Spider-Gwen (Vol. 1), Issue #5 – “Most Wanted? (Part 5)”

* Part 5 of 5 of the Most Wanted? storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Spider-Gwen (Vol. 1), Issue #5- “Most Wanted (Part 5)”! In the previous installment, Gwen has a little heart-to-heart with herself and tries to get over feeling guilty about Peter Parker’s death, about her dad, about Spider-Woman in general. She even talked to Aunt May about all this. It was sappy and insufferable. But, eventually, Gwen grabs a pair of drumsticks and joins the Mary Janes for their next show.

This series is a big warm bowl of nothing. I’m looking forward to it being over! Life is too short for mediocre comics, but first, let me write another 1,500 words about it.

Spider-Gwen (Vol. 1), Issue #5 [August, 2015]
Written by: Jason Latour

Spider-Gwen (Vol. 1), Issue #5

Matt Murdock’s tough-looking 5’2” bald assistant hands him an envelope. By the way, that thief? The security cameras didn’t catch anything. There is no evidence of his/her identity.

But Murdock knows who it was. Oh ho ho, who would mock the Kingpin so? The Black Cat, that’s who. Felicia Hardy. Meow.

The envelope contains VIP floor tickets to her show: Felicia Hardy and the Black Cats. Meanwhile, the Mary Janes see Hardy’s band advertised on the venue’s marquee. “What the hell does Felicia Play? Air guitar?” Glory gripes. MJ tells her not to take this personally. It’s not like she did it to directly compete the Mary Janes or anything like that. *wink*

“That ‘innocent’ little pop tart used to act like sharing a stage with us was visiting a leper colony,” Glory continues. “We’re here so she can spike her heels into our skulls on the climb to stardom. She’s laughing at us, Em Jay!””

Spider-Gwen (Vol. 1), Issue #5

The devil autotuning his farts sounds like just the kind of avantgarde noise rock that I can get behind.

“This isn’t about money or fame,” MJ argues. “It’s not about ‘selling out’– It’s about survival, ladies. The fleeting chance to keep doing what we love is right here in our hands. So no, I don’t care why she really wants us here. All I know is that she’s giving us an inch – and we’re gonna take a mile.”

You go, gurl! Take what’s yours! Fuck Black Cat and her motivations! Use it to your advantage! And so on and so forth.

While the Mary Janes set up on the stage, Black Cat stalks in the upper level relishing the scene. The Mary Janes are here. Matt Murdock is on the VIP floor. Everything is going “according” to “plan”. World-renowned international mega-thief extraordinaire Le Chat Noir (masculine, for some reason) is on the prowl again!

And here’s how Black Cat foiled the Kingpin: she stole the very first dollar that he ever earned, and that’s some priceless, priceless shit. Kingpin asked Matt Murdock to prove himself by getting it back, and that’s exactly what he intends to do.

The Mary Janes scream their way through a song until Black Cat prances onto the stage, interrupting and ruining their set. She and MJ exchange icy salutations while Glory groans exasperatedly.

“BONJOUR, NEW YORK CITY!” Black Cat yells to the audience. “I AM FELICIA HARDY! AND THESE ARE MY BLACK CATS!” She motions toward her backing band, all dressed as cats wearing French striped shirts. The Mary Janes marvel at the showmanship.

“Tonight we are here together,” says Black Cat. “All of us gathered knowing that this moment – that any moment – could be our last. And yet… still we dance!”

Matt Murdock is in the audience all like “bring it, bitch.” And then, out of nowhere, ninjas pop onto the stage and start throwing ninja stars at the Black Cats. The Mary Janes flop to the floor, you know, as a defensive tactic. Gwen has a look of “I gotta go be Spider-Gwen” on her face.

All the while, inscrutable shit is happening.

Spider-Gwen (Vol. 1), Issue #5

Just another normal Daft Punk show, nothing to see here.

