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.