Line #48 Literature/JoesWorld


1	''Joe's World'' is the overall title for two comic-fantasy novels written by Creator/EricFlint and Richard Roach.
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3	Long ago, a caveman named Joe created food to keep the humans going. Then, he invented sex to keep the humans occupied. Then, he invented work to keep the population in check. To help organize work, Joe then invented [[BadBoss bosses]]. To help the bosses [[PoliceBrutality keep the worse workers in line]], Joe invented the [[DirtyCop police]]. To help keep the worst ones in line Joe invented [[CorruptChurch priests]], and to help priests put the finishing touches on keeping everyone in line, Joe invented God. God, in his turn decided that Joe was a liability to him, and [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters froze Joe in a flash ice age]].
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5	Since then, the bosses, police, priests and God himself have fallen short of Joe's expectations. Even mentioning Joe is considered heresy (even though just about every feature of geography on the sub-continent of Grotum is named after him) and the common man is downtrodden. Luckily, there is [[LaResistance a resistance movement]] going on, led from the libertarian/anarchist nation of Mutt. And now, Joe's about to come back.
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7	The first book, ''The Philosophical Strangler'' (officially) written by Flint alone, tells the tale of Greyboar, the greatest [[ProfessionalKiller professional strangler]] around, and his agent/foster brother Ignace, who live in [[HurricaneOfPuns New Sphinctr, the capital of Sphinctria, one of the kingdoms of Grotum]]. The book opens with an account of what was supposed to be a routine royal strangulation; the crown prince of Sundjhab wants his uncle, the king, dead. The job goes smoothly until Greyboar declares the king his guru, but still strangles him as a matter of [[EvenEvilHasStandards professional ethics]]. [[InsaneTrollLogic Naturally]], Greyboar then has to strangle the prince for hiring him to strangle his own guru. The fallout from this forces the duo to flee the city for a time.
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9	After a TimeSkip and a NoodleIncident in nearby Prygg, the story picks up with Ignace and Greyboar back in New Sphinctr. What follows is a number of separate vignettes centered around the duo's professional exploits and love lives, culminating in a visit to the local underworld, and a momentous decision in regards to their ongoing career.
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11	The second book, ''Forward the Mage'', written by Flint and Roach, and (mostly) focusing on supporting characters from the first tale, has two separate storylines. One details the meeting, travels and romance of the Ozarine artist/mercenary/adventurer Benvenuti Sfondrati-Piccolomini and Greyboar's sister Gwendolyn, and the other on the wizard Zulkeh and his [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame dwarven]] apprentice/slave Shelyid. The book is largely set during the TimeSkip of the first book, providing more background on the general situation and shedding light on the Noodle Incident.
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13	The two books were published in 2001 and 2002. Flint and/or Roach spent portions of the next twenty years working on a third book in the series, to be titled ''A Desperate and Despicable Dwarf''. Sadly, the former passed away in 2022 with the book only partially finished. He allowed some of the work-in-progress material to be posted in a [[https://jiltanith.thefifthimperium.com/site/archivebook/ADesperateandDespicableDwarf Baen Books archive]]. A bibliography on Mr. Flint's website also lists two more titles that might have been: ''Sword On Canvas'' and ''Thumbs of Eternity.''
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15	The series [[SubvertedTrope subverts]], [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] or just generally plays for laughs most of the tropes it uses.
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17	----
18	!!Provides examples of
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20	* AchievementsInIgnorance: Wolfgang Laebmauntsforscynneweëld
21	* AllForNothing: Etienne Avare's decades-long attempt at finding a worthy heir who will preserve his vast fortune; when he finally thinks he's found one and dies, the money is almost immediately lost to vicious infighting and lawyer fees.
22	* AGodAmI: [[spoiler: God himself]], according to Hildegard.
23	* AmazonianBeauty: Gwendolyn
24	* AndShowItToYou: The only weapons, outside of garrottes, Greyboar uses are ones extracted from hapless bodyguards.
25	* ArtifactOfDoom: All of Joe's creations: The Pink Slips, The Rap Sheets, The Switches, The Boots, and whatever family-unfriendly artifact God was given. Though the only one the reader actually sees being used is a Rap Sheet.
26	* AssholeVictim: A (fallen) angel comments in passing that pretty much all the people that Greyboar has strangled have gone to hell.
27	* AwesomeButImpractical: While fighting The Great Ogre of Grotum, Zulkah unleashes a spell which does indeed blow the Ogre to pieces, but takes so long to cast that the creature is already expired, having been slowly chopped, bitten, poisoned and strangled to death by the rest of the party.
28	* BadGuyBar: The Sign Of The Trough.
