontation, don’t you think?

The third and final part to this saga opens with Dishface, now dressed in normal clothes, being wished luck by a fan as he gets his mail. Apparently he has a house now. Dishface turns around to get his mail, but notices something, and swiftly turns out to catch an arrow that was only seconds away from penetrating his head. He crushes it with his immense strength and goes to the source. The next panel is of minus and Dishface going at it like in those samurai movies, against the light of the Moon. We never see the details, but since the next day’s news is about Dishface’s disappearance, I think we can guess what happened.

Cut to minus and the green-haired girl watching this on TV. The green-haired girl wonders why they’re watching it and offers to change the channel. I’m a bit surprised that she doesn’t suspect minus’s involvement with the whole thing. Of course, the final panel shows a dish with two cookies on it, suggesting eyes.

So apparently, Dishface was causing so much trouble that minus felt she had to get rid of him. Interesting how she’s only willing to fix the problems her copies cause on her own initiative.

Well, I’ll stop here again, because there is another story arc coming up. But as you can see, this is the point where Armand decided to start developing his characters, making the comic more interesting.

Footnotes

¹ Whose walls are strangely pastel-colored

² No, this does not mean that they’re dead.

³ OH. So that explains how the ghosts could have existed earlier. It all makes sense now.

⁴ Speaking of interesting things, I have noticed that Armand has had a slight Art Shift since the beginning of the comic, most notable in minus’s hairstyle. But that’s beside the point.

⁵ Not to mention world hunger, as the football hero points out.

⁶ That actually makes the girl recoil

⁷ Yes, Clary is all those things, but she’s so over-the-top it’s funny.

⁸ Wait, don’t answer that. We all know she wasn’t thinking at all.

Comment [1]

Not only does the sixtieth strip focus on somebody other than minus, minus does not appear at all. Nevertheless, her presence is definitely felt.

The Victim of the Week for this strip is some random man, who, to Armand’s skill, looks different from all the other random bystanders who have been drawn so far. The man is walking along when he sees, on the ground, and old-fashioned oil lamp. I think you can see where this is going. The man seems to be Genre Savvy, because he isn’t at all shocked when a genie appears from the lamp. The genie is drawn something like a wispy cloud of smoke, without visible form, though it does have a rather… familiar wisp on the top where its head would be. This is foreshadowing, guys.

In any case, the man just asks for money like it’s nothing, and his wish is granted, with no negative side effects. Don’t you love these genies, that don’t twist your words? After being pleasantly surprised, the man uses his second wish to be surrounded by attractive women, and sure enough, two women get poofed right over to where he is, and don’t seem surprised at this. The man is now beaming, and for his final wish, asks for power. So what does the genie do? Push him into a mud puddle and disappear! The genie laughs in his face while the man is not happy at all, and walks away in disgust. In the last panel, we see somebody else walk past, eyeing the lamp curiously, while from behind a tree, we see the ginger ghost girl looking on, just barely able to contain her excitement at the fact that this guy’s gonna get thrown in a mud puddle. minus is merely clueless, but the red-haired ghost is just a terrible person. Behind a tree trunk, we see the only shot of minus we see in this entire strip, unless of course you count her appearances as the genie.

Naturally, this is continued into the next strip, where we see this middle-aged man wishing to be the strongest in the world, and getting a boot to the face. This is followed by a panel of minus and the ghost LMAOing. The genie’s next victim is a woman who wishes she could fly. Her wish is granted a bit literally by being flicked into the air off the panel. Once again, minus and her friend are in stitches, even though it really isn’t that funny. Ironic, yes, but not funny.¹ The third and final victim is a girl about minus’s age who wishes that her mother was no longer sick. There’s a Beat Panel in which the genie contemplates punching her, and then cuts to minus and the ghost. They look at each other, and then decide just to grant the girl’s wish without punching her. The next panel is of the girl hugging her mother in her hospital bed.

I’ll just leave this here.

But since this wouldn’t be minus. without something strange yet funny happening, minus makes the girl and her mother’s hair sprout leaves and be a home to birds, while minus and her friend run off laughing.

The first panel of the sixty-second strip is a close-up of those weeds that manage to grow in cracks of the sidewalk. This is important, because minus comes across it in the next panel. She examines it for a few panels, and then makes it grow huge. I mean size of a tree huge.² She makes it blossom, all while the background is done in warm colors, to symbolize the Sun. Once the weeds have grown into a fantastic tree, minus admires her handiwork, and leaves. This strip is nothing more than Armand showing off his ability to paint landscapes, to great effect. There was not a single line of dialogue in that whole strip.

The sixty-third strip is one of those rare ones that I wish would appear more often, as minus interacts with others and actually behaves somewhat normally. She’s at the park, feeding the birds, when this boy about her own age walks up to her and engages in conversation. Unfortunately for him, he drops his ice cream.

And here is why I like this strip. minus sees what happened and conjures up some more ice cream for him. She is actually developing into someone who isn’t a complete jerk. Unfortunately for her, the boy goes to his father immediately and explains what just happened. She has a rather perturbed look on her face when she realizes what is going to happen. So she wants to keep her powers a secret now, even though she had no problem showing off in front of her classmates before? So the boy’s dad appears, and asks if minus can make his hair grow, ‘cause he’s bald. She complies, and his hair is as long as a hippie’s. He leaves, and minus tries to go back to feeding the birds. That’s all she wants to do, ya know. Leave minus alone!³

Unfortunately for our heroine, a man with a top hat and cane shows up and asks for another favor. Sure enough, the whole park has found out what’s happened and swamped minus, asking for petty things! Yet I can’t help but notice that none of them batted an eyelash at all the weirdness that happened around Strip 50.

Apparently minus is uncomfortable around large crowds or something, because she just makes them vanish, and goes back to feeding the birds. I would like to think that she simply teleported them all back to their homes, but the green-haired girl never appeared in this strip, and usually minus only does something sensible when she’s around. Nevertheless, I still liked the strip, because it showed that minus’s powers can’t stay secret forever. This is foreshadowing.

That strip is followed up by this one, which is also pretty cool, because it gives another look into minus’s mind. It starts with minus bouncing around on a bubble (because apparently we need to be reminded that she’s a child and likes childish things) when she comes across a puppy, which always says “yip! yip!” So of course minus agrees with the readers that its Cuteness Proximity is off the charts, and starts to play with it. The puppy takes a liking to her, and she runs to her house asking her parents if she can keep it. Her mother does not approve, and slams the door in her face. You know, I am really starting to dislike minus’s unseen parents.

So minus is in her room, doing her homework, and once the coast is clear, shuts the door, reaches into her pocket, and pulls out the puppy which she miniaturized. And with her Squeeing over it, the strip ends.⁴

The sixty-fifth strip is Something Completely Different. It opens at a museum, in which minus’s class is on a field trip. In the first panel, we see the ponytailed girl, the white-haired girl, Clary, and… Oh Crap. You have got to be kidding me.

Apparently the short-haired twin was not sent back in time at the end of Strip 27 to be with her temporally displaced sister. I told you that was confusing! So either minus was being an even bigger jerk than usual, or her sister was lying to comfort her.⁵ So I take it we were supposed to interpret the final panel as being a flashback. Okay. Back to discussing this strip.

The four kids are looking at a giant statue of a horse, which, according to Clary, is of Sergeant Davy’s steed, Prendon. Meaning that all the way back in Clary’s first appearance when minus unwittingly humiliated her by changing the answers on a history test, that actually caused history to change, so that Sergeant Davy is a war hero and the museum has a huge marble statue of his steed. I just love all the Call Backs that are showing up in full force in this part of the comic.

Also, since we have four minor characters in the same panel for much of this strip, I suppose now is a good time to talk about how Armand is able to give all of his characters Distinctive Appearances, despite the fact that if you look only at their faces, they’re completely identical. He’s able to pull this off by giving them all different hair colors and styles, which is particularly evident here. But I digress.

So Clary brings up the subject of how cool it would be to have a real flying horse like Sergeant Davy’s. I don’t know why it’s Clary bringing this up, but oh well. The white-haired girl gets some more characterization, and says that that would be reeeeeeally nice, and is practically bouncing up and down with glee, as she suggests that they get minus to bring the Prendon statue to life so they all can ride it. The white-haired girl is just… I don’t know how to say this. A dumbass.

Of course, the short-haired twin vetoes this immediately, and with very good reason. The white-haired girl, in a stunning display of insensitivity to the fact that her classmate lost a family member ‘cause of minus, runs off to get the girl anyway. The ponytailed girl runs after her because they have to stick together, thus leaving the remaining twin and Clary alone, their facial expressions clearly stating “oh my God, this is so gonna end badly.” Which coincidentally, is exactly what the readers think.

So the white-haired girl and her partner come back, and shows them a potion minus made to bring stone to life, all while the short-haired twin is rolling her eyes. Of course, the white-haired girl pours the potion not onto the statue, but onto one of the pebbles surrounding the statue. See what I mean? She’s a dumbass.

As one can expect, the small pebble comes to life instead of the Prendon statue, and asks to go on an adventure. The white-haired girl is pissed off that she got cheated out of her pony ride (even though it was her own fault) and the surviving twin picks up the living pebble, anger evident on her face, and chucks it at minus’s head, much to the latter’s surprise. Of course her buddy is the green-haired girl, who just looks on with an expression that says “see what you’ve gotten yourself into?”

It’s the facial expressions that really make this comic, as dialogue boxes are often not needed.

As it turns out, this is part of a story line, which continues onto the sixty-sixth strip. They are now inside the museum, and the tour guide shows them some paintings. He gives the kids an Infodump that none of them are paying attention to, and that Armand surely knows because he’s an artist, culminating in some blank canvasses, that are apparently part of an artistic movement. The green-haired girl asks minus if she can believe that, only to discover that minus is gone. Worse, football hero doesn’t know where she is, either. So the green-haired girl walks through the museum looking for her friend, though she won’t find her because minus is inside a painting, having a picnic with the subjects.

As it turns out, this strip is another three-for-one deal, so there are two more strips on this page. minus jumps from one painting to another, which happens to be of a group of people in a bar. She lands on one of the subject’s heads, and, even though they are only globs of paint, the subjects notice this and get into a bar fight. So once again, minus has messed things up for no reason, and given sentience to subjects of a painting, which is now, thanks to her meddling, of two guys duking it out in a bar, while a crowd eggs them on.

In the third part, minus goes back to the museum and meets up with the green-haired girl, who warns her not to do that again. The two go back to the tour, where the guide is discussing a primitive tribe who, on first contact with Westerners, held the superstitious belief that photography could steal their souls. Of course, I am pretty sure that that is just an urban legend, but it’s Artistic License.

One of the children asks the tour guide if people really believed that, and he says they did, and they all start laughing. Pretty much everybody except minus and the green-haired girl are laughing at these poor primitives. That really isn’t nice, or culturally sensitive, for that matter.

In the next panel, minus brings out a camera. Of course, her classmates know what’s going on and get the heck out of there, much to the tour guide’s bewilderment. So he yells at them for believing in that crazy superstition. Oh, he has no idea what is to come.

Since he thinks that minus is just an ordinary kid, he lets her take a picture of him even though flash photography is not allowed in the museum. Now, the green-haired girl knows what’s going on, but makes no attempt to stop minus. Sure enough, after the tour guide gets his picture taken, the final panel depicts his ghost in a Polaroid. Death By Racism, I never thought I’d see that in this comic.⁶ The poor guy can’t even go to the spirit world, now.

The following strip, which will not be numbered, thankyouverymuch, is one of those rare ones with a caption: “A coast.” We see this coastal city, about to be swallowed up by a huge tidal wave, and some poor chap trying to outrun it. But before the tsunami touches down on the city wreaking havoc, the water starts to turn into birds, like in those M. C. Escher paintings. Gee, who could be behind this, I wonder? So the town is not destroyed, and the birds start flying over it.

The following panel gives us the strip’s second caption: “A city.” After some panels of buildings, we see one of them collapse. Oh, the humanity. Even though the tidal wave didn’t actually hit, there was still an earthquake.

…Cut to minus and the green-haired girl playing Jenga. As soon as it’s the green-haired girl’s turn, the earthquake happens, ruining the entire tower. minus throws up her arms in victory, while her friend yells that that doesn’t count.

So minus caused a tidal wave and an earthquake, causing unknown amounts of property damage, just to win a board game? Man, is she short-sighted.

The seventieth strip features minus walking down a 90-degree slope just because she can when the brown-haired ghost girl from before shows up. She tells minus about the theory of Ancient Astronauts, and since she previously thought a dandelion was an alien artifact, of course she believes it. So she gets minus to send them back in time to see if they can find some aliens. They arrive at an ancient city somewhere, and the ghost thinks she’s found something. minus translates the inscription, only to find it has absolutely nothing to do with aliens. They search high and low, but find nothing.

Back in the present, archaeologists uncover an inscription with minus’s face on it, portraying her as some horrific two-faced deity. Heh. Much to their shock, they see that it’s written in English. So minus just trolled the entire archaeological community!

Well, onto the seventy-first strip. minus is playing with a Frisbee. She reaches into her jacket pocket, and brings out her miniature puppy. Yay, the puppy’s back! The rest of the strip is her playing with the puppy, being as cute as is humanly possible. Not only do they play Frisbee, but she takes her puppy on a walk through those unnaturally steep mountains from earlier, and to that restaurant where she got the super soft creams. The poor, old waiter complains that they don’t serve animals at the establishment, so minus temporarily turns her puppy into an exact copy of the water, though still with canine mannerisms, much to the waiter’s horror.

minus also does what all little girls with pets do: hold up her animal right in other people’s faces, much to their annoyance. The last panel is of minus drawing her puppy in sidewalk chalk as the puppy chases a butterfly. I do think that the strips with the puppy in them are among the best.

But the next strip starts another story arc, so I’m gonna stop it here. I hope somebody actually comments on these eventually.

Footnotes

¹ You know, if enough people know about this lamp, how come nobody has warned them that they’re just going to get punched in the face?

² I wonder what happened to the wall that was behind her?

³ And with that Chris Crocker parody that is now like six or seven years dated, I have now stooped to a new low.

⁴ Wait, what am I doing? That was my running gag for the last article series!

⁵ Hey, don’t look at me that way. I’ve read this comic before, but I don’t remember everything about it.

⁶ Of course, knowing minus, she probably wasn’t upset about the tour guide making fun of that tribe as much as she thought, “ooh, a camera that captures souls? WHAT A COOL IDEA!”

Comment [4]

We just passed the halfway point of the comic in the last part. See, I told you this was short. It’s time to celebrate.¹

All right then, back to the comic. The seventy-second strip is one of those in which minus does not appear. These have lately been showing up with some frequency because other characters are being developed. Since I rather like Character Development, I am not complaining in the least. This strip is merely the first in another story arc, anyway.

The two characters in the scene are the ponytailed girl and her hanger-on, the white-haired girl. The second of these is twirling around, talking about how speshul her day was, being annoying enough for the ponytailed girl to run as fast as she can away from her. For some reason, she chooses to hide in the girls’ bathroom. Because her friend, who is also a girl, would never look in there! No sooner has she entered the room than she discovers that it has been transformed. It is now much Bigger On the Inside, containing a whole ecosystem. I think we know who is responsible for this.

So of course, the ponytailed girl’s curiosity gets the better of her, and she explores this place, thus leading into the next strip.

The first two panels of this strip are nothing but the same picture of the bush, with slightly rustling leaves. The next panel shows the ponytailed girl behind it, from out of nowhere. No sooner does she make herself visible than a voice from off-panel yells at her, using medieval language. She turns around, and much to her gaping horror, is staring down the gigantic lance of this man dressed all in white and in a face-concealing helmet, standing atop some fantastic horned beast that looks nothing like any real animal, who states that he is the White Knight of Hothrawn, wherever that is. Before she can say a single word in her defense, the knight accuses her of kidnapping the princess and two winged figures appear from out of nowhere to take her away.

Don’t you hate it when you stumble right into the middle of a Renaissance Fair?

They fly up to a domed castle in the clouds, and the ponytailed girl is brought before the queen of this place. Three guesses as to who it is, and the last two don’t count.

The ponytailed girl protests her innocence to minus. Her classmate stares at her for a panel, before ordering her decapitation. Yeah, she’s just playing around,² but the ponytailed girl faints when she hears this.

As the ponytailed girl is carted away by one of the Winged Humanoids, the white-haired girl enters the bathroom which has become a portal to a fantasyland. The white knight immediately appears, and says that the white-haired girl is the princess. Was it ever established before this point that minus was friends with the white-haired girl?

Upon being told that she will get to ride a flying unicorn, the newcomer beams with excitement, and the last panel depicts her hugging the thing as they soar into the air.

The seventy-fourth strip is of the ponytailed girl being carted off to meet her doom. Man, minus is taking this whole thing too far. But I guess when you have magical powers that let you do whatever you want and interact with ghosts on a daily basis, the difference between life and death means nothing to you. Fortunately for the ponytailed girl, however, her captors are ambushed by a man clad all in black and wielding a piece of wood.

HOLY CRAP, A NINJA!

The ninja takes the ponytailed girl, and it turns out that he’s only about her height. Strange. They run off, but one of the winged figures brandishes a sword at him. This leads to the ninja giving off one of the best lines in the whole comic: “Fool! Do you think you can withstand the power of the Black Knight!? You cannot!”³ Even though that line is so cheesy and so cliché, it just sounds awesome, particularly since this guy is taking on an angel.

The Black Knight-turned-ninja clobbers the guard, and he and the ponytailed girl reach a castle turret. He assures her that she will not be harmed for as long as he is there, and they just jump off the turret like a boss, landing on a giant crow. Of course, the ponytailed girl is perturbed at what’s going on, while the Black Knight manages to look stoic even though his face is completely concealed. They’re in the air for a couple panels, and meet the white-haired girl halfway. She’s smiling without a care in the world, oblivious to her friend’s discomfort, and waves at her. Even though she has no idea what’s going on, the ponytailed girl waves back, but in a manner that makes it clear that she is only doing it out of obligation.

In the seventy-fifth strip, (another three-for-one deal) one of the angelic beings informs minus that the people of the villages are running out of food. With a smirk on her face, she says that they don’t have any to give them, even though she could just conjure up more food, and has done that before. To make matters worse, the white-haired girl is playing in the field of delicious cakes! That is actually what it’s called. Not even Marie Antoinette was this self-centered.

I think it’s safe to say that minus is just playing around, blissfully unaware of the fact that the beings she creates for her games are actually sentient, but that doesn’t make it any less disturbing. Cut to the white-haired girl looking at the cakes, when minus shows up and they get into a food fight. I still don’t think these two have ever really interacted before.

Cut again to the giant crow, and the black knight recruits the ponytailed girl into La Résistance. She has more empathy for the beings of minus’s imagination than minus does. The crow lands in a desolate location, with no vegetation in sight.

In the second part, the ponytailed girl lives among the villagers. This is told without words, but she helps them get supplies, and, when the ninjas get into a battle, she tends to her wounds. She even learns how to fight, herself, and in the last panel of this part, stares up at the night sky in ninja garb, probably thinking about how she got into this situation.

(I must say, did minus really need to make the fantasy world this extensive, when she herself will never even visit that part of it? Again, it shows that, even though she is starting to warm up to real people, the beings she creates are still subject to her mad whims.)

Unfortunately, there is no climactic final confrontation. In the third and final part to this strip, the bell rings signaling the end of recess, and minus has to go back to class. The green-haired girl asks where she was. She is shortly followed by the white-haired girl, who had a great time. After several panels of just the bathroom door, to establish that some time has passed, the ponytailed girl exits, takes one last look at that world that is probably now gone⁴, and leaves, silently, shutting the door behind her.

That was kind of anticlimactic, but was probably done to once again hammer home the fact that minus is easily distracted and doesn’t really follow up on things. But then, do actual children really care much about their make-believe sessions when they start doing other things? Probably not. The only problem is that when minus is involved, she actually makes them real, but does not seem to notice.

Anyway, the seventy-eighth strip is once again minus with sidewalk chalk. But this time, there’s Painting the Fourth Wall! She decides to turn her own world into a chalk drawing, and even the panel borders look as though they were drawn in chalk.⁵ Now minus is able to make things just by drawing them. She tries to draw a tree, but since she isn’t that tall, it winds up horizontal. While she is drawing a snake burrowing its way through the sidewalk, a man walks by, and it turns out that everybody except for minus turned into stick figures! But they do not appear to notice. They lock eyes, and minus helpfully gives him wings; he thanks her, and flies away.

minus returns to her sidewalk drawing, but, as one can tell from her facial expression, gets bored, and reverts the world back to its normal medium. However, her changes are still present. There is now a horizontal tree growing near the sidewalk, and unfortunately for the snake, it is cut into several pieces and dies horribly. minus has really got to start thinking these things through.

And in the last panel, we see that though he is no longer a stick figure, the man still has wings, and is happily flying among the birds. It’s a shame that minus’s meddling only rarely has a positive outcome. By the way, that man will appear again, but not for a long while.

The seventy-ninth strip is weird. It begins with minus watching a commercial for this super special awesome new amusement park in town ™. We get to see that when minus has Expressive Hair: when she is surprised, her ahoge⁶ sticks straight up. As soon as she sees the commercial, she runs off, presumably to go.

This is also one of the few strips in which I will call attention to minus’s hair color. It is green when she is watching the advertisement, but when she goes outside, it is now bright red. She’s walking along, dressed all snazzy in this jacket and projecting an aura of coolness, when she overhears this boy (who for some reason looks like a vaudeville performer) asking his mother if they can go to the super special awesome new amusement park in town ™. Once again, minus halts in surprise; apparently she has forgotten all about it.

In the next set of panels, minus’s hair has changed color once again, to blue. She’s drawing with sidewalk chalk for some reason, completely ignoring the super special awesome new amusement park in town ™. She is distracted by what appears to be a dust mote, which leads her in the direction of… the super special awesome new amusement park in town ™. Cut to the park, to see a bunch of copies of minus, identical except for their hair color, playing around. The few people there who aren’t minus are disturbed.

So I’m confused. Did minus just make a bunch of copies of herself before this strip started, for some reason, or is it that we were always supposed to think that each time minus changes her hair color, that it’s a different copy of her? The first explanation makes more sense to me, but you never know.

The eightieth strip is just pure awesome, ya know why? Because the puppy’s back! Hooray! minus has made it giant so that she and the green-haired girl can ride it. For some reason, her ahoge has become even more ridiculously long, but only for the first panel. They’re bouncing along the neighborhood, and minus lets them off at her house. Unfortunately, no sooner do they land then minus’s mother yells at her from off-panel again, about how she can’t have a puppy. minus panics, and says there is no puppy, only for it to bellow out “yip! yip!”

So minus is perturbed, and the green-haired girl glances behind them. Turns out minus made the puppy even more huge— and the readers can see this. Proportionally, the puppy is even bigger compared to minus and her friend in this panel than it was when they were riding it. Nice touch. Except… doesn’t that mean that minus doesn’t have complete control over what’s going on? This is foreshadowing.

But for now, minus hastily yells that it isn’t her puppy, oh no. It belongs to the green-haired girl, who is not pleased that minus has just thrust this responsibility on her.

minus’s mother is apparently gone, so she asks her friend if she can take care of the puppy. The green-haired girl says she can, if her parents allow it. minus bluntly tells her that they will, and sure enough, when she brings the puppy home, her parents literally jump for joy at the prospect of having one. So, minus can’t do anything to her own parents, but she has no problem with making other people’s parents do what she wants. Okay, then. This is getting stranger.

As an aside, we actually see the green-haired girl’s parents on-panel, unlike minus’s. They look normal enough, but her mother also has green hair. It must be a dominant trait, since her father has brown hair.⁷ That’s unimportant, though. What is important is the very fact that the green-haired girl’s parents make an appearance highlights the fact that minus’s parents never do so, even though she does have parents.

Well, I’ll cut it off here, because the next strip begins yet another story arc. See you later, though it doesn’t really matter because I’m not even sure if anyone’s been reading this.

Footnotes

¹ This celebration was cut short because it’s bloody stupid to celebrate being halfway done a review.

² And may well not even know that people die when they lose their heads.

³ This goes without saying, but just in case, I’ll provide the citation anyway: Strip 74, panels 6 and 7.

⁴ What were we saying about this earlier, minus?!

⁵ Though according to Armand, he used crayons.

⁶ Which no longer resembles a single hair, but arguably a strange, vertical ponytail in its own right.

⁷ Yes, I know that green hair could be recessive if her father carries the allele; I’m just simplifying things.

Comment [4]

The eighty-first strip opens with minus excitedly taking a book off the shelf. Why is she so eager to read it, you ask? The following panel shows us the cover — it’s titled “Judy the Tank and the Trouble with Pirates”. So it’s just what a kid like minus loves— living weapons fighting pirates. Hooray! In classic Decompressed Comic fashion, the next six panels are of her looking at the book and occasionally flipping through the pages so that we know she’s making progress. Now that she’s all fired up about pirates, she holds her swivel chair like it’s a ship’s helm, and starts pretending to be a pirate.

There is only one problem. It turns out that she’s in a library. So this guy appears and asks her to stop making so much noise. minus is completely oblivious to this and thinks that he just wants to join her crew. When the man says no, minus says that he’ll walk the plank, and next thing he knows, he is tied up on a gangplank suspended over water, with minus pointing a cutlass at his back. His expression is frozen in a state of horror, and if you were in his situation, wouldn’t you be too? minus says that she’ll only let him go if he joins her crew, so he is pretty much bullied into it. I feel so sorry for him. So minus, trying to talk like a pirate by inserting “arr” into every other sentence, gives herself the piratical appellation of minus the black. Yes, really. The last panel shows her stomping around enthusiastically yelling “arr”, while the man she pressed into service is very weakly and unenthusiastically doing so. This is, of course, a story arc. The eighty-second strip is called minus. – the black –

It begins with a scene of the library from outside, one of those perfectly rectangular brick buildings. Over the next two panels, it disintegrates, and from inside we see the people’s surprise as the bookshelves start to collapse. All the leaves from the books join together, as we see that minus transformed the building into a pirate ship, essentially press-ganging everyone inside. minus sets up the swivel chair as the helm, and starts steering, like a boss, as the ship moves along the road, cutting a huge groove into its path.

Now, at this point, I would think that the best way to contain minus would be to have the green-haired girl be around her at all times to rein her in, but sadly that it not what happens, as can plainly be seen. The green-haired girl isn’t even in this story arc, which of course continues onto the next strip.

Since her pirate ship was originally a library, it still has all its books. So minus is poring over a book about pirates, and discovers something horrible. She puts the book down and informs everyone that it is time to eat. We get to see these innocent bystanders, away from minus, as they discuss what they might be having. All of them are looking forward to food. Much to their palpable disappointment, on the table are giant bowls filled with nothing but lemons. Once again, minus has taken things a little too far.

The guy from last strip asks her what the hell is going on, and she replies that they need to eat lemons in order to protect themselves from scurvy. Gee, if she had read the part of the book where it said that pirates stole from people and slaughtered those who tried to stand up to them, would she have condoned that? Wait, don’t answer…

The guy points out that they’re in no danger of scurvy because they’re on land and could just stop at a supermarket or something. He says that he’s not gonna eat the lemons. Unfortunately for him, at that very moment minus removes all the Vitamin C from his body, and he collapses, presumably from shock. The way minus reacts to this is just the same way any child would while playing pretend: she throws up her arms in horror and yells, “Oh no, scurvy!”¹ Even though I don’t like her behavior in the rest of this arc, I did find that funny, as it shows that she’s still just playing a game and doesn’t actually mean ill will to anybody. (Though that in no way excuses her irresponsibility.)

Faced with this horrible spectacle, the other bystanders try to appease minus by shoving lemons down their gullets without even peeling them first, while she looks on, smugly. If one of them chokes, does she know the Heimlich maneuver?²

At least minus is trying not to be a hypocrite, because she tries a lemon herself. Apparently she never tried one before in her life, as she only now finds out that lemons are sour as all hell. You have to wonder why she didn’t just give them oranges. So what does she do? While she is about to take another bite, she actually transforms the lemon into cake just as it enters her mouth. Gee, I hope minus gets scurvy, I mean, I’ve been joking around, but it’s really hard to like her in this arc.

The eighty-fourth strip continues the story arc, but this strip is drawn in pen and ink. This one is narrated in the manner of those old serials. Apparently, minus has kept her involuntary crew at sea for several weeks. Surely she would have gotten bored long before then. And wouldn’t people be looking for her? This arc must be set during summer vacation or something. So they land at a port town, and minus overhears other sailors telling tall tales about her, which, knowing her nature, are probably all true. So, as these sailors are telling their tales, one of them, who looks astonishingly like Nostradamus, tells of a treasure buried on a cursed island. Naturally, minus heads out for it. Now, the narration mentions her crew, so I’m surprised they haven’t mutinied yet. It wouldn’t surprise me if they did, because they’re caught in a storm. But then minus stands on the deck of the ship, points at the sky, and commands it to halt, or she will release her fury upon it. And with that, the storm ceases. Now she’s just stealing Jesus’ shtick. what the hell?

The treasure is guarded by an undead horde of skeletons. In the one panel of the fight we see, minus is dueling one skeleton with her cutlass, while one of her crew is uppercutting a skeleton’s skull off. Dude, that’s awesome. When minus confronts the undead captain, who is apparently wearing a raincoat, he just gives the treasure to her because they’re the only crew who ever fought them, instead of running away in terror. Considering that minus created the skeletons just for this escapade, I am pretty sure that they are the first to fight them, period. But then again, there was that incident involving the ponytailed girl… Ah well. The strip ends with them sailing off, but the arc is still continued into the next one.

It opens on a beach, where we see some paper sticking out from the sand. Some boy finds it, and sees that it’s a map to the location of the treasure of minus the black. He’s all excited, gets a shovel, and follows the map to dig up the treasure. Sure enough, he finds it, and even though the treasure chest is full of jewels, he is able to pick it up in his hands. He leaves happily, and then a day passes, and minus arrives (alone) at where she buried the treasure. I have no idea what happened to her crew. She finds that someone stole her treasure, but doesn’t really care, as she never follows up on it. That is the end of the story arc. I do have to wonder why she left the map on a beach.

The eighty-sixth strip is minus and the green-haired girl playing with a Frisbee. Unfortunately it starts to rain, so what does minus do? She flies them up above the clouds, so that they can continue their game. I hope they don’t throw the Frisbee too far. Well, that’s the end of the strip; it was a short one because of the lack of dialogue.

The next strip also features the two of them, but is not a continuation. minus and the green-haired girl are playing indoors, slapping this annoying creature that pops up from out of the ground. But this is just the background. The real point to this strip is their conversation. minus asks the green-haired girl why she was absent from school. It turns out she was sick. minus, on the other hand, has never been sick before, but after hearing that her friend got to stay home from school, she makes herself sick the following day.

So the next morning, she wakes up, stays in bed, conjures up a television and a bowl of soup or something, and prepares to take the day off. Unfortunately for her, as soon as she starts to eat, she gets nauseous. Of course, she regrets her decision instantly. Karma, whoo! After spending the whole day miserable, the next day she is seen scowling at her friend, who has no idea of the reason for it.

The next strip features minus and the green-haired girl in the library once again. Hey, maybe she took my advice somehow, even though that’s clearly impossible. They’re reading, and minus starts to switch everybody’s heads around, just for the fun of it. Her friend tells her to stop it, so she reverts it back to normal. She apologizes to everyone³ but that doesn’t mean they aren’t angry with her, as you can see from their facial expressions. Then in the background of one panel we see somebody rush out the door. Turns out that minus had switched the bodies of a young woman and an old woman, and the old woman left (in the young woman’s body) before minus could switch them back, so the young woman has come to tell minus about this oversight. The last panel depicts the old woman walking outside, in a younger body, while somebody looks on.

The eighty-ninth strip begins a mini-arc which I like a lot more than that other arc. minus is walking outside and decides to create a staircase to the clouds. However, it turns out that a man and a woman saw her do this.⁴ You know what this means.

DUN DUN DUUN!

Unbeknownst to minus, the two follow her, and we get to see perfectly ordinary people walking on the clouds without minus’s knowledge. minus heads off somewhere, so the couple, the curious people they are, get into a cab and tail her. What is truly interesting about this is that this couple are among the only people in the entire comic who realize something is amiss when minus is around. They catch up with her, at the very same restaurant where she’s been ordering those super special awesome soft creams. The last panel shows them waving to her, as they ask if they can sit at her booth.

As shown in the next strip, minus allows it. So they strike up a conversation with her, where the woman asks if minus is really all-powerful. Apparently minus has never really thought about this before. For some odd reason, the woman asks minus if she can make it so that the woman is in the man’s body and vice-versa. The man is skeptical of her ability to do this, and minus, completely oblivious to any possible ulterior motive for this, does it anyway, much to the man’s surprise. The woman, on the other hand, says that she knew minus could do it. (Though since their bodies are swapped, it looks like the man is saying this. S/he is also leaning on the table with closed eyes.) What follows are three rather inscrutable panels: The couple glance at each other and have an illegible conversation. Then the one in the female body glares at minus (enough to surprise her) and then in the third panel the “man” is leaning back in the booth while the “woman” is turned around with “her” feet on the top of the booth. Once again, they are having an illegible conversation. Apparently it was about how to make minus help the world, because then they ask her to eliminate all conflict in the world, just for a single day. But minus is a little kid and doesn’t know what the word “conflict” means. So the woman explains it as just people fighting. minus agrees. The couple look on, smiling, as it turns out that minus was eating her super special awesome soft cream this whole conversation.

Then the scene cuts to a basketball game. Players on both teams are going for the ball. Then, a player from one team passes it to a player of the other team! The two of them score goals together, and it’s a tie. minus got way too broad a definition of “conflict” here.

But not to worry, because the confusion will be cleared up in the next strip. For some reason I still haven’t figured out, both the man and woman are dressed in dinner jackets and have mustaches.⁵ They actually give an Infodump about how a land dispute was peacefully resolved… by the islanders agreeing to give up the island and live in the sea. The man points out that this is ironic wish fulfillment. It is clear to both of them that minus did not know what she was doing at all, between that and the basketball game. They take off their fake mustaches, and skip off to try their luck with minus again.

This time, they aren’t going to be so vague. No, instead they clarify, with reams of documents, in legalese, about exactly what they want minus to do. Then they skip off to the ice cream place and ask minus to look it over. Since she’s a child (who judging from her personality, may well have ADD or something) who doesn’t understand a word of the document, she doesn’t even get through a single page before getting bored and making origami and paper airplanes. We never see the couple’s reaction to this, as the strip is over.

The ninety-second strip is a three-for-one deal again. minus and the green-haired girl are looking at clouds, talking about what the clouds look like. Of course minus is giving the clouds uncanny resemblances to their guesses, and her friend calls her on this. minus denies it, but as soon as she makes a fire-breathing dragon, it becomes obvious. She is not a good liar, and that is probably a good thing. Her friend glances at her while she looks the other way, and whistles. As if it could be any more obvious.

So the green-haired girl asks minus to make a cloud shaped like a woman, for some reason. It passes into the city, where it waves at a little girl, which looks up at the cloud, and then it moves away. I have no idea what is going on. My guess is that it’s something personal related to the green-haired girl that minus doesn’t know about, since she didn’t elaborate.

The second part of the strip depicts the cloud as it continues along its path. It covers a city, approaches a waterfall, does a loop-de-loop in the sky, and approaches a flock of birds. It’s really nice artwork. This continues in the third part, where the cloud-lady sees a shooting star and follows it. It reaches a tropical island, and in the last panel, there’s a torrential downpour.

This was one of those stories where Armand only used minus to set up the story of one of the things she creates. In this case, it allowed him to show more landscapes, which I think are his best art. So I liked it, even though it had little to do with anything.

The ninety-fifth strip opens on a hillscape, with two houses clearly visible on the center hill. minus and the green-haired girl fly by on a flying carpet, and the green-haired girl notices the house. She talks about how cool it is, and that the people who live there must be pretty rich.

The green-haired girl starts looking at other things, while minus takes another look at the house. Then, she does something inexplicable. She takes advantage of perspective, moving her hand so that it looks like it is touching the house (though of course, it is nowhere near it). Then, she flicks it off the hill. Why? There is no reason for it. The closest I can get to an explanation is that she’s a populist or something and hates the rich. Just think of all the property damage she caused. Or worse— what if the owners were inside the house when she did that? She might have killed some people, and we will never know, ‘cause this is never mentioned again. I can’t help but wonder what the green-haired girl’s reaction is; we never see it.

All right, I can do one more strip today. The ninety-sixth strip reminds us that the green-haired girl is now the owner of the puppy, as she is taking him for a walk. Interestingly, she is wearing a jacket and the trees have orange leaves, suggesting that it is now fall. Maybe I was right about my speculation earlier.

In any case, the puppy bounces around as if he were asking for something, but the green-haired girl has no idea what he wants. She asks minus about it, who says that he wants to fly. Glumly, the green-haired girl points out that she’s just a normal human and can’t fly. So minus asks her if she wants to be able to fly. There is a Beat Panel where the green-haired girl remembers that she has a friend who is omnipotent, and answers yes. So in the next panel, we see the green-haired girl soaring in the air alongside her puppy, and beaming with happiness, in exactly the same pose as that man whom minus gave wings earlier.

When they’re in the sky, the puppy starts doing flips, and once again, the green-haired girl doesn’t know why. In the last day (presumably the next day) it turns out that minus has no idea what it means either. Heh heh. I like the strips like that, which are just funny.

You’d better be ready for the next part, because really strange stuff is gonna happen. Stay tuned!

Footnotes

¹ Strip 83, panel 12

² And I know that you shouldn’t actually call it the Heimlich maneuver; whatever.

³ Which I think is a first, actually.

⁴ They look like the couple I talked about all the way back in part 2 of this review, but are probably not the same. But they could very well be, for all I know.

⁵ It should be pointed out that I don’t know if they’re back to their original bodies yet.

Comment [4]

All right everybody; I briefly had some computer trouble, but I am back now, and ready to deliver an excellent review. So hang on tight to your horses¹, and get set for one wild ride.

The ninety-seventh strip begins innocently enough. The first panel establishes the setting as a beach, and focuses on a mound of sand, drawn in such a way as to suggest that it has eyes. This is foreshadowing, as the very next panel depicts a man lying down on a towel sunbathing, as small figures begin to grow out of the sand around him, without his knowledge. In the third panel, the figures have grown to their full size, and judging from their facial expressions, are not happy that the sunbather is there. The panel widens, so that we see that minus is off to the side playing in the sand, most likely unaware that somebody else is nearby.

The sunbather awakens, only to be face to face with the sand creatures, who accuse him of trespassing and threaten to evict him violently. The sunbather has only just woken up, so he is still trying to get his bearings, and is unprepared for the sand creatures sneaking up on him. He calls out in terror, and just before the sand creatures can lay a hand on him, their leader is hit in the head with a beach ball, crushing him. There is a Beat Panel where the sunbather takes this in, and, realizing that he is in no danger because his assailants have the consistency of sand, starts punching them. Now the sand creatures are fleeing in terror. One of them yells at his comrades to fight, and they try to go after a little girl building a sand castle. However, they pose no threat to her whatsoever, and the girl starts building her castle out of the sand creatures.

For once, minus’s actions did not result in anybody getting hurt.

That strip is over, and the following one begins with minus and the green-haired girl at a park, playing Frisbee with what I think is their puppy, though the creature is drawn with a tuft of hair that the puppy doesn’t have, so who knows. Unfortunately, minus throws the Frisbee too hard, so the puppy misses, and some guy who is dressed as the Fonz gets beaned in the back of the head.

The green-haired girl asks for the Frisbee back, and the Fonz-lookalike, somewhat understandably, won’t give it to her. So the green-haired girl asks minus for help, and at this, the Fonz-lookalike is amused. He is not at all intimidated by the little girl, and says something that he will surely regret by the end of the strip: “You and what army, kid?”²

Since minus is not only all-powerful, but takes everything literally, she summons an army to the scene, and the Fonz-lookalike realizes to his horror that there is a gun pointed at his head. He looks down the barrel of a different gun in terror, while the green-haired girl looks off to the side in confusion and minus stares at the poor Fonz-lookalike, her smirk clearly showing that she has the upper hand. So the Fonz-lookalike sheepishly returns the Frisbee, and minus runs away, giggling hysterically.

Now that the Fonz-lookalike is alone, he is relieved that the danger has passed (or so he thinks) only to be hit by the Frisbee again. minus runs over, and this time she aimed it at him on purpose, just so that she can provoke him into asking “You and what army?” again. Not only is that a colossal dick move, but I am surprised that she doesn’t realize that he would not ask that question again now that he knows she can summon an army at will. Instead, the man tries to placate her by giving her the Frisbee instantly, and yells at her to stay the hell away from him. In those exact words, and it should be pointed out that this is the first time in the comic that anybody uses any language that could be considered inappropriate for children, no matter how mild. minus is actually upset that she can’t summon the army again, and returns to her friend, crestfallen. And that is the end of that strip. I don’t know, I guess she was just playing around, again not caring how her play would affect others. The Fonz-lookalike starts off kind of rude, but he is nowhere close to as rude as that basketball player from many many strips ago, who actually did deserve to be on the receiving end of minus’s wrath.

Well, the ninety-ninth strip heralds the return of the brown-haired ghost girl, who, unlike the red-haired ghost girl, is actually nice. She and minus are talking, and then the green-haired girl shows up.³ This is the first time that she has been in the same strip as any ghost, so now it is pointed out that she cannot see them. Thus, she assumes that minus is spaced out, until the ghost informs minus of her existence.

Now minus realizes that her human friend wants to talk to her, but she tries to continue her conversation with the ghost at the same time, unaware that the green-haired girl cannot see the ghost. (And oddly enough, the ghost gives minus a weird look when she learns that minus is actually friends with a normal person.)

So the green-haired girl asks minus who she is talking to, and minus actually says that ghost’s name: Sara. According to Armand’s commentary on the comic, he did this when he realized that so few of his characters actually had names. Now, the complete list of characters with names consists of minus, Clary, Dishface, Larry, and Sara. Except for minus herself, none of them are really that important. Still, I’m not complaining, as it makes this review easier. The green-haired girl futilely tries to talk to Sara even though she cannot see her, and so, realizing that this is going nowhere, Sara asks minus to let her friend be able to see ghosts. This happens, and Sara greets the green-haired girl by yelling “Boo!” The green-haired girl is caught off-guard, though Sara herself smiles when she finds out that the green-haired girl can see her. The girl, who is steadily getting less ordinary as minus gives her more perks, pays her back by making her best attempt to be scary as well. The two hit it off, and start laughing together.

Sara expresses her approval, and invites the green-haired girl to the Moon with them. Of course she accepts, and after a Beat Panel where Sara is floating above the others, smiling, can no longer contain her excitement, and says that they should go right then and there.

The three of them take off, because thanks to what happened a few strips ago, they all can fly, and Sara resumes the story she was telling minus. What we get to hear of it goes on for two panels, about how she was a member of Lawyer-Friendly Cameo version of the Girl Scouts⁴ and decided to explore a dangerous cave while on a camping trip. The counselors wouldn’t allow it, so she snuck out at night, and didn’t even bring any supplies. Her story cuts off at that point because that’s the end of the strip, but the reader can easily deduce that she is telling the story of her own death. Rather morbid if you think about it too hard, but I guess that a ghost wouldn’t really be too afraid of the idea of death.

The story arc, however, is continued in the 100th strip. What a milestone! The trio have arrived on the surface of the Moon, and of course, minus takes the opportunity to experience the Moon’s low gravity. Even though she can jump high, she is taken by surprise at the hard landing. Meanwhile, the green-haired girl and Sara are exploring a crater. We get a panel showing off how huge this crater is, and Sara speculates on how cool it would be if they discovered that it housed an alien city. If you remember her characterization from before, this is consistent with her alien fascination.

The green-haired girl says that they could ask minus to make one, oblivious to the fact that these things usually go horribly wrong. But Sara is not interested in any synthetic city minus would make. She wants to meet some real aliens, who evolved on their planet naturally! I guess she is unaware of the fact that aliens had declared war on Earth a while back.

So this gets them talking about all the crazy things that minus has done. Sara mentions an event that was not depicted in the comic: minus getting upset at how hot it was, so she declared war on the Sun with an army of trees, only to lose interest when the trees blocked the Sun out. The green-haired girl hasn’t heard about this either, but finds it funny. So here we learn that we only get to see a fraction of the stuff minus does.

The green-haired girl then tells her own story, about when minus made them warrior queens of the ant people. Remember when that happened? It’s another Call Back. I am ambivalent about episodic works for the most part, but tend to like them when they do not ignore their own continuity for the sake of a gag. Thus, this comic passes that test, as has been demonstrated time and again. But I digress.

Before the green-haired girl can continue the story (and so that the readers don’t have to hear about it again) Sara interrupts her, and covers her mouth in horror. Apparently minus has talked to her about the green-haired girl before, but never described what she looked like, as Sara has only just put two and two together. She tells the green-haired girl that she is minus’s weird friend, who likes to throw up.

The green-haired girl is now pissed at minus for this blatant character assassination, and demands to know when she was called that. Sara claims that that’s minus’s opinion of the green-haired girl, who loudly states that that is not true, and she does not like to throw up.

This is actually an interesting look into how minus perceives the world. In an earlier strip, she said that she had never been sick, and so made herself sick when the green-haired girl mentioned it. Since the green-haired girl said that she kind of liked being sick because she could watch TV all day instead of go to school, when minus got so sick that she vomited, she latched onto that and assumed that her friend must like throwing up, because after all, she can make herself sick at will, so that must mean that everyone can, rite? She may not know how unique her situation actually is. This is never elaborated upon, but I like how Armand often lets the readers infer things about the characters themselves from the little hints he gives. It’s quite entertaining.

So once the green-haired girl clears up the situation with Sara, the final panel just depicts the Moon, signaling that the next strip will be at a different location.

Sure enough, the 101st strip opens on the lotus blossoms of the spirit world. Sara is still hanging out with them, and the trio are flying around. Since the green-haired girl isn’t dead, she does not recognize that the black cloud-like figures around them are actually the ghosts of aliens. This means that Sara could probably meet some aliens at any time she likes, so why doesn’t she?

As it turns out, Sara brought them there because she wants them to try this alien fruit that she found, because remember, people still eat in the afterlife. The fruit looks like a gray blob, so the green-haired girl is understandably skeptical. Thus, Sara grudgingly admits that the fruit might be poisonous to humans for all she knows, leading to minus saying that she will protect them if anything goes wrong. Aw, that’s nice. It’s strips like these that make her actually a likeable character.

So as the trio are enjoying the fruit, the green-haired girl asks if there are any human ghosts with legs, because she sees some who are wearing pants. As it turns out, no human ghosts have legs, but Sara explains that wearing pants is a fashion trend among those ghosts who are uncomfortable without them. Put that way, and she is kind of weird. The green-haired girl finds this silly since ghosts lack legs, and Sara appears to agree. However, after a few Beat Panels where she is eating the fruit, we see a thought balloon, in which Sara is imagining herself flying while wearing pants. So, does she wish she were still alive? If you think about it like that, it’s actually quite sad.

This story arc is concluded in the 102nd strip. It’s now the nighttime, and the green-haired girl bids Sara good night. Sara reciprocates, and casually says that she’ll see minus again in a month. The green-haired girl asks what’s going on, and Sara says that she can only appear on Earth once a month, while waving her arms around like a classic ghost. The green-haired girl asks if that is really the case, and it turns out that Sara is just joking around— the real reason she’s meeting minus next month is so that they can ride a comet. After inviting the green-haired girl along, Sara fades away, and only her outline is visible. Nice artistic touch on Armand’s part; that’s hard to pull off in such a way that it looks right.

The green-haired girl is carrying some of the alien fruit, and tells minus that she should head home too because her parents are probably wondering where she is. So when she hears this, minus fades away in the same manner as Sara, probably just for fun. The green-haired girl is now all alone and says good night to the emptiness, then looks at the fruit she is carrying. The last panel shows her flying home, against the night sky. Again, I admire Armand’s artwork.

The 103rd strip begins a new story arc. minus is sitting on the roof of a building, throwing a paper airplane. In the next panel, we see a bunch of paper cutouts of people, getting groceries. When somebody approaches, they shoot him. This technically wasn’t minus’s fault, but still…

The cutouts all enter their paper airplane, meaning that this is how minus does grocery shopping apparently. However, it turns out that the paper airplanes all land on the sidewalk, a long distance from their destination. A woman appears, and this time, instead of shooting her, the cutouts asks her to throw their airplanes, so they can reach where they want to go. The woman is unsurprised at this, and complies, though she throws them the wrong way first.

Unfortunately for the cutouts, in the next strip, it starts to rain. Since they are made of paper, this is a terrible thing. They all crash, scattering their groceries all over the pavement. A boy with an umbrella walks by, notices the candy on the ground, and picks it up, despite how unsanitary this is. So minus isn’t going to get what she went to all that trouble to acquire.

After the boy leaves, a single paper cutout gets up from underneath the remains of his airplane. He calls out to his comrades, but he is the only survivor. He glances around, and sees the boy with the umbrella walking away. Realizing that this is his only chance, he makes a run for it, but does not make it to the umbrella in time. We see him limping along, visibly distressed even though he lacks a face, as in the final panel, the boy walks away.

But the cutout is not done for just yet. In the next strip, the rain has stopped, and the cutout has survived, clinging to the only piece of candy that remains. He is determined to get it to minus no matter what. Too bad for him that a bird lands on the sidewalk right in front of him, and gigantic in comparison. He threatens it with his paper gun, but the bird just stares at it, unafraid. But don’t worry; the cutout survives this counter, and finally makes it to minus, who is drawing with her sidewalk chalk, as always. The cutout gives her the single candy bar, and tells her that the mission was successful. He of all his comrades gets a happy ending, and the last panel depicts him relaxing on the sidewalk, resting on minus’s chalk. Actually, I think that he is the only being that minus creates, period, who doesn’t end up dead by the end of his arc. (Not counting the inhabitants of that city minus made a terrarium for.)

The 106th strip changes the course of the comic forever.⁵

It opens with a snazzily dressed man all in orange, with a top hat that conceals his eyes, and who is carrying a briefcase. He walks along with a spring in his step, and encounters minus and the green-haired girl making more sidewalk chalk drawings. He gives them a sales pitch about the new, “state of the art” chalk he has with him in his briefcase, and asks if they want to see it.

Now, this strip is one that, the more you think about it, the more disturbing it gets. This is the classic scenario that everyone is taught as a child to avoid like the plague. If somebody walks up to you, and does something like this, what you should do is run away, because he is trying to abduct you. But minus does not understand this, and so looks in the briefcase. While she is distracted, the man stuffs her inside, to the green-haired girl’s complete and total horror. She should have told her friend not to listen to the guy, but did she? No, she didn’t.

That said, she demands that the man release minus. Surprisingly, he complies, and opens his briefcase. minus lands hard on the sidewalk, and the man walks away, probably elated that the green-haired girl didn’t run away to call the cops. Now that the man is gone, the green-haired girl asks minus if she is okay. Unfortunately, as can be seen by the fact that the background scenery is changing before our eyes, it is clear that minus is not okay. She says something unintelligible, and winds up cutting her body in half so that her legs are at the top of the panel while the rest of her body is below. But this effect lasts for only one panel, and she is back to “normal” by the end of it. The background returns to how it was originally, and the green-haired girl expresses concern. minus gets a huge smile on her face, one that is not natural, thus confirming that no, she is not back to normal. But she resumes her chalk drawing, while her friend is perturbed.

The title of the 107th strip is minus! with an exclamation mark instead of a period at the end. This symbolizes that minus is still affected by what happened in the previous strip. It is kind of hard to describe the effects, as she appears to have lost all sense of reality, and now has Rubberhose Limbs, to show that something is off. She stops suddenly, sits down on the sidewalk, and transforms herself into a chair. Other pedestrians do not seem to know why there is a chair in the middle of the sidewalk. When a runner, huffing and puffing, sees the chair, he sits down to rest, only for minus to laugh uproariously and turn back into a human, and scaring the bejeezus out of this bystander. For her next trick, minus turns herself into a puddle, snickering all the while, as we see a man and two kids walk along, presumably her next victims. We never see what happens to them though, because this is the end of the strip.

