[LNH/ACRA] Legion of Net.Heroes Vol.2 #23
Saxon Brenton
[Acraphobe content warning: contains sexual and scatalogical references,
and general mental imagery that you'll probably want to unthink later.]
[Continuity note: This story occurs just before _Beige Countdown_ #12]
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| |-| \
| |-| [] / #23
| | | [] egion of \ 'Slash Fiction'
| | | []__ [] [] [] [] / Intermezzo - Act 1
| | | [___][ \[]et.[]__[]eroes \ (A Beige Countdown tie-in)
| | | []\ ] [ __ ] /
| |-| [] [] [] [] \ written by and copyright 2007
| |-|___________________________/ Saxon Brenton
| |
| |
| | The painted cover has a scene with a large flock of sea birds of
| | the genus Sula nesting and feeding by a tropical shoreline.
| | The covers blurb exclaims: "Hey kids! Look! Boobies!"
| |
| |
| |
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[Roll call for this issue:]
o Senses Lass!
o Catalyst Lass!
o Master Blaster!
o MegaChurch Man!
o Multi-Tasking Man!
o Psionic Lad!
o Special Bonding Boy!
o WikiBoy!
These are just some of the super-powered do-gooders who belong to an
organisation that thinks that running around with your underwear on
the outside is acceptable as a fashion statement. They are: the
Legion of Net.Heroes!
@%%%%%%%%%%@
=( 'Irony Man decisively took off the helmet of his high-tech
battle suit and looked the black-clad master of ninjitsu squarely in
the eye. "Ultimate Ninja, I have something important to tell you, but
I'm pretty sure you're not going to like it. Hell, I don't like it,
but I have to face facts and get this out in the open rather than let
it stew. I love you. I've always loved you. I think you're the most
awesome leader that the Legion has ever had. I worship the ground you
walk on, and I get hard just thinking about the perfection of your body." '
=( ' "Say nothing, Toony-san," said Ultimate Ninja, and with but a
single deft movement removed his one-piece costume, revealing to all
the world that he too was aroused. "The Zen perfection of this moment
needs no words." '
=( 'They took each other in their arms, and their mouths met in a
passionate kiss...' )=
ACK!!!
Cheesecake-Eater Lad almost dropped the plate of pot roast ripple
cheesecake that he had been in the process of serving to Pizza Girl.
A reflexive use of his own ninjitsu skills prevented a messy accident
from occurring, but truthfully they probably wouldn't have noticed if
it had. For a terrible second they stared at each other, their faces
frozen in a rictus that read: 'Did I really just think that?'.
The rest of the world came back. The sounds of people going
"Eeeew!" or in some cases trying to suppress nervous laughter dragged
Cheesecake-Eater Lad's attention back to the rest of the cafeteria,
where other Legionnaires had suddenly lost interest in their meals
as well. At the very least they were surprised. Some were outright
horrified. Several kiwis had their green feathers fluffed up in
agitation, and Master Blaster had made an enormous mess on his table
by choking on his drink and having Mr Paprika snort out his nose (now
that's a seriously startled LNHer's pop!).
"What the Hell was that!?" Master Blaster demanded.
At another table entirely Senses Lass was one of only a few
net.heroes who were looking thoughtful. She stood up with an air of
purpose and determination about her, and around the cafeteria eyes
turned in her direction. She was a red-head with a voluptuous figure
and breasts that were even bigger than Power Girl's. As the old joke
went, she was literally physically incapable of falling flat on her face.
That was not what drew their gaze. In fact she was cheating a bit,
and was deliberately if lightly using her powers to alter perceptions
to catch their attention. She said, "That was a psychic broadcast,
possibly it was an attack. Don't let it rattle you. If it *was* an
attack then becoming unbalanced is what our enemies want." Then she
coughed nervously because she wasn't really used to public speaking
yet. She turned off her powers and left.
"Hey, Senses Lass, wait up!" came a voice from behind her. Senses
Lass turned to see Catalyst Lass following her from the cafeteria.
"Cat! Hello. How's the campaigning going?"
"It's going just great," Cat replied brightly. "So, what do you
think about what just happened?"
She shrugged. "It was a psychic broadcast," she repeated. "I
didn't recognise the mind it was coming from. I got a direction but
not a range..."
"Mutant Town?" Cat guessed impishly.
Senses Lass nodded with a wry grin. "'Fraid so. I'd like to go
scout around. See if there's anything I can find closer to the source,
or if I can get a triangulation if it happens again."
Catalyst Lass nodded. "Okey-dokey. But keep in touch, and don't
hesitate to call for backup if you need it."
@%%%%%%%%%%@
Multi-Tasking Man sighed, took another gulp of hyper-caffeinated
coffee, and moved on to the next webpage. .oO( Infinite April, the
STUFF.org disaster and then the President's Net.ahuman Responsibility Act
have certainly taken the shine off of the reputation of all heroes, )
he thought. .oO( Even saving the city from Mynabird and his army of
net.villains only improved our standing a little bit. )
[Infinite April is what the public calls the Infinite Leadership
Crisis. The events at STUFF.org and the subsequent passage of the
Net.ahuman Responsibility Act were in the _58.5_ limited series. The
Legion returned to fight Mynabird's net.villains at the end of the
Infinite Leadership Crisis in _LNH Comics Presents_ #501 - Footnote Girl]
Multi-Tasking Man knew that the problem was this: the Legion were
public figures. Often controversial public figures. Commentary (both
good and bad, fair and unfair) was to be expected. But not everybody
could be expected to be witty and pointedly relevant in their opinions.
Some of them fell back on simple acrimony, slander and rudeness.
And then there was Internet Rule 34: if it exists, there will be
porn about it.
So when a sexually explicit depiction of the Legion was put in
the public domain, was this an example of gutterminded slander, or of
genuine erotic appreciation arriving from out of left field?
The charcoal drawings of Catalyst Lass posing for a swimsuit
edition were borderline. But then there was a text story where Easily-
Discovered Man and Easily-Discovered Man Lite had a Batman and Robin
style relationship out of Frederick Wertham's most lurid fantasies.
The style of the... prose... made Multi-Tasking Man suspect that it was
probably legally actionable. He had made a note of it - one of far too
many in his opinion - to be sent for review by the Legion's lawyers.
Which left the animation with the almost naked Squidman using his mask
for tentacle sex. Was the concept of tentacle hentai widely enough
understood to be used as slander? Multi-Tasking Man didn't know, and
just having to think about it made him want to scrub his brain out with
bleach.
Multi-Tasking Man wasn't sure whether what had happened this morning
was an instance of deliberate vilification or of clumsy erotic appeal.
What he did know was that intrusive telepathic broadcasts like that,
whether assault, pornography or political comment, would be getting the
perpetrator in a whole lot of trouble.
@%%%%%%%%%%@
Senses Lass left the LNH-HQ and flew off towards Mutant Town.
Normally she would not have assumed that the mystery broadcaster was
there, but once the fact had suggested itself it did not surprise her.
Mutant Town offered the twin advantage and disadvantage of enabling an
evil mastermind to hide in plain sight while at the same time being a
bit too obvious a hiding place. Not that you could necessarily expect
rational planning from a supervillain.
She was making use of a personal flight.thingy, and so the wind
rushed through her hair as she made her way across the city. She was
also using her powers over perceptions to create a subtle 'don't notice
me' effect. It was not particularly strong, but in the airspace over
Mutant Town it did not have to be. One more flying woman was hardly a
remarkable occurrence and it was easier to influence people into ignoring
her as unimportant than it was to forcibly edit their perceptions to not
see her at all. Especially since most of her attention was focused on
feeling for any familiar telepathic traces.
There were none that Senses Lass could detect. After an hour of
searching she paused to reassess the situation. Her time had not been
totally wasted because she had foiled two muggings and rescued a cat
from a tree, but she was getting no closer to achieving her primary
goal. Unfortunately she was limited to only doing passive scans that
picked up whatever was being broadcast. Active telepathic probes were
beyond her; it was simply the nature of her powers.
She landed on a rooftop to think. She was now on the far side of
Mutant Town, the area that some called a net.ahuman community and others
a net.ahuman ghetto. Both descriptions were true, but both were also
vast oversimplifications. Mutant Town understood difference, so, for
example, it was little wonder that when extraterrestrial youngsters came
to study on Earth, Net.ropolis was a favoured destination. Many aliens
settled down in and around the Mutant Town area. This was because it's
always a good thing to live in a community which automatically understood
about alternate biologies and was prepared to cater to diets that used
a different biochemical base.
And speaking of aliens, an idea occurred to Senses Lass. Perhaps
she should go and speak with John.
@%%%%%%%%%%@
=( 'A sweaty Cheesecake-Eater Lad walked in to mens' change room
after his training session. He peeled off his costume and turned on
the hot water for a shower. Then, on the spur of them moment he paused
before one of the full length mirrors and struck a Charles Atlas pose.
He had to admit, he looked good.
=( '"You have lost weight," observed Kid Kirby.'
=( 'Slowly, almost lazily, Cheesecake-Eater Lad turned around. He
had not heard the Kirbian enter, but it did not do for a man trained as
a ninja to admit surprise to anything. "Ever since I cracked the secret
of non-fattened cheesecake I've been putting work into getting rid of
my love handles," he purred dangerously. "So, tell me Kid Kirby, what
brings you down here? I would have thought you had no more need of
going to the mens' room than you need to breathe when you're in space."'
=( '"In truth there are some bodily functions that I have chosen
*not* to transcend," declaimed Kid Kirby. He raised one clenched fist
and pounded it against his chest. In response there was a burst of
Kibry Krackle and his armour went away, relegated to some unthinkable
dimensional until such time as he saw need to recall it to back him.'
=( '"Ah," said Cheesecake-Eater Lad knowingly. He steeped forward
and ran both hands across those magnificent pectorals and down those
washboard abs. "You really do have a cosmic body."...')=
Psionic Lad leaned back in his chair and frowned. Well, that had
been a bust.
He had been waiting to see if another story fragment would be
telepathically beamed at the Legion. It had been his intention to lock
onto it and trace it back to its source, thereby discovering whether
it was indeed a net.villain attack, or a prank, or a particularly
ill-considered piece of advertising by one of the telepathic porn pay
services.