29	* BagOfHolding: The sack that Shelyid lugs around is huge and bulky, but still holds a whole lot more than a nonmagical one could; we witness its construction from the skin of a certain species of fish.
30	* BewareTheNiceOnes: [[spoiler: Shelyid.]]
31	-->'''Greyboar''':..we finally know what happened to the Great Wall of Grotum -- it pulled a knife on [[spoiler: a dwarf]]!
32	** When [[spoiler: Shelyid]] finally loses his temper, it is described, before HilarityEnsues, with an OverlyLongGag that ends with [[spoiler: Shelyid]] losing his temper like Dispater, the archduke of hell, losing the keys to paradise and the hope of eternal salvation.
33	* BlindWithoutEm: Possibly inverted; Schrodinger's Cat is apparently blind with her Coke-bottle glasses.
34	* BloodyHilarious: The freed Snarl's rampage through the Ozarine outpost in ''Forward'', with disassembled body-parts flying in all directions.
35	* BrilliantButLazy: Greyboar, in the sense that he's the greatest professional strangler in the world, but is lazy to the point of developing a, yes, personal philosophy out of it. Ignace has to constantly pester and nag him to agree to take on clients. (Ignace comments that it's hard to say how intelligent Greyboar actually is, since most of the time, he doesn't ''have'' to think too hard to do his job.)
36	* TheCaper: Magrit [[CaperCrew assembles]] some of the protagonists to help her steal the [[ArtifactOfDoom Rap Sheet]] that the Ozerines have brought to Groutch.
37	* CloudCuckooLander: Schrodinger's Cat. Wolfgang Laebmauntsforscynneweëld. Zulkeh when he goes into theorylalaland.
38	* CloudcuckoolandersMinder: Ignace has shades of this relationship with Greyboar, who would just loaf around and, yes, practice philosophy if Ignace wasn't there to constantly pester and nag him to keep earning a living.
39	* CombatPragmatist: Benvenuti's weapons-training under his various uncles is firmly centered around this trope. If you can, stab 'em at night, InTheBack and/or while they are asleep. If you can't, go straight to the GroinAttack!
40	* ConfusionFu: The Cat, of whom you can only tell for sure where she is or which way she is moving, but not both at the same time.
41	* CorruptChurch: The entire religious structure of Grotum, from The Old Geister on down, is viciously repressive and corrupt. The individual ministers who appear are either sanctimonious idiots or utterly vile sex perverts.
42	* CorruptCorporateExecutive: The Consortium
43	* CoversAlwaysLie: ''Strangler'' has a roughly accurate depiction of Greyboar and Ignace meeting an underworld denizen. ''Forward'' shows much more inaccurate versions of Zulkeh and Shelyid, meeting a woman and a gang of bipedal bat-like monsters. This is probably intended to depict the duo's brief encounter with a mysterious unnamed women who appears out some woods with a large pack of Snarls, who are described more as enormous cat-like quadrupeds.
44	* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Zulkeh, in spite of the fact that his relationship with actual logic fleeting at best, is probably the most powerful wizard on the planet when he puts his blustering and pedantry aside and actually focuses on his work.
45	* DeathGlare: Greyboar has the Stare. Other names for it include "The Mirror of Mortality", "[[OverlyLongGag The Mirror of Imminent Mortality]]", "Basilisk" or "Time to Reconsider".
46	* DeliberateValuesDissonance: It's very easy to forget that Greyboar is a mass-murderer and Ignace his more-than-willing accomplice.
47	* DireBeast: Snarls are giant vaguely cat-like creatures that are extremely dangerous, unless you're lucky enough to be a Snarl-friend.
48	* DirtyBusiness: Unlike Ignace's gleefully amoral attitude, it's indicated a couple of times that this is how Greyboar feels about being a professional strangler, but he puts up with it because apart from any moral quandary it's easy work that pays the bills.
49	* DistressedDude: The final adventure in ''Strangler'' is all about Gwendolyn dragging Greyboar and Ignace into [[spoiler: rescuing her lover Benvenuti from literally The Place Worse Than Hell.]]
50	* DirtyOldMonk: The Goatmonk is a massive pile of corrupted lust. Until he makes [[GroinAttack the mistake]] of targeting The Cat with his "affections."
51	* TheDividual: Angela and Jenny. They always appear together, and their personalities are identical. (Though physically they look different from each other.) Les Six are an even more perfect example, almost to the point of being a HiveMind.
52	* TheDreaded: Greyboar, who possesses both his thumbs and The Stare.
53	* DoorstepBaby: Shelyid was left in front of Zulkeh's abode in this manner.
