I Prefer the Reid's "My Friend" Knuckle-Duster Myself

Finished reading: AD8

We have now come to the end of 2007 and are at the precipice of 2008. Very strange that the show celebrated its 10th anniversary this year and that the character celebrated her 14th -- remember, she was initially a character on "Beavis and Butt-Head" which debuted in 1993.

Therefore, it's time for some brief New Year's Resolutions:

1. To not say a damned thing about the United States 2008 presidential elections.
2. To stay off the message boards as much as possible.
3. Lose some weight, dammit.
4. Continue to reduce debt. I just keep telling myself, "Canada, July 2012."
5. Pass my professional exams.
6. Continue to read fanfiction, good and bad.
7. Writing about something other than "Daria" for God's sake.
8. Seek out new experiences -- and possibly, new life and new civilizations.
9. Try to avoid seeing movies that have a number at the end.
10. Go Braves.

(* * *)

Unfortunately, for those looking for powerful, trenchant commentary ("CINCGREEN, why start now?"), you won't find it today. It appears that AD8 is simply a wrapping up of threads and a post-mortem.

There's not much to say about AD8 -- which could have frankly been skipped as the plot isn't moved forward. I only have three comments on AD8.

1. I found it rather interesting that the shooting of two people hasn't bothered Daria much, but her near-rape continues to affect her. I wonder if Doggieboy tossed a bone to those complaining about Daria's lack of self-reflection; in any case I enjoyed the fact that some things bothered Daria but not others.

2. How does Jane even know that a rifle is a .30-06? By sight? By trying to match the shell casings? What I'm hoping is that there's a big book somewhere in Robert Ford's office (I know that's not his name, but I like singing "that dirty little coward/who shot Mr. Howard/has laid poor Jesse in his grave") that provides some guidance to Daria and Jane. When you pick up a weapon that you've never fired, loading it can be cryptic, until you figure out where the secret latches/levers/whatever are. Then it's rather simple. Look at all the low IQ "gun nuts" who can shoot. If they can, you can too.

(BTW: Does anyone out there really hate parts of fanfic where they begin to explain the minutiae and obscuria of the latest weapons/jimcrack? It really slows the story to a dead crawl. "No, I don't give a damn that the weapon was manufactured in Bulgaria. Get to the story!")

3. Okay. You have three dead bodies in the yard. It's true that they might not deserve a burial, but you'd better get them out of there before the feral wolves come -- or someone comes along and decides to fight it out with Daria and Jane. After all, the house might have a lot of goodies in it if three guys died trying to get in!

Showdown at the Dumbass Corral

Finished reading: AD7

(Editor's note: I probably won't be needing any more beta readers. I have three, and one has already returned the MS. However, if came to visit for that purpose, I appreciate your help. Maybe next time. -- JB)

It's taken a little while for me to get to my computer, but I can proudly say that the computer has been reassembled at Fortress CINCGREEN and I am retyping from the comfortable basement.

My sister-in-law did yeoman's work in getting the place in tip-top shape. Among her various home improvement items were:

1) repainting the walls in forest gold and brown. My sister and law calls these colors "Reese's colors".
2) constructing a whiteboard for me and hanging it on the wall.
3) repainting this old 1950s-era desk, including drilling some holes in the side. The wood is 1/4 inch thick, and it was a chore to work with
4) cleaning out the old desk to make it possible for me to find a place to set the hard drive.
5) constructing a bookshelf (Target brand put-it-together)
6) putting molding along various doors, and
7) hanging a device that will store an ironing-board -- my office must double as the washer-dryer nook

In addition, Ruth and I have also

1) purchased a flat-screen monitor to replace the old "TV set" monitor, and
2) purchased a hacksaw.

The reason being that the old desk apparently had some sort of function wherein a typing table was concealed on the left side. You swung open the facade on the left side of the desk, and lifted the typing table out.

The problem was that the typing table stopped working long ago, and all that was within was the skeletal remains. As long as that old machinery was inside, putting a hard drive nook would have been impossible. Three metal bars -- two 1/4 inch diameter, one 1/2 inch diameter -- traversed the space and with the bars in place, the assembly was impossible to get out.

I was able to hack through the two 1/4 inch bars and bend the mechanism so that the assembly could come out, thanking goodness that I didn't have to hack through that final 1/2 inch of 40-year old metal. Everything is copacetic, Ruth and I have cleaned the floor, and the place probably looks better than it has in years.

(* * *)

Now, on to AD7. Hoo-boy. This section of "Apocalyptic Daria" I'm going to have to give a "thumbs-down" to. (More on the perils of serial-writing later.)

The story leaves off from AD6. When we last left Daria and Jane, they were blissfully unaware that three enemies of the former owner of the house were heading for a Straw Dogs type showdown.

Such an inept groups of assailants couldn't be imagined outside of a "Daria Triumphant" fic. Only one of these guys have managed to bring a firearm. The other, God help us, has actually brought an ax. The third has brought...nothing, save his fists. (Perhaps he's a descendant of the Boxers of the Opium wars.) One of them -- it's not worth while remembering who -- hopes that if the old man is not there, his daughter is. (So you're guaranteed to hate him already.)

I won't detail the showdown. Jane has a 10-gauge shotgun that she's found. Daria is carrying a concealed .357 Magnum -- forgive me if I get the numerical designations wrong. Jane manages to kill the only armed one of the group, I believe, with the 10-gauge -- but not before Jane takes a bullet in the arm. The other two, believing that Jane is now helpless (we're assuming that this breach-loading shotgun is not double-barreled), move in for the kill.

