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.)