89: When the Star Kings Die John Jakes

gellaho

Savoring the smell of dung

Mordred's Tauntaun Froze

How the fuck do I know how tall the tallest space-horse he saw in a museum was?

gellaho

More likely George stole this

What with how time works

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Either way, steal from the best, right?

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

Pollution exchangers take in carbon monoxide and create methane

LyraV

You look in your heart and make a best guess.

Brendan

This society is dwelling on First World like someone who peaked in high school

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

And are ruled by the LORDS OF THE POLLUTION EXCHANGE

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

First World problems, amirite?

gellaho

The classic children's game Acceptable, Acceptable, Unacceptable

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Jesus, dude, you had one conversation with her.

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

I too am haunted by the girl who spit in my hair in second grade, Dragonard.

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Crank one out, linger in the shame for a bit, and move the fuck on like the rest of us.

FancyShark

And Max sleeps the sleep of the simpy

gellaho

Flamboyant assassins

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

They wore the beards, but removed them in the presence of a lady

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Whats the point of being a cool assassin if you cant let people know it?

I learned that from both Discworld AND Assassins Creed.

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

Red boots mean you're an assassin, whereas green boots mean you're into pegging

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

So it must be true.

jakesy, weightroom hazard

I mean we've all had that one person who wait they literally only spoke once Jesus Christ

FancyShark

Red boots signal assassins and kids on their first snow day

Brendan

Whereas I efficiently turn oxygen into both.

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

You have other more useful functions though.

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

But Brendan will be equally delicious when we ritually eat him.

gellaho

The Sign of the Starfish

Brendan

Chenoweth or Wigg?

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

I thought the look of the killer was red boots?

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Oh if a belch is all it takes to make the Sign of the Starfish I do it like four times a day

Brendan

The Red Boot Murder Diaries

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

🤔 Starfish like Patrick Starr or star fish like fish that live in space?

jakesy, weightroom hazard

If you show him the sign of the starfish he gives you the hotdog flavored water

FancyShark

Bell

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

That's the look of the killer, Max just has the look of killer

gellaho

Seems like a fine establishment

Dark Screams of Ramb$ne Gracie

might just be a roper in an apron

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Graspable

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

He lidded his eyes in acknowledgement

LyraV

ew melting into the stinking dusk is not cool Dragonard no matter how you lid your eyes at it

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Oh I love when we slip into second person for literally no reason

GDC

That's either a scary dive or an incredibly bougie speakeasy.

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

Where is the accessible entrance?

gellaho

Stripping in the future is weird

FancyShark

The author has never seen an open sewer

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

"This bar scene is perfect for my new movie, Space Battle!" said a young George Lucas.

FancyShark

Stripping sounds incredibly annoying

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

I mean.........stripping in the now is weird. A friend of mine used to be a dancer and her gimmick that got her an all time high earnings for the night was the time she dressed up like a clown and called herself Pussywise.

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

yeah we all love naked women, let's not make them carry a cacophany with them

gellaho

This seems more like terrible performance art

Mordred's Tauntaun Froze

I thought of a worst word than breasts: I once heard someone say "breasticles."

FancyShark

She's a stripping one-woman band

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Adding "icles" to anything really lowers the vibe.

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

The dance is amoral, but the instruments are downright evil

FancyShark

I think "chesticles" is fun to say though

Brendan

Solid pick, I sez.

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

Now she does jazz hands and whispers "capitalism"

gellaho

He's got plenty of bells now

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Crowd cums instantly, and starts farting.

Brendan

Space Orientalism

gellaho

Hot?

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Reddit

gellaho

Your understanding of Asia is very different from mine

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Credit for this needs to go to @Dark Screams of Ramb$ne Gracie so either blame her or thank her for the laughs.

FancyShark

Nothing gets a crowd hot like the 1812 Overture

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

This is getting dangerous, someone ring the alarm gongs.