Matt Murdock saunters up to the stage, unperturbed by the happenstances. Maybe because the man is a blind fuck and can’t see the carnage. “I’ll give you this, Felicia. Whatever it is, you have it. You Hardys always have. You’ve always known how to burn out before you fade away.”

Felicia is like “yeah, the ninjas were unexpected.” After the tussle dies down, she and Murdock seem to have the floor all to themselves. And they’re about to fight until Spider-Woman pops in to say the most asinine thing I’ve ever read in a comic book thus far.

Spider-Gwen (Vol. 1), Issue #5

I’ve got nothing to say. This has rendered me speechless.

Actually, two panels later Spider-Gwen says “Pajama Friday erry damn day, yo!” so she outdoes herself immediately. “I tell you, Ms. Hardy, I thought my life was weird lately. But theme park mascots playing keytars. Ninjas and creepy blind lawyers – your life is one mime short of a Bjork video.”

She thwips all the Black Cats and all the ninjas, wrapping their torsos with webby webs and pinning their arms. Hardy tries to retaliate, but Murdock reminds her that it’s bad luck to murder her guests. She doesn’t care, though, and she’s not going to listen to the lawyer who murdered her father (!). She’s going to murder that guy and pluck out his useless eyeballs. But first, she needs to make short work of that pesky Spider-Woman-Gwen.

So they fight. But even “fight” is a generous word, since all it takes is one punch to knock out Hardy. All the while, Spider-Gwen is as confused as I am about the outburst that Murdock murdered her father (!). After Hardy gets knocked out, Murdock approaches Gwenny and smiles smugly at her. “What is this?!” Spider-Gwen yells. “These are your men?! You work for the Kingpin. Protect him. Do his dirty work. It was you that sent those men to get revenge on Captain Stacy.” And Murdock just keeps SMILING and SMILING. “…a bit reductive as motivations go, don’t you think?”

But yes.

And he also sent the Vulture and that Aleksei guy after him too. Him and Spider-Woman. “I’ve been watching you, Spider-Woman. I’ve seen who you really are. Word of advice, little spider – grip too tightly to what other people expect of you. And in the end… you’ll have nothing left to hold.”

Spider-Gwen (Vol. 1), Issue #5

Smug prick. Tell him to describe yellow. That’s his Achilles’ Heel!

EPILOGUE. Captain Stacy stares at a picture of himself and Gwen and thinks out loud to his late wife. “…I’m so glad you can’t see the mess I’ve made.”

DeWolff pops in at his house just to sneer at him and tell him that it’s “just like him to be the last man standing”. He tells her to bug off. This whole case has infiltrated his home and family. He begs her to let it rest for just one night.

Nothing doing. “I’m not here to put you on trial. I’m here because no matter how it shakes out – no matter what comes next – or what Castle thinks… no matter what’s going on or what you’re into… I know deep down you’re a good cop. A good man. So just watch your back, ok?”

No such thing as a good cop. ACAB!

Final Thoughts

What a vapid shithole of a series! Never again!

Except Spider-Gwen continues in All New, All Different Marvel, so I’ll probably be hitting it up soon enough. Let’s see who runs that series… … …JASON LATOUR? Aw, fuck.


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Charlie Kirk Sucked

Charlie Kirk pictured here looking like dogshit on national TV.

This one goes without saying, obviously, but it’s a perfect way to kick off my new People Who Suck feature. Charlie Kirk really sucked.

I wrote a post already about how much Charlie Kirk sucked, but it was mostly a rant about his hilarious death and how it was conservatives’ new 9/11. To reiterate, post-death Charlie Kirk has really messed up half of America and you can apparently get fired from your hard-earned job by directly quoting the famous racist, misogynist, Islamophobic, transphobic, xenophobic piece of shit. Try quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. and you won’t get outrage from half of America. Directly quote Charlie Kirk and people get really, really mad at you. Go figure.

