Monday, December 15, 2008

The Tibetan White Pulp Hero Production Industry

Okay, Chris, but what if it isn't a case of Tibet being overcrowded with these mystical cities that are churning out white pulp heroes to send back to America? What if it's just one city? Tibet's plenty big enough to hide one measly little mystical city. And when you compare this city's total output of white pulp heroes to, let's say, the yearly output of one Ivy League university's graduates, then it isn't very many at all. These white heroes likely never even met each other, since they all probably matriculated at different times.
The real question then becomes, what is this city up to? What's its long term agenda? That's the story I want to read. Maybe I'll have to write it in order to read it, except that Daryl Gregory's probably already written it. Are they seeding the New World with these guys for some as yet undisclosed long term design? Are these heroes allowed to run around doing whatever heroic, or vengeful, thing they want to do for now, but, in addition to their obvious mystical abilities, all of them have been implanted with terrible compulsions that will be awakened someday? Are they all sleeper agents for the lost Tibetan city?
Or is it just a case that the lost city mostly turns out Asian based mystical heroes as it was originally founded to do, but like any great institution, it needs to maintain a healthy diversity program, so once in a great while they churn out a few pro bono white American heroes to trumpet in their fundraising catalogues every year? They probably do the same thing with African heroes and Mesoamerican heroes, and so on. Right?
So who then is the protagonist of such a story? Is it one of the city's professors who is upset because these foreign devil students don't have the work and study ethics of the Asian students? Or is the story about the recruiter who has to travel the wide world looking for potential candidates for the city's diversity mystical hero program? Maybe it's a Harry Potterish school days romp about going through the training?

"I'm sorry, but registration is already closed for the Learning How to Walk Through Solid Walls course. The class if full up. You should have signed up yesterday."

"But I was still traveling here yesterday. I came all the way from Pittsburgh! Your recruiter messed up my connection for the yak caravan out of -- "

"That isn't my problem now is it? I just sit here behind this desk and tell students what classes are still available and what classes are full. And the one you want is full."

"So what else is still available?"

"I can get you into Cloud Men's Minds."

"No way. I hear the instructor for that grades on a strict curve."

"How about Area Effect Causes Uncontrollable Sadness?"

"And be surrounded by a bunch of whiny emo mopes all the time? No thank you. what about Leap Tall Buildings in a Single Bound?"

"We don't have that class here. Christ on a rubber pagoda, you ignorant foreigner! Didn't you even bother to read the student handbook? That's not even our genre!"

And so on.

6 comments:

  1. Maybe the Tibetan White Pulp Heroes would have to fight like the giant robots always do.

    Why can't the giant robots just get along?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Now if the Tibetan White Pulp Heroes are fighting the giant robots, then you may have something, Williams.

    (And damn you, Willingham. You've got the germ of a terrific story there.)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah, I think I'll go ahead and write it up, provided that far-too-talented jerk Gregory hasn't already beaten me to it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mr. Willingham, perhaps you're referring to my latest story, "Phi Beta Fu" -- part 4 in my "Dwight Baxter, Shambhala Campus Detective" series. (Dwight was one of the white devils who failed to graduate, but stayed on as janitor, only to be promoted to the university security detail when he solved "The Case of the Cobra Kegger.")

    ReplyDelete
  5. See! I knew it!

    I am so enjoying Pandemonium. Well done.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "Oh, I'm sorry. You can't graduate. You failed to take MREAD 401 - Mind Reading IV. What do you mean you didn't know about the requirement? Well, if you had paid more attention in Mind Reading III, maybe you would have!"

    ReplyDelete