LyraV

I feel like the author of this book was the inspiration for several panels of Ballard St. Some ghost writer sewing bells onto his confused wife at 3am murmuring about Dragonard.

gellaho

But twas a trap!

Brendan

In the grim darkness of the future there is only male gaze.

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

Also anyone who calls part of a woman's body the "flanks" is a cannibal

Mordred's Tauntaun Froze

Hauling on?

gellaho

Just a little though

Brendan

https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=orientalism%20painting

Brendan

Romans mostly thought of the middle east re: Asia

GDC

Hauling on his rapier is a euphemism,right?

FancyShark

"Janice did her Farting Sheik routine and the guy punched his way to the exit"

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Now I have read the words "Sleep gas" and am cast back in time to when I was watching The Critic and got the phrase "And now I will release a cloud of amnesia gas."

GDC

Noxious amnesia gas

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

It's like rummaging on the rope

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

"Eggs dont ripen. EGGS DONT RIPEN!"

gellaho

Not seeing a lot of strippers with bells

GDC

'its not amnesia gas!'

'but it sure is noxious, you gotta give me that.'

Brendan

Mustard gas. FAMOUS for: death! KNOWN for: sleep. Nobody thinks of it outside of trench warfare, so let's see why mustard gas is secretly, incredibly intoxicating.

Brendan

You and me both, brother.

gellaho

Suet belly

Brendan

It's a regional thing.

Upstate New York.

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

I'd volunteer to crash your next birthday but I get migraines

FancyShark

Yay! Star hobo!

gellaho

Immense goggles

FancyShark

"Night goggles and stun swords" was an unsuccessful concept album by Starship

gellaho

Strange, puzzling sarcasm

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

Every character is fighting to be the one with the stupidest gimmick

Brendan

can't crash if you're already invited!

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Arent all swords stun swords, just really permanent and irreversible stunning?

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

That's why we have the flat of the blade

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

I'll be there with bells on - wait fuck

FancyShark

Do we need to open a shelter for adjectives?

gellaho

I often think of excrement as glue

Brendan

Hastings's skull reverberated with the strike caused by the flat of the blade resounding upon the impact of its connection to his head.

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

A new, horrifying dynamic for Paste Pot Pete

Brendan

Or a burn ward.

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

"No more fucking around. Stun him REALLY HARD YOU GUYS!"

FancyShark

Setting your sword to stun is how you blow your Star Trek cosplay cover at a Renaissance fair

gellaho

The fight is going great

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

"With your swords."

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

So when do they set their swords to Giant Hand

FancyShark

Why a padded hammer?

Brendan

It's poor manners to force all those ren faire dudes to cosplay as holodeck characters without informing them.

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Well we don't want to hurt him

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

You guys have brought a stun sword to a berskerker fight and Dragonard is going to be waking up tomorrow with nerd blood on his cock and bits of wood stuck to his skin.

gellaho

Third time's the charm

FancyShark

Rats sure do clatter

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Youd be surprised.

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

That whole sentence is just. A trip

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

Oh sask me about Brunhilda Heavypaws someday

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Grogu found a field mouse in the kitchen a week ago and the resulting fight was what I'd call a clatter, so this scans

FancyShark

Do you even lift brahs, brah?

gellaho

He half-awakens, and Jakes forgets how plurals work

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Well his name is already Jakes so

Brendan

This entire action scene is passive speech.

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Only on laundry day.

FancyShark

His widdle foots

Brendan

And where it's not passive it's in camouflage thereof.

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Hahaha foots

This book fucking rules

gellaho

Alright, we appear to be changing genre

FancyShark

The whole story wasn't so much dictated as suggested

GDC

This was written over 50 years ago but it reads like it was passed through Google translate.

Brendan

I don't even know if he broke a finger nail or a wall nail.

Brendan

JFC

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Bwuh??

We're fantasy now??

LyraV

Dragonard heeds not your genres

Brendan

the tavern patrons scurried away, the way rats, who are also cowardly, scurry.