In the 108th strip, minus is still not back to normal. It opens with Clary and the green-haired girl talking about her condition. Apparently it’s been a week since the incident and she is still not better. According to the green-haired girl, she has been doing nothing but spinning circles in her yard for three days. Not even her eternally unseen parents are forcing her to go to school.

While this is going on, the white-haired girl and the ponytailed girl enter the panel, and the white-haired girl enters the conversation. She is dismayed to find out what has become of minus, especially because the green-haired girl is genuinely worried about her friend. So the white-haired girl suggests hitting minus on the head with a rock, reasoning that a Tap On the Head always returns somebody to normal in stories. The green-haired girl says that that would just hurt minus more, but the white-haired girl dismisses her objections with the reasoning that it wouldn’t be used in stories if it didn’t work. I guess we can assume that she is not a troper, then? She shrugs and says that her suggestion is better than nothing, which makes the green-haired girl desperate enough to go through with it, after nervously glancing at Clary and then at the ground.

In the next panel, we see multiple shots of minus, in rotation, indicating that she is still spinning around, and in the middle, we see the green-haired girl carrying a rock so big it would probably kill anybody struck with it. This is foreshadowing.

As minus floats near the green-haired girl, without even acknowledging the girl’s presence, the green-haired girl preemptively apologizes, and, clearly distraught, strikes minus on the head. She apologizes a second time, but sees, to her horror, that minus has not gone back to normal. Instead, minus somehow shatters into smithereens, and quite understandably, the green-haired girl freaks out. minus is now dead because of her. I have to wonder if it was just a coincidence that this happened in the 108th strip, since that number has spiritual significance in Eastern cultures.

I told you the white-haired girl was a dumbass!

You may be wondering how the comic can possibly continue now. You will see, in the next part of this review. Make sure to comment!

Footnotes

¹ And kindly ignore the fact that you aren’t riding a horse…

² Strip 98, panel 8

³ This is a very minor detail in the grand scheme of things, but it is interesting to note that the green-haired girl is wearing something different from what she normally does. This isn’t the first time the comic has averted the Limited Wardrobe trope (minus has several different jackets, and the characters also wear their school uniforms only at school) but this is the first I noticed it for a character other than minus.

⁴ Because you know, people have to get permission if they want to have a character be a Boy Scout or Girl Scout, hence all the Suspiciously Similar Substitutes we see in fiction.

⁵ Before I checked this, I was sure this was the 105th strip. Clearly I am wrong, or else I am slowly going insane.

Comment [2]

Hello everyone, and welcome back to my review. In the last part, we saw that minus is now dead, so this strip is called minus. – the ghost –. It opens with two women at a man’s deathbed. The man’s girlfriend melodramatically yells about how tragic this is and that she just wants another chance to speak with him. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, minus floats to the scene, though she is invisible because she is a ghost. However, she heard the woman’s plea, because the she touches the man’s body, and he awakens.

Cut to the hallway outside, where a nurse is telling a doctor all about this, but he (and a young man standing next to him) are not at all surprised, because this has been going on all over the hospital. The doctor says this is a miracle, and the way he is drawn, he looks genuinely cheerful about it. The three of them rush off to perform some tests on their miraculously resuscitated patients, and after a blank panel, we see that the patients are walking around like zombies, while the staff runs away in terror. And they were probably getting on quite nicely in the spirit world before minus yanked them out of it. This is continued on the next strip, which has no dialogue except for occasional squeaks of fright. Since most people who die at a hospital were likely deathly ill or horribly maimed, we see that some of these zombies are very damaged. One is apparently reduced to a skeleton. He comes across this guy dressed in a nice suit, and takes it from him. He looks kind of snazzy, even though he’s a skeleton. Apparently the skeleton leaves the hospital, and goes to a florist. When she sees him, the florist just screams for the next three panels, and he takes a bouquet of flowers. This guy’s not very nice, stealing like that.

Meanwhile, somebody is reading a book in his house, while wearing a bowler hat. The skeleton arrives at his window, and takes the hat from him without him even knowing what’s going on. Then the skeleton arrives at somebody’s apartment. When he knocks at the door, there is a panel where he waits for the reply. Then, the occupant sticks a shotgun out the window and blows his skull off, killing him a second time. Oh my God.

The 111th strip begins with the green-haired girl talking to Clary at lunch. So I guess it was relevant earlier that she was in their study group. The green-haired girl is apparently explaining to her classmates why minus is not at school.¹ Clary questions why minus crumbled to pieces, and the green-haired girl says that she keeps them in a box under her bed. And then in the next panel she continues eating as though this were not disturbing at all. Okay, this is just morbid. What kind of person does that? The next panel shows the table from a different angle, revealing that the white-haired girl and the ponytailed girl are also at the table. The white-haired girl asks for confirmation that minus is dead. When the green-haired girl says yes, the white-haired girl looks at her, horrified, and calls her a murderer. Which is technically true, though it was she who proposed the idea of hitting minus with a rock to begin with. The green-haired girl looks at her funny, and says that minus is fine. But the white-haired girl doesn’t believe this, and so the green-haired girl yells that minus is fine. You’d think this would call more attention to her. The green-haired girl clearly doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, as we see her continuing to eat, while not looking at anybody else. She claims that minus is just having too much fun being a ghost to come back to life. But since none of them can see ghosts, I don’t think too many people will believe her.

We then cut to the green-haired girl in class, from the looks of things, trying to answer a test. minus’s ghost shows up, and tells her that the answer to the math problem is seven. I wonder how minus knows this, and the green-haired girl is also suspicious, because she claims that’s wrong. minus does her cool ghostly fade-out, and to her friend’s annoyance, arrives with the red-haired ghost, whom her friend has not met yet. She looks a little confused as to why she was brought to this kid’s test, and I can actually see why minus chose her and not Sara. The red-haired ghost looks a few years older than minus and her classmates. Unfortunately, since the red-haired ghost is something of a delinquent, she doesn’t know much about math, as she also says that the answer is seven.² By now the green-haired girl has had enough. She yells at them that they’re wrong— and attracts the teacher’s attention. The teacher yells at her, that there is to be no talking during the test. The green-haired girl apologizes, but the ginger ghost is annoyed. Over the green-haired girl’s objections, she goes off-panel, presumably to haunt the teacher, much to minus’s confusion and the green-haired girl’s horror. And in the last panel, we hear the teacher screaming, while minus looks upset and the green-haired girl is reduced to a double facepalm.

Now, think about the strip this way. It is basically about a kid, whose friend dies in an accident that she was responsible for. Then, her classmates blame her for her friend’s death, and if them hounding her about it isn’t enough, the ghost of said friend reappears to haunt her at the most inopportune times. In any other comic, this would actually be really disturbing. I really wind up feeling sorry for the green-haired girl.

Anyway, the 112th strip has minus, still a ghost mind you, swimming in the ocean, taking advantage of the fact that she no longer needs to breathe.³ She looks at the pretty fish, and finds one as big as her whole body. She follows it, and the scene cuts to two kids, one of whom looks like he is one of minus’s classmates, perched on a rock, fishing. They are startled to see some fish leap out of the water and begin to fly. After first being terrified, the two decide to catch them with butterfly nets. There is no dialogue in this entire strip.

The 113th strip begins with a little girl, who is having a tea party with her stuffed animals. Apparently she has real tea, as she is seen drinking it in a later panel. Much to her horror, she sees a tea cup floating in midair before her very eyes. Sheepishly, she tries to escape by saying that she forgot the cookies… only for a plate of cookies to float into the room in the next panel.

Cut to later on, where we see this same girl dressed like a princess, impressing her friends. She is no longer afraid of minus, as when her friends ask where she got that dress, she says that she has a magic servant who just showed up one day. Of course, her friends ask for stuff too, but unfortunately for the girl, minus has already left, and she has no idea because minus is invisible. So when she asks minus to give her friends dresses too, they get nothing, and mock her by just pretending to be wearing pretty clothes. The girl protests that she does have a magic servant, really, and gives her friends a death glare when they don’t stop it. The last panel is her sulking at the table, complaining to one of her stuffed animals. I actually won’t blame minus for this one; she may have left before the girl’s friends arrived.

In the 114th strip, some ghosts are looking at the grave of one of them, a certain Ted Stone. Yes, a one-shot character is getting a name this time. So, this ghost teenager whose bangs cover her right eye is impressed with Ted,⁴ because his family have placed flowers on his grave every month since he died ten years ago— that’s 120 times for those not keeping track.

So the teenaged ghost says that Ted’s family must love him a whole lot, and while he basks in this praise, he points out that the grave next to his, which only has the epitaph “Ted’s grave”, has never been visited by anyone, which is really sad. But Ted Stone just says that the other Ted wasn’t cool enough in life, and doesn’t care at all that this guy isn’t remembered. Those two ghosts leave, and we just now see that minus and Sara saw the whole thing. So Sara suggests that they be the ones to decorate Ted’s grave with flowers. This they do, and they fly away, pleased with their handiwork.

Over the next four panels, much time elapses, and the flowers on Ted’s grave slowly disappear, until it is once again bare, a stark reminder of the transience of things. Sic transit gloria mundi.

I am actually surprised how many minor characters are suddenly getting names, as the 115th strip stars a medium named Lem McNole. Apparently he actually can see ghosts, since as will be seen, minus and the red-haired girl appear on his show, suggesting that either some people can just see ghosts in this universe, or minus gave him the power just for this upcoming prank.

So anyway, McNole opens his show with a woman, who asks to contact her dead daughter, Terry. And the woman doesn’t look that old; that’s really depressing if you think about it. Well, McNole asks Terry if she will appear, and the red-haired ghost shows up. Now, I do not think that she is actually Terry, as will be seen by her actions in this strip, so I will still be calling her the red-haired ghost. So she leads McNole on, by saying that she is doing just great in the afterlife. And here is why I don’t think the red-haired ghost is actually the woman’s daughter: while McNole looks on, helpless, the red-haired ghost yells at the woman about how her death was all her fault, while being well aware that the woman can neither see nor hear her, so the woman is grinning the whole time. It would certainly be in the red-haired ghost’s character to do this, let me say, taking advantage of people like that. There’s a reason I don’t like her. Now, McNole is completely appalled and rushes the woman off the stage, while claiming that Terry loves and misses her.

The red-haired ghost rushes off to a group of other ghosts, waiting in line, minus among them. She says that minus should go next, and for her to change her appearance if the next person doesn’t ask to speak with a kid. So the ginger ghost pushes minus up to the front of the line, much to the girl’s confusion.

As it turns out, the next guest is a middle-aged man who wants to speak with his uncle, Edward. So when minus appears, all she does is wear a tie and sport a handlebar mustache, and McNole is bewildered. That was the punchline, people; it’s on to the next strip. This one starts a very important story arc.

It opens with the red-haired ghost flying along, at a restaurant. I have noticed that she has appeared a lot more than Sara, likely because, though she isn’t really likeable, her character is more interesting than Sara’s. Ironically, this arc is actually going to give the red-haired ghost Character Development, in an attempt to make people like her. So she is flying along, and notices that one of the waitresses is a woman who looks a lot like her. This gives her pause. She tries to contact her, but of course, the woman can’t see ghosts. So the ginger ghost is depressed, and floats back to minus with her hands in her jacket pockets. She asks minus a favor, and the girl acquiesces immediately, without even asking what the favor is, much to Sara’s horror.⁵

We learn what the ginger ghost wants in the next panel, as we see her get older, grow legs, and come back to life. Interestingly, her hair is now green, probably so that we can tell her and the waitress apart. Even though she was dead for years and has no documentation, she is now also a waitress at the same restaurant as the other woman, who could be her twin or something.

In the next strip, the waitress has to deal with some unruly customers. We see that she is nothing like her twin, as she is submissive, and afraid when the customers start getting violent. But fortunately, the red-haired ghost, who is now neither a redhead nor a ghost,⁶ intervenes. She yells at the customer, even though this panel lacks dialogue. Instead, the readers get the same effect, by judicious use of color splashes, and characters’ expressions.

Her twin is really scared, and drags her away from the customer who is now leering at them and pointing at them threateningly. Their boss finds out and is pissed off, but she gets him to back off when she explains what happened. The former ghost is actually standing up for people, for once.

So when the boss leaves, her twin (who does not recognize her, because of her different hair color and the fact that she should be dead) starts to warm up to her. They become friends, and the last panel shows the twin bidding the former ghost farewell, as the former ghost sits on a brick fence, apparently smoking. That threw me for a loop too, but it does fit her character.

In the 118th strip, the other ghosts have found out what happened, that minus is bringing people back to life, without making them zombies. It turns out that a lot of ghosts want to be alive again, and speculate as to why minus suddenly started doing it.

Then we cut to the character formerly known as the red-haired ghost, who is walking along like so many people in this comic. There is a color splash as she sees somebody from her past that she does not like, and then runs up to the person while the background blurs past her. She knocks this woman to the ground, and moved so fast that her afterimage is still on the panel. She yells at the woman about how she never thought they’d meet again or something, and the man with them is horrified. The character formerly known as the red-haired ghost yells at him to stay out of this, and kicks him where it really hurts. So she’s gone back to her previous behavior. She storms off, and it turns out that her victim doesn’t even know what’s going on.

This mini-arc is one that I would liked to have known more about, but it ends here. It is nothing more than the lead up to the most important strip in the comic: number 119.

A bunch of ghosts confront minus, about how she has started to bring people back to life. Their leader, a ghost wearing a bowler hat and whose dialogue is in a Brooklyn eye dialect, says that she hasn’t considered that others might want to come back to life too, and when minus asks him who he wants to come back, he says that everyone should have that opportunity, or else it isn’t fair. Not only that, but someone else adds that their pets should be brought back as well. And minus, flatly, agrees.

The consequences of this will change everything. The next panel shows some people going about their business, while the panel after that has everybody on Earth crushed under the sheer mass of every person and animal who has ever died. Yes, this results in them all dying again. And this is why people should think before asking minus something. So many of the comic’s problems would have been avoided if characters just did that, but no.

And now, Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies. Nothing Is the Same Anymore.

Footnotes

¹ You know what? What I’d like to know is where were minus’s parents during this whole thing. First, they don’t realize that their kid spent a whole week out of her mind, and now they seem to be paying no indication to the fact that she is dead. It’s like they don’t even care.

² To be fair, we don’t see the question and so don’t know who is right, but something tells me minus doesn’t know these things.

³ Though this probably wasn’t an issue even when she was still alive.

⁴ Who, in addition to having Cool Shades, is one of the ghosts who wears pants.

⁵ You know, I’m not sure if those two have interacted before this point.

⁶ I need to think of something else to call her, now.

Comment [2]

After the disaster that was the previous strip, the 120th strip, which is another three-for-one deal, opens on a long line of ghosts, waiting to be reunited with their loved ones. Since so many people died at once, it turns out this leaves a bureaucratic nightmare. Who would have thought?

Among the many, many people who are reunited with their departed loved ones are a certain middle-aged couple, who are of no actual significance to the story, but just depicted in order to provide one example of ordinary people. They rejoice at finally getting to see them again, and then the scene cuts to two vaudeville performers. The one in the bowler hat says that somebody should have seen this coming, to which the one in the top hat states that he did; the other just never asked him about it. This just raises further questions. If the vaudeville performers were ghosts, then why didn’t he warn minus about this? And if they were alive, then how did he even know about this in the first place? I think it’s just supposed to be a quick gag.

The scene cuts again to a young family, who just died, but now have a house in the spirit world. The parents look on as their two kids get used to the fact that hey, they can fly now! So their dad says that maybe things won’t be so bad in the spirit world, ignoring the fact that everybody is dead. Unfortunately, the kids stop smiling when they somehow manage to get their wisp tails tangled together, causing their dad to wonder out loud if his children will now remain children forever. This is foreshadowing. I know, we’re so close to the end and yet there is still foreshadowing.

As has been established, the afterlife in minus. is perfectly mundane, and this first part of the strip showed people just getting used to it.

The second part opens with minus hanging around the character who can now once again be called the red-haired ghost, and the ghost’s twin, who are only told apart by a subtle change in hair style. Well, that and the red-haired ghost is laughing profusely over what happened. Wow, everybody gets killed by accident and she thinks it’s amusing. What a jerk.

Her twin points out that she shouldn’t be laughing about so many people’s deaths, but the red-haired ghost brings up a valid point; that it has been established multiple times that the spirit world is practically just like Earth anyway, except that nobody can get hurt or die. And she’s been a ghost for enough time for her twin to have grown up, so she probably knows what she is talking about. See, things aren’t so bad even though everybody got a bridge dropped on them, figuratively speaking.

During the conversation, the red-haired ghost asks minus if she is going to press the Reset Button on this whole deal, and is surprised to hear a “no”, Holy crap everybody, the status quo is going to be changed! That almost never happens in episodic works, which makes it all the better when a work actually has the guts to go through with it. minus explains that the smartest people who have ever lived are all getting together, in order to decide what to do next. Call me cynical, but I am actually pretty surprised that this is what would happen; I’d expect there to be mass confusion as people are terrified at what has gone on.

For some reason, minus starts playing with her hair during this conversation, oblivious to the other two people present. This is further evidence for my theory that she isn’t exactly neurotypical.

Then cut to a large meeting room, literally filled with people, by which I mean that everyone in the background is just an outline. After all, scientists estimate that approximately 100 billion people have been alive since the species evolved, so if they limited membership of “smartest people who ever lived” to the top percentile, that will still be a billion people. Even if they limited it to the top percentile of the top percentile, that would still be 10 million. MENSA has got nothing on this.

Only a few people are drawn in the foreground. One of them, a man dressed in a suit and probably from the 19th or early 20th centuries, is aghast (no pun intended) at the fact that some of the smartest people who ever lived were women, while he is being angrily confronted by two of the aforementioned women. This just reflects the unfortunate fact that even extremely intelligent people are vulnerable to holding prejudiced viewpoints, and Armand does not ignore this fact. It is only used for a gag though, because we don’t get to see their proceedings. It probably would not have been that interesting, which is why Armand did not show it.

Instead, the third part begins with minus¹, the green-haired girl, and Sara flying someplace, as it is revealed that Super MENSA² decided not to revert everything back to normal, which only makes sense considering that the spirit world appears to be better than Earth in every possible way, and that people would have no reason to care about death now that they have proof of an afterlife (which, being eternal, also makes the living world kind of redundant).

So the green-haired girl wonders what will become of Earth, to which Sara speculates that aliens will create some new humans. That could only end badly. This of course takes the green-haired girl for a loop, so Sara explains that she somehow found out (even though this was never mentioned before) that after causing the demise of the dinosaurs, the very same aliens that minus visited were responsible for the creation of humanity after all. And even though they were apparently benevolent guides, they left positively no trace of their existence in historical times. So I have to wonder if Sara isn’t just making this up. The green-haired girl doesn’t believe this either, and asks minus, who says that Super MENSA told her they were converting Earth into an amusement park.

That… is a surprisingly logical course of action, actually. And yet it fits quite seamlessly into the style of this comic.

The 123rd strip focuses on a grouchy old man at an art studio, while others are visibly painting in the background. A significantly younger painter asks him what he is currently working on, to which he replies that he isn’t doing anything, because he now has no inspiration. Why, do you ask? Because now that everybody will spend an eternity in the afterlife, he can no longer take out his frustration that he will die one day. The painter is taken aback. She’s just working on a portrait of a butterfly because she likes them, but the old man says that she’s a fool. He storms off and tries reading a book, then watching a movie, and lastly listening to music, and then wanders into the darkness. When next we see him, he is showing a new, and rather garish, painting to a crowd, explaining that he created it because he can no longer be inspired by his mortality. Everyone “ooh“s and “aah“s, but it is clear that Armand has no truck with this whole True Art Is Angsty nonsense. Nothing in his whole oeuvre can even remotely be said to be angsty, so this strip is likely him taking out his own frustration that artists are stereotyped as such. Although, it never is explained what happens to people who are tired even of the afterlife.

The 124th strip begins with minus playing matchmaker, just like she did 101 strips earlier. Fortunately, this time is without the arrows. Instead, she ties the wisp tails of two random people together, so the two quickly discover that they cannot be apart. After first being embarrassed, the random couple warm up to one another, but grow sick of each other after a while. They are able to unknot themselves, though, and after they are separated, the strip focuses solely on the man. He is depressed about his breakup, until he sees another woman. As it turns out, his idea of being in a relationship is tying his wisp tail to hers, and the woman’s reaction is not one of laughing it off, to say the least. The strip ends there, making it kind of disturbing. There was no dialogue in this strip.

After that somewhat disturbing way of establishing that ghosts do get involved in romantic relationships, the 125th strip opens with minus at a huge library. It probably holds every book ever written, but minus is just interested in a children’s book, of course. This boy flies up to her, and is astonished to see that minus made the characters in the book move on their own accord. So there are still some people who don’t know about minus’s powers. I guess she wants to remain incognito, since after all, she is a child and probably isn’t able to handle large crowds. minus gives the boy the book, since he was so interested in it, and flies away. No sooner does the boy turn the page, however, then he gets dragged inside the pages by a tentacle. Even though he is in a library, nobody hears his screams. Not even minus.

In the next strip, the boy is able to walk around, as the book’s events play out as normal. Of course the hero beats the villain in the end and saves the day, but when the boy reaches the end of the book and is unable to escape, he decides to have some fun. He goes back to the climactic battle and destroys the hero’s weapon. This is continued on the next strip, where it turns out that the boy has become afflicted with existential despair. He is causing chaos in the book world just for the fun of it, because the book’s world is meaningless to him. He helps the villain take over the world, only to betray him at the last moment, and rescue the hero. Then, he kidnaps the princess, dumps her on the Moon, steals her magic charm, and uses it to destroy the book’s world. Indeed, the last panel is completely blank.

This boy, who never appeared before and doesn’t even have a name, is a foil to minus. He winds up with absolute power over the world he is trapped in, and so acts in a way that makes minus look saintly by comparison. One of the commenters mentioned earlier that minus is probably cavalier with her powers because she thinks that reality is her toy, and she can fix everything that happens with no negative consequences. The boy most likely feels the same way, but with added stress in that, for all he knows, he can never return to his own world, which is, of course, minus’s fault in the first place. This suddenly makes minus’s actions throughout this comic much more understandable.

The 128th strip does not feature minus, or indeed any previous character, at all. The directors of the project to turn Earth into an amusement park (which will be called “mearth.” for some reason) are discussing their progress. All the debris has been cleaned up, so Earth is theoretically inhabitable again, and they can now start to build the attractions. One of the planned attractions is an exhibit of ecosystems from every time in the Earth’s history. The director wants to see this, so the ghosts beam down to Earth… only to find Larry, alive, eating the meat of a dinosaur that he just killed.

Okay… how the HELL did Larry survive that?! Even if he avoided getting crushed by everyone else’s bodies, that much mass added to Earth would have thrown its orbit off-kilter. There is no prior indication that Larry is anything more than a normal human. But this is his second appearance, so I am just glad that Armand did not forget about him entirely.

The next strip begins with this banner: “LARRY IS DOING FINE. The continuing adventures of the last man on Earth” He rides a dinosaur, then goes to the beach and gets into a fight with the sand creatures, whom he defeats easily. Apparently they are still around, but at least they have a good reason for surviving the apocalypse. Then Larry gets an idea.

He puts a bunch of sand creatures into a wheelbarrow, and takes the animated sand to a glass factory, and uses that sand to make glass, which he molds into a woman. But his plan to become a modern Pygmalion and start an Adam and Eve Plot is foiled, as the glass woman still remembers being a sand creature, and chases Larry away. The last panel shows the glass woman buried in sand, trying to return to it. That’s so sad, if you think about it.

The 130th, and last, strip, is a three-for-one deal. This is the last we’ll be seeing of them. Now that Earth is cleared up, minus and the green-haired girl have returned, to visit their town one last time. The green-haired girl thinks that everything is so empty now that nobody lives there anymore. Also, we finally learn that minus is actually doing something responsible for once. Her perpetually off-panel mother is forcing her to go to the meetings, to help convert the planet to an amusement park. And with the green-haired girl and minus looking at their houses one last time, they fly off, the last panel of the first part depicting only buildings. This is actually the last time that either of them appear in this comic.

The second part begins with nature slowly reclaiming those buildings, but, before the scene can become completely melancholy, cuts to a class of ghosts on a field trip to Earth. Among the children is an alien, of a completely different species to the aliens we’ve seen before. This one looks vaguely like Cthulhu, all things considered. Their teacher, who looks like an older green-haired girl but isn’t, tells them that they will see a preserved city.

In the third and final part, the teacher explains to the students that people did not always live in the spirit world, and that most humans never saw or interacted with aliens. The kids are naturally surprised to hear about this, and one of them asks the teacher if she was around before the apocalypse. She wasn’t, which confirms that she is not the green-haired girl all grown up. The fact that she and the kids were born in the spirit world also confirms that new ghosts are being created and those who were children when the world ended are able to grow up.

The teacher shows the kids that the preserved city has automatons that resemble humans. Or rather, I think that they’re only automatons because this is an amusement park; the last panel makes this kind of ambiguous. The kids are surprised to see that living humans have legs, and the teacher also thinks that having legs is silly, because it is so much better to be able to fly around wherever one wants. So the teacher and the students look down on the scene, smiling, and the final panel of this entire webcomic shows a scene of (living) humans at a park. There are drawn such that I am not sure if they are actually automatons or if minus created some humans just to inhabit the new Amusement Park Earth. They’re very happy, and it’s a nice scene. I actually like this ending a lot. When you have a comic with an omnipotent viewpoint character, there are only a few ways to end it in such a way that it has closure, which this does, while at the same time allowing life to go on. It’s really nice that Armand was able to pull this off.

And with that, the comic ends.³ However, this is not the end of my review, as Armand drew some extra strips, which I will review in one final part.

Footnotes

¹ Who is carrying her puppy with her.

² Not actually called that, but you know what I mean…

³ And Armand’s commentary on this final strip? “Thanks for reading.” To which I say, “you’re welcome”, because that was a great comic.

Comment [5]

So, as you recall, the last part of this review series got to the end of the comic, so you would not expect there to be anything more to review. However, Armand went to the trouble of showing some additional bonus strips to his readers, so just for completeness’s sake, I will at least go over them.

According to the extra page the seventy-eighth strip of the comic, which I reviewed back in part 7 or so, was originally going to be part of a story line. However, according to the creator himself, he scrapped it because he thought it was too depressing. Considering all the stuff that actually did make it into the strip, you really have to wonder…

In any case, he did draw enough of one strip for this hypothetical story line for it to be shown to us. It opens with an aerial shot of a busy road, with jagged speech balloons emanating from one of the vehicles, whose drivers are too small to be seen. They are freaking out, because this traffic jam will make them late to deliver an important package. OH NOEZ! Fortunately for them, who is in the back seat but the man whom minus gave wings, in Strip 78. He acts all heroic and says that he will deliver the package himself and save the company, leaving his coworkers overjoyed. Now, you may be wondering why they don’t just have him do this from the beginning; there is a reason for this. He flies off, happy as can be, and then the scene cuts to the man discussing some business proposition with the head of this company. The company head doesn’t want to hear it, so the winged man asks if a flight around the city will change his mind. Now, if you were expecting him to grab the other guy and suspend him in midair until the other guy caves, that’s not what happens. He’s a nice guy, and takes the other man on a friendly sky ride. So the business owner is impressed, and offers the winged man a job, but the winged man says he’ll stick with the company he currently works at.

Now we see why all this ridiculous stuff happened. It turns out that the winged man is at a job interview, telling this story to the interviewer in the hope that they’ll hire him. The interviewer isn’t at all surprised that he has wings, and brushes this aside, pointing out that the man doesn’t have any other qualifications for their job, but he does suggest that the winged man try his luck at a shipping company. So the winged man is despondent, and we next see him at another job interview, but with better luck: airplanes can deliver packages much better than he can. The poor guy. I like him; he is a minor character who gets development, and judging from this unfinished arc, he probably would have been rejected everywhere. No wonder Armand decided not to finish this one.

He does have an unfinished standalone strip, completely unrelated to the saga of the winged man, which he also posts on this page. Now, the reason that this strip did not make it to the comic is because he thought it went nowhere and was unfunny. I have to agree. In it, minus is eating ice cream on a park bench, when she overhears some women talking. These women are also eating ice cream, right next to her, and she didn’t notice before now. The women, completely oblivious to minus’s presence, are complaining about their sexist male coworkers. As the women are venting about their male coworkers making them do all the work while the men can’t do even the simplest things, minus, likely because this long conversation is annoying her, yells at the top of her lungs that men can’t walk. No sooner does she say that than a man who was walking along in the background, minding his own business, falls flat on his face. Crippling every man on Earth would probably cause mass chaos. And also, minus deciding that man cannot walk just seems so random, even if she is pissed off at these people because they won’t shut up. The last shot is of those two women visibly disturbed at minus’s outburst, and frankly, I would be, too.

Presumably, she undid this one because men can still walk later in the comic.

Now, there are still some more pages of extras. And as will be seen, the next extra is clearly in an Alternate Universe where minus is, if anything, even more callous and uncaring.

The first of these has a vastly different art style from the actual strips. It’s done in pen and ink, with the characters drawn in manga style, and making minus look kind of creepy, which is probably the idea.

It begins with her doing what she often does in the comic; draw with sidewalk chalk. I should point out here that the panels in this extra comic are much bigger than they are in the ordinary comics, so we see a close-up of what is going on. minus looks rather melancholy, yet she is drawing a girl with a smiley face. After a single panel of just her drawing, the next panel has it smeared by somebody’s foot. We get a close-up of minus’s eye, and it looks terrifying.

The next panel zooms out to show mangafied versions of the ponytailed girl and the white-haired girl, completely oblivious to what they have just done, while minus stares at them from the background, menacingly. This is so not going to end well. Because this minus is not the carefree little kid who doesn’t realize the consequences of her actions, oh no. This minus is a monster, a cruel, sadistic, malevolent monster who overreacts to even the most minor and unknown slights against her, and everybody who has extreme misfortune to share a universe with her is just her toy, to be abused and tossed aside without a second thought.

That sounds like an exaggeration. It is not. minus scowls at the two girls, and tells them that they ruined her drawing. I can just imagine her saying this with Tranquil Fury. Everything about the scene points to it. The ponytailed girl turns back to her and apologizes, completely unaware of the horrible fate that is to befall her.

We get another extreme close-up panel of minus, again creepy and emotionless, as she tells them that they will be sorry. Just so we know it’s serious, lines of force are radiating in the background.

The others are surprised, and much to the white-haired girl’s horror, the ponytailed girl is transformed into a chalk drawing. The white-haired girl can only watch, helpless, as her friend, frozen in terror, is smudged by minus’s foot… and blood pours out from where her head would be. I reiterate that this is because the ponytailed girl accidentally smudged one of minus’s drawings, and minus, being all-powerful, could just fix the damn thing herself in like two seconds. Yet she decides to punish her classmate on purpose.

Now that minus has casually murdered one of her classmates, she tells the white-haired girl that she is next. We get a close-up panel of the white-haired girl’s face, with terror frozen on it. Now, in the main comic I hate the white-haired girl, but here I feel sorry for her. She’s just an innocent victim in all this, as is her friend.

minus tells her not to worry, as it will be over quickly. The tension builds up as the white-haired girl is even more terrified. minus stares at her again, and she screams in terror and anticipation of a grisly death. But all that happens to her is that she gets kicked in the behind.

According to Armand, that was an April Fool’s comic, and I can see why. It was completely horrifying. It might have been drawn in response to claims that minus is callous, because the petty vindictiveness of this minus makes anything that the canon minus does look like harmless fun.

There is a third page of extras, which are again in the format of “strips Armand wanted to put in the main comic, but cut”. Now, it turns out that this cut story arc would have continued the ponytailed-girl-in-the-bathroom-kingdom story arc, where Armand could actually show her newfound badassery.

This strip introduces a bully character, whose hair is all messy and has an overbite. When football hero invites him over to play with them, he pushes him to the side and says that he’s taking over the school. Unfortunately for him, his next would-be victim is minus. He is completely ignorant of her, and tries to tug on her ahoge, which interestingly, he claims is a ponytail, so perhaps Armand was acknowledging the subtle Art Shift. As soon as he tugs on her hair, a monster comes out of it, and he runs away in terror. He runs off to the ponytailed girl and the white-haired girl, and asks what the fuck just happened. The white-haired girl tells him that she thinks minus is a witch. So the kids do have their own ideas on what’s up with her. The bully turns out to be a total coward, and asks if they’re witches too. The white-haired cheerfully denies it, completely unaware that the bully just asked this so that he could kick their ball away with no repercussions. Man, this kid’s a jerk. At this, the ponytailed girl loses it, and demands that he return their ball. The bully is just as ignorant of the ponytailed girl as he is of minus, and refuses. So, the ponytailed girl gets nunchuks from Hammerspace and kicks his ass. After a panel of the bully bruised all over, the next scene is of him at his house, asking his father if he can transfer schools again, and having this quest be denied.

Dayum, that was awesome. But apparently Armand thought the strip was too long, and never posted it in the main comic. So the next extra strip on this page was his new plan for the ponytailed girl to show off her Character Development. In fact, I will quote his own words here:

The comic was too cluttered though and I didn’t have room to fit in the ending I wanted so I decided to redo it later, which I never got around to and so I eventually came up with a new plan for her to beat up on something. I had an idea for a comic where minus shows up some street magician so he gets angry and tries to attack her in her dreams(maybe minus gave him real powers while screwing around in the past, I didn’t really think it through) and the resulting nightmares could lead to monsters in the real world… monsters that could be beaten up with sticks. Except by the time I got to actually drawing the comics the entire original idea was scrapped, so it ended up just being stuff popping out of minus’s dream for no reason, which I couldn’t really use but still kind of wanted to, so I thought I could tie it to the other thing I wanted to get in before the comic ended, but even another Larry Comic couldn’t save it.
I was able to get Larry in one last time though. Actually at one point “Larry is Doing Fine: The continuing adventures of the last man on earth” was going to be the official final comic. It was competing with “legs sure are ridiculous”(the winner!) and a comedy routine by minus and her friend about why they wished they were fish. With that one they would have been able to bow in the last panel or something. So anyways, in the end the red haired girl never was able to show off her fighting skills. She was supposed to though. Also, before that, she was supposed to have her head chopped off.

Gee, that’s not very nice. Well, at least now we know that the comic was kind of rushed towards the end, which explains certain things. I’m not too upset, though.

There is one last set of strips. Fortunately, these are all really short. Apparently, they are meant to be more of the April Fool’s comics, with a vindictive minus in them. All of them are actually parodies of earlier comics, in fact, showing that this minus is clearly different from the canon minus. They are also drawn in yet another art style, which for some reason involves minus having shadow under her nose, and looking kind of impish. Weird.

Since these are only one or two panels tops, I’ll go through them really quickly just for the sake of completeness. For some reason, all these comics are drawn such that they appear to be set, not in the modern day, but in the Gay Nineties, which may be a reference to Armand going for a retro newspaper comic feel in the main strips. And because it’s a parody of 1890s-era comics, the dialogue is so corny that I am almost certain that Armand was going for Stylistic Suck.

The first extra is, appropriately, a parody of the first real strip. This time, however, when the boys say they’re going to take minus’s ball from her, she turns them into trees preemptively. Perhaps a minus who isn’t oblivious to the world around her is not such a good thing.

The second is a parody of the second strip, and has minus make a headstone come to life, and pelt mourners with snowballs.

Again, the third one has minus turn a balloon salesman into a balloon for absolutely no reason, and spouts off a stupid one-liner. Ironically, this balloon salesman actually has a better fate than the canon one, because he is still recognizably human and doesn’t pop.

I’m not sure what the fourth one is parodying; maybe the strip where the hunter has to box the lion he shot? The circumstances are different though. A man who looks much like that hunter is apparently a professional boxer, and as he brags about being undefeatable in front of all his admirers, minus sics a bald eagle on him. This boxer didn’t do anything to deserve this fate, unlike his counterpart!

The fifth strip is really weird. It’s a sendup of when the red-haired twins get sent back in time; since they’re already in Victorian times, minus sends them to the Cavalier Years — on purpose. And all they wanted to do was stop themselves from breaking a vase.

The sixth one’s kind of creepy. minus is surrounded by a bunch of old men, who, though they acknowledge she’s a girl, say that she looks like a boy. So of course minus is shocked to hear this, and makes herself look like an adult woman. It’s just weird.

The seventh one I think was done as a deliberate Take That to all those who misinterpreted the strip where minus stops an asteroid from hitting the Earth. But I don’t know. Some people notice an asteroid is going to kill them all, and as they panic, minus says she’s just gonna play some baseball. She doesn’t care one bit about the rest of the world.

The eighth one opens with some guy on a hill praising life, only for it to cut to minus washing some clothes in an old-fashioned washtub, saying to the man that he only exists inside a soap-bubble that she made, and that he will die once it pops. I should point out that there is no equivalent to the green-haired girl in these parody comics, so it is likely that that bubble will pop, and nobody will rein in minus’s antisocial tendencies.

Now, remember that guy dressed in orange who stuffed minus into a briefcase? In the ninth and final parody strip, his counterpart is walking along, and minus just kicks him for no reason. This one is only funny because we know what happened in the main comic.

Now, there are five remaining extra strips before this review is well and truly over. There is just one slight problem.

These strips are in Japanese, and not translated. I have no idea what they are about, because I can’t read Japanese, and since the strips are images, I can’t even copy and paste the words into Google Translate. I can’t do a review in these conditions, so I’m just going to end it here. If anybody does know Japanese, that would be a help.

But in any case, this review series is finally over. Thing is, I said everything I wanted to say about the comic in general in the last part, so let me just end this with, Ryan Armand is a pretty cool guy. He draws comix n doesnt afraid of anything.

Comment [2]

Gee, introductions are hard.

Hello, good people of ImpishIdea. I’m Brendan. I’ve been a lurker here for months and have finally gotten around to actually posting stuff. I’ve never really done a spork like this before, so I hope you’ll bear with me.

Anyway, what I’m about to show you is yet another self-published book series from a writer who thinks too highly of himself. However, unlike Tesch or Nelson or many of the other people who have incurred this site’s ire, this particular writer is actually respected in his field. His field is not fiction, suffice to say. Rudolph Rummel may be a respected political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii, but that doesn’t mean he can write good fiction. The books go to great lengths to list all his academic credentials, apparently unaware that those mean nothing here.

Now we are finally getting to the books themselves. There are six of them, however, it is clear that Rummel was not originally intending to write more than one. All of the books in his series are in fact available for free off his website. You can tell that they were vanity published because the covers are horrible.

If you want to read the books yourself, here is a link.

Here’s what he has to say about them:

On the Never Again Series

The six novels in this series are a what-if, alternative history. Two lovers are sent back in time to 1906 with modern weapons and 38 billion 1906 dollars. Their mission is to prevent the rise of fascism and communism, avert the major 20th Century wars, including World Wars I and II, and forestall such democides as those by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.

A description and the cover of each book are given below, along with a link to the free [PDF] download.

Foremost, this series is character driven entertainment, filled with strong action, humor, pathos, high emotion, sex, conflict, and maybe even tears. There are a large number of docudramas in the books that provide a true background or context for the action and conflicts, such as Pol Pot’s killing fields, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Holocaust, Stalin’s starvation of the Ukraine, Turkey’s genocide of the Armenians, Rwanda’s genocide of the Tutsi, the Russian abortive 1905 communist uprising, the Battle of the Somme in World War I, the Vietnam War and defeat of the South and resulting communist transformation of the country, and finally the Boat People.

But, above all, these books are a story about love versus power — the love of dedicated warriors for each other and for humanity and who risk their lives and each other in their deadly struggle against power, unaware that:

Unseen, loves dark foe
Power, like a deadly plague,
Infests, subverts, kills.

I’d just like to say that, much like the Twilight Saga, the summary of the book pretty much spoils the main twist. You’d better like waiting, because for a hundred pages, there will be no hint of any time travel.

Well, let’s begin with the first book, shall we? War and Democide Never Again

…I don’t know what to say about the cover, other than that it’s horrible. It’s utter chaos. If I were to guess, I’d say it shows an execution grounds in outer space while the upper bodies of a man and a woman (who look completely ridiculous, mind you) obscure part of the title. The only reason I propose the cover is in space is because an image of the Earth is superimposed in the center, with some weird rings around it. The whole thing is garish and really looks like somebody was messing around with Microsoft Publisher. Usually, you want the cover to get people interested in the book before they read it, but apparently Rummel did not get the memo. Of course, since one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, let’s get into the actual text.

Past the author shilling, title page, and copyright notice, the first thing we see is this:

Pray tell, my brother,
Why do dictators kill and make war?
For glory, for things, for beliefs, out of hatred;
For power.
Yes, but more because they can. (page 7)

I will admit, that actually makes me want to read the book. Surely things will get interesting, right? (Spoiler alert: They don’t. How disappointing.)

After that little poem (which does not have any attribution, so I assume that Rummel wrote it), he puts in an acknowledgements page. If he’s treating this like it’s non-fiction, and since his whole field of study is about war and democide, this book should be well-researched.

Next up is a Foreword:

Love is one of our greatest mysteries and the greatest reward that we can receive and give to others. It comes in many forms: love for our children and they for us; love for another person; love for our pets and the unconditional love they give us; our love for humankind; and our love of our country.

This is a story of the love between a man and a woman, and their love for humanity. It may make you laugh; it may make you happy—possibly even elated. It may make you sad. It may make you tear up, as I did frequently when I wrote it. All this is part of the aura of love, and we all have experienced it.

While love is a mystery, there is something in human relations that is not. It was known to the ancients, but has to be relearned by each generation, sometimes disastrously. It is the enemy of love, and this book follows the intimate and international struggle between the two.

Someday in the future, two people may undertake a mission such as the one you will read about here. If they do, I hope that they will understand this insidious, subversive, almost invisible enemy they will have to fight—an enemy against which they may have no protection.

What is it? Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it?

Many of the sub-stories you will read here, such as that of the Cambodian woman Tor, the Chinese woman Gu, and the German Ludger are false in the names of the characters themselves, but generally true in the background war, genocide, and mass murder. If you wish to read more about these events, you can visit my web site at www.hawaii.edu/powerkills.
R.J. Rummel (page 11)

Looks like this is serious stuff. If Rummel could make his characters believable, then I would feel those emotions he is expecting the readers to have. Sadly, most of the characters are as flat as those of the Inheritance Cycle.

Now, after all that, we finally arrive at the first chapter. It doesn’t have a name.

Joy had a body to die for. (page 13)

I kid you not, that’s the actual first line. Beginning a story with a character’s appearance is never a good way to start. This applies just as much to the love interest of the protagonist (as in this case) as to the protagonist himself. Speaking of the protagonist, who is as-of-yet unnamed, the first book (and only the first book) uses the conceit that it is actually the protagonist’s diary, with him telling the story after the events have already happened. This never ends well.

In any case, the Main-Character-Who-Has-Not-Yet-Been-Named says that he was an assistant professor at Indiana University. Now wait a minute here, isn’t the author a professor at a university? There’s such a thing as Write What You Know, but this is particularly obvious. Now, since this could get tiresome, I am not going to type out “the Main-Character-Who-Has-Not-Yet-Been-Named” anymore. Until we find out his name, I’m just going to call him Nameless. Nameless says that all he has to do in order to get tenure is to “Do [his] research, publish a book or two and some articles, keep [his] relations with the lovelies on campus discreet[…]”

Yes, he did just say what you thought he said.

Nameless rambles on about being a college professor for a few more paragraphs which have no bearing on the rest of the plot and somehow winds up visiting his cousin who lives in New York – who has a name, but will never be mentioned again. Why is this important, you ask? Because he takes the train into New York City on September 11, 2001.

Remember when Tesch tried something like this?

Let’s see how he describes the tragedy, shall we?

That morning, I took the PATH train from New Jersey to the World Trade Center. I arrived at 8:50 a.m. and hopped on the escalator up to the concourse.

I found the area empty of people; spooky, to see a public place so still and quiet. I looked around; for the first time, I noticed the smoke hanging in the air. It smelled sour. The air felt sticky. Empty shoes lay scattered over the floor.

My heart began to pound. Something was very wrong.

“Get out! Run!”

I whirled to see a policeman gesturing frantically towards the concourse doors. Without thinking, I obeyed.

Outside, the street was littered with glass, concrete, and papers of all kinds. Still more papers floated down from above. The stink of burning things and gasoline hung in the air. I couldn’t run, but had to step over and around the debris.

I almost tripped over what I initially thought was a side of beef. As I dodged it, I realized it was a naked torso without arms or legs. I was too dazed to do anything but register the mangled torso and automatically look for its sex, without absorbing it at all.

Further on, I passed a large tire and then a woman’s delicate hand with a wedding ring on one finger. It was severed at the wrist, lying palm upward, fingers slightly curled. Not one of the polished fingernails was broken. The owner would be happy about that. The stupid thought flitted across my mind like the CNN Headline news items that pass across the TV screen. (page 14)

The first thing you will notice is that this is highly egocentric. The pronoun “I”, or any of its declensions, is used sixteen times. Now, the story is told in the first person, however, most of the sentences begin with the pronoun “I”. It all comes off as rather boring (which is a travesty, considering we’re describing 9/11 here) and repetitive after a few sentences. And yes, the narrator goes on like this for the entire book.

Also, how did Nameless get into the World Trade Center to begin with? From the looks of things, he walked in precisely when the planes hit. How could he possibly not have noticed that it was being attacked? Would he have tried to go up to a higher floor if that policeman hadn’t appeared from nowhere? Ladies and gentlemen, the protagonist is an idiot. Not only is he an idiot, he is also a robot. He is incredibly emotionally detached; he walks into one of the worst tragedies in human history and shows no indication at all that anything is wrong. Now, I have been told that this can happen occasionally, but it just doesn’t seem right to me, especially since the entire book is written like this.

After having the most nonchalant response to a terrorist attack ever, Nameless suddenly realizes that his cousin is trapped in the World Trade Center. The fact that somebody he knows personally is going to die finally gets an emotional reaction from our protagonist. (It is at this point that we learn that his name is John, and I have a suspicion that the only reason his cousin is a victim of 9/11 is so that Rummel can have a cell-phone conversation, so that the audience can finally learn his protagonist’s name.) There is also an inconsistency, as John’s doomed cousin tells him that his cell phone is not working, yet they are having a conversation over the phone perfectly fine.

John sees the second plane hit, and still describes the events as though this were a documentary produced after the fact, and not like someone who is living through one of the greatest tragedies in American history. It is clear that Rummel has ignored the maxim, “Show, don’t tell.” Why do so many people do this?

In any case, John makes it to where his cousin had lived, and tells his cousin’s wife what happened. After several days, he is finally allowed to leave. Really, everything between his cousin’s death and his return to Indiana could have been removed without detracting anything from the story. However, Rummel wanted to show how IMPORTANT his subject is, yet he was unable to really reproduce the horror of a terrorist attack at all. If I sound callous here, and in later parts, it’s because the writing is so bland. I doubt that actual survivors of 9/11 would appreciate this.

Then we have this cryptic and somewhat corny statement:

The terrorists made one serious mistake when they destroyed the World Trade Towers. Timing. A week earlier, a week later would have made a universe of difference. I wouldn’t have been here. (page 18)

First, I think that third sentence could have been phrased a bit better. Second, all John can say about the sheer destruction caused was that the terrorists “made a mistake”? They did their job of terror quite well; their actions were all kinds of evil, but they weren’t a “mistake”. The hijackers knew full well what they were doing. Third, John is implying that the hijackers’ mistake was in committing their crime while he was there to witness it. As if that even matters! It just suggests that if John hadn’t been there in person, but had only heard about 9/11 on the news, that he wouldn’t care enough (admittedly, he doesn’t really seem to care anyway, judging from his lack of reaction) to do what he will later do.

And that’s the end of the chapter, so we’ll just have to wait to find out what it is he does.

Comment [32]

Or, Rummel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!

Welcome back, everyone. Now let’s dig in to Chapter 2, shall we?

The chapter begins with John talking about Joy. You know, the character who was mentioned in the first sentence of the first chapter and has not made an appearance thus far? Apparently, Joy is a student attending his lectures.

GOD DAMN IT, RUMMEL!

Moving on…

John keeps talking about how much his life has changed since the events he is narrating, and how young and naive he was, and blah blah blah. Really, nobody cares. All it does is make the reader want Rummel to just get on with the plot. John ends up talking about the last lecture he ever gave.

I worried over the same questions I’d asked myself when I began the class: How can I make my students feel in their gut what ten million or one hundred million bodies mean in human terms—that people died in agony, often for nothing but their ethnicity, religion, or political views, or to meet a death quota enforced by their rulers?

This frustrated me. I didn’t know how to convey the true horrors without making the students ill and turning them off. (pages 19-20)

Trust me, Rummel can’t convey these horrors any better than John can. Which is just evidence for my theory that John is Rummel. He has no personality and is basically a vehicle for Rummel to talk about his viewpoints. I’d even say that he’s about as blatant of a self-insert as Bella Swan. But more on that later.

Now, here comes a very controversial part of the story. Rummel puts the plot on hold so that his character can literally give a lecture about the horrors of dictatorship. For the next three pages, he talks about a Chinese girl during the Cultural Revolution. This is very bad practice, and not just because the sequence is really disgusting. The author is literally halting the plot so that his self-insert can lecture to the readers. This contributes nothing to the story, it holds us back, and really, it’s intended to give an important message, but seriously, pretty much everyone knows that dictatorship is bad. In fact, the people who would read this story already know that and don’t want to read about people getting tortured. Because that’s what this scene is. Torture porn, pure and simple. I will not go into it further.

Naturally, the students are stunned into silence. All except Joy, anyway. This is the first time she is actually seen in person. Apparently Joy is the only student in the class to be reduced to tears by the lecture. I should note that this is inconsistent with her later characterization.

Might I remind you that in Part 1, I said that Joy was John’s love interest. She is also a student in his class.

John continues his lecture, and we learn that he is apparently a Large Ham, gesticulating wildly and pounding his fist on the podium. Strange, considering how he’s narrating this, I’d think his lectures would be as boring as those of an old professor with tenure who doesn’t even want to show up. But what do I know about John’s awesomeness? After all, I didn’t write the book.

John says that 174 million people were killed by their governments during the 20th century, and that an additional 40 million were killed in combat during that same span. Rummel himself later revised that upward, and yes, that will be important later. As for those hundreds of millions of people? This book is spitting on their memories.

“This need not be. There is hope and a solution. Democracies do not make war on each other and, as a historian, I say bluntly . . .” and now I wagged my finger as though each word was at the end of it “. . . they . . . never . . . have.” (page 23)

Now, this is somewhat disputed. The democratic peace theory, which Rummel himself formulated as a political scientist, states that no war has ever been fought in which both sides were democratic countries. Other political scientists were quick to provide counterexamples, such as the Falklands War, for instance. Rummel and his supporters have answered their critics by saying that none of those cases actually count (in other words, special pleading), and that either one or more of the democracies were not “real” democracies. (Either the country was only democratic for a few years and the people were not used to having rights, though how that would affect their going to war is unknown, or a war was formally declared but there were no actual casualties, or one or more of those countries were not democracies at all, but oligarchies, though the dividing line between the two is actually somewhat subjective.) I’m no political scientist, and ordinarily I wouldn’t go into this, and a weak form of the democratic peace theory is probably plausible (after all, you don’t see members of the European Union going to war with one another), but the reality is not at all as cut-and-dried as Rummel makes it out to be.

I should point out that the democratic peace theory is an extremely idealistic theory of geopolitical relations. Since it is completely true in-story, you would expect this to be a very idealistic story, right? Well, the characters do not behave in a very idealistic manner, as will be seen later. Inconsistency, yay!

After more preaching to the choir about how great democracy is, we get this sentence.

“Democratization is practical and in fact is being aided by many current democracies.” (Ibid.)

HA HA HA HA HA!

I don’t want to be overly political here, but this is a gross misreading of history. There have been many times in history, especially in recent history, where democratic countries have supported dictatorships, and even gotten them into power, in the belief that the dictatorship would help them fight another, even worse dictatorship. That’s not really “spreading democracy”, considering that said dictatorships do not appreciate it when the people demand they leave power. Rummel is a political scientist and should know this. He is being overly naive for the sake of a political point.