To Psionic Lad's consternation his plan had not panned out. His
psi tracer had dissolved away into nothingness as soon as the broadcast
message had ended, just like the way his first attempt to grab onto the
earlier sending had failed.
It wasn't just him being unprepared then. There was something
'slippery' about these particular transmissions. The whole situation
was beginning to look more and more suspicious.
"Psionic Lad?"
Psionic Lad looked up. "Oh, hey there Special Bonding Boy."
"You look a bit peeved."
"I'm just having trouble trying to trace those telepathic
broadcasts," said Psionic Lad.
"Ah, well, that's just what I wanted to talk to you about. I may
be able to add a tidbit of information."
"Really?"
"You know how most of the Legion is convinced that it... they...
may be a deliberate supervillain attack? I'm not so sure about that.
I may not be a full telepath, but my empathy is strong enough to have
felt the emotions attached to the broadcast. I didn't feel any malice
during the incident."
"None at all?" said Psionic Lad, intrigued. He hadn't been paying
attention to that aspect. "So was there any emotional content?"
"Yes," said Special Bonding Boy. "Lust."
@%%%%%%%%%%@
Senses Lass arrived at the Mutant Town Community Psychic College
and went to visit one of the headmasters.
"Mary-Anne. Good to see you again," said John Goodberries as he
shook Senses Lass's hand. He was tall, thin and purple, and although he
spoke fluent English his speech was lightly flavoured with the literally
alien accent of the Inhilators. "Please come in. What brings you here?"
"I just needed to ask you if you experienced a psychic broadcast
earlier today."
He smiled. "A few, actually. You'll need to be more specific."
She outlined the circumstances of her investigation. John
Goodberries listened carefully and then shook his head.
"I can't say that I encountered that one. But we should ask John
as well," he said, referring - as Senses Lass knew - to John Fishwoods,
who was John Goodberries' partner in operating the psychic school.
Goodberries checked a timetable and said, "He was teaching clairvoyance
at about that time, and either he or his students might have experienced
something."
"Okay," said Senses Lass, and then she felt as slight rushing
sensation as Goodberries contacted Fishwoods and included her in the
psi link. After a perfunctory greeting she repeated her story and this
time gave the two extraterrestrials her memory of the event. She could
feel John Fishwoods giving the memory grave consideration, but from
Goodberries there was also a flicker of surprise and amusement.
=( I am sorry Senses Lass, )= replied Fishwoods. =( I did not feel
that, and none of my students or any of the other sensitives I have
talked to today have mentioned anything like that. )=
.oO( Thank you anyway, ) she thought.
Fishwoods gave a telepathic farewell and then Goodberries closed
the connection. She gave Goodberries a wry look. "This might be
intrusive, but did I feel amusement from you?"
John Goodberries looked somewhat abashed. "Yes, I'm afraid so.
Not at the discomfort that it caused to the Legion," he hastened to add.
"It's just that I've always been amazed and surprised at the Earth
human obsession with sex. To be honest, I've always thought it would
be better if your people had a set mating season. It would make things
so much simpler."
"I think I can agree we that," she said, at the same time taking
note of his use of the phrase 'your people'. She felt comfortable with
it, and she realised that she liked the way it made her feel like she
was included among humans rather than as a human-shaped construct built
to infiltrate the Legion and destroy it with sexual wiles.
And since they were on the subject of mating seasons she wondered
if she should enquire about John's own problems. She decided against
it. But still...
John Goodberries was one of the extraterrestrials left behind after
the failed attack on the Looniearth by the Inhilators. [In the _War
Without Worlds_ miniseries - Footnote Girl]. The Inhilators had come
in their garishly coloured mobile planet to telekinetically tear apart
the Looniearth and snort it up to get a psychic high. The Legion had
stopped them. However, when the rogue planet had been teleported away
sans its world-sized plot device engine, it had left behind a few tens
of thousands of aliens from the Inhilator underclass for no reason
that anyone had been able to adequately explain. After a while they
had recovered enough from a lifetime of living in the stultifying
psionosphere of their home planet to stop drooling, and had thereafter
integrated as well as any other net.ahuman minority.
However, the Inhilator ruling class hadn't *just* kept their proles
in a barely conscious, blissed-out state in order to tap their collective
psychic power for the rulers' own use. They had controlled pretty much
every part of the proles' lives, including breeding. Normally the proles
were, one and all, literally sexless being - lacking both genitals and
sex drive. It was only when the rulers decided that the prole numbers
had dropped below optimal level that they would activate the psychic
trigger in a segment of the underclass population to prompt them to
procreate.
The proles left behind on the Looniearth had made considerable
advances in establishing themselves as a self-aware and self-motivated
population. Some of them, like Goodberries and Fishwoods, had even
worked to develop their mental abilities for themselves rather than as
psychic batteries for others. But even they had not yet discovered the
psychic trigger that controlled their breeding cycle. Unless they could
find it, then the current generation of Inhilators on Earth would be the
only generation of Inhilators on Earth.
Senses Lass pushed these musings away. "How is the school going?"
she asked.
"Not too good," he said frankly. "Enrolments are dropping off,
and a number of students are withdrawing. We may have to close within
the year."
That was astonishing news. "But why?" she asked, genuinely
confused. "I mean, even if the number of people interested in the
advanced classes goes down, there should still be a demand from new psis
who need to learn basic psychic skills."
"There are," he agreed. "After all, the humans of this planet are
a latent psychic species, and I expect that there will always people who
are breaking out with at least some telepathic powers. That isn't the
issue."
"Then what's the problem?"
"The Net.ahuman Responsibility Act has people scared," was John's
simple reply.
She frowned. "They don't think training is a good idea?"
"The problem isn't the issue of training," said John. "Well, not
for most people who are worried about the Act. The compulsory aspect is
causing some concern, because for every person who compares it to having
to pass a driving test and registering to own a car, there seems to be
someone else who cites the fact that you don't have to register to own
a gun. The National Rifle Association is telling anyone who'll listen
that this is nothing more than the first move in an elaborate plan to
sneak in gun control laws."
Senses Lass thought this was unlikely. "Considering that President
Luthor has had control of all three levels of government ever since the
anti-torture legislation was enacted [In the 'American Nightmare' arc,
_Haiku Gorilla #297-327 - Footnote Girl], I think that if he wanted to
pass gun control laws he wouldn't need to 'sneak'."
"True, and to be fair that's only what a minority are saying. The
main complaint as far as I can tell is that the Responsibility Act
might be a backdoor for superhuman conscription. After what happened at
STUFF.org people seem to be happy enough with the idea that powerful
superhumans who dress up as net.heroes and go looking to solve problems
with fight scenes be put on a leash. They're less keen on the idea that
someone who wakes up one day with minor powers and just wants to learn
enough that they don't risk accidentally burning their house down has to
register in order to learn control and by doing that making themselves
vulnerable to being drafted. A lot of people have dropped out of
classes here since the passage of the Act, and the number of people who
enrol for basic training in the first place is down."
"So what are the new psis doing for training?" she asked.
"I know for a fact that the sales of self-help psychic training
books are up. I have anecdotal evidence about unregistered teachers
who operate in the black economy, running classes of varying sizes."
He shrugged. "I suspect that most of the paper trails are being hidden
as 'home schooling' or as 'faith based learning'. There are some cults
that teach mental disciplines and the government is less likely to
interfere in religious organisations without solid evidence of misdoings
in case there's a political backlash."
"And the Psychic College has always been a high visibility but low
profit organisation," mused Senses Lass. "Yes, I can see why this
would be causing problems."
John shrugged again. "Low turnover or not, we're a business
catering to a demand, and if there's no demand..." He spread his hands
in a gesture of stoic acceptance. "We shall have to see how things play
out," he said calmly. In truth the situation worried him greatly. He
had come from a culture where the rulers controlled people ruthlessly to
the rulers' benefit, and there was no way that he would be part of that
again. He was carefully monitoring how the administration of the Act
was progressing. And if things went too far... Well, John Goodberries
wasn't sure whether there would be a tragic fire that gutted the school
in the middle of the night and destroyed all the school's records, or
whether the records would be confiscated by what looked for all the
world like a government conspiracy no matter how much the government
denied it, but he was certain that the paperwork in his files would be
lost forever.
@%%%%%%%%%%@
WikiBoy reflexively stiffened in dread as someone sat down next to
him. Don't acknowledge and don't turn to look to see who it is, he told
himself. That would only attract attention. He only relaxed when
MegaChurch Man said, "Hey there, WikiBoy. How are you doing?"
"Oh, hi, MegaChurch Man. I'm cool."
"I'm glad to hear it."
Suddenly:
=( 'WikiBoy snuggled up against the equally naked Master Blaster.
They were alone at last, with just the well-stoked fireplace and a
bottle of Dom Perignon. He buried his face in the luxurious chest hair
of his Daddy Bear and made a sound of contentment...' )=
and MegaChurch Man could tell that WikiBoy was not longer cool.
"I'M GONNA KILL HIM!!!"
It was Master Blaster's voice. WikiBoy turned pale. He could see
the future fast approaching, and it had worlds of hurt in it.
MegaChruch Man looked at the Legionnaire That Anyone Can Edit and
said, "You know, I think you were planning on going on vacation starting
a few days ago, and as I recall you were going to keep the location a
secret so no-one could contact you and spoil your rest. You'd better
skedaddle."
The last thing the MegaChurch Man saw as WikiBoy vanished was a
grateful smile hanging, Cheshire Cat-like, in mid-air. Then Master
Blaster barged in.
"Where is he!?"
"Where's who?"
"WikiBoy!"
"I don't know where he is," MegaChruch Man answered truthfully.
"Why do you ask? Maybe I can help instead."
"I'm not going to put up with this crap with someone spreading
pornography about the Legion." Then he paused for half a second before
adding, "Not that type of pornography anyway."
"Er, Master Blaster, I don't think WikiBoy was the one who was
projecting those sex scenes," said MegaChurch Man. He hoped.
Considering the nature of WikiBoy's powers, it was always possible that
someone else had instructed WikiBoy to telepath them into everyone
else's head.
"But he's the one who I can get my hands on, RIGHT NOW!" snarled
Master Blaster.
It was enough to make MegaChurch Man want to put his face in his
hands and do a double facepalm. Instead he indicated the chair beside
him in an invitation to sit down and said, "Rob, let's talk about...
anger management."