54	* EasyComeEasyGo: The Queen of Sphinctr's favor and disfavor.
55	* ExtremeDoormat: Greyboar is a figure of invincible terror to most of society, but (as Ignace bitterly comments more than once) if either Gwendolyn or The Cat so much as hint they want something from him, he obeys.
56	* FictionalDocument: Numerous books are referred to by the characters, invariably written by some member of the Laebmauntsforscynneweëld or Sfondrati-Piccolomini clan.
57	* FromNobodyToNightmare: Shelyid evidently goes on to lead or inspire some sort of mass societal upheaval, acquiring a huge collection of nicknames in the process, most prominently "The Rebel."
58	* GeniusBruiser:
59	** Greyboar has a taste for philosophy. He is also regarded as the most technically adept strangler in history, but not the strongest.
60	** And even more so Hrundig the barbarian swordmaster, who is a shrewd veteran of many military campaigns and is probably the ''second'' most dangerous man in the kingdom.
61	* GiantHandsOfDoom: One of the denizens of the underworld whom the protagonists must battle is a disembodied pair of these.
62	* GirlWithPsychoWeapon: The Cat learns to use a vicious pole-weapon called a lajatang.
63	* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: At no point in the narrative does ''anyone'' have anything good to say about Queen Belladonna. Though we never meet her [[TheGhost in person.]]
64	* GroinAttack: Using "the Low Blow" in a swordfight is an officially recognized technique. The Cat inflicts it on the Goatmonk during their [[BarBrawl epic brawl]] in The Trough, entirely by accident.
65	* HangingJudge: The resident magistrate actually thinks that a quick-n-easy hanging is ''too good'' for criminal scum.
66	* HeelFaceTurn: Greyboar and Ignace [[spoiler: officially engage in this at the end of the first novel, changing from Professional Strangling to Professional Heroing.]]
67	* HeroismWontPayTheBills: Ignace bemoans this fact as [[spoiler:he and Greyboar become Professional Heroes. As ''Strangler'' ends, he hopes they can at least cook and eat the dragon they are going off to kill.]]
68	* HiddenDepths: Shelyid is constantly described as just being an ugly stupid dwarf, but he's a Snarl-friend, possesses a near-photographic memory, is immensely strong and a terrifying fighter if you manage to actually make him mad, breaks a magical seal just by touching it and even knocks the normally-invincible Greyboar off his feet. (The books never reveal what's going on, but one possibility is he's [[spoiler:an avatar of Joe]].)
69	* HumanKnot: Greyboar the strangler is renowned for tying enemies into knots, especially their necks, and takes a professional pride in making each knot a different one. He also sometimes non-fatally ties his foster brother and agent, Ignace. (Both his arms and his tongue if sufficiently annoyed.)
70	* HurricaneOfPuns: All of the kingdoms in Grotum are named after unpleasant bodily afflictions or parts.
71	* ICanChangeMyBeloved: Ignace realizes at the end of ''Strangler'' that he and Greyboar are in the process of being subjected to this. [[spoiler: He accepts his fate.]] It should be noted it's Gwendolyn who is doing this to Greyboar, The Cat doesn't appear to give a squat about his being a strangler, if she's even bothered to find out what he does for a living.
72	* IfItsYouItsOK: Jenny and Angela are lesbians, but happily take Ignace into their relationship, explicitly saying this at one point.
73	* IHaveManyNames:
74	** While Greyboar himself only goes by that name, his grip, like his [[DeathGlare glare]], has plenty of names.
75	** The Godferrets have also acquired a lot of names over the centuries, both official and derogatory.
76	* InadequateInheritor: Etienne Avare has provided Greyboar with steady business throttling these.
77	* InelegantBlubbering: Ignace and Gwendolyn end up weeping in each other's arms over how messed up their relationship and lives turned out.
78	* InsistentTerminology: No matter who is narrating a scene, Shelyid's legs are described as "twinkling" as he lugs Zulkeh's giant sack around.
79	* InsufferableGenius: Zulkeh drives all the other characters crazy with his endless pedantic discourses, but everyone also admits he's very likely the most powerful and knowledgeable magician alive.
80	* InsurrectionistInheritor: Merchant Prince Etienne Avare in ''The Philosophical Strangler'' leaves his entire fortune to the first great-grandchild to assassinate him.
81	* InWhichATropeIsDescribed: the chapter titles of ''Forward the Mage'' take this up to eleven.
82	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Zulkeh, extremely heavy on the jerk, but in spite of his behavior, when he learns that his bumbling about in the Joe business has gotten him on the Rap Sheet for the Cruds, the Inquisition, the Black Hand of Goimr, and just about every law enforcement agency on the planet, his primary concern is not with his own safety, but with Shelyid's.