John finishes off his speech by giving some platitudes along the lines of “if we work together, we can solve any problem” and apparently gets so emotional that his suit is drenched in his own sweat. I am not making this up, folks. Is this normal for people who give speeches, or should John go see a doctor? Even worse for John, some of his students didn’t even care.

At the end of class, Joy Phim goes up to meet John. Apparently she got straight A’s on all her assignments and John had kept an eye on her because of her beauty. Both my Sue-dometer and my paedo alarm are going off right now.¹

By the way, we finally learn John’s last name. It’s Banks.

There is some very disturbing narration while Joy invites her professor over to meet her mother.

It is at this point that Rummel switches from a rather beige and detached writing style to something more descriptive. Only, however, when describing Joy. Nobody else has gotten any description, not even John, which is why I assume that he is Rummel’s avatar.

Joy looked at me reflectively for a moment with her remarkable black eyes. They were large, almond-shaped, fringed with long black eyelashes, and tipped up at the corners. Her eyes and her voice . . . I could never just observe her voice and her eyes. They always attacked me with their declaration, “I am woman. I am feminine.” I melt now, thinking of them. (page 25)

Dude, John, this is your STUDENT you’re talking about here! Do you not see anything wrong with this? At least he rejects her offer to go to her house, since he’s still her professor until he grades her final exam or something. (But if he can show restraint like that, then how come he still fantasizes about her? Argh.)

As a matter of fact, what is John’s very next narration after Joy leaves?

I couldn’t help noticing how well her denims outlined her sexy rear end. Clever of her to wear those tight jeans. With them, she laid the cornerstone for my lust—lust that she soon would build into a towering edifice. (Ibid.)

ARGH. AGKFBDNVA AV DFVJNSKJADB VCKHB

…Sorry about that. Let’s get back to the spork, shall we?

Anyway, it turns out that Joy’s final exam was a term paper about the Vietnamese boat people. THIS IS FORESHADOWING. Joy is Asian; you do the math.

Well, Joy’s mother calls John after the semester is over. Apparently Ms. Phim has an unspecified Asian accent even though, as we will later learn, she has been living in the United States for at least twenty-five years. Rummel is apparently unaware that people will naturally start to lose their foreign accents if they remain around native English-speakers for decades, such that people like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan actually have to see language coaches in order to keep their accents as foreign as possible. In any case, it’s no surprise that John, both now and later, thinks that all Asians are alike. Asians are not portrayed very well in this series. It isn’t intentional racism on Rummel’s part, I don’t think, but it’s still glaring.

Naturally, Joy’s mother, Tor, rather rudely pressures John into going to their house. She even offers him FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS. As if John wasn’t waiting for the opportunity to get in Joy’s pants already. Tor is a horrible parent in my opinion, and not just because of this scene.

John says that if he accepts the money, then Joy can never attend another of his classes, and Tor says that Joy has quit school. In fact, it turns out that John’s course was the only course she took.

DUN DUN DUUN!

Oh, and just in case you were wondering if John could go a full scene without imagining Joy in an inappropriate manner, you’re wrong.

It turns out that Tor is the president of a major corporation known as Nguon Industries. I have no idea how that is pronounced. If anyone here is Vietnamese, please tell me how it is pronounced, though I suspect that Rummel has gotten the language wrong. And yes, THIS IS FORESHADOWING.

Over winter break, Joy shows up in John’s office to tell him when he should go meet them. Joy smiles at him “coquettishly” and the following paragraphs ensue:

Joy’s shiny black hair cascaded down over both her shoulders and brushed her waist. Her bangs fell across her forehead like a curtain drawn aside to reveal large, bright eyes and a flawless complexion. Gone were the student’s backpack and jeans. Now she wore a tight blouse, open at the collar to expose a golden choker, and a taupe skirt complemented her light olive-colored skin and showed off her long legs. She carried a light, fur lined coat over one arm.

Her lipstick seemed brighter; redder, I noticed. And what a perfume she wore! Light; not overdone; just a hint of gardenia. Must have been a hundred dollars an ounce.

Joy exuded a heady mixture of Asian femininity and sexuality. If she’d been a photo in some fashion magazine, I’d have scissored it out and hung it in constant view. Weeks later I realized that she had selected her clothes and had made herself up to make me lust for her.

Perfectly done. Perfectly achieved. (page 28)

You mean to tell me, Rummel, that Joy is dressing provocatively for her professor? What are you smoking?

Those of you who wanted a time travel story, I apologize. Rummel felt the need to derail it into a disturbing romance between a college professor and one of his students. After some more idiocy by our protagonist, the chapter ends. Thank God, that was really awful.

Footnotes

¹ Yeah, I know they’re in college. That doesn’t make it any less disturbing.

Comment [25]

When we last saw John and Joy, they were… riding in a limousine?

Anyway, John monologues more platitudes to himself about whether or not it’s moral to play God and be judge, jury, and executioner, but none of this intrapersonal conflict will ever be brought up again, so it really doesn’t matter.

I reached the front door of my faculty apartments at 5:30. (page 31)

Wait, weren’t they in the limousine by now? This narration is jumping around. Could this be the time travel?

Nah, it’s just stupidity.

I actually wish it were the time travel, then the plot would pick itself up after it collapsed while jogging somewhere around Hot For Student land.

shivers

Moving on…

Apparently this limo would pick Joy up from school, back when she was younger. I guess she was one of those spoiled rich kids who flaunted her family’s wealth in everyone’s face or something. She then brags about how she beat up a bunch of boys back in grade school or something, even breaking the legs of one boy unfortunate enough to try to use the element of surprise against her.

Now, Joy is a sociopath. She takes utter delight in all the times she maims or kills someone, especially later on. She never feels sorry about it at all. Rummel probably did not mean to make Joy into a sociopath, but whenever John argues with her on what they should do to their enemies, she always suggests the more bloodthirsty option, with a kind of relish that would make me want to back away slowly. To top it off, her ego is enormous. But Joy is not the only character who is completely ruthless whilst being presented by the narrator as a paragon of virtue. Apparently, the father of the student whose leg Joy broke sued Tor over the incident. Instead of acting like how a reasonable person would, Tor went so far as to sic a private investigator on the poor student’s father. There is literally no cause for this; Joy was clearly in the wrong, and the father had not done anything worthy of suspicion. Yet when she relays the tale to John, Joy relishes in the fact that her mother blackmailed an innocent man just to get her daughter out of trouble. And these are supposed to be our heroes?

Despite getting his first inkling that Joy is completely psycho, John still cannot stop narrating how beautiful she is. Gag me.

John questions Joy, not about why she beat up the boys, but about how she was able to beat up the boys. We thus learn that Joy has been trained in karate and judo since she was four years old, and is skilled with knives.

It is at this point that I would be throwing all my weight at the limousine’s door and taking my chances with oncoming traffic over this creepy Knife Nut.¹ But then of course, I am not completely infatuated with someone over whom I am in a position of power. By the way, my Sue-dometer just made some noise.² You’ll see why in a moment.

John says something that I just have to quote, because it aptly summarizes my opinion of this whole book:

I felt like I’d sat down in the middle of a spy thriller—a lot was going on in the movie, the cinematography and directing were great, but I didn’t know the plot or who were the good or the bad guys. (pages 32-33)

Well… maybe not the parts about lots of things going on or about the cinematography and directing being great. That’s a whole other issue. It’s bland, pure and simple. That’s what the narration is. Did Rummel really find this entertaining when he reread it? Did he even reread it at all?

Anyway, Joy demands that John punch her. For once, John acts like a normal person and is rather bewildered. But alas, all his attempts to punch her lights out are blocked effortlessly. You are keeping an eye on the Sue-dometer, right?

And we get this deliciously innuendo-filled line:

“You must get to know me and my special . . . skills,” she responded,
with a curiously sensual emphasis on the last word. (page 34)

Rummel, you magnificent bastard.

Now, there is one misconception I may have inculcated into your minds. Joy, as we now learn, is actually twenty-five years old. She’s only one year younger than John, in fact. However, John does not learn this until the readers do, so it doesn’t make his lust for Joy any less sickening. In fact, his very next line is a rather loliconnish admittance that he thinks that Asian women look like they should be in middle school. I do not want to know what Rummel thinks of his Asian students now.

Joy apparently has a B.A. in political science from Berkeley and an M.A. in computer science from Princeton, which took her only two years to get. Why is my Sue-dometer making so much noise?

It turns out that the only reason that Joy was taking John’s class was because Tor, her mother, wanted to hear firsthand about John’s contribution to the democratic peace theory.³ Wait a minute, here. Rummel is the most well-known proponent of the democratic peace theory. John is just some rookie professor no one has ever heard of before. Did Rummel confuse himself with his character or something? Now I really don’t want to know what he thinks of his female students. Thank God I’m a guy.

Now is time for another Very Special Flashback Sequence, this time to Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. That’s where Tor is from, apparently. Now, I skipped over the last Very Special Flashback Sequence, but this one takes up most of the chapter in which it appears and is a bit more important to the plot, since it’s Tor’s backstory. (In fact, it’s the only Very Special Flashback Sequence in the entire book that I wouldn’t recommend excising in its entirety.) But I warn you, both you and your stomach will get very tired of these soon enough.

So in 1975, Tor lived with her husband Nguon, whom she would eventually name a business after, and who really has very little purpose in this whole flashback. The only reason he exists is so he can be killed by the Khmer Rouge to give Tor emotional baggage. Surprisingly, they aren’t worried at all that the Khmer Rouge has just taken over Cambodia. They’re just glad that the war is over. I would’ve suspected Rummel to have his characters lecture the readers on how evil the communists are before the democide even starts. However, this is not a good thing. Rummel’s saving up the horror and the filibustering for later. If he had done otherwise, he would have been unable to imply that the “ignorant Orientals” can see through the wiles of power-mad dictators without Western aid. There is also a short bit where it looks like Rummel is blaming the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge on people who are unwilling to “stay the course”. How pleasant!

We’re not even half a page in and I’m already sickened.

Somehow Tor’s face is still beautiful, even though the narrator implies that she had been starving for some time. Human metabolism, what’s that?

By the way, Tor’s past self is the second character in the whole book whose dress is described. I’d say that John entertains some truly bizarre fantasies, but he actually isn’t the narrator for this part. Joy is. There is absolutely no reason for us to know what Tor is wearing. It doesn’t matter, particularly considering that she lives in Cambodia in 1975.

(I am deliberately trying to avoid acknowledgement of that fact. So far Rummel could have been writing a short vignette about a pair of high school sweethearts for all we know.)

So far, every Cambodian character, even Tor’s past self, has expressed nothing but support for the Khmer Rouge. None of them are even slightly worried about what might happen to them now that a hostile army has taken over and occupied their country. I know what Rummel’s doing here. He is doing exactly what the authors of every single Holocaust novel that poor unsuspecting seventh-graders are forced to read has done: show the character’s lives before everything goes to hell. Unfortunately, we see almost nothing of their lives before the Killing Fields.

We see some more of Rummel subtly (and I hope to God unintentionally) implying that the “intellectuals” supported the Khmer Rouge, in some perverse attempt at dramatic irony. He does know who Pol Pot’s first victims were, right? Right?

The first indication that something is wrong is when Tor and Nguon hear gunfire and see the Khmer Rouge attacking people. But instead of actually being worried, like any rational person would be, Nguon just speculates that some government forces just don’t know when to quit. Does Rummel want us to sympathize with Nguon or not? He’s being an idiot.

Tor and Nguon get rounded up by the guerrillas. Do I really have to keep sporking this?

I’m trying to gloss over this as quickly as I can, in part because I really don’t want to act like a troll, and in part because Rummel’s writing actually isn’t that bad here. The portrayal of 1970s Cambodia is just as horrific as it was in real life. Since this scene is in third person, Rummel’s emotionally detached narration actually works, since it captured the horror and insanity of the situation. Now, as a general rule, anything bad you have heard about the Killing Fields is probably less severe then what really went on, so I cannot attack Rummel for having the villains of this flashback be pointlessly evil. They’d make the Nazis look like saints.

And then Rummel has the characters pointlessly exposit:

“Neither do I,” Nguon replied. “There were rumors of the Khmer Rouge evacuating towns that they controlled before the war ended, forcing everyone to be peasants in the fields, and shooting former government officials and all captured officers. We all thought that was government propaganda.” (page 40)

A few problems: the dialogue is stilted, Rummel has already given the readers this information, and anyone passingly familiar with the subject matter would already know it. It would be like someone writing a novel about the Holocaust, only to have the characters discuss among themselves the details of the Final Solution. I would have suggested Rummel forgo the science-fiction aspects of his story entirely, and write about historical democides and the effects they had on everyone involved, but then he ruins it with his bad dialogue. Like this sentence, for instance:

“Pech hates anyone who is unenthusiastic for the revolution.” (page 45)

Something tells me that the actual victim of an atrocity like this would not describe her oppressor in a manner befitting the antagonist of an educational program for children. What was Rummel thinking, that we’re all too dumb to figure out for ourselves that the Khmer Rouge were puppy-kicking bastards to a man?

I should also point out that Rummel has his villains use a lot of profanity. And I do mean a lot of profanity. I guess it’s supposed to show that they’re hardened killers, or that they want to intimidate their victims, but most of it comes off as gratuitous. It happens in every extended flashback, not just this one. I guess Rummel really couldn’t think of anything else for his villains to be than vulgar, even in contexts where it makes no sense. Another linguistic oddity is that all the Cambodian characters use modern, American slang. I understand that the Translation Convention is in effect, and that the characters are meant to be “really” speaking Khmer, but it’s just something that has been noticed that detracts from the authenticity and makes the whole flashback sound artificial.

In case you were wondering, at this point Tor is hearing the testimony of a fellow inmate in the Killing Fields. This other woman goes into graphic detail about how the Khmer Rouge treat their prisoners, but Tor, who is also a prisoner, should already know this. Yet she acts as if all this is news to her. I think Rummel really thinks that his audience needs everything explained.

Oh, and I take back some of what I said about his writing style actually working here. There’s still far too much telling, and not enough showing. For instance, Tor doesn’t actually have emotions, she “remembers” her emotions. One could say that she can’t show any emotions because the soldiers will kill anybody who does show emotions, but that is not what I am talking about. A person can still have emotions, but deliberately suppress them, like if they were in the Killing Fields. However, Tor doesn’t even do that. We just have to take Rummel’s word that she isn’t a robot.

But perhaps she’s just that traumatized? Well, that idea doesn’t work, as will be seen later on. She doesn’t show any indication of being traumatized, either. Tor’s emotionlessness is entirely due to Rummel’s laziness.

This flashback is so long that it needs to split into parts. (In fact, it takes up the whole remainder of this chapter.) Ordinarily, this would not be a bad thing. However, the formatting of this novel can lead to confusion. The transition between the main story and this flashback was marked by three symbols that resemble lightning bolts, which don’t even cause a line break. Then, the flashback’s internal transition has exactly the same punctuation, albeit with a line break this time. At first, I thought that this meant the flashback was over, but that’s not the case. This book was vanity published, so I can only assume that Rummel did not have a proofreader.

Another problem, particularly in this scene, is Rummel’s occasional insertion of something completely inappropriate. Starting after the line break, he recounts one of the most horrifying scenes in the entire book series, let alone this particular installment. Leaving out all the really gruesome bits, it’s about an inmate that Nguon had befriended, who is tricked by the soldiers into revealing that he is a teacher, thus leading to his death by children. This scene is so horrifying that it makes you want to agree with Rummel about the democratic peace theory. However, immediately before this scene happens, we get what appears to be slapstick. What. The. HELL?!

A month later a squad of soldiers stopped at the village to rest, and happened to pass by Mey’s outdoor class. One of the soldiers halted so suddenly that the one behind him almost bumped into him. (page 47)

Was there a point to that paragraph at all?! Really? Really. It contributed absolutely nothing to the scene and just should not be there. The Khmer Rouge were terrifying, not the Three Stooges. There is absolutely no reason for it. Might I remind you, this scene happens immediately before an innocent man is hanged by the group of children that he was put in charge of, who were told that they were playing a game. This is so horribly disrespectful, I don’t know what to say.

Also during this scene, Rummel goes into a completely unnecessary description of the weather. It was apparently a perfect day on this man’s execution, so he was clearly trying to subvert the pathetic fallacy, but at no other point in the book is the weather described. It’s needless and should have been cut.

Now, back to the plot. Unfortunately, the Very Special Flashback Sequence still has not ended.

After witnessing their friend’s public execution, Nguon and Tor plot their escape. Nguon says that they must leave that night, and Tor says that they aren’t ready. Nguon quite justifiably wants to kill the bastards who put them where they are, but knows that if he did that, both he and Tor would die. Apparently the two of them have been stockpiling food and other supplies, knowing that that would get them killed if they were discovered, and keeping them bundled in a raincoat buried under a pile of rocks beneath a tree. I have the feeling that that would never work in a million years.

When it comes time for them to escape, all they do is walk out of their tent in the middle of the night. Incredibly, this actually works. There are no guards stationed at night to prevent this sort of thing from happening, and the two of them make it across the field and into the woods. If it were that easy to escape, you’d think that people would have left the Killing Fields in droves. This scene is spitting on the memories of the people Pol Pot had murdered. Worst of all, it’s almost certain that the following morning, when the soldiers discover that two people have escaped, that they will execute two others in retaliation. However, Rummel does not go into what happens in the camp after Tor and Nguon escape. After all, it’s not like any other victims had names. For a few paragraphs, it actually looks like they might escape unscathed. Apparently Nguon knows how to get all the way to Thailand, even though they have been kidnapped by the revolutionaries and brought out to the middle of nowhere. For all he knows, they could be much closer to the eastern border with Vietnam, but of course they would never escape to Vietnam because Vietnam is a communist country. Never mind that the Vietnamese army actually fought against the Khmer Rouge, and that Thailand was also a dictatorship in the 1970s. Vietnam would probably have been the lesser of two evils. Now, if it had been explicitly stated that they were closer to Thailand, that would be one thing, but the readers do not know where the characters are. A smaller problem is that Nguon knows which way is west by how moss grows on trees. Except that moss doesn’t actually always grow on the north side of trees, so he could just be leading Tor around in circles.

Tor and Nguon travel west for several days, with only the limited supplies that they had managed to sneak from the camp they were in. In true hack novelist fashion, this harrowing journey is not described at all, leading the readers to believe that the two encounter no trouble at all until right when they reach the border with Thailand. In real life, wilderness survival is more complicated than this. One needs shelter, food, and water, and I doubt that Tor and Nguon were able to sneak enough food away to last an unspecified number of days without being discovered, nor is it likely that there is a convenient stream available for them to drink from. There is a line break for no adequately explained reason. The scene does not warrant one. Before the line break the couple was almost past the last village before the border, and after the line break they’ve passed that village.

Is that it? Are our protagonists actually going to escape the most horrible atrocity ever to occur in human history without a hitch? No, because a rainstorm happens at the worst possible moment. I would like to remind everyone here that Cambodia is a tropical country, so rainstorms are serious business. They typically last for weeks on end.

And so, Nguon slips on a rock and breaks his ankle. This may be the first diabolus ex machina in this series, but it won’t be the last. He tells Tor to make a splint out of the branches laying around, and the cloth that they inexplicably had with them.

Then we get this:

Tor got up and staggered over the unfamiliar ground in the drizzling rain, searching for a fallen branch. Finding one, she returned to her bag, pulled out her knife, and cleaned the branch of leaves and twigs. (page 52)

Wait a minute, Tor has a knife? Has Rummel forgotten that Tor and Nguon have just escaped the Killing Fields of Cambodia? There is positively no way that the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge would have neglected to search through all of their belongings and confiscate any weapons. An obvious Ass Pull if there ever was one.

Of course, the real reason Rummel had Nguon break his ankle is revealed in the following paragraph. It only happened in order to slow the two of them down enough for a Khmer Rouge patrol to discover them. You know, a far better way to have that happen would be as a consequence of them not knowing how to survive in the wilderness. The way it is here, right before they’re safe, comes off as contrived in the extreme.

Naturally, Nguon tells Tor to leave him behind and run. Tor initially refuses, saying that she will die with him. Nguon says that she must tell everyone about the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. Apparently this is enough to make Tor want to live.

So she manages to escape the soldiers (again) but Nguon gets shot. Considering what would probably have happened to him if his wound got infected, this is probably a mercy kill. Also, there is no indication that Tor took the supplies with her. There is another line break, but at least this one is somewhat justified.

Remember how the narrator said that Tor and Nguon were almost at the border? Well, apparently it still takes Tor days to reach Thailand. If Nguon hadn’t died, would they have had enough supplies for both of themselves? At least Tor is smart and uses the Sun as a compass instead of moss, in a tropical area.

When it was cloudy, she determined west by where the moss grew the thickest on the tree trunks. (page 53)

Or maybe not. Just when I thought the characters would start to be intelligent. Aye aye aye…

Once again, Rummel describes Tor’s physical appearance. While she is bleeding and bruised all over, I’m pretty sure that she should be very malnourished by now. After all, not only was she in the Killing Fields, but she was described as suffering from starvation before the Khmer Rouge even took over. She should barely have the energy to move. Furthermore, I doubt that she was able to boil any water she found in conveniently placed streams. I only bring this up now instead of earlier because Rummel does not show any hint of this in his description. A person who went through what Tor goes through should be an absolute emaciated diseased mess. Keep this in mind. Good? OK.

And at that moment, a soldier approaches her.

You know what, this is really taking a long time. It would have been better for the climax of the escape to be Nguon’s demise. There is no indication of how close to the border Tor is, and we have already seen enough atrocities that I am pretty sure that even a communist would have concluded that the Khmer Rouge are bad by this point.

Tor still has her knife with her, but the soldier has a rifle. She still doesn’t have a fighting chance, despite how Rummel portrays the scene.

As she intended, the boy saw Tor’s genitals as she bent over. When she stood up and turned toward the boy, his eyes were round and his face was flushed. Naked, she glided toward him, murmuring huskily, “I want you. I want to fuck. Fuck me.” (page 54)

Remember what I said before about democide victims being emaciated diseased messes? Yeah, apparently Rummel’s not having it. Despite all the indignities she’s been through, Tor is still attractive enough to lull the soldier into a false sense of security, because she’s speshul. In real life, she probably would have been better off just stabbing the soldier with a knife and then running as fast as she could. I don’t care how repressed the soldier is, he is not going to find her sexy. There was no reason she had to do that before she killed him.

And another thing: the book states that Tor supposedly hid the knife behind her forearm. However, the way she approached the soldier would not have allowed the knife to remain concealed, since her forearms would have been clearly visible during her approach. This is more of Rummel not thinking things through.

There is another line break, and three more days pass. Tor is STILL not out of Cambodia. What was Nguon thinking when he said that all that separated them from freedom was a single village? Tor has been traveling for at least a week after Nguon’s death. It is only now that the lack of food, shelter, or proper clothing has gotten to Tor. Realistically, it should have happened while Nguon was still alive.

And without even knowing it, she arrives in Thailand. You would think that the actual border would be more heavily armed than a few villages near the border, especially considering that an escapee could just go around the villages. (In fact, I wonder why Nguon didn’t do that.)

We get this sentence:

She was in Thailand! (page 55)

Now, I understand that Tor should experience a lot of positive emotion once she discovers that she is safely in Thailand, but that sentence just looks awkward to me. It would be better phrased as, “Finally, she was in Thailand,” or, “At long last, she was in Thailand,” or just “She was in Thailand,” without the exclamation mark. I don’t think that exclamation marks should be anywhere outside of dialogue, but perhaps that’s just me. That sentence is also a paragraph unto itself. We get what should be an emotional scene of Tor putting a photograph of her husband⁴ in her locket, which the Khmer Rouge didn’t confiscate for some reason, and the chapter ends.

Wait a minute, if Joy was telling John the story of her mother, then how did she know about all of those minor details?

Footnotes

¹ After all, you don’t just say that you’re skilled with lethal weapons in a casual conversation.

² Think of a Geiger counter.

³ Only creationists more flagrantly abuse the word “theory”.

⁴ Flat What.

Comment [8]

So Joy ends the Very Special Flashback Sequence, getting rather emotional about it. I will admit, she has the right to be emotional about it, but you’d think Tor, who is the one who actually lived through it, would be more so.

John, who I remind you is narrating all this after the events of the book have happened, tells the readers that Joy will not die happy. Nice job spoiling the fate of a main character for us, Rummel. Now it won’t be shocking when she dies.

By the way, even though Joy has lived in America for practically her whole life, and speaks perfect English, John still feels the need to describe her as “exotic”. Yeah…

The limousine conveniently arrives at its destination. Not counting the Very Special Flashback Sequence, the limousine ride lasted only a couple of pages. Strangely enough, they’ve stopped at a farmhouse. What, does Joy’s family own a plantation or something?

For the first time, we see Tor in person.¹ Apparently, her voice is still “youthful and sweet”. Now, I have heard Holocaust survivors talk, and their voices cannot be described as youthful or sweet. They still show evidence of being traumatized even sixty years later. Considering that Tor went through a catastrophe of similar magnitude, it is unlikely in the extreme that she would not show some signs of lasting damage.

It turns out that some sort of conference is being held inside the farmhouse. Why they chose to meet in a farmhouse is beyond me. What’s wrong with an office building? That would be far less suspicious. John gets introduced to everybody present, one after another. All of them are highly successful owners of corporations.

Spoiler alert: None of these people will actually be that important to the plot.

It’s clear that all of these CEOs are working for a common goal, so what on Earth do they want with an unknown professor at a strictly average university?

Now, a note on names. As will be made clear in a few paragraphs or so, the people assembled in the farmhouse come from all over the world. Thus, it is an excellent opportunity for Rummel to show that he really does not understand foreign names. The first person to whom John is introduced is a Chinese woman named Gu Yaping. Both of these are real names, as it turns out, but Rummel has them backwards. He is under the impression that “Gu” is a given name and “Yaping” a surname, when in fact it is the other way round. This error would be very easy to fix, but of course that would require some research, and we all know how little writers like to do research…

Tor reminds John that he is there because she had invited him over for dinner, and while they eat, they discuss current events.

…Or rather they were current events, back when this book was first published in 2004, but most of them are highly dated now. In fact, they were a little dated even then, since the book is set a few years before it was published, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

One of the people in, for lack of a better term at this time, Tor’s groupies, is introduced somewhat awkwardly here. Only two of Tor’s groupies had actually been given names when John first saw them, the rest had been shunted off to the side. This man, we learn now, is named Laurent Nkongoli. In real life, it turns out that there is a person by this name who, at the time these books were written, was the Vice President of the National Assembly in Rwanda. It appears likely that Rummel, since he doesn’t know of any African names, just named his character after this person. The Laurent Nkongoli of the book is not meant to be the same person as the real Laurent Nkongoli, since the fictional version is a doctor based in the United States, but it was in rather poor taste, I think, to do this. Of course, the fictional Laurent Nkongoli (and almost certainly the real one as well) lived through the Rwandan genocide.²

By now, the readers have read two separate stories detailing the horrors of despotism and state-sanctioned killing. Most people reading the novel would get Rummel’s point by now. However, he feels the need to include yet another Very Special Flashback Sequence and further halt the overall plot. Laurent isn’t even an important character, so this doesn’t even serve the purpose of providing needed backstory. It’s just there.

The flashback is of course initiated with a line break.

From the very first sentence of the flashback, verisimilitude is compromised. Supposedly, Laurent has a nephew named Seth Sendashonga. As it turns out, there was a real person in Rwanda named Seth Sendashonga. However, the real Sendashonga was a member of the government during the 1994 genocide. (Though to be fair, he did not think that the Tutsis should actually be killed.) The fictional version of Seth Sendashonga, however, was a college student at the time. Of course, since the real Sendashonga was a Hutu and the real Nkongoli is a Tutsi, there is no way they can be related, but if Rummel had acknowledged this, then he would have had to come up with two entirely original names for his African characters.

The narrator tells us that the fictional Seth, Laurent’s nephew, attended school at the University of Butare. Furthermore:

There was some concern among Tutsi students and faculty at the university about massacres of Tutsi unleashed by the Rwandan Armed Forces in Kigali, the capital. But by Rwandan standards, that was a long distance away. Few worried about it. (pages 59-60)

There are two things wrong with this. Number 1, the distance from Butare to Kigali is about 76 miles. That’s less than two hours by car. Admittedly not many people owned cars in 1990s Rwanda, but even walking it would take only two days or so to travel there, so not exactly a long way. Which brings us to problem Number 2, that if someone heard that people of their ethnic group were being massacred by the Armed Forces less than 100 miles away, I don’t think that they wouldn’t worry about it. Seth should know that the violence could very quickly spread over to where he is. This is the second set of Unfortunate Implications I have pointed out in these flashbacks. What was Rummel thinking?

Apparently Seth was taken by surprise when a militia occupied the university. It’s as if no one thought that the new government which shows no regard for the life of its citizens and in fact regularly kills thousands in plain sight was going to do the same throughout the country? I’m sorry, but we just might have a contender for dumbest character in the book.

The head of the militia is named Stanislas Munyakazi. Now, I can’t actually find any information on a “Stanislas Munyakazi”, so I think Rummel actually came up with this name himself. Now the only question is why he couldn’t do that for his viewpoint characters.

Also, in the same paragraph where Munyakazi is introduced, the name “Tutsi” is misspelled as “Tutu”. Really?

Again, when it comes to the actual details of the genocide, Rummel is pretty accurate. I’d expect him to be, since the study of these atrocities is his specialty. The genocide really was carried out by angry mobs, and even educated people joined in, just like how it is described here.

However, we do get one sentence that makes me cringe for reasons other than the horrifying atrocities committed:

Most had never seen the inside of a library and were unaware of the maze of book stacks. (page 60)

Really? Granted, literacy in a sub-Saharan African country probably isn’t too good, but Rummel did know that a racist stereotype of black people is that they are too dumb to understand education, right? It should also be pointed out that much of the Hutu students at the university were described as joining the militia. They should know what the inside of a library looks like!

We learn that Seth wants to be a doctor just like his uncle. However, this is useless information because Seth will never appear after the Very Special Flashback Sequence is over. From a window, he witnesses some of his fellow students being rounded up in the parking lot and shot. When guns are being fired, I’m pretty sure that it isn’t a good idea to be near a window. Furthermore, the militia men would be able to look into the window and see him, thus figuring out his location! He also has a conversation with some other students who are hiding, even though, you’d think that since they were hiding, that they would want to draw as little attention to themselves as possible? It appears to me that, despite what the narration says, Seth has a death wish.

Just then, Seth realizes that some of the students in the aisle with him aren’t hiding. Oh no, they’re actually Hutu,³ participating in the genocide. He finally gets a sense of how serious the situation is and runs like hell, to the opposite wall, where he runs down the fire escape and hides in the Dumpster. He knows that the militia will easily find him if he stays there, so he jettisons all his belongings except for some food and the knife he had just for this eventuality, and goes into the woods. Wouldn’t he be a bit safer out in the open where he can’t get ambushed?

His body had known. His instincts had carried him this far. Now his laggard mind caught up. As he slowly crept along, he suddenly realized how very near death he was, as close as if he were about to stumble into a pride of hungry lions. He knew that if even one militiaman or soldier with a rifle came into the lane, he was dead. His whole body started shuddering with the hammering of his heart. He had a hard time getting his breath; he almost fell away from the wall. But it was keep moving or die. (page 61)

I don’t know quite what to make of this paragraph. It just seems off to me, but I can’t place my finger on the problem. I am beginning to have the feeling that Rummel wrote this chapter after playing a stealth-based video game. It would explain quite a bit.

Somehow, Seth is able to escape the university campus and run all the way to the hospital where Laurent works without running into any militia men. This is almost as ridiculous as Tor’s escape from the Killing Fields. Apparently the massacre hasn’t reached the hospital yet. How far away from campus is it? The farther away, the less chance that Seth would have avoided the militia, and the closer it is, the less chance that the militia would not have seized it.

Seth is willing to wait for ten whole minutes in the waiting room for Laurent to show up. It should be pointed out that this Very Special Flashback Sequence was supposed to be Laurent’s backstory, yet he has not yet appeared and the flashback has focused entirely on his nephew. Naturally this backfires, since in the time Seth spends waiting, the militia arrive at the hospital. He runs out of there as fast as he can, which strangely does not attract attention to him. Once again, he stupidly looks out a window.

He overhears Munyakazi (the leader of the militia) ordering the Hutu doctors to kill every Tutsi in the hospital. Rummel falls into the same problem here as back in the last Very Special Flashback Sequence: he has the characters use American slang, even though English is not a commonly spoken language in Rwanda. They would either be speaking Kinyarwanda or French, and the former is more likely.

After hearing this, Seth is proactive for once. He runs over to where Laurent is. Strangely enough, only Seth seems to notice that the militia have taken over, even though some other passers-by have also seen them.

When Laurent hears from his nephew what is going on, he attracts attention to himself by strutting around the hospital imploring everybody to leave. Conveniently, the surgery he had performed immediately before the massacre began had been a mastectomy, so he was able to disguise himself and Seth as Hutu by making it appear that he had cut off some poor woman’s breasts with his scalpel. For some reason he doesn’t tell any of the other Tutsi about this strategy, even though they’re in a hospital so it would be trivial for them to acquire surgical knives and to get their clothes soaked in blood. Selfish bastard.

…Of course, since they are in a hospital, one would think that some of the militia men would realize that some people would try something like this, but that never happens. Rummel really seems to be going for the Dumb Muscle idea.

There is yet another egregious spelling error on page 65. In one sentence, Rummel pluralizes “knife” as “knifes”. Even children in elementary school know that the proper plural is “knives”. Geez Louise. Did he not have an editor? …Wait, don’t answer that question.

Laurent and Seth leave the hospital, and don’t even try to rescue any of patients who still don’t know what’s going on. Rummel points out that the militia would kill them if they stopped to help people, but there is no indication that the militia men are in that particular room. Surely there would be some way to get at least some people out of there alive? This is just not trying.

Of course, when they do encounter some militia men, their disguises work flawlessly, with the militia men never once supposing that some surgeon might have just disguised himself using the very method detailed by Laurent. You’d think these bloodthirsty lunatics would shoot (or slash, as the case may be) first, and ask questions later.

After many more gore-filled paragraphs, we get a scene where Laurent kills an ambulance attendant who was working with the militia. This is more or less the only time in any Very Special Flashback Sequence that we actually read about a victim fighting back against the oppressor. However, it should be pointed out that the person Laurent kills is not a member of the militia. It is quite possible that the nameless ambulance attendent was only taking part in the killings because the militia had told all Hutu that they would kill anyone who opposed them, whether Hutu or Tutsi. Rummel easily could have made Laurent’s victim more obviously evil.

To him, it was an execution. Justice had been served. (page 66)

THIS IS FORESHADOWING.

Laurent and Seth meet another militia man. At this point, I should mention that Rummel loves Product Placement. He will always mention the exact manufacturer of any arms featured, but not only that, he specifically described the brand of cigarettes that the militia man was smoking. This is all to set up a scene where Laurent tricks a militia man into letting down his guard, so that he can stab him through the heart.

Well, at least we know for sure the victim was reveling in the genocide this time. It’s a bit surprising that no one else was stationed with him, though.

So far, Laurent has been much more proactive than any other viewpoint character in this book. It’s a shame that as soon as this chapter ends he goes right back to insignificance.

Laurent and Seth board the ambulance which the now-dead militia man was guarding. It’s a good thing the keys were still in the ignition, right? They make their bold escape.

“We’re heading to our border with Zaire. We should make it in about two hours, if the militia doesn’t call ahead.” (page 67)

All right, Rummel majorly screwed up this time. Do you know what was going on in Zaire in 1994? I’ll give you a hint. Zaire is now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo.⁴ Whenever anybody thinks of a country in Africa where things are really, really bad, they think of the Congo. It is probably the worst country in which to live, other than North Korea, especially since in 1994 Zaire was ruled by the utterly insane dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. In the Nineties, the Congo was the site of two of the bloodiest wars ever to be fought. The atrocities committed in that conflict boggle the mind, and totally dwarf any inconvenience that we in the First World have ever experienced. Rummel missed an excellent opportunity to have a Congolese character star in a Very Special Flashback. Shouldn’t Laurent be driving the other way?

Seth brings up a very good point, namely, what will happen to their other family members. Laurent just says that their relatives will be hidden by moderate Hutu who do not support the genocide. Wouldn’t it just be simpler to go their homes now, pick them up, and then skedaddle? They have a motor vehicle right now.

When they arrive at the border, Rummel flubs geography a little. He has Laurent and Seth park their ambulance outside the “Rwandan town of Bukavu”, before approaching the forested border with Zaire. In actual fact, Bukavu is on the Congolese side of the border, and on the Rwandan side is a town called Cyangugu. If they were just outside Bukavu, then they would already be in Zaire, not that Zaire would be any better than Rwanda, of course.

They cross into Zaire, and unlike the case of Nguon and Tor, the two of them do not have any difficulties in the forest; both Laurent and his nephew survive. Of course, we knew beforehand that Laurent would survive, since this is a flashback and he appears in the main story, but Seth is never mentioned again. In some way, that eliminates the tension of all of these flashback sequences, since the readers know that the viewpoint character must survive.

The Very Special Flashback Sequence and the chapter end with the revelation that 170 Tutsi were eventually murdered in the hospital. I said earlier that Laurent should have at least tried to save some of them.

Between this and the last flashback, I think that Rummel greatly overestimated a person’s chances of surviving a massacre like that. At least this flashback is slightly better written than the previous, however. It’s not enough to really be good, though.

Yes, I have been doing research for this spork.

Footnotes

¹ Er, well, keeping in mind that this is a book and so we cannot actually “see” anyone…

² This isn’t quite as contrived as one might think, but the explanation has not been revealed just yet.

³ How he is able to actually tell that they’re Hutu just by looking at them, when the Hutu and Tutsi don’t really look any different from each other, is not explained.

⁴ It is, of course, neither democratic nor a republic.

Comment [14]

As soon as this chapter begins, it makes me want to bang my head against the wall. This is the opening paragraph:

Had I known Laurent’s story earlier, I might have forgiven his putting a memory-wiping drug in my tea during Tor’s dinner party. Actually, I did forgive him. (page 69)

Um… what.

I shall refrain from making a very off-color joke about John’s fate. Laurent slipped him a roofie. What kind of people are Tor’s groupies?

Rummel definitely has a knack for coming up with such unbelievable scenes out of nowhere, with no foreshadowing, and never mentioned after one brief paragraph. So, as typical of Rummel’s style by this point, John and Laurent discuss history as if nothing had happened. It seems that John is still conscious for the next several hours even though he’s been given what is essentially a date rape drug.

John and Laurent discuss the Black Death, mistakenly calling it the “Black Plague” all the while. Laurent compares the plague to the mass killings of the twentieth century. This is all more foreshadowing, which might have been somewhat interesting had the readers not already been told what was going to happen by the book’s summary. Instead, the readers are bored out of their minds while waiting for Rummel to get to the goddamn point.

At the end of the dinner, we learn that Tor’s groupies are officially called the Survivor’s¹ Benevolent Society. I will still call them Tor’s groupies because it’s funnier. We won’t learn of what this society actually does this chapter, anyway.

Tor interrupted my maudlin thoughts. (page 70)

Pfft, who uses the word “maudlin” these days? Sometimes a writer needs to use a thesaurus because they know that there is a word which fits their sentence but cannot remember it. Most of the time, however, use of a thesaurus is completely unnecessary. This is one of those times.

Tor mentions that several of her groupies could not make it to their club meeting in person, so they’ll be quite literally phoning it in, much like Rummel when he was writing this book. We get some pointless information about one groupie who died in the 9/11 attacks after being in a coma for presumably three months. This would be quite sad if we had heard anything about this character beforehand, but here, it’s just superfluous. We find out that he had lived through the Bosnian ethnic cleansing, so thank God that we are spared one Very Special Flashback Sequence. Alas, we still have plenty more through which to suffer.

Speaking of which…

Yep. There’s another one this very chapter. Gu Yaping tells of her time in Communist China. Rummel already gave us a Flashback Sequence set in Red China which I mercifully skipped. It is not usual for him to double up like this, so he must really want us to know how terrible China is. (In fact, two entire books in this series will have the Chinese as the villains.) Look, there are far worse countries to live in, buddy. Ever heard of North Korea?

Oh, and John points out that Gu’s eyes are “double-lidded” and slightly slanted. You know, ‘cause she’s Asian. Did we really need this, Rummel?

LINE BREAK!

Of course John feels the need to brag about his mad lecturing skillz, and tells Gu about the first Very Special Flashback Sequence, the one he made up, involving a Chinese student during the Cultural Revolution. Gu, of course, says that his made-up story is so accurate and that she knew someone who had died in the same manner described by John.

It is at this point that we learn that Rummel’s transliteration of Chinese is one of the most ad-hoc, inconsistent transcriptions ever. So far, the one named Chinese character has had her name given in the Pinyin romanization. However, starting in this Very Special Flashback Sequence, Rummel switches to the rather inelegant and outdated Wade-Giles romanization. This is probably because the Pinyin romanization was promoted by the communist government of China, and Rummel doesn’t want to use any commie spelling, but in that case, he should have picked one system and stuck with it! It’s also a really stupid idea.

Gu begins her Very Special Flashback Sequence by telling John information he already knows but which the readers of this book might not. These two paragraphs really should have been cut. If Rummel needed to tell his audience the exact details leading up to the Cultural Revolution, he should have done that in a less obtrusive way.

On page 72, we have more Product Placement, with Rummel describing the exact brand of cigarettes that Gu smokes. Was this really necessary? And I’m pretty sure that it isn’t proper etiquette to smoke in the presence of non-smokers. What’s more, she rudely waves her lit cigarette in John’s face. Is there a reason that she could not have stepped outside for a moment to light up? Considering Rummel’s love of stereotyping, I’m a bit surprised that Gu isn’t using a hookah.

To summarize this flashback so that it doesn’t take forever like the other ones, what happened in China was that Gu’s husband was falsely accused of being a subversive, and he was executed. It should be pointed out that of all the characters who get Very Special Flashback Sequences, only the females have significant others whom they lose. The men aren’t allowed to get emotional. The women are required to get emotional. I find this rather distasteful, Rummel.

Apparently, the communist director of the institute in which Gu’s husband worked before he was killed was named Wu Zhen.² Now, how do you think Rummel got this name?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3lLYOGDsts

a. He made it up, but it’s a legitimate Chinese name.
b. He made it up, but it’s pure gibberish.
c. He took it from a history book.

If you guessed C, you guessed right.³ Wu Zhen was a painter of the Yuan Dynasty. Just so have some perspective, the Yuan Dynasty was founded by Kublai Khan. No twentieth-century Chinese person would have a name like that. Modern Chinese names have three syllables, which would be obvious to anybody who read a history of the Cultural Revolution!

Over the course of her story, Gu happens to mention Chiang Kai-shek. For some inexplicable reason, this causes John to pipe up and give the audience a short infodump on the man. Even Gu is clearly annoyed by John interrupting her. Now, why did Gu mention Chiang Kai-shek? Because, one of Wu Zhen’s agents told her that he had read a book called Tales of the Plum Flower Society, in which Chiang Kai-shek is the main villain. Now, I searched for that title, and the first hit was none other than Rummel’s ebook. Now, it is possible that there is such a book, written in Chinese, and so I would not find it by searching for an English translation of the title, but I think I can safely say that there is no such book. In the aforesaid book, the leader of Chiang’s spy ring is named Peng Jiamu. We learn now (and not when he is first mentioned, for some reason) that Gu’s husband is also named Peng Jiamu. Now, there was a real Peng Jiamu, who was a scientist, but he lived until 1980. In other words, he survived the Cultural Revolution. This is important, because literally all the “evidence” given that Gu’s husband was a capitalist spy was that he coincidentally shared the name of a character in a novel. Of course, Peng Jiamu was alive during the Cultural Revolution and he was not purged, so if there really was such a book, that means that the Communist Party directors were able to distinguish fiction from reality. I know that Rummel wants to make it perfectly clear that the communists were bad, but this is just stupidity. What happened to making the bad guys evil by showing what they actually did, instead of making stuff up?

I am sorry, but Rummel’s idiocy here knows no bounds. He pretty much says goodbye to the notion of having realistic villains at this point. There is a line break, after which Gu details her escape from China after the arrest of her husband, but I’m not going to elaborate upon it. Anyone who read Tor’s or Laurent’s flashbacks would pretty much have read this already. This whole thing just goes on for too long. We know that all of Tor’s groupies escaped from their native countries, Rummel, since they’re narrating these scenes. We don’t need to know the minutiae of how they do so.

I will say this, though. Rummel had Gu escape China by stowing away on a ship, and seemingly for no reason except to add more darkness to this story, Gu is forced to basically be a prostitute until she gets off the ship. She seems to be taking this whole affair rather well. For God’s sake, Rummel, we have to tell inexperienced adolescent fanfic writers not to have their character be raped for the hell of it. You are a grown man, you should know better.

And with the end of that Very Special Flashback Sequence, the chapter ends. The plot has not moved one inch in two chapters. If it’s going to keep collapsing, then it really shouldn’t have taken up jogging as a hobby.

Footnotes

¹ Note the incorrect placement of the apostrophe. It should be after the S.

² …And now we’re back to Pinyin romanization. Keep it consistent, Rummel!

³ And if you guessed A, you don’t know anything about Rummel.

Comment [8]

Hey everyone. I apologize for the wait; a lot of things have happened recently. Let’s just get back to the spork.

We’re up to Chapter 6 now, and it’s another pointless one.

The chapter starts with John focused only on himself. Instead of showing any real sympathy for what everybody else has been through, he’s only interested in why he was invited to their company in the first place. Admittedly, this is a fair question: all of Tor’s groupies are made out to be highly successful, and possibly in the Forbes 500 for all we know, but John is just some nobody.

…Has Rummel forgotten that John has been drugged, and should pass out soon? He won’t be the only one to pass out if the plot doesn’t start moving again.

We get to read a really confusing sentence:

I leaned forward in my chair, glanced at Joy, and saw her looking at me with the same concerned, wide-eyed, “is that a letter from the IRS?” look I would get to know so well. (page 82)

For a moment, I thought that Tor’s groupies actually did receive a letter from the IRS, and so I was wondering when on Earth this plot twist happened. But no, it’s just a mangled turn of phrase demonstrating Rummel’s incompetence as a wordsmith. It’s such a bizarre description, really. What does the International Revenue Service have to do with the situation at hand? It’s not like Tor’s groupies are part of some secret society or anything…

It turns out that Tor’s groupies produce a stack of papers going into detail about John’s personal life. They must be stalkers or something, because they even have information on his parents and friends. And yet John still has complete trust in these people. No, we the readers do not get to see any of the details of these documents, even if that would allow us to understand more of John’s character. All we get from it is John attempting to justify his perverse attractions to young students. Women easily like him? I doubt that.

I looked up at Gu, my eyes throwing daggers at her—this is the way I hoped I looked, but I had no practice. (page 83)

I’m sure John looks like a loser.

Gu, who has suddenly become the spokesperson for Tor’s groupies, tries to justify this flagrant breach of privacy by saying that they had to “make sure” that John was the right person for their little task. And then she demands absolute secrecy of him — if I were in John’s situation, I wouldn’t trust Tor’s groupies at all.

This is the main problem with this story. Rummel wants us to perceive his characters as heroes, but so far, nobody has done anything even remotely heroic. John is a pervert, Joy is bipolar, and Tor’s groupies have 1) slipped John a roofie, and 2) pried into his personal life. They’re revealed to have done even worse things later on in the book. At no point does Rummel ever say that they’ve gone out of line. Nope, as far as he’s concerned, they’re as pure as the Sun is hot.

Gu claims that if they didn’t drug John or violate his privacy, that there are dozens of tyrannical governments who are just itching to assassinate them all. Clearly, Tor’s groupies think too highly of themselves. When we finally learn their purpose, it turns out that they are little more than a non-profit organization (though of course, we do not actually see any of their operation). If Gu really thinks there is a bounty on their heads, then she’s freakin’ paranoid.

It is finally revealed to John that he has been given a roofie. Apparently, the effects will not activate for another three hours. …I don’t know of any drugs with a delayed reaction like that, but never mind. The drug will make John wake up the next morning, remembering nothing, with a note from Joy saying that the dinner was canceled. On the other hand, if John does exactly what Tor’s groupies want, they will give him the antidote in time so that he will keep his memories.

Yes. Tor’s groupies have just given John a Hobson’s choice. And they are considered the Survivor’s Benevolent Society. Never forget that last sentence. I will bring it up again and again.

John’s like, “I won’t have this!” and Joy’s just like, “You’ll thank us later.”¹ So John just has to take this indignity like a man. I wonder what would happen if he tried to call the cops on them… Rummel wasn’t thinking that his characters would have cell phones.

By the way, on page 84, John claims to have a sailor’s vocabulary, but pretty much the only profanity that he or any other character really uses is “shit”. Make of that what you will.

There is a line break… which doesn’t segue into a Very Special Flashback Sequence. At least, not immediately.

“We are a secret society,” she explained (page 84)

In that case, Tor’s groupies should have no trouble paying their taxes.

Tor gets emotional for no apparent reason while Gu delievers their mission statement. Rummel seems to have a thing for the Hysterical Woman, as no matter what, whenever a female character gets into any amount of hardship, or anything that reminds her of a past hardship, she bawls her heart and soul out to the nearest man. It got kind of annoying after Joy did it for the first time, but it never stops. It just keeps going, even after the characters have gone through so much they should be desensitized to things that become trivial in comparison.

Anyway, it turns out that the Survivor’s Benevolent Society is essentially a support group for people who survived destructive wars and democides. Somehow, no matter what the cause of their original misery was, they all have developed a neoconservative viewpoint, even the members who escaped from Chile— oh wait, there aren’t any!

Yeah, that’s another thing. For a society which recruits members from historical tragedies, it seems to be rather short on numbers. Only a handful of individuals are even seen in the society, even though you’d expect their numbers to be in the thousands if not millions. Only the well-publicized democides have any representation: we have the Khmer Rouge, Red China, Rwanda, Nazi Germany, and the Holodomor.² There is no mention of the Iranian Revolution, the desaparecidos of Chile, the civil war of El Salvador, apartheid, Timor Leste, the neverending conflict in the Middle East, or the barbarism of African warlords. (Darfur can be excused for not being mentioned because it was, sadly, a current event, and the Armenian genocide would have taken place too far in the past to really have any survivors still alive at the time of the story, but everything else is a grave omission.) In other words, if the average person hasn’t heard of it, then in Rummel’s world, it’s not worth mentioning. This man is a scholar on this issue. What’s the big idea?

Mind you, I wouldn’t want any more Very Special Flashback Sequences, but the victims of these other tragedies ought to be at least acknowledged.

However, we finally get our first inkling (aside from the summary) that there is time travel in this novel:

“We not only wish to remember the dead and through our Society build a testament to their souls, we also want to ensure that no human beings ever suffer this again. But not just ‘never again.’ We want it to be ‘never happened.’” (Ibid.)

Without any other context, John just thinks they’re delusional.

As it turns out, Tor’s groupies are fantastically wealthy. This was mentioned several times before, but the readers do not know the true extent of the Society’s wealth until now. The members are collectively worth over one trillion dollars. For context, the richest man on Earth is less than a third that wealthy. And it’s unlikely that any of them individually can rival Bill Gates or Warren Buffet… can they? Since they’re all refugees for the most part, would it even make sense for any of them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and go from rags to riches like in a Horatio Alger story?³

Ach, my Sue-dometer’s going off!

Either Gu or Tor (the two are so similar that it’s difficult to tell them apart) exposit about the history of the Survivor’s Benevolent Society. We learn that it was founded in the aftermath of the First World War by one Jimmy Wilson. Even though he was likely born in the late nineteenth century, he used a diminutive form of his name in business. It wasn’t until President Carter that people were willing to take seriously a man who insisted on “Jimmy” even in professional matters.

Furthermore, Gu/Tor explains that Jimmy emigrated from Great Britain to the United States after the war in order to get a college degree. She says that he was right about his chances being better because he got into Columbia University. Thing is, though, the mere fact that he got accepted to an American college doesn’t mean that his chances of higher education were greater in America than in Britain. One does not follow the other. Upon graduation, he moved back to Britain (where his American degree would be worthless) to start his own bank, ten years after graduation. Um, ten years after World War One? About that…

Jimmy used his newfound riches (because Rummel is under the impression that the stock market is a path to free money) to found the grammatically challenged Survivor’s Benevolent Society. One of the requirements for membership is that one be committed to the Society’s goals absolutely, even above one’s own family members. This is sounding less like a non-profit organization and more like a cult.