@%%%%%%%%%%@
On the way back to the LNH-HQ Senses Lass got to fight supervillains.
She was flying the long way around the perimeter of Mutant Town when
a bank robbery in downtown Net.ropolis caught her attention. An SUV
chunkily mounted with armour plating and a giant tuning fork on the
front was using sonic vibrations to shake apart the doors of bank.
Five costumed goons (it actually said 'Goon' on the fronts and backs
of their green and purple coveralls) armed with small tuning fork guns
and apparently protected by their headgear were swarming into the bank.
Citizens were either fleeing or had already collapsed under the
onslaught of the ultra-sonic vibrations. A few security guards who had
tried to intervene were also lying on the ground unconscious.
Senses Lass briefly pondered how to deal with this situation.
True, she could manipulate her own sense of hearing so that she didn't
perceive their sound attacks, or even arrange it so that she did but
didn't experience any pain. That, however, was merely the *perception*
of the ultra-sonic attacks, not the ultra-sonics themselves. It wouldn't
change the fact that the sounds powerful enough to tear apart a steel
shop front would still be beating against her body and threatening to
damage her eardrums.
There was a fairly obvious solution. She rendered herself
unnoticeable and then dropped down from the sky, landing a fair distance
away and off to one side of the SUV, getting a good look inside with
telescopic vision. As she suspected there was a sixth goon there, and
with relative ease she befuddled him with a sense of doubt and confusion
as to how well the tuning fork was working. He adjusted the controls to
make the sonic weapon work properly, but in fact was deactivating it.
In the seconds before his compatriots realised that their main defensive
cover had been shut down she sprinted up to the driver, wrenched him out
of the driver's seat and shut down his sense of self, then left him
lying on the road in a temporary fugue state.
The other goons returned. After all the fruitless searching of
the past few hours Senses Lass felt a moment of grim satisfaction at
being able to take out her frustrations on this lot. She shouldn't
have, of course. If nothing else she worried that she might become
addicted to violent emotions and backslide into supervillainy.
They opened fire on her, but she caused their aim to go wild
(actually, low; she didn't want them hitting any bystanders). Then she
set about beating the snot out of them. She could have simply rendered
them unconscious with any number of mental feats, but the pictures of a
net.heroine taking down criminals on the evening news would help with
the Legion's reputation after Infinite April, and the media liked
action shots.
She emptied her mind of emotion, focusing her attention on the
position and movements of her opponents. Then she sped up her sense of
the passage of time, a trick that she had deliberately copied from the
Matrix movies.
- Swing around, kick goon one in the guts.
- Goon two realises that the guns aren't working and rushes forward
for a physical attack. Use his momentum against him, launching him to
impact hard on the road, setting up to give goon three an elbow jab
that winds him.
- Goons four and five are holding back, uncertain with what to do
since both ranged attacks and close combat have proven ineffective.
Senses Lass can feel their confusion and fear, and guesses that
they're going to try and make an escape. She launches herself into a
series of somersaults and closes the gap on goon four, knocking him
out with a kick to the chin.
- Leaving goon five, who panics and fires wildly, hitting Senses
Lass by pure luck rather than good aim.
In that instant the momentum of her assault fell apart. The sonic
attack was the infamous Brown Note, and Senses Lass staggered and lost
control of her bowls and her grip on bullet time. Aww yuck! Feeling
grungy, she simply punched goon five in the face - once, twice. He fell
unconscious to the ground in short order.
She sighed. Now she would have to wait and make a statement to the
police before she could return to base and change her underwear. Oh
well, at least she could dampen the sense of smell of everyone involved
so that she didnÂ't cause herself too much embarrassment.
@%%%%%%%%%%@
Later, back at the Legion headquarters and after a shower and
change of clothes:
"Psionic Lad, have you seen WikiBoy?"
"Uh, no, actually I haven't Senses Lass. Word is that he went on
vacation a few days ago."
"Really? That's a bit disappointing."
"What do you need him for?"
"I've just spent the last few hours scouting Mutant Town, looking
for traces of the telepath who was beaming that sexually suggestive
story at us this morning. I didn't get very far, and was hoping to get
WikiBoy's help for an unorthodox approach at tracking him down."
Psionic Lad chuckled. "Join the club. Actually though, it was
stories. We got two more afterwards."
"Really?"
"Uh-huh. Which makes it really frustrating, because I was ready
for another psi contact and I *still* couldn't get a bead on him."
Senses Lass crossed her arms and stared at the ceiling. "Sounds
like John was right."
"Huh?"
"I went to the Psychic College in Mutant Town to see if they had
psensed anything. They hadn't. But as I was leaving John Goodberries
mentioned that with all the mutants and aliens and magical beings and
whatnot living in the area, that it wasn't unreasonable that it might be
an atypical type of telepathic transmission. He even gave the example
of maybe being some sort of ranged narrowcast rather than a broadcast,
so that it could only be detected at its target area rather than along
the path. I certainly didn't feel anything after the first time, so
that wrecked my attempts to triangulate the source." She looked back
to Psionic Lad. "Was it the same mind doing the broadcast each time?"
she asked.
"Sure was," he confirmed, and shared the memory of all three
incidents with her.
"Okay then, let's think laterally about this. What other
superpower, or combination of superpowers, do we have on tap that we
could use to track a telepath?"
"Fearless Leader has already asked the computer guys to do a search
for anybody known to have that M.O.," said Psionic Lad, ticking off his
fingers. "They came up blank."
"And with WikiBoy gone we can't simply Edit him into knowing the
answer," said Senses Lass.
"That might be why he's not available," Psionic Lad said. "Too much
of a deus ex machina."
"How about Pulls-Paper-Out-Of-Hats Lad? If those stories have been
written or printed on anything, he'll be able to find them."
"Possible, but it's a bit of a long shot. The paper may not have
the perpetrator's name on it. Wait a moment, I know!" said Psionic Lad,
growing excited. "Earlier today Special Bonding Boy told me that he
felt lust associated with those stories. Regardless of whether it's a
supervillain sending them or not, it's not just something that she's
doing with clinical detachment."
"Er, so?"
"So, if whoever's doing this is so emotionally involved in them,
then maybe they're affecting her dreams."
Senses Lass's face lit up. "Rotanna, the Dvandom Force member!
That's right, she's a Dreamqueen... Hold up, 'her dreams'?"
"Working hypothesis. All three of the stories were slash fiction
pairing up male characters. Supposedly most gay slash is written by
women. If they're private fantasies rather than something being sent
to embarrass the Legion, then there's a better than even chance that
our telepath is female."
Senses Lass tried to wrap her mind around this. "Okay. Well,
let's contact Dvandom Force."
@%%%%%%%%%%@
Senses Lass stepped into the room and looked around in
astonishment. .oO( Goodness, ) she thought.
=( What is it? )= asked Psionic Lad, who was outside.
Once Rotanna had identified the dreamer as an adolescent boy...
["Most gay slash fiction is written by women, huh?" Senses Lass had
smirked. "Oh, shut up," Psionic Lad had said.]
...the Legionnaires had decided to have one person investigate with
another acting as backup. Their target had turned out to be way out
beyond Mutant Town; right direction but a totally different county.
.oO( He's a fan, ) thought Senses Lass in reply to Psionic Lad.
.oO( Take a look. )
And through Senses Lass' perceptions Psionic Law saw the bedroom of
Nicholas Boltner. It was cluttered. That, at least, was to be expected.
What it was cluttered with was the surprise. Most of it was Legion of
Net.Heroes memorabilia. Posters and fan art and licensed video games
and piles of comic book adaptations.
.oO( Dolls, ) thought Senses Lass as she looked at a shelf of
sculpted figurines. .oO( He must have every singe LNH doll in the
series. He even has the Limp-Asparagus Lad doll! Do you know how low
the sales of that one are? )
=( Guys prefer to call them 'action figures'. )=
.oO( They're solid plastic with no joints for posing them. There's
nothing 'action' about them. They're dolls, ) she thought dryly.
Nick was sitting at his desk working on a computer. He was in his
mid teens, and would probably be quite a handsome young man once the
acne cleared up. The desk was placed so that the door was to one side
of where he was sitting: if Senses Lass hadn't been using superpowers to
make herself unnoticeable her entry could not have gone unobserved. She
walked over and glanced at what he was doing: school work from the looks
of it. Then she glanced around again, looking for anything out of place.
=( I can feel confusion from you. What's wrong? )=
.oO( This is the right house, and his mind definitely matches
those telepathic sendings. But his... I don't know, *hero worship* of
the Legion makes me doubt that he'd do something as malicious as send
those stories. )
She could feel Psionic Lad's amusement. =( I don't think it was
malice. I think it was an accident. I've done a light mind scan of
Mr Boltner. He definitely wrote those stories all right. Take a look
in the folder with the blue cover wedged into the bottom shelf. )=
Sense Lass followed his directions and flipped though the folder,
quickly scanning what was printed and then stored in its plastic insert
sleeves. .oO( There must be months' worth of stories here, ) she thought.
=( There are years' worth of fan fiction in his other folders.
Most of it featuring the Legion, but there are stories featuring other
heroes. Even fictional heroes. And more than half of them are
male/male romance. That folder just has the newest stuff. Now take a
look at the most recent entries. )=
She did so, and recognised a few key paragraphs.
=( I think we've found our 'supervillain'. You'd better have a
word with him, )= suggested Psionic Lad.
Nick was right in the middle of writing up how impulsive teenaged
angst had been the downfall of Romeo and Juliet when Senses Lass said,
"Excuse me, Nicholas? Can I talk with you?"
Nick looked up and saw a costumed woman with a huge bust standing
next to him. Pattern recognition immediately kicked in. "Whoa! Senses
Lass! How'd you get in here? Hey!" he exclaimed, snatching away the
folder from her hand. "That's private!"
"Actually I'm not so sure about that anymore..." she began gently.
Nick glared at her. His anger and distrust that she was threatening
to expose his private fantasies to public scrutiny and ridicule were
palpable. She tried again. "Several parts of your stories were
broadcast telepathically into the Legion headquarters earlier today.
That's what brought me here. I think you might be a projecting telepath
of some sort."
He actually listened to that, which mildly impressed Senses Lass.