Here are some of Charlie Kirk’s best hits. He really believed all this stuff because he sucked:
-Black pilots are scary.
-MLK was awful, actually.
-The 1964 Civil Rights Act was a mistake.
-Muslims are coming to America in droves to destroy the country from within.
-White people are being deliberately and systematically replaced with non-White people.
-Straight people should be throwing heavy rocks at gay people.
-Trans people are Martians coming to America in droves to destroy the country from within.
-Women shouldn’t have autonomy and, in fact, should be killed by their husbands if they don’t cook them dinner every day.
-COVID-19 was a hoax invented by the Chinese in order to steal America’s moon babies.
-Vaccines are “medical apartheid” and children should only receive immunizations via runes thrown on the ground to see what shadows they cast.
-All this and much, much more!

Charlie Kirk was never embarrassed to keep a smile on his face, but he should’ve been.

Charles Aloysius Kirk Esq. was born and raised in a boring Illinois suburb. His father was an architect who worked on Trump Tower, coincidentally, so Kirk’s father sucked too. His mother worked as a mental health counselor, so it’s very likely that Kirk sought emancipation due to her extremely woke profession. His sister works as Chicago art curator, which is pretty artsy and woke, too. As a young child, Kirk pulled wings off of flies and played with matches extensively. He was an Eagle Scout, earning myriad merit badges including “TV/VCR Repair” and “Dick Sucking”. During his junior year of high school, Kirk started voraciously listening to the fat and sweaty Rush Limbaugh. Kirk wrote an editorial for Brietbart in his senior year about how liberal his textbooks were, citing algebra and chemistry as particularly heinous and socialist. It led to his first media appearance on Fox Business at the age of 17, where he was on a panel that conversed extensively on the menacing liberal agenda of sorghum farmers. He was rejected from every college he applied to, so he went to community college where the textbooks were even more liberal and geared toward young women with pierced noses and cats. He left after one semester because it was too hard and he was too stupid to cut it. In May 2012, Kirk met a 72-year-old sex offender named Bill Montgomery and they co-founded Turning Point USA. The organization aimed to spread misinformation rampantly in order to turn white privileged high school kids into completely unempathetic, Hitler-loving assholes. Charlie Kirk was shot in the neck at age 31. The dumbass didn’t even get as old as Jesus.

I hate constantly hearing about this guy. To this day, the news is still packed with stories about how people are losing their jobs over saying mean things about this irredeemable cunt. When he got shot (and died, lol), conservative social media was in an uproar about how the “radical left” was responsible for such far-right-style violence. They called it an “assassination”, a word usually reserved for victims who weren’t undereducated crybaby podcasters. I spoke at length about the Jimmy Kimmel situation, an event so mindfuckingly stupid that I still can’t believe it happened. Oh no, Charlie Kirk was the 98,767th victim of gun violence in America in 2025. Don’t make light of it, it’s disrespectful! You know, even though Kirk himself often claimed that senseless gun violence is a necessary way of life in America and that a heap of dead kids during daily school shootings is required for maintaining the Second Amendment (the only amendment that’s important these days, it seems). In short, he died for the cause. He got what he wanted. Charlie Kirk would have completely fine with his own outcome. Too bad he was too busy spouting blood out of his thick neck to have a comment at the time.

RIP Charlie Kirk. I hope you don’t have an issue with the devil’s liberal agenda.

Fuck off.


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Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #941 – “Night of the Monster Men (Part 3)”

* Part 3 of 6 of the Night of the Monster Men storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #941 – “Night of the Monster Men (Part 3)!” In the previous installment of the Night of the Monster Men storyline, Batman and Batwoman face off against a second monster while Nightwing learns that there are still two monsters out there to go. Against Batman’s wishes, Gotham Girl leaves the Batcave in pursuit of Monster #3.

So she’s going to die. Let’s get the fuck on with it, then.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #941 [November, 2016]
Written by: Steve Orland / James Tynion IV
“Night of the Monster Men (Part 3)”

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #941

In the Burnley District of Gotham City (the undisputed sexiest district), Batwoman pummels a two-headed monster in the mouth with her flying motorcycle. And, fuck, the monster didn’t even blink! She tries to put out an All-Points Bulletin (APB, as we say in the business), but her transmission is met with static.