Unwise move. Daria manages to kill both of them with the .357 magnum. I'm surprised the extras were even given names. (Bill, John, and Harry for those keeping score.)

There follows a long scene with Daria and Jane trying to heal Jane's wound. With nothing sterile, Daria is forced to do the best she can with needle and thread. They manage to get the bleeding under control, and Daria allows Jane to sleep.

(* * *)

Immediately after the story was posted, the commentary broke down into two oppositely opposed camps, raising their voices at each other at least until AD8.

Camp A believed that Daria and Jane should be a bit distressed at the fact that they have killed three human beings -- rotten examples of human beings, but humans nonetheless. Camp B, on the other hand, believed that the survival instinct should trump and that Daria and Jane should have gone Clint Eastwood on them and not given the incident a second thought. (I'll assume that Doggieboy is in Camp B.) Both camps...are wrong. To claim that "all characters should respond like X" is a bit foolish, given the spectrum of human reactions.

Soldiers of all types, ages, and countries have been interviewed regarding their emotional experiences after killing people. There were many soldiers who said, "well, killing never bothered me, actually", and most of these "mass murderers" (after all, they did shoot dozens of people) went on to successful lives as butchers, bakers and candlestick makers without a shred of remorse, with no nightmares and no psychopathy. To these people, killing was simply a task much like any other.

On the other hand, psychological trauma has appeared to increase over the years from veterans. One interesting theory is that with the movement away from mass warfare, it is much harder to get away with deliberately missing. If you were truly terrified, or gripped with anxiety at the thought of taking life, you could fire your World War I Springfield in the general direction of the enemy without actually worrying about hitting anybody. In the chaos, it wouldn't be noticed. (Estimates were that only one out of ten soldiers in that era was actually trying to hit anyone.) However, with "fourth-generation warfare" -- small unit combat where you can actually see your enemy before you kill him -- you can't escape the necessity of taking life.

My conclusion? "One from Column A and one from Column B" -- with the caveat that personality tells you nothing about who will be an efficient killer and who will not. Drill Instructors can tell you dozens of stories about the tough guys who broke down during Basic Training, and they were the guys everyone thought would pass with ease. Then there were the soldiers with pencil-thin legs who wore glasses who calmly and resolutely stuck it out and made more-than-capable soldiers, men whom no one would bet on.

Daria and Jane's personalities will tell us nothing about how they react to trauma. For all we know, if you put a jammy in Mr. O'Neill's hands, he might be the most efficient killer of them all!

That wasn't the part I objected to, feeling that the commentators missed the point. My complaints are of two varieties:

a) the setup. I can't imagine where you could come up with more inept opposition. When I discovered how they were armed, they might as well have been wearing giant tags that read, "I will be dead soon." This is the time during the movie where you get up and get some popcorn while everyone else watches the killing.

Furthermore, Daria letting Jane rest and the "all is well" atmosphere at the end is difficult to understand. Once you shoot down three guys at your doorstep -- even a borrowed doorstep -- does it ever occur to you that someone might wander where they've gone? Maybe they have families too, like the rapist encountered in an earlier part of the story. Maybe they have dangerous...armed...smarter brethren who might be looking for their missing cuzzins.

Another complaint deals with gun mechanics. As it turns out, Daria fandom is blessed (?) with a herd of gun enthusiasts who can recommend what kind of ordinance Daria and Jane should be carrying down to the grains of the shells. Myself, I never wanted to become Tom Clancy and resigned myself to learning "just enough" to make a story involving guns remotely plausible...sometimes, with no success.

However, I have actually *fired* both of the weapons in question. I have fired a breech-loading shotgun as well as an automatic shotgun, small-caliber rifles and large caliber handguns. My father was a gun enthusiast and he wanted me to take up his enthusiasms -- I wouldn't have minded save for my mother, who was terrified with guns and I just opted out, not needing to be in a tug of war between the two.

The first thing that you'll note about shotguns and handguns is how loud they are. If you're not wearing ear protection, it's almost like a small firecracker going off next to your ear. (I hated shotguns precisely for that reason, prefering to stick to small-caliber rifles.)

Guns make noise that will have your ears ringing if you're not aware of what's coming. (I have no hints by the author that Daria and Jane have fired any sort of firearm.) I'm surprised Jane didn't hear from one of the malcreants. "You just shot our buddy and now (high pitched death of ear cells causing a whine in Jane's ears)"

The second part is that if you're not familiar with guns, they can be puzzling. "What do you do to open the breach?" "Where's the safety?" "How hard do you have to pull the trigger?" "How do you reload the chambers in a non-automatic handgun?" This isn't the kind of stuff you want to learn ad-hoc, although since Daria and Jane are smart kids, they might have doped it out on their own.

Finally, one matter has been forgotten -- recoil. Firearms are loud devices that tend to *kick*. Jane's shot knocked the assailant right to the ground -- a 10 gauge can be pretty powerful close up. However, Jane might have found the barrel rising, under its own power, into the air with the recoil. Recoil can sneak up even on experienced shooters. There are five-foot, one-hundred pound women who can handle the larger types of shotguns quite well, but even experienced marksmen can have trouble with the kick.

And Jane is no experienced marksman, and neither is Daria.

(* * *)

So do the criticisms above carry weight? Perhaps, they don't. There are always people out there that are going to nitpick over minutiae. I thought the unfamiliarity with firearms should have been a burden to the protagonists. Other people might claim, "The Belgian 10-Gauge Frammistat Shotgun is not a breech-loader, but an automatic, you clod." (In any role playing game, you always get one of those.)

Was the above enough to spoil my enjoyment of AD7? Neither was singularly, but combined with the ignorant protagonists it was enough to give this chapter of "Apocalyptic Daria" a failing grade.