His anger didn't cause him to block out what someone else was saying
or twist the meaning into something else, and Senses Lass hadn't had to
nudge his curiosity to get him to listen to her. He flushed red in
embarrassment as the implications of what she was saying sunk in.
"Aw crap," he said, and banged his head on his desk. "What, the
*whole* Legion?"
"Anyone who was in the Legion headquarters at the time." She gave
him a second or two to grapple with this notion, then added. "Listen,
this is probably a bit embarrassing..."
"A *BIT*" he exclaimed melodramatically. "I've just made a
spectacle of myself in front of the whole Legion of Net.Heroes!"
"Yes, but you'll need to take steps to make sure this sort of thing
doesn't happen again," she said evenly.
"Arrgh. Providing I don't get killed first. I'll never be allowed
to live this down." He was starting to perspire. "Jeez, Ultimate Ninja
will skin me alive."
=( He's got a point, you know, ) telepathed Psionic Lad, still
radiating amusement. =( Master Blaster was spitting chips. But I've
got an idea on how we can deal with the problem. )= he added, and
quickly outlined his plan.
"Now listen to me," Senses Lass said to Nick. "Snap yourself out
of your funk and try to act responsibly. It took us a lot of effort to
track you down, and not everyone knows the identity of the 'telepathic
supervillain who narrates slash fiction into people's heads'." Nick
flushed with embarrassment at that. "If you behave yourself I think I
can arrange for some private tutoring with Psionic Lad and keep your
name unconnected with all of this."
"That... that would be great," he said appreciatively.
"Okay then. Let's..." Then she sighed wearily, because he was
doing what a large number of men tended to do. "Yes, I have very large
breasts. Please stop staring at them or your girlfriend will get jealous."
Nick looked askance at her. "Hey, I'm gay. Staring at your
boobies doesn't even make my top hundred list," he said dryly. "But I
do know enough about anatomy to know that breasts don't work that way.
So, uh, how do you keep them...?" and here he brought his hands up to
his chest to pantomime the support of imaginary breasts that were, if
anything, even larger than the ones that Senses Lass actually had.
"I have a strongstuffium reinforced spine," she answered simply.
"Oh. Okay." He'd wondered about that. Actually there was a lot
of argument about it on the internet discussion boards, even though it
was the type of question that didn't always get into the Frequently
Asked Questions lists.
"Let's go and talk with your parents... say, do you have any
Limp-Asparagus Lad stories in here?"
--------------------
Character Credits:
Catalyst Lass created by Elisabeth Reba.
Cheesecake-Eater Lad created by Matthew Jotham Millheiser.
Inhilators created by Jamas Enright.
Master Blaster created by Martin Phipps, as the Writer Character of
Rob Ramirez.
MegaChurch Man and WikiBoy created by Tom Russell.
Multi-Tasking Man created by Jeff Coleburn.
Pizza Girl created by Martin Phipps, as the Writer Character of Ali.
Psionic Lad created by Carolyn Vaughan. Used without permission.
Senses Lass reserved by Saxon Brenton. Originally created (as
The Red Head) by Martin Phipps.
Special Bonding Boy created by wReam (Ray Bingham).
Author's Notes:
By rights a story that stars Senses Lass should be taking place in
the _Limp-Asparagus Lad_ net.comic. But...
It's not *just* that the _Limp-Asparagus Lad_ series runs so far
behind in continuity. No no no. If that were the only problem then I
would simply publish the story in another _Limp-Asparagus Lad Special_.
After all, the reason that I created that series was to publish one-off
stories that were more or less contemporaneous with what's happening in
the Legion's 'present'.
Rather, this is the first in a short arc of stories that are meant
to be running roughly in parallel to the _Beige Countdown_ limited
series. That is, it falls between the period of the 'Infinite Leadership
Crisis' Event depicted in _LNH Comics Presents_ #35-501 and the _58.5_
limited series on the one hand, and the 'Beige Midnight' Event due in
2008 on the other. This, incidentally, is why I borrowed from Dvandom's
Transformers stories the description 'Intermezzo' ("a short movement
separating the major sections of a symphonic work"). Most of these
stories will not have directly connecting plots, but instead are
thematically related in that somewhere in the story they will touch upon
the various political and social topics (both internal to the Legion and
national in scope) that are swirling around the LNH in this period.
The next story ('Attack Of The Vampire Cows') is almost ready to
go. The pseudo-arc will probably contain a few other stories, and climax
with the struggle against Hex Luthor's plans to gain a third term as
Usenetted States President.
That's the setup then. Now, let's have a character writeup.
SENSES LASS (Mary-Ann Happenstance)
TYPE: NWC
CREATED BY (as The Red Head): Martin Phipps
CREATED/RESERVED BY: (as Senses Lass): Saxon Brenton
FIRST APPEARANCE/ORIGIN (as The Red Head): _System Corruptors_ #5
FIRST APPEARANCE/ORIGIN (as Senses Lass): _Limp-Asparagus Lad_ #44
POWERS: Various sensory powers of her own, and able to block or
alter the perceptions of others
FORMER ALIASES: The Red Head, Senseless Lass
ADD NOTES: Created by Professor Perhap as part of a scheme to destroy
the LNH, she was placed in stasis and left on the bottom of the ocean
until awoken by Dr. F for his Union of the Useless. She was captured
after a fight between the Union, the LNH, an the Brotherhood of
Net.Villains
-----
Saxon Brenton University of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
saxon....@uts.edu.au saxonb...@hotmail.com
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex
world of jet-powered apes and time-travel." - Superman, JLA Classified #3
_________________________________________________________________
New music from the Rogue Traders - listen now!
http://ninemsn.com.au/share/redir/adTrack.asp?mode=click&clientID=832&referral=hotmailtaglineOct07&URL=http://music.ninemsn.com.au/roguetraders
Martin
> =( 'Irony Man decisively took off the helmet of his high-tech
> battle suit and looked the black-clad master of ninjitsu squarely in
> the eye. "Ultimate Ninja, I have something important to tell you, but
> I'm pretty sure you're not going to like it. Hell, I don't like it,
> but I have to face facts and get this out in the open rather than let
> it stew. I love you. I've always loved you. I think you're the most
> awesome leader that the Legion has ever had. I worship the ground you
> walk on, and I get hard just thinking about the perfection of your body." '
> =( ' "Say nothing, Toony-san," said Ultimate Ninja, and with but a
> single deft movement removed his one-piece costume, revealing to all
> the world that he too was aroused. "The Zen perfection of this moment
> needs no words." '
> =( 'They took each other in their arms, and their mouths met in a
> passionate kiss...' )=
So it's safe to say that the LNH version of Civil War is officially
over?
> At another table entirely Senses Lass was one of only a few
> net.heroes who were looking thoughtful. She stood up with an air of
> purpose and determination about her, and around the cafeteria eyes
> turned in her direction. She was a red-head with a voluptuous figure
> and breasts that were even bigger than Power Girl's.
Oh. My. God.
I'll read the rest later. I've got work to do. :)
Martin
Arthur Spitzer
>A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
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>Url :
http://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/racc/attachments/20071017/63f0e061/attachment-0001.bin
This is what the post looks like in...
http://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/racc/
And in my Thunderbird newsreader it was blank...
Was able to read it using googlenews though...
As for the story...
Christ!
Double Christ! :)
Arthur "Or perhaps God/Christ..." Spitzer
Jamas Enright
> Saxon Brenton wrote:
>
>> A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
>
> Was able to read it using googlenews though...
Also available at:
http://www.eyrie.org/~thad/blip/other/lnhv23.html
> As for the story...
Saxon has revealed a hitherto unknown talent... as for whether or not
that's a good thing...
--
Jamas Enright
Blog: http://jamasenright.blogspot.com
Homepage: http://www.eyrie.org/~thad/
Blue Light Productions homepage: http://www.blue-light-productions.com/
Tom Russell
And a spicy one, too. :-P
Saxon, I think you capture the 'feel' of slash fiction perfectly--
though, having not read any actual slash fiction, I base this on the
assumption that it lies somewhere between normal fan-fiction and bad
porn. :-)
As usual, it's the little details and extrapolations that stand out--
the fact that the Ninja calls Irony Man "Toony-San", the bit about
Squid Man. Each of these divinely silly details produced a laugh;
it's this inventiveness that makes Saxon's stories worth waiting for.
Oh, and:
> [multipart_alternative_part]
You know, I had this same problem around the time I was posting
"Speak", but with my yahoo mail account. Thanks to the suggestions of
Eagle and Jamas, I poked around a bit and switched my Yahoo mail
options to compose in plain text only, and that seemed to solve the
problem.
==Tom
EDMLite
something wholesome after all of the R-rated business
on RACC lately...
On Oct 16, 10:53 pm, Saxon Brenton <saxonbren...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> =( ' "Say nothing, Toony-san," said Ultimate Ninja, and with but a
> single deft movement removed his one-piece costume, revealing to all
> the world that he too was aroused. "The Zen perfection of this moment
> needs no words." '
> =( 'They took each other in their arms, and their mouths met in a
> passionate kiss...' )=
Then again, maybe not.
Wow... someone finally wrote LNH slash...
and it wasn't Martin...
> The charcoal drawings of Catalyst Lass posing for a swimsuit
> edition were borderline. But then there was a text story where Easily-
> Discovered Man and Easily-Discovered Man Lite had a Batman and Robin
> style relationship out of Frederick Wertham's most lurid fantasies.
What what WHAT???
Man... and I thought "Frank Miller's All-Star Easily-Discovered
Man and Lite" was lurid.
Never before have I envied So-Lame-Even-Saxon-Brenton
Would-Never-Include-Him-In-A-Story-Lad.
I may never feel clean again...
> John Goodberries looked somewhat abashed. "Yes, I'm afraid so.
> Not at the discomfort that it caused to the Legion," he hastened to add.
> "It's just that I've always been amazed and surprised at the Earth
> human obsession with sex. To be honest, I've always thought it would
> be better if your people had a set mating season. It would make things
> so much simpler."
We do have a set mating season.
It's called "college."
And I was too busy writing superhero stories on
the Internet to enjoy it...
> "I think I can agree we that," she said, at the same time taking
> note of his use of the phrase 'your people'. She felt comfortable with
> it, and she realised that she liked the way it made her feel like she
> was included among humans rather than as a human-shaped construct built
> to infiltrate the Legion and destroy it with sexual wiles.
