Empress Theresa: Chapter 20 Analysis · 6:11pm May 12th, 2023
It’s three weeks later, and Theresa is finally ready to start raising that land bridge from Israel to Crete. It’s been a while since they were so jarring, but we do get a series of completely pointless numbers about how big and long the land bridge will be.
Let’s talk about that three week gap, shall we? Time skips can be an effective device. A lot of Japanese cartoons and comics use such things to great effect. However, in this particular case, the skip just happens just because. To make this story more interesting, we should see what kinds of preparations Theresa and her brain dead entourage of yes-men are making to make sure everything goes according to plan. She could even butt heads with OPEC a few more times, if they weren’t already out of the game for good. The point is that if you’re going to have a vast amount of time between two extremely major plot points, the space has to be occupied with other plot points that build up to that big payoff. Otherwise, you’re just wasting everyone’s time. Even the fictitious characters’.
Getting back to the story, Theresa seems to be making the land bridge partly out of the silver and gold that she’s mined from space. Why? For dramatic effect? Just because? That stuff was supposed to be used to stabilize the worlds’ economies, and now she’s frivolously using it for some decoration. She could have just worked with what she had and used what was naturally in the ground in that area, but that would be intelligent and responsible. Theresa has repeatedly shown that she is neither. The story continues with excruciating detail about the raising of the land bridge, and how everyone in Israel just seems to be okay with the outrageous plan to simply pack up and move away from the land that God promised them.
We are then completely surprised by the sudden reveal that a representative from Saudi Arabia wishes to meet with Theresa in Geneva, Switzerland. Theresa is hesitant, because she shares Boutin’s views that the Arabs are just a bunch of greedy, evil, backstabbing, two-faced, no good, jihadist sons-of-bitches. Think I’m exaggerating? Read the actual book and you’ll see just what a low opinion Boutin has of Arabs. Hell, read his responses to some of his criticisms. Those are quite enlightening to his character.
Theresa talks with Blair about what to expect from this meeting, and he tells her that he expects that the Arabs will offer to give up their demands for the reoccupation of Israel in exchange for Theresa ‘ungrounding’ all of those terrorists. Why? Because the Arabs are evil and they love terrorists who hate America, just because they’re jealous of the wealth and values of the US. How stupid and shallow can an author get?
A drudgery of inane dialogue is swapped between Theresa and Blair, before we finally get back on track with the story. But not before Boutin demonstrates how little he knows about what went on during World War II. Theresa and company go to Geneva to meet with the Arab representative. When she is asked what her plan is, Theresa says that she can’t tell, because it depends on what the common people think. All of a sudden she’s an expert negotiator who knows how to appeal to everyone.
Everyone is sat down. Theresa, the Arab rep, the Swiss moderator, and the audience before them. Before anyone says anything else, Theresa interjects by saying that she can clear everything up if she speaks first. I’m not an international negotiator, but I’m pretty sure that this is considered bad conduct, since the moderator is supposed to decide who speaks first. Anyway, even though she’s completely flouting the rules, she is allowed to speak first. We can just assume at this point that it’s because she’s so amazing.
What is Theresa’s big revelation? The thing that will make everything okay? She uses a baseball metaphor to blame everyone else for what’s going wrong. That’s right. She makes a completely erroneous point to tell everyone else that they are the problem. The entire point of a debate is to learn where the other side is coming from and how to effectively counter their points, or perhaps change your own points if it turns out that your argument isn’t as solid as you thought. That way, the problem at the middle of a debate may be solved. A debate is not to be used as a chance to attack the other person, which Theresa does with an incredible lack of any kind of grace, tact, awareness or intelligence.
