Not the usual type of family secret found in that universe.. :)

*laughs* Perhaps not. But what's cyberpunk without at least a little of the 'punk' side really coming in?

Mary may not show up until after the big Heist scene, but she's an integral part of the plotline anyway. Granted, you've already read more of the story than most people.

This picture got 'Everything Louder Than Everything Else' stuck in my head... hopefully now in yours too.

Gee, thanks...

It was that or a joke about 'Caterwauling' being a good name for one of her albums.

... and now I'm wondering if that makes Deedee one of the Katzenjammer Kids.

The rhyming micro-couplet of 'Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary' had me thinking of more than one of Marilyn Manson's song lyrics, until I realized this particular Mary was and is part of the same world as Huntress, DeeDee and their kin. It just sounds like something Marilyn Manson would've sung or said in the early studio-album days of the band, when he was being a similaform Willy Wonka and Manson Dad mashed into a single person and ongoing narrative.

I think the 1990s needed somebody like Brian Warner-become-Marilyn Manson, because we needed the same Pagliacci and human reflection of what once was as Edward Blake (Watchmen, 'The Comedian') tried to do: an utterly amoral teller of hard truths, who chose the path of the realistic and the Laughing Man, understanding that laughing at horror was the only way to get that horror, and its proponents, to stop and look at itself. Then, it might change, or at least find some self-understanding and comprehension.

DeeDee mentioned that she's helped her Mum in more than one significant live and recording-studio production and performance programming respect. Do any of the other members of their cell (including Huntress) have any involvement thus in music? I mean, aside from that particular tigress having all of Mary's albums, before Mary pulled the Corp Cork out of her style.

-2Paw.

Heh. With Watchmen, I was recently reading an argument about The Comedian and Rorschach pointing out that they both had the same revelation in many ways (life is meaningless and random) but that they chose different paths: the Comedian going a rather a more nihilist route where the fight itself was often the goal; whereas Rorschach chose to continue to fight for his vision of what was right, even if the rest of the world disagreed with him. He went overboard on his fight, but in many ways Rorschach had the more optimistic outlook, that things cloud and should be better, even if it was a Sisyphean task that could only be fixed one life at a time. He eventually even convinced his psychiatrist of that, that you have to do what you can even if it seems like it will never be enough.

Honestly, there's a lot of that attitude in cyberpunk as well (and in the 'punk' movement in general): the people running the world don't care, so it's up to you to do what you can. Huntress even comments on that not long after meeting Mary: "Sometimes I think that people like me are the only things stopping the big corps from just going into all-out war and taking the rest of us down with them."

No, none of the other members of the cell have been involved with this: heck, until the discussion above, nobody else knew about the relationship. Huntress seems to have been getting friendly with at least one of the backup singers, and got challenged to dance at one point, but she's still not really involved by the time the story ends.

I saw that in the attitude and choice of 'conduct' of Edward Blake (The Comedian) and Walter Kovacs (Rorschach); both of them were much less skilled in how they interacted with the world at the very beginning of their careers, and both found an equilibrium in their beliefs and what to do about them and the their world. In an odd sort of way, they were akin to the Order and Chaos of the Sumerian creation mythos (and later found in Babylon 5's Vorlons and Shadows): Rorschach as Order, unrelenting moral strength and behaviour (at least as he saw it to be), repeatedly stating that even in the face of armageddon, he would not compromise; and The Comedian as Chaos, his chosen dwelling-ground, the only place his amorality and worldview could find its home. Unpredictable, savage in his reactions and accustomed behaviour. And Rorschach always doing what was morally right, at least to him, and incarnated Order's payback to the world and society of Chaos he would not let suffer to live.

That I've always found to be true in Cyberpunk, even the basic Edge-mythos: "Sometimes you'll get a chance to do some good in the world, and make a difference. But don't ever count on it." It's not strictly nihlism, but more along the lines of the Joker's view of the world (presented in The Killing Joke): "Life's so p-u-u-u-ny and the universe so big..." Batman was sure The Joker, or the person the Joker was before his final change into the white-skinned, green-haired giggler, had given up on redemption, or breaking from the path he knew they were both on, but wanted to take one more college try, in the faint hope he could change the Joker's mind, and the Joker could change his own. But the flashlight-bridge to freedom was intermittent, and the Joker convinced it would only be switched off halfway across.

It never occurred to the Joker that he didn't need anything other than the will to escape, to get out and back to what might've been a better path. But he had no hope left, burned out of him first when his wife and unborn child died when the baby-bottle heater shorted out, and from every choice made since then, reinforcing it. His belief system no longer included hope, at least not in an absolute sense.

The Corps don't care, aside from their individual mandates of control, fear to spur that control on, and to take more and more of what each of them want. Their moral choices are only adherent to their own morality, not that of the men and women who worked on the lower rungs, who shudder in the shadow of every arcology, every Corporate War in their neighbourhood or mercenaried BoosterGang in Corp employ. Very much alike to our world, the people with the most moral character and strength more often than not have the least control of the bus we're all riding on as a society.

And like a Run that doesn't work out, sometimes things go wrong, and horrible things happen to wonderful people. But we need to soldier on. As you said above: if we don't do it, who else is going to? That is the commitment I believe we have to each other, and what entails the unwritten but clear social contract we share as human beings. It's certainly the one I subscribe to, and have long since worked into my life amongst the people I share it with. We do what we can, when we can, as often as we can. We respond to needs, either directly or dynamically. We try our best to make sure everyone gets to the finish line, in the part of the Human Race we're meshed into.

Huntress has seen and known her past and loved ones, those she trusted, betray her, as you've told me in her story. But she hasn't given up hope. The young tigress that she was is still inside of her, and while she might not smile very often externally, it's smiling inside of her. Her hope isn't gone, she just shows it and puts it into use in a different way. From my own life, while I've since learned to smile and love the sunshine again, I understand this as closely to my heart as she does.

-2Paw.