Also, we learn that there are never more than two dozen members of the Society. How do they determine which genocide survivors are worthy? Do they hold auditions, and pick whomever has the biggest sob story?

There is some more infodumping about the League of Nations and the circumstances leading up to the Second World War, with Tor’s groupies claiming that their society was a part of it, and was able to influence the outcome of elections. Jimmy Wilson’s son Ed, who is still alive, expresses great disappointment in Neville Chamberlain, practically reciting the canard that he had appeased Hitler. In reality, Chamberlain’s poor reputation is undeserved: Britain was in no condition to fight Germany in 1938, and in reality Chamberlain bought his country valuable time to prepare. If Britain had gone all Leeroy Jenkins on Hitler, it would have been curb-stomped to death.

Then we meet an elderly member of the Society named Viktor Pynzenyk. As is expected by now, there is a real Viktor Pynzenyk. He is one of the people responsible for Ukraine’s recovery from being part of the Soviet Union. Rummel using his name makes it particularly obvious that he cannot come up with any foreign names on his own. John recalls meeting him when he was introduced to everybody, but he was never mentioned before, and will never be mentioned again after his Very Special Flashback Sequence.

Yep.

Our torture has only just begun. This exposition was only a slight reprieve.

“We also completely revised our approach. We decided to concentrate on finding a technology to help us fight war and democide—your term, John—and to seek a new international strategy. Clearly, international organizations and law didn’t work to prevent war and mass murder.” (page 86)

Two things:

Number one, notice how the text says that John Banks coined the term “democide”. In actual fact, Rudolph Rummel created the word. Yes, him. So I suppose this Freudian slip proves that John is indeed Rummel’s Self-Insert. It doesn’t get more obvious than this, folks.

Number two, note the last sentence. It should be obvious that Rummel has no faith in the ability of diplomacy to spread democracy and freedom, which kind of goes against the whole democratic peace theory. More sinisterly, I can’t help but read that as an endorsement of preemptive wars such as Vietnam or Iraq. U.S. involvement in Vietnam backfired stupendously, and Iraq is actually more unstable now. This would seem to suggest the opposite of what Rummel is implying.

It also turns out that Tor’s groupies are responsible for the Internet. I wish I were making this up; it’s just too funny. With all of the events they mastermind behind the scenes, and all the technology they spearhead, it’s a bit difficult to believe that a secret society such as this could remain hidden for long. More likely, Tor’s groupies are just taking credit for things they didn’t do. This second interpretation makes even more sense considering that the Society claims to have been responsible for preventing Mutually Assured Destruction from actually happening, AND for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Moreover, the next few paragraphs don’t cast such a good light on the intelligence of Tor’s groupies:

“Twenty years ago, one of our members was alerted to research on war that suggested the answer we sought. […] The finding was that democracies do not make war on each other. Of course, if correct, this would mean that we should promote democracy. (pages 87-88)

Two more things:

One, this implies that the idea for the democratic peace theory is twenty years old by the time these events take place. Not only is this incorrect in real life (the first paper on the subject dates to the 1960s) but John Banks is only 26 years old. If he made a lot of contribution to the theory in the world of the book as is implied, then this is an inconsistency.

Two, the way this is phrased implies that the Survivor’s Benevolent Society wasn’t particularly democratic until this point. Considering the backgrounds of the founder and original members, if they were committed to the ending of atrocities like the Holocaust and Stalin’s purges, wouldn’t they have been staunch democrats to begin with? It’s as if they didn’t understand how good democracy is until forty years afterward. What form of government did they support originally, philosopher-kingdoms?

Viktor collapses, but that doesn’t stop him from telling John all about what happened to his family during the Holodomor.

Here we go again…

John, by the way, claims to be able to remember the contents of these flashback sequences perfectly. So much for modesty.

The flashback itself is full of sentences that are awkwardly constructed. Surprisingly enough, this flashback is pretty short. All that happens in it is that Viktor’s family starves to death. Compared to the other flashbacks which went on and on about how evil the governments were, this is surprising, especially considering that the man responsible for the famine was none other than Stalin himself. This would have been an excellent opportunity for Rummel to continue preaching, but compared to the other flashbacks, it just seems brief, being only three pages long. Maybe Rummel began to bore himself with them.

Other than some exposition, nothing much happened in this chapter. But don’t celebrate just yet. We still have quite the way to go before the plot picks up.

Footnotes

¹ These are not actual quotes.

² Those last two haven’t had their flashback sequences yet.

³ Does anybody even read that guy anymore?

Comment [11]

This chapter opens with an excerpt from an article by John Gribbin. The citation is very awkwardly placed immediately afterwards instead of in an endnote. It isn’t even a very good citation; it’s just a URL. Not only is this improper form, but the link is broken.

What is this excerpt about? Time travel. This is only the second instance of time travel being foreshadowed in this book. I can understand wanting something of this magnitude to be a huge plot twist, but in that case you don’t spoil the plot twist in the summary of the book. I’ve mentioned this several times because Rummel could have introduced the time travel plot by now, but instead he’s wasted about fifty pages so far on Very Special Flashback Sequences that contribute nothing to the plot and focus on characters who play a minimal role in the story. This story outline is foolish beyond belief.

There are probably some flaws in the theory of time travel quoted in the book, but I will graciously ignore them because first, I don’t know much about the subject either, and second, without the time travel there would be no story. Of course I argue that there already is no story because Rummel keeps dilly-dallying, but that is the least of our worries.

In what passes for the story itself, Viktor collapses and as he is taken out of the room, he asks John to agree to the Society’s goal, so that he can keep his memories. Apparently they are all “counting on” John to do something, but neither he nor the readers know what.

Gu tries to speak, but John is a know-it-all and starts talking about Immanuel Kant. It’s rather off-topic. (I hate to admit it, but I’m actually starting to like Gu, since she at least tells John off when he interrupts her.) Gu is a physicist and says that her laboratory was conducting research in creating a wormhole. Will we finally get to the time travel this chapter?

(Spoiler alert: We won’t. We still have a couple more flashback sequences, sad to say.)

By the way, I may not know much about wormholes and theoretical physics, but I do know enough to say that human beings simply do not have the resources to produce enough energy to send even the smallest object even a few milliseconds back in time. I point this out because Gu’s lab is apparently capable of generating such power. We will find out later that they are not employed by the government. How on Earth could a private enterprise produce that much energy? Not even all the government research agencies of all the countries in the world put together could do that. Even more unbelievably, Gu’s lab could send objects back in time several years… in the 1990s. (Although admittedly, this is a breach of the laws of physics necessary for the story to work.)

We already run into a problem. If they are sending objects back in time, then they are being reckless with the timeline. Chaos theory and quantum mechanics would dictate that even the slightest change to the past would multiply and cause unforseeable change to the present. Even if they just moved a cardboard box into the past one day, it would displace an equal volume of air and cause a hurricane somewhere in the Caribbean. Moreover, sending objects into the past opens the door to paradoxes. In this example, if Gu’s researchers sent a cardboard box one day into the past, when they did not receive one the previous day, then the box would both exist and not exist, thus causing a paradox. If, however, this sort of paradox is not allowed (as in, only causal loops are permitted) then the whole plot of the series becomes impossible. Rummel doesn’t care in the least about this, and so just handwaves the situation without bothering in the least for consistency.

Of course, John thinks that Gu is pulling his leg. However, no points will be awarded for his being skeptical and not having read the book summary, because that is the bare minimum expected for a story with any verisimilitude.

I was a brash young fellow in those years. Not the mellow, savoir-faire man I am now. (page 93)

Oh please, I cannot imagine John ever being savoir-faire or whatever he said. The description is kind of odd because, except for John interrupting Gu every five minutes, he hasn’t been that brash. He has simply let Joy, and later Tor’s groupies, push him in the direction they want. He isn’t very proactive as far as main characters go, to be honest.

Gu continues her exposition, saying that, while time travel is nice (and you know, a total breakthrough) it was useless because they couldn’t send objects through space as well as time, at least not until somebody named Gertrude Zawtoki made some mathematical contribution or other. Leaving aside the fact that “Zawtoki” is not a legitimate name, do you see the problem here?

That is correct. Time is only one of the four dimensions known to humans. A time machine will only send an object through time, not through space, and Rummel does acknowledge this. However, the Earth is not fixed in space. The Earth is constantly moving around the Sun, and the Sun is constantly orbiting the center of the Galaxy. This means that any object sent only through time and not through space would appear at a time before the Earth occupied that space, meaning that from the perspective of the researchers, the object should simply vanish and never appear in the past. I hope to any deities that may exist that those researchers did not test their time machine on living beings.

Also, I am curious as to who this Gertrude Zawtoki is. Is she one of Tor’s groupies? If she is, then which war or democide did she survive? If she isn’t one of Tor’s groupies, then how does she know about their time machine? Lastly, how come she is mentioned by name, but none of the other researchers involved in the invention of the time machine are? She will never be mentioned again after this, so she isn’t important to the plot. It just seems pointless and inconsistent on the part of Rummel.

John is smarter than I give him credit for; he actually does bring up some of my objections, but, much to my annoyance, they’re simply blown off. Gu spouts some bullshit about different objects affecting the past to different degrees, even though chaos theory clearly states that even the smallest changes will add up given enough time. Rummel’s justifications for things tend to be quite half-assed. I would forgive most of this if Rummel bothered to be consistent with himself.

Another “explanation” that Gu gives, one which completely contradicts her previous one, is that the act of time travel creates parallel universes. However, later on the very page where the parallel universe explanation appears, it is proved wrong, yet the characters still claim that their time travel creates parallel universes.

Ludger Schmidt takes up the exposition baton which Gu apparently passed to him. Ludger was actually mentioned at the very beginning of the introductions, but did not actually appear until now. This appears to be a poor attempt at a Chekhov’s Gunman¹ because he is actually somewhat important to the plot. What I find interesting is that Rummel can come up with a legitimate-sounding name for his Swiss German character, but his African and Asian characters get extremely implausible names. But I’m going off-topic.

Ludger tells John that Tor’s groupies have carried out sixteen experiments with time travel, even sending some living things back in time. Have none of them ever read “A Sound of Thunder”? This is reckless endangerment of everyone on Earth!

One of their subjects was a monkey which they sent back to 1900 in a sealed capsule. They placed the capsule at the bottom of Lake Superior. The monkey was not brought back, so even if the capsule didn’t leak, the monkey would have suffocated or starved eventually, so they euthanized it.² Still, that’s rather cruel of the Survivor’s So-Called Benevolent Society. What have they done to that poor monkey?

Interestingly enough, Tor’s groupies, in the year 1999, were able to recover the capsule containing the monkey’s body. They even admit that this means that they did not create a parallel universe, which suggests that actually changing the past is impossible. Of course, if the past cannot be changed and they know it, then the book would have to end right here. But it doesn’t. It turns out that Ludger is in fact a Holocaust survivor.

Yep. We have another Very Special Flashback Sequence. So far, that’s the only time travel we’ve gotten in this book.

I said that Ludger was a Holocaust survivor, but that designation is sort of misleading. He was never in the camps and he is not a Jew, Gypsy, or any other undesirable. In fact, he was a German police officer. Yes, instead of actually having the obligatory victim of the Nazis be a member of a group actually targeted for elimination, Rummel has him be of the same group as the oppressors. This is different from the pattern set by the rest of Tor’s groupies. I understand that Rummel was trying to say that tyrannical governments ruin everybody’s lives, not just the lives of people they profess to hate, but these are the Nazis we are talking about. Equating what Ludger goes through to what a survivor of Auschwitz (for example) went through is just offensive.

Ludger says that he was a police officer who was among those assigned to, and I quote, “be involved in the final solution of the Jewish problem”.³ So Ludger wasn’t even part of the resistance or anything. There are no words.

Ludger and the other police officers are taken to a military officer named Hans Schaefer, who speaks as though this were just a run of the mill assignment. I know what Rummel’s doing here, but I’m quite peeved at his poor choice of survivor for this flashback. I should also point out that unlike the Khmer Rouge guerillas, Interahamwe militia men, and Communist Party administrators from previous Very Special Flashback Sequences, Schaefer never uses any profanity. Rummel, if you are going to begin with your evil characters swearing like sailors, at least be consistent about it.

Schaefer tells Ludger and the police officers that they are to kidnap the city’s Jews from their homes, lead them into the forest, and then shoot them in the back of the head. (Presumably this flashback takes place before the Nazis decided to just move them all into camps and gas them.) Schaefer then starts acting like a stereotypical Nazi, just so that Rummel can remind us that he’s evil, as though ordering people to shoot others in the back of the head weren’t evil already.

An Evil Nazi Scientist ™ shows up from out of nowhere with a crude drawing of a human head, with a red marking showing the police officers where to shoot. Presumably, law enforcement did not undergo training exercises in the 1940s.⁴

Then there are these lines:

Looking self-satisfied, the doctor stood beside his pad, looked at us, and waited for questions.
When none came, the oberleutnant asked, “Are there any questions?” (page 96)

That sounds redundant to me. These sentences should have been revised, because right now they just sound stupid.

None of the police officers, not even Ludger, care that they are going to fill the role of the militia men from Laurent’s flashback. So far, Ludger is just as guilty of the atrocities as any of his comrades who go along with the killing. Sure, he monologues about how he can’t do it, but not because he thinks that Jews deserve the same rights as Germans, as he later says that they should “just” be deported to Africa or locked in a ghetto. He says to himself that he “must” do it, because otherwise, he would be viewed as a coward.

Ludger does not come off as very heroic here. Laurent was far more heroic, and he killed two people. Does Rummel really want us to sympathize with this man? He clearly believes in most of the Nazi ideology, and only disagrees insofar as the “undesirables” being killed.

The next morning, Ludger and the police officers arrive in the city to kidnap the Jews. According to Ludger, the Jews were prevented from escape by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police. At first I thought that Rummel forgot that the Ukraine had been part of the Soviet Union, but it turns out that that was actually a real thing. Speaking of Ukraine, where was Viktor during all this? The poor guy had to suffer through both the Holodomor and World War II. Unlike Rummel, I recognize that these events did not occur in a vacuum, so his characters should not simply vanish between their Very Special Flashback Sequences and the present day.

When Schaefer asks if any of the police officers feel that they will be unable to exterminate the Jews, Ludger says nothing. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen!⁵

We are told that each police officer took one Jew at a time into the forest and shot them individually, with the bodies taken to a concentration camp, where they would be disposed of.

There is a line break for no apparent reason. After it, Ludger takes a Jewish woman with him to the forest. Even decades later, he remembers what she looked like and thinks she was pretty. Move over, John…

I grabbed her arm and said, “Gekommen —Come.” (page 99)

So, did Ludger really say the same thing twice in two languages? During this flashback, the characters are understood to be speaking German, so it is unnecessary for Rummel to suddenly not translate one word. Of course, the Polish woman Ludger is speaking to probably does not know German, but no indication is made that Ludger can speak Polish. So did he just say “gekommen” twice? That isn’t even correct German anyway.

While walking through the forest, preparing to bring this woman to her death I should point out, Ludger keeps monologuing to himself. He is rather casual for somebody about to shoot an unarmed woman in the back of the head. The lack of any emotions before killing someone is usually the sign of a violent sociopath. Just sayin’.

When she did, all I could see of her head was her black hair. At that moment, I heard somebody nearby. I looked to the left and saw a girl stretched out on her stomach. One of my fellow policemen had his rifle’s bayonet pointed at the back of her head. The scene seemed frozen in time, a still picture. It will be in my mind always. No day goes by that the image doesn’t appear to me, sometimes when I get up in the morning; sometimes before bed; sometimes in my nightmares. Even while I’m trying to make love it will flash into my mind, which immediately destroys all passion. (Ibid.)

Eww… did we really need to read that, Rummel?

Yeah, Rummel will often mention sex when doing so would be really, really inappropriate.

This scene is important though, because seeing his fellow police officers kill innocents makes Ludger unable to go through with the act himself. He falls to his knees and hugs his would-be victim. I am not making this up.

Somehow, even though he is dealing with ruthless Nazis, Ludger is able to just walk away from the forest without killing anyone, and without getting in trouble. However, he is unable to bring the woman back with him, and to be fair to Rummel, there really was no way he could possibly save her, so I’ll let that pass. Ludger, in an uncharacteristic fit of ballsiness, then asks Schaefer to be excused on account of not feeling well. Amazingly, Schaefer does not force him to kidnap any more people, though he does force him to stay and watch. At the end of the day, Ludger is dismissed. He moves back home and survives the war. Since Ludger was described as living in Switzerland during the introductions, he must have moved there eventually. The question becomes whether he went The Sound of Music route and tried to escape during the war or not.

But our flashback sequence does not end there, oh no. Not so fast, bucko. Four years later, when the war was over (so the incident in the forest had to happen in 1941 at the earliest) Ludger walks into Schaefer’s office (how he is still employed during the denazification process, we’ll never know) and stabs him with the bayonet of his rifle.

Somehow, Ludger gets away with murder. THIS IS FORESHADOWING.

With that poetic justice, the chapter ends. All told, this flashback sequence was a twisted perspective flip of Laurent’s, and though I understand that Rummel was trying to say that dictators ruin everybody’s lives, even those of their loyal citizens (and also that the mere footsoldiers on enemy lines aren’t evil, though their governments might be) the whole thing comes off as wrong. There is a time and a place for such moralizing, and a story about the Holocaust probably isn’t one of those times or places.

Footnotes

¹ Ah, TV Tropes and its puns.

² Don’t ask how they could assure that eventuality from their vantage point in the future. I can’t figure it out either.

³ page 95

⁴ Speaking of which, Ludger would have to be pretty old by the main story, in fact older than Viktor, yet he does not behave like a senior citizen at all.

⁵ With apologies to Linkara.

Comment [6]

Apparently, between the end of the last chapter and the beginning of this one, Ludger’s Very Special Flashback Sequence ended and he resumed exposition about the monkey that was their test subject. We don’t read about any of this, by the way.

Gu interjected with, “He’s too modest. We had one more experiment to carry out, and that was with a human—him.” (page 102)

Oh no. Don’t go telling me that any of Tor’s groupies are modest; they’re all part of the same circle-jerk yelling “PITY ME!” at the readers. As for Ludger being a human test subject, there are so many things wrong with this that I don’t know quite where to begin.

Quite simply, what were they thinking?! If anything went wrong like fictitious scientific experiments are wont to do, then Tor’s groupies could end up permanently effing up the timeline, Ludger could be dead, or worse, he could come back with superpowers. The last thing we need around here is a Stu with superpowers. There is a very good reason that real scientists do not test any inventions on fellow human beings before they are 100% sure that it’s safe.

Of course, Tor’s groupies ignore my apprehensions and send Ludger back in time one year. Again, this action did not create a parallel universe. So far, everything about this suggests that a time traveler in the Rummelverse cannot cause any changes to the past. Tor’s groupies are able to put Ludger in suspended animation, but for some reason he elects to stay fully conscious in a cramped capsule with no amenities for a full week. That should make anyone claustrophobic. Of course, since Rummel can’t have his Sues take any lasting damage, Ludger is recovered at the end of the year with all his faculties intact. I should remind you that Ludger must have been in his eighties or nineties by this point, since he had a paying job as a police officer during the Second World War.

In order for John to know that Ludger’s mind has not been addled from his confinement, he asks him whether Lincoln is dead. I don’t know about you, but if I were asked if President Lincoln is still alive, I would think that the other person has gone a little off his rocker. John, however, has no worries about Ludger’s sanity.

He does, however, question how there can be two Ludgers at the same time, when he is in suspended animation. This is the classic misunderstanding of science fiction; there is no logical reason why there cannot be two Ludgers, one from the future and one in the present, as long as both of them remember their meeting. Despite this, Gu says that if both Ludgers had met, there would have been a problem, though there is no reason this must be so.

John finally begins to distrust Tor’s groupies, as he thinks they might seal him in a capsule next. So close…

Also, we learn that Tor’s groupies have the technology to create a perfectly functional and safe time machine, with no constraints on energy, yet they have no plans to make this discovery public. I’m actually surprised that they have chosen to pass up this chance to make even more money.

It looks like Rummel will at last get to the plot:

Finally. What took them so long? (page 103)

You said it, John. You said it. I can’t believe I’m agreeing with him.

We get an utterly pointless description of Joy and of what might be going through her head (trust me, it’s unimportant) and then…

…a line break.

Tor’s groupies have apparently gone through the list of promoters of the democratic peace theory and have decided to recruit John to their cause, because he is speshul. We get to read about how awesome he is for a full paragraph. It also turns out that John’s parents are dead. Remember, he’s 26. Depending on when his parents died, he may have been struggling to pay his college tuition, but this is the last we hear about this.

One of the reasons they’ve chosen John for this project instead of somebody else is because “[t]here is nothing really keeping [him] in this universe”.¹ Remember this, as it will be important later.

It is now that Joy, who has been shunted off to the side for the last five chapters, speaks up. She is supposed to be the deuteragonist, yet so far has only appeared in relation to John.

Apparently she has a “dynamite smile”. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

And now we finally learn just what the heck is going on. Joy and John are both going to be sent back in time to the beginning of the twentieth century in order to steer history to Tor’s groupies’ liking, even though the rules of time travel seem to have established that this is impossible. John does not have a choice; if he refuses, he will lose his memory. And remember what I said about John being chosen because he has no ties to this world? Joy is going with him, and she has plenty of ties to the world. She was more or less raised by Tor and her groupies, and will be leaving them behind forever. And just so that we are sure she’s a Sue, it turns out that the only reason John is needed is for information on politics. Joy will do everything else.

…My Sue-dometer is beeping again, isn’t it?

It would be better to send a whole team of people to change history, as then they’d have a greater chance of success, but Joy handwaves this by saying that they lack the energy capacity to send more than two people. How convenient. This was not even hinted at earlier. It’s as if Rummel knew about all the plot holes in his novel as he wrote it, and just nailed some boards over the openings in order to shut up inquiring readers. Come on, put some effort into it, man!

John then gives us this gem:

I was being vamped. And I was entranced by every second of it. (page 104)

AFJBAVNF AFDSJBVN ACAKJSD

I THOUGHT WE WERE DONE WITH THIS!

…I should have known better.

How are John and Joy expected to change history to ensure a more democratic world? Simply murder anyone opposed to democracy, of course! The people tasked with changing history have no lines which they will not cross; this won’t end badly at all!²

John actually brings up some legitimate points about whether or not it’s moral to kill people for crimes they will commit in the future, only for his objections to be shot down by Joy. The problem here is that, if their goal is to change the past, then nothing is certain and they have no way of knowing that their changes to the past will prevent the mass murders of history even if the perpetrators remain alive. Worse, preemptively executing people opens up a slippery slope, which could easily be coopted by actual authoritarians in order to justify the killing of innocents. Would that really be worth it? I think not.

So all in all, John is made into a strawman pacifist for this chapter only, even though the Strawman Has A Point. He also undergoes Easy Evangelism to their cause, since he does not object to the killing once it actually happens. (But that won’t be for several more chapters.)

Then, Gu says that she and the rest of Tor’s groupies will send John and Joy back with plenty of supplies, including billions of counterfeit American dollars. Now we can add counterfeiting to Tor’s groupies’ list of crimes. Moreover, did they not realize the economic consequences of creating two billion dollars out of nowhere? I suppose we should also add “cause massive inflation” to the list as well.

Among their non-monetary supplies are two Macintosh computers. Apparently, The Web Always Existed, and can be accessed in the early twentieth century without any connection towers. The fail here is so thick, it can practically be cut with a knife.

Now that their Infodump is finished, Tor’s groupies put on a small demonstration of their time machine for John’s benefit, sending his wallet back in time fifteen seconds, and under his chair. After some Technobabble, John finds his wallet exactly where Tor’s groupies said it would be. This is the third time that the time machine has failed to change history, so why are Tor’s groupies so sure their plan will work?

John, as a surrogate for the readers, asks why they cannot send back several teams in several trips, in order to increase their chances of success and get around the contrived energy restriction. An unknown member of Tor’s groupies (Rummel is not even courteous enough to provide the name) says they can’t do that for security reasons. Why can’t they just send themselves back in time if they’re that paranoid about security? Or are Tor’s groupies unwilling to give up the modern conveniences that would not yet be invented in the early twentieth century?

Ed Wilson (remember him? The guy who’s only in Tor’s groupies ‘cause of nepotism?) says that they will destroy the time machine once John and Joy go back, in order to prevent dictators such as Saddam Hussein from getting it. And so, Rummel inadvertently makes his novel dated. However, Rummel inadvertently brings up a salient point: once one group of time travelers set out to change history, there is nothing to prevent another group of time travelers from trying to undo the first group’s changes. Even an author as ideological as Orson Scott Card pointed this out. This is why the whole idea of Tor’s groupies unnerves me, and in fact somebody commented on an earlier part of this spork, saying that Tor’s groupies are more like a select few oligarchs deciding the course of human history. And since power corrupts…

…Yeah.

This does not worry John very much. Instead, he is only worried about how he and Joy will return to the twenty-first century once the time machine is destroyed. Didn’t he realize they would be in for the long haul? He can’t possibly think that preventing every atrocity of the twentieth century would be easy!

Tor then angsts about how she will “lose [her] loving daughter.”³ Unfortunately for Rummel, the text shows that Joy is anything but loving. She is a conniving and sadistic bitch.

“If you agree, you will undergo three months of intensive training in martial arts, emergency medical aid, proper use of our weapons and equipment, and business management. That is all the time we dare risk before we destroy the time machine and all that goes with it.” (pages 108-109)

Pfft, like anyone could become an expert in all these things in a mere three months. Are you f*cking kidding me, Rummel?

My Sue-dometer has just gone wild.

Well, at least we learn what their cover is going to be in the past. John and Joy will pose as businesspeople running an “import and export company”. It is at this point that I mention that Joy is Asian and that society was highly racist in their target time period.

John decides to discuss the matter with Joy. It should be pointed out that he is on a strict time limit, before he loses all recollection of these events. Somehow, he remains lucid through the remainder of the chapter. And so, he promptly wastes time by letting Joy tell him how much she is attracted to him. Yes, really. Apparently Joy was attracted to John after only a few days of being in his class. It looks like Rummel is yet another author who has equated lust with love. Naturally, the following paragraphs are just John gushing about Joy without the narration even trying to avoid a purplish tint.

To make a long story short, John agrees to become the Society’s dupe, and his transformation to self-righteous asshole is complete. After some cryptic statements, the chapter ends.

…Holy crap, we managed to go a whole chapter without enduring a Very Special Flashback Sequence! They’ve appeared consistently for the last six chapters, and for the most part, have served as nothing but padding. This is not a good way to write a story, to say the least.

Footnotes

¹ page 103

² And if you believe that, there is a bridge in Brooklyn which I am willing to sell you.

³ page 108

Comment [4]

Hey, everybody. I apologize for the long delay; I was busy with finals. To make it up to you, and since the following chapters are so short, this installment will spork three chapters at once. Here goes.

Chapter 9 begins with a sexualized description of Joy. We’ll be reading plenty more of these as the series goes on. Look John, none of us want to read about how one of your students gives you a hard-on.

In order to explain why he will not be teaching any further classes, John lies to the university and tells them that he has terminal cancer. Tor’s groupies allot him two days to get all his affairs in order.

Naturally, since this story is a wankfest (in more ways than one) by Rummel, Joy accompanies John everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. They even sleep in the same room. John even explicitly calls Joy his sexual fantasy, thus confirming that he only views her as a sex object. We get some useless information about John’s childhood, including that he would enter the women’s locker room because he was “the mascot”. Uh, yeah… Keep telling yourself that, John.

John asks Joy about her family, and we finally learn that (le gasp!) Tor is not Joy’s biological mother. Her real parents were Sino-Vietnamese (and yes, she insists on being referred to as such) who tried to escape Vietnam on a makeshift boat in 1979. (Remember Joy’s essay on the Boat People, way back in Chapter 2?) Supposedly, pirates attacked the boat and killed all of the occupants except for Joy, whom they somehow failed to notice. Note to Rummel: this is a small rowboat; no one can hide in one of those. The boat drifted aimlessly until, by sheer coincidence, a kindly fisherman discovered it off the coast of the Philippines and saved her life.¹ In a contrived coincidence truly worthy of a soap opera, a journalist reports on this story, Tor finds out, and adopts her. At this point in time, Tor would have only just arrived in America. It turns out that, soon after Tor escaped Cambodia, she got a job as translator for the United Nations and met Gu, who had her inducted into the Survivor’s Benevolent Society. This is all information that would be interesting had it been substituted for one of the interminable Very Special Flashback Sequences, but which nobody cares about now. It’s not like we’ll see any for Tor’s groupies again.

Also, Joy is apparently named Joy because Tor “thought of [her] as the child she would have had with Nguon.”² With that, the chapter ends.

Now onto Chapter 10. John asks Joy about her prowess in martial arts and weaponry. As it turns out, mere months after Joy was adopted, Tor put her through a strict training regimen of exercises. (Joy gratuitously shows John a rather sexualized one.) In addition to acrobatic exercises, she was also taught martial arts. Apparently, at one point she broke another trainee’s arm, and was not punished for it.

Sue-dometer goes off

Now, what need would Joy have for this training? It is all but stated that Tor was raising Joy to become their temporal operative from the start. Was she just a means to an end for Tor’s groupies? This is probably the worst thing that they do in the books. It’s quite ironic that an organization opposed to Third World living conditions decided to create what is essentially a child soldier. Rummel does not go into any more detail, and just brushes it aside as if it is no big deal.

Then, there is some bullshit about the Far East having total sexual freedom, and that Tor has taught Joy to view the sexual act in this way. Can anybody say Critical Research Failure? In fact, when Joy was seventeen (!) Tor enrolled her in a secret academy where the students are taught and perform sexual acts. I kid you not:

I was deflowered, of course, and taught the arts of love by male and female instructors.”
She was right. Now I was embarrassed, and I couldn’t keep my voice from sounding hoarse as I asked, “Did you make love?”
I must have blushed rose red with that asinine question, for I felt as though I was leaning against a hot stove in winter, and I wanted to take out my tongue, nail it to a wall, and whip it. Jesus!
The corners of Joy’s mouth tipped upward, but she puckered her lips—it must have been a supreme effort for her not to guffaw outright. As it was, she still had to respond, “How else does one learn, except by experience?”
Immediately realizing its implications, she reconsidered what she had admitted. Now she looked at me with a worried expression. “John, it was just training, all physical, nothing of the heart or soul. It was like masturbating, only learning to do it well.” (page 118)

ARIUEFBVNA J AIFEROVDJ JVAFHNV

WTF am I reading?

Also note how Joy is already defensive of her behavior to John. What, are they boyfriend and girlfriend already? Aye aye aye…

After a page of Mills and Boon Prose, the chapter ends.

Chapter 11 begins with the readers being told that Joy is a flirt and has a temper. The readers do not need this information, because they can easily figure this out for themselves. I should also take this time to point out that these are all traits John finds desirable. Now matter how much of a Jerk Sue Joy is, John’s lust for her still forms a towering edifice. Apparently Rummel has a thing for tsunderes.

John and Joy have an appointment with a lawyer, Pete Sawyer (geddit?) so that John can write his will. Shouldn’t Joy write one too? I’m sure that she has possessions…

This was the first of what would be uncounted office visits we would make together the rest of our lives, often armed with enough hardware to defeat a regiment. (page 120)

Two things:

1. This is foreshadowing, and
2. “Hardware” is a computer. “Arms” refers to weapons, and is the word that Rummel should have used.

I am now picturing John and Joy entering an office wrapped up in extension cords with iMacs dangling off at dangerous angles.

John and Pete make some rather sexist wisecracks while Joy is in the room. She does not object to this.

Once again, John lies about having a terminal disease. He wills everything to Tor’s groupies; clearly, this whole thing is just a complicated scam!

Next, John and Joy go on a plane. Where to? Bangkok. Rummel, you magnificent bastard you…³

Then we get a really stupid, and I mean really stupid, plot about John being jealous of Sawyer the lawyer, just because Joy thinks that he’s a nice person. Not only is she a horrible judge of character, but John comes off as a possessive control freak. The two of them act like children in a pizza parlor, and I hope that they embarrass themselves in front of all those minor characters. There is more Product Placement, when it comes to beverages. For some reason I doubt that Rummel got permission from each of these companies…⁴

While our two idiots reconcile, Joy “melts”. Ding dong, the witch is dead?

…No, it’s just stupid narration. The Jerk Sue extraordinaire will be with us for the foreseeable future, I’m afraid.

Really, this whole scene is pointless! They’re just eating pizza! ARGH!

And then Joy starts talking about Tor’s groupies again. It’s really pointless; one can skip it entirely and not miss anything. And with that, the chapter ends.

Really, these three chapters were, on the whole, pretty pointless. There was no reason to split them up, and even less reason to include them to begin with, particularly Chapter 11, more than half of which was John being unreasonably possessive of Joy while eating pizza. The whole thing is mind-boggling. I’ve had enough for one day.

Footnotes

¹ And so, one of the most obnoxious Sues in original fiction was saved. Crap.

² page 114

³ They don’t actually go to Thailand; that’s just an innuendo.

⁴ Of course, I suppose I’m not one to talk, eh?

Comment [18]

Now that the holidays are well and truly over, it is time for more sporkings, so let’s dig into Chapter 12 of War and Democide Never Again.

The very first paragraph is perverse:

Gorgeous Joy was as available to me as some hungry hooker. Tomorrow night would be it, I told myself. After our flight the next day, I would make my move. All I needed to do was say, “Let’s make love.” Just like that. And she would get naked, and I would get naked, and whammo. No more emotional Novocain. I now had been hit with Joy and her mother’s background and we had cried it out. All had been said. So, tomorrow night! (page 129)

John sounds less like a college professor and more like a frat boy who has heard of sex but never experienced it himself. This makes John’s denials that he is obsessed with the topic even more hilarious. When describing his move from Bloomington, Indiana to Tor’s groupies’ base, we get to read the highly amusing Freudian slip of “Silicone Valley”. Oh, Rummel and his misspellings!

When on the plane, John muses about how he will never fly on one again, because he is going back to the very start of the twentieth century. It’s supposed to be emotional, but falls flat because of the boring style of narration. There is also a scene where Joy complains to a flight attendant that John will not let her join the Mile High Club—and then explains to the readers what the Mile High Club is. It’s a shame that you could not see the look on my face when I read that.

At the end of their flight, our “heroes” arrive at a warehouse on Saratoga Avenue, in an unspecified town in Silicon Valley. Or was Rummel unaware that Silicon Valley is not an official region?

Upon their arrival, Tor tells John that they will commence training the next morning. John goes to bed, and complains to himself about the fact that he had been alone with Joy for three whole days, and they have not yet had sex. Oh, boo hoo. With that complaining, the chapter ends.

That chapter was really short, so I’ll spork the next one too. Chapter 13 begins with John aroused. How aroused, you ask? I’ll let John himself answer:

I was as aroused as a teenage boy seeing his first porno movie. I could smell the sex, taste it, feel it. I had to take a fast cold shower just so I could pee. (page 132)

This is most emphatically not the proper decorum that ought to be shown by a college professor. I didn’t think that synaesthesia worked that way. I never want to read anything like that again. Unfortunately, I must, for this book isn’t even halfway through. Rummel, get to the time travel plot already!

Changing the subject, John compares what Tor’s groupies put him through to basic training for the United States Marine Corps. But considering that John is unable to run five miles without stumbling over his own two feet, I think this is an overstatement. John complains about it a lot, but the activities as described do not appear to be that backbreaking, and I say this as somebody who is out of shape. What a wimp.

The only good thing to come from this is that John is too tired to be aroused—but this is negated by the fact that he still feels the need to talk about how sexy Joy is.

Did somebody order a… line break?

Joy, naturally, breezes through the training like it was nothing, since, after all, she has been doing this sort of thing for far longer. I will assume that she only takes the training with John so that she can boss him around and tell him how wimpy he is. That will register on my Sue-dometer, mind. She is also responsible for writing computer programs which she and John will use on their mission. I reiterate, they are traveling back to before computers existed. What use would her fancy programs serve? Furthermore, she also is taught medical knowledge. [In sing-songy voice:] O Sue-dometer…

For martial arts, Joy is John’s sensei. My suspicions are confirmed. John then goes into a paragraph-long spiel about how this situation goes against nature and humanity itself. Well if he views women as sex objects I suppose it’s only natural for him to be more overtly sexist as well. This is the man that Tor’s groupies have trusted to make a better world. I must introduce my face to my palm…

I should now point out that this scene makes both John and Joy look bad. John is revealed as a sexist, and Joy shows even more Sueish behavior. For you see, it takes decades to master one martial art, let alone the several that Joy teaches. Joy is a black belt at 25. And not only has she mastered martial arts, but she’s improved upon them.¹

What’s that, Sue-dometer? Timmy’s in a well? You’re sure beeping a lot today…

To prove that she is Asian (even though she has no Japanese blood in her veins) Joy explains to John that gi means “karate uniform”, hakama means “pants”, uwagi means “shirt”, and obi means “belt”. Because surely we could never have figured that out from the context! Oh, whatever would we do without our splendiferous Mary Sues!²

John feels obliged to tell us that Joy is wearing her hair in a “knot” for this training session, and to note that she rarely does this. Rummel, there are four words I wish to say to you: I do not care. What I want is for them to go back in time, after 133 pages of your lollygagging.

This lollygagging is promptly demonstrated by Rummel describing the dimensions of their training room, even though they will only be there for this one scene. I have noticed that Rummel tends to waste description on elements of the story that do not really matter, such as those Very Special Flashback Sequences, for instance.

Joy brags about being able to bend steel rods³ with her bare hands and kick holes in concrete, while at the same time insinuating that John cannot kick his way out of a paper bag. I have heard from a friend who knows martial arts that what Joy has described are just theatrics, that are not as difficult as showmen make them sound. Really advanced martial artists can perform feats of strength that are truly amazing, and which Joy notably lacks. I think she got her black belt from a McDojo. It would explain a lot.

When John questions Joy’s prowess, she promptly threatens him.

…And that’s the sound of my Sue-dometer going off again. I’m getting worried about it; it hasn’t been exposed to such concentrations of Sueishness before.⁴

The next paragraph is pretty much Joy channeling R. Lee Ermey. He ought to go yell at Rummel for a bit; I don’t think he’d stand for this lack of heroism by the protagonists.

I gaped at her. She was enjoying this, I knew. (page 134)

Even John admits that his object of lust is a total Jerk Sue. Predictably, the very next scene is her being mortified that John doesn’t bow to her correctly. She’s a spoiled little princess!

She gets away with abusing John to levels that would make the main character of Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai blush.⁵

What’s that sound I hear?

Crap, that isn’t my Sue-dometer! It’s the smoke alarm! The damn thing caught fire! Curse you, Joy Phim! Curse you!

unleashes fire extinguisher

Well, this scene is mostly Joy berating John, and John saying how sexy Joy is. As if we should expect anything else from Rummel. As a teacher, Joy is mediocre at best. She is not seen to teach John any useful martial arts techniques, and this is only exacerbated by her creation of a hostile learning environment. If this story followed any logic of planet Earth, John would die five minutes into the first fight scene. Overall, it’s simply boring. With that half-assed training montage, the chapter ends.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go rescue a kid who fell down a well, and after that buy a new Sue-dometer. Tallyho!

Footnotes

¹ Though to be fair, that could just be her ego talking.

² With this in mind, I’m surprised that John did not explain earlier that sensei is the Japanese for “teacher”.

³ Heh, “rods”…

⁴ I turn it off before reading other people’s sporks.

⁵ And a note to writers: if your female lead is more of a bitch than Kousaka Kirino, then something is seriously wrong.

Comment [22]

Chapter 14 opens on New Year’s Day of 2002. There is no time to celebrate the holiday, however, as John still needs to train. Otherwise, he’d get beaten up at the first sign of trouble.

Joy is teaching John about how to fall properly, and minimize harm. Naturally, she acts like a Drill Sergeant Nasty. However, John can’t take much more of her abuse:

Now, I had been a college teacher. I knew how to teach. She was no teacher. She had the skills, but not the manner. Were it not for the mission, and that I was falling ever more deeply in love with her each day, and our mission—of course—I would have told her to do the anatomically impossible. (page 139)

HOLY CRAP, SOMEONE ACTUALLY CRITICIZED THE SUE! Better reinforce the roof, because the sky is falling.

After more of this nonsense, the chapter ends.

What is with these ultra-short chapters? That one was only two pages.

All right, onto Chapter 15.

This chapter opens with John having overslept. This isn’t important at all, it just shows that Rummel can’t think of many ways to begin a chapter.

During the next training session, John watches Joy effortlessly defeat a giant Eastern European man. If my Sue-dometer were here, it would be going off right about now. This whole demonstration was just to prove to John that Joy is a badass.

Joy then claims that karate is useful in a real fight. Taku, I’ll let you explain everything wrong with this in the comments section.

We then learn that Joy also knows kung fu, taekwondo, and “t’ai chi ch’uan” (whatever that is— Rummel is using Wade-Giles romanization again). How much time has she spent training?

In any case, John complains about Joy fighting dirty, and Joy says that in a fight, anything goes. What, are they going to get into street fights once they arrive in the past or something? How would that possibly help them on their mission? Joy says that “[p]aranoia is the best defense.” Okay, it looks like somebody has gone off the deep end.

“When do you let your guard down, then?”
“When your opponent is down and incapacitated. Dead is best.” (page 144)

Remember what I said earlier about Joy being a sociopath? Yeah.

Then, John says that, even with all her prowess, there is a chance that Joy could lose a fight. Joy frankly denies this, and berates John for saying so. My poor, poor Sue-dometer.

Then, there is a really stupid flashforward to our heroes’ struggles with opening a jar. I will not discuss it further, as it is stupid. I don’t even know why Rummel wrote this scene. With more pointless domestic anecdotes, the chapter ends.

Chapter 16 is about… the circumstances leading up to John and Joy having sex. Basically, Joy starts training John in judo throws and one thing leads to another. I want to keep this spork PG, so I will not go into any more detail.

Oh, don’t think that John will be less horny now that he’s finally scored. This book doesn’t work that way, because Rummel is a Dirty Old Man. In fact, John just gets hornier now that he knows that Joy will do it with him. Just remember that these are supposed to be our heroes.

At dinner, Tor seems to know that her daughter has had sex with John, since she cracks a few innuendos directed at them. …And I’m done with this scene.

Remember when this story had a plot?

Finally, Tor seemed to jerk into an awareness of our presence. She released her locket and looked at us, saying, “Ah, yes, well, I’ve got to tell you about your minor operations, planned for tomorrow. You will each have a transmitter implanted in your throat and a receiver in the bone behind your ear. This system will be powered by your body’s own electrical grid, and will never need replacement. Each implant will be cushioned against jarring. It will survive all but a hard and direct blow. It will operate on shortwave for about eight thousand miles, and even further if sunspots are quiet. Your body is the antenna. You toggle on the transmitter by saying ‘KK,’ which are letters unusual enough that you would not say them accidentally. Once turned on, the transmitter is voice activated and will transmit what you say, even in a whisper. You also toggle it off with a ‘KK.’ This will keep you two in touch.” She smiled directly at Joy this time. (page 151)

There are so many things wrong with that that I don’t know where to begin. I don’t really have the energy to point out the absurdities here. With more of John’s frat boy attitude, the chapter ends.

Comment [18]

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.

Comment [21]

Here we are. In this chapter, our supposed heroes will finally travel back in time, after 18 chapters of foolishness. The novel is about halfway over. If you thought the writing was half-assed before, then you haven’t seen anything yet.

Three months of extensive training, the Society planned for me. Ha! What a laugh. In five incredibly short weeks, hardly enough time for me to learn which end of a rifle to shoot from—I didn’t, Joy would claim—the world ended. Abruptly. Forever. (page 158)

Pay attention to this paragraph. John’s training is cut short after just over a month. He still doesn’t know how to properly hold a rifle. And yet he is going to be sent back in time now, with no more preparation. Those last two sentence fragments are going to be quite prescient.

Why must they be sent back ahead of schedule, you ask? Because Tor’s groupies are wanted by the FBI.

DUN DUN DUUN!

I knew that their illegal activities would catch up to them eventually. Serves them right for training child soldiers and spiking people’s drinks.

Rummel, of course, treats this as a horrible injustice. How dare the federal government want to keep a time machine out of the hands of dangerous criminals and terrorists? So, naturally, Tor’s groupies blow up the time machine as soon as John and Joy are sent back. If only that had killed them, then I would not need to finish this.

But of course, our Mary Sues survive unscathed. My Sue-dometer has been fixed for this special occasion.

Joy speaks to her mother for the last time. In the hands of a good or even decent writer this might be emotional, but since it was written by Rummel, it falls flat. His Self-Insert, of course, just stands there like an idiot. All this is going on while the SWAT team is breaking the door down.

And then, after 160 pages of tomfoolery, our alleged heroes enter the time machine, and arrive in 1906. Finally. Could you have taken any longer, Rummel? Wait, don’t answer that question.

By the way, Rummel uses probably the worst description of a time machine in action I have ever read.

We had arrived. Somewhere. Sometime. Except for my racing heart, I felt nothing amiss. I put my hands to my cheeks and rubbed my eyes. I felt my clothes and moved my toes. I hadn’t changed. I hadn’t turned into a lizard. I wondered if, in spite of the sound, the machine really hadn’t worked, that I had only imagined that it did, and we were still back in Silicone Valley with the FBI SWAT team waiting for us to open the door. (page 160)

Yes, Rummel still calls it “Silicone Valley”! The fail knows no bounds.

And once they arrive in 1906, the chapter ends.

I’ll cut it off here, just because this is a natural stopping point, even though this chapter was just as short as the others.

Comment [5]

That should be a long enough break. I’m back.

When we left off, our supposed heroes had just arrived in the year 1906. What sort of sheer stupidity will they get themselves into? Find out in Chapter 20.

To begin with, their time machine has a supply of 36 hours worth of oxygen, in case something goes wrong, as well as five days of food and water. Wouldn’t that be a waste, since there is only enough air for a day and a half? If only this novel had been proofread.

What’s more, Joy is bipolar. She’s all cold and ruthless one moment, and a gibbering wreck the next. Has Rummel never heard of conistency? I don’t know what to make of this. If this is Rummel’s attempt to humanize Joy, he is failing. I should also point out that his Self-Insert never acts this pathetic.

The sob-fest ends as quickly as it begins, and we learn that Joy has dubbed their destination the New Universe. Haven’t we previously established that they can only create a Stable Time Loop? Trust me, that rule has just gone right out the window, because Rummel doesn’t want his Sues to fail, even if he has to break his narrative’s own rules to do so.

Outside the capsule, the first thing John notices is that the past smells. I will give Rummel credit for his realization that pollution was worse before the Clean Air Act of the 1970s. However, he seems to blame this on the great fire, even though that happened about six months before his chrononauts arrive. The smoke lingers in the air for half a year? Is that realistic or not? I don’t know, but I think not.

“Here we are,” I said to Joy. “Shouldn’t we say something dramatic, like ‘One step for mankind’?”
Her grieving eyes turned toward me. “You said it,” she said.
“I said what?”
“Something for the ages.”
“What?”
She was beginning to put her anguish behind her. I saw the barest hint of a grin at the corner of her mouth. “You said, ‘Here we are.’ That’s as dramatic as you get.” (page 163)

I don’t know about that. That’s kind of lame. Rummel is oblivious to his characters’ failure, as usual.

John spots the supply capsules on the warehouse floor (do you see a pattern here?) and says that it would have been terrible if they hadn’t arrived. So he is a wimp who would not be able to survive at a slightly lower technological level. And I’m supposed to sympathize with these people?¹

To those who asked if John and Joy are going to be discovered and mistaken for spies, that never happens. Sorry to disappoint you. In fact, this whole scene is kind of pointless since the only advanced technology our anti-heroes use are their weapons.

John tests out his built-in transceiver, which is still a monstrously stupid idea, and then he suggests they go to sleep. I know what you’re thinking.

So far John has done everything. Joy is off to the side. I’m beginning to think that she is a superfluous character.

John exposits about the geography of San Francisco, but from what I can tell, he gets his information wrong. I have never been to San Francisco myself, so I am only working off Google Maps, but there are several differences between the street layout as described in the book and in real life.²³ Rummel, as John, claims that Hooper Street connects to both 7th Avenue and Market Street. Though the real Hooper Street does intersect 7th Street (not Avenue as the novel states) it is only one block long, and never intersects Market Street. Rummel probably meant that 7th Street intersects with Market Street, which it does, but that is a misplaced modifier. He gets no points. This paragraph is unneeded anyway.

When Joy finally speaks up, it is to wonder about the welfare of Tor and her groupies. We will never hear the end of this. John reassures her that since Tor’s groupies were not carrying illegal drugs on their premises⁴ that they will get off scot-free. He seems unaware that if the FBI shows up at a building, the occupants will at least be questioned. He also says that Tor’s groupies will have a whole team of lawyers ready to fight any lawsuits, enough to make Microsoft’s legal team look pathetic in comparison. There is a certain memetic line from a certain Web parody I would like to recite at this moment…

Oh Sue-dometer. I almost forgot what you sounded like, from your long absence from this spork.

I should point this out one more time. Joy is supposed to be a strong female character. In a fight, she is downright sociopathic. But here, she is reduced to hysterics, even though this is inconsistent with her previous characterization. Of course, John sexualizes her some more:

Even as focused as I was on her sadness, I felt pleasure at the smooth feel of her warm skin, and her scent. She’d never worn perfume again, after her mother’s dinner party. No need. She had reeled me in, gaffed me, and hauled me into her boat. I hadn’t even flopped around or gasped for air. I happily accepted my capture. She didn’t need perfume anyway. When we were close, I discovered she had her own arousing, womanly aroma. (page 165)

This novel is rather misogynistic if you think about it. The only important female character is a sex object when she isn’t being a bitch, and sometimes even while she’s being a bitch. Are we sure that John cares for Joy at all, or does he just put up with her for free sex?

I do not wish to find out exactly what is Joy’s “arousing, womanly aroma”.

Allegedly, the rational side of John’s brain is paralyzed when he is near Joy. Considering his actions in this novel, I will wager that the rational side of his brain is paralyzed all the time.

With our protagonists dozing off to sleep, the chapter ends. Sure, they’ve arrived in the past, but they have still done nothing. The plot is still stalled in its tracks. Rummel is still an oversexed fanfic writer.

Footnotes

¹ They were vaccinated before arriving at the past, so John does not have the excuse that antibiotics were not yet invented.

² I understand that John is referring to San Francisco more than one hundred years ago, but I cannot find records of the street grid from 1906, and I doubt that Rummel can either.

³ Speaking of which, when did John find time to look at old maps? He would have had no reason to do this as a teacher of world history, and would have had no time once he was inducted into Tor’s groupies—he spent all day training.

⁴ Except for, you know, the MIND-ALTERING ones they slipped John…

Comment [5]

The next chapter begins with John surprised that he isn’t dreaming. Generally, whenever a character says that they can hardly believe what is happening to them and that they must be dreaming, it is a sign that the author’s subconscious is telling him that his story is ludicrous. Rummel may wish to keep that in mind.

To calm himself down regarding his immense task ahead, John repeats the old saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Then he quips that perhaps in the New Universe, people will attribute that quote to him. Silly Rummel, that’s an old Chinese saying, known even then. But I suppose that Joy isn’t the only character with a huge ego.

All of a sudden John remembers that he’s a hundred years in the past, and so must replace his wristwatch with a pocketwatch appropriate for the age. So far Rummel has generally avoided the number one sign of bad writing— describing a character’s clothing in detail. Well, there is a first time for everything, and he starts now.

John claims that in 1906 people only bathed once or twice a week, if at all. I think somebody mixed up his time periods here; they’re in the 20th century, not the Middle Ages. By the time most people acquired indoor plumbing, they began to bathe more often. Of course, Joy takes this time to criticize John for his body odor, and the two of them engage in yet more pointless bickering.

Just after John gets properly dressed for the time period, disaster strikes. Three young men walk into the warehouse.

DUN DUN DUUN!

Our protagonists¹ really should have known that this could happen. The warehouse which they selected as their base of operations is damaged from the fire and is unlocked, so anybody can just waltz in, especially after it has sat there unclaimed for months following the fire.