We seem to have a few of those these days.
Too many villains trying to employ the
"Smurfette Principle," I suppose.
> "The problem isn't the issue of training," said John. "Well, not
> for most people who are worried about the Act. The compulsory aspect is
> causing some concern, because for every person who compares it to having
> to pass a driving test and registering to own a car, there seems to be
> someone else who cites the fact that you don't have to register to own
> a gun. The National Rifle Association is telling anyone who'll listen
> that this is nothing more than the first move in an elaborate plan to
> sneak in gun control laws."
In the U.S., it's a state-by-state matter.
In Massachusetts, where I spent most of my life, guns are
very strictly regulated, if not registered. In California,
where I now live, it's much less so -- though cities like
San Francisco have tried to change this. In the South,
they're more or less given away with Happy Meals...
(Well, not really. But when buildings have to post
signs saying you can't carry a concealed handgun into
them, you realize you're living in a scary, scary
world).
> On the way back to the LNH-HQ Senses Lass got to fight supervillains.
Sounds like Senses working overtime...
> "Now listen to me," Senses Lass said to Nick. "Snap yourself out
> of your funk and try to act responsibly. It took us a lot of effort to
> track you down, and not everyone knows the identity of the 'telepathic
> supervillain who narrates slash fiction into people's heads'."
The 'Slash Marauder'?
A well-written, funny-as-hell story that will
doubtlessly cost me years of therapy.
--Easily-Discovered Man Lite
--Has discovered a whole new meaning
to 'Just Imagine Saxon Brenton's..."
Saxon Brenton
> Oh my goodness! A new Saxon Brenton story!
>
> And a spicy one, too. :-P
But spicy stories, like spicy food, may not necessarily be
to everyone's taste :-)
> Saxon, I think you capture the 'feel' of slash fiction perfectly--
> though, having not read any actual slash fiction, I base this on the
> assumption that it lies somewhere between normal fan-fiction and
> bad porn. :-)
Pretty much. In fact, I strongly suspect that the combination of the
bad 'amateur writing style' of a lot of fanfiction and the bad 'porn
needs no plot except as the contrivance to get to the sex scene' of
a lot of porn means that slashfic suffers even more badly under
Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") than most other
amateur fiction.
[...]
>> [multipart_alternative_part]
>
> You know, I had this same problem around the time I was posting
> "Speak", but with my yahoo mail account. Thanks to the suggestions of
> Eagle and Jamas, I poked around a bit and switched my Yahoo mail
> options to compose in plain text only, and that seemed to solve the
> problem.
I shall bear that in mind. I've already done some poking around,
and it seemed to post okay for the September End of Month Reviews.
---
Saxon Brenton
saxon....@uts.edu.au saxonb...@hotmail.com
Tom Russell
> On 22 Oct 2007 Tom Russell <milos_par...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Oh my goodness! A new Saxon Brenton story!
>
> > And a spicy one, too. :-P
>
> But spicy stories, like spicy food, may not necessarily be
> to everyone's taste :-)
This is very true. And such timid souls should veer far away from
<promo> the new series in the Eightfold Family of Romance Titles,
KINKY ROMANCE. It's the more cheerful-- and certainly spicier--
counterpart to WEIRD ROMANCE and DOOMED ROMANCE, and it's coming soon
to a newsgroup near you.</promo> Ahem.
> > Saxon, I think you capture the 'feel' of slash fiction perfectly--
> > though, having not read any actual slash fiction, I base this on the
> > assumption that it lies somewhere between normal fan-fiction and
> > bad porn. :-)
>
> Pretty much. In fact, I strongly suspect that the combination of the
> bad 'amateur writing style' of a lot of fanfiction and the bad 'porn
> needs no plot except as the contrivance to get to the sex scene' of
> a lot of porn means that slashfic suffers even more badly under
> Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") than most other
> amateur fiction.
I certainly don't want to get into a discussion here-in on the merits
of out-and-out pornography, nor am I advocating one viewpoint or
another, but I wonder if the "porn needs no plot except as the
contrivance to get to the sex scene" trope is _necessarily_ a bad
thing. It's kind of like musical comedies not having a plot except as
the contrivance to get to the singing and dancing; the singing and
dancing are what musicals are all about. Of course it has to be
fluff, a mere clothesline on which to hang what's actually important;
no one wants to watch, for example, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
debate the policies of the New Deal or learn to deal with the demons
of their past. They want to see the singing and the dancing and the
witty one-liners, and that's fine because that's what they're about.
I think pornography, erotica, what-have-you, is a "feel-good" genre.
At best they'd _have_ to be light comedies. Can you imagine a
pornographic film about a man dying of cancer, or someone dealing with
substance abuse, or someone driven to suicide by mind-numbing
poverty? It would be terrible, and it would defeat the whole purpose
of it-- few people can be simultaneously aroused and depressed.
Granted, this is assuming that a "good" plot is serious, realistic to
a point, and has something at stake. I'm not saying that an uplifting
story is inherently less "good" or even less satisfactory-- again,
Astaire and Rogers are pure uplift and all the better for it-- but
these plots do tend to rely more on contrivances and if they existed
in a vacuum-- if just the story was related with none of the
spectacle-- they would crumble to pieces. It's the spectacle-- the
singing, the dancing, and, in this case, the sex-- that redeems the
"shabby" plotting.
That being said, the same logic should apply to big noisy action
films, but I find myself to be much less forgiving of bad plotting in
those situations. This is most likely because singing, dancing, and,
yes, that other thing, require a degree of technical mastery, grace,
and personal expression, while blowing stuff up only requires
explosives (or, more depressingly, computers). And that's probably
why musical comedies and porn are more identified with their
performers and certain key performances, rather than plots, directors,
what-have-you.
==Tom
Martin Phipps
> I think pornography, erotica, what-have-you, is a "feel-good" genre.
> At best they'd _have_ to be light comedies. Can you imagine a
> pornographic film about a man dying of cancer, or someone dealing with
> substance abuse, or someone driven to suicide by mind-numbing
> poverty? It would be terrible, and it would defeat the whole purpose
> of it-- few people can be simultaneously aroused and depressed.
I was once taking an English course an a psychology course at the same
time and I once saw the same argument made from both points of view:
"Literary genre is a function of the emotional context." It follows
that there are exactly as many genres as their are human emotions. To
test this theory, imagine any human emotion and then imagine a story
that would make you feel that way.
Fear <--> Horror / Suspense
Love <--> Romance
Passion / Lust <--> Porn (includes soft and hard core)
Wonder --> Sci-Fi / Fantasy
Hate / Anger <--> Action (with the emotion directed at the villain)
Joy <--> Comedy / Musical
Sadness <--> Drama
Curiosity <--> Documentary
Satisfaction / Excitement <--> Anything really as long as it's good
By extension, all literature is equally legitimate. The plot of a
porn film merely exists to connect sex scenes? The plot of a horror /
suspense movie exists merely to connect scenes of viloence. The plot
of a romance exists merely to connect scenes of couples kissing. The
plot of a sci fi or fantasy movie exists merely to connect scenes
involving impressive special effects. The plot of comedy exists
merely to connect jokes. The plot of a musical exists merely to
connect scenes in which people are singing and dancing. The plot of a
drama merely exists to connect scenes of emotional turmoil.
Documentaries don't have plots, per se, but they do have a narrative
which functions to clarify one idea presented before moving on to the
next.
My English teacher was surprised when I told him that I had heard
pretty much the same argument in my psychology class. I got an A in
my English class, btw.
Martin
Tom Russell
> On Nov 8, 12:53 pm, Tom Russell <milos_par...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > I think pornography, erotica, what-have-you, is a "feel-good" genre.
> > At best they'd _have_ to be light comedies. Can you imagine a
> > pornographic film about a man dying of cancer, or someone dealing with
> > substance abuse, or someone driven to suicide by mind-numbing
> > poverty? It would be terrible, and it would defeat the whole purpose
> > of it-- few people can be simultaneously aroused and depressed.
>
> I was once taking an English course an a psychology course at the same
> time and I once saw the same argument made from both points of view:
> "Literary genre is a function of the emotional context." It follows
> that there are exactly as many genres as their are human emotions. To
> test this theory, imagine any human emotion and then imagine a story
> that would make you feel that way.
>
> Fear <--> Horror / Suspense
> Love <--> Romance
> Passion / Lust <--> Porn (includes soft and hard core)
> Wonder --> Sci-Fi / Fantasy
> Hate / Anger <--> Action (with the emotion directed at the villain)
> Joy <--> Comedy / Musical
> Sadness <--> Drama
> Curiosity <--> Documentary
> Satisfaction / Excitement <--> Anything really as long as it's good
What about ennui? :-)
> By extension, all literature is equally legitimate.
If by legitimate you mean that all literature is able to be called
literature, then, yes, I agree. Whether or not its good literature is
another matter entirely. :-)
> The plot of a
> porn film merely exists to connect sex scenes? The plot of a horror /
> suspense movie exists merely to connect scenes of viloence. The plot
> of a romance exists merely to connect scenes of couples kissing. The
> plot of a sci fi or fantasy movie exists merely to connect scenes
> involving impressive special effects. The plot of comedy exists
> merely to connect jokes. The plot of a musical exists merely to
> connect scenes in which people are singing and dancing. The plot of a
> drama merely exists to connect scenes of emotional turmoil.
I see your general point in theory, but I disagree with it in
practice. I think most other genres occupy a different space than
porn and musicals.
The distinction I'm making here is that a musical and a porno are both
pieces of performance art. While it's possible that the plot of a
comedy can exist only to connect the gags (see: W. C. Fields), serving
in the capacity of a clothesline to hang them on, more often than not
the comedy is built from the context-- from the ebb and flow of the
storytelling, from the build and the structure, from the characters
themselves.
Musicals and porno don't _need_ characterization because no one cares
what anyone is thinking while Fred and Ginger are dancing-- they just
want to see them dancing. That's why a compilation film like That's
Entertainment, which has no story at all, was so darn popular-- and
that's probably why most pornography is available in comp-reel form.
You can't really do that with, say, a drama. Scenes of confrontation,
scenes of laughter, scenes of discomfort-- without a real context to
ground them, they can be confusing at best and hackneyed at worse.
