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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 30, 2021 16:42:38 GMT -5
I finished Ricks Story.
I’m planning on taking a break before I start Going Home. I keep saying that and then I start on the next arc right away. We’ll see.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 1, 2021 22:05:51 GMT -5
Finally completed Women tonight, and I feel like I understand it even less than I did the first time. It's called "Women," but it doesn't really have anything to say about women beyond Sim enjoying lengthy back and forths between Cirin and Astoria that don't really go anywhere. At a certain point, it seems like Sim's final point is that both perspectives have their merits...and then Cirin is just the bad guy by the end. As for any further commentary on women, I don't see one.
It's strange that next volume will be the one where Sim gets himself eternally labelled as a misogynist. Weird because, even this far in, he seems to respect men far less than women. The character we can most clearly identify and sympathize with in this volume is Astoria, while Cerebus and the Roach/Swoon are so overcome by their own internal weaknesses as to be utterly useless in achieving their own goals (and perhaps in even setting any). It often feels to me like Sim's idea of a woman is to strip a man of his sexual urges, vices, and insecurities. Sim's women don't feel particularly like women to me, just more capable men. How that connects to what happens in the next volume will be fun to figure out.
Beyond all that, it occurs to me more clearly than ever now that Sim doesn't really plot anymore. There are no explanations for why things happen or when. Why is Cerebus being hurled through the air (and possibly through dimensions) at different points? It just seems to artificially trigger the action in the story when rising action or a good climactic tension is needed. And attempting to understand the Kevilists vs. the Cirinists, vs. the Iestians vs. whatever is ultimately pointless because Sim isn't considering any of it all that carefully. He makes it up as he goes, and jumping across character arcs (even if most aren't progressing in any discernable way) helps to mask this. Fortunately the art, writing, characterization, and pacing are so good that you barely notice, but my impression of the Mothers & Daughters block of stories last time around was a whole lot of noise and very little actual story, and I feel that more than ever this time.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 2, 2021 14:42:22 GMT -5
Finally completed Women tonight, and I feel like I understand it even less than I did the first time. It's called "Women," but it doesn't really have anything to say about women beyond Sim enjoying lengthy back and forths between Cirin and Astoria that don't really go anywhere. At a certain point, it seems like Sim's final point is that both perspectives have their merits...and then Cirin is just the bad guy by the end. As for any further commentary on women, I don't see one. It's strange that next volume will be the one where Sim gets himself eternally labelled as a misogynist. Weird because, even this far in, he seems to respect men far less than women. The character we can most clearly identify and sympathize with in this volume is Astoria, while Cerebus and the Roach/Swoon are so overcome by their own internal weaknesses as to be utterly useless in achieving their own goals (and perhaps in even setting any). Fully agreed! Several women in the series up to that point (Cirin/Serna, Astoria, the "real" Cirin, Jaka) act like adults while among men, only Weisshaupt and Po stand out. The other male characters are children, slobs, idiots or prone to self-sabotage. I didn't get a sense of women acting in any specific way in Cerebus; some were driven by a desire to change society (Astoria, Cirin, Serna), some by love (Sophia), some were looking for freedom (Jaka), some were emotionally dependent (Joanne) and some were after financial stability (whoever Viktor Davis was involved with). The next volume, Minds, doesn't deal with the men-women dichotomy; it's a glorious voyage through the solar system, coupled with Cerebus learning what a d*ck he truly is. It's in Guys, I believe, that Sim will explore male-female relationships more deeply; however, unlike his anti-feminist screeds from the comics' back pages would suggest, the way he shows men and women acting in the story is at the same time pretty accurate and funny. (In a nutshell: neither sex is particularly mature, and when someone finally acts like an adult, it's on the basis of individual personality rather than their sex). Yeah... I kept hoping we'd eventually get a big revelation as to the hows and whys, but... I look at that aspect of the series a little more leniently, because I get the impression that Sim makes fun of politics in a deadpan manner. When Astoria explains why Kevilism is different from Cirinism, absolutely in earnest, she reminded me of students who insist that they have nothing in common with Marxists because they're actually Trotskyists. I do agree that there is barely a plot to follow after Minds, however, and what there is of it is way less important in the last third of the run than it was during the High Society and Church and State arcs.
