#gratuitous exposition makes every cover better

[nocountryforiguanodon]

One more old comic edit because yesterday I couldn't find the folder I had saved it. I wish comic books still had speech bubbles on the covers. There's so much more to work on.

[fieldbears]

Washed-Up Stucky MNF/Fic Writer Provides Endgame Opinions

I’m going to try to tackle this linearly, at least to begin with:

I am very much Team Bored With MCU Hawkeye, but I want to give sincere props for the cold open, which I think accomplished several things simultaneously: recapped the consequences of the last film (since, hey, it’s been a fuckin while), set the tone, and began Clint’s narrative arc.

That said, jesus, I’m still irritated by the shoe-horned family to begin with. First they were invented for convenience and narrative stakes, and then their final, ultimate reason for existence was to be temporarily fridged. Take a moment to imagine a world where Clint was the circus runaway loner he was supposed to be, who only had his coworkers as found family, who either responded to The Snap by throwing himself harder into his teamwork work OR went rogue because his sense of justice and agency was so fucking destroyed by what happened. He didn’t need a blood family to have the arc he had. And he didn’t even need the arc he had. But this is a bitchfest about a choice made many years ago, not made in this final movie.

The first third of that movie was rough. The whole thing had the narrative flow of “A Series of Related Short Stories Played One After the Other”, but the first third seems to be Failing To Establish the New World and then Clumsily Establishing The Emerging Situation.

The establishing shots and scenes to show the audience what The Snap’s consequences were worldwide were... lacking. It’s dark? No more baseball? People are relying on natural light instead of interior lighting, but this is also happening at Avengers HQ, where they clearly still have power and internet access to work their tech, so... was it just an aesthetic choice? I feel like the film tried to spend time showing us what the consequences were for the average New Yorker, but instead we get a weird Canonly Gay Russo Character who gave a good performance that tells us about the human loss but not about the mechanics of this new world. We get the ‘no baseball’ shot and all we get afterward are ‘people miss the missing people’. But restaurants still exist? Businesses are functioning? (Wouldn’t New York run kind of smoother if it wasn’t overpopulated?) I feel like we were invited to start thinking about how this dystopia works, but were never given answers. (There are so many interpretations of how things could go wrong if certain people just disappeared, and their knowledge/access were suddenly unavailable, and none of it was explored, even briefly, outside of establishing shots.)

The Garden Planet - it’s discovery, the traveling to it, the fight there - lacked emotional grounding in a way I find hard to explain. The audience was excited for Brie Larson being a fucking boss, and the quick execution of the grab-him-and-cut-his-arm-off plan was satisfying, but the twist and subsequent letdown was just a weird beat after a slog to get there, after waiting on a deep letdown beat from the last movie.

Last thing about flow and emotional beats, because I want to move on to character analysis, and this is a huge one for me: Clint’s fight in Tokyo and Steve’s fight with himself were some of the biggest missed opportunities in the entire film.

Not counting the football field brawl at the end, which I don’t count as a real fight scene, these are the two major fight scenes of the entire film and as far as I can tell, there was no effort made to make these showpieces. They went to the trouble of bringing Clint to Bladerunner Central, and pit him against the last bastion of aesthetic-obsessed mafia in the world. The panning camera in the interior as Hawkeye fought goons brushed past lazy fight scenes that only showed who was winning, not the brutality that Clint was supposedly falling into, not the grit of this new awful world, just... shapeless dark bodies getting thrown through windows? And on top of that, they could have made up (or picked from canon) any Big Bad to pit him against outside in the street, and we get an Orientalist sword fight that could have fit in nicely on a CW superhero show, and some of the most unnecessary exposition dialogue I have ever heard. Someone bothered to weave Clint’s arc in earlier, with Rhodey explaining to Natasha that Clint’s gone International and also Worryingly Dark. Why the fuck do we have the ‘I’ll give you anything you want’ line, on the rotten cherry on top of ‘stop being mean to the yakuza, we didn’t start it’? You already covered his motivations with the cold open.

And while Steve’s fight ended in a FABULOUSLY HEARTBREAKING WAY, the fight itself was nothing - you can pick little character details out like how they both ditched their shields almost immediately, and it was funny that Then-Steve mistook Now-Steve for Loki in the first place, but it was still a completely lost opportunity to get one true superhero battle in this three-hour slog. Both Steves could have gotten up and carried out the rest of the narrative after a decent brawl, but instead they fall a great distance after some blocked shots and it... was nothing? Missed opportunity for some cool shit.

Okay, skipping to character assessments now:

Clint’s character has been mishandled from the beginning and this seemed to be the “better late than never” eleventh hour arc. Except the end of the arc is unclear - it made sense for him to fall apart after losing his Shoehorn Family, but how did Natasha’s choice to fall do anything but fridge someone else, with more agency this time? It makes Natasha noble, which she already was, and it made her win against Clint, which I appreciate, but Natasha didn’t need salvation through death and Clint learns nothing by getting them back, just experiences relief.

Bruce. I want to say, first, that I love Hulk in a Cardigan. Cardihulk can stay. I want fanart, I want t-shirts, give me all of it. But Bruce’s explanation of “I scienced it so I could get the best of both worlds” only gives us half of the acceptance that Banner’s character is already working towards. As we saw most explicitly in Ragnarok, the Hulk isn’t just a physical form, he has his own separate consciousness, originally defined by rage but revealed to be more complicated. Bruce merging into Cardihulk seems to have... erased Hulk’s separate consciousness without merging it into himself? If there had been some acknowledgement of a second voice still within him that shot out opinions or demands for certain menu items in the diner, this would have been a much cleaner end to his arc, which has been equally messy between actor and narrative shifts.

