Darth.Bill
Versed in the lewd.
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- May 4, 2018
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Dresden Files: Small Favor by Jim Butcher.
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That reason was the Onslaught trilogy, all three books of which were by J. Robert King. That, or forum mismanagement. Alarming number of photographs of distended rectums stuffed with bandanas, in those days.I can't comment on Pact, but... I mean, yes, it was the best of a bad bunch of post-Weatherlight books, but 'Novels and Storylines' on the WotC board got renamed 'Storylines' and the whole forum got banned from talking about them for a reason.
A regular meeting with Leonard 'Captain Cold' Snart. He's still in prison, isn't he? Belle Reve, I suppose.13th April
16:01 GMT -5
"What's your favorite book?"
I.. frown slightly. Leonard generally doesn't bother with personal questions, and… He doesn't respond all that well if I try asking them. But it's not as if it's a security risk.
"I, uh... I never heard of him..."
You have class, at least, that's one of the best Discworld novels.
Man, if only you could have accessed the internet in a place Sir Terry did write. Snag a collection of e-books. Too bad you didn't get the chance in the Buffyverse. Then again, early internet era anyway."He your favourite author?"
"Yes. Um, if you're interested… I'm sorry, but he doesn't exist in this reality, and I've only ever been able to do a ninety six percent recreation of Small Gods…"
The joy of there only being so many logical cape names. Sooner or later, someone's going to end up with the same name as someone else, who might not want to share."No, it's… Something Wizard said."
"Wiz-?"
If Wizard's out then I need to speak to John-.
Yeah, not a good association for Mardon."Weather Wizard, not.. whoever you were thinking of."
"William Zard. He operates under the name 'Wizard' and he was one of the people responsible for Roanoke Island."
'Weather Warlock', perhaps. Or 'The Meteomancer..." On second thoughts, no. That makes him sound like a magical cook (meaty-o-mancer...)Leonard looks right at me, his eyes widening slightly. "Shit. Yeah, not him. I never even heard of him."
"You might want to suggest to Mister Mardon that he consider a different abbreviation. If the police hear someone call him 'Wizard', they might just shoot first without checking."
Well, Mardon could be useful concerning weather control tech. Would you want to risk losing that to a nervous Central City cop?"See, this was what he was talking about. You just gave me advice to give him so he doesn't get killed because the cops thought he was someone else."
"Okay?"
Besides 'Don't go there, it's fucked up'?"Do you have people..? Superheroes, who are total psychos?"
"I… Generally wouldn't call people like that 'superheroes'. I mean… There was The Reaper in Gotham. That was after Green Lantern One left but before Batman started working there. He murdered.. quite a lot of people. Quite a lot of them had it coming…" I frown. "Do you actually know anything about Gotham?"
At least he can laugh at himself. Can you see Batman making a joke like that?"Everyone who lives there is crazy."
"Hey, I live-. Yeah, okay."
A long, sordid tale of bad people using good people..."I went to Gotham once, 'cause Mister Freeze had some equipment I needed. Never went back again."
"Right, but the city's history?"
Everyone has hidden depths, OL. Just because he doesn't show it doesn't mean he doesn't know it."Used to be an alright place, then manufacturing jobs left and crime went up." My surprise clearly shows on my face. "What? I go to Kadabra's lectures."
"Sorry, sorry, I know you're intelligent, I just didn't think you were interested in that sort of thing."
He's got a fair point. No profit in taking from the poor. Just bad karma."No point robbing someone with no money."
I give him a mildly disappointed look, to which he responds with a small smile.
"What? There isn't."
Dude, do you know what Gotham was like before Batman? 'Cesspool' would be being charitable."So the Reaper… The place had gone to pot. The mob owned the police, the politicians and the judges. So the Reaper decided to kill them all."
His smile grows slightly. "Didn't do a very good job."
I mean... I can see him making them useful to him, but..."There were a lot of them. He killed quite a few of them, then got too badly injured to carry on. By the time he was fighting fit again, Batman was in his second year and the police were starting to get straightened out. But he didn't care and went right back to murdering. Two honest policemen killed and several injured, Batman decided that the only way to keep the death toll down was to make a deal with the mobs-"
I know, right? Seriously, that's..."What?"
"-for information."
"No, no, you can't just drop something like that and keep talking."
That's usually what happens when Batman is involved in something. Or any popular hero, really. Yay for the Law of Narrative Causality."What? Batman hated them, but the Reaper killed a lot of people in a short space of time. He thought that with their help he could deal with the Reaper in a few weeks, but that the mobs would be a long term problem whatever he did."
"And given that Batman's still around and the Reaper isn't, I can guess how it went."
And he makes a good example of why Batman shouldn't kill people, too. I mean, sure, Bats says 'I wouldn't be able to stop', but that's a worst-case scenario. And as the Texans say: Some people need killin'."The Reaper's motives were a lot like Batman's. And his aims were too. But his methods weren't. If he'd been a little more discerning… I mean, Gotham was pretty bad. But the moment he killed honest police officers escorting a criminal they already had in custody, no one thought he was a superhero. He was just another serial killer."
Yeah, you can be a punch-clock villain, with an honest moral code. Or you could be an asshole knight paladin of a 'hero' with no room for shades of grey in your worldview. There's all sorts."But a supervillain's a supervillain."
"I'd.. encourage you not to think about it in such binary terms."
There's still a point where you go from mere villain to complete monster. Joker is a good example of the latter.He leans back in his chair and waves his right hand. "I mean, the more violent a superhero is, the less heroic they are. But for a supervillain, the more violent you are, the more villainous you are."
"That's… Surprisingly philosophical. What brought this on?"