What I find amusing is that these three as-of-yet-unnamed young men from 1906 speak in a more modern way than some of the characters from the present:

“Hey,” he said when he was about ten feet away, “who are you? Whatcha doing in our building?”
Then one of the others pointed to the open door on the capsule, and exclaimed, “Look, he got it open. How’d he do that?” He turned a speculative eye on me. “We tried everything. Not even a sledge hammer would make a dent in it.” (page 168)

Before John can shoo them off his not-yet-officially-claimed property, guess who peeks out of the tent without getting properly dressed first? Oh, Joy.

In fact, she pretty much tries to seduce them, in order to lull them into a false sense of security while she kicks their asses. She should be really careful, since she can move faster than light;² she could easily kill them. Not that she would care.

Wait just a second. She pretty much invited them into her tent. Her exact words were, and I quote, “Come on, boys. I’m yours. Who’s first?”³ She deceived them about her intentions in order to inflict bodily harm on three people she has not even known for three seconds. And we’re supposed to be rooting for her?

Quite understandably, after that performance one of the three calls Joy a bitch and goes after her with a knife. Finally, somebody is calling the Sue on her bullshit! Unfortunately, the Sue just knocks the knife out of his hands. Good morning, Sue-dometer, how are you?

While this is going on, John tries to save his @#$%-buddy himself, but just succeeds in making an ass of himself. This is pretty much the only time that Rummel will acknowledge that John isn’t as good at martial arts as Joy is, and that he has only received five weeks of training. When the time comes, the Sue-dometer will be going off for John as well. I should also point out that John calls what just occurred “entertainment”. Yes, he is entertained by the sight of Joy beating up three bystanders. I do believe he has acquired some of Joy’s psychopathy. And remember, he is Rummel’s Self-Insert.

Then, our soon-to-be-villain-protagonists-if-they-keep-this-up tie up the three unfortunate trespassers. For all John and Joy know, those three young men actually own the property. When one of them asks what is going to happen to them, John says that if they do not answer all of their questions to their liking, he and Joy will kill them, possibly after torturing them first. HOW ARE THEY ANY DIFFERENT FROM THE PEOPLE WHOM THEY ARE TRYING TO STOP?

Joy threatens one of them with castration, to which John says that she has as many sides to her as a diamond. Except, no. Joy has only two sides: whiny bitch and creepy psycho. This is no different.

So, the three newcomers are terrorized into revealing everything about themselves:

The one Joy had chopped in the groin seemed to be in less pain. He responded first. “I’m Dolphy Docker. I’ve been out of work since the fire. So many horses died that nobody needs a stableman anymore. My mother died from something she caught during the fire. I got no father. He left my mother when I was four years old.”
“Dolphy? What kind of name is that?”
“My friends call me that. I don’t like people using my first name.”
“Which is?” I prompted.
“Adolph,” he muttered.
“Where were your parents from?”
“Germany.”
“Sie sprechen Deutsch —you speak German?”
“Ja,” he responded in German, “my mother hardly knew any English.”
“What part of Germany?” I asked in German.
“Munich.”
“How old are you?”
“Neunzehn —Nineteen,” he replied.
I returned to English. “What are you doing in our warehouse?”
He looked surprised. “You own this?”
“Yes,” I said. It was only a partial lie, since we would be buying the
building.
“We live here.” (page 171)

This makes me sympathize with Dolphy and his friends even more. The kid lost his job and has to live in an abandoned warehouse, only to be viciously attacked by two people who shouldn’t even be there. Dolphy is my age; now I don’t want to go anywhere near Rummel. Also, giving him the first name Adolph was definitely Rummel’s attempt at irony. It’s too obvious to work, though.

The second young man, the largest of the group, calls Joy a chink. This kind of casual racism was common at that time period; to Rummel’s credit, he does not tolerate this sort of thing and so has John sternly reprimand Dolphy’s friend Alex Reeves. However, racism actually is a very minor part of this book, which is more than a little unrealistic since John and Joy ostensibly want to create a better world.

It turns out that Alex, who will be called by his nickname “Hands” for the rest of the novel,⁴ ran away from abusive parents and played minor league baseball until he broke his arm. Since he doesn’t have any real job skills or work experience, he’s pretty much doomed to poverty at this point. He is twenty-two years old. We also learn the ironic fact that, despite Hands’s culturally expected racism, he himself is part Cherokee. (Why are they always Cherokee? There are other Native American tribes you know, writers!)

The last young man is a twenty-year-old of Mexican descent, Sal Garcia. He lives with his uncle because his mother was a prostitute, and naturally he never knew his father. He was supposedly born on U.S. soil in a cardboard box—knowing what I do of Rummel’s political views, I am honestly surprised that he didn’t insert a diatribe here about “anchor babies”. He was the one who attacked Joy with the knife—that’s a little cliché, isn’t it?

After learning about their stereotypical impoverished backstories, John tells them to relax while he speaks with Joy. Dude, they’re tied up and begging you not to kill them horribly. How do you expect them to relax? This is more evidence that Rummel did not reread his work after writing it.

Why hello, line break. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you, hasn’t it?

John tells Joy that they can either kill the three young men, frighten them into silence, or hire them to work at their front company. In an attempt by Rummel to show that his Self-Insert has morals, John persuades Joy to take the third option. Since we know that Rummel wouldn’t bother giving detailed backstories for three characters who serve only to get killed, we know from the beginning that Joy agrees. It turns out that the only thing that sates a Sue’s bloodlust is a Self-Insert. My Sue-dometer just went off again.

Oh, but they won’t trust their three new hires. Trust is an emotion beneath paranoid Mary Sues. So they add psychological torment on top of the physical beating that Dolphy, Hands and Sal have already received. Joy injects the three of them with a harmless saline solution, which John tells them is actually a slow-acting poison. If they run away or reveal anything about the company, they will die. The only way to avoid this is to receive the “antidote” (actually a multivitamin) which only John and Joy can administer. You read right. They threaten their employees with death because they are paranoid. I’m sure that if the three young men had not been frightened into submission, they would have called the police. Two suspicious people who appeared from nowhere, one of whom is of a hated minority, would attract quite a bit of police attention, would they not? But Rummel doesn’t want his Sues to face any real setbacks in their mission.

One pointless line break later, John puts his new marks—I mean recruits—through Training From Hell. He has them do jumping jacks until they are gasping for breath, and then does the old carrot-on-a-stick trick. John takes out a counterfeit $100 bill, and tells them whoever can take it from him may keep it. However, this is just an excuse for him to beat them up:

At that moment, all three of the guys lunged for the bill between my feet. The training Joy had given me immediately kicked in. Time slowed down. It was almost as though I were play-acting as I kicked Dolphy in the groin, causing him to double up, and almost simultaneously ducked inside Sal’s reaching arm, grabbed his shirt with one hand and yanked him to me while stepping to the right to trip him; he fell headfirst away from me as Hands, who had hung back until he saw me occupied with the other two, threw himself headlong at the money, as though he was sliding into home base; and I kicked back with the foot I’d used to trip Sal and connected with Hand’s outstretched right arm, knocking it away, and he twisted and landed on his shoulder. I grabbed his outflung left arm with both hands and twisted it behind his back and up. I held it there for a minute, and then released it, pushing Hands away. With a flourish I couldn’t help, I reached underneath my foot for the bill.
I waved the bill at the three sprawled on the floor, and warned, “I could have killed each of you, but I went lightly so as not to injure you. Do you now understand what I mean when I say I’m your boss?”
Gripping or rubbing their painful spots, they grimaced and glowered, but nodded. (pages 176-177)

I am, quite frankly, disgusted by John’s behavior. He’s picking on those who are weaker than he is. And it’s strange that three young adults who lived a good portion of their lives on the street are less skilled at fighting than a former college professor who has only trained in martial arts for a little over a month. Besides, he is outnumbered. My Sue-dometer is complaining even louder.

After this atrocious display, John puts the trio to work. Apparently, their first task is to comment on how John and Joy look in their new, period-appropriate outfits.⁵ John claims that “the afterglow of laughter”⁶ was still on their faces. I have no clue what that means. Are they literally glowing? Also, Joy flirts with the new hires. John is not happy.

At least this next line break has a reason to be here: there’s an actual scene change, for once. As soon as they leave the warehouse, they notice that San Francisco in 1906 is, frankly, a pigsty. There is manure on the street and flies buzzing everywhere. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t people have indoor plumbing by then? Flush toilets were around since the 1890s. Rummel might be making the past worse than it was.

John then makes the following sexist comment to Joy:

“Look, no women around. Must all be in their place at home.” (page 180)

Look at how politically correct our hero is!

And with the entire import and export company stepping into a buggy, the chapter ends. At least this one is longer than a lot of the previous were.

Footnotes

¹ There are only so many different ways I can say “our so-called heroes”.

² Remember the laser incident?

³ page 169

⁴ That’s kind of an unfortunate nickname, if you know what I mean…

⁵ After a whole page of John and Joy getting dressed privately, while teasing each other.

⁶ page 179

Comment [20]

…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

Comment [13]

John has sweet memories of his time in weapons training. Considering that he takes weapons training with Joy, I am beginning to believe he is a masochist. For all of Joy’s complaints about his technique, John doesn’t actually learn anything. Perhaps if he stopped drooling over his instructor and started paying attention… but that’s another matter.

And in other news, Joy demands that John address her as “Sergeant Phim” when training.

Also, for somebody who has to put up with Joy every minute of every day, John is awfully naive. He was apparently under the impression that being able to hit a target 70% of the time counted as pretty good, before Joy disabused him of that notion. Or should I say, “abused him”?¹ She berates him for actually taking the time to aim his shotgun instead of just shooting from the hip like Rambo, and whacks him with a tree branch. Because Abuse Is Okay When It’s Female On Male! [2]

I should point out that a shotgun is designed to be fired from the shoulder. Shooting from the hip will just scatter the shells everywhere and likely get everyone except your target killed. Of course, Joy cares nothing about collateral damage.

But John finally has enough. He grabs the switch from Joy’s hands and smacks her with it. Then he yells, “You’re not one of those fucking monks teaching me judo,”³ and storms off to the car. What Joy did was out of line, but since this is John we’re talking about, he comes off as a whiny asshole. The people tasked to save the world have the maturity level of anime characters. The world is so doomed.

Of course they kiss and make up, but since Joy is incapable of feeling guilty or sorry about anything, she flips John’s plate of dinner upside-down into his lap.

She has pegged my Sue-dometer. I need to go back to the store and get it fixed now.

…

After this leads to yet another fight, Joy walks out of the house and John is worried sick. If I were in his shoes, I’d be glad to be rid of that crazy bitch. For some reason Joy went back to their office building in the middle of the night, even though Rummel acknowledges that in 1908 anybody outside after dark was assumed to be a criminal, and as an Asian woman Joy would be assumed to be a prostitute, so she has no business ever being outside anyway. In any case, we learn that Joy did this to guilt-trip John into buying her flowers, and later says that John should control his temper. She is such a manipulative Jerk Sue, and neither Rummel nor his Self-Insert can see it. If Joy were male and did what she did, I am sure that those actions would not be justified by the narrative.

Joy is horrified when John shoots a bird during a later training session.

“You killed it,” she exclaimed in a horrified voice. Joy was sad for the rest of the day and kept mumbling, “Poor thing. I hope it didn’t have little ones to feed.” (page 191)

Remember this when Joy has no compunctions whatsoever about killing human beings. This is just like the schizophrenia over death in the Inheritance Cycle, only worse because Rummel doesn’t even have the excuse that there is a war on. In fact, his characters want to prevent wars, so they should be above reproach. Yet as you can see, they are clearly below it.

The next few paragraphs make me wonder if Rummel has any military experience, because in them John has to learn how to crawl the way they do in basic training, and Joy inevitably tells him that he’s doing it wrong.⁴ How would she know? The reason I ask is because Rummel never actually tells us what John is doing that is so bad. Is this a way of hiding his own ignorance?

Within a year, John becomes almost as good a shot as Joy. Of course, we are told this and not shown this, but I can’t really complain because the previous training sessions were nothing but Joy being abusive. Still, it would have been nice to see John actually hit a target for once. Instead, that sentence is replaced with a puerile sex joke. Just so you know, Rummel was born in 1932.

Then we get this, which proves beyond a doubt that Rummel has never even held a firearm in his life:

For the drill, I had on a suit with a shoulder holster and a .45 caliber semiautomatic. I was to stand relaxed and wait until she pulled the target toward me and yelled “Gun,” when I was to go into a partial crouch while pulling the gun out of my holster. Using two hands, I would then shoot the enemy in the chest. The first time I tried it, I thought I did pretty good. I got him in the stomach.
Joy said, “Too slow. Again.” (page 192)

Any hunter or law enforcement officer will tell you that a semiautomatic is completely excessive unless you are going off to war, which John and Joy are not. When they start their assassinations, they will either be execution-style, or just hiring organized crime syndicates to do their dirty work for them. Only somebody who is Ax Crazy would use a semiautomatic rifle for the situation our protagonists will be in. It is also obvious that Rummel’s characters don’t know any more about guns than their creator, considering that Joy once again chastises John for being too slow. It is a very well-known fact that machine guns are fast. They’re called “automatic” for a reason: modern ones can fire dozens of rounds in a second. I don’t think that anybody who is unarmed, or merely has a pistol or melee weapon, would stand a chance. Therefore, Joy is being completely unreasonable once again.

I also must wonder where they are getting their ammunition from. No gun store in 1908 would stock ammo for a firearm that will not be invented for almost four decades. I know that Tor’s groupies sent them capsules full of ammo, but that’s a limited supply. John and Joy have no idea how much they will need, and if they run out, then all their advanced weaponry will be useless. It seems like a waste to me.

It takes John several seconds to take the gun out and shoot the target. This seems a little fishy. Did Rummel do any research?

Exasperated, John hands his submachine gun to Joy so that he can measure her reaction time. Apparently, when he turns toward her the barrel of his rifle is inadvertently pointing at Joy’s chest. Without skipping a beat Joy kicks it out of his hands.

Number one, that was very dangerous (if the gun had gone off, both of them would be dead— this is why you always assume that a gun is loaded), and number two, THIS IS FORESHADOWING. It shows that Joy is a paranoiac psychopath convinced that even her @#$%-buddy is plotting to kill her. She is reminding me a lot of a certain man whose last name starts with the letter “S”…

And then Joy yells at John for not following proper gun safety! As if we didn’t see this coming. At this point, I like Joy Phim only slightly more than I like Rose Potter.⁵

John, and Rummel by proxy, describes Joy as having “almond eyes” that grow larger. I am not sure what this is supposed to mean. He can’t mean the color of the iris, and Joy has already pushed my Sue-dometer past its breaking point, so I think he is referring to the shape of her eyes. Yes Rummel, we know that Joy is Asian. We do not need to be reminded of this on every other page. Then there’s some bullshit about Joy getting in touch with her inner warrior or some such. She’s only shooting at a paper target, for Pete’s sake.

Joy fired three shots in 1.8 seconds. It takes John 3.6 seconds to fire just one. Now they are just mocking me.

And with John admitting that he is actually afraid of getting in a fight for real, the chapter ends.

Footnotes

¹ Badumtish!

² Warning: TV Tropes link.

³ page 188

⁴ And of course feels the need to humiliate him by standing on his back and demanding he carry her to the goal.

⁵ She hasn’t carved words into anybody’s forehead… yet.

Comment [8]

I can hardly believe that I am about to say this, but finally, after 23 chapters, and more than half of the book, something significant is going to happen.¹ Somebody alert Chicken Little, because the sky is falling.

Our protagonists are heading off to Mexico to kill some people. John claims that he is no more familiar with early-20th-century Mexico than an astronomer would be with the surface of Venus, and that his only exposure to the time and place comes from action movies. He can’t have been a very good historian then, because at this point he has lived in the past for about a year and a half or so, maybe longer. San Francisco wouldn’t have been too different from its southern neighbor. Moreover, action movies are about as accurate as elementary schoolers playing “Cowboys and Indians”. Expect to see The Theme Park Version of Mexico, and by extension of the rest of Latin America.

Oh, and we finally learn why John and Joy felt the need to bring along a full armory with them to the past: they are worried that they might be attacked by bandits. That seems like protecting oneself from muggers by carrying an AK-47 around.

We get some more evidence that Joy is not right in the head with the following paragraph:

I looked at Joy. Really looked at her. She was bent over in the light coming from the capsule, looking for something. She was serene, as though she were humming to herself. Maybe for her it was like being an artist standing around paint, oil, and canvases, or a musician in a musical instrument shop. (page 195)

Note that at this point, Joy is looking over their weapons, deciding which ones to bring.

John, in contrast, is not comfortable with the thought of holding a gun and using it to kill. Remember this once the fight scene happens, because Rummel won’t. He talks about how Joy is like a samurai, and if he were a competent writer, would be using this to point out that Joy is little different from her opponents, but Rummel is blissfully unaware of the implications of what he has written. This lasts for the better part of a page. Can we get on with it, please?

Apparently not, because Rummel feels the need to write in another implied sex scene. Because planning to kill people is really romantic! Gags John even suggests that the lust love between him and Joy is as pure as the love God has for human beings. Gag me. With a spoon.

Somehow, having sex cures John of any hesitant feelings he may have had about his mission. He is now convinced that their weapons are being used for good, in order to defend what he loves. Because Heaven forbid there be intrapersonal conflict in this story! In this world, there are only two shades of morality: what the protagonists believe is Right, and what the protagonists oppose is Wrong, so there is nothing the protagonists can do that can make them stray from what is Right, as they are Right by definition. Every single extremist in the world follows this logic.²

Apparently Rummel wants us to know that Joy is going to use a Ruger in the upcoming fight. Yep, Product Placement for a company that did not even exist at the time of this story. When people find the shells on the ground in the aftermath, they’re going to start asking questions. In any case, this paragraph isn’t necessary, because we know that Joy is armed and we know that Rummel is taking his sweet time already.

Also, Joy will be wearing a light dress for the remainder of her mission. I’m convinced that the only way she is able to conceal her weapons in such an outfit is because she is a Sue.

And with description of Joy and John’s choices of weaponry, the chapter ends. It’s short enough that I’ll spork another.

The next chapter begins with John saying that what Joy fears can lead to her death. I’ve said this before: the only emotions Joy is capable of feeling are hatred and smugness. She is a lot like a sociopath that way.

Both she and Joy go to work armed as described in the previous chapter. Because that’s not suspicious at all!³ John gets so used to this that in time he feels naked unarmed. Joy’s mental instability is rubbing off on him.⁴

We then have yet another “erotic” scene for no reason whatsoever. As if to remind the readers that Joy is a woman, Rummel has her get sickeningly emotional and distraught for no adequately explained reason, even though she has faced tougher situations without breaking a sweat both before and after this scene. The characterization is so inconsistent it’s schizophrenic. Joy needs her man to comfort her, and she has a surprisingly self-unaware outburst:

“We can’t possibly do what we plan!” she cried. “We are only two people among billions. We’re up against incredibly powerful forces, armies galore with millions of soldiers. We’ll fail in Mexico, and after Mexico we’ll fail, and after that, more failure. So much depends on us, but I’m afraid I’m not up to it. I think of Mom, of Gu, of all the others in the Society, and I can’t bear the thought of failing them. I will die of shame.” (page 200)

If they were normal characters in a normal story, then this could very well happen, but John and Joy are not normal characters. They are Mary Sues, and Rummel will not allow any failure to mar their combat records. I also have to wonder who talks like that.

Even though Joy has no Japanese blood in her veins, she holds the values of the pre-modern samurai, meaning that John is worried she will commit hara-kiri if she feels that she has dishonored herself. Give me a break.⁵

And with even John realizing that Joy’s characterization is inconsistent, the chapter ends.

And yes, we have just passed the 200-page mark. Not a single dictator has bitten the dust.

Footnotes

¹ It won’t actually happen for another two chapters, but at least it’s in sight…

² So yes, Rummel’s protagonists have sunk to the same level as Al-Qaida. Why do John and Joy hate America so much?

³ I know that early 20th century America was extraordinarily lax when it came to gun control laws, and that the Wild West was still in living memory, but surely somebody would have noticed their inhibited movement and the fact that they didn’t show up to their offices armed before.

⁴ Then again, he was rather emotionally detached when his cousin died in 9/11, which was before he met Joy. Who knows.

⁵ Though I honestly wouldn’t mind if a Sue of her caliber bit the dust; it’s the execution I’m complaining about.

Comment [11]

First of all, I apologize for the perceived lowering of quality of the previous two parts of this spork. This isn’t an excuse, but I really don’t know that much about firearms so I made quite a few mistakes in my criticism. Let us hope this doesn’t happen again.

This chapter opens with a short excerpt from an old newspaper article from the “real world” — that is, from before John and Joy’s tampering with history. Dated to September 1915, it describes the anarchy in Mexican society following the revolution five years earlier. Rummel is quite clearly using this to show how bad revolutions are and that this is something his protagonists should prevent. While I agree that many horrible things happened in Mexico in the early 20th century, Rummel is forgetting one thing: all revolutions are like that. More importantly, even the American Revolution, which Rummel considers one of the greatest events in human history, was like that. It would not have been fun to be a Loyalist or an unaligned civilian at the time of the American Revolution. First, it was a frickin’ war. Second, both the redcoats and the Continental Army were fond of pillaging random villages and doing unspeakable things to the inhabitants. The Americans were not as squeaky-clean as people like Rummel would have one believe. Now, the only reason I mention this is because Rummel is clearly implying that all other revolutions were corrupted attempts at emulating the United States. While there may be a grain of truth to that,¹ it doesn’t change the fact that the Mexican revolution was fought to overthrow a dictator, and John and Joy do not believe the Mexicans capable of doing such a deed by themselves.

It is in this chapter that John and Joy finally get off their lazy asses and get on the train to Mexico City, but not before John complains about the long distance. Let me reiterate that it has been more than 200 pages since the start of the book.

Again, our so-called heroes are so insecure about their safety that they feel the need to carry enough equipment to defeat a regiment with them on the train,² and John is awed by the old-fashioned steam engine. He has been living in the past for several years, and has traveled long-distance on several occasions. Wouldn’t he have seen one up close before? In fact, Rummel gives more detail to the train than to anything of importance.

The main characters do not do the research on Mexican weather and so are surprised when all their weapons and armor exacerbate the hot and humid temperature outside, making an already stuffy train ride even more unbearable. They aren’t the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree, are they?

On the train, John brushes up on his Mexican history by reading a book on the subject. There is stupid, and then there is what he just did. What he has is a modern history book, that talks about the world after the early 1900s. If John had lost that book, and somebody had found it, then they would have knowledge of their future, and would be able to compromise the protagonist’s mission. Shouldn’t a time traveler avoid this sort of risk?³

John muses about his life, and according to him, Joy says that he is equivalent to a first-degree black belt in karate. Not only do I doubt this for reasons already stated, but would Joy ever admit to anybody other than herself being competent in anything? I don’t think so.

Clickity-clack, clickity clack. . . . (page 202)

The first sign of amateur writing is to write out sound effects. The second is to be inconsistent with your punctuation. An ellipsis has three periods. No more, and no less. This is not that difficult to understand.

John claims to have lived a civilized life, and to have never gotten into any sort of fight before. He even claims that Tor’s groupies should have chosen a Green Beret or a Navy SEAL to team up with Joy.⁴ He also talks about how much he cares for the people who are hurt or die in vehicular crashes and how oh-so sentimental he is. But here’s the thing: we don’t see any of that! All we’ve seen of John so far is that he is a shameless pervert who has spent the last few years of his life training under a psychopath to kill people. If Rummel really wanted us to empathize with John, he would have shown us that he is allegedly just a big softie, possibly even before getting involved with Tor’s groupies, instead of telling this to us in what comes off as a desperate attempt to get us to like him.

He also thinks about all of the horrible things that could happen to them if they were to be caught. This is the only time that the characters will acknowledge the consequences of their failure. It’s as if they know they’re Sues.

Interestingly, John points out that not even the U.S. government would be willing to help them. In fact, the federal government would arrest them if they knew what they were trying. That is because what John and Joy are doing is basically filibustering,⁵ which is incredibly illegal. It’s tantamount to forming one’s own private army and taking over the government of a country. This is another thing we should add to their list of crimes. However, John is upset by this fact, because to him, what they’re doing is so clearly right that the government should back them. I am not amused.

If I was going to worry about one thing, why not everything? What about all the other things we planned to do? Would we survive them also? I knew my probabilities. Although the risk of death or some other personal disaster may be the same, when one took into account all the risky things we would do, then the probability was high that we would get creamed. On each toss of a coin, the probability of heads is the same, but in ten or twenty tosses, it is very unlikely that one will get heads for every toss—that we would survive each risk-filled intervention. (page 203)

Keep this in mind when they survive them all. It’s a good thing my Sue-dometer is in repairs right now, because this would break it again.

There is then a cryptic line which suggests that the interventions are not what will do them in. If you were paying attention in an earlier chapter where Rummel revealed ahead of time that Joy will die, you can see where this is going.

And with John trying to console himself, the chapter ends. Rummel really has a knack for drawing this out for as long as possible.

Footnotes

¹ I can think of at least three real-life revolutions that were coopted by the powerful to become atrocities in their own right.

² Clearly security was lax to nonexistent back then.

³ I guess a certain somebody has never seen Back to the Future Part II.

⁴ Though he’s probably right about that one. I don’t think that a Green Beret or Navy SEAL would tolerate Joy’s behavior.

⁵ Not stalling in Congress; I mean the other definition of the word.

Comment [10]

John says some platitudes about life always throwing curveballs, and that he did not expect his heart to be broken.

WHAAAAAAAAAAT?!

Do you really think he is going to break up with Joy? Really, truly think? If you do, slap yourself please.

This “stunning plot twist” is put on hold for a while as our protagonists arrive in Mexico City, where they meet up with Sal who is supposedly a suave executive now. Since when did he become a travel agent? Inquiring minds want to know. Apparently he got them reservations at the swanky Grand Mexico City Hotel, which I have translated from the Gratuitous Spanish that Rummel is using. (He forgot an accent on an E.) In this scene, not only do we learn that John and Joy let Sal and his friends call them by their first names, but also that Sal is a total tease, who seems to have figured out that John and Joy are friends with benefits, and thus has arranged for them to stay in the same room. Might I remind you again that the setting is well before the Sexual Revolution? This would have been scandalous!

After this bizarre and improbable scene, they all go to dinner, and Sal asks them if he can invite a friend over. Believe it or not, this is foreshadowing.

But first, John and Joy bathe together. It is claimed that the hotel they’re in is one of only two in the city that has running water, because it is apparently necessary to point out how backwards a country Mexico is. It was behind the times, but it was no Africa!

In a crude attempt to show how nice of a person he is, there is narration which tells us that John’s heart goes out to all the poor native peons who have to work in near slave-like conditions for John and Joy to enjoy their hot bath. Despite this, John does not have enough cultural sensitivity not to call them “Indians”. Really, this comes off much the same as all those whiny YA protagonists who claim to care about the starving children in Africa or what-have-you but then complain when things do not go their way. It’s very shallow and irritating. At no point do our alleged heroes actually see the natives being mistreated, which would have made John’s sympathy a bit more significant, if he had actually stopped to help them instead of enjoying the fruits of their labor. It would also show that the government of Mexico at the time did, in fact, need to be toppled.¹ Yet again this novel runs afoul of the “show, don’t tell” rule.

As if admitting his hypocrisy, John outright says that his sympathy for the peons is abstract while his comfort is real, complains about the conditions of the train ride over there (which are nothing compared to the working conditions of the natives) and then has sex with Joy in the hotel’s bed. They do not even have the decency to hang a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door.²

They go down to dinner and see Sal sitting at a table with his new girlfriend, who will not actually be very important to the plot. John and Joy try to join them when, surprise surprise, a waiter mistakes Joy for a native and tells them, in Spanish, that they do not serve Indians.³ This is the first time that actual racial prejudice is shown in the story.

Of course, John moralizes to the audience about how racism is wrong and that he had learned the proper response to such beliefs during the Civil Rights Movement. Wait just one New York minute here! John was 26 when 9/11 happened. He was not yet born at the time of the Civil Rights Movement. He could not possibly have taken part in it. Now the author is trying to give his Self-Insert even more undeserved accolades. I think he, just like most fanfic writers, has forgotten that he is significantly older than his Self-Insert. Ultimately however, he does nothing, because in his own words, “Fighting such prejudice here was futile.”⁴ Someone tell that to the ghost of Rosa Parks. But the conflict is resolved as soon as John tells the waiter that Joy is Chinese. I’m pretty sure the Chinese were also considered second-class citizens in 1908 Mexico. Moreover, note that John calls Joy Chinese, and she does not object. This will be important later.

As an aside, Rummel-as-John claims that the proper responce to such bigotry is “We don’t eat Indians.” It should be pointed out that the waiter addresses Joy in Spanish, and I am pretty sure that “No comemos indios” does not make any sense in response to “No servimos indios aquí”. The Spanish word for “to serve [as food]” is “abastecer”. But that’s for another time.

She isn’t an important character, but here we learn that Sal’s girlfriend-of-the-week is named Alicia Cardenas . This is a bit like naming an American character “Beth Lincoln” or something like that. Also, Rummel doesn’t have the accent over the first A. (But maybe that’s just me being pedantic.)

In any case, the following scene happens:

She gave me a slight bow and, in a most ladylike way, slid onto the chair, crossed her ankles, put her hands on her lap, and sat primly, back straight. It was so unlike my image of her, like a wild tiger trying to act like a domesticated cat, that I only barely stifled a guffaw. Her way of being sarcastic.
I plopped into the chair next to her and told an amused Sal, “You had better explain our humor to Alicia. He did so in Spanish, in effect telling her we were incurable jokesters.
She replied in Spanish, “Really. I thought John was such a gentleman and Joy so much a lady.”
I could tell Sal was struggling to suppress his own snicker. (page 206)

What was that all about? That “joke” is impenetrable to anybody who doesn’t know John and Joy. And in any case, aren’t they supposed to be acting like adults? I’m also a little surprised that this Alicia, who appears to be this high-class lady, has no objections to sitting with an Asian.

Since Joy doesn’t understand Spanish, she asks John what the waiter had said earlier, and he lies to her, and says that the waiter was commenting on her good looks. Was there any reason that he couldn’t have told her the truth? …Wait a minute, he may have realized that Joy would throw a fit if she knew.

So Rummel wastes some more time and narrative with the characters’ double date. Seriously, a double date. They could be stopping dictators or something right now! Isn’t that what this book is supposed to be about? The story that the readers are interested in and wanted to read about when they opened this novel? Instead of fast-paced action scenes or psychological examination of how evil people think, we get small talk about Sal’s date being this rich girl from a noble family,⁵ and note that our so-called heroes don’t care in the slightest that Alicia’s family are some of the hacienda-owners they oppose. Oh, the irony. They don’t even try to ingratiate themselves with her in order to ally themselves with her family or anything that actual social reformers would try to do. So what was the point of making Sal’s girlfriend come from a wealthy background in the first place?

Afterwards, John and Joy wake up at midnight, armed to the teeth, and sneak out of the hotel. Other than a street-cleaner, no one else is outside. By the way, John and Joy aren’t really headed anywhere; they’re just taking a midnight stroll. Seriously. They realize the foolishness of this when — GASP! — four teenagers approach them! Oh no, not teenagers! Said teenagers are dressed like stereotypical Mexicans, sombreros and all. One of them says something rude to John, yet at the same time addresses him by the respectful “Usted”. Just after we learn that Rummel doesn’t know that much Spanish, the teenager asks John what he is doing with that “Indian whore”.⁶ Immediately after that, they tell John to leave, and try to rape Joy, brandishing knives.

John apparently thinks that Joy is a dumbass, and tells her that their assailants want to rape her, as though she couldn’t figure this out on her own. When she hears this, and this is important, she says “Oh. Fun.”⁷ It is meant to be a Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner. But John, as we will soon learn, apparently sees it differently.

What follows is a badly choreographed fight scene in which Joy takes out three armed men by herself, and John just stands there like a dumbass. Joy kills one during the fight itself, and then murders the other two after they are incapacitated. There is literally no reason for this incident to even happen; the teenagers just show up from nowhere to create cheap conflict, and to demonstrate Joy’s ruthlessness.

John is understandably horrified. This is the last time we will ever see him have a normal reaction to anything. I know I’ve said that a lot, but this book is schizophrenic when it comes to characterization. He’s so upset that he throws up, and his vomit only barely misses hitting Joy.

The thought burst into my devastated mind: Thank God. She would have killed me. (page 210)

Immediately afterwards, he denies this, but I actually believe it. That is some Freudian Slip you did there, John.

Joy just brushes it off and tells him that they had better leave. How convenient for them that there were no witnesses.

John… is actually a wreck. He is on the verge of a Heroic BSOD because of what has just happened, with Joy considering it fun to kill people. (Yes, a bystander is actually more affected by a rape attempt than the would-be victim. That’s another Unfortunate Implication.) The next paragraph is him rationalizing Joy’s behavior. It looks like John is developing Stockholm Syndrome, or at least something a lot like it. After a pointless line break, John staggers back into the hotel with Joy following emotionlessly.

He looks like a wreck, and when Joy innocently asks him what’s wrong, he flips out on her, telling her that she could have (and in fact, did) incapacitate the teenagers effortlessly, so killing them was excessive. He calls her a murderer right to her face. Could John actually be getting some Character Development?

Joy says that they tried to rape her (even though she effortlessly fought them off) and rationalizes her killing of them by saying that she probably saved more women from their rape gang, and then calls John an asshole while insinuating that he’s sexist.⁸

“So,” I screamed even louder, “You are judge, jury and executioner. Not of what they did, but of what they might have done.” (page 211)

He says this while on a mission to kill dictators before they come to power. Forget my Sue-dometer, now my irony meter is broken.

Joy barely stops herself from inflicting bodily harm upon John for that remark. Instead, she screams at him, says that she did all the work in the fight, and leaves the room.

Line break.

John stays in the hotel room all the next day. He does not want anything to do with Joy anymore. At last, he goes down to eat dinner, and meets up with Sal, alone.⁹ Sal says that he heard from Alicia that four people were killed not far from the hotel— unbeknownst to them, the very same four teenagers Joy killed. When John hears this, he vomits all over the table.

And with John running back to the hotel room crying, the chapter ends.

Cliffhanger!

Footnotes

¹ It did, but Rummel doesn’t do a good job of showing it.

² He also complains about the bed’s “awful springs”. I don’t know quite what he means by that.

³ And yet Sal, the son of a prostitute, is able to sit there without a problem.

⁴ page 205

⁵ Yes, really. She is allegedly a Cardosa of which “Cárdenas” is a spelling variant. That further raises the question of what she’s doing with Sal of all people.

⁶ page 208

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ You know what they say about stopped clocks…

⁹ Sal, by the way, has no idea why they are even there.

Comment [9]

Chapter 28 begins with somebody knocking on John’s door. He refuses to answer it. Surprise, surprise, it’s Joy, who, appearing to be contrite, asks John if she can come in.

No John, don’t do it! It’s clearly a trap!

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, and taken aback by the way Joy looked. Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed. Her face was sallow, lined as though she had aged ten years. She had scratched her cheek somehow, and there was blood smeared around it. She had done nothing to her hair since we returned to the hotel, and it was half in a bun, with strands hanging loosely down the side of her head, and a large strand swept over her forehead. She usually took great care of her appearance; she must not have looked in the mirror at all. Or now just didn’t care. (page 213)

Or she neglected to maintain herself in order to fool John into thinking that she feels guilty about the previous night, even though she’s a sociopath and so is incapable of that emotion. She even uses fake tears. (Though Rummel, of course, denies this.)

To John’s credit, he doesn’t fall for it. Instead, he can only see how Joy killed those teenagers. Joy, meanwhile, increases the guilt-trip, claiming that she loves John, and would die for John, and offers him the chance to leave her and forget about the mission.¹ Flip the genders around and this scene gets a lot more disturbing, doesn’t it? Joy’s actions here are reminiscent of those of domestic abusers.

Then Joy does something unexpected. She throws down her knives and begs John to kill her. Though Rummel may think this means that Joy feels guilty, I beg to differ. Think about her upbringing. She was raised to be fanatically devoted to the cause of Tor’s groupies. If anything, I can believe that she attaches no value to human life, even her own. It is quite possible that she intends some sort of Gambit Roulette here. If John takes the bait and kills her, then she will have proved to him from beyond the grave that he doesn’t practice what he preaches, and if he doesn’t kill her, then she lives and is free to torment him some more. Her emotions are so fake here that I honestly can’t see her remorse as genuine.

As for what John does? He says that he cannot kill Joy, and that he will never leave her side.² Yet by doing this, John has demonstrated mercy, the very same trait that Joy revealed herself incapable of showing when she killed those teenagers.³ The fact that she is in charge of a mission that will determine the course of the world is very worrying indeed, especially now that John shows no willingness to rein her in.

After they kiss and make up, Joy explains her rationale. (Well, other than having insatiable bloodlust, anyway.) Basically, there’s some religion-bashing where Joy says that in non-democratic areas of the world like Latin America and the Middle East, the rape victim is punished while the rapist gets off scot-free, thus killing rapists is actually part of their mission. Fair enough I suppose (though still see my earlier footnote), but at no point do John and Joy ever consider nonviolently campaigning for equal rights for women and minorities. Not only does this make them hypocrites, it also reinforces the idea that to Joy, Violence Is The Only Option.

Joy then continues for another paragraph about how Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil. I really think that Rummel is trying too hard to prove he’s not sexist. Unfortunately for him, it is difficult for me to believe that in light of all the other scenes where he objectifies women. There is more to sexism than just thinking that rape is okay, and likewise there is far more to opposing sexism than just being against rape. That’s just basic decency. I am not going to praise him for basic decency, as that is the default. I hereby award no heroism points.

As an aside, Joy says that if the teenagers had gotten away with raping her, that they may have killed her and John too, both to eliminate witnesses⁴ and because John is a hated American. At no point does the book ever explain why some Mexicans hate Americans; the way it tells it, all Mexicans hate all Americans for no reason at all. Of course, explaining the real reason would disprove Rummel’s claim that the United States has a perfectly clean history.⁵

And with John and Joy taking a bath together, the chapter ends. I told you that John wouldn’t permanently break up with her.

This chapter was short and I probably should have sporked it together with the previous one. However, since the next chapter starts with another newspaper clipping, I want to stop here for now.

Footnotes

¹ By the way, if he had accepted that offer, I am sure that John would have wound up on Joy’s list of people to kill, because he knows too much.

² So we must endure more of Jerk Sue extraordinaire, unfortunately.

³ Now, if she had shown mercy to the teenagers, and they continued to try to assault her after this, and then she had killed them, I would have significantly less of a problem with it, because then they would have brought it entirely on themselves. But if Joy is supposed to be seen as good, then murder should not be her first resort.

⁴ Really, it takes a special level of stupidity to attempt to commit a violent crime in the presence of witnesses. Rummel couldn’t have forgotten John was there because he narrated it.

⁵ Bearing in mind that the US wasn’t really democratic at the time of the Mexican-American War because slavery was still legal, so this doesn’t actually go against the democratic peace theory, it’s quite unusual that although Rummel lambastes other countries for the atrocities of their non-democratic predecessors, he treats slavery in the United States as no more than a footnote, considering the US to be a democracy from its inception.

Comment [7]

First, I would like to apologize for the delay. I was having computer trouble, but that’s fixed now, so I can give you the next part of the spork of War and Democide Never Again. Stuff is actually going to happen now. I am not exaggerating this time, but don’t celebrate just yet. You know all the drama that happened in the last two chapters? Yeah. It will only get worse from here.

This chapter starts off with yet another newspaper clipping from our world. Rummel must really like doing this. As an academic, he should know the proper way to cite a work, but I do not see that in this book. Now, this particular excerpt just gives a barebones summary of the events leading up to the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Rummel probably could have worked that into the actual narrative, because it’s intrusive where it currently is. But I am counting my blessings— the article’s tone is politically neutral.

Right before our protagonists set out to do something, John is, in his own words, “scared shitless.”¹ Not that I can blame him. If I were in his shoes, I’d feel the same way. He has to walk on eggshells when around Joy, after all.

So far, I haven’t really had that many bad things to say about this chapter, have I? While I would like to say that this chapter is better than the preceding ones, that is not the case. Off-page, John tells us that his relationship with Joy is back on an even keel. Trust me, it isn’t. An even keel implies that both parties give and take, but Joy is all take, and no give. John does not stand up to her nearly as much as he should. There is some cryptic foreshadowing about their relationship never being the same again, but sadly there is no evidence for this.

Before they commence their illegal venture, they go shopping. Yes, really. Naturally, Joy buys a bunch of Mexican jewelry that she will never wear. So much for sympathizing with all the poor exploited indigenous people who had to work in the mines to produce that jewelry, eh? Then they hang out with Sal and Alicia, even though those two do not actually do anything of note for this entire subplot. Rummel has got to work on his pacing.

Surprisingly enough, John and Joy actually put off having sex. I guess that not even Rummel is willing to have his characters do that just before murdering people.

Before heading out, they change into their civilian clothes, albeit with their weapons concealed underneath. Joy’s disguise includes a mariachi-style sombrero. Not only would it be highly unusual for a woman to wear such a thing, but I don’t think that dressing as a mariachi is what they want to do if they wish to speak with politicians. That would mark them as among the common folk, after all. According to Wikipedia², it was not until the 1920s that mariachi became the type of music played at important political events in Mexico. I just think that Rummel does not know how people dress themselves in other countries.

Rummel then describes his characters’ breakfast. John is too nervous to eat much, but Joy does not have that problem. Yes, we know that Joy has no reservations about what she is going to do. This does not make us like her. After that, they leave the hotel in a carriage.

There is some bullshit about Joy trying to share her “warrior’s strength” with John as if by sympathetic magic, and John sees that Joy is eager to carry out their mission. I have to wonder just what were the circumstances that made him reconcile with her. She doesn’t appear to have changed one bit.

There is a line break, after Joy gives John the same look that she wore when first kidnapping him inviting him to Tor’s groupies. Is this supposed to mean that she anticipated getting in John’s pants just as much as she relishes the thought of killing people? Because ew.

They arrive at the “Riojais Building”. I looked this up, and found out that Rummel had misspelled the name of the location. There is no “Riojais” Building in Mexico City, but there is a Hotel Rioja. Rummel claims that it is one block away from the Palace of the Inquisition, apparently unaware that the Spanish Inquisition had operated in Mexico, so it stopped there at the same time it stopped in Spain, about a century before the novel’s time. At that time (and today) the building had been converted to a school of medicine, in a fit of irony. In any case, the two buildings are nowhere near each other, at least according to Google Maps.³ Strangely enough, after Rummel calls the building the Palace of the Inquisition, he adds a sentence that says it had been built in the eighteenth century and had belonged to the Inquisition.

Double-take

Did a second-grader start writing this part? I don’t believe it.

Joy evidently ditched her mariachi outfit to dress up as a proper lady, though I am sure that proper ladies, then as now, did not wear belts. Somehow this is supposed to make her quicker on the draw, but I don’t really see it. Furthermore, her shoes poke out from under her dress. Either she is wearing clown-size shoes, or her dress does not reach the ground, which, in those days, would mark her as a whore.

Oh, and swenson, Joy is not wearing a corset, even though John suggested it in order to provide a place to hide her knife.

John’s outfit is comparatively normal, except for the tight pants. Even if there are fangirls reading the book, which is unlikely in this case, the author is not supposed to give them ammunition! Even more so since John is the author’s Self-Insert.

I still don’t know why it is important to the story for the readers to know exactly what the main characters are wearing. At least it wasn’t in purple prose.

Whether or not Joy should go in armed is a matter of fierce debate between her and John. Surprisingly enough, it is Joy who argues that she should be unarmed and John who says that she should bring a weapon. And to think that I was actually starting to like John before this point. What is he thinking, letting somebody as deranged as Joy carry even a pointy stick? (I’m not even getting into how out-of-character it is for Joy to pass up the chance to hold something that can kill, or seriously maim, a person.) John’s reasoning is that they could be attacked in there, but all the evidence suggests that their mission requires them to start the fight.

Now, who is in the Hotel Rioja that requires John and Joy to visit them? Why, none other than Francisco Indalecio Madero himself. No, this is not what you think. It’s even stupider.

Of course, John and Joy have to walk through security, and John’s guns are actually discovered. Yet despite this, they’re actually allowed through to meet Madero after their weapons are confiscated. They aren’t detained for even five minutes.

AOIRNJBAOJNPFE GJN QVEJABGAKJBFKJFGKAJENR GSFTE

The two are ushered into Madero’s office, and he is described as being middle-aged. In 1908, Madero was thirty-five years old. That isn’t middle-aged by modern standards, which John would be accustomed to using.

Now, I know that in real life Madero was a high-profile figure and got away with his vocal opposition to Porfirio Díaz, but for some reason I doubt that Díaz would have allowed him to have his own headquarters in a public place. Mexico wasn’t a democracy back then, which is the whole reason that John and Joy are there. If anybody here is more knowledgeable about the situation, please correct me if I’m wrong.

Of course, John complains about the lack of air conditioning. It turns out that a primitive electrical air conditioner had already been invented by Willis Carrier in 1902, but was not yet common. Well, John is rich, why doesn’t he try to introduce it to the places he goes? Who knows, maybe the people would be so grateful for cooler air that they’d give him more leeway.⁴

Madero’s bodyguard whispers something in his ear, and the soon-to-be President of Mexico pulls a pistol on John and Joy. I guess the guards weren’t totally incompetent after all. (Though they still shouldn’t have let them in the room to begin with.) Did Rummel confuse Mexico with the Old West or something? This is something that should have been left to his frickin’ bodyguards.

Madero’s face is described as “teardrop-shaped”, which I think is a bizarre way to describe anybody’s face, and forces our alleged heroes to sit down.

John asks if they can speak English. When someone is pointing a gun at your head, it’s best not to quibble about language. Since Madero can conveniently speak English at a time before it became the language of diplomacy, he complies. (Interestingly, he tries to speak to Joy in Nahuatl, before Joy tells him that she is East Asian.)

Madero has the upper hand (or so he thinks— these are Mary Sues we’re talking about) and speaks to them coolly and collectedly. He’s the second truly likeable character in the book, after Sal. Considering how late he appears, that does not bode well for the quality of the writing. He calmly ignores the fact that the two people before him walked into the room armed, and asks them what they want. John says that they are present to deliver a possibly dangerous message to him. It’s blackmail time!

“Not a problem,” he responded gruffly, almost smiling. “One is my son-in-law, the other my cousin. My secretary is my granddaughter.” (page 220)

There is simply no way that Madero could have a married child, much less a granddaughter old enough to work for him, by the time he is 35 years old. Rummel clearly Did Not Do The Research. I don’t even know what they’re talking about here. Were a few lines accidentally deleted from the book?

In any case, John tells Madero that he wants him to bribe Díaz into resignation whilst declaring Madero as his successor.

What the [Bleep]?

Democracy does not work that way.

I thought they were trying to promote democracy. What they are doing eliminates any precedent for democracy and will just make it harder for Mexico to accept the idea. And in the real world, Madero won the election, so this is pointless. Even worse, the revolution gave way to anarchy when a reactionary cabal assassinated Madero and overthrew the government. If he is President earlier, then he would probably be assassinated earlier. What John and Joy are doing will just make things worse. What were they thinking?!

Naturally, Madero isn’t having any of this. He asks John and Joy just who the hell they think they are.⁵ Joy reaches for her knife and John almost has a heart attack. (Because just saying “my heart skipped a beat” is not cool enough for Rummel, so we get a description of what would be a serious medical condition.)

The following exchange occurs:

“It is a crime to bribe officials,” he snapped.
“Of course,” I agreed. “Did I say bribe? I said influence, and there are many legal ways to do that.”
“The things you say are all lies. Who is telling you this?”
“My government has very good contacts,” I responded, trying to act nonchalant about it, as James Bond would have done in one of the 007 spy movies. My confidence was growing as I went along. “And there is no point in denying what both of us know to be the truth. How much?” (page 221)

No John, what you describe is not “influencing”. It is bribing, plain and simple. That’s another crime.

Madero says nothing for several minutes. This in itself is interesting, since he doesn’t order them out of the room as soon as he hears of what they intend.

After an unspecified amount of time, he tells them that he will ingratiate himself with Díaz if they give him twenty million dollars. Rummel doesn’t realize it, but this line shows that he is just as cynical about politics as anybody else. This doesn’t bode well for the democratic peace theory.

At this, John almost jumps for joy. He doesn’t, but he thinks it. He doesn’t seem to understand that even if Madero will take a bribe from them, that doesn’t mean that they’re off scot-free. If it is discovered that they bribed him, they’d get in big trouble, and it would also make the U.S. government involved since John implied that he was working for them. This could escalate into an international incident, and he’s just sitting there without a care in the world.

John deduces that Madero offered him an absurdly high figure as a test, so what does he do? He asks him for his bank account number. All I can do is this.

Madero thinks this is all some sort of practical joke. John tells him that he will get the money, and when he asks for proof, all John says is that Madero will know of their sincerity when he gets the money. Doesn’t this sound like the classic scam? He’d have to be an idiot to believe that.

Madero asks him what government he works for, so John says that he and Joy are secret agents. I understand everything now. This whole series is Rummel trying to write a spy movie and failing.

Madero stupidly gives them his bank account number. Won’t he be surprised when they steal his identity…

Now, you may wonder why they needed to bring weapons to the office. After all, they didn’t kill Madero, just bribed him. Well, just before they leave, Joy takes out her knife (which she was trying to get hold of during that whole conversation) and sticks it into Madero’s presumably expensive antique desk. What the hell?!

It turns out that if Madero tries to do anything with the money other than finance his campaign or bribe the incumbent, Joy will give him the death of a thousand cuts, or possibly crucify him on a cactus.

Again, what the hell?!

They already know that he won’t use the money for personal gain because in real history, he ran for President without such assistance. The only point to the threat was so that Joy can be a sociopath again. If I were Madero during this scene, I would call the cops on them. They have shown themselves to be a danger to civilized society. Madero, however, does nothing, and lets them exit the building without any fuss. Something tells me that the real-life Madero would not have tolerated something like that.

…Wait a minute, did they just blackmail him? Their criminal activities know no bounds.

John is overjoyed that that actually worked⁶ and decides to take another bath with Joy. But first, there’s a line break.

As an interesting aside, Madero was a believer in Spiritism, and was convinced that he was in contact with the spirit of Benito Juárez. It would have been funny if this had been mentioned, but it wasn’t.

In the afternoon, John and Joy hire a detective agency to locate the whereabouts of Pancho Villa, whose real name, as John oh-so helpfully reminds us, was Doroteo Arango. Is it legal to just search for someone like that? It seems like a major violation of privacy, though admittedly early-20th-century Mexico wouldn’t care much about that.

John exposits to Joy about Pancho Villa having been a cattle rustler turned bandit who initially fought for Madero following the Plan of San Luis de Potosí. Now, unlike some of the other Mexicans of this time period, Villa is pretty infamous. He’s the one who led a horde of bandits to attack the U.S. Cavalry during the Revolution, based on what appears to be a personal grudge against President Woodrow Wilson. I can fully understand why John and Joy would want to get rid of him. He was a bad dude.

Joy interrupts John’s exposition to tell him that she knows this already. She was a student in his class, after all.⁷ John gets her sufficiently enraged by informing her that Villa hated the Chinese and would murder any Chinese person he came across.

In order to distract Joy from this enough to dissuade her from compromising their mission by tracking Villa down and tearing him limb from limb,⁸ John reminds her that Villa launched a terrorist attack in New Mexico. Oddly, John claims that this is the reason that Villa became viewed as a hero by many Mexicans— again with his thinking that the Mexicans are out to get us!

(Now, Villa is considered a hero in Mexico for some impenetrable reason, but it probably isn’t because of his actions against the United States.)

John then says that when Tor’s groupies first mentioned Villa to him, he agreed that they had to neutralize the threat he posed to societal stability, but didn’t think that they should kill him. Is John actually suggesting that they spare the life of somebody who would be considered a terrorist had he been alive today? What happened to his sworn revenge against terrorists after the 9/11 attacks? Consistency, what’s that?

