Podcast: Interview with Jimmy Aquino

Just follow the novel’s blog for any tour event announcements. Thanks for responding to our podcast chat and expressing interest in Secret Identities. I hope interest from folks like you is great enough to spawn a Volume II.

Jeff and Parry said if there’s a follow-up, they want it to be about Asian American supervillains, which might actually be more fun to create than superheroes. But I can already see the complaints coming from hypersensitive types like that condescending assclown at the Sundance screening of Better Luck Tomorrow who yelled at Parry, his co-stars and Justin Lin for not doing a “positive” enough movie about Asian Americans and then got verbally smacked in the ass by Roger Ebert in his greatest moment as a critic ever (footage of this is featured in Arthur Dong’s new doc Hollywood Chinese).

I’d love to do more stories about the “Sampler” characters, but frankly, I’m kind of tired of the superhero genre (most of the comics I read are non-superhero titles). I think Volume II should be a GN about Asian American detectives. Maybe it should be called Secret Eyes: The Asian American Detective Anthology.

“Condemn it because they brought back Sylar and now have one of the dumbest shows on TV!”

…and because they have the most aimless story arcs, some of the dumbest characters (Captain Gullible, a.k.a. Mohinder) and some of the most pretentious and annoying voiceover narration on prime-time.

Sorry, future staffer or actor from Heroes I might work with someday.

My sister and I disagreed over Heroes during Thanksgiving dinner. She thought I was too harsh about the show. I doubt she’ll ever read this, but I didn’t get the chance to say to her that despite its flaws, Heroes is not the worst scripted hour-long show on prime-time. That would be Grey’s Anatomy.

Oh, and one other thing:

http://afistfulofsoundtracks.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-voice-seems-to-be-all-over.html?showComment=1244564267632#c8317019663551470077

I found this today on io9, where a white woman, of all people, has best articulated what I was having trouble saying during my spiel on the podcast about my biggest beef with Heroes: Hiro never became the sword-wielding badass that the show hinted at in season one because the writers are scared of having strong, mature and nuanced Asian male characters, so they killed off Hiro’s future self. (And why is it always the Petrellis who get laid? And other than the murder of Peter’s black girlfriend in season one–which leads to another discussion about other characters of color on that show that I’d rather get into another day–why are only the Petrellis never punished for sexing somebody?)

I should just bring along an erudite white woman with me to translate everything I try to say whenever I get interviewed on a podcast:

“Why haven’t we seen Hiro developing into badass Future Hiro with the leather and sword? The man who no longer has to speak in pidgin? The simple answer is that the dystopian future where he became that man isn’t going to happen. But the more disappointing answer is that this show can’t seem to allow its Asian male heroes to be powerful, fully adult, sexual beings without punishing them. Each time Hiro has inched towards having an adult identity, whether that’s as Future Hiro or the lover of the feudal-era princess in season 2, he’s slapped back. Not only is he robbed of these identities, he’s actually turned into somebody (a child) who can never have them.

And don’t even get me started on Suresh, who was an unctuous weakling for two seasons, a guy who spent all his time whining or being a voice-over. And then when he finally became sexually involved with somebody, it turned out it was because he was slowly mutating into a hideous monster. Why can’t Heroes make these men sexy and tough, instead of reducing them to aimless boy-children, easily manipulated and undermined at every turn?”

(Taken from: http://io9.com/5091621/what-have-they-done-to-hiro-and-sylar)

I think the resurrection of Sylar was what convinced me that every promise was about to be broken. Dead Sylar–nope. Cool Hiro–nope. Peter Petrelli finally taking that annoying look off his face–nope.

The only characters I liked, in addition to Hiro, were Horn Rimmed Glasses and the Haitian. They made HRG start acting weird, and they benched the Haitian. Oh, I also liked that girl who could tell people what to do, but she didn’t even last for a season. So they basically killed all my motivations for watching the show.

TMM,

We’ve definitely gotta talk soon, man! We’re living in the digital age, which means that things are a bit different from what they used to be, but print still speaks loudly!

By the way, let’s do another podcast once you’ve published (and I’ve read) your book.

B.