Speaking of Ragnarok... it’s time! Are you ready? Have you read articles about the Gambit Gambit too? Are you fucking depressed that a fat suit was used for comedy gags in the year of our lord 2019? Because I was. The Russos seemed to... not struggle with what progress Ragnarok had put onto Bruce and Thor’s characters, but reject it. This movie’s Thor was anxious for laughs, was desperate for easy answers to a a feeling of lost heroism, and it didn’t feel like a familiar character. The time-travel scene with his mother wrapped it up very elegantly, and was well performed, but that scene didn’t need to follow a series of “chunky drunk in sweatpants” jokes to show us that Thor was struggling. Everyone in the film is fucking holding on by their fingernails, but only one is played for cheap laughs.

At least we get the bisexual Asgard lady king we deserved.

Tony got the right death. He got a hero’s death and Pepper’s last lines of “you can rest now” were exactly the right lines to wrap up an arc characterized by fear and a desire to protect and control at any cost. I knew the MCU was never going to really acknowledge that Tony’s The Problem, even with lines like ‘you should have let me do the fascist robot thing, that was gonna work fine’ thrown around pretty much as soon as he touches down on earth again.

I’m not sure if there’s much to say about Natasha. It was fitting that she was running HQ, that she was struggling, that she was rejecting emotional help from Steve but clearly still close with him. Seeing her break down after hearing the report on Clint felt right after, I think, being told by several directors (or making the personal acting choice? idk) to just be as flat and as decolletagey as possible. And again, while I feel like she would be self-sacrificing on that cliffisde if given the opportunity, and that she would win, the narrative choice to place her there and have that be her end didn’t really give her anything she didn’t already have. She had nothing to prove.

I have a hard time really laying out my thoughts on Steve without launching into the pregnant absence of Bucky, but I’m going to try. Chris Evans did a good job being the emotional heart of a really fractured story with a lot of conflicting pieces. Seeing him lead a talk therapy session after The Snap seemed very out of character for him until one realizes that Sam isn’t there to lead it himself. His scene offering help to Natasha was another good scene between them proving that not every m/f relationship has to be sexual to be interesting or add to the plot. His leadership speech during the Stupid Fucking Slow-Mo Heroes’ Walk to the platform was well done and makes me think of what could have been for the MCU, if they’d ever just let them be a cohesive found-family team for twenty minutes and let them fight some doom-bots or something. Fuck. Imagine.

Something weirdly satisfying about the deceitful ‘hail hydra’ line in the elevator. Yes? Yes.

The hammer scene was satisfying to me without being too gratuitous, but I’ll acknowledge that some people weren’t into it. Having paid more attention to Steve’s arc than most, I’ll argue that he earned it several times over.

His ending - that is, the secret life he alludes to but doesn’t explicitly reveal to Sam - is earned too. I’ve read at least one thing saying that Steve’s arc was all about him learning to let go, but that’s... never what Steve does. Not at the end of any arc, of any comic story, does Steve let go. Not of his principles, not of the people he loves, he is always “Thinking... Thinking About Bucky!” and getting in fights he can’t necessarily win. So I don’t think his final ending is ever Learning to Let Go. I think it’s fair that it’s Just Once, Just This One Time, Getting What You Want And Getting To Enjoy It.

And now I’m backtracking to Bucky. I’ve read one article already that theorizes that Steve’s arc, which was highly prioritized, included literally as little direct interaction with Bucky as possible because... the MCU? the Russos? Marvel?...  is aware that Steve/Bucky is the most popular same-sex ship in the MCU. And that’s tiresome as fuck but I think there’s some truth to it. I wonder if, like in Civil War, we’ll hear later from the actors that a lot of contextual one-on-one scenes were shot and then mysteriously cut from the final edit.

I will say that in my head, Bucky is relaxed when Steve goes back in time for the final time, and lets Sam goes to talk with Steve one-on-one at the bench, because Bucky is not worried if Steve will come back, and does not feel a need to check on Steve on the bench. Because, like Peggy, Bucky has been getting secret visits too. Maybe as far back as during his time in Wakanda, but certainly since the final fight with Thanos. Bucky was calm because he already knew. He didn’t miss Steve because Steve hadn’t given him an opportunity to do so.

d

[paulisweeabootrash]

First Impression: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

I started writing up this review with the intent of shelving it for this year's end-of-year cleanup (yup, I intend to make that a yearly thing), but the more I watched, the more I felt it deserved a longer writeup.  Especially given how popular and well-received it was, because frankly I don't think it lives up to the hype.  So shapeshift into a more comfortable form as we talk about...

...That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (2018)

Episodes watched: 14.

Platform: Crunchyroll.

The victim of a freak stabbing, a nice but forever-single 37-year-old has his dying thoughts — from wishing he weren’t feeling pain to wishing he could have a shot with many women in his next life — granted as wishes by a mysterious voice.  The voice turns out to be "Great Sage", a sort of... user interface(?) of a fantasy world that functions according to very RPG-like rules.  Generic monsters vs. named human and humanoid heroes, powers that can be acquired and leveled up, that sort of thing.  Those "granted wishes" come in the form of a new body, that of a slime, impervious to many things and able to absorb the abilities of other monsters by engulfing them, which he can apparently use either to literally eat them or to keep them alive “stored” inside him (which sounds... horrifying) — "analyzing" them using the Great Sage and gaining the use of their abilities in either case.  Granted the name Rimuru by Veldora, a godlike dragon he befriends (and then eats in order to carry him around), our slimy protagonist goes out into the world to explore and fix other people's problems.  Monsters, as we soon see in much more detail, typically have no names and minimal organization or skill, and once named, "evolve" into more powerful variants with not only superior strength but also the capacity to use superior magic and technology.  It's an interesting mechanic/premise that really feels like it would be at home in an ancient etiological myth.