Spoiler is trying to keep the evacuees happy, but there are about 700,000,000 people crammed into an area the size of a Dairy Queen, so tensions are high.

Nightwing reports that he’s still heading to Blackgate Penitentiary, and that Gotham Girl is a fucking lunatic. Over.

Alfred’s tie is undone, so you know he means business! The Batcave reports that they’re trying to counteract the isolated energy source of the bioenergy-fueled cell structure, whatever the fuck that means. I’m no scientitian.

Clayface, still disguised as about 14 cops, reports that he’s about to lose his sanity if he has to stick around as a bunch of different people for this long. Another neighborhood has been evacuated.

Gotham Girl is ordered to return to the Batcave, but she’s like “No way, Jose”. Again, she’s going to get herself killed like an idiot, and who will be around the clean up that mess? Fuck you, Gotham Girl. You’re a ninth wheel.

At Olsen Park, the evacuees are getting even further restless. “Who put you in charge, kid?” one of them says, pointing an ugly finger at Spoiler. A little boy is looking for his lesbian parents in the crowd and gets shoved by a jerk, so they all turn against him and rioting begins. I’m starting to think that evacuating a whole city was a dumbfuck idea in the first place. Survival of the fittest, I always say. I would be at home watching TV, personally. Let a monster try to suck the marrow out of my bones, ain’t nothin’ keeping me away from my Star Trek reruns.

Nightwing has made it to Blackgate before Gotham Girl. Batman whines to the kid that Gotham Girl is ignoring his direct Bat-like orders. If she’s around, no one is safe. Take her out at the knees!

She shows up anyway in all her shaved-headed glory, sending inmates and monsters flying in all directions.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #941

GA-THOOM! I’M HERE TO HELP! WHAT’S THAT, YOU GOT CHUNKS OF CONCRETE IN YOUR EYEBALLS? HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT WAS MY FAULT??

Batwoman continues driving her motorcycle around town, observing that monsters are still terrorizing the city and that people are still roaming the streets. She doesn’t do much else other than that.

While a Clayface clone tries to convince more people to get the fuck out of the city, a big chunk of skyscraper starts falling to the street. He pushes a couple of dudes out of the way, and immediately starts dematerializing into sludgy goopy goop. The dudes are about to thank him, but after noticing his condition they’re like “AAAAHHHH, YOU’RE ONE OF THEM!!” And, in shaky, scary lettering, Clayface says “Just… a citizen of Gotham like… you” while his face melts all over the place making “splk spllrch sploorch” noises. Meanwhile, the actual monster grows another head and chaos continues to reign surpreme.

At Olsen Park, this red goop is splashed all over the crowd. I don’t know what it is or where it came from or why it’s there or what I’m reading or where my pants are, but it’s making the crowd unruly. “I said stay calm, people!” yells Spoiler. “Don’t let any more of that stuff touch you!”

Spoiler and Orphan try to fend off the crowd while simultaneously realizing that this was a terrible fucking idea. Even leaving it in the capable hands of the great men and women in the Gotham City Police Department (snicker) isn’t working. Spoiler tries to contact Batman and Batwoman to tell them that some weird red spooge is causing everyone to become violent, but she is met with radio silence.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #941

WEEEE!! I GOT SOME AIR THAT TIME, MA!

Batman is flying around his own flying motorcycle. Or if it doesn’t fly, he must be taking some fricken sweet jumps. At any rate, he’s getting buttfrustrated because he can’t solve every problem simultaneously and quickly no matter how much he wants to, like a fucking psychopath.

Spoiler goes to a tunnel of the cave and thwips a big net around the opening so the 7 billion residents of Gotham can’t get through to strangle her. She assess the red murder sludge situation and deems it to be something that can be solved with fresh-cut grass. While she completely wastes time in that direction, Harvey Bullock sweats profusely while fending off Sludgy Citizen #475,584. He’s willing to try anything. Grass, kid? “Fresh-cut grass – it’s a smell to us. It’s also an airborne compound plants release to warn each other of danger. It’s how they communicate,” Spoiler explains. She keeps talking about plants communicating as one mind. This sludge is doing the same thing. Cut off the communication. Thanks for the idea, hot shot. How are we going to do it? Turn off the Wi-Fi?