Dude... His dad was... Ah. That was intentional."The day after I told you Luthor offered me a job, I started getting letters. WayneTech, KordTech, a few other places…"
"Mister Luthor may not be Alva, but I'd still be much happier with you working somewhere else. Almost anywhere else, in fact. It would be like putting a bottle of whiskey down next to an alcoholic."
Yep. The Rogues have a code of honour. You don't backstab each other, you don't hurt anyone who isn't getting in your way, and you don't be a dick about the work.A reference to his father usually gets a scowl out of him, but he just looks away again.
"It's about class."
Acceptable targets. It's still bad, but it's bad people suffering so it's okay? But the CEOs don't feel the hit from it. It's the people underneath them, all the way down to the tellers, who cop wage cuts to cover the insurance hike..."In what sense?"
"When I thought about what sort of supervillain I wanted to be. When I started out." He shakes his head. "I know Doc Quinzel wants me to say I'm lashing out at society 'cause I want to lash out at my dad, and… Yeah, she's probably.. not wrong. But you don't tell yourself.. you're stealing from innocent people 'cause you can. You… Dress it up in your own head, too. Like, there was a story about one of the banks in Central City foreclosing on a whole lot of mortgages. I think.. one of the car factories closed and put a lot of people out of work." He shrugs. "So I robbed their vault. I didn't do it because they foreclosed; I don't know anyone who got a loan from them. I did it because… The fact they did that made it okay. They were bad, so… If I make their lives harder, so what?"
As I said before: Some people need killin'. I think Batman might be a little miffed, but most Gothamites won't shed a tear for old Jack.He smiles.
"If I shot some security guy dead when I was robbing a place, that's murder. And if I shot a psycho like Joker dead, it's still murder, but…"
Insightful. A good way to tell the okay people from the bad... But not a perfect one."But he has it coming, so it's easier to tell yourself that's why you did it. You don't have to internalise 'I'm a guy who will kill anyone to get his way'."
"Yeah. Wiz-. Mark said something like that, once. 'Ask someone what their favorite book is'. 'cause… Anyone who's read a book has a favourite book, even if they don't like it much." He shrugs. "Right? And it's not like it's a big secret or anything. The only reason not to tell someone is if you've literally never read a book, or you're such a total psycho that you can't… Have a conversation without turning it into a fight."
It's not like you don't have time to read. Why not hit up the prison library?"And I don't think I'm that person. I know I never wanted to be. But I also know I can't tell you what my favourite book is."
"What's your favourite book?"
'Ask someone what their favourite book is'.
Start with Equal Rites, if later Rincewind books interest you, you can always go back. But the first two Discworld Books are almost standalone compared to the rest of the series.I've been meaning to read the Terry Pratchett's series, still haven't even started any of them.
Leonard Snart is American. Isn't that how they spell it?"What's your favourite book?"
'Ask someone what their favourite book is'.
I couldn't finish Raising Steam. Snuff felt like generic fantasy, but Raising Steam was genuinely bad.My favorite book is also by Terry Pratchett. Thing is, I can't tell you what it is exactly because my feelings are equally tied between The Last Continent and Snuff. Raising Steam was good too, but reading it makes me feel a bit too sad for me to call it my favorite. The Last Continent feels like a story about how you can't escape fate, except when you do. Snuff feels like a story where you are on the backdrop by the awfulness there is in the world. Leaning more forwards The Last Continent because of Rincewind.
When I was young I wanted to be like Rincewind. Not cause he was a WIZZARD of course. I wanted to be like Rincewind because he escaped. He endured. No matter what the world threw at him he lived as best as he could and undoubtedly made the world a better place as he made his way in life. Rincewind had a strength I envied. His resilience even when it felt like the whole world was against him was something I admired as a child, and still do to this day.
I honestly find myself hoping he can finally go straight... But then I remember how well that usually goes for Rogues.
13th April
16:01 GMT -5."
"And I don't think I'm that person. I know I never wanted to be. But I also know I can't tell you what my favorite book is."
I appreciate the message that Snuff tries to convey, albeit poorly. Also the idea of Nobby Nobbs hooking up with a goblin girl is hilarious. The quality of those books does genuinely feel like they have dropped in some areas compared to the rest of his works, but to be fair those two books were the first two books he wrote when his Alzheimers started getting really bad.I couldn't finish Raising Steam. Snuff felt like generic fantasy, but Raising Steam was genuinely bad.
I can't comment on Pact, but... I mean, yes, it was the best of a bad bunch of post-Weatherlight books, but 'Novels and Storylines' on the WotC board got renamed 'Storylines' and the whole forum got banned from talking about them for a reason.
The problem is, he switches between 'favorite' and 'favourite' several times. For instance, his second and third lines in the scene, after the first correction... I just went for the lesser number of apparent errors. Otherwise, every occurence of 'favourite' in his dialogue is wrong...
I used to play a game called Magic: the Gathering, produced by a company called Wizards of the Coast. I also used to frequent their forum. One of the boards on the forum was called 'Novels and Storylines', where people discussed the fictional works associated with the game. At the time, each of the three card sets released every year had a novel associated with them. The first few I read were... Okay. Some interesting ideas, no real depth. Some people liked them, some didn't.
I'll correct those then, thank you.The problem is, he switches between 'favorite' and 'favourite' several times. For instance, his second and third lines in the scene, after the first correction... I just went for the lesser number of apparent errors. Otherwise, every occurence of 'favourite' in his dialogue is wrong...
That is really very sad."And I don't think I'm that person. I know I never wanted to be. But I also know I can't tell you what my favorite book is."
Hate to be the one to point it out, but...
...You missed one.
"And I don't think I'm that person. I know I never wanted to be. But I also know I can't tell you what my favorite book is."
You see, the problem is he's translating this strange language, 'American', for English speakers. Oh? You mean there might be Americans reading this?