This also raises another question. John says that he has no interest in killing “ordinary” criminals, even serial killers. (And there were serial killers back then, such as Carl Panzram.) If they are going to kill dictators, then the same rationale for killing dictators applies equally well to murderers who thankfully never got into a position of power. Who are they to say that a serial killer is “less” evil than a dictator just because of happenstance? This is a bizarre inconsistency than really undermines the whole book, since the main characters aren’t as committed to saving as many lives as possible as they claim to be.

In a fit of stupidity, John suggests that they bribe Villa just like they bribed Madero. I don’t think that would work. One of the reasons that Villa attacked the U.S. was because it supported his rivals, so there would be nothing preventing him from reneging on the terms of John and Joy’s bribe once he gets the money. A bandit wouldn’t fear the death of a thousand cuts; they’d have to catch him first.

Predictably, Joy is offended by the very suggestion of showing clemency to anybody, and actually brings up some of the very points I made. I am ashamed to be actually agreeing with her for once. It will not happen again; Rummel just made John an idiot so that he could be shown up by Joy. Of course, Joy being Joy, she wants to torture Villa before killing him. Even if one accepts that some people must be executed (a dubious assumption in itself) why don’t you just shoot him? It’s the more humane way to do it. Joy’s messed up in the head. A lot like Pancho Villa, in fact.

Strangely enough, when trying to counter Joy’s claims, John points out that many countries (including the U.S. for a few years in the 1970s— And Knowing Is Half The Battle) have laws against capital punishment. So John is against the death penalty. He is against the death penalty, yet he agreed to a mission in which he will kill people. I just love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.⁹

John tries to ignore Joy by picking at a scab that he just randomly got. He knows that you shouldn’t do that, right? Especially in an era with inferior sanitation?

After some more pestering from his dominatrix, John agrees to assassinate Villa. He says that though he agreed to this when he accepted the mission, actually killing a real human being is another matter. He’s saying this to Joy, who has no hesitation about killing anybody, even when she hadn’t done it before. John has become wishy-washy again. It would have been interesting if he actually stood up for his ideals and conflicted with Joy.

But Joy is not content with just one assassination. Oh heavens no. She also wants to kill Emiliano Zapata. Now, this man is considered a national hero of Mexico. What he advocated was better conditions for the indigenous Mexicans who made up the lowest ranks of society. Rummel seems to think he was a communist. This is strange, considering that Zapata has a much better reputation in the U.S. than the dangerously violent Villa. He was no terrorist. In fact, the Hollywood movie Viva Zapata! (starring Elia Kazan, who was no leftist) gives him a straight Historical Hero Upgrade. But according to Rummel, wanting to help the poor should get you killed, apparently.

Now, Zapata did fight in the Revolution, but if that’s enough to get him assassinated, then the country of the United States has some serious legitimacy issues. Does Rummel realize that he is implying that the U.S. should have never declared independence from Great Britain? Of course he doesn’t. This is the second time that Joy shows her hatred of America.

In any case, John agrees to the assassination because he is worried that Zapata might (not “will”, “might”) oppose their version of democracy. Because people aren’t allowed to have different political and economic views, or something. I knew that Joy’s clinical paranoia was rubbing off on him. Even if Zapata had been a card-carrying member of the Communist Party (he wasn’t), this sort of behavior is not healthy. That history book that John read on the train must have been written by somebody more right-wing than Rick Santorum, since he claims that there was no difference between Zapata and Villa. He also condemns Zapata for allegedly doing the very same things that Joy advocates. Because torture is OK when your side does it.

I threw up my hands and admitted unhappily, “If we do in Villa, it makes no sense to let Zapata live.” I was almost shocked at that sentence. We were acting like gods. (page 226)

I agree with that last sentence. Joy for sure has a god complex. This is why changing the course of history should not be entrusted to an organization as small as Tor’s groupies.

Apparently the detective agency they hired already delievered their reports on Villa and Zapata days before John and Joy had this conversation. When did this happen? Did several days go by without any indication of such? It turns out that Villa is in Durango and Zapata is in Morelos.¹⁰ There is a good distance between these states, and between them and Mexico City. If they set out to kill them, as Joy suggests, the travel time alone could mean that their targets will have left by the time they get there.

John is skeptical of going so far out of their way to personally kill them, to which Joy responds that she thought that was what they were all about. John asks to think about it, and dunks his head in cold water. When he comes back, he sees Joy crying. If these aren’t fake tears, then that means that she is honestly upset that she might not get to kill somebody. John tells her that killing them is too dangerous, and Joy says the following:

She snapped, “What? You don’t trust me? Are you afraid I’ll kill some little children as well? You’re not going to tell me what I can and cannot do.” (page 227)

John may not be worried about that, but I am. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that she killed those teenagers, even though it wasn’t necessary. Joy is vile. There, I said it. It is the worst insult I can possibly give.

John tries to give Joy a Death Glare but fails, because Joy is a bigger Sue than he is and thus is immune to the effects of lesser Sues. Mostly he persuades her not to go because her targets are protected by whole gangs of criminals, even though before the revolution took place both of them were private citizens who didn’t have a bunch of bodyguards waiting on them. He suggests hiring the services of a criminal syndicate to do their dirty work for them. Joy allows this.

I’ve lost count of the protagonists’ crimes by this point.

John says “I love you”, and he and Joy kiss, in an attempt to make the readers forget that the two of them are shortly going to put a hit on two people, even though one of their targets really does deserve it.

And then, there’s a line break.

They go to the detective’s office later that afternoon. It’s a stinky and humid place because of the lack of air conditioning. The detective’s name is Labastida, which is actually a town in the Basque Country. I don’t know if it is used as a family name; I think Rummel just found it on a map and thought it sounded cool. John tells him that he wants Villa and Zapata to disappear permanently. I always thought that detectives were generally not hitmen.

Labastida questions John about his story, and brings up some good points, such as how come, if John’s country wants the two disposed of, the government doesn’t send a spy to kill them itself. John brushes it off and invents a transparent story that Labastida accepts without further questioning.

Even though a woman would have no business speaking to a man in these matters in the year 1908, Joy personally threatens Labastida with a knife, and says that she will tie him over an ant colony if he cheats them. Disproportionate Retribution, much? Their operations are illegal as-is.

I really hate Joy.

John leaves the detective with some made-up stories about the people he wants them to kill. I still don’t know how a mere detective would have the power to do this. Has Rummel forgotten that detectives work for the police? John and Joy are lucky that they weren’t arrested for conspiracy to commit murder.

After another line break, they take another bath, where all of John’s concerns about the assassinations fade away. He still understands that Joy is bloodthirsty, but doesn’t care. That means that he is just as guilty of her crimes as she is.

John goes to sleep for the night, and invites Joy to come with him. Joy says that she’ll come later, but she has too many things to work on with her laptop. You know, the laptop with no Internet connection or battery power?

And with John having no idea that Joy is lying to him, the chapter ends.

Now, I may have gotten several things wrong in my analysis. If you disagree with me on certain points, feel free to yell at me in the comments, though I tried to get all my information from neutral sources.

Footnotes

¹ page 217

² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariachi

³ Rummel gets the address of the Palace of the Inquisition correct, but it would take a creative interpretation of the word “block” for the Hotel Rioja to be a single block away from it.

⁴ It should be obvious here that I am being sarcastic.

⁵ Now that I think about it, Madero is reminding me of Bruce Ironstaunch. I wonder what that says about our so-called heroes.

⁶ Except that if you apply logic to the situation, it really didn’t.

⁷ Though we don’t see much of his class. He may not have covered that time period.

⁸ Joy has issues.

⁹ Although at the time I type this, it’s late in the evening.

¹⁰ Does Rummel expect me to believe that there is only a single person in the world at that time named “Doroteo Arango” or “Emiliano Zapata”? What if they located somebody with the same name, but who had nothing to do with the Mexican Revolution?

Comment [15]

Even though he said this just a few pages ago, John reminds us that he and Joy have only one more appointment before they can leave Mexico. According to him, failure is not an option, because if they do not succeed, they will die.

If you know about the events of the Mexican Revolution, then you may have noticed that John and Joy missed one crucial person on their mission. That person is Victoriano Huerta, the reason that the Mexican Revolution gave way to anarchy in the first place. In this chapter, John and Joy are going to go after him. John tells Joy information that she already knows, and Joy blows him off.

By sheer coincidence, Huerta’s apartment is only one block away from Labastida’s detective agency, so the protagonists do not need to walk far. An armed guard, who surprisingly does not search them for weapons, escorts them to Huerta. We also learn that Joy is able to identify the exact make of rifle the guard is carrying. Methinks she is a little obsessed with the subject.

When Huerta first sees Joy, he kisses her hand and makes his lust for her apparent. I don’t care that he was a ruthless warlord, I don’t think that even he would be so brazen as to try to force himself on a guest. At no point does the narrative suggest that John and Joy are anything else, from Huerta’s point of view. There is such a thing as hospitality. John muses that Huerta and Labastida are opposites when it comes to how men in Latin America treat women. As though he is one to talk.

Huerta acts like a good host to John, though his body language makes it obvious that he has the hots for Joy. What about Joy is so irresistible to men in this novel?¹ After some small talk, Huerta mentions that John was meeting with him to give him a proposition. With his nervousness evident, John says that he will pay Huerta a large sum for the latter to move to Spain and never visit Mexico again.

Wow, the protagonists are actually taking the nonviolent course of action for a change. I wonder how upset Joy is about this.

Huerta questions John about his motives, and we get this:

I swallowed, took a breath, and answered calmly, “My government knows that someone will assassinate you if you stay here. Therefore, it is willing to help you move to a home in a new country, and to make it worth your bother.” (page 233)

LOL isn’t it so ironic that it’s John and Joy who want to kill him?

Huerta then demonstrates why you should not say such a thing to a warlord. He orders his bodyguard to arrest John and Joy, and asks them which one of his enemies sent them. I mean really, could John have worded that in a more suspicious manner?

Fortunately for John, his life is saved thanks to Joy’s Super Ninja Reflexes ™ allowing her to bend the rifle out of the guard’s hand and dislocate his arm. This causes enough of a commotion for John to wrest Huerta’s own gun out of his hands. He actually isn’t completely useless for once. This still requires both John and Joy to move faster than a speeding bullet.²

Now that Joy has the rifle, she orders Huerta’s bodyguard to back against the wall. John is so worried that he preemptively begs Joy not to kill the man at her mercy. Surprisingly, she complies.

With them both incapacitated, John tells Huerta that he and Joy have most definitely not hired a Mexican criminal syndicate to assassinate their enemies, and that they have Huerta’s best interests in mind. He gives him an ultimatum: if he stays, he will die, but if he leaves, he will live.

Huerta glances towards Joy, and after learning that she is (allegedly) a secret agent, gives his now-useless guard some impenetrable hand signal. Without skipping a beat, Joy immediately “[digs] her fingers into the switch on his carotid artery”³ and the guard collapses. Not only is that completely disgusting, there is no “switch” on the carotid artery. Joy has just done the anatomically impossible. Furthermore, if she broke the skin, that guard will probably bleed to death.

Scared out of his wits, Huerta says he will take the offer for five hundred thousand dollars.⁴ John accepts, and as they get up to leave, Joy throws a knife at the portrait of Porfirio Díaz hanging on Huerta’s wall. She then undermines everything John said earlier by saying that she will kill Huerta personally if he doesn’t leave. With that, they leave the apartment, and for some unknown reason a high-ranking official of the government lives in the worst part of the city.

And therein lies the rub. Huerta isn’t a relative unknown like Pancho Villa or Emiliano Zapata. He was a close ally of the President. He and Díaz’s nephew instigated the coup against Madero. In other words, he was a very wealthy man with connections. There is no reason why he could not simply contact Díaz, explain what happened, and have the full wrath of the Mexican government descend on John and Joy. The only conceivable reason that this doesn’t happen and John and Joy get away with this is because they are Sues. It would probably have been less risky for them to just kill him, and there is no reason to leave him alive if they are going to kill the other warlords. Not to mention that sending Huerta to Spain would put him in a position to ally himself with Franco later on. A story like this cannot simply ignore the Butterfly Effect. I don’t think Rummel put any thought into the consequences of his characters’ actions.

After a line break, Joy asks John why he begged her not to kill Huerta’s bodyguard, asking if he really thought that she would kill a helpless man. I don’t know why they are even having this conversation, considering that the answer is obvious. She killed those teenagers after she incapacitated them and made them no longer a threat to her. For some reason, John does not bring this up, even though he angsted about it to no end several chapters ago, and says that it’s just a natural response to that situation.

The two of them are convinced that they have managed to turn Mexico into a stable democracy without the country descending into civil war, even though their actions have created so many unintended consequences that by all rights they should have gotten themselves killed and failed to prevent any of the bloodshed. Yet they are already counting their chickens before they hatch and saying that Tor’s groupies would be so proud of them. The worst part of all this is that much of their violence wouldn’t be strictly necessary to achieve their goal, anyway. Huerta was perfectly willing to leave Mexico before Joy threatened him. This scenario is just a train wreck, pure and simple.

John has a Significant Dream in which he is giving a lecture. Joy is in his class, and asks him about the Mexican Revolution. John says there was no revolution, and that Mexico peacefully transitioned to American-style democracy in 1909.

How many times do I have to say this? THEY DID NOT CHANGE ANYTHING. In a world that obeyed the laws of cause and effect, it is likely that their meddling only made things worse. In order to actually prevent all the bloodshed, they would have to convince Díaz to leave power peacefully and make Madero a more effective president, in addition to getting rid of those who would start a coup. That last part would be easier said than done. All they did is practically tell Mexico’s oppressive government that they wish to overthrow it. Do the characters honestly think there will be no backlash from that? Violence creates as many problems as it solves, something that Joy would know if she weren’t a bloodthirsty maniac.

And with John waking up from his dream, the chapter ends.

Footnotes

¹ Don’t worry, Sue-dometer. It will be over soon.

² And if they can do that, couldn’t they just run out of the room?

³ page 234

⁴ Funny how in every case the Mexicans speak of dollars instead of pesos.

Comment [5]

Chapter 31 begins with yet another newspaper excerpt, this time talking about the Japanese annexation of Korea. This little bit of foreshadowing oh-so unsubtly displays our protagonists’ next course of action. It’s a really short excerpt too, one which will be soon revealed to be completely unnecessary.

So John and Joy return to San Francisco without incident. John is convinced that their Mexican operation was a success despite all of its flaws which I pointed out, though he does at least acknowledge the possibility that they made things worse, albeit only to dismiss this out of hand. He mentions that he has forgiven Joy pretty much in toto, and there is a line break.

Their return trip takes a full week, and during that time John and Joy discuss the location of their next intervention. Surprisingly enough, the novel is going to greatly pick up the pace. After all, the author has to fit all of the interventions into less than a hundred pages. The result is a rushed mess that really would have been avoided if Rummel had made better use of all 336 pages of his book.

Joy states that they should go to Japan next, and John feels the need to brag.

Finally, I thought at the time, now, with my incredible knowledge of history and Asian Studies, with my awesome research, I’m the expert. Joy’s the student. All that I suffered under Sergeant Phim has now passed. My turn. Move over, student Phim, for Professor Banks. None of these happy thoughts showed on my face, or in my manner, of course. I’m too nice. (page 238)

Yeah yeah, keep telling yourself that, John. If he is an expert on Asian Studies, then how come this was never mentioned before now? It comes off as an Ass Pull to me. (And of course, the book will misinterpret many things about Asia.) John’s narration strikes me more as that of an adolescent than a responsible adult.

He gives Joy an “As You Know” speech where he explains that their goal is to prevent Japan from becoming a military dictatorship in charge of an evil expansionist empire, and that their business has gone international, with nearly a dozen Japanese employees in a Tokyo branch of the Tor Import & Export Company. I am not entirely sure whether pre-1945 Japan tolerated foreign businesses operating on its soil, but I’ll let it slide. (They were, after all, pretty paranoid that if they let Europeans and Americans do unrestricted business with them, that they’d wind up as a colony.) We do learn that Joy had previously gone to Japan during their two years of slacking off to set up that office in the first place. Operating a non-Japanese business is one thing, but letting a woman do it is quite another. During this time, Japanese feminists often found their works banned.

In typical Joy manner, she complained about the boat trip over there. Though I don’t know why John is bringing this up if he values his life— he’s seen what Joy does to those who annoy her. Predictably, Joy explodes on him. (Not literally, sadly.) She then snaps back that she heard John enjoyed himself among the company of the women in Vienna. So John clarifies that he was joking. A sense of humor is something that Joy lacks. You’d think John would know this by now.

John reminds her about the mission, and says that they want to save the lives of the moderate and liberal politicians who opposed Japan becoming a military dictatorship. The fact that they are using the same tactics as the people they oppose should give them pause, but it doesn’t. I don’t understand how Joy can possibly take the moral high ground when she doesn’t have qualms about killing her political enemies either. This is something that the book consistently fails to address.

The two of them agree that they must stop the problem at its source: the 1910 annexation of Korea.

“Yes, Korea is it,” I said. “By now, 1908, Japan has turned Korea into a protectorate. No one has protested this except the Koreans, and in 1910 Old Universe, Korea becomes a Japanese colony.”
“Let’s see,” she mused. “Japan now is very sensitive to the world, and particularly to American opinion. In the Old Universe, however, European powers and especially the United States ignored what Japan was doing in Korea. So, one of our tasks is to foment elite American opinion hostile to a Korean takeover.”

That bit about the West not caring about Japan’s imperialistic ambitions is actually a little foreshadowing, but for the next book in the series, not this one. Suffice to say that though our so-called heroes are opposed to European colonialism, we don’t see them do anything about it. In that case, all their work would probably be for nothing, since all of the worst countries to live in at the present time are former colonies. Oh, and we don’t even see them influence American opinion.

Their most tangible goal is preventing the assassination of Itō Hirobumi. Surprisingly enough, Rummel, unlike almost every other Westerner, writes Japanese names in Japanese order, at least for now. Mostly it’s only otakus who do that.¹ John claims that Itō opposed the outright annexation of Korea, so after he was assassinated there was nobody who could temper the extremists in the government. This analysis is pretty accurate from the sources I consulted, though of course, as a product of his time, Itō would have expected his own country to be the most important in a hypothetical alliance between the three East Asian nations. In fact, this very pan-Asianism was the main philosophy of Imperial Japan, so I do not think that Itō would have been very sympathetic to democracy.

Of course, he was assassinated by a Korean nationalist, An Jung-geun, whose name Rummel inexplicably Romanizes as “Ahn Choong-kun”. He believed that by killing Itō, he would get rid of the force causing Japan to turn against the rest of Asia, thus allowing Korea, China and Japan to join forces to save themselves from Western imperialism once and for all. However, by killing Itō he pretty much convinced the Japanese government that Korea had to be annexed, and he was executed. Now, the man was quite clearly a nutbar who believed that violence was the only way to save his people, but whose actions only made the situation worse. Does this sound familiar?

Now, here is why I said at the beginning of this installment that the newspaper excerpt was completely unnecessary. Somehow, John has a copy of that very article, though it will not be published for about a year. He reads it aloud to Joy, making its first appearance completely redundant.

After hearing this, Joy summarizes their plans, which contradict each other somewhat as not only are they going to save Itō, but they are also going to finance the organization which killed him. This is not going to end well.

Now, John claims that this will weaken the extreme militarists, but Itō was almost seventy by this point. He might not have lived that long afterwards anyway, and without doing anything to actually discredit the militarists, they’d be back at square one and nothing would change.

At this point, the greatest opponent of the militarists was not Itō Hirobumi, but Saionji Kinmochi, who actually condemned racial inequality in the Paris Peace Conference but was shot down.² Pretty much the only reason that he wasn’t assassinated by the militarists was because he was considered an elder statesman. If anyone could have stopped Japan from becoming an evil expansionist empire, it was him, and he failed. I don’t see how John and Joy will be able to help him much.

As soon as John says his name, Joy corrects his pronunciation.

“Dearest,” she interrupted, and held up her finger, “you pronounce Japanese like you’re sneezing. Don’t embarrass me in Japan. Its sa-e-own-gee keen-mo-che—as in cheese—without emphasis on any syllable.” (page 241)

Not only is that incorrect (It would be “sa-i”, not “sa-e”, and the N in Kinmochi would assimilate to an M in that context) John is currently speaking English, so who cares? Joy is just being a know-it-all. She is reminding me very much of those elitist Japanophiles who sneer at the uneducated Westerners who don’t speak Japanese right now. Joy’s native language is not Japanese. It is English, and she was brought up in America. Besides, she isn’t even of Japanese descent. Surely Chinese and Vietnamese speak Japanese with easily noticeable accents? So Joy, even if she knows Japanese, should probably speak it like a foreigner because she doesn’t have the opportunity to speak it that much. It isn’t like All Asians Are Alike or anything. This is just a pet peeve of mine. Also, how come Joy didn’t correct John’s pronunciation of Itō Hirobumi’s name? If you’re going to be pedantic, at least be consistent.

According to John, Joy was able to prevent Saionji’s resignation as Prime Minister by giving him fifteen million dollars. I fail to see how that would help at all. Saionji didn’t resign because of financial troubles. John even admits it: liberals like Saionji had almost no influence in the government of Japan, because it was controlled by oligarchs who generally favored the military. Furthermore, though I have called Saionji a liberal, that is only in comparison to his opponents. He may have personally opposed militarism and favored parliamentarianism, but his political party was willing to offer concessions to the militarists if they thought it would give them votes. At this point in history, Japan did not have universal suffrage. That is one of the main reasons that it eventually became a full-on dictatorship. Rummel does not seem to understand how politics works.

Joy then says that Tor’s groupies suggested not intervening in Japan at all. While I don’t think that John and Joy’s current actions are helping the situation, I don’t think that doing nothing would help either. It did, after all, become a totalitarian nightmare. Unfortunately, it is as if they are blind to any real way to enact social change. Of course, there is a very good reason for this, namely, the fact that they are not Japanese. And here reveals a major problem with Tor’s groupies’ original plan. They really should have sent back more than two people. In fact, their biggest mistake was probably concentrating all of their operatives in one country, instead of selecting people from all over the world to work to change their countries. There is absolutely no way that John and Joy can prevent the rise of Japanese militarism, because they do not have any Japanese allies from the 21st century whatsoever. Of course, Rummel will ignore this, and assume that his non-solutions would actually help.

Right now, the best they’ve got is bribing people. There is a line break, following which is some information about their front company. John has made millions of dollars on the stock market, even taking into account his losing millions on purpose in order to avoid suspicion. He again mentions that he doesn’t care about what Joy did in the past, and says that Joy was spending more time on her presumably useless laptop. THIS IS FORESHADOWING.

But what would this book be without a line break?

When we next see John and Joy, they board a boat to Japan via Shanghai. John once again reminds us that he hates pre-modern transportation. Somehow they got an appointment with the very important Japanese statesman Itō Hirobumi. Now, I’m curious. How do they make all these appointments anyway? Their company isn’t that big. They only have a few hundred employees. I do not think that most people would even know that they exist.

Crossing the Pacific in those days was risky business, and sure enough, on the first leg of their voyage they run into a typhoon. For some reason, John and Joy foolishly go on deck. After some purple prose where John is certain that he and Joy are going to die, the typhoon ends as quickly as it began, and much to the readers’ disappointment, both John and Joy survive unharmed.

Their ship was blown so far off course that they arrive in the Philippines instead of China. While they wait for another boat to take them on the rest of their journey, John proposes that from now on, he and Joy travel separately, in case of an accident. We then get this telling line:

I did take one trip to Japan and China without you, to set up our offices there. I didn’t enjoy it, but traveling alone is something we will have to get used to. (page 245)

I think I realize something. It looks like John and Joy have a codependent relationship going on. Joy loves controlling the relationship, and John is an enabler. It all fits.

They purchase separate tickets, and then have to wait three more days for their ships to arrive. They get a hotel reservation as “Mr. and Mrs. Banks”. Well I suppose that interracial marriage wasn’t considered as big a deal in the Philippines as in San Francisco, but I might be wrong. Of course, we are told that they spent the time having sex.

When Joy and John wind up on separate ships, John finds the separation from Joy unbearable. A normal person would be rejoicing at the fact that he got away from her. More evidence for my codependency theory.

They eventually arrive in Japan and are greeted by a Shinseki Watanabe. Apparently Rummel has now decided to write Japanese names in Western order. Watanabe is frantic, because there are only two hours before their appointment.

Now that they are in Japan, John says that they have to save face as much as possible because the Japanese will not tolerate even the slightest breaches of etiquette. Surprisingly enough, that isn’t much of an exaggeration, considering the time period. Apparently if they had been so much as a minute late, Itō would have canceled on them or something.

When Itō appears, he is described as being tall by Japanese standards. As though to foreshadow what is to come, though his room is decorated with portraits of the Japanese Emperor and military officers, there is not a single politician. Are our so-called heroes sure that they are not too late?

He greets them in Japanese that I’m sure Rummel got by asking information from anime fans or something. John offers him a handshake, which he only reluctantly accepts. Even though Itō can speak English, apparently the custom of the time dictated that Joy would translate what John says into Japanese, since apparently Joy studied as many languages as possible in preparation for her mission.³

John tells Itō a similar story to what he told Huerta, but phrased in a much less suspicious manner, probably because he’s telling the truth this time. I still would like to know how they convinced him that they were ambassadors.

He just looked at me. Only his nostrils moved. Now I could see why Westerners called Japanese inscrutable. (page 249)

You know, I really don’t see much difference between that and, say, a Briton keeping a Stiff Upper Lip when informed of bad news.

Itō is furious and, after yelling something in what is probably incorrect Japanese, says that his trip to Manchuria is a state secret, and demands to know how our alleged heroes found out. This is a recognized trope: the idea that Time Travelers Are Spies. However, since their mission would be ruined if John and Joy got into trouble, they manage to avoid Itō’s wrath. They ask him to reschedule his visit so that his assassin will be thrown off, and offer to reimburse him. Itō accepts for only $25000— much less than the Mexicans.

That went reasonably well, and Itō invites John to come with him to a geisha house. Even though real geisha were not actually prostitutes, John turns him down, which according to Joy is actually a faux pas in Japanese society. In any case, Itō looks at Joy lecherously⁴ and Rummel seems to believe that Itō would invite him to a whorehouse.

Not that Joy is complaining about John turning down the offer. She says that Japanese men have no respect for women and is happy that John does not feel the same way. Except that he does. Several times he has viewed women as objects. Remember back before he went back in time and could not stop thinking about when he would finally have sex with Joy?

And with Joy telling John that he’s full of it, the chapter ends.

Footnotes

¹ Which is strange, because most people write Chinese and Korean names in their native order, so why is Japan the only exception?

² Neither the West nor the Japanese were too fond of that idea, which just goes to show that you need more than one person to greatly change society.

³ Does Rummel even know how difficult it is to learn a new language, much less speak it fluently?

⁴ Oh for crying out loud…

Comment [14]

The next chapter begins with this line:

I should have known she would betray me. (page 252)

Could John be getting disillusioned with Joy again, for real this time? Find out in this new installment.

Because they are now travelling in separate ships, John and Joy change their ticket arrangements. Apparently Joy speaks Chinese, meaning that she can fluently speak at least three languages. Now, knowing one language that is not your native tongue is one thing, but two is quite another. It takes a lot of time and effort to learn another language, time that Joy does not have. My Sue-dometer has just gone off. While John returns home, Joy is en route to “Peking”¹ to somehow make an appointment with the leader of the Korean resistance, Jung Il Han. I cannot find any information on a Jung Il Han active in the early twentieth century, so I don’t even know if Rummel spelled the name wrong or not. I wouldn’t put it past him. Particularly in that the name is suspicious, since il is Korean for “sun” and an element of the Korean name for Japan, while Han is how the Chinese refer to themselves; thus his name evokes both Japan and China. (And “Jung Il” together is reminiscent of the then-current North Korean dictator.) It may even be possible that he is a wholly original character. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. Jung Il Han is in China because he wants their help. Regardless, the fact that John and Joy are apart for more than a week is in fact a plot point.

During this time, Joy is able to communicate with John via their implants. Keep in mind that they are an ocean apart, and in 1908 there were no communications satellites or cellular towers. They shouldn’t get any transmission. Joy tells John over their impossible connection that she met with General Han² and offered him a whopping thirty million dollars for his campaign, with the usual threat. This is important later.

After two days of no contact, John starts getting worried. Just before he sends a telegraph to China to investigate, Joy calls him and tells him to transfer the money over, and that she’s on the ship back. John asks her what happened and she says that she will explain when she gets there.

When she arrives back in San Francisco, she actually does come clean, surprisingly enough. But before she does, she preemptively makes excuses for what she did, and, like a child who broke their parents’ vase, begs John not to get mad.

It turns out that Han is the only character in the book not to be intimidated by Joy’s threats. He is suspicious of her from the start and thinks that she’s some sort of Mata Hari figure hired by the Japanese.³ He asks Joy if she’s a secret agent, she stupidly says yes, and he orders his men to tie her up.

See, what I don’t get is that Han is the only person who gets suspicious when told that our protagonists are secret agents. No one else really has any reaction to that, or thinks “wait a minute, these guys are enemy operatives”. Probably the only reason he does is for the cheap conflict which will be explained below.

Of course, since our magnificent Sue can’t be defeated by mere mortals, Joy knocks them all unconscious in a matter of minutes. We actually get to read John’s thoughts on this:

Minutes. You took minutes. I thought that it would take that long only if you had a broken leg and a paralyzed arm. Then out of the mental depths where my horribles lay hidden came What, you didn’t kill them? (page 253)

Even John understands that something is not right about the world of this series.

Joy continues explaining that Han kept trying to interrogate her, but she would not tell, because she can’t. She isn’t working for any government. Despite this, Han accepts the money for some unspecified reason. When Joy takes her knife and threatens him, he doesn’t take it seriously. Again, he is the only person to do this. But then, Joy reveals an astonishing twist. The general said that he would only accept their assistance if Joy slept with him.

DUN DUN DUUN!

Yes, apparently the frickin’ leader of the resistance is so venal that he will not accept thirty million dollars, which would certainly help his cause, unless the provider has sex with him. Rummel is making his antagonists be Stupid Evil again.⁴

Joy says that she had no choice but to accept, and that is why she took so long in returning. Quite understandably, John flips out. This makes the second time that he has a normal reaction. It’s a shame; he could have become a genuine character without Joy. However, he is not upset about the fact that his girlfriend was basically raped. Instead, he thinks that Joy enjoyed it and that she cheated on him. Dude, you know what happens when Joy gets angry. I don’t think you want to provoke her. What the hell, Rummel?

Joy justifies herself by saying that it was for the sake of the mission, and that the sex act did not mean anything to her. That’s not helping her case. Both John and Joy are equally contemptible here.⁵

At this, John loses it. In his own words, “Vesuvius finally erupted and [he] spewed ash all over San Francisco.”⁶ Gee, thanks for that imagery, Rummel. He jumps off the couch and starts trashing the place, much like Tom Cruise, or maybe Tommy Wiseau. You can make The Room jokes now. The next paragraph really is melodramatic.

And as quickly as John’s anger erupts, it subsides, and he starts to see the “necessity” of Joy’s actions. The sheer speed by which he goes from outraged to accepting of what Joy does is really disturbing.

Joy goes to comfort him, and John spills his guts out about how he wants to marry her and start a family with her, but that their mission makes this impossible. It’s as if this book has become a romance novel.

The scene suddenly changes without a line break, for some reason. John tells us that years later, they learned that they were successful in stopping the military in taking over Japan. It’s totally unrealistic, but did you really think they’d fail, considering how this book works? Somehow their monetary donations were able to cause American politicians to support Korea and oppose Japanese imperialism, even though Japan was their ally and few people in 1908 thought imperialism was a bad thing. At this point, Great Britain ruled like a quarter of the whole world. If you think about it, this would only make the Japanese more angry with the West, as they would claim that the Western countries are allowed to have colonies, but will not let them do the same. This blatant display of hypocrisy would be far more likely to turn the Japanese public right into the hands of the militarists, instead of the other way around like the book claims. Even today, more than sixty years after the transition to democracy, many Japanese believe that they are superior to all other nationalities, and believe in certain pseudosciences to support that.⁷ It would have been worse in the Imperial period. It is also said that Saionji Kinmochi was able to win the position of Prime Minister and push through reforms, even though he was Prime Minister in real history—in 1911, in fact— and wasn’t able to stem the tide of oligarchy. I have already said that the only way that they would have been able to turn Japan into a democracy before it actually did would be if they got a grassroots movement going on, and they didn’t. Once again, Rummel is convinced that his characters made things better, but if you apply logic to the situation, they only made things worse.

John and Joy celebrate upon hearing this news, but John can’t stop brooding about Joy. And with him expressing his disturbance about Joy’s demeanor, the chapter ends.

Footnotes

¹ Really, Rummel? I understand that “Peking” was the spelling used when you were young, but nowadays all media use “Beijing”, and that is what’s written on modern maps. You’ve been out of the loop for several decades.

² So “Han” is apparently his surname. Even then, I can’t find any information on him, so he probably is an original character.

³ He actually wouldn’t be too far from the truth.

⁴ Though I can sort of see where Rummel’s coming from this time. Men in the early 20th century considered women beneath them, so from Han’s perspective, I imagine he thought that Joy was now at his mercy.

⁵ Oh, and before anyone says anything, the book did establish earlier that Joy was sterilized before the start of the mission and that she brought anti-venereal pills from the future. The only question is why she had them with her in China. Did she think this was gonna happen, or something?

⁶ page 254

⁷ Not that they’re all like that, mind you. I have a Japanese friend who has never once made any racist comments to anybody, but the point is that xenophobia is a bigger problem in Japan than the West.

Comment [5]

Hey everybody. I know it’s been a while; for the last week or so I’ve been preoccupied with writing a story of my own¹ so I haven’t really had the chance to continue this spork. But now that my other project is finally complete, I really have no excuse to put this off any longer. So let’s head right into it, shall we?

This chapter’s very first line reveals that John and Joy had considered officially getting married to one another. They never actually do this, but in hindsight, John says that this may have helped their mission somehow. I really don’t see how, since John is white and Joy is Asian and early 1900s San Francisco really really did not like Asians, or interracial marriage. What’s more, John’s speculations do not actually affect the plot in any way, so I wonder why they were included.

John tells us that for over the next few years he and Joy built up their Import and Export Company in the cities of Europe, and that the year was now 1911. If there is one thing I’ve noticed since the characters have arrived in the past, it’s that Rummel has a habit of skipping over entire years, even when his characters should be doing something important in all that time, such as, oh I don’t know, preventing a world war? Now they have only three years before the war breaks out, and they have done nothing to avert the crisis. Plenty of companies operated internationally back then, and would have found a war bad for their business, yet they were unable to prevent it from happening in real life. What makes John and Joy so special?² And yet John says that it was still too early for them to intervene! When wouldn’t it be too early, the 28th of June, 1914?

We are told, but not shown, that they spent millions of dollars on an anti-war propaganda campaign. However, we are not shown any of their campaign, nor are we even told their target audience. After all, it was those in power who insisted on a war, so merely appealing to the people would do nada. Not to mention that, despite its riches, the Tor Import & Export Company is not a governmental organization. The governments of the European countries, particularly Germany and Russia, would have had them thrown out if they tried anything. The final nail in the coffin of this idea is the fact that television and the Internet did not exist in 1911; John and Joy would be limited to pamphlets, since I doubt that any foreign radio station would have permitted them to make broadcasts.

By the way, we never hear of what happens in Mexico or Japan for the rest of this book. Rummel and his characters really believe that they were totally successful on the first try and don’t even bother to check up on their interventions afterwards. For some reason, I have the feeling that Rummel did the same in regards to his draft of the story.

By now, John claims that his stock portfolio is too large for even the biggest brokerages to handle, being worth about 11 billion modern dollars. By now, I’m sure that his rivals would start to be suspicious, and lest we forget, in 1911 the Progressive movement was in full swing, and trusts were being broken up. There is a reason that nobody can become as rich as Rockefeller anymore. Of course, all this is just so that the protagonists can spend as much money as they want without needing to worry about funds. My Sue-dometer is not going to let me hear the end of this.

We now learn why Joy was using her laptop. She was looking up the stock market prices of real life and comparing them to the listed values in the paper. What have I been saying about the Internet not working in their time period? Apparently, it was not until late 1910 that the stock market in the new universe began to diverge from how it was in the old universe. The cause? Companies which do business in Mexico or Asia³ have begun to be affected by the lack of wars. This is the last time I will mention that the protagonists’ meddling should have made both Mexico and Korea less stable, because we will never hear of those places again after this.

As for Joy’s specific dialogue, it’s so magnificently bad that I feel I must quote it in its entirety:

“It’s happened, love. We finally are significantly influencing global events. We have created a New Universe. The correlation over all the New York exchange stocks is down from 100 to 96 percent.” (page 258)

Who has ever said, “It’s happened, love.”? I want to know.

John and Joy employ about 1300 people, which apparently makes theirs the largest firm of its kind in the western United States. Within five years, Dolphy, Hands and Sal have become their executives. We almost never see him, but Hands apparently did so well that he’s their Vice-President. Are John and Joy supposed to be co-Presidents, or is Joy Just the First Citizen? Surely there were some adults more qualified for these posts? Of course, it’s not like any of this matters, since John and Joy are the only characters who do anything of note.

Surprisingly enough, the cash that Tor’s groupies left behind almost backfires on them. At a company party, Hands asks John how come his stock portfolio contains more money than their company is listed as making.

Are you ready for this? Because I certainly am:

DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN!

Oh noes, how will our heroes get out of this? Not to fear, J. Random Reader, as John says that he has inherited a large amount of money from European aristocrats. Hands actually believes this story, even though it’s ridiculous, and a crisis is averted.

Without any form of scene break, John then says that the three of them did not actually know that Joy lived with John. But wait a minute, didn’t Sal go out of his way to ensure that John and Joy got the same hotel room? They would have to have suspected something, or he would never have done that in the early 1900s. Rummel keeps forgetting how scandalous that would have been. The so-called heroes spend a page or two analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of getting married, before deciding that it’s unnecessary. Can we get back to the plot, please?

John notices that Joy has been feeling under the weather recently. Not enough to actually affect their mission, but we are told (not shown) that she is unusually tired. John is worried enough that he suggests taking her to a doctor, but Joy rebuffs that doctors in 1911 are so incompetent that they’d lobotomize her for the flu. I find that unlikely, since influenza was known to be the result of infection even back then. Not only that, but the first true lobotomy was not performed until 1935.

Then there is this cryptic line. For some reason, all lines that conclude a chapter must be cryptic:

If only I had known what I do now. I would have preferred a lobotomy. (page 261)

And with John showing a remarkable disregard for the mental health of his partner, the chapter ends.

The chapters are getting short again. The next one has a newspaper excerpt, though, so I’ll leave it for the next time.

Footnotes

¹ As much as I want feedback, I won’t link it unless you ask.

² I know, Sue-dometer. I know.

³ Note that the text says “do business in”, not “are based in”. This is an important distinction, because apparently capitalism only exists in America and Western Europe.

Comment [8]

The next chapter opens up, yet again, with a newspaper excerpt. By this point I don’t know why these excerpts are even here; it’s as though Rummel doesn’t believe his readership capable of figuring out in which country his characters will next intervene without them. It is not as if the excerpts provide any information that is actually important.

John tells us that their intervention in China was far more difficult to pull off than their previous two interventions. This may be the case, but (spoiler alert) they still turn China into a functioning Western-style democracy with much greater ease than one would expect.

On the other hand, China did undergo a bona fide revolution in which their emperor was deposed during this time, so at least it would be possible for a set of time travelers to actually make things better this time around.

In addition to this, John tells us at the start of the chapter that he saves Joy’s life, thus negating any upcoming dramatic tension. This is bad form, Rummel.

Eventually, John exposits to Joy that the Qīng dynasty is on the brink of collapse thanks to widespread discontent and the revolutionary activities of Sun Yat-sen. Joy points out the ridiculousness of John lecturing her about China and brags about how she reads Chinese newspapers in their original language, even though this has never been mentioned before and comes off as Rummel trying to make his characters look cooler.

John’s thoughts on this are basically, “Shut up I have CREDENTIALS”¹ and he starts going on with his Infodump, as though deliberately attempting to annoy his partner. Better be careful, John. You wouldn’t want Joy to throw her knife at you.

Also, Joy was looking at a clothes catalogue while all this was going on.

For some reason, our so-called heroes wait for an unspecified number of months before they do anything. You’d think they would have given Sun Yat-sen some financial help or something, but they don’t. Perhaps this is just because nonviolence is not the way of Joy the Warrior™.

They finally get off their asses when John hears from a foreign contact that the Qīng dynasty is no more. Strangely enough, this happens in exactly the way it did in real life, and yet the characters are surprised by this, even though they know their history. Thus, John actually asks Joy if she knows which general carried the day in overthrowing the government, and she correctly answers that it was Yuán Shìkǎi.²

There is yet more exposition about just how this happened, even though this is not needed for the story, and John talks about a practical joke that he never gets around to playing on Joy.

More weeks pass, and Sun Yat-sen returns to China. Strangely, the characters are actually surprised by all this, even though it happened in real history, and John is allegedly a historian. In any case, Joy claims that democracy is moving forward, which is odd, for the very reason that if China had indeed become democratic then they wouldn’t be having their intervention in the first place. Did Joy suddenly gain several levels in naivety or something?

They tarry some more, and in February of 1912 (on the exact date this happened in real life, mind you—screw you, butterfly effect!) the Chinese Emperor abdicates. It should be pointed out that the emperor was six years old. John and Joy dance around a little in their office, not even caring that the year is 1912 and Joy is technically John’s subordinate.

So what was the point of all this, you ask? Find out, after this line break.

Now that Sun Yat-sen is President of China and the Republic has been established, John and Joy head over to the country. You see, Sun Yat-sen had made a lot of political enemies during his revolutionary activities, and in real life made an agreement to resign from the presidency after a while in favor of Yuán Shìkǎi, who had been promised the post if he could secure the abdication of the emperor. In hindsight, this turned out to be one of the worst things he could have done, since Yuán promptly proclaimed himself Emperor, thus causing a huge backlash which led to China being ruled by quarreling warlords for several decades.

The book does give a pretty accurate synopsis of these events. After hearing about them,³ Joy asks if that means they should assassinate Yuán and support Sun Yat-sen. John practically yells “no”, saying that Sun was not really a democrat. Considering that his Three Principles of the People⁴ were inspired by the democratic ideas of Europe and progressive ideas of the United States, I smell a No True Scotsman coming on. This is probably because the man’s legacy was distorted both by the Communists and Nationalists, neither of which were democratic but both of which viewed him as their forerunner. Still, as a scholar, Rummel should be able to tell the difference.

Rummel claims that Sòng Jiàorén was the “real” democrat, who would have turned China into a liberal democracy if he had not been assassinated by an agent of Yuán Shìkǎi. All the information on Sòng I managed to find suggests that he wanted to ensure the people were protected from abuses of power by their government,⁵ but other than that, I don’t see how he was any different from Sun Yat-sen politically.

I will give Rummel credit here, though. At least this time there is a faction for his characters to side with unconditionally, and what they do cannot possibly make things any worse than they were in real life. The warlord period was utter chaos, and likely counts as a democide in and of itself.

John says that after Sòng was assassinated, his political party, the Kuomintang, was taken over by Chiang Kai-shek, who turned it into a fascist organization. Even though she should already know this, Joy asks John if it is true that Chiang caused the deaths of ten million people. John says yes, and Joy reacts in horror. This would have been a good way to establish that Joy is one of the heroes because she opposes genuine Complete Monsters, but she acts so sociopathically in previous chapters that I just cannot believe it.

Because John is a man and he makes all the decisions, it is he who declares that they should assassinate Yuán Shìkǎi, Chiang Kai-shek, Máo Zédōng, and Zhōu Ēnlái, though the last of these was only fourteen in 1912 and probably was not yet a communist. He could wind up becoming a democrat in the new timeline for all they know. I truly hope this is a case of Writers Cannot Do Math, otherwise…

Now there is a problem, not for the book as much as for me. The four people mentioned pose a major threat to the stability of China, and in real life they pretty much ensured that the country would be authoritarian of one sort or another. As much as I oppose the heroes killing people, I doubt that anything else would stop them. They can’t exactly be prosecuted for war crimes since they had not yet committed any in 1912. Even so, Rummel is forgetting about the generals under Yuán who rebelled against him and became warlords. Would John and Joy have to kill them too? They likely would have rebelled even if Yuán never proclaimed himself Emperor. This issue would need to be solved, but the author of the story just forgets about it.

Joy then says that John will say that he does not want her to kill their targets, not for any moral reasons but because it’s too risky, and that they should get an organized crime syndicate to do their dirty work for them. John does not object to this characterization, so I assume that is what he actually has in mind.

It will be easier for me to just quote their plans for the intervention:

“As to the assassinations, we now have a large office in Peking and another in Shanghai; we have the resources. We’ll be meeting in Shanghai, where our office can set up an appointment with the secret Green Lotus Society to arrange the contracts. Then we can go together by train to Peking to meet with Sung. We should have Yüan assassinated right away, as I mentioned. Then we have to persuade Sun to keep the provisional presidency until the 1913 elections, when he should abdicate in favor of Sung.”
Then I stopped talking as I realized what I had proposed. I, Professor John Banks, was going to put out a contract on the head of one famous general who was the ruler of China, and other contracts on two still unknown future mass-murderers and leaders of China—Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tse-tung, and Chou En-lai. Human beings, nonetheless. I shrugged it off. (pages 265-266)

You read that right. He shrugged it off. Even if the book is making the case that those people have to be killed because nothing else will stop them, the main character should at least have some misgivings, lest he be seen as a total sociopath. I would expect this behavior from Joy, not John. I should also point out that in assassinating people who would ruin their plans, they act just like Yuán Shìkǎi when he had Sòng Jiàorén killed. The irony is lost on the writer and the characters.

And so, after a line break, the two set off to enlist the services of organized crime. This is surprisingly easy to do; all we hear of it is from John, after the fact, who says that they got a secret society to kill Yuán Shìkǎi without any trouble. This is said in a single sentence. Remember kiddies, you can make a deal with criminal syndicates and you won’t get in trouble from either them or the law!

• gags *

Also in one sentence, they give fifteen million dollars to Sòng Jiàorén to help with his campaign. As for Sun Yat-sen, our protagonists want him to leave politics after he resigns in favor of Sòng. I think this is a dumb idea. Sun alone was unable to stop the warlords from taking over; what makes them think that Sòng alone can do it? The two of them together would have a much better chance of keeping China democratic. This is one of the few times where I criticize the characters’ plans because of a blunder, rather than moral repugnance.

John and Joy have now done all they need to do in China. However, this part of the saga is far from over. That criminal syndicate they hired finds out about their massive riches, most likely because John promised them an absurdly large sum. Their leader is a total dumbass and gets into his head the idea that John carries millions of dollars with him on his person. The narration outright says that he knows nothing of banks or telegraphs. Because only white people understand technology, amirite?

So the unnamed leader of the syndicate has our anti-heroes kidnapped. I don’t want to say “I told you so,” but…

On the other hand, now we finally know why John and Joy are always armed enough to defeat a regiment. Something tells me that Rummel wrote this scene where his protagonists get ambushed by the mob, and decided to have them be armed to the teeth so they can beat all their attackers, and then realized he needed to explain where their weapons came from, and that’s why John and Joy are stupidly overarmed since day one.

So six thugs show up to beat them senseless. The narration says that one of them is the size of a sumo wrestler, probably for no reason than to make the protagonists Joy seem more badass when they she beats them up. All but one of them are armed with knives, and the remainder has a gun. John says that they are not like the Mexican teenagers, whom Joy killed anyway.

This time around, John says that Joy can have her fun. I’m sure that Yuán Shìkǎi had the same attitude towards killing.

A few minutes pass with neither side doing anything, as the gangsters are convinced that there is no way they will lose. Joy theatrically prepares for battle, casting off her ridiculous hat (which I have forgotten what it looks like) and shoes. For some reason, she also unbuttons her blouse and loosens her skirt. I thought she didn’t want them to rape her?

Suddenly, the first mobster makes a move. Somehow, Joy takes out her gun (a Magnum, mind you) ties a headband around herself, and throws her purse into the rickshaw that got them there, all before her assailant can reach her. John also has his weapon drawn. They are still outnumbered by a ratio of three to one.

John is literally shaking in his boots, giving “another meaning to the term knock-kneed.”⁶ On the other hand, his mind seems independent of his body, suggesting that some of Joy’s Mad Ninja Skillz™ have rubbed off on him.

Joy asks their assailants if they can begin. The narration tells us that the mobsters aren’t intimidated, because the reaction time of a person holding a gun is inferior to that of a melee fighter, even when there is quite the distance between the two. I am not sure what to say to this.

It’s proved wrong anyway, because Joy effortlessly shoots all who attempt to rush her. This is described in graphic detail. Heads explode, just like those of the readers. Of course, Joy never misses, unlike that loser John who doesn’t even hit all his targets. This all happens in the span of a couple of seconds. I don’t think it is physically possible to fire a gun six times in that duration.

Surprisingly, however, Joy is not unscathed. One of the attackers had thrown his knife at John, who was able to dodge it. However, Joy was right behind him (!) and so it embedded in her thigh. If she was behind John, than how come he isn’t riddled with holes right now?

Joy tells John to kill the three stragglers on the ground who are probably mortally wounded anyway, and passes out from shock. John ignores this request, picks up Joy, and runs out into the street. Dayum.

He finds a horse-drawn carriage, threatens the driver with his gun, and tells him to get to their office. Surely they had hospitals in China? This is a matter of blood loss; I’m sure that they stopped using leeches by the twentieth century.

John rushes into the office, and his staff sees him armed to the teeth and Joy covered in blood. No, they do not ask questions, not even after this is all over. John runs to the supply closet (still carrying Joy) and gets the medicine kit Tor’s groupies had prepared for them. According to their handy-dandy sphygmomanometer, Joy’s blood pressure is dangerously low and her pulse rate is dangerously high. (How does John even know how to use one?) The ensuing description of first aid reads like Rummel took a class on the subject and is parroting it by rote. Somehow their first-aid kit is as well equipped as a modern hospital, with IV bags and everything.

“Shit, she’s going to die.” (page 271)

Now, this had the potential to be a suspenseful scene. After all, the narration did mention way back at the beginning of the book that Joy would not survive their mission. However, since the beginning of the chapter states that John saves Joy’s life, the readers know from the start that this is not it.

John has one of his staff help him set up the apparatus, and the staff member’s name seems fake to me. John injects Joy with a needle that can pierce through bone. I know that such needles do exist, but how does their first-aid kit have one? However, intraosseous infusions are only done when intravenous ones are not feasible, and there is no indication of this in the book. John is taking an unnecessary risk.

Also, the name of John’s unimportant staffer is inconsistent. Is it Chan Chi or Chan Chin? Was this book ever seen by an editor?

John worries that the knife Joy was stabbed with had every kind of bacteria in China on it, but doesn’t know how to deal with possible infection. He tells us that he actually has no training in first aid and is going off the manual. Realistically, this should not end well for them. However, both main characters are Mary Sues, and Mary Sues sneer at medical science.

Before that though, things look bleak. Despite all that John does, Joy is still bleeding heavily. After John applies another compress to the site of the wound, he cannot do anything more. He has no choice but to wait for more than ten minutes. During the intervening time, Joy’s condition actually gets worse. John stays up watching her all through the night. Again, if Rummel had not said at the start of the chapter that Joy lives, one could seriously think that Joy is going to die here.

Then, suddenly, in the middle of the night, with absolutely no adequate explanation, Joy starts to get better. Her pulse rate is no longer tachycardia (even though she was never defibrillated) and her blood pressure slowly rises to a normal level. John collapses from exhaustion, and when he wakes up, Joy is conscious and can talk to him. There is a term for this phenomenon. It starts with deus and ends with ex machina.

Apparently, the Triads hear about what happened and want to meet with our realistically-should-be-dead-by-now protagonists for some reason. This is never mentioned again, and I for one have no idea why they would want to take that risk. Considering that the other criminal syndicate they hired betrayed them, how can they even be certain that their hitmen will actually kill the people they want instead of some random schmuck in the wrong place at the wrong time? Something tells me that assassins wouldn’t care who dies as long as they’re paid.