Oh wait, here’s the bright idea: burn it with fire. Make it really hot in the caves with fire. Put dangerous, dangerous, fire near thousands of hair-having people. I’m so done with this stupid story.

ANYWAY, back to the story! Gotham Girl blasts eye-lasers at anything that moves within the penitentiary. “YOU THINK I’M AFRAID?!” she yells, terrorizing man and beast alike. Nightwing is like “you don’t know who I am, but I know who you are, and you’re hurting people, so stop it.” But guess what? Gotham Girl will never stop it.

She gets swarmed by these little lumpy black creatures while Nightwing bashes them against the wall as if they were little Cambodian children in the Killing Fields! Gotham Girl is so overrun that she plows through a concrete wall just to get them off of her! That’s where she discovers the Queen Lumpy Black Creature. It’s this ugly, bulbous lump with a weird skeleton-thing at the end of it. It goes “FFFFFFFRRRRR”.

“It’s you… giving birth to those things. Hurting people. You think you scare me? It’s always some monster. Psycho-pirate. Hugo Strange. Making my brother go mad. Making me afraid of what I can do. But not this time.”

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #941

Everyone let the crazy lady keep going until she gets tuckered out. Do not attempt to communicate or, like, you know, look in her direction.

Gotham Girl goes loco and rips the beast’s scythe arms off, then against Nightwing’s wishes, rips the whole body in half in a disgusting, gory mess. “Just like the pirate! You don’t deserve to exist! I’ll kill you! Do you hear?! I will kill you! Kill you!”

She starts to come to her senses while goody-two-shoes Nightwing looks positively flabbergasted at her atrocious behavior! The cell block is full of guts. She seems ashamed of herself. All these mutilated intestines are making me hungry, honestly.

“Let’s get you out of here,” Nightwing says to the shaking girl. Then, suddenly, all the red bloody sludge on them causes them both to convulse in pain. It seems to be taking a life of its own, seeping into their various orifices. Then, when they can’t hold in their rage any longer, they both turn into werewolf-y beasts! Rawr!

Everyone else is falling apart. Batwoman’s radio doesn’t work. Spoiler can’t hold on for much longer. Batman is losing traction on this stupid rope-thing he rigged up behind his motorcycle. Clayface is decomposing everywhere. Honestly, it looks like a bunch of dumbasses who dressed up in costumes pretending in a self-satisfied way to help the situation by barely doing anything. It all sucks so much dick.

Nightwing and Gotham Girl are going to seriously start fucking shit up now, by the way. They’ve become giant, stupid-looking monsters! Rawr!

Final Thoughts

Is this supposed to be exciting? This isn’t exciting. All I see is a gaggle of complete virgin losers trying to save a city from a threat that is completely out of their league. They’re using rope and nets, for fuck’s sake. Very mid stuff. And to think that this crossover was coordinated by, like, 45,000 people. Sad.


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Season 9, Episode 19 – “Simpson Tide”

The Simpsons, Season 9, Episode 19 - Simpson Tide

“Simpson Tide”

Original Air Date:
March 29, 1998
Directed by:
Milton Gray
Written by:
Joshua Sternin / Jennifer Ventimilia

QUICK SYNOPSIS

Homer causes an international incident after he joins the Naval reserves.

POINTLESS GUEST STAR(S)

Bob Denver as himself is very pointless, but at least he doesn’t knock on the Simpsons’ front door with the intention to save the day or anything. He just gets laughed at. It wasn’t a funny scene.