It starts off feeling very much like watching a pretty good adaptation of an RPG or maybe point-and-click adventure, as the plot progresses mainly via Rimuru using items and abilities he has incidentally acquired for unrelated reasons to stumble into and complete quests for other characters.  It bounces wildly in tone from fantasy combat to ecchi to adorable wholesome content, and I assume at some point there will be some kind of confrontation with or followup on the human hero who imprisoned Veldora in the first place?  But for the first five episodes, it's mostly "ooh what's this?" followed by a sort of self-imposed quest to create a goblin nation-state from the ground up by naming everyone, taming the dire wolves who are threatening the goblins, and importing technology from the aforementioned named humanoids.  Then it takes an abrupt turn for the serious, laying on us three episodes of backstory about Shizu, a character who I can't really talk about at all without spoilers, but that short arc was engaging and resulted in Rimuru finally being able to take on a humanoid form, which turns out to be a great disguise in future episodes.

Meanwhile, the vague world conquest plans of majin (a term used here to refer to powerful humanoid magic-users) and demon lords having been taking shape in the background, as a vast orc army is steamrolling through every weaker group of monsters it can find.  The next few episodes focus on a group of oni, ahem, ogres (but they’re totally traditional Japanese depictions of oni) who join Rimuru's village after their own is destroyed by the orcs and an underground civilization of lizardpeople who attempt, in a hilariously clumsily and overconfident way, to join forces with Rimuru's followers against the orcs.  The oni are pretty great, especially Rimuru's secretary/bodyguard Shion and scout/diplomat/spy/whatever Souei, as is the unassuming goblin Gobta, who has frequently been the comic relief up to this point but becomes important to the looming conflict.

The lizardpeople/Rimuru-followers alliance is eventually formed and the show tries to make their war against the orcs epic and dramatic, but... here it largely fails.  This arc is full of tedious repetitive exposition about the same characters and tedious repetitive exposition about the same characters and tedious repetitive exposition about the same characters and tedious repetitive exposition about the same characters, as if they expect the audience goes into every episode having forgotten the events of the previous episode and even several recurring characters' names.  Add to this some sudden new abilities getting pulled out of Rimuru's and others' asses, increasingly frequent jarring tone shifts from scene to scene, combat scenes where everyone is stationary and stupid, and cap it all off with a "boss fight" that only gets started after some villainous exposition monologuing worthy of Dragon Ball Z and an exposition dump flashback about the orcs that raises more questions than it answers, and at this point I'm only still watching to find out where the hell it goes from here.  This feels like a bad adaptation of a game now... but maybe a bad adaptation of a good game.  Maybe it would work better, honestly, in RPG format.  It's not like this doesn't have potential as a premise.  But I don't get the hype, because I really don't think it lives up to it.

W/A/S: 4 / 5 / any random number 3–8, depending on episode / !

Weeb: Like I said about Death March, "not weeb so much as geek".  But this is getting a higher weeb score than that because some basic elements (such as, uh, the main character himself) probably come off as really weird if you've never played any of the Dragon Quest (a.k.a. Dragon Warrior) games, which are responsible for the generic low-level slime monster we know today.  Not to mention that this show's versions of orcs, ogres, and demons are more like depictions of those various races in other Japanese media than they are like the Germanic/Anglosphere/Tolkien-influenced fantasy canon.

Ass: Rimuru likes boobs.  He likes to talk about them.  He likes to cuddle up against them.  He checks out everyone.  He's... a sad old virgin.  Expect gag boobs and gratuitous camera angles, but not all the way to anything sexually explicit.

Shit (writing): Again, it really does feel like we're watching Rimuru complete a series of quests or puzzles to advance through the predetermined areas of a game.  Which is probably the point, but that doesn't work quite as well as a storytelling technique when the audience isn't actually figuring out how to complete those quests.  The sudden tone shift for Shizu's three-episode story arc and the weird exposition dumps throughout feel like they're trying to cram a lot of source material into relatively few episodes and it's not going well — which is odd considering that they got a 24-episode season instead of the more typical 13.  And considering that the source material has been going in some form or other for five years prior to the anime (it originated on Shōsetsuka ni Narō, the same self-publishing website responsible for a great deal of the last decade’s epidemic flourishing of isekai, including the above-mentioned Death March and Re:ZERO).

Shit (other): I like the character designs.  And they did a great job in particular making Rimuru expressive despite not... uh... having a face.  But the animation is sometimes embarrassingly bad, especially in action scenes — I swear, there was a fight at like 4fps at one point, the CG orc army is just painful to look at, and the "battles" between the orcs and lizardpeople are mostly just them staring at each other and then occasionally weakly thrusting a spear forward.

Content: Brief surprisingly violent shots, given the often-silly tone of the show.

-----

Stray observations:

- I said Rimuru pulled new abilities out of his ass, but... wait, do slimes have asses?  Can he form a temporary ass, like a comb jelly?

