Talk: Joaquin Delgadillo

I think that covers him from HW, actually. TR 19:20, July 22, 2010 (UTC)

That it does. He didn't do shit. And I seem to remember his scenes came up in the hopper far less often than most. Turtle Fan 20:05, July 22, 2010 (UTC)

HT really painted himself into a corner with this one, but it was still a shame to have him killed just as he'd found a new lease on life. Turtle Fan 16:08, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

That was my response as well. It's probably worth remembering Hip Rodriguez's adventure with electricity from TVO, but since Delgadillo's adventure with the bomb came at the end of the novel, I think it's a safe assumption that he's dead. Unless HT decides to retread Johnny Got His Gun. TR 16:11, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sure he's dead. His character arc had reached a point where there really wasn't anything to be done with him that was both believable and interesting, and in a war story having someone get conveniently killed out of nowhere is legitimate, not a cheat as it would be elsewhere. Also, no other POVs died in this one, and there's always someone.

I wonder whether HT will replace him with another Spanish character or put the new pair of eyes somewhere else. Spain's such an unimportant part of this story, Weinberg can surely cover it on his own.

Past HT patterns suggests that a Spanish Nationalist is the logical choice. But the only other developed Nationalists are Delgadillo's sgt (possible), Uribe (dead), and Sanjurjo himself (which could be cool, but strikes me as unlikely).

Wasn't Carrasquel part of that ill-fated raid himself? I thought he was. And he really doesn't seem like POV material. I fear HT would need to create someone new ex nihilo. Or maybe introduce him by having Weinberg open TBS and interact with him before handing it off. Kind of like that time Chester Martin captured Reggie Bartlett in a trench raid. Whee.

Huh? Bartlett and Martin were POVs from the very beginning. TR 19:24, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

Right, but you remember at the end of AF when Martin jumps into a trench and orders the Rebs to surrender, and the next scene is Bartlett watching Martin jump in and order him to surrender? Something like that, except this time we'd add the introduction of the new character. Weinberg encounters a Nationalist, learns his name, and suddenly he's a POV. Turtle Fan 20:17, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

Gotcha. It's possible, but really, you can just about set your watch by HT's patterns and story structure. Any replacement will almost certainly be from among the secondary characters already introduced. TR 21:23, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

Well HT did have Vera take over for part of McGill's scene at the one point, when she and her boss were talking about how he was her meal ticket. We've had guest POVs before, sometimes playing off of a scene by a regular POV directly before or after. I guess we've even had guest POVs interrupt someone's scene, but to shift to a different perspective within a scene . . . That's new. For HT, anyway; I've seen it in many novels by other authors. Among AH writers, I think, only Tsouras. (Which reminds me, I have to read A Rainbow of Blood . . . some day. But they're charging so much for it online, and no bookstore or library is likely to stock it.) So he's broken one mold, or at least cracked it.

That being said, I'm sure you're right about the POV reassignment. And I certainly hope you are; we need two pairs of eyes in boring-ass Spain like we need holes in our heads. (You know what especially annoys me, by the way? When two POVs link up and both of them use their scenes to show us the same sort of thing. Carsten and Junior had been the most recent example before Weinberg and Delgadillo got to be such buddies, I believe.) Turtle Fan 21:49, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

I think a more likely scenario is the Pomeroy to Pound switch. Again, given HT patterns, it will probably be someone we've already met in a secondary role. That could give us Weinberg's former running buddy, or Jenkins perhaps.

Ideally, it would be a POV we don't have yet, like a Pole, or Chinese guerrilla. Maybe that Slovak comrade of Vaclav's that Vaclav still wonders about in W&E. That could be some foreshadowing on HT's part. TR 18:00, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to see Vera as a POV, actually. She sort of took over part of one McGill scene, which was far enough outside HT's long-running (and I do mean long!) system that it confused the fuck out of me. From the insight into her psyche that little moment offered, I'd say she is indeed playing him for his millions. Turtle Fan 19:07, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

Wow, did she ever make a mistake. TR 19:24, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

Well, he did buy her jade and silk, both of which would be the soul of ease to turn around and resell if she can keep him from finding out; and he takes her to all kinds of places that are far as the moon beyond the upper limit of her price range. And now he's going to try to marry her so she'll actually have a government that can protect her from the vagaries of stateless life in 1930s China. She's getting about as much as she can expect to get from someone who wouldn't consider the Golden Lotus beneath his notice from the get-go. Now maybe she's fallen for his, umm, charm(?) for real, but even if she's become as pure of intention as he imagines her to be (and she certainly wasn't when she stood in for narrative duties), she's still getting as much as she would if she were gold-digging. Turtle Fan 20:17, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

(Actually, I'm still at a loss as to why HT has bothered including it at all.) Turtle Fan 16:45, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

My latest unsupportable theory is that HT came up with the Early WWII idea first, then decided that it would very quickly look like a truncated OTL WWI/WWII mishmash, and so decided to keep Spain in a less than successful bid to keep things interesting. TR 18:00, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

Well, whatever he did was less than successful, that's for sure. Unless the fall of Gibraltar is going to have an effect later (allow the Italians to take Egypt, perhaps?), but it's a long, long walk for whatever payoff can be had. Italians taking Egypt is about the most earth-shattering development I can possibly imagine. Turtle Fan 19:07, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

If Italy were being more aggressive, I'd be expecting that. But we haven't even heard of Abyssinia at this point, much less Italy getting frisky in Egypt. TR 19:24, August 4, 2010 (UTC)

I think Musso is also aware that, if he attempted an adventure and it backfired (hardly an impossibility, considering Musso's history of adventurism) Hitler would be too busy to help him. The Brits proper are too busy to help Egypt, but with Japan heading north all those Indian and Malaysian and Australian and New Zealander garrisons are available, and they would go into action to protect the Suez Canal, if nothing else.

Maybe at some point we'll see all those Indian and Malaysian and Australian and New Zealander garrisons fighting the Italians in North Africa, and while they're there Japan will make a grab for one or more of their home lands, despite the fact that they're already involved in two major conflicts. That could touch off any number of possible series of events which end with McGill having a real goddamned job to do for a change. I can't think of many other things that would; the leathernecks keep insisting the day is coming, and soon, but we haven't seen a smidge of evidence that the two nations are on the verge of hostilities, except for a couple of half-assed reminders about the Panay. The encounters between the two garrisons feel more like Cold Warriors, like when our sailors would meet their Eastern Bloc counterparts in European port cities in the 60s and 70s. "Yeah, we'll get you some day, you bastards"--only they never did. Turtle Fan 20:17, August 4, 2010 (UTC)