83	* KnightTemplar: The Godferrets ruthlessly hunt down any hint of "Joesy" on behalf of the Old Geister.
84	* LaResistance: One of the many things going on in Joe's World is a socialist revolution.
85	* LeftHanging: Neither book ends on an overt cliffhanger, but all sorts of plotlines are left dangling: [[spoiler:Newly anointed Heroes Greyboar and Ignace are going off to fight a dragon (and owe Magrit the witch an official favor), Ozarine armies are overrunning the continent, the Dwarves are all being herded into some sort of death-camp "experiment" evidently related to poop-gold, and most momentous of all, Joe is reportedly coming back in some form]]. As noted above, Mr. Flint spent the next twenty years working intermittently on a third book which would have detailed more of Zulkeh and Shelyid's adventures during the time-skip, and shown the events of the first book from Bevenuti's perspective.
86	* LetsGetDangerous: Grayboar is always dangerous, and generally engages in [[CurbStompBattle Curb Stomp Battles]], but nevertheless, on the rare occasion when an actual challenge presents itself, he goes into The Stance.
87	* LoopholeAbuse: The artist Benvenuti is forced to hand over his portrait of a now-dead nobleman to the man's family without getting paid... so he re-does it so it gruesomely depicts the man's moment of death, with Greyboar's infamous thumbs around his neck.
88	-->''The Great Hunter. Sans Beaters. Sans Bearers. Sans Guides. Sans Tout But the Beast.''
89	* MegaCorp: The Consortium again.
90	* MoneyFetish: After getting a big payout from Hildegard, Ignace spends a couple of blissful days counting and re-counting all the coins, and then stacking them in various artistic ways.
91	* MurderInc: Professional Stranglers' Guild.
92	* NarrationEcho: Happens a few times in ''Strangler.''
93	-->She started off by peering at Jefferies through her bottle-bottom spectacles, inspecting him like he was a side of wormy meat.\
94	"Boy, you look like a side of wormy meat," she said...
95	* NiceJobBreakingItHero: For a certain definition of "hero"; Zulkeh and Shelyid are the ones who reveal to the world that dwarf poop can be turned into gold.
96	* NoodleIncident: Along with the big one mentioned above, events and people are often alluded to by Ignace and not discussed, a typical example being how a section of the bar in The Trough came to be cursed and thus is never ''ever'' used. Also, Zulkeh and Shelyid have further adventures during the time-skip which don't get detailed in the prequel, and would have been the focus of the third book.
97	* ObsessiveCompulsiveBarkeeping: The owner of The Trough engages in this; a veteran Troughman can instantly determine his mood and intent by how exactly he performs these actions.
98	* OffingTheOffspring: Etienne Avare, for several generations
99	** And once he dies, all of the remaining offspring off each other, wiping out the family fortune in the process.
100	* OhCrap:
101	** All the other characters when Greyboar sees the nude paintings of Gwendolyn that Benvenuti has done. Fortunately the strangler remains calm about the whole thing.
102	** The [[MassOhCrap entire population]] of The Trough after Greyboar officially announces his displeasure at their failing to properly protect The Cat from the police sent to arrest her. Goes down in history as The One Day The Trough Emptied Out.
103	** Rupert Inkman upon being confronted by the Snarl he previously kept chained up and tortured.
104	** Ignace all through getting shanghaied into joining Gwendolyn's underworld rescue expedition, but especially as he belatedly realizes that [[spoiler: Magrit the witch is only along because Gwendolyn now owes her a favor... which Ignace and Greyboar will have fulfill by invading "Project Nibelung".]]
105	* OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: All we learn about dwarves is that they are short and good at mining. Shelyid is constantly described as being hairy and ugly, but it's never made clear if he (or any of the other dwarves) have actual beards.
106	* OverlyLongGag: This is Les Six's whole schtick. They repeat, toast and/or expound on everything six times.
107	* OverlyLongName: The Laebmauntsforscynneweëld clan, and the Sfondrati-Piccolomini clan.
108	* ParodySue: Benvenuti is handsome, charming, athletic, clever, expertly trained in multiple fields of combat and art.. and ''still'' has to [[DistressedDude be rescued]] by the other characters on more than one occasion.
109	* PetTheDog: Zulkeh is a harsh taskmaster, but reveals at one point that he knew about Shelyid's befriending a spider, and allowed the relationship to continue since it did no harm and seemed to bring Shelyid some comfort.
110	* RiddleForTheAges: Pretty much everything to do with The Cat. Who or what Schrodinger is/was, why she's always looking for him, how she got herself out of a sealed stone chamber at the very bottom of a dungeon...