WHY THIS EPISODE SUCKS

“Simpson Tide” is one of those middling early Zombie Simpsons episodes that toe the line between real and surreal. Here we have Homer getting fired and starting a new job in the naval reserves. Homer getting a new job will become a frequent plot device as time goes on, so get used to it. Here, we get to observe a zany story that culminates into Homer becoming acting captain of a submarine and starting an international incident by treading into Russian waters. It sounds stupid because it is stupid. Most of this episode is stupid, and the jokes don’t really make up for it with the notable exception of Abe Simpson’s rambling defense for his son. (“But he is NOT a porn star!”) The entirety of the submarine sequence, as far as I’m concerned, as a complete shitshow of antics, outlandish storytelling, and dumb jokes. The Village People on top of the sub singing “In the Navy” with Smithers dancing out of nowhere? That’s the worst offender. God, I hate that joke.

Luckily, the B-plot stays rooted in reality. Milhouse gets a new earring and suddenly becomes the cool kid in school, prompting Bart to follow the lead. One of my favorite jokes in the episode involves Starbucks taking over the Springfield Mall (pretty prescient in 1998). “All right kid, but you better hurry up. In five minutes, this place is becoming a Starbucks.” I also enjoyed the meta “Do the Bartman” joke where Ralph rolls his eyes and rebukes Bart for being “so 1991”, as well as Milhouse accidentally pretending to be a vampire to continue wearing his earring (“But they’re also covered. Carry on.”)

I remember being underwhelmed with this episode when I was 10 years old. Apparently, some things don’t change.

The Simpsons, Season 9, Episode 19 - Simpson Tide

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

It was difficult for the writers to figure out how to get the captain off of the sub and they eventually decided to have him shot out of the torpedo tube, which in the DVD commentary, Al Jean says that Rod Steiger claimed that he really did get stuck in a torpedo tube once.
It sounds to me that the Simpsons writers required character actor Rod Steiger to write them out of a jam. Those Harvard and Yale degrees really went to waste!

In the original draft, Bart sneaked on board the submarine with Homer. They were trying to do it “for the comedy of it”, but could not get the draft to work, so it was cut.
Comedy first! Good story-writing second! Better enjoy even this while it lasts, because both comedy and story-writing will take a backseat to “sucking really, really hard at the Simpsons writing job” soon enough.

One of the Asian gang members in the Russian roulette game looks like Richard Sakai, a producer on the show.
Too bad it’ll never see the light of day, because I trust some dipshit named “Dan Greaney” to tell me how good a scene in the show would be. Oh look, I found a piece of the original script!

All Asians look the same, huh? Fucking racist shit right here.

FINAL GRADE
C


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Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

The Book Bonfire Disclaimer: There will be spoilers. If you’re even remotely interested in this book and you haven’t read it, or if you’ll be mad if you accidentally read any possible spoilers about it, I’m going to chalk it up to “not my fucking problem”. You have been warned. Also, this is a feature about reading. You came here to read about books, so pictures in these posts will be scarce. Be an adult.
Book 3 of the Discworld series

Equal Rites

Book Bonfire! Let’s burn a new book!

Pratchett, Pratchett, Pratchett. Here’s my dilemma with Discworld: I never read far enough to get to the “good stuff”, so I have no frame of reference for how the “good stuff” compares with the early rough stuff. For all I know it never gets that much better, it’s all just silly, extremely light reading with a disappointing lack of substance. How am I to know?

I’ve read Equal Rites before and I liked it well enough, but that was before I deluged myself with other fantastic fantasy literature over the years that set the bar higher. A reread of Equal Rites was very disappointing this time around. Maybe I’m expecting too much right now and my feelings are correct?

Here’s some stuff I liked about it:

“The first man who tells me I can’t do what he can do can give me a nice suck on the ol’ windsock.”
– Granny Weatherwax

There was actually some cohesion this time around. While The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic both seemed to be pieced together by a dozen different stories that just happened to star the same characters, Equal Rites actually had one story that lasted throughout the whole novel! Eskarina (Esk) is the eighth child of an eighth son. Usually these kids are wizards, but this eighth child happens to be a girl. And girls can’t be wizards! The dying wizard who passed on his staff as an inheritance didn’t know that until it was too late.

