Nerding Day: Otherverse America Part 2

Chris A. Field is a horny lunatic who wrote Black Tokyo, a pen-and-paper RPG about wielding your penis as a bladed, whiplike instrument of death. He also wrote Otherverse America, an attempt at serious social commentary on the culture war. Last time, we explored the technological marvels of his futuristic world, which mostly turned out to be sex-based. We also covered the Choicer sub-nation, a liberal utopia ruled by a matriarchal witch cult. Their foes are the Lifers, an Evangelical Christian faction made up of illiterate corpse-fuckers who don't understand how sex works. To be fair, they probably get their sex education from "meta-porn," which Chris tells us has almost entirely supplanted the traditional adult industry.

This has already come up a lot in Otherverse America, but in the hands of another author, "more than twice as many superpowered alien hybrids work in sex work than in the military" might be an amusing bit of worldbuilding. Here, it reads simply as yet another concession to Chris Field's overriding interest in the subject of intercourse. In Chris's reality, even the right-wing Christian Lifers can choose the "Porn-Blogger" starting occupation.

Ok so obviously the headline here is "child porn star as a character class" but I want to zero in on the phrase "blog-porn." Otherverse America was written in 2009, so we were just exiting the peak of the blog era. But still. "Blog-porn?" That sounds like the name of a species in Babylon 5 that everyone hates.

I'm going to skip the short story about sexual abuse that comes next — don't say I never did anything nice for you. Instead, let's talk about "predator alleles!"

Much like Hillary Clinton, the people of Otherverse America believe in the existence of genetic "superpredators," people with genes that make them commit sexual assaults. Some good news, though:

Next up is a bunch of worldbuilding about what normal people carry in their pockets, then some rules for being a cyborg. I'm getting conceptual whiplash here. A sensible writer would organize their book so that you didn't have the stats for nano-mesh cock blasters jammed in next to descriptions of free-bleeding Choicer ninjas who schedule their missions around their cycles. Chris Field is not that writer.

I want to step back and review for a moment. Even putting aside the abortion war and all the sex stuff, this is a world with a lot going on. We've got advanced gene modding, cyborgs, aliens, superheroes, whatever "Phallus Space" is. But Chris isn't done. Halfway through Otherverse America he introduces "object philosophies," which are just straight-up magic you do by convincing yourself that you can do magic. That lets him do things like copy and paste his menstrual blood sorceress class from Black Tokyo.

Yes, Black Tokyo and Otherverse America are broadly compatible, suggesting the existence of a multiverse of menstruating warrior women. Sidebar: Zangief from Street Fighter weeps manly, Russian tears whenever a fetus is aborted.

Choicers are smart and agile, Lifers are furious morons. It's not exactly inaccurate, but it almost feels like punching down? I'm not saying that anti-abortion freaks don't have it coming, just… not like this, you know?

But let's get into those Object Philosophies. Chris tells us that the Choicer ones are based on New Age philosophies, so I'm expecting things like the power to absorb the sun's energy through your taint for one turn and then fire a powerful beam from your pussy on the next like a sexual Chikorita. Sorry, a more sexual Chikorita.

Sadly, a lot of them are pretty boring. Predicting the future, doing cool knife stuff — Chris, you're letting me down here!

This is the one we were promised earlier, and it's ok, but is a +2 bonus to strength and dexterity for one business week a month worth excluding men from the special forces entirely? It seems like men are still capable of learning a lot of different kinds of magic, such as transforming into a living avatar of death to Christians who have caused you or your loved ones to suffer financial damages.

Sadly, men cannot benefit from Menstrual Nano-Armor.

I've come to expect period blood-based combat advantages from Chris, so the idea of powering a personal force field with shed uterine lining doesn't surprise me. But the part about splitting up your period into five non-consecutive days throughout a given month makes me wonder if Chris actually knew what menstruation was when he wrote this.

On the one hand, he was a product of the American educational system, but on the other, he had access to a better and more reliable Google in 2009 than we have today. If he'd searched "period how work" he wouldn't have gotten an AI summary that says that menstruation is a kind of fish best served with glue and childlessness. But this is a far-future world of incredible technology, after all, so maybe the idea of using cybernetics and brain magic for the purposes of "holding" your period isn't so far-fetched.

But on that note, I've just noticed a plot hole in this decade-and-a-half old social commentary slash jackoff fantasy: why is anyone even talking about abortions at this point? There's a class called the "Neo-Witch Midwife" who performs abortions with her blood-red cyber arm, but everyone's gene-modded to the point that they can basically decide when to get pregnant and with how many guys' sperm at once. Chris even points out that abortion is kind of fading into the background.

What the hell, Chris? You waited this long to say that actually, the culture war maybe isn't about abortion anymore, it's about fucking your superhero brother?