Maybe she’s making a point? Perhaps there’s some greater objective that she’s building up to? Oh, hell yes! She takes out some photos from a manila envelope that she had brought with her which depict the desert environments of the Middle-East, which she considers to be completely awful and horrible. She then juxtaposes this to the lush, green, flowery countrysides of Europe, which she considers to be amazing and desirable. When she’s done, Theresa poses the question of where a person would rather live. Do you understand that? She just dunked on an entire culture based on the environment that they live in! And she says that if the Arabs back down from their demands and let the Israelis go, she’ll make the Middle-East more like the European landscapes! There was a joke in an episode of ‘South Park’ where Mr. Garrison thinks that Arabs are all pissed off at Americans because they live in sand. Here we see a serious, unironic, completely unaware statement that shows us that sometimes you don’t need to watch a satirical cartoon to look for bluntly stupid ideas! On top of that, she threatens the guy by implying that she might do to his country what she did to Antarctica and start blowing up big chunks of it! Some negotiation, huh?
In any case, it seems to have worked. The Arabs do nothing as Theresa takes a huge ball of carbon from the sun and breaks it up into a bunch of smaller diamonds. I should point out that I spoke to another friend who is more knowledgeable on such matters than I am. It turns out that if any matter is taken from or added to the sun, then the sun would lose anywhere between a million and a billion years of its lifespan. Basically, Theresa is killing the sun by mining from it. That problem is infinitely worse than the wind not blowing. Speaking of which, it seems like people have kind of forgotten about that. And about the water spouts. Like, neither of those things has been mentioned for many, many pages. Not even a passing reference. Oh well. Who really cares? Not the author, that’s for sure.
Okay. She’s got her diamonds, and she has them circle the globe so that they provide twenty-four hour sunlight during the exodus from Israel. Why she couldn’t just stop the rotation of the Earth or gather light particles to condense and place them along the way. Or even set up portable, solar-generated lights along the way. It’s all very contrived, and there are a million other more practical ways to go about it, but who can fathom the mind of a stupid author. It takes five days for Theresa to complete this project. Again, if it’s going to take so much time for all of these things to get done, something needs to happen between them to build up to the main payoff! That’s just good storytelling! She’s also practicing raising water up into the air. Why? Isn’t that what those water spouts were for? I guess Boutin really did forget what has already happened in his story.
Finally we find out the results of Theresa raising that oil field off the coast of Antarctica. There’s indeed a lot of oil there, and Exxon gets to it first. Just as their boat is going on its merry way home, filled to absolute capacity with oil that it paid dirt cheap prices for, it collides with another boat and causes a horrible oil spill.
This ends the chapter, and is actually quite effective, as it ends with an exciting event that makes us want to find out more. At least we would, if we didn’t have to read about all of the numbers associated with it sinking. Or if we didn’t already know that Theresa was so great and can just hoist all the oil out of there with her water spout tricks.
We’re almost done with the completely pointless Israel story arch. If there is any point to it at all, it’s to show how Theresa would solve major political world issues. Except any solution that she is going to execute would never work for a second in real life. We also see the author make it a point to tell an entire culture how horrible their life is and how miserable they are for living in the desert. The truth of the matter is that none of Boutin’s beliefs about the Middle-East are true, because even before modern times they had adapted to their environment culturally and economically. The man is not only stupid, but is also racist. If any author is going to use their book as a commentary for world events, they should first know what they are talking about. That’s all I have to say about that. Until Monday, it’s goodbye social life, hello ‘Tears of the Kingdom.’
Plenty of Arab nations are chums with the United States, which is something Boutin seems completely unable to grasp.
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I know! You'd think that somebody who is so conscious of world events as Boutin thinks he is would know this!
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Could it be that Boutin is just really racist? He did outright state in a response to a review that a non-white person getting HAL would be a bad thing.
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There is no doubt in my mind that the man is racist. His own writing is very telling of how he thinks of other cultures and ethnicities, even without reading his comments.
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Which is strange. His background would surely result in empathy for other minority groups; according to the Empress Theresa wiki, he has ancestors in Quebec (French Canada), a group who have faced prejudice in the past.