I liked the first half of the book because there was much more focus to it. We learn about Esk, the little girl who wants to do real magic. We learn about Granny Weatherwax, the witch whose magic mostly involves knowing what various herbs do. Granny tries to take Esk under her wing to learn witch magic, but Esk is extremely uninterested until she learns that Granny can “Borrow” animals by getting in their heads and controlling them. This causes Esk to bind herself with an eagle, almost not returning to her own body. See, this was all very interesting stuff! I liked this stuff! It was cool and entertaining and good.

The feminist themes were pretty forward-thinking for a man in 1987. The persistence of Esk trying to be accepted as a wizard in a field dominated by men — men who aren’t accepting women in their club because it’s “against the lore” — was some good ol’ hard-hitting social commentary! I like that the two strongest characters were Granny and Esk. I like the ineffectual and weak dispositions of the men. I thought Simon was a fun foil for Esk’s radical ideas. And, of course, in the end, Esk’s efforts prevail! She gets accepted as a wizard, and she and Simon collaborate to develop a new type of magic.

Here’s some stuff I didn’t like about it:

“Hey Granny, the Archchancellor’s head is starting to turn purple. You can ease up on the thigh pressure.”
– Esk

This is possibly just a case of early-book-syndrome, but man are Pratchett’s ideas all over the place. Just like the first two books, Pratchett jumps head first into tangents and diversions that are bogged down with purple prose. It’s like trying to sift through an ADHD-addled mind. The narrative is constantly disrupted and convoluted, so much so that the 213 pages took me about a full week to get through. Nothing flows with enough grace to make it a page turner. It was a bit frustrating to weave my way though the dense thickets of the writing. It’s like trying to read my dumbass blog!

I really hope this gets better as the books progress into the good stuff. I love the idea of these books, but they’re a little bit of a nightmare to get through. I don’t want it all to be a slog! That would be sad.

BOOK BONFIRE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS!

Does Pratchett succeed in writing a “feminist” book? Does he seem to have set out to do so? Does he avoid the usual errors of male authors who use female protagonists?
Doesn’t Terry Pratchett set out to do everything? The name of his game is social commentary, ain’t it? The name of the fucking thing is “Equal Rites”. What kind of question is that?

I’m not sure if I’d say Pratchett succeeded in writing a feminist book, because I’m still ever-growing as a feminist myself and sometimes I still learn about all the pitfalls along the way. The theme of Equal Rites is gender equality, although some of the tropes and pitfalls are still present. Men become wizards, women become witches, and that how it has always been and forever shall be. Inherent in this idea are the gender roles. Different types of magic for each sex, and the wizards have an air of superiority over the witches due to their more “complex” magic, whatever that is. Esk breaks the gender barrier on wizardry, and spends much of the novel establishing herself as the wizard she is destined to be. While this is satire, and it attempts to spin the ideas of gender norms on its head, is it a feminist book?

“Well, Granny. If you say we’re gonna have to kill our way through Unseen University, then who am I to argue?” *picks up bomb*
– Esk

Most of the book passes the Bechdel test proficiently, with the two deliberately strongest characters being the persistent Esk and the hard-headed Granny Weatherwax. And although Granny spends her efforts trying to convince Esk of her destiny of “women’s work”, she grows as a character and pivots to spending her efforts getting Esk into Unseen University. Pratchett was able to give these two female characters distinct personalities that aren’t beholden by usual adventure story tropes, such as the damsel-in-distress. Can you imagine Granny a damsel in the first place, let alone in distress?? Preposterous!

So I’m going to say yes, I guess. But what do I know? I’m an insufferable white guy like Ross Gellar.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This is the first Discworld book with a steady story, but there’s still a lot of meandering and the story can be hard to follow. I think things fell apart near the end with the Dungeon Dimensions, but the first half was very good. And it’s a short book. It took me 890 days to read it, but you can probably bang it out in an afternoon because you’re smarter than I am.

Other Writeups for This Series
The Color of Magic • The Light Fantastic

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