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Post by String on Aug 2, 2021 14:54:25 GMT -5
In trying to post my latest update/thoughts on my re-re-read, I have been interrupted twice, once by a power outage so I'll make this semi-short.
Finished all of Church & State.
Bran's actions here are baffling to me, especially his last act. Why do that? Thrunk shows up as the False Pope and Bran's reaction is...that. Was he afraid the people had lost faith in Cerebus? (and so quickly too!) Had he lost faith as well? I keep thinking that, that his reaction was a sign of the weakness of his faith in the Earth-Pig Born especially in the face of a giant stone fist punching through the hotel wall.
As Pope, Cerebus commits quite a few despicable acts though the one that stands out for me occurs during his last visit with Weisshaupt. The Pope, slapping him in the face, condemning him to hell, while on his deathbed, praying for absolution. That's some powerful imagery right there, very unsettling.
The rape of Astoria was still as difficult to read as before though I had forgotten how she had lead him on prior to that act. It adds a layer of moral quagmire to the act with her teasing suggestions seemingly giving Cerebus free will to do as she suggests but her being shackled, gagged and blindfolded makes the defilement even worse. Astoria's choice of words here is interesting, helping him with 'one of his acquired tastes'. As seen previously in interactions with Sophia, when did Cerebus become interested in sex?
Cerebus making the act 'legal' by hastily marrying them is shameful though it makes the Judges' last remark to Cerebus as he leaves the moon all the more poignant, if you feel your suffering to be unjustified, remember your second marriage. That's cold.
This is the only time so far that I've ever read anything involving the Flaming Carrot. Although I'm given to understand that he had some kind of back up feature previously in the issues?
Onward to Jaka's Story.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 2, 2021 21:06:09 GMT -5
The rape of Astoria was still as difficult to read as before though I had forgotten how she had lead him on prior to that act. It adds a layer of moral quagmire to the act with her teasing suggestions seemingly giving Cerebus free will to do as she suggests but her being shackled, gagged and blindfolded makes the defilement even worse. Yes. That scene really messed me up the first time through and led to my taking a lengthy break from the series before continuing. It's treated with such inappropriate levity and then pretty much forgotten. It amazed me that readers were in arms over Viktor Davis, but pretty much gave this moment a pass. One of the first major inconsistencies I noticed in the series. And far from the last.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 3, 2021 6:03:05 GMT -5
I didn't view it as a contradiction myself, but as another demonstration of Cerebus' lack of self-control. Once he discovers a new thing to abuse, he just does. Other examples are his alcoholism, financial greed, spousal abuse and fanboyishness. He just wants more, more, more, and devil take the hindmost.
Why wasn't he interested in sex before? Well, I think his being an aardvark prevented him having much sex in his youth (although I'm not sure Sim meant him to still be a virgin at that point), so it might not yet have been a thing for him before getting married to Sophia.
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 6, 2021 15:27:35 GMT -5
I got another batch of Cerebus issues today. I now have all of Latter Days and I’m only missing two issues from the end of Going Home. So I’ll probably start Going Home over the weekend and I’ll hopefully have those two issues by the time I finish Going Home.
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 6, 2021 18:15:10 GMT -5
OK. I started the first issue of Going Home and I am laughing out loud at Cerebus and Jaka and Missy at the Action Figures Pub.
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 8, 2021 12:42:31 GMT -5
I read all of Sudden Moves. That’s the first arc in Going Home. I remember the first two or three issues but the rest of it seemed totally new to me.
And I’ve started the second arc. Fall and the River. This is the arc with F. Scott Fitzgerald. I remembered that Cerebus and Jaka are on a boat with F. Scott Fitzgerald but beyond that, none of the details are familiar.
I was somewhat familiar with Fitzgerald when these issues first came out. I had read Gatsby more than once and I’d read The Beautiful and the Damned. I’m sure I was a little familiar with the stories of Scott and Zelda frolicking through the twenties. He was friends with Hemingway. Zelda ended her days in an institution. The Cliff Notes version.
Since then I’ve read a lot more. I saw the movie version of Tender Is the Night. I was fascinated with Zelda for a while and I read a biography about her. I bought a book with her complete writings which includes a number of short stories, articles and a play. And also her novel Save Me the Waltz. Which I think is better than anything I’ve read by F. Scott.