The end of Yasujiro's film Late Spring is absolutely heart-breaking.
But it's just a shot of a man peeling an apple. Presented by itself,
or in tandem with scenes from other films, it loses its power
considerably.
Musical numbers, sex scenes, and, to a degree, fight scenes/action set
pieces, can exist in a vacuum, divorced from their original context
and still be exciting, entertaining, and thrilling. You can take the
best scenes out of films from those respective genres and still
entertain your audience. Again, these are performance pieces. But
try to do that with, say, most science fiction and fantasy, and you'll
fall horribly flat. Disconnecting HAL has no power if we haven't seen
the hour-and-a-half of film before it; the confrontation on Mount Doom
in LOTR would have no power without the journey before it.
So, context is very important, and plot in many cases cannot be said
to exist "merely" to connect different emotional moments or to tie
them together, nor can different stories or genres exist "merely" to
evoke those feelings.
I also think a story that exists merely to evoke emotions and push
buttons isn't really worth telling. Art is about more than Pavlov's
dog.
Like the great Ray Carney once said about film, and I feel this
applies to all forms of art:
"You can give viewers new eyes and ears. You can change their states
of awareness so that they see, hear, care, and feel differently. Your
work exists to express things too delicate, too fluttering, too
multivalent to be said in any other way. You're doing something much
more radical than telling a story. You're rewiring people's nervous
systems. You're doing brain surgery. Art gives us more than new
facts and ideas; it gives us new powers of perception."
==Tom
Tom Russell
emotional context falls pretty flat on its face when you realize that
most genres can evoke a multivariate response. Romantic comedies can
be melancholy (see the work of Truffaut). Comedy itself is often a
function of anger, much more so than an action film. Horror stories
can evoke terror and fear, but they can just as easily evoke wonder
and pity (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein).
Most genres are _not_ a function of emotion, but rather of trope.
What makes science fiction science fiction is the element of science,
whether it's hyper-futuristic or taking place in the present day; what
makes fantasy fantasy is the fantastical setting. Porno is not
determined by what feelings (both emotional and pysiological) it
inspires in you, but rather by the presence of sex; musicals are
determined by the presence of singing and dancing, _not_ by the desire
to feel-good.
And some genres, frankly, do not evoke any overriding emotion at all.
What emotion is postmodern work like Ulysses in key with? What about
bildungsroman? Epistolary? Stream-of-consciousness? Robinsonade?
Psychological Realism?
What is the Western a function of? Anger, justice, elegy, discovery?
None of these.
A Western is a function of _setting_.
So, while I understand the basic gist of the idea, in actuality it's
bullocks and it's somewhat frightening that an English teacher who
presumably takes literature seriously would also take that theory
seriously. It's about as bad as those people in the seventies who
said there were no such things as authors or even works, but rather
products of prevaling socio-economic conditions.
==Tom
Martin Phipps
> And the argument that each genre exists as an extension of a specific
> emotional context falls pretty flat on its face when you realize that
> most genres can evoke a multivariate response. Romantic comedies can
> be melancholy (see the work of Truffaut). Comedy itself is often a
> function of anger, much more so than an action film. Horror stories
> can evoke terror and fear, but they can just as easily evoke wonder
> and pity (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein).
It's a good way to identify "pure" genres rather than mixed genres
like romantic comedies.
> Most genres are _not_ a function of emotion, but rather of trope.
> What makes science fiction science fiction is the element of science,
> whether it's hyper-futuristic or taking place in the present day; what
> makes fantasy fantasy is the fantastical setting. Porno is not
> determined by what feelings (both emotional and pysiological) it
> inspires in you, but rather by the presence of sex; musicals are
> determined by the presence of singing and dancing, _not_ by the desire
> to feel-good.
It's a simplistic argument that happens to work very well. All movies
have music but not all movies are musicals. And pornography really is
a function of what one individually finds pornographic or arousing or
disgusting as the case may be. If a couple were having sex and, at
the same time, having a meaningful conversation then it could arguably
be described as a drama with the sex providing little more than
setting. You yourself told Saxon not long ago that porn can never be
sad or it wouldn't be porn. What makes something pornographic is not
the images themselves but the feelings they envoke. (In addition to
passion and lust, I should add disgust. The feelings of passion, lust
and disgust identify different genres of porn with some people
apparently only capable of responding to images that would simply
disgust most people.)
> And some genres, frankly, do not evoke any overriding emotion at all.
> What emotion is postmodern work like Ulysses in key with? What about
> bildungsroman? Epistolary? Stream-of-consciousness? Robinsonade?
> Psychological Realism?
How do they make you feel? It really is a valid way to distinguish
one pure genre from another.
> What is the Western a function of? Anger, justice, elegy, discovery?
> None of these.
>
> A Western is a function of _setting_.
A Western is a type of action movie. Science fiction, likewise, is a
recent invention of the past hundred years that grew out of the need
for more realistic fantasy. I realise that "realistic fantasy" sounds
like an oxymoron but all stories do need to be capable of suspending
disbelief.
> So, while I understand the basic gist of the idea, in actuality it's
> bullocks and it's somewhat frightening that an English teacher who
> presumably takes literature seriously would also take that theory
> seriously. It's about as bad as those people in the seventies who
> said there were no such things as authors or even works, but rather
> products of prevaling socio-economic conditions.
Well, Tom, I've had enough years of experience to identity bull and I
frankly don't see it coming from me.
Martin
Martin Phipps
Feh. Who cares about ennui? :)
> > By extension, all literature is equally legitimate.
>
> If by legitimate you mean that all literature is able to be called
> literature, then, yes, I agree. Whether or not its good literature is
> another matter entirely. :-)
>
> > The plot of a
> > porn film merely exists to connect sex scenes? The plot of a horror /
> > suspense movie exists merely to connect scenes of viloence. The plot
> > of a romance exists merely to connect scenes of couples kissing. The
> > plot of a sci fi or fantasy movie exists merely to connect scenes
> > involving impressive special effects. The plot of comedy exists
> > merely to connect jokes. The plot of a musical exists merely to
> > connect scenes in which people are singing and dancing. The plot of a
> > drama merely exists to connect scenes of emotional turmoil.
>
> I see your general point in theory, but I disagree with it in
> practice. I think most other genres occupy a different space than
> porn and musicals.
<snip>
The mistake may be trying to pigeonhole everything into genres. A
tragedy which has comic relief does not suddenly become a comedy. A
trajedy can be accurately described as a kind of story that makes us
feel sad, specifically one in which the hero meets his end as a result
of his own folly. Really, the argument is incomplete unless you keep
in mind that stories have both major climaxes and minor climaxes: if a
story ends with the hero climactically dying as a result of his own
folly then it was a trajedy; if the story ends with the hero getting a
cream pie thrown in his face then one would assume it was a comedy.
It's a Wonderful LIfe is a good example: it starts as a drama, become
a Twilight-Zonesque fantasy and ends with everything alright and
everybody singing and laughing. So what was it?
The present story is another good example: it contains pornographic
scenes and the story arguably exists to string them together but it
was ultimately a superhero story, in this case a mixture of fantasy
and comedy genres.
Martin
Martin Phipps
> On Nov 8, 6:13 am, Martin Phipps <martinphip...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > By extension, all literature is equally legitimate.
>
> If by legitimate you mean that all literature is able to be called
> literature, then, yes, I agree. Whether or not its good literature is
> another matter entirely. :-)
"Good" and "bad" are subjective. You can, however, gauge emotional
reactions and ask how effective something was.
Martin
Martin Phipps
Feh. Who cares about ennui? :)
> > By extension, all literature is equally legitimate.
>
> If by legitimate you mean that all literature is able to be called
> literature, then, yes, I agree. Whether or not its good literature is
> another matter entirely. :-)
>
> > The plot of a
> > porn film merely exists to connect sex scenes? The plot of a horror /
> > suspense movie exists merely to connect scenes of viloence. The plot
> > of a romance exists merely to connect scenes of couples kissing. The
> > plot of a sci fi or fantasy movie exists merely to connect scenes
> > involving impressive special effects. The plot of comedy exists
> > merely to connect jokes. The plot of a musical exists merely to
> > connect scenes in which people are singing and dancing. The plot of a
> > drama merely exists to connect scenes of emotional turmoil.
>
> I see your general point in theory, but I disagree with it in
> practice. I think most other genres occupy a different space than
> porn and musicals.
<snip>
Tom Russell
> > Porno is not
> > determined by what feelings (both emotional and pysiological) it
> > inspires in you, but rather by the presence of sex; musicals are
> > determined by the presence of singing and dancing, _not_ by the desire
> > to feel-good.
>
> It's a simplistic argument that happens to work very well. All movies
> have music but not all movies are musicals.
That's why I said that musicals are defined by the presence of singing
and dancing, not by music. :-)
> And pornography really is
> a function of what one individually finds pornographic or arousing or
> disgusting as the case may be. If a couple were having sex and, at
> the same time, having a meaningful conversation then it could arguably
> be described as a drama with the sex providing little more than
> setting. You yourself told Saxon not long ago that porn can never be
> sad or it wouldn't be porn.
Actually, what I said was that it would be "terrible". It would be
"bad" porn. But it would still be porn, I think, as a genre. Though
it's true that the presence of sex doesn't necessarily make something
porn; it's when the emphasis is on the sexual performance that it
makes it porn.
You could have a movie where a character sings and dances, but only
for a brief moment-- Christopher Walken does it quite often-- and I
suppose that doesn't make it a musical.
So my definition of pornography is perhaps a bit inexact, but at the
same time depressing and bad porn is still porn, which means the "feel-
good" aspect wouldn't necessarily be a good litmus test either.
I guess we just know it when we see it. :-)
> > And some genres, frankly, do not evoke any overriding emotion at all.
> > What emotion is postmodern work like Ulysses in key with? What about
> > bildungsroman? Epistolary? Stream-of-consciousness? Robinsonade?
> > Psychological Realism?
>
> How do they make you feel? It really is a valid way to distinguish
> one pure genre from another.
I've never heard of a "pure" genre before.
The whole point of those examples is that they are genres _defined_ by
either external formal devices (epistolary, for example) or by a basic
plot structure (Robinsonade).