And now, the important question: was AD7 so bad that it derailed your will to read the series? The answer is "no, it was not."

There's always a danger with writing serials -- every chapter is a chance for someone to climb off the bandwagon. People will find egregious fault with Chapter 1, or Chapter 2, or Chapter 22, or so on. A serial can never build readership, only lose it. It seems that enough people liked the story to read forty-two chapters of it; the first six chapters should make up for the bad seventh. In short, expect me to be here to read AD8 and comment on it.

(Note: Work might get a little more hectic at work, and further reviews might be less frequent. Can't be helped.)

The Usual Suspects

"Reclamation III" has now been re-read. Beta readers are sought. E-mail me at the address in the header, and I'll send it to you.

Into the Woods with Gun and Camera

Finished reading: AD6

All right. I can happily say that due to the fact that absolutely nothing was going on at work yesterday, that I have finally finished "Reclamation, Part III".

However, there are two more things that need to be done before the public can see it (and point, mockingly). The first thing is that I have to re-read it and make corrections. I've always found this part of "fic writing" the very hardest part of all.

Hard parts of fic writing, in order

1. Rereading the first draft.
2. Waiting for the first draft to come back.
3. Preparing the final copy from the first draft.
4. Writing the first draft.

Notice that "writing the first draft" is fourth on the list, the very bottom. Anyone can write a first draft and just throw it up on the Internet. Which is why I've often called fan fiction "an amusing collection of first drafts". To become a polished writer, one has to revise and revise and revise and I've always found this revision painful.

I already know the first draft is weak. Parts of the dialogue are clunky. Parts of the plot are propelled by coincidences. Sometimes, you just don't have any idea as to how you're going to fix those parts. So you do the best you can -- put bandaids on it despite the fact that blood is pouring out of the copy -- then send it back. And wait.

Hopefully, the beta readers will have good ideas as to how to fix things. (Bad ideas are a dime a dozen.) At least, they can confirm your initial diagnoses ("yep. I knew that didn't work") or even find new ones.

Then, they send it back, you stitch it up, and mail it to messageboards and get it out of your life.

(* * *)

I'm presently making excuses for not rereading my original copy. My computer, my gateway to the world, is currently in pieces in the basement. Why? My sister-in-law is here painting and redecorating the place and we're hoping to turn the basement into a true Fortress CINCGREEN and not "the place where you put all the spare crap that doesn't belong elsewhere in the house". I'll actually have my own home office.

So where am I typing this? From the living room. My wife is otherwise distracted, but I hate the thought that someone could look over my shoulder at any moment and say "whatcha doin'"? Not that I have anything to be ashamed of, but I find my return to fan fiction writing a bit embarrassing. My wife would say, "oh, not this again" and I'd have to say "yeah, this again."

However, I have access to the first draft from this computer. I'll make the effort to read it. I pinky-swear.

(* * *)

By the way -- I miss my computer baseball game, the only copy of which is on that computer mentioned above, in pieces. The plan is to replace my monitor with a flat-screen monitor. I want a big one.

(* * *)

Anyway, on to AD6. Part of reading a story is that you get to follow its thread, and I'm very surprised that commentary didn't so much center on the strengths (or weaknesses -- you'll never get honest commentary on a message board ) as on what kinds of supplies the commenters would be storing if society went ass-up. It reminds me of the earliest games of Dungeons and Dragons where you'd roll up a character and proceed to load down the character for supplies as if he were going on an arctic expedition.

Daria and Jane certainly can't carry this crap around with them. They can, however, put it in their car but if they lose the car...they lose everything. This shouldn't be as much of a prolbem as some people think. To paraphrase Mark Twain, "put all your eggs in one basket -- and watch that basket!"

They're probably better off in a car than in a house (more later). However, Daria and Jane are trying to find out what happened to Lawndale, and when a winter storm approaches, they decide to seek shelter in a house. The problem is that the houses nearby appear to be crudely barricaded. If I recall correctly, one house has parked its car right in front of the door, a sort of futile attempt at a barrier.

The two find the only house that isn't barricaded, and make their way in. However, they find the previous inhabitant...dead. Apparently, he died of a heart attack and there was no one to check on him. Daria and Jane dispose of the body, and gather more supplies from inside the house, including more firearms.

Unfortunately, Daria and Jane might not remain disturbed long. A group of men watches the house from a distance. They have it in for the previous owner -- they're not aware that the man died of natural causes -- and might plan a confrontation....

...can you feel the suspense out there? Time to head on to AD7....





My list of things for the apocalypse:

a) A backpack. Don't overload it.
b) A good knife with a sharp blade, preferably a long-bladed hunting knife -- not so much for defense as for its use as a tool
c) A whetstone, to keep such a knife sharpened.
d) A compass, so that you know where you're going. If walking, people tend to favor one leg or another, which means that after many, many days, you might end up walking in a circle when you think you're going "true north".
e) A pistol. Which you keep holstered, and at your side. "God did not make men equal. Sam Colt did." Ammo for same. Avoid rifles unless you plan to eat what you shoot.
f) Potassium iodide.
g) Flint, along with the knowledge to use it to start fires.
h) The knowledge of how to make your own sandals from tire rubber at http://www.hollowtop.com/sandals.htm. Save your shoes for winter.
i) Possibly, a Ph. D. in herbology. That might be hard to find during the apocalypse.
j) A friend, possibly the most valuable thing of all. Daria and Jane are already one-up on that....

Message From Beyond

Finished reading: AD5

One of the many problems of blogging is the need to find material, and I'm loathe to fill the blog with stuff regarding my personal life. I don't think my life is interesting enough to maintain a blog at that level.