So I’m definitely getting a lot more out of Fall and the River than I did twenty years ago.
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 8, 2021 22:32:43 GMT -5
I’ve only got a few issues left in Fall and the River.
Do the Cerebus compilations have much of the text in the back of the individual issues? The Fitzgerald issues have lengthy notes sections in the back, with lots of material about Sim’s writing process and a lot of biographical info on F Scott and Zelda. I don’t think I read this material when I was buying these issues when they were new. They make this whole arc a lot more accessible.
Sometimes Sim will be talking about how awful women are. And then for an example, he’ll point to something in Cerebus.
And I’m thinking, Dave. That’s something you wrote. That’s something you made up. The Cirinists aren’t real.
I don’t find it very convincing.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 9, 2021 8:12:53 GMT -5
I’ve only got a few issues left in Fall and the River. Do the Cerebus compilations have much of the text in the back of the individual issues? The Fitzgerald issues have lengthy notes sections in the back, with lots of material about Sim’s writing process and a lot of biographical info on F Scott and Zelda. I don’t think I read this material when I was buying these issues when they were new. They make this whole arc a lot more accessible. Sometimes Sim will be talking about how awful women are. And then for an example, he’ll point to something in Cerebus. And I’m thinking, Dave. That’s something you wrote. That’s something you made up. The Cirinists aren’t real. I don’t find it very convincing. To this day I can't manage to reconcile what Dave wrote in those back pages and what he wrote in Cerebus proper. He would indeed say "see how horrible women are? Look at what Jaka did in that issue!" and I'd go "Er... what Jaka does in that issue is perfectly reasonable; it's Cerebus who's acting like a moron". Puzzled, puzzled, puzzled.
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 9, 2021 15:27:12 GMT -5
I just read one of Sim’s back page rants and he dismisses Naked Lunch by calling Burroughs a typist and bragging that he threw it in the trash. Then he dismisses Picasso in a similar manner.
If there was any doubt that Sim is a clueless arse I think this erases it entirely.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 10, 2021 5:14:18 GMT -5
I just read one of Sim’s back page rants and he dismisses Naked Lunch by calling Burroughs a typist and bragging that he threw it in the trash. Then he dismisses Picasso in a similar manner. If there was any doubt that Sim is a clueless arse I think this erases it entirely. Part of what made those editorial pages unbearable to me was how Dave would rant about a subject as if he were an authority on it, just like the crazy uncle who tells you the Earth is flat because he's "done his research". And yet his overlong diatribes were usually just emotional, with little data to back them up, which was ironic given his insistence on how men are supposed to be rational. I must thank him, however, in that he got me to actually read Hemingway and Fitzgerald. (They were, unsurprisingly, much better than the back pages of Cerebus would have led me to believe). Picasso I already knew, and was aware that he was already an accomplished artist at the age of twelve. (I think he painted Science and Charity as a teenager, and it wouldn't look bad next to a N.C. Wyeth painting).
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 10, 2021 7:38:40 GMT -5
Part of what made those editorial pages unbearable to me was how Dave would rant about a subject as if he were an authority about it, just like the crazy uncle who tells you the Earth is flat because he's "done his research". And yet his overlong diatribes were usually just emotional, with little data to back them up, which was ironic given his insistence on how men are supposed to be rational. I wouldn’t call it ironic. I would call it typical.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Aug 10, 2021 12:34:11 GMT -5
Bran's actions here are baffling to me, especially his last act. Why do that? Thrunk shows up as the False Pope and Bran's reaction is...that. Was he afraid the people had lost faith in Cerebus? (and so quickly too!) Had he lost faith as well? I keep thinking that, that his reaction was a sign of the weakness of his faith in the Earth-Pig Born especially in the face of a giant stone fist punching through the hotel wall. This gets explained later on, implicitly. Thrunk seemed to be fulfilling a prophecy that Bran had expected Cerebus to. This resulted in a massive loss of faith combined with a feeling of having backed the wrong person, and he could not tolerate the emotional conflict. That's an oddity in this book. There were hints that in his youth, Cerebus had been sexually involved with women (not to mention the story which introduced Jaka), but apparently not because … he only believed in sex after marriage?
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