Mugging the Monster: Difference between revisions
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* In ''[[Snow Crash]]'', a white supremacist hick picks on the super-swordsman Hiro Protagonist. Hiro waits just long enough for the hick to threaten his life so he can decapitate him with just cause.
** One reason Hiro prefers his swords is their tendency to avert this trope; skinheads aside, most lowlife types aren't dumb enough pick fights with someone who is ''obviously carrying a pair of swords''. And even the skinhead might not have tried it without a roomful of buddies, not that they improved his life expectancy any.
*** Being fair to the skinhead, 'half a dozen guys with guns' is generally considered very good odds vs. 'one guy with swords'. The skinhead's error lay in getting drunk enough to forget that the entire point of having a gun is the ability to kill people from ''outside'' sword range.
** The Japanese businessman who picks a virtual swordfight with Hiro is another example: while the businessman isn't nearly as good as he thinks, Hiro is awesome in real life ''and also wrote the code for swordfighting in the virtual world''.
* Has bittersweet results for Lale in ''[[The Assassins of Tamurin]]''. The sweet—she kills the guy. The bitter—the subsequent "[[My God, What Have I Done?]]?"
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