However, I'm hoping to work on "Reclamation" a bit today. As it turned out, I had written 1/2 of Part III and then came to a stop -- before I walked out of fandom in a fury. So it was good to see that my work was theoretically half-over.

Work is slow. Until I have projects to work on, there's not much for me to do except continue my education, and I'm waiting for the results of an exam I took in November to come out in early January. So do I study something new, or study something old if I failed the exam? Decisions, decisions.

It turns out that I "think" in scenes. I've talked to other writers and have learned that some writers actually take notes. Taking notes, however, doesn't work for me. I generally have some ideas for scenes, and I work those scenes out in my mind. Then, I fill in the gaps with other scenes and the entire story snaps together like a puzzle. By the time I commit finger to keyboard, I've usually already "written" about eighty percent of what I'm going to type -- it's merely a matter of description.

unfortunately, I'm treating "Reclamation" a bit differently. This is going to be a pseudo-canon fanfic -- no science-fiction-y stuff. Furthermore, it will have an end. And it will need beta-reading, a process I hate because it keeps me from simply shoving the first draft onto the Internet and forgetting about it. I assume that I can beat Scissors MacGillicutty into providing a beta-read, at least.

(* * *)

As it turns out, "Apocalyptic Daria" has something in common with the way I'm formatting blog entries. I've decided that I'll read a little bit of someone's fan fiction and comment on it each time I make a post.

I borrowed that idea from Slacktivist, and his "Left Behind Fridays". Slacktivist is reading the "World's Worst Books" -- Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and the other guy -- and commenting on what execrable tripe they are, both in the literary and the theological sense. (And guess what? Today is Left Behind Friday!)

Now I am not claiming that "Apocalyptic Daria" is in any way comparable to LaHaye's excrement. In terms of writing skill, LaHaye should be licking Doggieboy's shoes. However, there are a few amusing/interesting parallels:

1) We are in the Apocalypse in both stories. In Doggieboy's world, the nukes have flown; in LaHaye's, we are dealing with the post-Rapture. The difference being that Doggieboy's universe has consequences and chaos while life goes on seemingly as normal in Left Behind despite the absense of about a billion people.
2) In the church where Daria and Jane are staying, there is a copy of Left Behind among the other books, and a Boy Scout manual, which has a better plot than LaHaye's book.
3) The tape.

Undoubtedly, one of the questions is "where are the parishoners?" As it turns out, Sunday morning is approaching and Daria and Jane should be face to face with the "owners" of the church, but no one shows up. However, as it turns out -- coincidentally -- there is a video tape which has been made the Sunday before which answers the question of why no one will be showing up at this church again for a long time.

As it turns out, there is also a video tape scene in Left Behind (trust me, I haven't read it -- I'm going by Slacktivist's explanations). This tape was "left behind" by the former pastor of the New Hope Church, explaining what killed hi--uh, that is what raptured him and most of the congregation. Consider it evangelism beyond the grave. (There are websites now which will send post-Rapture messages to your unsaved loved ones, believe it or not.)

Doggieboy flips the coin on the readers, as this tape is more a dysangel. It's just bad news all around.

I wasn't moved by AD5, but I don't know if Doggieboy really wanted his readers to feel for the parishoners or if he just wanted to move the story forward. My problem is that these are pretty much tropes of "apocalypse" fiction. Namely, "the message from beyond", from people who for some reason aren't around anymore. It can be a diary, it can be a cassette tape, or in this case, it can be a VCR.

As for Daria and Jane being moved by what they saw, I'm simply remembered of this same scene in the hands of two other comedy writers:

a) Douglas Adams, whose Arthur Dent is not moved to tears over the destruction of his home planet...until he realizes that he will never have a McDonald's hamburger, ever again, and
b) Futurama, where Philip J. Fry is ecstatic over the realization that all of his family and friends are dead...his life sort of sucked, anyway.

(Boy, I've really become callous and cynical, haven't I? If it makes you feel any better, I probably would have felt sad if I had seen that tape, too.)

Daria and Jane were moved, at least. Moved to tears. Which might be the subject of a whole other essay.

The Number 22

Finished reading: AD4

Amazingly, one story from my "unfinished fic" list has been completed: "Canon Fodder" was posted for me by Scissors MacGillicutty.

That's the good news. The bad news is that I have to start work on "Reclamation", a much tougher fic to write and one whose ending will be disappointing. That's as may be -- the list needs to be cleared out. Oddly enough, I've been thinking about "Same Drum, New Tune" more than I've been thinking about "Reclamation".

I noticed that medea42 opened up an account on the other board. I hope she finds it interesting but that other board is pretty much dead. No real fic is being written there and all of the conversation -- so to speak -- takes place in hidden forums.

(* * *)

Now, on to "Apocalyptic Daria". I just noticed at PPMB that Doggieboy has actually finished the series. medea and Milderbeast returning, a serial actually being finished? What's next? A red moon? The birth of a centaur?

AD4 isn't much of a story, it's more of a "get the characters from one place to another" tale. However, there are hints of the future world that I wonder if the author intended.

It's clear that government at the state level has broken down, but not at the local level. Each town seems to be left to its own as to how to deal with the problem of refugees. D & J are met by gun-toting locals at the city limits in one town; in another they are pleasantly greeted but told sorry, there's no more room at the inn. At least, an ancient Geiger counter is brought out to indicate that no one is dying of radiation poisoning. With no where else to turn, Daria and Jane go to church...seriously, at least to find a place to spend the night. (Shades of Joseph and Mary looking for a stable.)