- Rimuru is not only lusting after the various elf and oni women; he is also obviously attracted to Souei, one of the male oni, and this is not played as being surprising or gross or funny in-universe, so, uh... yay bi representation... I guess...

- PS: I continued watching (even though this is frustrating) past the episodes this review covers, and I just want to add that I hate the pegasus knights.  Nobody had the sense to equip them with either ranged weapons or large melee weapons like lances.  They just fly around with swords that wouldn't be able to reach their enemies unless they pull up right alongside them.  This might make sense if they attempted a charge and attacked at point blank, which is the entire point of the distinctive cavalry saber, or maybe they could even dismount to fight on foot, and use the ability to fly for extreme maneuverability getting to a particular point on the battlefield?  Nope.  The closest they come to either of those tactics is to just fly leisurely towards Charybdis's open mouth without even unsheathing their swords in ep. 19.  WTF?  Look, I'm hardly a military expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I think these pegasus knights were dreamed up by someone who has only dimly heard of the concept of cavalry of any kind and hasn't spent more than a few seconds thinking about how you even can use horses in war, let alone bother to look up even a basic overview of how armies actually historically did.

[geek-patient-zero]

Part 2, Chapter 1

Or:  Gratuitous? I'll Show You Gratuitous

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy Volume 1

Before starting Part 2, Robert Weinberg gives us another Edgar Allan Poe quote. This one’s from the short story “Ligeia”.

That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned as no ordinary passion.

Who could this chapter be about, I wonder?

New York, NY—March 14, 1994

The most dangerous woman in the world rose each day with the sun.

She lived in the penthouse suite on top of one of the tallest skyscrapers in New York City. The building, from foundation to lightning rod, belonged to her. Few New Yorkers realized that the owner lived on the premises. Even fewer knew what she looked like or how much she was really worth. None were aware of the other, darker secrets the structure held.

A strong start so far. From here, the chapter will emphasize four things when introducing our new protagonist, Alicia Varney:

She’s super hot

She’s super horny

She loves being alive to a decadent degree

She’s a ruthless and unapologetic member of the 1%

In that order. Look, it’s the 90′s, this is a nerd property, and the story’s talking about a woman. You knew where this was going.

The name “Varney” might be a reference to Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood by either James Malcolm Rymer or Thomas Peckett Prest. It was a penny dreadful vampire story that predated both Carmilla and Dracula and introduced several classic vampire tropes, like fangs that leave two puncture wounds and hypnotic powers. It’s also remembered for being terrible, so it’s maybe not the best story to associate your own book with.

As the sun rises, the light shines through her windows and slowly creeps over her lush carpet to her king-size bed.

It splashed across bright red silk sheets until it crested like a wave on the nude body of the woman sprawled in deep sleep in the middle of the crimson sea.

‘Cause sleeping naked on top of your bed covers is what anyone does when they live in New York City, a hundred floors up, in mid-March.

Her dark hair flared around her head in a halo, the sleeper had the face of an angel. And the body of a devil.

Her features, young and wrinkle-free, glowing pink with perfect health, were those of a twenty-five year old. Her body was taut and lean, well-muscled and deeply bronzed. Firm breasts, long, tapered legs, and flared hips proclaimed her one of those rare beauties who looked exceptional either dressed or undressed.

She must also smell like a gym sock dipped in stale perfume, given that she’s just waking up.

Quick comparison: In Part 1, Chapter 1 we didn’t get a physical description of McCann for about two and a half pages, and when we did all we were told was that he was a “big, broad-shouldered man” along with his height and weight. Before then we learned his name, profession, the situation he was in, what he’d been doing in the recent past and what he’s doing at present, and some exposition about a different character. For Varney, we get some brief hints at her wealth and power before being presented with a Playboy centerfold description three paragraphs into the first page of the chapter.

The sunshine caressed her face, causing the woman to smile in her sleep. Sighing softly, she rolled over, burying her head in the silk.

Varney has a grand old time waking up. She wipes the sleep from her eyes (or as we of the lower classes would describe it, scrapes off the hardened crust gluing her eyelids shut), does some lazy, sensual stretches, and shimmies her shoulders and back against the sheets to enjoy the feeling of them against her skin. After that “face of an angel/body of a devil” stuff it’s not like Weinberg was gonna write her groaning, scratching herself, and farting.

Still, I gotta call bullshit on this next line.

It feels good to be alive, thought Alicia Varney. It feels very good to be alive.

I don’t care who you are, how high your Humanity stat is, or how much you love being alive. No one likes waking up at sunrise.

Varney shuffles herself over to the intercom on her nightstand to alert the help.

“The princess in the tower has arisen,” the young woman declared. Her voice, low and sultry, was as smooth as melted honey.

That’d be the morning phlegm doing that.

She requests her usual breakfast and says she should be out of the shower by the time it arrives. The voice on the other end of the intercom acknowledging her wishes is a guy named Sanford Jackson, and he’s one of those fictional servants who’d be overqualified for their job if their employer was your average rich person. A former Green Beret and CIA troubleshooter, Jackson now serves as Alicia Varney’s manservant, chauffeur, bodyguard, and all-around sidekick.

And emergency cock.

During the rare periods where she was without a lover, he handled that job with reasonable competency as well.

“Reasonable competency,” hmm? Can’t tell if that’s a playfully coy way of saying he’s an excellent lover or a polite way of saying he’s meh.