And, to answer your question at least in part-- postmodern work
generally makes me confused and bored. I'm not sure if that's what
makes it a genre, though. :-)
> > What is the Western a function of? Anger, justice, elegy, discovery?
> > None of these.
>
> > A Western is a function of _setting_.
>
> A Western is a type of action movie.
That would discount the Ox-Bow Incident, wouldn't it? Not to mention
Brokeback Mountain. Both two very prominent westerns without much
action.
Well, not the sort of action you mean, anyway. ;-)
Anyway, I still stand behind my belief that a Western is defined by
its setting.
> Science fiction, likewise, is a
> recent invention of the past hundred years that grew out of the need
> for more realistic fantasy. I realise that "realistic fantasy" sounds
> like an oxymoron but all stories do need to be capable of suspending
> disbelief.
It doesn't sound like an oxymoron at all. It's a very good point.
But Sci-Fi isn't always about wonder. It can be, certainly. But it
can also be about the relationship between people and technology (an
intellectual idea, not an emotion per se), or about fear (aliens
attacking, et cetera), or even about how much life sucks (cyberpunk).
Just because a sci-fi story isn't filed with wonder doesn't make it
any less "pure" or any less "science-fiction". I feel a subgenre is
just as pure as a genre-genre. After all, aren't all genre-genres
just sub-genres of tragedy (story ends badly) and comedy (story ends
good)?
> > So, while I understand the basic gist of the idea, in actuality it's
> > bullocks and it's somewhat frightening that an English teacher who
> > presumably takes literature seriously would also take that theory
> > seriously. It's about as bad as those people in the seventies who
> > said there were no such things as authors or even works, but rather
> > products of prevaling socio-economic conditions.
>
> Well, Tom, I've had enough years of experience to identity bull and I
> frankly don't see it coming from me.
I'm not attacking you personally, Martin, and I wasn't saying that
_you_ persoanlly were _behind_ a theory that I personally disagree
with very strongly. If someone were to espouse the other theory I
mentioned-- there are no authors, Shakespeare wasn't a genius but
rather a product of his times-- I would still call it bollocks without
meaning in any way to disrespect hte person saying it.
It's not a theory you came up with; it's a theory that's quite popular
in the academic world, like the importance of decoder-ring symbolism.
I think even if you disagree with my opinion, you'll concede that you
at least understand where I'm coming from, just as I disagree with the
genre-defined-by-emotion theory but I understand where you're coming
from.
And, really, this is a case where no one can be 100% right. We're
talking about abstracts. You point out flaws in my argument, I point
out flaws in yours, and so on-- and hopefully others will join us in
this invigorating game of What Makes a Genre a Genre?
> Martin
==Tom
Tom Russell
> The mistake may be trying to pigeonhole everything into genres. A
> tragedy which has comic relief does not suddenly become a comedy. A
> trajedy can be accurately described as a kind of story that makes us
> feel sad, specifically one in which the hero meets his end as a result
> of his own folly. Really, the argument is incomplete unless you keep
> in mind that stories have both major climaxes and minor climaxes: if a
> story ends with the hero climactically dying as a result of his own
> folly then it was a trajedy; if the story ends with the hero getting a
> cream pie thrown in his face then one would assume it was a comedy.
Those are actually all very good points. I still stand by my main
argument, as you still stand by yours, but the fact that genre is
usually somewhat fluid does account nicely for errors in both of our
arguments. :- )
>
> It's a Wonderful LIfe is a good example: it starts as a drama, become
> a Twilight-Zonesque fantasy and ends with everything alright and
> everybody singing and laughing. So what was it?
Magical realism?
> The present story is another good example: it contains pornographic
> scenes and the story arguably exists to string them together but it
> was ultimately a superhero story, in this case a mixture of fantasy
> and comedy genres.
Which brings us to the more pressing question: What makes a superhero
story a superhero story? I'd argue it's the presence of superheroes,
and not any emotion it might arouse-- as it can arouse literally any
emotion.
==Tom
Martin Phipps
> On Nov 9, 1:53 am, Martin Phipps <martinphip...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > How do they make you feel? It really is a valid way to distinguish
> > one pure genre from another.
>
> I've never heard of a "pure" genre before.
You haven't? You've never seen movies described using hyphens?
Romantic-comedy? Action-suspense? Musical-drama? (The last one is
usually just called "opera" :))
> > > What is the Western a function of? Anger, justice, elegy, discovery?
> > > None of these.
>
> > > A Western is a function of _setting_.
>
> > A Western is a type of action movie.
>
> That would discount the Ox-Bow Incident, wouldn't it? Not to mention
> Brokeback Mountain. Both two very prominent westerns without much
> action.
>
> Well, not the sort of action you mean, anyway. ;-)
>
> Anyway, I still stand behind my belief that a Western is defined by
> its setting.
If Western is merely a setting then it isn't a genre. Blazing Saddles
was a comedy that had a Western setting. When people say "I like
Westerns" they don't mean "I like movies with mountains in the
background", they are talking about a kind of action movie involving
guys on horseback shooting guns at each other. A Western setting
doesn't make a movie a Western.
I've heard the same argument before vis-a-vis science fiction. If I
take a drama and set it in the year 2020, it does not automatically
become science fiction. If I have Jason Voorhees killing teenagers on
a space station, the setting alone does not make it science fiction.
Look at it this way: writing exists for only two reasons, either to
impart information or to envoke an emotional reaction. In the case of
fiction, obviously it doesn't exist solely to impart information
because most of it simply isn't even true: it must therefore exist at
least in part for the purpose of envoking emotion. The obvious thing
to do is to classify writing in terms of the emotional reaction that
it is intended to envoke. Frankly, when we classify stories as
"horror", "suspense", "comedy", "drama", etc. we are already doing
that.
Martin
Martin Phipps
So what's a "superhero"? If Superman is drinking coffee and talking
to Lois is he being a superhero in that story? If not then his
presence doesn't make it a superhero genre story. Frankly, superhero
stories are a subgenre of fantasy, one that sometimes overlaps with
science fiction but usually doesn't.
Martin
Tom Russell
> On Nov 9, 3:27 pm, Tom Russell <milos_par...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I've never heard of a "pure" genre before.
>
> You haven't? You've never seen movies described using hyphens?
> Romantic-comedy? Action-suspense? Musical-drama? (The last one is
> usually just called "opera" :))
I have seen hyphenated genres, of course; I just don't see them as
being in anyway "impure".
> A Western setting
> doesn't make a movie a Western.
Let's just agree to disagree here.
>
> I've heard the same argument before vis-a-vis science fiction. If I
> take a drama and set it in the year 2020, it does not automatically
> become science fiction. If I have Jason Voorhees killing teenagers on
> a space station, the setting alone does not make it science fiction.
But JASON X _was_ a science-fiction film. And a slasher film. Kind
of like ALIEN.
Okay, a _lot_ like ALIEN.
> Look at it this way: writing exists for only two reasons, either to
> impart information or to envoke an emotional reaction.
It might be more precise to say that a writer tries to engage a
reader, whether intellectually or emotionally. In the latter case,
one is not neccessarily trying to evoke a particular and definable
emotion; the best writing doesn't make everyone feel the same way, nor
is it orchestrated to do that. It might be a nittling point, and if
it is, I'm sorry-- I just feel it's an important enough distinction to
make. The best art I've ever experienced does something to me, but I
can't put it into words. It doesn't make me sad or happy or
whatever. It's an experience and when i come out on the other end of
it, I've changed. And I think my earlier Carney quote provides a
third reason for writing to exist.
==Tom
Tarq
'musical' was a genre -- rather a mixing of two or three media (music,
dance and theatre/film, depending on the case). While many musicals
are comedic ('Crazy for You'), others are really rather tragic ('West
Side Story'), and others still are open to interpretation; 'Someone's
Son' would be my preferred example, though 'The Sound of Music' is
probably better known.
'Musical' isn't really any more of a genre than 'novel' or 'movie',
though most people do tend to ignore the fact that musicals are
capable of presenting multiple genres much the same way that people
tend to associate video games with violence. (Damn it, Reader Rabbit,
why do you teach our children to kill??) Both are perfectly able to
present comedies, fantasies, dramas, and whatever else would float
your boat.
Having said that, however, perhaps media could be looked at in a
similar 'emotion-inspired' argument; there are exceptionally few
action musicals since people who enjoy large explosives rarely also
enjoy singing and dancing, no matter what they're singing and dancing
about. Bookshops have entire walls full of fantasy novels, though my
local video store has less than half a shelf. It would be interesting
to conduct a survey and have people mark what media and what genres
they're interested in; romantic video games would be far less common
than comedic movies, I should think (pornographic games would probably
stand a depressingly higher chance).
Sorry to disrupt the flow of conversation there, but I found the
continuous referral to musicals as a genre to be a bit unsettling. =)
~Mitchell.
Lalo Martins
> Just to throw in some two cents here, but I wouldn't actually say that
> 'musical' was a genre -- rather a mixing of two or three media (music,
> dance and theatre/film, depending on the case). While many musicals are
> comedic ('Crazy for You'), others are really rather tragic ('West Side
> Story'), and others still are open to interpretation; 'Someone's Son'
> would be my preferred example, though 'The Sound of Music' is probably
> better known.
I'm with Tarq on this one. I'd add that Sci-Fi isn't a genre either, and
then we could extend the list with super-heroes, westerns, war stories,
and probably more.
I guess more useful would be to describe works in a multi-dimensional
way. Something like:
Story genre: drama, horror, mystery, action, humour, etc
Narrative/setting devices: sci-fi, magic, western, war, super-hero, etc
Medium focus: acting, music, dance, martial arts, what I call "non-human
performance" (car chase, aircraft or spacecraft dogfights or piloting
stunts, etc), imagery, and why not, sex
And of course, on any of those dimensions, one given work may "tick" on
more than one choice. In fact, the best sci-fi (in my opinion) always
does that; to go with easy examples, B5 uses sci-fi and war story
devices, while Serenity uses sci-fi and western.
best,
Lalo Martins
--
So many of our dreams at first seem impossible,
then they seem improbable, and then, when we
summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
-----
http://lalomartins.info/
GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/
Tom Russell
>
> I guess more useful would be to describe works in a multi-dimensional
> way. Something like:
>
> Story genre: drama, horror, mystery, action, humour, etc
>
> Narrative/setting devices: sci-fi, magic, western, war, super-hero, etc
>
> Medium focus: acting, music, dance, martial arts, what I call "non-human
> performance" (car chase, aircraft or spacecraft dogfights or piloting
> stunts, etc), imagery, and why not, sex
I can see your general point, Lalo (and yours, too, Mitchell), but I'm
going to have to disagree here. I interpet the term "genre", which
means a type of, kind of, or sort of something, much more broadly--
that is, I interpet it to be any criteria used to categorize anyhting
as a type of, kind of, or sort of.