Surprisingly, they have no trouble gaining entrance. The doors aren't locked. When I grew up, every church I ever attended regularly was locked when services were not being held. Either Daria and Jane got lucky finding an unlocked church, but really -- we don't need to know the details as to how D & J got in.

Sidebar: There's a blog called Slacktivist that I sometimes read. No, it's not what you think it's about. It's a blog about Christianity. From one of the comments links, I was taken to an atheist blog that discussed the recent shootings at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. As it turned out, there was armed security at the church that shot the gunman. Good thing the gunman was there, but it raises the question of why Christians put their trust in Sam Colt more than they do in God, who is the ultimate provider. Likewise, I wonder why churches have their doors locked when no one is inside. You'd think that a church would want as many people coming in as possible. Then again, the pastor is a "Marion Summers", so maybe they're United Methodists or something.

Anyway, back to the tale. While Daria sleeps a fitful sleep, Jane rummages through the "black knight's" personal effects. She finds out that the assailant, a Larry Carter, has a wife, three kids, and a cat. A diary (!) also reveals that Daria and Jane were not his first victims.

Oddly enough, the concept of a serial rapist having his own family isn't out of the ordinary. You can type in "serial rapist married" into your search engine and find out about Nathan Antonio Washington, a married father of four, who committed two rapes and two sexual assaults in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The most interesting part of AD4 -- to me, anyway -- involved Mr. Carter's diary, where he wrote the details of his sexual assaults. Apparently, of his twenty victims (I'm assuming Daria and Jane aren't counted), he killed seventeen after his assaults and managed to track down and kill one of the three escapees. A nasty piece of work. Jane reads all of the details, including that he liked to hear the screams of his victims.

Serial criminals, oddly enough, tend to play into the stereotype of being meticulous. Frankly, you can't be successful as a serial whatever unless you are very organized. Can't leave evidence lying about. Can't leave people talking. And of course, sometimes you take a trophy -- in Carter's case, his detailed notekeeping.

But this is the odd fact: Carter must have written down the details before and after. Jane and Daria were listed as Numbers 21 and 22, but both escaped without molestation. Yet I suspect that many serial planners are a bit obsessive. I assume that Carter's handwriting is neat, the ledger is neat, and everything is properly squared away.

Therefore...I assume that Carter would not flub details and get the order wrong. Jane is listed as #21. Daria is listed as #22. Jane is knocked unconscious in AD3. When she wakes, Carter is ready to assault Daria. My question: what happened between the time Jane was knocked cold and the time she intervened on behalf of Daria?

If Carter is a serial obsessive, then the logical conclusion is: Jane was raped by Carter (#21). Then, Carter went on to rape Daria (#22), but was stopped. Meaning, that Daria saw Carter rape Jane...and didn't tell Jane. Jane, apparently, has no memory of what happened. Only Daria knows the awful secret.

(Of course, this theory falls apart: Carter liked to hear his victims scream. Unconscious victims don't scream. Carter was forced to skip #21 and proceed to #22, where he would have undoubtedly made the appropriate corrections in his logbook later. My first hypothesis, however, is more intriguing. And it has tigers.)

Rapefic Revisited

Finished reading: AD3

"No, not love she said
Don't you know that it's different for girls?
(Don't give me love)
No, not love she said
Don't you know that it's different for girls?
You're all the same"

--Joe Jackson

AD3 is not melodramatic, but it veers towards sensationalism. Perhaps what happens in AD3 is a trope of post-apocalyptic fic; I'm not familiar with the genre.

Daria and Jane, while attempting to drive back to civilization, run into a couple of good old boys who are determined to give Daria and Jane a good time...well, a good time for the good ol' boys anyway. Before very bad things can happen, a white knight in the form of a government agent manages to shoot the miscreants and come to the rescue of D & J.

However, Daria dopes out that this man is not what he claims to be and points it out. The white knight shows his true "black knight" colors and forces Daria and Jane to come with him. Without getting into details, Daria is about to become a non-virgin before Jane locates the man's gun, shoots him, and the two are on their way. (For actual details, you'll just have to read the story.)

I believe someone on the thread pointed out, "boy, civilization sure has gone under very quickly". How long has it been, a couple of days and already rape squads and perverts are roaming the land?

My hope is that society has temporarily reverted to anarchy -- not the anarchy of "do what you want", but the anarchy of "take what you please". This phase tends not to last very long, as superpredators arise to kill off the weaker of their fellow criminals. I hope Doggieboy's world-building exercise shows some thought.

What saved the above from leaning into melodrama -- the attempt at molestation is definitely sensational, there is a building of suspense, Jane's location of the gun moves the plot forward and almost depends on coincidence -- was that fact that after the black knight gets shot, we have no idea as to whether or not he is dead.

It doesn't really matter if he's dead or not. If he's not dead, and he shows up again, Daria and Jane can just take action when he arrives. A melodrama, however, would have Jane shoot him in the head to give the audience its satisfaction and confirm the melodramatic moral of "all rapists should die". AD3 at least confirms the uncertainty.

(* * *)

One of the problems of writing fan fiction with teenage girl protagonists is the lack of experience with being a teenage girl. To a good writer, this should not be an insurmountable obstacle. All sorts of fantasy fiction is written despite the fact the authors are not elves on the side.

However, one simply can't write teenage girls as teenage boys in drag. They have a different set of problems that aren't merely rooted in anatomy. One of those problems I suppose is the awareness that you're the "weaker sex" -- not weaker in the sense of being intellectually or spiritually inferior, but physically vulnerable. (I assume the writers of Kim Possible fanfic don't have this problem.)