Whatever his sexual skill level, the thought of Jackson’s “hard, muscular body” excites Varney. For the past few nights she’s been going through one of those previously mentioned rare loverless periods.

It was a situation she meant to remedy as soon as possible. Alicia Varney squeezed every drop of pleasure possible out of life. She did not like being denied anything for very long.

Still, she’s not quite desperate enough to fuck the help yet. Smart, since you don’t want a henchman in your stable getting too attached. It could also be evidence for the second of my two theories about Jackson’s Athletics ability.

Varney jumps into the shower, and as expected the narration doesn’t waste time on mundane actions like her scrubbing her armpits or rinsing the dandruff off of her scalp. Nor does Weinberg do the average male author thing of writing the woman doing an exotic dance in the shower while describing the water running down this curve and that tit. Nah, he skips all that and has Varney just go for it.

A few minutes under hot, pulsating streams of water, along with a session with the magnificent detachable shower nozzle, would serve for the moment.

You could give Weinberg credit for writing a woman masturbating for her own pleasure, rather than as foreplay or to show how lonely, pathetic, and manless she is, but keep in mind Varney’s only doing it because she didn’t have the real thing at the moment.

But self-stimulation was no substitute for the real thing. Later today she would go on the prowl. She needed a man.

We’ve only known Alicia Varney for two pages and I’ve read more about her struggling with her libido than I have Kindred with their inner Beasts since the start of the book.

When she steps out of the shower, Jackson has her breakfast prepared in her penthouse.

Dressed in a totally transparent dressing robe (because of course she is), Alicia nodded in satisfaction at the three slices of cinnamon French toast, selection of imported fruit jellies, pot of coffee, and copy of the Wall Street Journal.

This is very relatable to me. I, too, start my day by eating the Wall Street Journal.

She asks Jackson if she has any messages. He says she has a few, but nothing important enough to deal with before breakfast. He stands at attention nearby as she eats, and thanks to that transparent robe he does so literally and euphemistically.

Old habits died hard, Jackson never rested easy in the presence of his commanding officer. He always stood at rigid attention in Alicia’s presence. Though he couldn’t help sneak sideways glances at her firm breasts tightly pressed against the thin material of her gown.

I can guess why he ain’t with the CIA anymore.

As the former Green Beret tries to get his privates to stand at ease, Varney sets up her breakfast the way she likes it. Then she eats it the way you’d expect a hedonistic immortal billionaire to: like an asshole.

She feasted slowly, savoring each bite much like a condemned convict eating his last meal. Alicia rarely hurried doing anything. Eating, drinking, sleeping, making love,

using the bathroom, getting money from the ATM, deciding what to order at the drive-through,

she did them all at a controlled, measured pace that defined her existence. She believed in devouring her pleasures mouthful by mouthful, chewing them to a fine pulp, then swallowing. She was never in a rush. She had all the time in the world.

The WSJ doesn’t have anything in it that Varney hadn’t already learned from the better contacts her billions can afford her. This is typical even though reading the paper remains a part of her morning routine. Maybe so her sexy manservant won’t dare to try and start a conversation with her?

The mention of her billions leads to us learning more about the earnings of her company, Varney Enterprises, one of the largest corporation on Earth. Nothing about what services or products the company actually sells, though.

Estimating its actual worth was impossible, but corporate yearly reported income was more than the gross national product of many small countries. And that did not include funds from the company’s more profitable but quite illegal secret enterprises.

Someone’s muscling in on Cyberpunk 2020′s territory.

Eventually Varney puts down the paper, surely confident that Jackson won’t suddenly ask about her feelings, and gazes out the window. She lives in a skyscraper’s penthouse and the weather’s clear enough to see “for miles and miles,” and you’d think she’d admire the sight of New York City at sunrise. Instead, she looks toward New Jersey.

Her sharp gaze traveled past the slums of Tenth Avenue and the Bowery and across the polluted green and brown waters of the Hudson River. Beyond the river were the moldering Hoboken docks and the huge toxic waste dumps that had earned the town the nickname “the cancer capital of America.” At the edge of her vision, Alicia could catch sight of the crumbling coastal palisades that guarded the New Jersey swamps.

The World of Darkness is a Harsher, Crueler Version of Our World; a Stark, Desolate Landscape where Nothing is as it Seems. So obviously nothing about New Jersey changed.

The view makes Varney feel like “a medieval princess in her tower surrounded by a world of peasants.” The narration explains America’s social situation in the World of Darkness: The rich are like aristocracy, there’s no true middle class, just rich and poor. Same old, same old. And while Varney has a history that should give her a unique and profound view on this social problem, the only conclusion she’d come to is that being rich is better.

Having experienced both extreme poverty and extreme prosperity many times in her life, Alicia knew without question that incredible affluence was the better of the two.

Wise words, Upton Sinclair.

She reveled in her riches, her lifestyle, and, most of all, in the physical sensations of life itself. There was no way she would give up any of it. For anyone or any cause.

Now with a set-up like that, you could normally predict a character’s arc. This time I have my doubts, as extremely long lived immortal characters tend to be set in their ways, but we’ll see.

(Spoiler: There's only one damn character in this trilogy who grows, and it's not this one.)

Oh, right. If you haven’t figured it out yet, Alicia Varney is actually Anis, Lameth’s former conspirator and lover, or whatever the ancient Mesopotamian term for “friend with benefits” was. It’s not revealed for another two chapters, but it’s obvious, so...