Within each genre there are genres, and I suppose one could use your
organizing system to arrange them into a sort of hierarchy. But I
wouldn't use that system to say that "science fiction" isn't a genre.
Two examples to prove my point:
People who are sci-fi nuts seek out science-fiction books, movies,
whatever, _especially_. The fact that there are things that make it
science fiction-- largely a matter of setting but also a matter of the
use of speculation and the reocurrence of certain themes-- things that
appeal to these people, makes it by definition a genre. It's a "type
of" story that they like.
Secondly, even with such an organizational hierarchy in place, it
doesn't make a sub-genre or sub-sub-genre any less of a genre: a
dinosaur is an animal, and a dove is a type of dinosaur, and a pigeon
a type of dove, and a parlor roller a type of pigeon. But all of them
are still animals. A parlor roller is still an animal, and, indeed, a
Champion Parlor Roller is still an animal.
And so, say, while the psycho-biddy genre, defined by the presence of
two or more older women trying to kill/drive one or the other insane,
also fits within the thriller and grand guignol and horror genres,
it's still a genre in its own right-- in my opinion.
>
> And of course, on any of those dimensions, one given work may "tick" on
> more than one choice. In fact, the best sci-fi (in my opinion) always
> does that; to go with easy examples, B5 uses sci-fi and war story
> devices, while Serenity uses sci-fi and western.
Well, there's no such thing as a horror story that's only horror and
nothing else, or sci-fi that's only sci-fi and nothing else. All art
is ambiguous and subject to interpetation. Genres are useful when
describing certain things and identifying what about them appeals to
us, but at the same time one cannot say with certainty that something
is one thing and not another. The Lord of the Rings is just as much
an action novel and a war novel and a romance and a coming-of-age
story and a horror story as it is a fantasy. It's classified as
fantasy (or High Fantasy) because the things that make fantasy a
specific genre-- the presence of magic and of mythical creatures--
take precedence.
==Tom
Tarq
> On Nov 9, 9:59 am, Lalo Martins <lalo.mart...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I guess more useful would be to describe works in a multi-dimensional
> > way. Something like:
>
> > Story genre: drama, horror, mystery, action, humour, etc
>
> > Narrative/setting devices: sci-fi, magic, western, war, super-hero, etc
>
> > Medium focus: acting, music, dance, martial arts, what I call "non-human
> > performance" (car chase, aircraft or spacecraft dogfights or piloting
> > stunts, etc), imagery, and why not, sex
>
> I can see your general point, Lalo (and yours, too, Mitchell), but I'm
> going to have to disagree here. I interpet the term "genre", which
> means a type of, kind of, or sort of something, much more broadly--
> that is, I interpet it to be any criteria used to categorize anyhting
> as a type of, kind of, or sort of.
I would define 'genre' as a category of story that can be told in any
variety of media. I *would* include sci-fi as a genre, simply because
it has elements unique to it that, while they can certainly be
implemented in other genres and crossed over in sub-genres, define the
genre as science fiction. Most superhero stories, for example, fit
under sci-fi; how did Spider-Man get his powers? Wolverine? Batman?
Superman?
The difference -- what I see as a very clear distinction -- between
science fiction and musicals is that you can tell any sort of story in
a musical, but not any sort in sci-fi. Sure, you can *adapt* a text so
that's sci-fi, but that's a radically different sort of adaptation
then the one that goes from, say, novel to musical.
> Within each genre there are genres, and I suppose one could use your
> organizing system to arrange them into a sort of hierarchy. But I
> wouldn't use that system to say that "science fiction" isn't a genre.
> Two examples to prove my point:
>
> People who are sci-fi nuts seek out science-fiction books, movies,
> whatever, _especially_. The fact that there are things that make it
> science fiction-- largely a matter of setting but also a matter of the
> use of speculation and the reocurrence of certain themes-- things that
> appeal to these people, makes it by definition a genre. It's a "type
> of" story that they like.
I concur.
> Secondly, even with such an organizational hierarchy in place, it
> doesn't make a sub-genre or sub-sub-genre any less of a genre: a
> dinosaur is an animal, and a dove is a type of dinosaur, and a pigeon
> a type of dove, and a parlor roller a type of pigeon. But all of them
> are still animals. A parlor roller is still an animal, and, indeed, a
> Champion Parlor Roller is still an animal.
Some might argue that doves aren't dinosaurs, but I know what you mean
(I was a heavy dinosaur nut until I was about ten; my sole goal in
life was to be a paleontologist). Just saying that that might not be
the best example to use if you were to present the same argument to
the broader public. =)
> And so, say, while the psycho-biddy genre, defined by the presence of
> two or more older women trying to kill/drive one or the other insane,
> also fits within the thriller and grand guignol and horror genres,
> it's still a genre in its own right-- in my opinion.
And what a hell of a genre it is.
> > And of course, on any of those dimensions, one given work may "tick" on
> > more than one choice. In fact, the best sci-fi (in my opinion) always
> > does that; to go with easy examples, B5 uses sci-fi and war story
> > devices, while Serenity uses sci-fi and western.
>
> Well, there's no such thing as a horror story that's only horror and
> nothing else, or sci-fi that's only sci-fi and nothing else.
Yeah -- what's Star Wars without the Force and Luke kissing his
sister?
> ==Tom
~Mitchell
Martin Phipps
> Also spracht Tarq (Fri, 09 Nov 2007 09:38:04 +0000):
>
> > Just to throw in some two cents here, but I wouldn't actually say that
> > 'musical' was a genre -- rather a mixing of two or three media (music,
> > dance and theatre/film, depending on the case). While many musicals are
> > comedic ('Crazy for You'), others are really rather tragic ('West Side
> > Story'), and others still are open to interpretation; 'Someone's Son'
> > would be my preferred example, though 'The Sound of Music' is probably
> > better known.
>
> I'm with Tarq on this one. I'd add that Sci-Fi isn't a genre either, and
> then we could extend the list with super-heroes, westerns, war stories,
> and probably more.
>
> I guess more useful would be to describe works in a multi-dimensional
> way. Something like:
>
> Story genre: drama, horror, mystery, action, humour, etc
>
> Narrative/setting devices: sci-fi, magic, western, war, super-hero, etc
There are two popular sci-fi settings: the future and space. Jason X
_looks_ like a sci-fi movie but it's really about teenagers screaming
because Jason is coming to kill them.
> Medium focus: acting, music, dance, martial arts, what I call "non-human
> performance" (car chase, aircraft or spacecraft dogfights or piloting
> stunts, etc), imagery, and why not, sex
I apologize to Tarq for describing musicals as a genre (especially as
it seemed to "disturb" him). I had forgotten how some musicals can
make people cry. So an opera is a drama told through music.
Interesting. It makes sense too because you could never have a
"musical novel". Really all genres should be able to translate to
different media.
I know what you mean when you about martial arts and sex being media.
Bollywood producers claim that they don't need sex in movies because
they have music and dance and they can just as easily show a couple
falling in love that way as between the sheets. I think that's a good
example of what you mean.
Of course, martial arts is also a genre: it's a kind of action movie.
Movies with Jean Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal or Chuck Norris are/
were all martial arts movies with (usually) a Western setting as
opposed to an Eastern one. Writer / director Kurt Wimmer even made
the argument that "gunkata" is a martial art through movies like
Equilibrium and Ultraviolet. Certainly swordplay is considered a
martial art. I guess technically all action movies that involve
fighting are technically martial art movies! As you point out there
are also action movies that don't involve human fighting but rather
car chases, aircraft or spacecraft dogfights, piloting stunts, etc.
> And of course, on any of those dimensions, one given work may "tick" on
> more than one choice. In fact, the best sci-fi (in my opinion) always
> does that; to go with easy examples, B5 uses sci-fi and war story
> devices, while Serenity uses sci-fi and western.
You're right, we've been thinking one dimensionally whereas these
three considerations (genre, setting and medium) are separate. A good
example is animation: in the West, people think of cartoons as a genre
whereas Japanese cartoons can be any genre. The same is true of comic
books: there have been Western, romance, horror, sci-fi and funny
animal comic books, not just superhero comics. More often than not
the medium simply isn't the message. :)
Martin
Tom Russell
> There are two popular sci-fi settings: the future and space. Jason X
> _looks_ like a sci-fi movie but it's really about teenagers screaming
> because Jason is coming to kill them.
And the presence of androids, nanites, and the rebuilding of Jason as
a cyborg are _not_ science-fiction? ;-)
> Interesting. It makes sense too because you could never have a
> "musical novel". Really all genres should be able to translate to
> different media.
I disagree; a "first-person shooter" can never really be translated to
prose or the stage, but it's still a genre of game. Country music is
still a genre of music, but you can't really translate that to a
novel.
==Tom
Martin Phipps
> On Nov 10, 1:02 am, Martin Phipps <martinphip...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > There are two popular sci-fi settings: the future and space. Jason X
> > _looks_ like a sci-fi movie but it's really about teenagers screaming
> > because Jason is coming to kill them.
>
> And the presence of androids, nanites, and the rebuilding of Jason as
> a cyborg are _not_ science-fiction? ;-)
It's an old debate. Whereas most people would classify Star Wars as
science fiction because it has space ships and ray guns a lot of
people would argue that it is essentially a fairy tale in a science
fiction setting. Some people would even go so far as to say that Star
Trek with it's humanoid aliens who speak English is more allegorical
fantasy than realistic science fiction. Then there are the real life
forensic experts who will watch CSI, see them solve crimes in an hour,
laugh and say "Now THAT is science fiction!" :)
Martin
Martin Phipps
> still a genre of music, but you can't really translate that to a
> novel.
But if you did then it would be a Western. :)
Martin