Which leads to questions that many male writers can't answer from direct experience. They have to make hypotheses and pray that those hypotheses pass the acid test. Daria, for example, is about five-foot-one and has probably never exercised a day in her life. Furthermore, even though she might believe she's unattractive, she knows from hard experience that there's a subset of guys for whom that won't matter, and who furthermore would use violence to get what they wanted. That subset is kept at bay by law, and its true that rape is an act of violence and not of sex...but really, how much of the female consciousness is taken up by worries of rape?

My assumption -- and it might be a wrong one -- is that it's sort of like walking around as a target. In about 95 percent of cases, you can feel at ease but you know there are certain kinds of situations you don't want to get yourself into. You take precautions. Well-lit parking lots, etc. etc. with maybe some thought exercises such as "what do you do?" "Do you struggle to save your self-esteem or do you give in to save your life?"

How much do women think about this? How much of their present-moment consciousness is taken up by the fact? I would claim not much, but you do get daily reminders that bring you back to the topic momentarily.

There is a school of thought that says that men can't write about such matters -- not plausibly, anyway. My wife claims, for example, that men could never write what some fans would call a "rape fic", even if that work were to handle the topic with great seriousness and accuracy. Men are just not suited for such a subject. I refuse to argue about the matter, I just have a different opinion, that's all -- but I'm not about to write the next great rape fic in Daria fanfiction.

I was chatting with a friend about this the other night -- about physical vulnerability and the awareness it might play in the protagonists' minds. He concluded, "No wonder Jake is crazy. He has two teenage daughters to worry about."

The Men in the Road

Finished Reading: AD2

Have returned home. Oddly enough, last night wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. The fact that wine was served didn't hurt. It loosened everyone up, and even the teenage kids of the neighbors seemed to catch the infectious spirit.

So what kind of loot did I get? Aside from the usual Christmas brick-a-brack, I picked up what I really enjoy. Peanut butter fudge, for one thing. And....books. Such as:

The Marvel Encyclopedia. "The Definitive Guide to the Characters of the Marvel Universe". A picture book suitable for middle-aged twelve year olds, to provide many reminders as to how I used to spend the bulk of my time.
The Super Bowl of Advertising: How the Commercials Won the Game by Bernice Kanner. This book is a history of the "Super Bowl Commerical", and how commercials during the game -- starting with the MacIntosh "1984" commercial -- became more and more high concept.
The Bathroom Baseball Book. "Hardball Trivia for the Best Seat in the House". "Where was baseball's first night game played?" and other trivia questions for distraction during those necessary trips to the smallest room.

(* * *)

I've took a brief look at AD2. Even though Part 2 isn't a "Part 2" in the sense that a story by Richard Lobinske is a "Part 2" -- a Lobinske Part 2 would be a complete story; AD2 is just a scene from a larger narrative -- there are some elements that piqued my interest.

First, the fact that during the story Daria is blinded in the left eye. (I don't have the story in front of me; I refuse to look at it again.) It doesn't really matter which of the two eyes is wounded; the fact that one eye is wounded is remarkable. I always called this "Claremont's Rule" after Chris Claremont, the years-long X-Men writer, who claimed the key to good writing as "put the characters in the worst situation you can, and then make it worse". I'm glad that despite the fact that Daria and Jane are starting out with the clothes on their backs, the story won't be an upward climb.

Secondly, there is the matter of "the men at the road". Daria and Jane are almost stopped by a group of men in the road, but when they notice a body nearby, they decided to zoom right by and take their own chances. Who are "the men in the road"? Why have they tried to block the road? What was their purpose? We don't know, and hopefully, we won't know. Most people's lives are filled with unanswered questions: "what happened to that cute girl I sat behind in seventh grade class?" The fact that Doggieboy isn't going out of his way to provide answers to everything is a good sign.

Merry Merry

Finished reading: "Apocalyptic Daria, Part 1"

Merry Winter Solstice, all. Right now, I'm getting ready to face the toughest part of Christmas, time in my mom's a-bit-too-small house with the family of her best friend visiting. Imagine eight people trapped in a tiny living room complete with one psychotic cat. CG, you just have to bite the bullet and spread a little bit of that Christmas cheer; then "the long national nightmare is over".

For the one person who might be reading this blog, some good advice: if you're traveling to a small town, you always want to stay in the newest hotel -- the one most recently built. That way, you can be sure that the room doesn't need too much fumigation and the facilities are up to speed. There's a scene in "Family Guy" -- two, if I recall -- where it's pointed out that with an ultraviolet light, you can see all the human proteins that have been spilled in a hotel room over the years. I prefer not to carry the DNA of others around if I can avoid it.

So we're staying in the hotel-of-most-recent-construction here. I'll also note, however, that a "Starbucks" is under construction in this small Southern burg. Without praising corporate capitalism overmuch, let me just say that a "Starbucks" will change this community completely. You can't be a conservative, God-fearing town with a Starbucks in your midst. Perhaps that's why they put it near the Interstate off-ramp...to fool the liberals.

(* * *)

Undoubtedly, you can't call yourself a true-blue Daria fan until you've read "Apocalyptic Daria" and "Falling Into College", so those are my next big projects on reading. As Scarlett O'Hara is my witness, I'll never read another Daria fic again until I finish all one hundred parts!

Hyperbole aside, my first thought on reading either one of those is sheer jealousy. "Hey, I wrote a very long fic, too, and no one read it! How come you guys get to be successful!" However, I promise to kill the big green monster inside and look at each of these with an unjaundiced eye. (Or should it be, "non-chartreuse eye?)