John and Joy spend another month in China while Joy recuperates, and then they sail home on the same ship, with no actual proof that those on their hit list are dead.

In 1913, Yuán Shìkǎi is assassinated. The protagonists never question why this takes so long. For some reason the remaining generals don’t try to overthrow the government themselves, and Sun Yat-sen remains president. He appoints democrats with no backlash from the presumably reactionary generals who seem to have just disappeared without mention, and when Sòng Jiàorén is elected later that year, John and Joy assume that China is stable, and move on to their next intervention.

Also, Joy now agrees with John that they should hire hitmen to do all their executions, even though this went horribly wrong when the assassins tried to kill them, and she nearly died. Why have all the important characters seem to have lost 30 IQ points? I don’t think that anyone else would need to be assassinated anyway,⁷ though of course the book disputes this. The main effect of the attack is that it convinces John that Murder Is The Best Solution, though I honestly don’t see how. I would think it would deter them from trying anything like that again, but then of course I live in reality whereas they live in a fantasy land. As proof that they killed the other three people our anti-heroes want dead, the Triads (who settle for ten thousand dollars each despite knowing that John and Joy are far richer than that) give them the full set of teeth for each victim. Consider that they know that John and Joy can spend millions of dollars willy-nilly. Wouldn’t they have tried to pull a fast one on them by killing three unrelated people? Their victims couldn’t be identified from their teeth, anyway. After that, the Triads leave them alone. What, they have cordial relations with gangs, now?

Then they leave China. And with John and Joy preparing to prevent World War One,⁸ the chapter ends.

Footnotes

¹ Not an actual quote.

² Though Rummel uses Wade-Giles romanization for his name, and doesn’t even spell that correctly, as he puts an umlaut in Yuán’s name for no apparent reason.

³ Though she should already be familiar with them if she truly is knowledgeable about China

⁴ Freedom from imperialism, democracy, and the welfare of the people

⁵ He must be spinning in his grave today.

⁶ page 268

⁷ No, not even Hitler. He is an unknown at this point who could be easily dealt with.

⁸ With only one year left to do so

Comment [9]

The world is on the cusp of the First World War, so what do the protagonists do next? Try to prevent the disaster that is the maiden voyage of the R. M. S. Titanic.

I… am actually kind of impressed. They are actually doing something that won’t involve killing for a change. Unfortunately, considering that the year is now 1913, they’re a bit late for that. The ship has already sunk. This is what happens, Rummel, when you skip over so many years. You miss vital things.

Thanks to some authorial magic, the year gets reset to 1912, and the story continues as though no messing around with the time-space continuum¹ had occurred. But consider that last chapter’s escapade in China happened in February of 1912, and our nominal heroes stayed there for more than a month. Add in the fact that travel across the ocean in those days could take up to two weeks, and it is late March or early April before they could do anything at all. The Titanic sunk on the fifteenth of April.

Even though everyone and their brother knows the story of the Titanic, Rummel feels the need to begin this chapter with yet another newspaper excerpt. This is really getting tiresome.

After the unnecessary fluff, the chapter opens with this line:

Yes, she was a murderess. But a compassionate one. (page 277)

BULL. SHIT. Joy is the antithesis of compassionate. If one were to look up the word in a thesaurus, one would find her name listed under the antonyms. She kills in cold blood, feels naked without her semiautomatic weapons, and thinks that martial arts are meant to be used to clobber people. If she was not born a sociopath, then she has certainly lost her ability to empathize with others long before the story begins. So the claim that Joy is “compassionate” or that the sinking of the Titanic is a subject “near and dear to her heart”² is just character shilling at its finest.

After I turned my Sue-dometer off because its incessant beeping was giving me a migraine, John contacts the president of the British Seafarers’ Union and tells him that he has long been a supporter of the union, and that the White Star Line plans to hire non-union workers in violation of their contract.

Leaving alone for the moment the fact that it’s ludicrous to believe that John Conservative-Darling Banks is ever a union supporter, this is a lie and he knows it. The lie is rather transparent too, since in his telegram John claims to have supported the British Seafarer’s Union for a long time. In actual fact, this particular union had only been formed the previous year. It broke away from the much larger National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union, accusing it of selling out. The president of the BSU should have known that something was up. It also proves that Rummel did not do even cursory research.

John anticipates this, and so, playing on society’s racism, hires a dozen people of African or Indian descent to stroll around the shipyard pretending to work there. A white person who did this would get fined at the very least; non-white people caught loitering would probably have gotten arrested. Stay classy, Rummel. The union is pissed off and calls for a strike against the White Star Line, even though all their evidence is fabricated and in those days corporations employed government help to crush strikes. A manager of the White Star Line later convinces the union that they were hoodwinked, but not before the launch date of the Titanic is postponed… by a whopping five days. Before people start getting suspicious, John sends a letter apologizing for his “mistake” and sends another five thousand (U.S.) dollars, “to show his sincerity”.³ But he isn’t sincere at all, and is so rich that five thousand bucks is nothing to him.

Of course, all this is a moot point if the White Star Line did not care about unions in the first place. Remember, this is the same company that cut costs on construction by skimping on lifeboats.

Speaking of that…

Despite the short delay, the Titanic makes her scheduled voyage without sinking, and everyone is happy. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how John averted the disaster. The ship still made her voyage through the same waters, at roughly the same time of year. There are always going to be icebergs in the North Atlantic. The Titanic had the same captain, Edward Smith, whose incompetence played a great part in the sinking. She still had a deficient number of lifeboats. The White Star Line is still under the delusion that their biggest ship cannot be sunk. Realistically, all John did was let the would-be victims live one week longer. From this, it is clear that Rummel does not actually know what caused the disaster.

Considering the actions taken later in the novel, one would expect our so-called heroes to get Captain Smith fired, or even offer to pay for the construction of the extra lifeboats themselves. They certainly have the money.⁴ Instead, they do no such thing.

Furthermore, the aftermath of the disaster caused the formation of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, which established safety regulations intended to ensure that an event such as the sinking of the Titanic could never happen again. Without that tragedy, there will be no incentive in the novel’s new universe to push through those reforms, meaning that it is only a matter of time before some idiots who run a shipping line repeat the mistake of the Titanic. In the end, it would be all for naught, and the New Universe would not necessarily be better than the old one, because people died in it who did not die “the first time around”.

So my question is, how on Earth did John and Joy push through such safety reforms, when the major shipping lines were enough opposed to them that it took a tragedy for ocean liners to be required to have enough lifeboats?⁵

With our alleged heroes celebrating enough to get drunk, the chapter ends. All in all, it was nothing more than filler.

Footnotes

¹ At least, no more than the protagonists have already engendered with their time travel

² page 277

³ page 278

⁴ Which is another thing. They have all that money, yet do not take any efforts to use that money for constructive purposes. It just goes to waste, only there when Rummel wants to remind us how rich his Self-Insert and his @#$%-buddy are when they plop down millions of dollars as a bribe.

⁵ Spoiler alert, this question is never answered.

Comment [18]

This is the first paragraph of Chapter 36:

I was adamant: I wasn’t going to kill these men. I reluctantly agreed to bribe or frame them. It had nothing to do with their being white Europeans. (page 280)

John, you can claim that race has nothing to do with your restraint all you want, but it will not stop people from thinking that you are a racist. In fact, I might not have suspected anything if you had not pointed this out. This is why anyone who begins their sentence with “I’m not racist, but…” invariably goes on to say something terribly racist.

Why do I bring this up? Because now, our alleged heroes are finally going to try to stop the First World War. (Of course we know that they, being Sues, will succeed with no effort. Rummel, it is something of a problem if your readers never once question whether your heroes will succeed in their goals.¹) The First World War led directly to the second, and from there to the Cold War and thus, most of the wars and democides which Rummel’s leads wish to prevent from happening. If people like Pancho Villa or Yuán Shìkǎi caused enough suffering that Rummel judges that they needed to die, then, just in order to be consistent, he would need to cast that same judgment on the instigators of one of the most destructive wars in human history. But since those people were white, the main characters are willing to give them a second chance which they denied to would-be dictators of color. Isn’t unintentional racism just precious?

Mind you, I’m not saying that those people would necessarily have to die; what I am saying is that since Rummel has already decided that those who committed crimes of similar magnitude deserve the death penalty, then so should these warmongers just for the sake of narrative consistency. Thus, I am not contradicting what I said two installments ago.

Getting back on topic, I should remind everybody that at best, John and Joy have two years to stop the war. Realistically, there is no way that they can pull this off, and it is entirely their fault for waiting so long to do anything instead of working on this from the moment they arrived in the past. So watch as Rummel stretches the suspension of disbelief to the point of absurdity!

Rummel has John tell the readers that the war killed about nine million people and was possibly responsible for the infamous influenza outbreak that killed anywhere from twenty million to forty million more. I am sure that most people who are reading this book already know this. He also points out that the war indirectly allowed the Bolsheviks to take power in Russia and thus start the Cold War, meaning that even if all of their other missions failed, John would consider their trip through time a success if they succeeded in stopping the war. I have already stated that the only reason they succeed in this endeavor is because of authorial fiat, so let me point out that even if Russia never goes communist, our heroes would still need to stop the tsar.²

Rummel thinks that just because John and Joy had a conversation about the war back in 1908 that means that they’ll be able to prevent it, but it doesn’t matter how much money they spend promoting pacifism, because the war was caused by entangling alliances. Furthermore, most people before 1914 weren’t pacifists precisely because most people were unaware of how destructive war really is. At that time, all their military expeditions were going on in faraway colonies and the people would not have cared even if they were closer, because, you know, the other side was made up of brown people. John and Joy even create multiple secret societies devoted to ending war, but we never see any of them. What a waste.

Now, I am not saying that the population’s attitudes towards war could not change through nonviolent means, but I am saying that Rummel has this happen way to quickly. This would not have been necessary if he had sent his characters further back in time than 1906.

Even John hangs a lampshade over how unrealistically fast their progress is:

I was once concerned about how two people could ever influence grand historical events. Now I was growing concerned about how much two people could influence such events. (page 281)

Yeah Rummel, maybe this is a sign that you should have rewritten the story to better explain why things happen the way they do. The “great man” theory of history has been obsolete for a long time, so if you still hold to it, Rummel, that makes me doubt your ability as a historian.

Rummel handwaves this away by claiming that since politically lobbying was rare in the early twentieth century (a claim that, by the way, is bullshit) his protagonists are able to be unusually successful at it. He does acknowledge nationalism, but vastly underestimates how much influence the idea had. For some reason, he also blames Nietzsche, though he was quite reviled at this time, for the upcoming war, as well as Darwinism, even though Darwinian evolution has nothing to do with the outbreak of the First World War. If Rummel means Social Darwinism, (which would better be named Spencerianism) he should have said that, instead of this bogus “challenge-and-response theory” he claims is a part of evolution. In fact, the challenge-and-response theory is a theory of history, not biology, and was not formulated until 1934, by Arnold Toynbee. I don’t know whether that means that Rummel Did Not Do the Research of if it means that he subscribes to that theory, but if it’s the latter, let it be known that very few scholars take Toynbee’s views seriously. Since I myself have studied biology, let me just say that Rummel has no clue what he is talking about.

On the other hand, John admits to Joy that they will probably be unable to prevent the minor wars in the Balkans, but puts the blame for those entirely on the Ottoman Empire. Thus, John says that they should make an intervention in Turkey, but I do not recall them ever doing this.³

What surprises me is that Joy finds John quite the pessimist after he says that they won’t be able to stop every war, even though I would think that she is the pessimist for using assassination as a first resort.

By the time 1914 rolls around, the UK and Germany somehow magically get over their differences and become strong allies. The readership is expected to believe that this is all due to John and Joy’s actions. I call foul. Great Britain and Germany were fierce rivals; anyone proposing friendship between them would have come under suspicion. Furthermore, the First world War was not about Anglo-German rivalry, at least not in the beginning. It started when Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and escalated when Germany attacked France, because of the Gordian knot of political alliances. Even assuming that the Triple Entente still exists after the UK “betrays” it by allying with Germany, all that would happen would be that Britain would remain neutral. The war would still happen in Continental Europe. How did Rummel overlook this?

Meanwhile, our protagonists manage to get a pacifist party elected to the French legislature, even though before 1914 France was arguably the biggest warmongering nation in Europe. At no point is it explained how they do this; it just happens because they are that awesome.

As for Germany and Russia, the duo plans to nonviolently dispose of the militaristic politicians who escalated the war to begin with. Now the opening paragraph finally makes sense, but, in a shocking display of apologetics for absolute monarchy, Rummel absolves the emperors of Germany and Russia of any responsibility for the war, and places the blame entirely on their advisors. This is exactly the behavior that corrupt monarchs throughout history have engaged in order to prevent their subjects from overthrowing them. It is rather distasteful that Rummel, the champion of democracy that he is, is succumbing to this.

After a line break, John and Joy sail to Europe to deal with the militarists. John, as has already been said, wants to bribe them into compliance. However, Joy, being the sociopath that she is, wants to have them killed. She points out exactly what I did at the beginning of this installment; namely that John had no problem with the deaths of Hispanics and Asians, but wants to save the lives of people who were just as cruel, but had the good fortune to be born in Europe. Damn it, why must I become Joy’s mouthpiece again?

John is hurt by the accusation of racism and claims it is unwarranted. He says that though these men caused the deaths of millions through their actions, they did not directly execute anybody and did what they thought was best for their country. John, every dictator (except maybe Stalin) did what they thought was best for their country. It’s just that their idea of what is best is vastly different from what ninety-nine percent of people would think is best. That does not excuse their actions.

“Oh, is that right. What about General Yüan Shih-k’ai and Chiang Kai-shek? They were not like Mao, and were responsible for war and deaths only by virtue of the decisions they made. Like these Europeans.” (page 283)

GOD DAMN IT, JOY, WHY MUST YOU MAKE ME AGREE WITH YOU?!

John says that those two are not good counterexamples because they actually ruled their countries, while the militarist politicians never had absolute power. This doesn’t change the fact that they were responsible for the war, and were fascists in all but name. In fact, many of them joined the fascist movements that sprang up after the war. Joy objects, but John has had enough and blows her off. Much to my amazement, Joy lets the subject go. They actually aren’t going to kill anyone this time; aren’t you astounded?

What they do instead is ruin their targets’ lives. Somehow our protagonists distribute photographs of the Austrian Chief of General Staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, in bed with a young Russian girl. Conrad⁴ claims the photographs were fake, which is completely true, but our so-called heroes paid the girl from the picture to state otherwise. The ensuing scandal results in Conrad losing his job, and the emperor replaces him with a moderate. What a coincidence, huh? It’s not as if John and Joy would have any influence in whom the emperor appoints to positions.

A week later, the Austrian Foreign Minister, Count Leopold von Berchtold, resigned and fled the country because John and Joy spread rumors that he is homosexual, though they have no proof whatsoever. It is never said with whom the emperor replaces him. Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov gets rushed to the hospital with a serious illness, one that he did not have in the original timeline. Now, I can accept our heroes pressuring officials to resign, but to actually cause someone to get sick? That crosses the line. It is still up for debate whether Sazonov was greatly responsible for Russian involvement in the war. Conveniently, the tsar replaces him with someone less hawkish. The way this paragraph is written implies that John and Joy had nothing to do with it, but remember that this book is under the conceit that John wrote it.

As for Gottlieb von Jagow, the Foreign Minister of Germany, our heroes outright frame him for child molestation. He kills himself a week later, thus causing John to believe that they may have gone too far. Yet he doesn’t have any lasting regrets about killing anybody else. Perhaps he is indeed a racist. Joy feels no remorse for the suicide at all. Now, Jagow’s Wikipedia article does not say to what extent he was a militarist, merely that he was involved in negotiations prior to the war.

Now, as though this had not already been made clear, I do not think that the heroes of a story should be so blasé about killing people. In this case, I do think it would be kind of pointless, since final authority in Germany, Austria, and Russia rested in their respective emperors. If the monarchs wanted a war, there would have been a war, no matter who their foreign ministers were. If the characters successfully prevent the war, and I am sure they will, then all of Eastern Europe will still be ruled by absolute monarchies, and countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland will never get their independence. Rummel ignores this.

In any case, John doubts the essential goodness of his mission for the first time in years, and has a dream about Jimmy Wilson (the founder of the Survivors’ Grammatically Challenged and Dubiously Benevolent Society, remember), and his experiences in the trenches. You know what this means, don’t you? We’ve got another Very Special Flashback Sequence.

SFKHNSOKNFBGT AREWIGIOR IADJ FGIA QAJRWBG

I thought we were through with these!

Half squatting, Jimmy leaned against the side of the muddy trench, the toes of his boots invisible in the muck at the bottom. Jimmy was a short, skinny fellow, with a frame on which not even his military training could put muscle. His baggy uniform now rippled like a sail in a crosswind. His helmet hid his short brown hair, except when his shaking tipped it forward over his eyes and a few strands escaped. (page 285)

Jimmy is one of the very few characters in the book to get a physical description. We learn that he grew up in Bristol and that, even at eighteen, he had never gone on a date with a girl. I don’t know why this information is important enough for Rummel to devote a paragraph to it. Apparently he was smart enough to get into college, but since nobody less well-off than upper middle class is allowed to have a stable family life in these kinds of stories, his father didn’t pay the bills and eventually abandoned them, meaning that Jimmy had to get a job at a warehouse instead of furthering his education.

Jimmy winds up in the army when war breaks out and already knew most of the soldiers in his unit, thanks to the army policy of grouping recruits from the same town together. By the time of the Battle of the Somme, most are dead, including his two friends and his cousin. He has to drag his cousin’s body out of the trench, and becomes convinced that he will die out there, too. Of course, we know he won’t since this is a Very Special Flashback Sequence.

One of his trenchmates, George Finch, asks him to deliver a message to his mother if he dies. We all know what’s going to happen now, don’t we? Just once, I would like to see a writer subvert the Fatal Family Photo trope.

The barrage of shelling stops, and Jimmy’s commanding officer orders his unit to advance through no-man’s-land, in a futile attempt to take over the German trench. Of course, only Jimmy makes it that far, even though he lets his guard down for a few seconds, which realistically would get him blown up. He gets hit, and knocked unconscious, but somehow survives thanks to his helmet. An explosion wakes him up, and he sees his commanding officer with his guts spilling out. Well, at least Rummel is capturing the horrors of war. I am not sure where Jimmy is right now. No mention is made of him being at the German trench. I can only assume he is still in no-man’s-land, which was called that for a reason.

Jimmy was shot in the arm, and so tries to make it back to the British trench and what meager medical attention he could have received on the western front. Somehow he makes it back without trouble, and he survives the Battle of the Somme, though of course we knew he would. His right arm is amputated, though.

It should be pointed out, and Rummel does this, that that one battle lasted for three months, and 600,000 soldiers died, and ultimately achieved absolutely nothing. If Jimmy was wounded at the beginning, I am not entirely sure that he would have sat out for the entire remainder.

In the hospital, Jimmy sees that others were far worse off than he, and learns that he will be sent back to England. Thus, he makes plans to go to college, and decides right then and there to try to prevent future wars. Yet for some reason he chooses to study business instead of international relations, and so makes little progress. But as was told to us much earlier, Jimmy moves to the United States, becomes a millionaire, and founds the society that would become Tor’s groupies. And with the conclusion of the Very Special Flashback Sequence, which takes up four and a half pages, the chapter ends.

Footnotes

¹ The only exception to this rule is if your work is something like Gurren Lagann, and this novel is clearly nothing of the sort.

² I don’t know why, but for some reason people on the right wing, even ordinary conservatives like Rummel who presumably aren’t monarchists, think that the tsar couldn’t possibly have been a dictator because his replacement was totalitarian. This line of thinking would force one to claim that the Nazis couldn’t have been that bad because, at least in East Germany, they were replaced by the Stasi. It is this kind of negligence that would make the New Universe collapse the moment its history ceased to be guided by Rummel.

³ It also should be pointed out that in real history, Turkey modernized precisely because it was defeated in the World War, thus causing the Ottoman government to be unpopular enough that it was overthrown. Without the war, the rather stagnant and reactionary Ottoman Empire would continue to exist.

⁴ That was his family name, not Hötzendorf. Rummel is inconsistent about this, but that’s what Wikipedia says.

Comment [14]

John and Joy have totally prevented World War One, but the best of their accomplishments has yet to come, which they “would celebrate by getting stupefyingly crocked.”¹ Aren’t you so excited, you guys? Can’t you just feel the tension and suspense?

After John dreams about Jimmy Wilson, he feels better about accidentally-on-purpose causing Jagow’s suicide. This will never be brought up again.

He gets up, while Joy is still sleeping, and finds his Super Secret Mission Notebook, which has newspaper clippings from his original universe. He muses about all the lives they’ve saved, and goes back to bed. I’m not sure what the point of this scene is, really. It’s a little late for Rummel to start the introspection now.

After a line break, our alleged heroes go for the top brass, the Chancellor of Germany himself, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg. Rummel says he was responsible for the war, blah blah blah I don’t care at this point. John and Joy bribe some people into revealing his secrets, and think it will be pretty easy to get him to resign.

But they can’t just walk up to the chancellor and ask for an appointment.² He has important chancellory stuff to do. So they get this guy, Franz Kleinsteuber, who Rummel claims has a lot of influence with the emperor, but who he has just made up, to intervene and get the emperor himself to make Bethmann-Hollweg meet with them. I cannot even quantify how unlikely this is.

But it all goes through,³ and a week later our so-called heroes meet the chancellor. He is described in such a way that Rummel was just saying what a photograph of him looked like, and compares him to a terrier. Not exactly the “formidable” that he is claimed to be.

Rummel feels the need to remind us that the Chancellor of Germany speaks German. John answers in German, and tries to be Don Corleone. The chancellor is skeptical of their claim to be secret agents.

Now, what is the chancellor’s deepest, darkest secret? Supposedly, he fathered a child out of wedlock, who is now in an orphanage, and he has not cared for his offspring at all. John is brazen enough to actually show him a photo of the child in question. Now, for all we know Bethmann-Hollweg could have had a child resulting from a one-night stand, but there is absolutely no evidence of this. On the other hand, it has been a good number of years since John and Joy showed up in the past, so this could be handwaved away as part of the butterfly effect, but the butterfly effect only happens in this story when it’s convenient for Rummel.

Bethmann-Hollweg says that if news of this gets out, it will destroy his career, and instead of ordering the two strangers out, asks for assurance that his boss doesn’t know. Now, John is quite willing to be reasonable, and to destroy all evidence in exchange for his resignation. He even offers to support the chancellor’s family (but excluding the kid in the orphanage, I think) if they move to Switzerland. Now, wouldn’t the emperor be getting suspicious about all his subordinates who all suddenly up and moved to Switzerland?

John offers to give him money, but Bethmann-Hollweg refuses, saying (in a somewhat Narm-filled way) that he will resign for the good of Germany. He is probably the most honorable of all Rummel’s antagonists… and a good deal better than Joy, for that matter. So he resigns one week later, and John is okay with it. Joy does nothing in that scene, and Rummel even points out that she was unneeded. Not that I would have wanted her to do anything; she’d just make it worse. Rummel should not have included her in the scene to begin with.

There is a line break before our protagonists head for their next intervention, against the Black Hand. They really should have done this earlier. John tapes a note to Joy’s bathroom mirror informing her of the situation and offering a course of action:

“Attention: The Black Hand Society will assassinate the heir to the Austrian throne on June 28, 1914 when the archduke and his wife are on a state visit to Serajevo. sic This triggered World War I in the Old Universe. The Black Hand Society has members in the Serbian Army and supporters throughout the Serbian government. Apis, the alias of Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, leads it, and as head of Serbian military intelligence he is beyond our influence. We could assassinate him, but someone else might well take his place and arrange the assassination of the archduke. (page 294)

Now… what do I say about this? It is too little and too late for Rummel to say that certain historical figures are beyond the reach of his Mary Sues. They have and they will eliminate even more powerful people as the story goes on. Furthermore, I have brought up the issue of others taking the places of their victims before. Why does Rummel only care about it now? This is One-Shot Revisionism, which raises more questions than it answers, and is not good practice.

John and Joy deal with this rather quickly. They plant some documents in Dimitrijević’s house somehow, and get the government to raid it. Screw you, Fourth Amendment!⁴ This gets him arrested, and somehow gets the Black Hand shut down. But I thought they just said that this wouldn’t work. Rummel sets up a plot point and contradicts it on the same page.

They also stop Franz Ferdinand from going to Bosnia on that day. How? By sending Hands to Europe as an operative. No, he’s not a badass secret agent, unfortunately; he just seduces some actress which somehow gets him into a party the archduke is also attending. Does Rummel not know that actors were not considered part of high society before Hollywood? In any case, Franz Ferdinand comes down with a serious but non-lethal illness, and so cannot go to Sarajevo. Was this the only thing our heavily shilled heroes could think of? We are told about all of this after the fact in one paragraph, which is a shame, because Dolphy, Hands and Sal almost never do anything in this whole book. And then their one accomplishment just gets glossed over because they are not speshul ™. Urgh.

John spends the twenty-eighth of June harassing news organizations, who keep assuring him that nothing is going on. Even though this could just mean that the war will happen a little later, our protagonists get drunk as skunks in their hotel room the next day. I’m surprised that they don’t receive a noise complaint from all their yelling.

We eventually passed out and woke up in the morning, huddled together, when the hotel maid opened the door, gaped at us, and slammed the door. It was cold on the rug. Joy wore only her Old Universe pink silk panties; I was clad only in my undershirt. The second time drunk for both of us. We were sick all that next day. (page 295)

Uhh, yeah.

So anyway, apparently the Austro-Hungarian Empire lasts at least another nine years, because that is when Franz Ferdinand finally visits Sarajevo. Now, if his plan for reforming the empire was put in place, that may not be so bad, but this is never specified.

It is recognized that war could still happen, so we are told that John and Joy help the democratic movements in Germany and Russia. But we are not shown. Rummel will spend whole chapters on assassination, and even more on John and Joy playing Will They Or Won’t They, but isn’t willing to even offer two paragraphs of nonviolent intervention.

Skip to 1917, and there is a riot as the German people remove the emperor from office. How does this happen without the war to make them desperate? Constitutional monarchy would probably be more logical at that point. But it doesn’t matter since Rummel can’t even make an uprising exciting. It’s over in one paragraph and that’s that; Germany is a democracy now. Where is Hitler in all this? You will see later.

But that was still in the future. Back in 1914, I had my own murder to commit. (page 296)

And with that not-so-subtle-at-all foreshadowing, the chapter ends.

Footnotes

¹ page 291

² Even though they had no trouble meeting with a Prime Minister of Japan.

³ My Sue-dometer hates me right now.

⁴ Yes, the Serbian goverment did not recognize the U.S. Bill of Rights, but one would think that John would.

Comment [5]

According to John, only one more thing remains before Western Europe becomes the peaceful, democratic countries that it mostly is by the twenty-first century.¹ Isn’t this a little premature? I mean, he and Joy have only prevented the First World War because their creator doesn’t understand historical events. They still haven’t dealt with all the institutionalized racism and classism rampant in Europe at the time. Britain, Germany and France still have colonies, and for as long as they do, they’re foreign policy will be belligerent.

Admittedly, John also thinks this assessment is premature, but not for the reasons I have given. He thinks this because so far, only Joy and the mob have gotten to directly kill anybody, and now he wants a turn. Even though he had earlier been very vocal about not wanting to kill anybody. Make up your mind, man!

Just like how they did it in Mexico, they hire a detective agency to locate their target. He’s living in an “artistic colony”, whatever that is, in Munich, and is supporting himself by painting landmarks.

There were many ways we could eliminate him. I thought the most direct way involved the least risk and greatest possibility of success. We went into the old apartment building and up the dirty stairs to the second floor. The whole place reeked of alcohol, turpentine, paint, and urine. His apartment, #29, was on the right at the top of the stairs. (page 297)

So they’re just gonna walk into someone’s apartment and murder him? Wouldn’t the neighbors suspect something when two people enter and exit a man’s apartment, and he is discovered to be dead by the next day? I cannot wrap my head around the stupidity of this course of action.

The two of them stake out the apartment for some time, and when Joy says that she wants to kill him, John forcefully objects, and says that he should be the one to do it. So much for being the voice of reason, though I suppose he stopped being so long ago. Which is a shame, because in the hands of a competent writer, John could have actually been decent.

We have one line that actually could have been good, namely, Joy telling John that she’s his backup. Nice sentiment, or at least it would have been if Joy were not a sociopath and the two actually looked out for one another. This book really could have benefitted from a revision.

John is about to knock on his quarry’s door. But while he hesitates, images flash through his mind. Images of the Second World War. Poles dying from German aggression and innocents being sent to the gas chambers. As if Rummel needed any more foreshadowing of who John’s victim is.

He opens the door, and holy crap, it’s the Devil! That is actually how Hitler is described in John’s mind’s eye. It reminds me of a certain Captain Planet episode, where Hitler’s hatred is so intense it counts as pollution.

And if you couldn’t figure it out three paragraphs ago that it was Hitler, then you need to work on your reading comprehension. Rummel tries to keep it a mystery, but it’s completely obvious.

Now, Rummel does have John get the image of a demonic Hitler out of his head, and sees him for the human being he was. However, I do think that portraying him as practically supernatural in his evil diminishes it, as it denies that a human being is capable of such atrocity. And if we think that the Nazis were under some demonic influence, then we are less likely to be able to prevent such horrors from happening in the future. Speaking of which, how will the people of the New Universe learn to spot demagogues and avoid being taken in by them?

Also, I would like to remind people that this book is written with the Literary Agent Hypothesis in mind, the idea being that, in-universe, John is writing down these events years after they occurred. Since (spoiler alert) he kills Hitler, his audience would be inherently unable to comprehend how evil the man was, and so wonder why the satanic imagery was used in the first place. So it fails even then.

Hitler asks John what is going on, in what is probably incorrect German, even keeping his Austrian accent in mind. However, I do not speak German, so I can’t tell. But I don’t think that Rummel would do research on languages when he has gotten them wrong before AND has done sloppy research on his own area of expertise.

John asks a few questions to confirm that the man before him is Hitler, and as soon as Hitler affirms his identity, John shoots him between the eyes. That was anticlimactic. Remember, John is standing in the hallway. Lucky no one was there to see him, right? But that would make things harder for the leads, which to Rummel is anathema.

They enter Hitler’s room, and Joy takes some of his teeth. Even though he just killed a man, John vomits when he finds out what Joy has done. This is not because he just killed somebody; he is actually relieved when the deed is done. He outright says,

I had killed another human being and that night I cried with happiness. (page 299)

Doesn’t the fact that he killed someone without remorse make him just like Hitler? At no point do the characters ever take measures to ensure that they don’t Jump Off the Slippery Slope and become as big a threat to civilized society as the people they are killing. I find this worrying.

And with John’s elation at killing Hitler, the chapter ends.

Footnotes

¹ Though something tells me that modern Europe is far too socialistic for Rummel’s liking.

Comment [15]

Revolutionists seize Petrograd; Kerensky flees; ministers under arrest . . . Winter Palace is taken after fierce defense by women soldiers—Washington reserves judgment, hoping revolt is only local.

The New York Times, November 9, 1917 Old Universe (page 300)

That’s right. We have another newspaper excerpt! Never change, Rummel. Never change. As you can probably tell, they’re gonna stop the Bolsheviks in this chapter. With only 36 pages left in the book, I believe that this is the last intervention. Yes, we are finally approaching the end of the book.

John says that he and Joy were the happiest they’ve been so far, since they were so unrealistically successful in all their interventions. However, he also says that “inside [their] relationship was a growing cancer.”¹ THIS IS FORESHADOWING.²

We learn that while in Europe they spend time on vacation³ instead of, you know, making sure their interventions stick. They return to America in late 1914. Now, this is kind of strange, considering that we all know that their next intervention is going to be in Russia. Why not just stop the communists while they’re there, instead of taking a ship back to America only to take another one back to Europe. Now that there is (supposedly) no war, it should be easier. But of course, I’m using Earth logic instead of Rummel-land logic.

Over the next three years, their business gets ever-larger for no adequately explained reason, and John suddenly has enough leisure time to write a novel. The subject? The history of the twentieth century. The real-life twentieth century, with all its wars and democides and crimes against humanity. Of course, he’s going to present it as fiction, but I still think the idea is stupid. There wasn’t much market for dystopian fiction before World War One, since everyone believed that their progress would be everlasting.⁴ People usually don’t wish to read stories whose only purpose is to depress them, though of course, that raises the question of why I am reading this book to begin with.

It doesn’t really matter, since no publishing house is willing to publish John’s book, though not for the reasons I described. Evidently they all think the plot is ridiculously implausible, even though that’s the whole point of speculative fiction, and also even though the New Universe is far more implausible, particularly if actual historical processes are allowed to take their course. Not to mention that if John’s ability as a writer is anything like Rummel’s, then his book has no literary merit, yet this has nothing to do with the publishers’ decisions. (Is my Sue-dometer going off?)

Meanwhile, Joy discovers that San Francisco in the 1910s really isn’t that racist, because a missionary named Barbara Atherton founded a home for Chinese girls out of the goodness of her heart, and she certainly isn’t mistreating them, oh no sirree. So Joy, in an uncharacteristic display of charity, donates some money. Sorry Rummel, I still don’t believe she’s a good guy. Why are they picking and choosing which non-profit organizations to fund? John and Joy are so rich they’re almost certainly on the Fiction 500, which contains such characters as Scrooge McDuck and Richie Rich. But I digress.

John also says that Joy has become lethargic again, for reasons which are not explained.⁵ This is supposed to be foreshadowing for something, but it doesn’t really make sense. John says, but we do not see, that he and Joy have worked out all their relationship problems, and that they know each other better than most couples married for thirty years.

Yep, that’s definitely my Sue-dometer going off.

After a line break, the year is 1917 and they go to Russia. I have already explained why this is stupid. John says how IMPORTANT it is that they don’t screw this up, as though democratic Europe would be utterly unable to stop communist domination or something. If preventing the rise of fascism was as easy as shooting Hitler in the face, then I don’t think they are in any danger of failure here.⁶

John mentions the tsar’s crushing of the 1905 revolt like it’s a good thing, but at the same time gives money to people like Lvov and Kerensky, who were leaders of the non-communist February Revolution. (Well at least Rummel remembers that Kerensky existed, unlike a certain filmmaker who shall not be named.) I can actually see why they’re doing this. Without the war there would be no catalyst for a revolt, and our protagonists want to ensure that the democrats are better prepared than the Bolsheviks. Of course, they do this by having Lenin and Trotsky assassinated, which I suppose I should expect by now. This is all glossed over in about a sentence.

Now, for an obligatory pedantic note, I must point out that Rummel is abbreviating Russian names incorrectly. Since Russians do not have middle names but patronymics, one must either write out the full name—given, patronymic, and last (e.g. Georgy Yevgenyevich Lvov, Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky), omit the patronymic entirely (e.g. Georgy Lvov, Alexander Kerensky), or use initials for both the given name and the patronymic (e.g. G. Y. Lvov, A. F. Kerensky). Naturally, Rummel abbreviates the names in an American fashion, as Georgi Y. Lvov and Aleksandr F. Kerensky, which is incorrect. I thought this man was supposed to be a scholar.

Though it’s debatable whether Stalin could ever have come to power if not for Lenin and the Soviet Union, he is the next target. Now they’re going for the big guns. Even though Stalin was a known communist calling for the overthrow of any non-communist government whether monarchical or not, for some boneheaded reason the provisional government (which seems to have overthrown the tsar without the readers noticing) decides to release. This is probably just so that our extremely bloodthirsty heroes can kill him, of course. Because it would be such a waste for him to rot in prison!

The exact quote is as follows:

Joseph Stalin was the greatest mass murderer of the twentieth century, perhaps of all time. The new provisional government has released him from exile in Turukhansk, and he would be arriving on March 12 in what was still called St. Petersburg in this new universe. I also planned his assassination without compunction. Agreeing on who was to do it, however, caused one of the biggest fights between Joy and me since our European trips. (page 302)

I actually had to read that paragraph thrice because it looks like Rummel changed tenses on me. Did this book ever see an editor? As for John and Joy arguing on who gets to do the killing, they are sounding less like heroes and more like fanatics. If they were heroes they would kill only reluctantly, or, if Rummel were a really good writer, find a way to prevent Stalin from coming to power without killing anybody. I don’t have a problem with Black and White Morality in fiction, especially if the work is idealistic, but in that case, the author had better be damn sure the characters never do anything morally questionable, or the readers will hate them even when they’re being pragmatic.

In any case, Joy says that she should kill Stalin because John killed Hitler, but John says that killing Hitler was easy so he should get to kill Stalin too, or… something. It doesn’t really support his argument much. Without starting a new paragraph after ending a quotation, John says that Stalin was gaining support among the radicals, even though in real life he wasn’t very high on the succession when Lenin died, and only made it to the top by a combination of deceit and killing all his rivals.⁷ So John says that it’s too dangerous for Joy to go alone and makes a very inappropriate comparison to the Ku Klux Klan. So much for not being racist, eh?

So our heroes decide not to dirty their hands, and instead pay some monarchist organization ten thousand dollars to kill Stalin, and arrange to acquire his teeth. We will find out why they want the would-be dictators’ teeth, but not in this chapter. It’s not pretty, I’ll tell you that.

While their hired assassins kill Stalin, John and Joy spend some time sightseeing, visiting places unimportant to the plot. I think Rummel got confused for a moment and thought he was writing a travel guide.

Sure enough, our protagonists receive Stalin’s teeth, but attached is a note:

What you gave us is payment enough. Somebody beat us to him, but we got this present for you from the morgue. (page 303)

WHAT A TWEEST!

But seriously, in that case, how do they know they have Stalin’s teeth? Those could be anybody’s teeth. They trust their assassins way too much. Also, why is the note written in English?

John leaps to the conclusion that Joy went off and killed Stalin⁸, and is pissed that she didn’t tell him. Of course if she had told him, he would probably have vetoed it. Of course, this puts the lie to the claim that they know one another as well as an old married couple. John wonders if smoke came out of the top of his head when he sat fuming in the hotel lobby. He’s not in a cartoon, for crying out loud! So John realizes that he can no longer trust Joy⁹ but when she returns, he pretends nothing is amiss.

And with the two of them returning to America (and John complaining about the primitiveness of ocean travel) the chapter ends. That’s it. They stop the Bolsheviks just like that. It’s almost as anticlimactic as John killing Hitler. The whole chapter was basically John sightseeing, and standing around while Joy does all the dirty work off-page.

The next chapter is only two pages long, so I’ll spork it now. In it, we will find out why John and Joy have Hitler and Stalin’s teeth.

It is because… (drumroll please) …they are their evil incarnate. I am not making this up. I think it has to do with totalitarian dictators being human monsters, but I think Rummel stretched the metaphor too far.

So they also have Lenin and Mao’s teeth (though I don’t recall those ever being collected) and what do they do with them? They put them in jars and whack them to pieces with a sledgehammer. Both of them go to town on those teeth. They collect the fragments in a bag and throw it in the trash. What will people say when they discover human remains in the garbage? Rummel never addresses this.

And with John and Joy celebrating their revenge for more than a hundred million people from the Old Universe, the chapter ends. The book is still not over.

Footnotes

¹ page 300

² Hey, it’s been a while since I’ve said that, hasn’t it?

³ And engage in some conspicuous consumption along the way.

⁴ Bearing in mind that the Victorian definition of progress was often not the same as the modern definition of progress.

⁵ Once again, commenters, she is not pregnant.

⁶ Which is, of course, a problem.

⁷ Hmm… that’s a lot like John and Joy. News flash, Rummel, when your heroes remind people of Stalin, that means that your heroes aren’t heroes.

⁸ Thus triggering my Sue-dometer by being so successful without anyone noticing.

⁹ He’s just now figuring this out?

Comment [23]

In this chapter, things get weird.

John asks the readers if he should recount his own personal horror, or if he should just stop at the previous chapter. Of course, we know that he is going to continue, and when one considers that if he hadn’t then the book would abruptly end with him and Joy mutilating human remains, I’m actually a little glad. Only slightly, though, as it means that I have more of this book to read.

After the October Revolution is prevented, a long time passes without anything happening. John suddenly starts talking about the late 1920s, as if he and Joy had nothing of importance to do in the first part of the decade, such as, oh I don’t know, promoting democracy? This is not the worst aspect of this novel (that would be the endless sexualization of Joy) but it is certainly in the top five: glossing over any event that does not require gratuitous violence, or allow Joy to show John up. Some readers would probably have enjoyed the book if it were about political intrigue, but instead, it’s just boring, when it isn’t being horrifying.

John says that the late 1920s is when his life begins to fall apart, and ponders whether telling the readers about what happened will help him deal with his “despair”. It will finally become important that John is narrating the story after it is all complete. But first, there’s a line break.

Many of the events we had set in motion in our trips abroad, and by funneling huge amounts of money into peace and democratically oriented groups and parties, were bearing fruit in the 192Os. In this New Universe, the Czar of Russia abdicated on February 25, 1924, and Kerensky became president of the Russian Republic. Social revolutionaries tried a coup in St. Petersburg, but were easily defeated. (page 307)

I know that somebody pointed this out in the comments to the last part, but how in the flying fuck did Rummel mistake a capital O for a zero? It just boggles the mind. At least this is more-or-less absolute proof that what I am reading is the first draft.

Also, according to that paragraph, the tsar did not abdicate until 1924. Considering what the earlier chapters implied, I am now more confused than ever about the time frame of all this. Did Joy not kill Stalin until the twenties or something? When does all this take place? And nice how the communist revolt is easily put down, even though Kerensky is in charge. In real life he was powerless against the revolutionaries. How did our so-called heroes make him an effective enough leader to be able to bring enough people out of poverty to make communism unpalatable, within a span of merely ten years? The book never says; it just assumes that if certain historical figures had died ahead of schedule, that nobody else would try to put their ideas into action. If you ask me, I think he’s lazy and doesn’t want his characters to actually have to work in order to succeed in their goals.

In the next paragraph, Rummel-as-John discusses Turkey, and talks about how the Armenian genocide was easily prevented because the subjects of the Ottoman Empire all spontaneously decided to overthrow the sultan and establish a Western-style democracy, even though there was no war to catalyze this. No explanation is given as to why the revolt happened without the war, even though the people could have revolted at any time in Real Life but did not do so until their country’s crushing military defeat. John even outright states that he and Joy had nothing to do with it. Furthermore, despite the centuries of religious and ethnic conflict, the Turks have no objection to electing a good proportion of Armenians to their new democratic assembly. If it were the case that democratic revolutions automatically lead to the end of racism, then American slavery would have been abolished in 1776 and the Civil Rights Movement would have been unnecessary, not to mention that Britain and France would never have run brutal imperialistic empires in the 1800s. Sadly, this is not so. If Rummel believes it is, then he is incredibly naïve. I’m a better historian than this guy, and I’m not even a history major. What the hell, man?!

Also glossed over is the fact that the Ottoman Empire was not just Turkey. It also included much of the Middle East, but Syria, Lebanon, Palestine-Transjordan and Iraq are not even mentioned, though if the sultan were overthrown one would think that Arabia would try to declare its independence, which could spark a war. Either Rummel assumed that these events would defuse the crises of the Middle East or he is just clueless. I think you know which option I am prepared to believe.

After the potential powder keg that is the Ottoman Empire is dealt with in a single paragraph, the even more volatile magazine of Japan is briefly revisited. We are told that an attempted coup by some military officers is defeated by pure luck, and a liberal Prime Minister single-handedly destroys the power of the oligarchy and institutes civilian control of the military, all without any violent backlash from the privileged class, which history repeatedly shows us has the level of maturity of a toddler. If my suspension of disbelief were still around, this would be the breaking point.

Our protagonists aren’t even doing anything! This is so anticlimactic.

John is getting older, and one night he has to go relieve himself. He notices that Joy is not in bed either, and assumes that she’s doing some work, or playing a computer game that she apparently programmed. I would still like to know how they kept their electronics in working condition for so long. It’s been more than twenty years now. This would be the equivalent of somebody today using an Apple II. Not to mention that John is not worried even though it has been established that Joy cannot be trusted. If I were in his place, alarm bells would be going off in my head.

It turns out that she took the car. Rummel goes to the trouble of pointing out to us that they have both a LaSalle and a Mercedes-Benz.

John goes back to bed and waits for Joy. When she arrives, he asks her how her computer game went, and she answers his question. Now it has been confirmed that Joy is a liar. Of course, John immediately jumps to the conclusion that she is cheating on him, even though it’s far more likely that she’s trying to do what she did with Stalin a second time. I am tired of this stupidity, Rummel.

John stalks his alleged girlfriend for a while. After finding no proof of her cheating with Hands, Dolphy or Sal, he widens his search, for random employees. After seven weeks of this behavior without finding any evidence of infidelity, a rational man would realize he was mistaken. But evidently, John is not a rational man.

Joy is with another man. She is kissing him. She is purring and caressing him. She is making love to him. He has the whole tour of her body. (page 310)

Oh, please.

He has become so paranoid that the next time Joy leaves the house, he searches the entire apartment. He goes so far as to inspect her dress for another man’s semen, even though almost two months have passed without Joy going anywhere. When did Edward Cullen start to possess John Banks?

“It is . . . Jesus Christ!” (page 311)

I would think that Jesus Christ wants nothing to do with this book.

John has a Eureka Moment, rushes to the newspaper office to read their archives, and figures out the reason for Joy’s strange behavior. He even uses profanity in the narration, when he has usually reserved the swearing for the villains. Now, Joy is not cheating on John, and raise your hand if you knew this already, but she is instead doing something so terrible that John is prepared to leave her; he is so angry that he feels only a “hot ball” in his stomach. If he stayed with her after she killed those Mexican teenagers, then I don’t think he is going to have the balls to break up with her now.

When Joy arrives, John asks her how many people she has killed recently.

DUN DUN DUUN!

When she hears this accusation, Joy pretends to cry. John does not care.

Joy doesn’t actually know how many people she killed; she thinks maybe four or five. John yells at her that the true number is eleven, in that year alone. But instead of calling the police, John gets in his car and drives away. Joy is dead to him now.

It is finally dawning on him that Joy is a murderer, and that this is not right.

Joy finds him, and she looks terrible. (Rummel actually describes her as looking like a gypsy; screw political correctness.) Despite her style of clothing and the age she is in, she is not stopped by police. She explains to John that after the incident in Mexico, she would, from time to time, go into the poorer parts of town to see if anybody would attack her. If they did, she would kill them. She thinks she’s like Batman, even though there is the oh-so-slight difference that BATMAN DOES NOT KILL PEOPLE!

This confession angers John so much that he tells her that he wants to end their mission. Perhaps it is for this reason that Joy makes a shallow apology and tries to get them back together.

And with John forcing her to swear that she will not kill any common criminals ever again, the chapter ends.

THIS IS FORESHADOWING.

Comment [24]

You’re not going to believe this, but even after the drama of the last chapter, John and Joy have patched things up again. Well, this isn’t entirely true, but Rummel is trying to lead the readers to think so, blissfully unaware of the fact that this was barely a plot twist to begin with, and using it more than once is just stupid. But of the twenty pages of the book that remain, the majority of them are dealing with this “conflict” that should have been resolved in one page. Every paragraph of this book is a disappointment.

Apparently their fight scared Joy enough to stop her street killings… which kind of goes against all her previous characterization, as she is not only a psychopath but also fearless, and doesn’t give a hoot about what John thinks. And John, despite knowing exactly what kind of person he has been living with, desires to record (what he thinks is) a positive portrayal of Joy for posterity.

As I come to this part of our history and the years that went by after I discovered Joy’s street murders, I feel a special need to update our success. Not for my sake. For hers. She would’ve wanted this said, and I envision the happiness on her face and the kiss she would’ve sent to her mother along with something like, “Look Mom, we did it!” (page 316)

It truly eludes me how anybody could possibly still like Joy after everything she’s done, but since John is a murderer himself, I suppose we shouldn’t expect a properly oriented moral compass from him either.

The time period jumps again, to 1933, and we learn that the Tor Import & Export Company has become the third-largest of its kind in the world. We never learn the identities of the first two. In any case, managing a business of that size is too much for our leads to handle, so what do they do? Give the whole operation to Hands, Dolphy and Sal, of course! I don’t think that those three would be able to handle everything any better than John and Joy alone, which makes me think that our protagonists do not actually care about their so-called “friends” or the state of their company. They are somehow able to function without a board of directors, which John oh-so helpfully informs us means that he and Joy can run the whole business as a dictatorship. Indeed, giving all the top jobs to the three squatters who stumbled upon their hideout¹ while neglecting any employees with real credentials is reminiscent of the earliest European monarchs declaring the descendants of those who initially fought for them the nobility, or of communist governments granting privileges to their party’s original members and denying anybody else the chance at upward movement. And as far as Rummel is concerned, John and Joy don’t really have any ordinary employees, because they’re “normal” and not super rich like his protagonists and their friends.

Just so we’re reminded that John is a Stu, he’s worth two billion dollars in 1933 money.² Oh hi, Sue-dometer, it’s nice to hear from you again.

For some reason, the lack of wars in their timeline also causes nationalism to become less mainstream. If the world is truly becoming more peaceful, and organizations akin to real life’s European Union are forming, then that probably would lower nationalism’s appeal, but Rummel has overlooked that this would be counterbalanced by the fact that nobody in the new universe knows of the horrors of Nazism, which were largely caused by fervent nationalism, meaning that there should still be some very vocal opposition to globalization.³ (Hell, in real life many organizations in the United States are convinced that the United Nations is a nefarious plot to eliminate US sovereignty. Without the Nazis around to scare them straight, the Europeans should be just as parochial and backwards.) I wouldn’t mind the peaceful democratization and liberalization if Rummel would just show it, rather than telling the readers about it after the fact from a distance while his characters just sit back and do nothing!

On the other hand, I suppose I should be happy that Rummel is anti-war and outright states that governments, even democracies, will use war in order to instill a sense of fear in the populace, in order to seize more power than they would be allowed otherwise. He is sternly against this, which is more than I can say for many of our current politicians, of either party.

What is truly interesting is that Rummel thinks that a peaceful and democratic planet would have more sovereign states, not fewer. John claims that the lack of wars in the new universe mean that governments are now open to the possibility of recognizing independence movements, even going so far as supposing that Alaska, Hawaii, and California secede from the United States! Even if one ignores the fact that Alaskans, Hawaiians, and Californians have no desire to secede from the Union, the Civil War more or less established that secession is tantamount to treason. This is completely pointless, and seems to be libertarianism gone horribly wrong.⁴

But the US is not the only state to be willingly balkanized. The United Kingdom for some reason allows every constituent country other than England to declare independence (which makes me think that Rummel is one of those Americans who think that the UK is or ought to be only England, and generally makes every other American look like an ignorant buffoon when interacting with Britons) and Quebec is now independent from Canada. That last one is the only one even remotely likely.⁵

Of course, the biggest problem with the above is that decolonization wasn’t even considered until the Second World War made Britain and France unable to afford their overseas possessions. They would never give up a colony willingly, let alone all of them. Have our Sues ended racism as well?⁶

By 1936, we could travel to most places in the world by air. Lacking the great impetus of World War I, airline companies still saw the profit in developing passenger airline service. (page 317)

So much for John’s earlier Wangsting about how he’ll never fly on a plane again after arriving in the past. He and Joy are only in their fifties.

Apparently Francisco Franco still exists in the new universe and still wants to take over Spain, but John stops him in two paragraphs. Boring. Meanwhile, Joy is monitoring India to make sure that a revolt doesn’t happen,⁷ but cooler heads prevail, so she doesn’t have to do anything, and heads back home. John says that this is an unfortunate occurrence. THIS IS FORESHADOWING.

Of course, the two of them have sex at the airport.

Next, John does some navel-gazing:

If only we could know the future. Not the documented future that time travelers still think of as history even while living in the past, but our future in a new universe we created and in which we were trapped. Had I known the special significance of that night, had I known what would follow, had I known . . . But we humans, time travelers or not, are locked in our own time-bound shell, open to our past, closed to our future. What tomorrow will bring for our personal lives, we never know. And thus, we may unknowingly drink our last champagne, see the sunset for the last time, hear Tchaikovsky for the last time, and make love for the last time. Unknowingly.
If I had only known.
And this brings me to what I find almost impossible to relate. (page 318)

And with yet another cryptic allusion that the readers are getting tired of, the chapter ends. There are only two chapters and an epilogue left. FINALLY!