111	* RobbingTheDead: When we meet Zulkeh and Shelyid, they are living in an abandoned death-house, and pay their expenses by stealing gold from the ancient corpses.
112	* RunningGag:
113	** Again, mentions of the countless members of the Laebmauntsforscynneweëld and Sfondrati-Piccolomini clans and their various claims to fame.
114	** "It's a matter of professional ethics."
115	* UsefulNotes/SchrodingersCat: As noted, the Cat is one big extended riff on this concept. She even gets sealed up in a metaphorical box at one point.
116	* TheScrooge: Ignace's main motivation apart from drinking ale in The Trough is collecting as much money as possible and storing it under Greyboar's bed (''much'' safer than any bank!), though somewhat to his own bafflement, he develops other interests as ''Strangler'' progresses.
117	* SelfMadeMan: Grayboar and Ignace climb out of abject poverty and are quite wealthy by the end of the first novel. (Though as Ignace notes, ''staying'' rich is another matter entirely.)
118	* ShortTitleLongElaborateSubtitle: Forward The Mage does this, to the point that several chapters consist solely of the title.
119	* ShoutOut:
120	** Every time a famous Laebmauntsforscynneweëld or Sfondrati-Piccolomini gets cited, their first name is a reference to someone (real or fictional) related to the subject under discussion.
121	** The Lajatang weapon originally appeared (at least under that name) in ''VideoGame/{{Ultima}}'' and ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons.''
122	* SolidGoldPoop: Dwarves' already-miserable lives get significantly less pleasant when word leaks out that it is trivially easy to transform dwarf excrement into pure gold. (This is another NoodleIncident in the first novel, Ignace mentions that things really suck for the dwarves without ever going into detail.)
123	* StarCrossedLovers: Benvenuti and Gwendolyn insist they are doomed to be this as long as they have their self-assigned duties to complete; narrator Ignace thinks they are both being idiots about the whole thing. The second novel shows how they fell in love and came to their heart-wrenching decision.
124	* StrawManPolitical: Ozarine politics, in particular.
125	* SurroundedByIdiots: Hildegard displays this attitude when talking to Greyboar and Ignace about why she is hiring them.
126	* TakeThat:
127	** When the protagonists visit the underworld, one chapter is a vicious parody of ''[[Literature/TheDivineComedy Dante' Inferno]]''.
128	** The unfinished draft of the third book includes a very overt example aimed at the novel ''Literature/TheBridgesOfMadisonCounty''.
129	* TagalongChronicler:
130	** Lampshaded and PlayedForLaughs. ''Forward the Mage'' is ostensibly put together by the Alfredae, chronicling lice who live in the voluminous body-hair of the protagonist Shelyid. They are frequently disdainful of everyone else and extremely snobbish, die quite frequently causing shifts in how they narrate, and complement their own narrative with other sources (which they often think are untrustworthy and biased). They are very much an UnreliableNarrator, but so is everyone else.
131	* TeethClenchedTeamwork: ''Strangler'' and ''Mage'' climax with some of the protagonists assembling to (respectively) [[spoiler:rescue Benvenuti from The Place Worse Than Hell]] and [[spoiler:steal the Rap Sheet]], and they spend a great deal of time bickering, snarking at and insulting each other.
132	* ThreeWaySex: Ignace falls into this kind of relationship with Jenny and Angela.
133	* UndergroundRailroad: A literal one exists for the dwarves as they attempt to escape their ongoing persecution. The protagonists of ''Strangler'' end up running a major "station" in the basement of their home.
134	* UnreliableNarrator: None of the narrators can be expected to tell the truth without embellishments, omissions, wishful thinking, self-aggrandizement, creative editing, or adjustments of facts to theory. It gets {{Lampshade Hanging}}s when the same scene is told by two different narrators, in entirely different ways.
135	* VaguenessIsComing: The Alfreadae go on about how the human protagonists will cause some sort of apocalypse, but never offer any details. And as noted, they are such [[UnreliableNarrator Unreliable Narrators]] with BlueAndOrangeMorality, their definition of "apocalypse" is very much open to question.
136	* WouldntHitAGirl: Gwendolyn grudgingly lets her brother Greyboar become a Professional Strangler on the condition that he never accepts a contract with a woman as his target. He rigorously abides by this, except for one instance where Gwendolyn gives him explicit written permission. (And the target is the one hiring him to do the job.)
137	* WretchedHive: Pretty much every city in Grotum, except for The Mutt. New Sphinctr in particular is described as "the armpit of the world."
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Context Literature / JoesWorld