"Apocalyptic Daria: Part 1" (which shall herein be referred to as ADx with x being the current part) starts off with an interesting premise -- Daria and Jane are driving along minding their own business when the nuclear holocaust starts. All of the complicated plotting for the first few parts should be reduced to one goal: survival. At the end of AD1, Daria and Jane are trying to make their way back home, as the readers eagerly anticipate the horrors that lie ahead.

I found Daria and Jane's trip to West Virginia a bit implausible -- yes, I know that Doggieboy had to get Daria and Jane over to West Virginia to keep them relatively safe, but I figured that Jane would look for impulsive, lazy fun, not driving to the Kwik-E-Mart of West Virginia. There's also a grammatical nitpick, namely leaving numbers in their numerical form (20, 3, 7) when the numbers are short enough to be spelled out (twenty, three, seven). The general rule is to spell out numbers and to convert to numerical form only for numbers that would take a long time to spell out (like 1,893).

However, there was a part of the tale that brought a smile. Daria and Jane's car for some reason has not been crippled by the electromagnetic pulse trope associated with nuclear holocaust fiction. When trying to reason out why their car is still running...Daria and Jane simply give up. They don't know why. (And the omnicient narrator doesn't step in, either.) It's good to not only have things happen in a story the characters can't explain, but to have things that the narrator refuses to explain. Readers don't need to be spoon-fed the answers, and Daria and Jane's road trip back home will not need a physics lesson. Just get them on the road.

(* * *)

As far as I can tell, here is my "unfinished fic list" that I'll have to tackle....

"Canon Fodder": the only ideas I had for "Canon Fodder" were in the next plot element, the next thing to happen that moves the story along. Things happen in "Canon Fodder", the characters don't know why they're happening, and I don't know why they're happening, either. However, I will pick it up and try to finish it. Maybe it should end with an autistic kid looking into a snowglobe.

"Legion of Lawndale Heroes": progressing nicely, thank you. Probably when the world's temperature is 420 degrees, when all life has been extinguished due to a runaway greenhouse effect save one man and there's only one working computer terminal...either Brother Grimace or I will be typing "Legion of Lawndale Heroes". (Well, probably not Brother Grimace, who will have escaped to another planet by then.)

"Reclamation": people reallllly liked "Reclamation". But first things first. Clear up "Canon Fodder", then one more part for "Reclamation".

"Same Drum, New Tune": the only one of the stories above that has a fully worked-out plot, even if only in my head. I have an idea of how it's going to progress, as well as an idea for an end. However, we're working in alphabetical order here.

"Thought Exercise: Multitask". Uh...no.

"Girls' Night Out": in your dreams.

The Daily Blah

I believe I remember reading somewhere that a study was done of people who routinely blogged their lives online and it was found that their mental health was no better that a control group of people picked at random. At least, we can be assured that their mental health was no worse.

Which is why I look askew at trying to create a new blogging experience again. Posting every day is a pain in the ass. There's really nothing about my life that's worth writing down, or keeping in a diary -- although, if you really and truly insist, I can tell you about the visit to my mother's after a long drive today.

I probably need to get into the swing of reading fanfiction again. Since Brother Grimace has used characters from "Apocalyptic Daria" by Doggieboy, that should probably be my first choice, but I *hate* feeling that I had to read something. The fandom would gather around some great writer, a John Takis or The Angst Guy or Doggieboy (is he the new great one?) or whatever, and then it would become a chore -- "gotta finish those next three chapters of PiTA" and you *didn't* look forward to it. Not that PiTA isn't a great series, and very well written; it was just the sense of obligation you imposed upon yourself, and I instinctively rebel against those obligations, even the one's other people don't set.

I tend to be a perfectionist, setting very high standards, berating myself for not meeting them and berating everyone else for the same. (See: CINCGREEN, vis-a-vis fandom for multiple examples.) Only with a series like "Legion of Lawndale Heroes" or even "Girls' Night Out" could I feel free of those high standards, free to post something that pleased me with really no one else in mind. One of the things that's been a problem is to be a bit more forgiving of other people who don't behave in ways that I feel they should behave.

Undoubtedly, there will be some reading of fan fiction and discussion of it here, although it might be one of the reasons why "The Green Sink" was never updated -- the feeling self imposed (and occasionally, imposed by others) that you *had* to be doing something. Hell, I still need to finish reading "Journey to the End of the Night" and "American Gods", and I started those books six months ago and they are still not finished.

So to fandom, and to any readers out there, here is a warning. As someone once said, "I give you not my best". You'll find true, honest-to-God C-minus work here; the upkeep at Fortress CINCGREEN is not what it used to be.

Yuletide Cheer in Daria Fandom and Elsewhere

Regarding my absence from Daria fandom, I spoke to a friend of mine whose user name resembles that of a paper-cutting implement from Boston and we talked about fannish issues to and fro.

Therefore, I've decided to withdraw my former abandonment of the fandom. (The Bug Man, it seems, had me pegged correctly -- "how many times has CINCGREEN left the fandom, now?") However, what I have decided to abandon is the message boards. More than likely, my first goal will to be finishing all of my unfinished works, which will be a burdensome process but will at least keep my imagination from acting as an ouroboros, with continue self-re-reflection on my past fan activities.

What I've abandoned, however, is posting on message boards. Of course, to finish some of those stories, I will have to post (unless I can get that above named friend to do the heavy lifting.) However, the to-and-fro of comment on those stories will be limited to private e-mail, as threads will not be answered. I doubt anyone shall be inconvenienced, as comment on items I had posted was virtually nonexistent.

Regarding Legion of Lawndale Heroes: Brother Grimace will still have leave to act unfettered throughout the land in posting the adventures of these superpowered teens. I love his take on the whole thing, and right now, I'm not really ready to resume the full-time chore of writing LLH. He owes me eight episodes, and I plan to extract my pound of flesh from one of the chief Angst Lords.