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Man earlier I joked about this being like Deathstalker but damn.

gellaho

Dragonard appears to be having a heart attack

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

what the fuck is happening

Brendan

HE WAS UNTIED

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

God. I wish I could give as little of a shit as this author does about his own manuscript

GDC

His rapier shone blue in the presence of orcs because it was forged in Gondolin in the Elder Days.

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Interrogate Dragonard! Whale on his Dragonards with a knotted rope!

LyraV

he dug his heart out from his chest with his hands, metaphorically.

gellaho

The sarcasm of the one who had pronounced

LyraV

I'm pretty sure right? yeah

Brendan

How many Jakes does it take to overwrite a Star Kings novel?

FancyShark

Glad Jakes tied up that loose thread

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Just the ones

gellaho

No idea what the fuck a pocket punk is

Brendan

This writing isn't going off the rails so much as reaching Old '97

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Pocketpunk is shit like The Borrowers and Minish Cap.

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

seriously what the hap is fuckening

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

"Forget it, he's rolling."

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Pocket Punk never quite caught on like Mighty Max or Polly Pocket.

gellaho

Starmarch is coming up. What's everyone doing for Star Patrick's Day?

Brendan

It's giving me very ardent "Book I of the Manticore Wars, the First Aria of the Stars Unbound Epic" vibes just from how it can't handle a basic sentence.

LyraV

The thought man, shrugged.

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

"And before you ask, yes. Fortress Space Hustle was taken."

Brendan

Never write a single paragraph when a 17-book epic will do.

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Doorbolt is a great spell. Does a lot of damage.

gellaho

The bells really threw him off

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

The Stephen King method

gellaho

(also the thing covering her head, but who's counting)

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Hahaha of course the star cop falls in star love with the star stripper.

LyraV

Just needs to get her some starfish shaped bells and Dragonard is IN

FancyShark

It's more creepy than endearing that he's excited to see the lady he saw one time again

Brendan

Boy, you dames are always lithely striding, but somehow softly.

gellaho

Double twist

Brendan

Oof, no chill on Kristin.

Kristin was ABSOLUTELY the secretary at his day job.

gellaho

Triple twist

Brendan

The only question is did he get the spine to show her his manuscript? I think not.

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Oh shit its gone all sideways.

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Oh no! It's…

The…

Wait. Who's this dork?

Brendan

Not sure I'd lust this hard after anyone I met at the Sign of the Starfish

GDC

Lighting emblems on the collar is a bad sign.

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

I missed five minutes

Brendan

This is just PUNCHES in space

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

Dont tell me anything that happened it won't matter or hold my interest

GDC

gellaho

I also don't trust electricians

Brendan

The man who owned the new voice -- this guy even makes active speech sound like passive speech.

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Sneaky bastards, who knows whether fuses are real or not?

LyraV

hehe I thought it said regulators

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Close enough.

gellaho

He's been mentioned a couple of times before, but I didn't include it. Then again, the last time was like sixty pages ago

Brendan

It should, somebody messed up.

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Regulars are just regulated to be regular.

GDC

Wasn't the regulators a Stephen King book?

Brendan

Thomas St. Anne, meet Maxmillion Dragonard

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

You need a regulator to regulate the regulars.

FancyShark

It was! Well, Richard Bachman, but still!

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

And regulars are self regulating so regulars are also regulators.

gellaho

I think he chose stunned

FancyShark

This reads like a snooty, spoiled child meeting their bitchin' new babysitter

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

To be fair, Dragonard has two emotions. Stunned and blood horny.

LyraV

That could have been ONE SENTENCE

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

He was stunned, like someone stabbed with a stun rapier

Brendan

The author of the book who had written it was, stepping from the shadows, perhaps as literal as much metaphorical, indeed the bearer of the name Stephen King, though he had, of late, taken to calling himself Richard Bachman, under a new identity forged for him by the regulators, along with several surgical scars to sell the new identity.