Footnotes

¹ Do not be mistaken, I actually like Hands, Dolphy and Sal. They’re some of the only truly likeable characters in the book, and it’s a shame that they only appear sporadically. It’s just that we never hear of them actually learning how to run a business.

² And since the Great Depression magically never happened in this timeline, those 1933 dollars are worth a lot more than real-life 1933 dollars.

³ By which I mean peaceful internationalism and possibly world federalism, not what is generally considered the modern definition of globalization: that of corporations being practically above the law and exploiting Third World countries as much as they like with no comeuppance.

⁴ As far as I know, while libertarians believe in the right of any entity to secede from its state, their utopian fiction only does this to areas that actually want to do so, or in other words, not California.

⁵ Now, Rummel says that Northern Ireland, not Ireland, is now independent from the UK, which suggests that the rest of Ireland became independent at around the same time as in real life, without any intervention from the protagonists. I am really beginning to wonder about their criteria for intervening.

⁶ And now my Sue-dometer won’t shut up. Thanks a lot, Rummel.

⁷ But didn’t Rummel just establish that in the new universe racism no longer exists and people in the colonies are no longer being exploited?

Comment [10]

The next chapter opens with John being nostalgic for the time before all hell broke loose:

I want to go back to the early years again. I want relive them, add things I now recall. But I must soon emerge from this long tunnel of remembrance. Time is running out. (page 319)

I don’t think that paragraph was very well written. It tries to be all emotional, but I just don’t see it. I have never heard of anyone compare memories to a tunnel, either.

Joy already had breakfast and left him a note saying that she would be gone for most of the day, and left him some pancakes in the oven. Why does John trust her, exactly? She has done nothing to deserve his or anybody’s trust. For all he knows, she’s poisoned those pancakes so that he can’t stop her killing spree.

John does not find this suspicious at all, and muses that he had better clean up. It must be the weekend, because he isn’t needed at the office. The front company is never mentioned again, so for all we know, Rummel could have forgotten all about it.

So while John cleans up after himself, he absent-mindedly has the radio on, and hears that Norman Thomas is running for president as the Democratic Party candidate. Now, if you know anything about Norman Thomas, you will know how wrong this is. The man was never a member of the Democratic Party. Instead, he was…

(drumroll please)

… a socialist!

I can only assume this is a case of Rummel believing that liberals are socialists and that socialists are communists.

John tells the readers that Joy is a supporter of the Democratic Party (albeit with incorrect capitalization, because proofreading is of the Devil) but that she hates Norman Thomas with a passion. It is easy to see why: she is convinced that he is a communist. (Even though in real life, Thomas was among those socialists who opposed the Soviet Union, because it was a dictatorship.)

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that Rummel agrees with Joy and that she is going to do something drastic. Well, you’re only half right.

“He’s a closet communist,” Joy spit out. “He’s an utterly stupid choice. Have the Party bosses no sense? He’ll put his ideological cronies in the cabinet, and they will do the same in their departments. As they appoint more and more of their kind, they’ll load up the government and the courts with those dedicated to revolution.” (pages 319-320)

I have two questions. The first is, as usual, who talks like that? The second is, why is Rummel capitalizing the word “party”? Usually, that’s only done when a Russian is talking about the USSR. Is he suggesting that one of America’s two political parties is secretly pro-dictatorship? In the 1930s? Has he lost his mind?¹

John basically blows her off, pointing out that he has also ranted about politicians he doesn’t like, and so it’s probably nothing. If they were normal people, then John would be justified in not paying attention, but this is Joy we are talking about, the woman who has been trained since the age of three to execute people whom she perceives as a threat. I’d keep the highest watch on her, but just because they have an agreement² that they will not interfere with U.S. politics, John is not worried that his partner will act on her violent fantasies. She is literally a pathological liar and a serial killer, and yet John trusts her enough not to kill somebody. Is John’s flaw supposed to be that he’s too trusting or something?

As an aside, it is interesting that our theoretical heroes have a rule that they will not interfere with domestic politics. I suppose this is supposed to be so that even Joy has a line that she will not cross, but once you remember that at that time period, both racism and sexism were institutionalized and accepted, you have to debate the wisdom of this. Couldn’t they have poured some of their countless millions into organizations that would work towards the end of segregation, or something? It would be much more productive than just killing people without thinking of the consequences. Or is this just supposed to mean that America is perfect, and needs no improvement? It wouldn’t surprise me if Rummel thinks that, since he also thought that the UK and France were democracies, even though they ran brutal colonial empires.

Now, John had come back from killing Franco the previous night, but had not gotten around to putting away his weapons until that morning. When he goes to the weapons capsule, he finds that “it”, whatever “it” is, is missing.

And I am sure that the readers saw this coming a mile away. I know I did.

John rushes to his Mercedes Roadster³ and races to the Golden Gate Park, going so quickly that he burns the rubber of his tires. He commits practically every traffic violation in the book in order to get there before Joy does. He actually gets into an accident, but doesn’t stop to discuss things with the other driver. I am sure the other driver was really pissed at that. Then he continues recklessly, getting into countless fender benders and near misses, until he arrives at the park. Clearly, San Francisco does not have traffic police. If John were caught, his driver’s license would surely be suspended.

He arrives at the park with only four minutes to spare, and finds Joy perched in a sniper position behind a grassy knoll. I am sure that any connection between this story and the conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s assassination is just a coincidence. In case it hasn’t been made sufficiently clear, Joy is trying to assassinate Norman Thomas.⁴

She lay on her stomach, clutching her prized British Accuracy International sniper rifle. She had set up a solid support of rocks and a large branch for the rifle, and she was sighting it through the sniper’s telescopic sight. I looked far down the park toward the speaker’s platform, about half a mile away. She wouldn’t miss Norman Thomas when he started to speak. There were no secret servicemen around, this far away. Indeed, the protection of the nominees for president and vice-president had become lax by 1936. There had been no attempt to assassinate a president since that of William McKinley in 1901, and the country had not had war or a terrorist bombing or killing since then, either. (page 321)

Even without any wars, I find it highly unlikely that the federal government would drop security for presidents and presidential candidates. The circumstances of McKinley’s assassination are what finally caused the government to give the president adequate protection to begin with. This would not be an acceptable risk, especially in this modern era.

No one could shoot accurately at this distance with 1936 rifles which, without the stimulus of war, were even less accurate than those in the Old Universe at this time. (Ibid.)

Now, a reader of this spork calling himself “N H” has emailed me a long time ago, to inform me, line by line, of the ludicrous inaccuracies espoused by Rummel in the climax of the book. Yes, we are at the climax. If this is not a problem, I will let him take it from here:⁵

This is absolute nonsense, all of the major bolt-action rifles used in World War 1 (Mosin-Nagant, Lee-Enfield and various Mauser derivatives) have been designed before the turn of the century and wouldn’t be affected by anything our true loving lovers of love (who loved each other) did. With a period telescopic scope, a trained marksman could make a shot at those ranges easily, and you can’t say no trained marksman would exist since you’d still have game hunters and police marksmen even if there were no actual wars, nevermind that militaries would still be aware of the power of the already-invented machine gun and probably train snipers to take out machine gunners and officers in any hypothetical war.

In a flash, she had her magnum in hand, a silencer attached, and it was aimed at my heart. (Ibid.)

This is the part that’s physically impossible. Revolvers have a gap between the front face of the cylinder and the barrel that allows gas to escape, which prevents them from being effectively suppressed. There are a tiny number of gas-seal revolvers (we’re talking “fingers of one hand” tiny) with the Nagant M1895 the only one produced in any quantity. For an SP101 to mount a suppressor you’d have to either use special ammunition or modify the cylinder, and you’d have to cut a screw thread into the muzzle to actually accept the suppressor or make it a permanent part of the weapon. Needless to say, when Rummel was describing Joy’s gun he didn’t bring up any unusual modifications to it, so this would never work.

She held it steady, finger on the trigger, her arm extended. (Ibid.)

You’d think miss PROFESSIONAL MARKSMAN DRILL SERGEANT ARGH would use both hands with a .357 Magnum.

I fell across the sniper rifle and grabbed the barrel. I held it in both hands with all my strength. If she shot me I hoped that she would not be able to wrest the rifle from my dead hands. (Ibid.)

As I recall John’s not a small guy, so this would have the two effects of almost certainly breaking the scope (probably off its mounting) and giving him the equal and opposite reaction of a rifle scope in the gut. Either way, clinging to the gun is stupid since she probably can’t make the shot now even if she gets it back.

Off in the distance I heard clapping and cheering that went on for several minutes, and then the far voice of someone speaking. (Ibid.)

That’s a bloody impressive voice to carry for half a mile through a fairly densely wooded park.⁶

I heard her say, in a voice from Hell, “You never did learn how to zigzag.”
Her very last words to me. How ironic. (Ibid.)

I don’t see how that’s ironic at all.⁷

Even though Joy has John in a very vulnerable position, she does nothing to stop him from taking the gun from her. Instead of keeping it on his person, he throws it into the woods. I guess he was hoping that Joy wouldn’t scramble for it. Instead, she just cries. Strange, before this paragraph everything pointed to Joy being this unflappable “warrior woman” who wouldn’t take crap from anybody, and now she’s crying? Once again, Rummel is inconsistent with Joy’s characterization.

John stares at Joy, saying that she had aged ten years since the previous day, but still claiming that, because she’s Asian, she looks younger than her 57 calendar years. (Now we can calculate with certainty that the year is 1938, not 1936, since Joy was 25 when she arrived in the year 1906. But that wasn’t an election year; Rummel screwed up the timeline again.)

Let me point out that at this point, Joy is older than both of my parents, yet she is still very immature.

The elegant beauty she had matured into was now ruined by wrinkles and lines in her face I hadn’t seen before, and her compressed lips. (page 322)

I guess John is also immature, since he only cares about superficial appearances.

He compares Joy to the perpetrators on the “Colombo” television series. First, it’s spelled Columbo, and second, it is unlikely that the series will be created in the new universe, so the readers of John’s diary will not even get that reference.

Joy drops her magnum into John’s hand. Strange, I could have sworn that John had already taken it from her. Was she dual-wielding this whole time? That would have logically affected the outcome of their earlier standoff.

John takes Joy along by her “cold, lifeless hand”⁸⁹ and brings her home.

There is now a line break.

John brings Joy to the bedroom. He says that at this time his mind was destroyed and he was acting on pure instinct, ostensibly to avoid responsibility for his upcoming actions. Little does he know that the readers are actually cheering him on at this point, as he smothers Joy.

And with John just realizing the ramifications of what he’s done, the chapter ends. Only one more left.

Ding dong, the Sue is gone. The Mary Sue is dead.

Footnotes

¹ Since there was no war, apparently the Great Depression never happened, and so F. D. Roosevelt never became president. That’s the only way I can explain the Democrats not choosing to run him in the 1930s.

² One that we are just now hearing about.

³ ‘Cause we gotta have Product Placement!

⁴ Wait. If Thomas is campaigning for President of the United States, and stopping in San Francisco, then doesn’t that contradict the last chapter, which implied that California is now an independent country in the new universe?

⁵ So everything from here until the next footnote is from N H, not me.

⁶ N H’s comments end here. I would like to thank him for his help. Now back to me.

⁷ And yes, this is the chapter in which Joy dies. Now I can finally put that question to rest.

⁸ page 322

⁹ No, she is not dead yet.

Comment [11]

After killing Joy, John is a robot. That is actually what it says in the book.¹ Even though the narrator suddenly turned into an automaton, he is still capable of writing down his thoughts and experiences. Rummel has a tendency not to think his metaphors through.

So John places Joy’s corpse in his car, where its existence would be plainly visible, as well as a shovel. He is going to dig her grave himself, on their weapons-training range for maximum symbolism points. Disposing of the body is yet another crime in addition to the murder. It should be noted that he also fills the car’s gas tank using fuel he had in a can, which is not legal either.

Rummel probably thinks that the burial scene is emotional, but there is no feeling in it at all. Even if there were, the readers would not shed any tears, because it is Joy who is being put to rest.

John drives to the airport and picks up Joy’s airplane tickets. Either this airport has a habit of delivering the tickets to customer’s houses (in an era long before the Internet) or John bought tickets to China in Joy’s name so that nobody suspects anything when she’s gone.² Afterwards, John throws all of Joy’s belongings (except her car) into the bay. So all that jewelry she bought in Third World countries was for naught.

The next day, John wakes up and sees that he neglected to pack Joy’s toothbrush into the suitcases that he threw into San Francisco Bay, thus leading to this just classic line:

Her toothbrush! Joy! Joooy! The sledgehammer of stark realization finally smashed into me. I’D KILLED JOY! (page 325)

O bathos, thy name is Rudolph Rummel!

Yet again, John tells us that he still loved Joy to the very end. The Sue-dometer is being triggered from beyond the grave.

So John puts his rifle to his head and intends to join his @#$%-buddy in death, but then, in the very next sentence, comes to his senses enough to decide not to kill himself. No explanation is given for this sudden shift, even though people who are in such an emotionally compromised state that they consider suicide generally do not simply back out of it once they have their finger on the trigger.

Then, John decides to finish the mission, not because he is the only one left, but entirely for Joy’s sake. He doesn’t even care anymore, and just like the readers, only wants to get this over with.

He calls Hands the next day. He doesn’t bother to tell him that Joy is dead, which, once it becomes apparent that she isn’t coming back, should cast some suspicion on him. Unfortunately, this scene is pointless and Hands does nothing.

It turns out that each of our reduced heroes wrote letters to the other, which were only to be opened if one of them died before the mission was complete.³ John describes Joy’s letter as “so beautiful, so sweet.”⁴ To think that those words are even in the same sentence as Joy Phim! The letter also specifies that Joy wanted to be cremated, meaning that John read this after he had buried her, not knowing what she had wanted. He exhumes her, and “cremates” her by dousing her body in gasolene. Even more disturbingly, he kisses her now likely rotten corpse before the act.

I refilled her grave and marked it again with the bougainvillea plant. It may have been her temporary home, but it was now holy to me. (page 326)

That sound you hear is me throwing up in my mouth.

Weeks pass, with John crying himself to sleep every night. It would be one thing for him to grieve over the loss of a loved one, except that that loved one was a demonstrable psychopath. After this has gone on for far too long, John gets the news he was waiting for. A Chinese flight crashes, leaving no survivors. So of course, John takes advantage of this tragedy by telling Hands (no, I don’t know where Dolphy and Sal have gone) that Joy died in the crash. Remember, this occurred several weeks after Joy actually died. Wouldn’t Hands be a little suspicious about Joy spending weeks on a business trip in Asia?⁵ At no point had John implied that she would take that long. Amazingly, nobody will search airline records and discover that Joy Phim was never on any such flight. That would implicate Rummel’s Self-Insert, so he can’t have that. Even before the Internet, this could still be done, so come on.

Hands goes to John’s place and confides in him that he also loved her. That makes two posthumous Sue-dometer activations.

John buys an urn, fills it with soil to make the deception more believable, then invites Hands, Dolphy and Sal to a private memorial service. Apparently, memorial services revolve around altars to the deceased. Yes, an actual altar. There are no words.

Rather inexplicably, one word of the funeral’s description is set in a monospaced font. None of the rest of the book is. I have tried in vain to discover the reason for this.

The next few paragraphs are a description of the contents of the protagonists’ scrapbook, making a desperate attempt to appear that they changed world history for the better.

After the others leave, John stares at Joy’s urn for hours. This is bordering on an unhealthy obsession.

I thought of all that she had done, and I knew that her soul would eventually meet with those of the lives she had saved. (page 328)

If that is true, then there truly is no benevolent God.

After a line break, John soliloquizes to Joy’s urn. The first thing we learn through his Infodump is that Norman Thomas lost his bid for the presidency in a landslide, because elections are only ever won in landslides in Rummel’s fantasy world. He also says that Germany is a stable democracy⁶ and that Japan is a partial democracy, albeit with some ways to go before being truly democratic.⁷ Russia is not only now democratic, but is projected to become a superpower anyway, even without the war. Considering Russia’s political situation, it makes even less sense for it to be a stable democracy than even Taishō-era Japan.

Of course, there is now magically no nationalism (except in China) and everyone is happy. The westernmost parts of China gained independence in 1910— yes, before their intervention. Remember this during the next book.

Because there is no nationalism, a United Nations-esque organization was founded called the “United Democracies”, which apparently has vastly more power than the UN and is a proto-One World Government, with no objections. That’s kind of a silly name, and since the real-world UN doesn’t exist, there is nothing to prevent this new organization from picking that name instead.

Despite all this, there are still genocides in Africa, explicitly committed by the native Africans. What is this I don’t even…

All in all, this is a really lazy way out. Instead of actually showing the readers how the world has improved thanks to the protagonist, Rummel literally just tells us everything in a concluding speech. And most of this has the potential to actually be interesting, but the formation of the UN-analog and the decolonization process are both glossed over in about a sentence each. That sums up this book in a nutshell, really: interesting idea ruined by rushed execution.

After another line break, we learn that John is retiring from business and giving Dolphy, Hands and Sal the absurd sum of $200 million each as a severance package. I don’t know if Rummel is aware that a severance package is only given to those who are laid off. Because it is inconceivable that anybody other than our heroes run the Tor Import & Export Company, which is unimportant now anyway. It served as nothing more than a plot device, to be discarded when it ran out of use.

John uses the rest of his money to create… Tor’s groupies. This time, he names the organization after Joy, of course. If there was anybody who deserved the honor less, John and Joy probably killed them. She also gets a chair named after her at Harvard, despite the minor problem that she was never a professor. Somehow, Hands pulled some strings, but it was never mentioned that he was affiliated with Harvard before. Wasn’t he a high school dropout? These characters are so neglected that their own creator doesn’t even remember their backstories.

There is one more line break, after which we are told secondhand that Hands and the others found out about the time travel. This shocking revelation is glossed over by the equally vacuous reveal that apparently, they knew all along, because Dolphy is a fan of science fiction, never mind that science fiction as a genre didn’t really exist until Hugo Gernsback’s pulp magazines, first published in the 1920s and 1930s. Even though they deduced this long before, they had never gone to our so-called heroes about it. It would have been much more interesting if one of them had discovered that their bosses were time travelers long before, and confronted them about this while the interventions were going on. Then, maybe, John and Joy would be forced to tell them everything and give them the same Hobson’s choice that John received at the beginning. But of course, since that would provide conflict and suspense, it didn’t happen. It’s a real shame that Dolphy, Hands, and Sal exist, but serve no purpose to the story. They were the only interesting characters in the book.

Lastly, John reveals that he bought a mausoleum for his and Joy’s remains, and listed Joy as his wife, even though they were never officially married while she was alive, and one cannot marry a dead person.

When he finishes this Infodump, John commits suicide. I am not making this up. Here’s the quote:

“Now, my love, all is done. I signed a million documents. I purchased all the apartments in this building and helped the tenants move out of them and find new homes. The mission is over. It is time for me to join you. I have moved your ashes to the crypt and I will be with you in day or so, our souls forever commingled. I have left a will to ensure this will be done.
“Now I’m ready. The flames are approaching, and the smoke is almost too thick to see through. I can hardly breathe. In minutes I will lay down on the bed where I always slept with you. I will hold your photograph on my heart and on top of it, this account of our wonderful life together and our successful mission. It has kept me alive until now.
“I’m so sorry you died believing I hated you. I did not. I always loved you. Now, my sweetheart, my wife, we will be together again. You will know my love again. I’m coming.” (page 331)

What. The. Fuck. I can’t even describe how stupid and pointless this is.

Dying in a fire must be a truly terrible way to go.⁸

And with that, the chapter ends.

The book is not finished just yet. There is still an epilogue.

The year skips to 2001, starting with the inaugural address of the President of the United States. So apparently, there are still multiple nations in this world. In the address, the president states that the US will begin military disarmament. However, this is apparently not something that the “United Democracies” demanded. Now, disarmament is one of those things that, while completely admirable, only works if everybody does it. Otherwise, it’s just a tactical blunder— and I say this as an anti-war world federalist.

The scene then cuts to Harry Gavino, the manager of John and Joy’s mausoleum. One thing I’ve noticed while reading this book is that Rummel gives names to every character, no matter how minor. Gavino, at least, has some lines. He is showing his replacement around, just as an excuse for Rummel to describe the site in lavish detail. Even his Sues’ final resting place is perfect. It even has electric lighting! Seriously.

Joy’s knife is prominently displayed, but nobody comments on this.

To show how different the new universe is from ours, the manager’s replacement knows nothing of the significance of the Titanic. He assumes it was a cruise that John and Joy had gone on.

This is the epitaph:

Joy Phim-Banks—1936 John Banks—1938
THEY LOVED MANKIND
AND EACH OTHER
but
POWER KILLS. (page 333)

Since nobody knows the true circumstances of the deaths, the manager and his replacement are puzzled by the final line. Meaning that despite all their Sueishness and questionable activities, John and Joy go down in history as heroes.

The epilogue is still not finished. There is also a poem on the mausoleum wall:

Souls do not disintegrate and die;
Years pass and yet they do not fade away.
Memories are like a distant star
Pouring forth its light across the void.
All our tears and laughter do not lie;
Though we pass like dreams, our spirits stay,
Held fast by love, which is just what we are,
Yet in a form that cannot be destroyed. (page 334)

The manager’s replacement notices the rose in the vase, which looks new. He asks about this, and the manager tells him that he doesn’t replace the roses. He doesn’t know how there is always a fresh one there. You mean to tell me, Rummel, that John’s love for Joy somehow magically keeps the rose from decaying?

AREOING RABG QUAIHR GQUIRW QIUWHRG FQIUW FEQIWURBHGF

OH COME ON! JOHN KILLED JOY AFTER SHE DID SOMETHING SO SOCIOPATHIC THAT NOT EVEN HE COULD DEFEND HER ACTIONS ANYMORE! DON’T TELL ME THAT’S TRUE LOVE.

Okay, I have calmed down enough now to finish the spork.

The manager says that he doesn’t know how new objects keep showing up in the crypt, but just shrugs it off. I will assume that Tor’s New Groupies know about the tomb, or something, and keep putting stuff in there. And with the manager’s replacement saluting our heroes’ urn, the epilogue ends.

Now the story it at a close, but Rummel still wrote a two-page afterword, wherein he explains his reasons for writing the story and all. He claims that the democratic peace theory has been proven, though in actual fact it is hotly disputed, and claims that politicians listen to him. This is just him thinking that he is more influential than he really is, and implying that the Iraq War was inspired by his theory. (Hey, it was 2004 when the book was written, so the morality of that war will not be discussed in the comments. Understand?)

He even goes so far as to claim that his book should be used as a teaching tool to help people understand the twentieth century! Of course, the book is so obscure and poorly written that the author actually had to post it in its entirety, for free, on his website just to get people to read it. So that plan has failed. And with Rummel trying to justify his use of Very Special Flashback Sequences, the afterword ends. Now the book is truly over.

If Rummel can give his final thoughts, then so can I. While reading this book, the one constant I noticed again and again was the utter waste of potential. Instead of scenes of action-packed political intrigue and suspense, there’s pages upon pages of the heroes being flirtatious and all major plot points are summarized in a single page. Instead of the heroes being reluctant to compromise their own principles by killing people, one of them is a sociopath while the other one just lets himself be strung along. Instead of discussion of whether it is moral to try to change history, that is just taken as a given with the flimsiest justifications for events. And though the story tries at the end to say that Joy was wrong, everything before the last two chapters presents her as being always correct (as opposed to that idiot, John) such that her descent into villainy does not really mean anything. And that is the greatest tragedy of this book.

Footnotes

¹ So, was Rossum’s Universal Robots still written in the new universe? If not, the in-universe readers of John’s diary will have no idea what he is talking about here. And since the play was written as an allegory of fascism, I find it a bit hard to believe that it would still be written in this (allegedly) vastly more peaceful world.

² Before you ask, the police never come to John’s house for questioning, suggesting that either the Police Are Useless, or everyone just forgot about Joy. A fitting end for a Sue, I say.

³ Just so you know, this book was written before How I Met Your Mother even aired, so Rummel did not rip off a sitcom, surprisingly.

⁴ page 325

⁵ Instead, his response to the news is simply “Oh no!”, just as melodramatically as John’s earlier outburst, and definitely not in the tone of voice used by those informed of a death.

⁶ Before the hyperinflation, so was the Weimar Republic. This proves nothing.

⁷ Again, this was true in the real-world Taishō era. What’s that they say about counting chickens?

⁸ Yes, John set his house on fire, presumably right after he finished that diary. So how does the document survive the burning building?

Comment [25]

Okay, the first thing I would like to say is that I am very sorry. It has been about six months since I’ve written anything. I did not expect the hiatus to be this long, but real life got in the way. But since you were all looking forward to this, I decided to take your advice and continue the spork, just in time to begin the second book in the late R. J. Rummel’s Never Again series— Nuclear Holocaust Never Again.

Now, wait just a minute, you might say. This is a sequel to the first book, is it not? And didn’t the first book end with world peace? So how could there be a nuclear holocaust in the series? Well, there is actually an answer. It is extremely poorly thought out, has loads of Unfortunate Implications, and is just plain stupid. But enough pussyfooting around the subject, let’s get started!

Just like when I began the spork of the first book in the series, so long ago, I will show you the cover:

Well, at least Rummel didn’t joke around when it came to the title. It’s not like anyone could pick up the book and think, “This must be a story about fluffy bunnies!” And I will admit, the picture is more connected to the book that the first book’s cover than the first book was, though the images were still quite crudely done. There is also that stupid picture of his “heroes” in the corner, as though we did not know which series this is a part of just from the title and author’s name on the cover.

Of course, if I judged this book by its cover this would be a very superficial and unhelpful spork, so let’s get into the writing, shall we?

Just like the first book, this one has a page with heavily quote mined sources giving praise to Rummel’s nonfiction books, but no indication made that the praise (which is dubious at best because of all the ellipses) is actually for something completely different that he wrote. That’s just dishonest. This time it goes on for two whole pages. Then we get a list of his nonfictional oeuvre (which the first book did not have for some reason) and then… a completely blank page. What was the publisher thinking? You don’t just include completely blank pages in an online book. It’s a waste of bandwidth.

It turns out that this volume has a dedication:

To the unknown Joys and Johns of this universe that fight and die so that others may live in freedom (page 7)

What? I dunno what Rummel’s trying to say here. He can’t possibly be referring to the military, because John and Joy are not in the military. They’re civilians, and when civilians do the things that John and Joy do, they’re called terrorists. And I don’t think that he believed that there were actually time travelers secretly interfering in history to ensure that things turn out okay, so that eliminates that possibility as well. Then there is another blank page, before we are treated to an Acknowledgements section, even though that usually only appears in nonfiction. Apparently Rummel does have an editor, one Marg Gilks. Rummel also mentions that he took to mind the feedback he got for the first book, and corrected some errors of historical fact. As we will later see, this is in fact the only reason that the sequels even exist. Now, you would think that would mean that this book is better researched, but don’t get your hopes up. As least Rummel acknowledged his own flaws, which is better than I can say for most authors sporked here. It’s a shame that he died.

Apparently Ms. Gilks decided to separate Rummel’s sections with blank pages, because there is yet another one dividing the acknowledgements from the foreword. Admittedly, that probably looks much better in a physical copy of the book, but this is the online version, which I am actually amazed is still available. The conversion to PDF was a bit clumsy. But maybe I’m just nitpicking. The foreword is basically two paragraphs of pretentiousness that could have been eliminated entirely, and then, after another blank page, we arrive at Chapter 1.

It opens with a caption revealing the setting: the New Universe’s version of New York, in the year 1994. Well I suppose this beats a bunch of “As You Know, Bob” speeches made by the characters to reveal when this takes place. Unfortunately, we don’t even get two sentences into the body of the work before Rummel forgets that a new paragraph must be made every time a character speaks. This is so basic that I have to wonder about the extent of his editor’s job.

Behind Lora, a sudden, blazing-white light cast everything into stark black and white, like a photographic negative. “What the . . . ” Lora blurted, just before a thunderous blast pushed her into the earth. (page 13)

Yes, this a sequel set in the late twentieth century, John and Joy are long dead, and the book is focusing on new characters. We don’t know anything about Lora as of yet, but it’s not going to matter because she is pretty much a flat character anyway.

The bigger problem is this narration. First, Rummel describes the light as “blazing-white” but then, within the same sentence, uses “black and white” as an adjective, repeating his words when he could have said something more like “monochrome”, which would have flowed better in the sentence. Also, there is pretty much only one thing that could possibly push somebody into the ground after a bright white light: a nuclear explosion.

Oh my God, there was a nuclear attack? Well, it’s in the title, so of course there’s going to be one. Rummel fails on making there be suspense here, but hey, maybe he was intending for it to be a First Chapter Spoiler kind of thing. Well, he says that Lora was not looking in the direction of the blast, explaining why she didn’t go blind. She must also be far enough away from the epicenter that she isn’t vaporized instantly. That’s kind of convenient, isn’t it? And as we will later find out, she isn’t just some random bystander. She is actually a person of importance, so this is in fact a Contrived Coincidence and not just Rummel choosing to focus on a character who can actually have her story told.

After getting little more than the wind knocked out of her, Lora rather foolishly looks back only to see a huge mushroom cloud standing over the ruins of Manhattan. Now, you know how badly Rummel failed in accurately depicting the aftermath of 9/11? Well, here he’s just as bad as portraying what people’s reactions would be to a nuclear strike. We don’t see any of the destruction, only here about it from afar. The viewpoint character is far away from the scene of the disaster now.

Lora’s first thought is denial, and that an asteroid hit the Earth. There are so many things wrong with this. First, assuming that a counterpart of NASA exists in this timeline, wouldn’t they have noticed that Earth was on a collision course with an asteroid big enough to wipe out a major city? Considering that the government of the New Universe is supposed to be benevolent, I don’t think they would have hidden that information. Instead they would have warned people and told them to evacuate Manhattan. So it isn’t an asteroid collision. However, Lora is naïve enough to believe that John and Joy completely eliminated international conflict once and for all, so there is definitely no way that they could have been attacked.

And already we have a major plot hole. Two of them, in fact. The first is that John and Joy’s mission was secret. Yeah, John kept a diary, but no one would believe him.¹ There is a Hand Wave for this later, but it’s really kind of stupid, especially considering that according to John’s diary, Joy went completely crazy, so why would they still honor her? Secondly, according to the first book, world peace was achieved some time in the 1930s, before nuclear weapons were even developed. Therefore the very fact that they exist in the New Universe is proof that there still was international conflict, as countries still felt the need to develop nuclear weapons, and therefore that John and Joy did not succeed in their mission. In fact, Lora herself should realize this is a fallacy, especially considering something that is revealed later. There is an even bigger problem with this, but before the reader can figure out what it is, Lora’s inner monologue shifts to worrying about the fate of her boyfriend, Mark.

Now, it is perfectly natural, after a disaster, to be concerned about your loved ones. What is not natural is not to realize that your arm is broken. Yet Lora doesn’t even notice this until after she gets up to try to find Mark. Wouldn’t she have felt the searing pain before? Not only that, it’s a compound fracture; her arm bones are sticking out at a ninety degree angle. It’s amazing that she hasn’t passed out from shock.

She says that she has to go find Mark, and a paragraph later, he’s with her. There’s no suspense or anything. Considering that in a tragedy of such magnitude, thousands if not millions of innocent bystanders would lose their lives, this seems a little cheap. At least make it so that she needs effort to find Mark! Mark has a broken arm as well, but only minor injuries compared to Lora. It’s a good thing they were both far away from the blast radius, eh?

The two of them head for a hospital, and as it turns out, their car is still functional even though it was thrown into a telephone pole. Now, when I first started driving, I got into a serious car accident, in which I hit a sign. Fortunately I came out of it without a scratch on me, and nobody else was in the car, but the car itself was completely totaled. And I had slammed on the brakes as soon as I realized what was happening. For the protagonists’ car to have been thrown onto a telephone pole, it would have needed to be hit by hurricane-force winds, which themselves should have been noticed by the heroes, and the car would have impacted with much more force than my car did. There is no way that it is still drivable. But it’s just a convenient plot device for Rummel to get his characters to a hospital without them dying on the way. For the aftermath of a nuclear attack, he’s depicting awfully little of the damage that would realistically ensue.

It is only after they get to the car that the fallout starts dropping. If they are that close, then both of them should have radiation sickness by now, and there is nothing the hospital will be able to do about that. But neither of them realize that they are being hit by nuclear fallout, and Lora only cares about where her purse is. That would be the least of her worries. Rummel should have just stayed away from writing disasters. So like an idiot, Lora goes deeper into the disaster area, exposing both herself and Mark to even more fallout, to retrieve her purse. On the way, she finds a stray dog that is blind and bleeding from the mouth, and takes it in the car with her. First of all, that dog probably does have an owner, and secondly, there is nothing they can do for it. There is nothing they can do for themselves, either, but they’ve deluded themselves into thinking there is. If they are that close to the fallout, then they have received a lethal dose of radiation and will die slow and agonizing deaths within a few weeks.

The narration devotes much of the page to Mark trying to get the car started, and then they drive to a hospital in Brooklyn which should be completely overfull because of the disaster. But of course it isn’t, because the protagonists’ needs trump everyone else’s.

It isn’t until they are in the car that Lora suddenly realizes that it wasn’t an asteroid, but a nuclear bomb. You’d think she’d have come to this realization sooner. This leads to some of the most unrealistic dialogue I have come across in this series:

“Shit. Shit.” Mark almost drove into a three-car pileup in an intersection. “Jesus Christ, a nuclear bomb! Who could do this?”
Lora moaned, “Goddam, I’m too messed up to even guess who did it. It has to be the worst monster that ever lived.” (page 17)

I’m just going to ignore the obvious spelling and punctuation errors in that. The editor really didn’t pay that much attention to the manuscript. Also, the heroes are surprisingly calm for what has just happened. I’m surprised they’re willing to talk about it at all. And if they did, wouldn’t they use stronger profanity than that? It’s not like Rummel is shy about depicting his characters swearing.

When they arrive at the hospital, Lora leaves the dog behind, making it pointless and only present so that the readers know that Lora is kind to animals. Even though she pretty much left it to its own fate after all. It will be trampled when all the victims arrive. Which, I point out, should have already happened, since the duo took their sweet time getting there.

Rummel describes the appearance of the hospital, even though that doesn’t matter, and once again reminds us how lucky the heroes are to have gotten there first. Nobody else’s suffering even registers on the characters’ radar. For some reason, Lora refuses anesthesia during the surgery, but it’s never explained why. It’s an attempt at characterization that fails.

The hospital staff doesn’t seem to realize what is going on. Because of their broken arms, Lora and Mark have to dictate their medical information to a nurse. As it turns out, their full names are Lora Joy Reeves and Mark John Docker. Yes, it’s exactly as infuriating as you think.² Even worse, it turns out that Lora is the president of the Joy Phim Democratic Peace Institute. (Mark is her second-in-command, and actually her husband and not her boyfriend.) So yeah, that’s why I said it was rather convenient that they did not die instantly. This may have been mentioned in the last book, but I still think it’s crazy to name their benevolent organization after Joy, since she was a proven psychopath. Also, why is it that only Dolphy and Hands’s descendants are known to be in this organization? Nepotism, ladies and gentlemen!

Even though they just got nuked, the hospital staff just lets them go because Lora says they have to leave. Don’t even think about performing further tests to see if they have radiation sickness. Just leave them to themselves! Never mind that even their stay in the hospital, they look extremely ill.

Then there’s some lovey-dovey stuff, immediately before the deluge of survivors flows in. But they don’t matter to our heroes, who leave and find the dog right where they left it. It somehow avoided being trampled to death.³

It is at this point, and no sooner, that Lora finally realizes that all of their employees were probably killed in the attack. She name-drops a bunch of people whom the readers will never know about, meaning that we can’t really feel anything about their deaths. While Lora is grieving, Mark rather callously points out that if they hadn’t overslept, they would have been in the blast radius too. If only they had, then this book would have ended. After all this angst, Lora decides that they have a duty to fulfill, and must go all the way across the country to Santa Barbara. Why would they have to go that far? Surely their organization has more headquarters than just one each on the East and West coasts, and, for all they know, other cities were nuked also.

Their car radio still works, and they use it to get fragmentary news about what exactly happened. One (clearly unreliable) pundit claims the attacks were divine punishment. It’s nice to know that even in an alternate universe, the United States still has religious fundamentalists in a position of power. Meanwhile, on a talk radio show, the host insists that it was an attack by the Russians, because even though the Cold War didn’t happen, the Cold War happened, apparently. To his credit, Rummel has Lora point out how stupid that conspiracy theory is, but it doesn’t change the fact that this conspiracy theory shouldn’t exist in the first place, because, according to what happened in the previous book, Russia became a democracy allied with the United States, and the Soviet Union never existed. The only logical explanation is that Russian democracy collapsed and the country became autocratic anyway, which would mean that, once again, John and Joy failed their mission.

Speaking of John and Joy failing their mission, the third news source the heroes listen to, which they can somehow access despite it being a TV station and they’re listening to the radio, is of a Strawman Liberal claiming that the U.S. brought the attack upon itself because of its aggressive foreign policy. Ignoring the fact that nobody would have said such a thing if God forbid there were a nuclear attack, if John and Joy had succeeded in their mission, then America should not have a belligerent foreign policy. Also, there is apparently still a developed/developing country divide. So much for utopia, eh? Rummel basically wrote a whole book to set up his alternate history timeline, and then when the time came didn’t even bother to recognize the logical consequences of his changes.

The fourth news broadcast basically confirms that not only was Manhattan nuked, but so was Washington, D.C., and the entire U.S. government was killed. The only survivor, and therefore the new President, is the Secretary of Agriculture. The only response the heroes have to this is a “Holy Jesus.”⁴ One would think they would be a lot more worried, since the government collapsed and all. And if that weren’t bad enough, it turns out that most countries of Europe were nuked as well. This is not a mere terrorist group, this is an actual, hostile nation at least as powerful as all of NATO put together. How could any political analyst in the New Universe have possibly overlooked this? Especially since they go on and on about how they successfully democratized the world and established world peace.

And all Lora cares about is that her organization is gone, not that the world has pretty much been destroyed. She certainly lives up to her namesake, that’s for sure.

As for the crazies on the radio, one of them still thinks that Russia did it even though Russia was one of the nations bombed. If this book were a satire on the media, this would be one thing, but this book is not a satire on the media. It makes no sense in context. That said, we do get a line from Mark that states that the Russia of the New Universe only became a democracy in the 1960s. Already Rummel has started to Retcon things, but I’m saving the biggest of his retcons for last. One theory that floats around is that the attack was committed by Islamic extremists. Now, I will spoil something right here, because there is no way to discuss this otherwise. (Don’t worry, it’s properly revealed within a chapter anyway.) In the New Universe, China was taken over by Muslim extremists.⁵ So when the book states that no one could figure out where the Islamic extremists obtained the resources for an attack of this magnitude, they had to be willfully blind— especially considering that China was the only nation not to be attacked.

In any case, Lora gives a speech about how, in the absence of a war, all the democratic countries just let their national security programs wither away. I highly doubt that this would ever happen, especially considering that there is still a powerful dictatorship in the New Universe, that is run by fanatics, no less. Of course, this is just an excuse for Rummel to preach his own political views, no matter how little the chance that the scenario in the story would ever actually happen.

Mark and Lora contact the families of the deceased, that are totally irrelevant to the story, and then there’s some nonsense about the dog. Then, they finally start their journey. Yes, the writing was so ambiguous that it wasn’t clear that they hadn’t gotten into the car until now.

Starting on the next page, there is something that the readers of this spork series should have become intimately familiar with: a line break. Rummel is still obsessed with them. There is some exposition about how Lora moved all her scientific stuff to Santa Barbara instead of New York⁶ and then Rummel wastes more time with the characters discussing their travel route, and generally underestimating just how difficult it would be to travel across the country if the government were to collapse. Apparently it’s hard for Mark to drive because of his broken ribs, but he does so anyway.

And with some banal narration about everything inconveniencing our heroes on their travels, the chapter ends. We haven’t even gotten to the biggest retcon yet.

Footnotes

¹ Speaking of that, this is the first book in the series to do away with the idea that the whole thing is just John telling the story after the fact.

² That’s our Hand Wave, by the way—that throwaway line about John and Joy’s assistants discovering their secret.

³ Though that would in all likelihood be a better fate than dying of radiation sickness.

⁴ page 21

⁵ I’ll go into how ludicrous this is once the spork properly gets to that point.

⁶ Where is San Francisco in all this? Wasn’t that the original location of the headquarters of the Tor Import & Export Company?

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The second chapter opens up with a change in point-of-view. Instead of focusing on Lora and Mark, it now follows a man called Abul Sabah. Now, I don’t know Arabic, but according to my research, this is not a legitimate name. Abul is a contraction of Abu al, of which abu means “father” and al is the definite article. In other words, “Abul Sabah” means “father of the Sabah”. Now, you may think this is some kind of title, but the book makes this clear that this is his real name that he was given at birth, and, not only that, but that “Abul” is his first name and “Sabah” is his last name. Clearly, Rummel did not understand that different cultures follow different rules in naming their children. Unfortunately, this is not the first foreign name that will be so obviously fake, and therefore anyone who knows the languages mentioned would shake their head at the author’s ignorance.

As it turns out, this Sabah character is located in Beijing, which Rummel continues to call “Peking”. Even if the Pinyin system was never developed in the New Universe, one would think that the Chinese would eventually come up with a similar system to render their language in the Roman alphabet. Even if it was very different from our universe’s Romanization system, the capital of China is not pronounced with a K sound, so why would it still be spelled like that?

Anyway, the header says that it’s a day after the nuclear attacks, but since China is on the other side of the International Dateline, it’s actually the same “day”. At least Rummel remembered that.

This is what Abul Sabah is thinking right now:

Abul Sabah glared at his son Turghun in sad anger. He could no longer hide his hatred.
I wish he were dead. (page 26)

Oh my gosh, what could Turghun have done to anger his father to such an extent? Well, he’s standing right next to the commander of all of China’s military, one Mirzat Zunun, and the chief imam, Ch’en Hsun. Except for that last, everyone’s name sounds vaguely Turkic, and that and the fact that this imam is Chinese are the first clues that China has been conquered by a foreign nation.

Sabah is terrified at those before him, because he knows that he is in trouble. Even his son has betrayed him. Since the readers do not know exactly who Sabah is at this point, they have no idea what is going on, because Rummel is taking his time in explaining the situation. Instead, he spends a paragraph describing the supercomputers that are also in the room, before getting to the fact that they are how China launched all of its nuclear missiles.

All of their bombs went off except the one headed for Tokyo, in some perverse situational irony. That is in fact why all the higher-ups in China are meeting, in order to make sure that their second attempt does not fail. This is nothing more than an excuse to gather everyone there, because the second bomb goes off without a hitch.

Even though Abul Sabah is the theocratic dictator of China, and therefore the Big Bad of the story, even he is horrified by what his people have just done. Not only have they killed billions and likely plunged the planet into a nuclear winter, but they did so against his orders, and he realizes that this is not only a declaration of war against the entire world, but also a coup d’état against him, led by his own son, with the approval of everyone else in his government.

He then gives an internal monologue about how his son is going to demand that every other country in the world submit to annexation, and is more concerned about the fact that everybody will think that he did it than the fact that billions of lives were lost. Well, he is the villain, albeit unusually sympathetic for one in Rummel’s work. Of course, if he really had wanted to prevent this, he would have removed all of the fanatics from power, and he did not. So this is still his fault.

That’s the thing. Rummel wants us to feel sorry for Sabah, because his movement spun out of control and his son became much more fanatical than he, but we will later learn of his backstory, and considering some of the atrocities that Sabah committed, he is in no position to take the moral high ground against his son.

You’re almost certainly wondering why they did this. Well, Turghun explains that their goal is to forcibly convert everybody to their own sect of Islam, and they want to do this by nuking every major city back to the Stone Age. There’s a Strawman argument, and then there’s this. In the real world, nobody would be that crazy, because in the real world, the US has nuclear weapons, and would surely use them in the case of an attack. But Rummel wants the New Universe to be swiftly conquered by the bad guys, so he cannot allow a scenario of mutually assured destruction, and therefore has America foolishly engage in total disarmament in the naïve belief that it has no enemies even though a very powerful country believes in the very antithesis of democracy and human rights, actively proselytizes these beliefs at the point of a sword, and has every reason to lie about having nuclear weapons. Did Rummel think that Good Is Dumb, or something?

Of course, the real reason for this foolishness is because the book was written when American enthusiasm for the war in Iraq was starting to give way to anti-war sentiments, and Rummel was not on the protestors’ side. Never mind that Iraq, even though it was a dictatorship in the Middle East, was not an Islamist dictatorship in the Middle East, and did not have anywhere close to the resources to pose an actual threat, so it is not a good comparison. You can’t convince people to your way of thinking by such gross hyperbole, but Rummel did not understand that.

Abul glanced at the two security officers in the back of the booth. Both had their eyes on him; they always did, no matter where he went. Sometimes he felt like pissing on their legs, and excusing himself as an old man. (page 28)

That’s just disgusting, Rummel. What’s worse is that this isn’t the last time he mentions it.

There is some backstory about how all of the people in Sabah’s original government have died and that none of his current government would care if Turghun were to kill him and take his place. Now Sabah is despairing, and makes what is known as a “non-apology apology”; that is to say, he says that he is sorry about how things turned out, but phrases it in such a way as to be clear that he does not actually believe that he was in the wrong or take responsibility for his actions. I know that Rummel wanted the readers to feel a little sorry for him despite him being the villain, but it isn’t working.

But then, not only does he inflict that on us, but we are then exposed to something I hoped would have been gone for good in the first book. That’s right, we’ve got ourselves a Very Special Flashback Sequence.

This sums up what I think of that.

We flash back to the year 1914, at which time, I should point out, John and Joy had recently intervened in China. Apparently the now-democratic China allowed its far provinces, such as Xinjiang, to become independent, even though that did not happen after the overthrow of the Emperor in real life. Because most of the population of Xinjiang is Uyghur, the new country called itself “Uighuristan”. Yeah, that’s not the right spelling, but since when has Rummel cared? Funny how John never mentioned the existence of a Uighuristan in his diary, huh? This is a flashback to Abul Sabah’s birth, meaning that he is eighty by the time of the nuclear attack.

His family, and in fact his entire region, is dirt poor. His mother gave birth to him completely alone and had to cut the umbilical cord herself. We also learn that his father is named Aisha, even though that’s a girls’ name. Come on, Rummel. Most people know that, since it’s a stereotypical ghetto name, if nothing else. Once Aisha sees his son, he explicitly names him Abul. Yep, the kid got saddled with the name of “father of the”. No wonder he grew up to be evil. It also proves beyond a doubt that Rummel did not do any research on foreign names at all.

The real purpose of this flashback is to establish that, even by the standards of a poor area of Central Asia, Abul Sabah is devoutly religious. He attends school at a madrassa and everything. Now, I may be wrong, but I don’t think that there was such thing as free education in early twentieth century Central Asia, even if the “education” was nothing more than religious indoctrination.

The first thirteen years of Abul Sabah’s life are quickly glossed over, just to establish that at that age, he starts to suffer symptoms of epilepsy. Now, there was a theory in nineteenth-century Europe that Muhammad was epileptic. It is no longer believed by many historians, but that is what is being paralleled here. This is significant.

Now, Abul knew at the time that nothing had truly gone on, but he decides to play a prank on his father, and tell him that he received a visit from the angel Gabriel and that he had been chosen as a new prophet. Yes, he just compared himself to Muhammad. Now, in reality, if a Muslim boy told his father this, his father would probably scold him for “making fun of the Prophet” or something like that. His father would certainly not drop to his knees and believe every word that his son just said, especially when he knows that his son is something of a practical joker. But that is exactly what Aisha does. He falls for it hook, line, and sinker.

So, to make a long story short, Aisha sincerely believes that his son is now a prophet, and tells his entirely family to obey Abul. Now, all this time Abul is convinced that his father doesn’t believe it and is trying to teach him a lesson, but, as we soon learn, Abul is the only intelligent person in a family of hillbillies, because his father takes it at face value. Yeah, I know that they are uneducated and devoutly religious, but a devout Muslim would believe that there are no more prophets after Muhammad and that anyone who claims to be so is a liar. The treatment of Baha’is and Ahmadiyyas in Muslim theocracies is absolutely terrible, because they are considered to be heretics.

But Abul does not realize that the joke has gone too far. Instead of admitting that he was fooling around, he continues to tell his little lie. He assumes that this is just harmless fun, even though his uncle is somehow a wealthy businessman who contributes to their mosque, even though it was established that his family was poor. Consistency is not Rummel’s strong suit.

In any case, Abul’s uncle tells the mullah in charge of the mosque about the revelation, and the mullah investigates. Now the kid is terrified that the mullah will think he is a blasphemer, but surprisingly, the mullah is actually rational about this and assumes it was just a hallucination brought about by the heat, and he lets Abul go. But this is the last time that anybody will act like a reasonable person in the flashback. This should have been the end of it, but then Rummel would be unable to have his Villain Suetopia take over the world.

Despite the religious authority of their town saying that it was just a hallucination brought about by heat exhaustion, Abul’s father and uncle still try to convert people to their new cult. They don’t bother listening to their religious authority, so you would think that he would do something about that. But no, he just lets them go about it for a year, though they get few converts in that time. Unfortunately, a year later, Abul is at the market with his mother, when he has another epileptic fit, in front of a bunch of people, who go on about how he has “talked with God” and some such.

The narration isn’t clear as to whether the onlookers truly believe it was a revelation or if they are just taunting him, but Abul’s pride is wounded, so instead of brushing it off, he starts to recite some religious text but with himself in the place of Muhammad. Somehow, nobody recognizes his plagiarism, as he gets the crowd to believe that he is actually a prophet. One thing leads to another, and Abul decides to just run with it, claiming that he is a prophet even though he knows that he isn’t one. So Rummel cannot claim that Abul was just a practical joker who let it get out of hand. He was perfectly able to stop it at the marketplace, but chose not to, just for attention, and then he begins to Believe His Own Lies. He is not a sympathetic Anti-Villain, despite Rummel trying to make him seem like one.

Soon, his teaching spreads to most of his hometown, despite the best efforts of the religious scholars to stop it. And here is why I think that is unrealistic: surely Abul is not the first Muslim to suffer an epileptic fit? So how come, in the space of about 1400 years, no such epileptic preached that he was a new prophet and got a following large enough to have a shot at taking over the government? Rummel just cops out here.

Well, the mullahs aren’t going to take that lying down, and conspire to denounce Sabah as a fraud and kill him. However, he has already converted the chief of police, who warns him of their plan, and arranges to have the conspirators killed instead. Then, Sabah’s followers put the town on lockdown and force everybody to follow him, and kill those who refuse.

At this point, Sabah begins to have second thoughts, but is terrified by his subordinates, who are not averse to killing him and taking over his movement if he denounces them. So he does nothing to stop them from getting more and more fanatical, though by this point, the 1930s, the situation has spiraled completely out of control.

By this point, the government of Uighuristan has gotten involved. This is open rebellion, and they cannot allow it. So what do they do? Just wait in their capital while Sabah’s forces march to them. Somehow Sabah’s army wins every confrontation without a setback and takes over the government with ease. Why? Because they are Villain Sues, that’s why! By this point, Sabah is basically a puppet to his general, Musa, who was able to win the war through sheer brutality and Stuishness.

After Sabah’s followers have taken over the government, they are absolutely brutal to their defeated enemies. Some of his opponents escape to China and reveal what just happened to the world, but the governments of the world do nothing but give Sabah a slap on the wrist. You would think that this would be grounds for a war with Uighuristan now, since rebels have overthrown the government. But nobody gets involved. Yeah, Sabah’s people may have been able to take over their own government, but they live in a small and weak country. They would have no chance against a coalition of the strongest countries in the world, who by now are all democracies and would have reason to oppose them.

Now, just in case you think that Sabah’s neighbor, China, wants to do anything about the refugees, you are sadly mistaken:

Abul had no thought of it at the time, but China would be his next conquest. (page 42)

And with that not-subtle-at-all-foreshadowing, the chapter ends. I abridged what happened heavily, because most of it was padding.

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