Dragon Quill

I decided that with measels in the news, I felt like checking out this monstrosity again.

See, the whole vaccine connection would be somewhat topical, you know? I keep hearing people on the news trying to explain that when parents choose not to vaccinate, it’s not just their kid they’re affecting, it’s all the other kids! Because it’s okay to kill your own child, they’re your property.

So imagine the fight being about conflicting parental rights, and the fallout is that stuff which impacts other people’s children is mandatory, like vaccinations, and stuff that doesn’t impact other people’s children, like cutting them up for parts, is entirely up to the parent. You can even keep the abortion ban because thinking women need to suffer unborn children have rights and actual children don’t is a sort of doublethink we’re already familiar with.

You’d still have your teen appeal of parents betraying children and children not having rights. It just stops being presented as prochoice = murder and instead focuses on another issue that affects all children right now.

But that would not be endlessly terrible, so that will not be this book. Let’s just hope no more magical leprechauns show up to pretend to be an actual human ethnicity. (more…)

So before we dive in, I’d like to do a quick recap about what these books really are.

Although the book claims there was a big fight between prolife and prochoice people to kick this mess off, the actual book is written from the perspective of someone who is really obviously prolife and doesn’t seem to have any idea what prochoice people believe. This is not to say the prolife side is portrayed positively but it’s a dystopia based around the idea of what if the prolife side went too far and were evil like those horrible prochoice bastards. It’s sort of like if someone wrote a story where women could choose to do anything they wanted to their unborn children, like have them blinded or chunks of their brain removed so they’d be as smart as cats or altered so they’d only live to age three, and also free abortions any time you felt like it even up to the point of actual labor, which is a really bizarre but not totally baseless extension of the idea the mother should get to choose what happens in her body, and then said it was a compromise between the prochoice and prolife people who are both just as terrible even though nothing I just said has anything to do with what the prolife lobby wants and a bunch of what I said are things that would horrify them far more.

The book is written with the idea that abortion is just about murdering kids for the lulz and the only reason for not sucking it up and being a mommy is that liberalism has sold you on the idea that you’re a victim and can just abandon your sacred responsibility to be a childish leech on society. Its idea of being far and balanced is wondering if creating a world of hideous child neglect is worse than aborting the children and coming up with an epic shrug.

I myself am pro-abortion. I think abortions are great, be they for the health of the mother, birth control, or mercy for those who wouldn’t survive birth itself, and I view stopping abortion as saying you want women to die horrible deaths for having sex and leave behind broken families because that is objectively what happens when abortion is prevented. You are not banned from disputing this in the comments, but there is a really good chance I will respond with vitriol to you.

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Last time, Connor 2: The Adopted Mixed Race Version. Also seriously, he’s going to be evil because none may challenge Connorsue and/or because adopted and mixed race, just warning you. (more…)

Last time, Connor 2: Connor, but nicer, mixed race, adopted, and willing to fight back to protect himself and others, so evil incarnate.

Miracolina is Lev 2 and like Connor 2, better engages the basic premise and world, but like Connor 2, the world is still Unwind and it’s all still terrible. She’s a happy tithe.

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Last time, Miracolina’s chapter was so incredibly long and terrible I split it into two. Today, the other terrible half.

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Our third character. If Miracolina was Lev 2: Actually Resembling A Character This Time, Cam is to this book as Lev was to the last one, a character who’s unusual and there to show something about the setting, as well as to be very wrong about whatever part he’s highlighting. (more…)

Well, our three new characters introduced, we reach Part 2: Whollies

Then we do the thing where the writer puts in some actual news that either inspired him or just fits with the thing he wants to hammer in, and it’s the thing about how a state’s law about abandoning babies at hospitals made some people drop off older kids, haha parents suck right?

Well, no. (more…)

And now, Connor. Fucking Connor.

The best part of these missions is the look on the parents’ faces when they realize that the tables have been turned. How their eyes dart down toward the tranq gun aimed at them, suddenly realizing that their unwind order is now nothing but a piece of paper.

And we see how we have now officially left any hope of decent characterization behind. It is Connor. They are adults. (more…)

There is only one permanently disabled resident of the Graveyard. Since the disabled are a protected class, they’re never at risk for being unwound, so they never turn up at the Graveyard with all the other kids who ran from their unwind order. It’s a testimony to the swiss-cheese nature of public compassion.

It’s also just random plot fiat. (more…)

A representative from the Anti-Divisional Resistance shows up the next afternoon—three days late for his scheduled meeting with Connor. He’s disheveled, paunchy, and drenched in sweat.
“And it’s not even summer,” Connor says—hoping to make the point that the sweltering Arizona summer is just a few months away. The ADR had better get their act together, or there are going to be a lot of angry AWOLs. That is, the ones who survive the heat.

Or maybe just say that, because people generally like direct statements and not passive-aggressive bullshit. (more…)

I get to go back to published books now! What were we doing – oh.

Right.

Well then.

When we last left our…characters, Connor punched the messenger, whined a lot, and decided Connor 2 doing magic tricks with chicken eggs meant he was the best choice for managing their incredibly limited food supplies.

This chapter, it’s Risa playing piano. She explains she was surprised to find the piano was made by Hyundai and then there’s an honestly pretty pleasant piece of exposition: (more…)

Ah, back to the comparatively tolerable Connor 2, who’s explaining how he cleverly didn’t say he wanted power and just networked like hell and at last, through careful planning, Starkey has inserted himself in the right place at the right time to gain Connor ’s favor without him ever knowing that it was all part of Starkey’s long-term plan. (more…)

We’ve reached the third part of this! There’s seven parts total.

Our opening quote for this section is a list of organ prices showing the disparity between how much it costs to buy the organ and how much you get for selling it.

While there’s a valid issue, the information presented here is presented in a horrible, manipulative way: (more…)

A retired 787 arrives with only fourteen Whollies packed in empty beer barrels in the hold. Connor wonders if someone in the resistance is just getting bored, or if the barrels were really the most inconspicuous way to ship them.

Really. Kids are getting shipped in everything including coffins and yet you think beer barrels are somehow different and a sign they’re just screwing around.

Connor again is all THEY ONLY SENT A FEW KIDS TO THE PLACE THAT’S NO LONGER SAFE AND WHICH IS HAVING TROUBLE FEEDING THE KIDS ALREADY THERE, THIS WORRIES ME WHAT COULD BE GOING ON. (more…)

Back to one of the comparatively better characters. We start with Cam is putting on his special anti-scar medicine.

He can feel the tingling as the engineered microorganisms in the cream do their job.
“Believe it or not, the stuff is actually related to yogurt,” the dermatologist told him. “Except, of course, that it eats scar tissue.” It also costs five thousand dollars a jar, but, as Roberta has told him, money is no object when it comes to Cam.

So it’s apparently flesh-eating bacteria, but unlike normal flesh-eating bacteria, it’s difficult to grow.

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