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.