Except it is about abortion still, because now we come to The Manual of Pro-Life Doctrine, which details more of the powers and weaponry of the skull-loving, incest-hating Lifers. But they're not racists. Don't write it down that they're racist.

It's adorable that Chris seems to be trying to humanize the Lifers, who, again, practice necrophilia, dress like '80s cartoon villains, and wield a martial art known as Rescue Judo. But they are serious people with strongly-held, passionate beliefs, as evidenced by this conversation between an anti-abortion activist and a fallen alien cyber-empress.

And then the alien started crying and accepted Jesus Christ and swore to stop abortion wherever it was found. That alien's name? Albert Einstein. Sorry, it was actually Artemis, and the Lifers convince this impossibly advanced being from beyond the stars that she can redeem herself for… something by blowing up abortion clinics.

Weep not for the unborn, you fucking sick machine angel from the outermost galaxies. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Or be raised from aborted fetal matter into an undead abomination through necromantic rituals, either way.

And before you ask, yes, if you're doing a crossover between Otherverse America and a classic fantasy setting, abortion zombies are affected by the powers of paladins, clerics, and any other character or magic empowered by a god or goddess. I mean, unless they've had an abortion, done an abortion, or they've sworn allegiance to Mifepristo, the Goddess of Abortions.

Making people out of medical waste is not the only power available to the Lifers. It turns out that being really mad about abortion all the time is a pathway to many abilities some consider… unnatural.

Like a rejected Doom Patrol villain, you too can imagine a theoretical baby so hard that you become intangible and walk through walls. And you know what has walls? Abortion clinics. Just one problem: sometimes they have force fields, too. Yeah. They're powered by "Mac-Tik" technology, which is basically tractor beams, because Otherverse America doesn't have enough shit on it yet. So what's an enterprising domestic terrorist to do? Call on the power of the Lord, obviously.

Crumble, false walls! You will protect these baby-slayers no longer!

But sometimes psychic siege tactics aren't enough. A true anti-abortion warrior must armor themselves with the Armor of God! Or the armor of pictures of dead babies, I guess.

The ultimate Lifer technique allows practitioners to get so angry that they create a fatal anti-woke mind virus.

Don't tell Elon about this, or he's going to spend the next six months in an isolation tank trying to develop psychic abilities. Actually, do. Worst case scenario we get an Altered States type of situation.

The Lifers aren't limited to mind warfare, either. Despite being a ruined nation of subhuman dipshits, they have legions of cyborgs and powered armor suits at their disposal. And it feels like Chris is a lot more comfortable drawing these than human beings, because some of them actually kind of kick ass. Check this shit out:

Goddamn. This looks like a pair of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Stands in a world where instead of prog rock, Hirohiko Araki was obsessed with unborn children.

I love the weeping eye design and the subtle Christian iconography. Tasteful. What I'd really like, though, is a robot with a codpiece that looks like it was designed by Dr. Wily. When people look at my armored bathing suit area, I want them to think "memento mori."

Exquisite. But I've saved the best for last. Feast your eyes upon the Pro-Life Closer.

Sadly for the 7,000 preborn who are murdered daily, the minds that built these incredible machines of death and wield the might of Christian psionics do not have the tactical acumen to deploy them effectively. Chris relates the story of Fort Collins, in which a bunch of these assholes all tried to blow up a single abortion clinic and ended up killing each other instead.

The Lifers hate beauty, insert their penises into dead people, and go around in black clothing decorated with images of death. But they're also bungling jackasses, so maybe that makes them more sympathetic? Chris was trying for subtlety here, insisting that the people he himself calls terrorists who have developed ways to mentally murder healthcare professionals aren't all bad.

Hold on. A bizarre attempt to make skull-obsessed, hateful lunatics into complex, multi-dimensional villains? This is starting to sound familiar.

My god, it all fits. The lack of structure. The mashing together of cyborgs, aliens, magic, and genetic supermen. The villains being illiterate, yet somehow technologically-advanced death worshippers. Otherverse America is just Rifts if you take out all of the exclamation marks and replace them with abortion.

…which makes Chris A. Field Kevin Siembieda if he'd ever heard of sex. And also hadn't micromanaged his company into the ground and run an absurd, self-serving campaign to save it. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think Chris A. Field is just a more ethical Kevin Siembieda. My evidence?

While I was writing this piece, Chris retweeted one of my posts on Bluesky. I went over to his account to take a look, and yeah, he's reposting pictures of Lola Bunny's tits like you might expect, but most of his recent posts are about how ICE is an ontologically evil organization, Israel is sowing terror, and Zohran Mamdani is the best candidate in New York City's mayoral race.

Maybe he's grown and changed since he wrote Otherverse America and Black Tokyo. Maybe he's just a really horny guy who also happens to have good politics. I don't know. I do know this: that Chris A. Field drew a pro-choice Tron guy side kicking a Christian death commando in the head, and for that, I salute him.

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