Having reflected on how the hardships she experienced over the millennia have taught her absolutely nothing beyond “fuck you, got mine”, Varney starts feeling philosophical. She asks Jackson if he can imagine living without the sun. Unfortunately the guy’s a bit of a dumbass when it comes to this sort of thing. Or so we’re told.

“Pardon, Miss?” Jackson was poised, bright, and articulate. He did not, however, possess an imagination. He viewed the world in terms of blacks and whites, positives and negatives. A wonderful bodyguard and right-hand man, he was less satisfactory as a conversationalist.

Jesus, all he said was “pardon.” No need to insult the guy’s worldview or conversational skills just yet.

She paused, gathering her thoughts. “Have you ever given any thought to what it would be like enduring in a world of eternal darkness. (I see what you almost did there, Mr. Weinberg) Without hope of ever seeing sunlight again?”

The big lug thinks she’s talking about being blind.

“Can’t say I have, Miss Varney. During the war, I trained wearing a blindfold, learning how to rely on my other senses if my eyes were injured.

Jackson’s secretly a kung fu movie protagonist.

But that never happened. I’ve been lucky that way. Always had perfect vision.”

Alicia sighed. She wondered why she bothered. With a shake of her head, she tried one last time.

“Big bright light in sky. What if... could kill you? Can only do awake things when big bright light go sleep at dark time? You like?”

But seriously. Varney tells Jackson to imagine he caught a theoretical disease that would kill him if he were exposed to sunlight, and cost him the ability to enjoy “physical pleasures” like eating and drinking. Never again able to see the sun, to eat or drink. Would he go mad? Would he adapt, if he even could.

Jackson finally figures out that his boss is talking about vampires, like the ones she deals with at a place called The Devil’s Playground.

“Became one of those vampire things who spend all their time plotting against each other? Or haunt the streets, drinking the blood from bums who don’t have a place to hide.”

“They are not prime examples of the Kindred,” said Alicia. “But close enough.”

Nah, that’s an accurate description of your average WOD vampire, even the older low-gen ones Varney no doubt thinks of as prime examples (and secretly is).

“It wouldn’t make a difference to me, Miss. I’m a survivor. I enjoy my food and drink,” his eyes widened suggestively, “and my lovemaking.

“Uuuuuuuugh,” groaned Alicia as she once again regrets banging him.

Can’t say I’d be thrilled if I had to live without them. But I ain’t quite ready for the great beyond, if you catch my meaning. If I had to drink some blood to stay around, I’d do it in an instant. Did worse in the war, ma’am. Lot worse once or twice. Survival ain’t pretty, Miss Varney. Still, death is awful final.”

“You are a practical fellow, Mr. Jackson,” said Alicia.

Me, I would’ve asked him to clarify on the war crimes and possible cannibalism he just admitted to, but fine, let’s go with practical.

Varney concludes that she sometimes thinks an eternity of darkness is no better than a short life followed by death, and Jackson can’t really understand because “Mankind is born of the sun” (not me though, I was born after nine o’clock PM) and “Humans are truly heirs of the morning.” Jackson counters by saying he’d heard vampires being called the Children of the Night. Varney says that’s poetic, but very true, proving that neither of these two idiots had watched the damn movie. Dracula was talking about wolves. If anything, werewolves are the Children of the Night. Vampires are more like the Stuffy Old Dudes or Moody Teenagers of the Night, depending on the story.

That was all a fancy way of them agreeing to disagree. The conversation ended, Varney stands up and reminds us that she’s not so much wearing a robe as a big sheet of Saran wrap.

She rose to her feet, grinning as her assistant’s expression froze, his thoughts as transparent as her robe. “Keep hoping, Mr. Jackson,” Alicia purred as she walked to the huge closets that covered one entire wall of her bedroom. “If I don’t find a candidate to satisfy my carnal desires within the next few days, I will be forced to rely on your services. I’m positive you will rise to the occasion.”

“Yes, ma’am. I will have an erection for you when the time comes.”

“...Mr. Jackson. We’ve talked about you explaining my wordplay.”

“...?”

“That you shouldn’t.”

“Of course, Miss Varney,” said Jackson politely. “I’ll try my best.”

“That will be quite satisfactory, I’m sure,” said Alicia.

It’s more clearly playful than the last time Jackson’s fuckin’ skills were brought up, but the fact that he still has to wait a few days before his boss gives up and settles for him still makes me doubt his ability to please.

This reminds me of some Spider-Man history. Do you know why Spidey’s relationship with Black Cat didn’t work back in the day? It’s because while she was in love with the mysterious, wise-cracking and crime fighting Spider-Man, she had absolutely no interest in boring old sad sack Peter Parker. Sure, he was dating this incredibly beautiful lady, but the nature of the relationship meant his self-esteem was at rock bottom.

The situations are different, but the results are similar enough. Jackson occasionally gets to have sex with his gorgeous and seductive boss, but she straight up tells him she’ll only do it if she’s going through an extended sexual drought and can’t find a different boy toy, and she’s too coy to straight up say whether or not she enjoys those rare times with him. It makes me wonder about poor Jackson’s mental health. That and that war time cannibalism he mentioned earlier.

Ah well. Next chapter we learn that Varney pays him enough for her to have no doubts about his loyalty, so he has that going for him at least.

Speaking of paying him enough to deal with her bullshit, as Varney enters one of her closets she orders Jackson to bring up her messages and Sumohn, her pet panther she hasn’t seen in several days. Not only is Alicia Varney a selfish corpo yuppie, she’s one of those people who thinks it’s a good idea to own an exotic animal.