Furthermore, my friend decried the fact that there were no comments on the blog. Therefore, I've reintroduced comments, but not everyone has leave to speak. You have to have an account at Blogger for one; for another, unless the comment has something substantial to add to the conversation, beyond just a simple "hello" or goofy remark, it might not see the light of day, although it will certainly be read by me. People who have something substantial to contribute will hopefully contribute to a conversation; people who have little to say -- or worse, people who are so starved for attention that they treasure even negative attention will find their comments shrivel up like mice in a miser's kitchen.

I've noticed with some small interest the recent hubbub regarding comments on the pale "blunt parody" of the old Daria Fandom Blog -- the one which is not the Daria Fandom Blog II, a wonderful endeavor of The Angst Guy that should be read, cherished and encouraged. Without naming names, or assigning blame -- since as far as I know, I still have pleasant relationships with each of the parties in the dispute -- I have a simple thought exercise.

"Why are you surprised that a certain individual might take offense to an argument, even ostensibly one in parody, that said individual is a child molester? And why are you doubly shocked that said individual might pursue legal action against such scurrilous libel?"

I think when you begin slandering someone's sexuality, you automatically make yourself the loser; it was a critical strategic misstep that I would have advised against because it opens you up to attack on a wide variety of fronts having nothing to do with the original thrust of the argument. Yeah, it is kind of fun to break the rules of rhetoric and avoid fear of the ad hominem; but partakers in kinky blog-postin' fun should realize that those rules were originally intended for the safety of the writer, and not his intended victim.

Turn off your TVs

There are some huge advantages and disadvantages to writing a blog without comments.

The biggest advantage is that even though you shut out all the interesting voices, you shut out all the uninteresting voices as well. I'm one of the few people who doesn't have a cell phone, and one of the reasons is that I didn't feel that I should be at the beck and call of every person who might have my number. You wouldn't let anyone in your house who decided to knock on the door, so why should you let anyone wander on to your blog?

The biggest disadvantage is that in hearing no voices at all, you've consigned yourself to an echo chamber, where blogging becomes much like writing a diary. My mother keeps a diary, or at least kept one, and I have no idea what's going to happen to that book on the inevitable day when she can resume her peaceful nonexistence. (Life was once called by someone an inconvenient interruption to an otherwise peaceful nonexistence.) As I have no children and have no plans of having them, there's no one to whom this book could be passed. I feel that reading such a book would be a violation of my mother's privacy, even after her (hopefully far off in the future) death. In the same way, a blog can become self-contained. I've blogged private matters and have come to regret it, because really, what kind of person posts his private thoughts and deepest secrets all the hell over the web?

It's unlikely that I'll be doing further television reviews. Not only has the writer's strike dried up material, but as you can tell, the bulk of television shows deliver nothing in the way of entertainment. "Everybody Hates Chris" has become unwatchable, "Kid Nation" had a final episode which was an abortion, "The Simpsons" is still in its "painfully unfunny" period. Many of these shows weren't "funny bad" like Manos: The Hands of Fate, but bad bad, like rectal surgery. And trust me, there are so many people out there doing television reviews that I doubt my voice will be missed.

So what's next? Probably...baseball. Or hockey. I've always loved sports, and particularly sports history and statistics. Baseball and hockey are at two ends of a continuum, where it seems every gonad scratch in baseball is recorded and put into a database, whereas the only stats recorded in hockey seem to be goals and assists. Maybe there will be something worthwhile to write about that.

But will I be deleting the older blog entries? No, I won't. Might as well keep them here.

So does this mean the end of CINCGREEN's sojourn in Daria fandom? Most likely, yes. Now that I'm past forty, some sort of middle-aged gene has kicked in saying, "You know, you really shouldn't be wasting such time and effort on a cartoon about a bunch of teenage schoolgirls". When life gets shorter, one tends to look at things on a cost-effective basis, a basis which can be overridden if the activity tends to bring you great pleasure. Daria fandom got to the point where the amount of joy it was bringing me was no longer commesurate with the amount of time I put in, and like a middle-aged accountant, I cut it from my list of expenses.

I'll borrow some thoughts from Kevin Holden in Montreal and restate them as my own. Most of the fan fiction no longer interests me, except maybe for "Legion of Lawndale Heroes", and the only reason that interests me is that it was my creation and Brother Grimace is running with it. I've pretty much seen most of the fan fiction permutations out there. Furthermore, as the amount of fan fiction has dropped (show not on the air, y'know), the other chit-a-chat doesn't grab my interest.

More and more of the newer fans come off as sociopaths, undoubtedly drawn to the fandom because they sympathise with the rejected Daria, as the newer fans are real social rejects themselves --cutters, bulimics, bipolars, slackers who really really need the help of a good psychiatrist rather than a coffee klatch. (God knows *I* needed a good psychatrist; thank the stars I found one.) The current mentally ill members of the message boards can always find a sucker to listen to them, and to forgive the most egregious lapses in basic decorum or decency. (What's the old saying? "A sucker is born every minute, and two to take him?" It's a good gig, as some of those people remain coddled for years on end.) It begins to look like an episode of Jerry Springer, "Abusive Fans, and Their Enablers Who Just Can't Say No!"

The only real solution to that problem would have been to form a spin-off group of older, more mature fans -- more emotionally mature, anyway. But I concluded that it was too much time and energy to make a truly concerted effort, with no guaranteed payoff, and there would be another split of a fandom that's seen too much splitting anyway. Better to just let it go.

As Bob Dylan said, "Nostalgia is death." Time to move on to the next big thing, whatever that is.