The Supernaturalist, Chapter 4: Cringe-Worthy Cosmo

It's November 2! That means NaNoWriMo is in full swing, but more importantly, so are my graduate school applications. To give myself more time to work on both those things (which are equally likely to see me curled up in a ball and crying), I'll only be updating this blog on Monday and Friday this month, for all you diehard fans out there. And by that, I mean my mom. Hi, Mom! But back to The Supernaturalist.

I love the beginning of this chapter. After a long night of blasting Parasites, the heroes return to their warehouse base to eat and rest for their next escapade. And Cosmo does something that we've all done before: 

"'I thought we did okay tonight,' he said. 'No one got hurt, and we blasted a hundred of those creatures.'"

Cosmo, it's your first night out. How do you even know what a good night is for them?

"Stefan threw down his army-issue spoon. 'And tomorrow there'll be two hundred to take their place.'

Cosmo finished his food in silence, chewing slowly. "You know what I think?"

Stefan leaned back in his chair, arms crossed.  'No, Cosmo--what do you think?'"

Cosmo, no. Cosmo, stop.

"'I think that if we could find out where they lived, then we could do some real damage.'

Stefan laughed sharply, rubbing his face with both hands. 'For nearly three years I've been doing this, and I never thought of that. Wow, you must be some kind of genius, Cosmo. Find out where they live. Amazing.'"

There you go, gentle readers. Your daily cringe. Something like this has happened to me more times than I can count. I think it's most likely to happen when you're the new guy, but even moreso when you're the new guy who doesn't want to be the new guy. You give a suggestion to prove that you're competent, and it's immediately rejected. It's even worse when they make you feel like an idiot.

This chapter is also the first without a lot of action in it. No rooftop falls, no sick teenagers, no Parasite blasting. I'm not complaining, though. The book's moved at a breakneck pace so far, and now the characters - and the reader - get a breather.

That doesn't mean it's not interesting. Along with seeing what Satellite City looks like during the daytime, we also learn more about Mona. It's been all but outright stated that she was in a gang, and it's confirmed when she and Cosmo go to her home turf of "Booshka", named after the slang term for car theft.

I think it's a little funny how audiences respond to scoundrels. I've always liked roguish characters. I've written plenty of stories (of varying quality) with a criminal as the star, and like to play the less than law abiding characters in roleplaying games. We cheered when the crew of Serenity stole medical supplies from a hospital in Firefly, but look at it from a different perspective: a bunch of freelancers, with a history of breaking the law, robbed a hospital. Whatever the context, however quickly the hospital could be resupplied, if someone robbed a hospital in real life, we would not be so forgiving.

That's just one of the things I love about fiction. People we would hate in real life become the ones we cheer for in books and movies.

I bring this up because real life gangs are violent and frightening, and Mona's old gang, The Sweethearts, seems more along the lines of West Side Story than Songs of Anarchy. They're not about smuggling drugs or guns, they're about illegal drag racing.

Now that I'm (in theory) a grown-up with a better understanding of the world, I'd say that's not so bad. Much better than drug smuggling, at any rate. Reading this now, it seems pretty light, but this book was also written for teenagers. You can argue all day about what is and isn't appropriate for kids to be exposed to, but I'm glad that it didn't get much darker than this when it came to the gangs. They play a relatively small role in the overall novel, and a more realistic version may very well have scared the shit out of me.

Even so, I enjoyed Mona's description of the other gangs in the area.

"'Those are the Irish I's. They specialize in truckjacking from the docks across the bridge. [. . .] Those tall guys are the Zools. Body guards mostly, they all learn some kind of African martial arts. One of those guys throws something sharp at you, and it's all over.  [. . .] Those men with the piercings are the Bulldogs. They can strip a bike down in seconds. You turn away to tie your bootlace, and when you come back, your bike is just a skeleton.'"

I like the variety, but these descriptions, and other small details in the narrative, really flesh out Satellite City.

When she was a Sweetheart, Mona was the gang's mechanic. The girl mechanic trope isn't exactly an original concept at this point, but it's one I've always liked. I like being handy when I can, and it's good to know what to do when your toilet breaks and you can't call your dad for help. That said, I rarely figure out things like that without guidance, and at this point I'm much more likely to pay someone to fix things for me than do it myself. Maybe the reason I like this archetype so much is because it's what I'm not. Hell, maybe that's the reason I like criminal characters, too.

Ditto and Stefan found Mona after she'd been critically injured in a drag race. Ditto saved her, and she joined Stefan's team after they heard her babbling about blue creatures. Stefan ended up trading a Myishi Z-12, a super car of the future, for Mona's ticket out. Stefan is her sponsor, which means that she's a legal citizen and doesn't have to worry about being hauled off to an institution like Clarissa Frayne.

I keep looking for more of Cosmo's character to stand out, and it's finally starting to. At least, his timidity is showing. As he and Mona walk through Booshka to get parts for the Supernaturalist's vehicle, he shrinks, stares at the ground, trying to make himself small and invisible. Mona, on the other hand, tells him that he needs to walk tall, or the gangs will eat him alive.

C'mon, Cosmo, I know you can do better than that.