Jackson blanched. His big hands clenched into fists as he scowled at Alicia.

Even her boner-addled henchman is judging her.

“That beast is dangerous, Miss Varney. Black Panthers aren’t made to be household pets. Not even for ladies like you.”

“Nonsense,” said Alicia, her tone of voice brooking no disagreement. “I can assure you that Sumohn is incapable of harming me. I repeat, Mr. Jackson, incapable. We have had this conversation before and it does not please me to repeat it again. The subject is closed.”

Jackson relents, understanding who writes the checks and provides the magic pussy. He says he’ll send word to the kennel, because of course the ignorant billionaire keeps the poor wild animal in a kennel. Following this is what I think they nowadays call a #girlboss moment, but I’m a little out of touch when it comes to cancelled Netflix shows and the social and anti-corporation essays they inspire. It’s the 90′s so let’s call it a Girl Power moment.

“You’re getting better, Jackson,” said Alicia, with a laugh. “But you’re still not perfect. I run my life the way I want. You worry about my business rivals sending assassins after me. I’ll worry about Sumohn.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Jackson, his tone of voice indicating he thought his employer was crazy. “You’re the boss.”

“Exactly,” said Alicia. “Now go.”

Alright, Robert Weinberg, I believe you. Alicia Varney is a Strong Female Character and not the result of typing one handed.

The gimp goes down to warn the kennel people while Miss Varney gets dressed. Now, this is a young rich woman getting ready to take her pet out for walkies. It’s an... eccentric choice of pet, but still. You’d expect her to wear something trendy but casual enough to sweat in. But this is vampire fiction, so she’s gotta dress a little more extra than that. She puts on a long black velvet skirt, the Seinfeld puffy shirt a frilly white blouse, and, get this, a black toreador jacket. In this one case, it’s “toreador” as in a bullfighter, not an undead hack artist.

No word on whether or not Varney’s jacket has epaulettes, but I choose to believe they do.

She completes the look with a black beret worn at a “jaunty angle”, so that by the time Jackson gets back she looks like the french foreign exchange student from a 90′s high school movie.

(The only thing we were told about McCann’s wardrobe was that he wears a topcoat.)

Jackson came back with a folder full of documents and word from the kennel that the panther’ll be up in a few minutes. Varney can’t help but snark at Jackson one more time about his earlier common sense argument with her.

“At least they understand the wisdom of not arguing with me,” said Alicia, thumbing through the documents.

Making anonymous calls to the ASPCA, on the other hand...

Halfway through reading her messages, she learns some bad news about Russia. The Shadow Curtain has affected the country’s economic plans as well as secret vampire crap. Now we learn how Miss “I Run My Life the Way I Want”, earlier described as someone who “did not like being denied anything for very long,” reacts to being told she can’t have something.

Not well, as you guessed.

“The Russians refuse to let our people into the country? What the hell is happening there? It doesn’t make sense. Varney Enterprises has been doing business with the Communists since 1919. Did that fool in charge, Andropov, give any reason for the abrupt change in policy? I thought we were bribing the miserable son of a bitch plenty.”

She’s most likely referring to Yuri Andropov, third General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and, as of ‘94, someone who had been dead for ten years. I can’t find anything about him being a secret vampire who faked his death and ruled from behind the scenes, so Alicia Varney hasn’t been paying attention for the past decade. 

She also seems to think the USSR’s still a thing when it fell three years ago. I don’t think WOD is one of those fictional universes where the Soviet Union stuck around. That only happens in things like Star Trek, which came out before the Soviet Union fell but takes place in the future and made the wrong prediction about Russia’s. It’d be a waste anyway. There’s plenty of darkness and misery to be found in post-Cold War Russia.

Jackson informs her that rather than dying of renal failure in the 80′s, Andropov has vanished without a trace, along with other people they’d been dealing with in the country, thanks to either Boris Yeltsin or the true power behind Old Drinky. They’d been eliminating the “Old Guard” and replacing them with their own people. Either a reference to the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis or just ”business as usual”. In any case:

“They’ve made it absolutely clear that foreigners are no longer welcome into the country. And that includes us.”

No McDonald’s for World of Darkness Moscow.

“Fuck,” said Alicia harshly. “That move is going to cost us millions. We spent years setting up that network in the Soviet Republics. It can’t crash just become some reformer has taken charge. I refuse to believe it. Russia doesn’t work that way.”

This is the second big change Russia has gone through in less than a century. Nothing stays the same forever. Countries and cultures change. You’d think an immortal would know this.

Jackson says that “things have changed drastically in the past few months,” and their agents, presumably the ones that haven’t become Nictuku food yet, delivered some disturbing rumors about Yeltsin’s secret advisors.

“Word is that to consolidate his position, he’s cut deals with some awfully ruthless characters.”

“Ruthless?” Repeated Alicia. “What’s new about that in Russia? Those bastards are colder than ice. They’d murder their own children and sell the bodies for medical research if it paid enough.”

The urge to include a vodka crack in that rant must have been so strong that if this were the tabletop it would’ve needed a dice roll to resist.

Unfortunately, no one knows the exact truth. Jackson says that despite all the talk, anyone who gets too close to the real truth disappears.

“I’ve studied the reports from the past twelve months.”

This has been going on for a year and you’re only now telling the head of the corporation?

“The closest thing we have to actual facts are several garbled reports of a gigantic old bitch with iron teeth and iron claws meeting late at night with the Premier.”