LyraV

In the silence Dragonard couldn't choose between reactions so he sat stunned. One sentence.

gellaho

Eat it, St Anne

gellaho

And St Anne is such a manly name, too

FancyShark

We have ladyboi, confirmed

Brendan

Fucker probably has emotions.

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

I feel like Jakes is working through some stuff with these depictions of the masculine spectrum

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

It's like a ben shapiro novel

Brendan

I dunno, he's been described twice and they both sound like Hitler.

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

St. Anne is the name of my fifty gun galleon in Uncharted Waters.

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

THE LORDS OF THE EXCHANGE should be showing up anytime now

FancyShark

Most of them died

gellaho

Quadruple twist?

Brendan

Nah, Shapiro just summarizes his scenes like from the outline. This guy drags you into them at LENGTH but like you're piecing together the crime scene after the players fled.

gellaho

You are wise indeed

Brendan

We have had three grand entrances in one scene. This is like a fuckin' WWE battle.

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Holy shit I summoned them

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Ohhhh shit its space STeve Jobs.

Brendan

It's like every member of NWO coming into a one-on-one.

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

I legit thought they would not be appearing

FancyShark

The Differential Half-Turn is like the People's Elbow but instead of an elbow drop, it's just a guy blowing his nose

Brendan

OH FUCK YOU

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

MISHUBI is the sound I make stifling a sneeze.

Brendan

In ten thousands years, the new Japanese transistor will rule the galaxy

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Wait

Holy fucking shit

The II galaxy

Brendan

if he'd written this in the '50s all the FTL jumpgates would be under the rule of Emperor HoJo

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

It's named after this fucking guy?!?!

FancyShark

Glancing up under his eyelids, which are separate from his eyes that he sighted with

Brendan

They could have called it the Mitsubishi Galaxy

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

He's so fucking rich they named him after a number, and then named the galaxy after him

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Mitsubishi Galaxy in the Motorola cluster.

gellaho

No?

Brendan

They didn't put Heart Flag photofaxes in the vidlink?

GDC

That would have just been a rip off of the Ford Galaxy from Spaceballs

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

Too late, it's my headcanon. Death of the author

gellaho

II as in the Second

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

Did they ever sat what the II Galaxy is?

FancyShark

1967!

Brendan

You all said this one would kick ass, and I said no, and LOOK AT US NOW

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

He said what it was at length but he didn't explain why it was called II

FancyShark

We got to see you destroy Jakes. I think that's pretty kickass

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

yeah brendan won you guys this suuuuuuuuucks

jakesy, weightroom hazard

Mishubi is going to end up fighting Samsug I for control of the Galaxy

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

No, this is fucking bonkers. I've been eating this shit up

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

Control of which galaxy is that?

Badger - Rated R for Relevant

It's somehow both completely pedestrian but so up its own ass that it wraps back around to camp

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Yeah I'm for this. Its not quite Metabarons but only because Jakes didnt do acid in Paris.

FancyShark

The Radioshack Galaxy

Brendan

The dinner of the person writing this sentence was, by its aroma, beckoning to him.

FancyShark

Honestly, I gave up trying to follow this story about three hours ago. So this is playing out more like a series of slides someone threw together without a plan. And I'm here for it

gellaho

Shit, Star Homer Simpson

Mordred's Tauntaun Froze

I keep jumping in and then having to go do adult stuff.

Brendan

And also last season's fashion was exposed breasts, sorry you the reader got here a year too late for it, even though this is just prose.

Ai no Senshi Flippant Sausage

Yeah lets go with "Homer Simpson" as the reason Mishubi II is yellow af.

Rachel, Big Gay Vampire

Same but adult stuff means something wildly different

Mordred's Tauntaun Froze

Yeah not the fun stuff.

gellaho

Dragonard stupidly gives up the guy who busted him out of prison