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Message

Subject: Re: Where is JMS? In the past he defended Sins Past
Date: 12 Oct 2004 07:00:46 GMT
From: jmsatb5@aol.com (Jms at B5)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe

>JMS  they are all the same comic conventions with pretty much the same 
>level of credibility.    or as you called them   "cheats"

Except that I didn't.

>Rapid growth is as much a comic cheat as time travel or cloning.
>(the most notable case that I recall being the Carol Danvers Ms Marvel 
>Immortus pregnancy)

No, it's not.

>but you promised no cheats. in this unedited quote of your post
>and that puts a high standard for the story to meet
>and rapid growth to solve a timeline is just another "cheat"
>though technically you might say that you promised not to use the listed
>cheats,   and nothing about using a differetn cheat.
>is readers wrath so hard to understand?

Yes, it is, on this count at least, because I *didn't* cheat.  Here's where you
went off the rails.  

You are using such a broad definition of cheating as to make the term
meaningless.  You are saying that if one uses a fantasy or SF device, that's a
cheat.  But that's not a cheat, and that's not what I said.  

Let's go to the record of what I *did* say, shall we, and discover why this is
NOT a cheat?

I said --

>To the broader questions raised here...I don't generally believe in 
>cheats.  
>This isn't a time travel deal, it's not an alternate history story, it's 
>not a
>hoax, it's not a clone story, it's not, in short, a *cheat*.  

A cheat is when you tell everybody it's one thing and at the very last second
change it to something else to escape the consequences of what you've written. 


So if I led the readers on to think they were Gwen's kids, and it turned out
that --

OHMYGOD THEY'RE TIME TRAVELERS! or OHMYGOD THEY'RE THE CLONE'S KIDS! or OHMYGOD
THEY'RE JUST HOAXING HIM! 

-- then it's a cheat.  I think that's pretty clear.

You are trying to say that *ANY* kind of use of SF, comics or fantasy devices
constitutes a cheat, in which case since the entire Marvel universe is based on
that stuff, then ipso facto the whole THING is a cheat...and the term becomes
meaningless.  If you're going to say that this MUST and can ONLY have a
solution that has NOT ONE SINGLE element of the comic book universe that it
inhabits, then you are putting on impossible restrictions.

I started off this road implying that these were Gwen's kids.  I provided a
solution that is consistent not only with the Marvel universe but even science
(with a variation on progeria), rather than having to go around the horn to
come up with time traveling Stacy clones that come in at the eleventh hour to
explain the whole thing away so that THE STORY YOU JUST READ DOESN'T MEAN
ANYTHING!

That, fella, is a cheat.

And that, this *ain't*.


 jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2004 by synthetic worlds, ltd., 
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine 
and don't send me story ideas)