That sobers Varney up immediately. Or gives her a stroke. You decide.

Alicia froze, her mouth open in stunned surprise. All the color drained from her face, leaving her white as a ghost. Her eyes clouded, as if focusing on something deep within her mind. She stood unmoving, like a statue, for nearly a minute. Then her jaw snapped shut and she ground her teeth together.

“The hag,” she murmured, as if dredging a name out of her subconscious. “The iron hag.”

If Yeltsin had been in league with a powerful witch of legend in real life, I think he’d be remembered more fondly.

Jackson asks her what she means but she snaps out of it and dismisses it as remembering a story from her childhood. Then the elevator arrives and her mood brightens. Sure, Baba fucking Yaga is messing with her bottom line, but right now, KITTY!!!

She turned just as a short, swarthy man (oh for fuck’s sake) entered the parlor. Accompanying him, barely controlled by the steel chain leash around its throat and jaws, was a huge black panther.

The poor thing’s not even wearing a muzzle. They just wrapped a chain around its mouth.

She squees about how much she missed her giant baby as she rushes toward it to run her fingers through its neck fur.

The beast growled, a deep rumbling sound that Alicia insisted was its way of purring.

Oh surprise of surprises, the exotic animal owner knows jack shit about it. The largest species of cat that can purr are cougars. You can argue that some of the noises big cats like jaguars and leopards can make are equivalents to meowing, but I can tell you from experience that cats only meow when they want something, like food, or to bite your throat out and escape because you took it from its natural habitat and regularly stick it in a kennel for days in a row.

(Black panthers are jaguars and leopards with black fur, not a separate species, but we aren’t told which of the two Sumohn is. Cougars are sometimes called panthers, but there aren’t any with black fur, they’re smaller and, despite what the Red Dead Redemption games would tell you, they aren’t as deadly to humans as the actual big cats, and thus aren’t as impressive a thing for a sexy rich immortal to own.)

“Glad to see me too, huh?” said Alicia, scratching the monstrous panther behind the ears.

Yellow eyes stared deep into Alicia’s dark blue ones. The billionairess nodded, as if in reply to an unstated question. It appeared as if the animal and human were communicating by telepathy.

When it comes to animals, vampires are like ghosts and killer robots; animals can sense they aren’t human and freak out. A way around this for vampires here is ghouling the animal. It's heavily implied in Blood War, and will eventually be explained in the third book, that Sumohn is a ghouled animal, which makes it both a superpowered mutant cat and completely loyal to it's master. I also figure that Varney knows the Animalism discipline, which at its most basic allows vampires to communicate with and control animals. The first tier power, Feral Speech, allows one to do exactly what Varney did just now: communicate with animals telepathically if you look them right in the eye. The name of the power wasn’t mentioned, but that same thing happened many chapters ago with Vargoss’ Dominate attempt. There’re also Animalism powers that allow you to summon an animal, sooth its anger, and even possess it; all useful abilities to have if you’ve got a goddamn panther. Animalism isn’t a Brujah power, associated instead with Gangrel, Nosferatu, Ravnos, and, unfortunately for the animal, Tzimisce. But over the millenia old Anis could have learned it from a member of one of those clans. Varney orders Jackson to find out more about what’s going on in Russia by this evening. She tells him to call their people in the State Department and have them check with the CIA, a “subtle” example of her influence. Right now, it’s time for walkies.

“Sumohn’s tired of being kept in a cage. She needs exercise.”

Then don’t keep it in a fucking cage! There’s a reason zoos don’t do that anymore!

They’re headed for Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, to Jackson’s dismay. In this world, New York City has gotten even worse than it was in the 70′s. Here’s what he says about Prospect Heights.

“Prospect Heights isn’t safe. The police have declared it off-limits to civilians. Last week they threw in the towel and stopped patrolling the grounds, even during the daytime. Squad cars won’t enter, even if they spot a murder taking place. Too many gangs and psychos hide in those woods, all armed with heavy artillery and anxious for a chance of blowing away some cops.

“The mayor washed his hands of the whole situation. He called the park a national disgrace. The city council wanted the national guard called out to clean up the place. But the legislature vetoed the funds.”

Jackson shrugged his shoulders. No fan of politics, he was a strict believer in justice delivered from the muzzle of an automatic. ”No way Republicans are going to help a Democratic administration. Meanwhile, the park is a free-fire zone. You’ll be taking your life in your own hands if you go in there.”

What I believe he’s saying here is that The Warriors is canon to Vampire: The Masquerade. Deep down, I think I always knew that.

Varney laughs off the danger. Sumohn will protect her.

As if responding to her mistress’ comments, the panther growled. Despite the big cat’s mouth being muzzled by steel chains, it was a terrifying sound.

Fine, I get it, the panther loves her owner back. But still, GET HER A REAL MUZZLE! ONE THAT KEEPS THE PEOPLE AROUND HER SAFE BUT IS COMFORTABLE FOR THE PANTHER! YOU CAN OBVIOUSLY AFFORD ONE!

How do you even wrap a chain around a panther’s jaws without losing a hand? Christ!

“I hope she can catch slugs with her teeth,” said Jackson.

And take out enough creepy mute baseball bat-wielding psychos before you’re both overwhelmed.

Varney insists she’ll be fine and tells Jackson to focus on Russia. She’ll be back in a few hours. After all, she’s got evening plans at the Devil’s Playground.

“Alert the usual spies. It’s going to be a hot night.”

Which was more true than she could imagine.