Injudicious

Finished reading: AD20

Martin's father, John Peters, thanks Daria for removing her shirt to serve as a bandage, or something, to help out Martin Peters. Daria gets on the Peters's prayer list as a result, and gets to hear Jane Lane's comedy rantings for five minutes. ("Thank you, ladies and gents, I'll be here all week!")

Three of the attackers have been captured. The toll -- four church members are dead and many are injured. Everyone gets a Geiger counter sweep. One of the dead assailants is so radioactive that they need a lead-lined container to dispose of him. And coincidentally...guess what? Glen happens to know someone who has a lead-lined coffin! There's a long story that's probably not helpful to recount, so we'll just let this go and say that the lead coffin solves a lot of problems.

As it turns out, one of the attackers has a very high level of radioactivity, so whether he faces justice by bullet or not, he's dead anyway. Doctor Kathy asks that the man not be shot...because you'd have to clean up his blood. (Well, as the joke goes, "...and that's why they call me the hanging judge!")

The lead coffin isn't big enough to bury the men or their equipment. One member of the church donates her lead-lined hope chest to the cause of deposing of radioactive items.

Jane finds an AK-47 which doesn't seem to be too radioactively "dirty". Coincidentally, it happens to be a rifle that the old hippy taught her to fire at the commune, so Jane adds it to her growing arsenal. One of the men at church whose daughter's arm was broken by the assailants threatens to shoot one of the captured men. The man is defiant to the last. Jane takes over the responsibility of shooting the man by blasting him with the AK-47.

The church is very surprised. Even Daria is surprised, but Jane is just as defiant. There's some argument about turning the other cheek among the parishoners.

Reverend Harris states that the men have to have one last chance to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The man who isn't radioactive prays with the reverend briefly, and then Glen kills him. As for the man who has radiation sickness, he is offered the same opportunity. Bawling, he takes it before the parishoners kill him by rope.

(* * *)

Daria is thinking about Martin Peters. As it turns out, Martin shoved Daria out of the way and coincidentally took a bullet meant for her. Daria assumes this was a massive act of altruism. Jane states that Martin will always have her thanks for doing that.

Martin survives his surgery. Daria comes to see him and gives him a kiss. Martin thanks Daria for saving his life, and they kiss again. They are still friends...and perhaps, something more.

(* * *)

Well, I guess there's no nice way to say it, so you know me, the kind of guy who just thoughtlessly blurts it out in the open.

I remember a music critic saying, "how do you tell Paul McCartney that he has produced a lousy album?" Likewise, "how do you tell someone who worked hard (presumably) on a piece of fan fiction that they just wrote something with very little merit?"

One of the keys to melodrama -- good and bad -- is coincidence. Coincidence, used judiciously, can make a work of good melodrama. Coincidence ,used injudiciously, makes an awful one. In this chapter, Lady Coincidence has staggered into the room, smelling of run, bedecked with beads, showing her jooblies to anyone who will look. Then, she throws up all over the carpet.

We have not one, not two, but a whole lot of authorial applications of coincidence. Someone just happens to have a lead-lined coffin floating around. And a lead-lined hope chest. (I can imagine some young lady saying, "I need a hope chest that can both prepare me for marraige and the cruel, post-apocalypse reality I'll have to live with when the Russkies let fly the nukes.")

And, Jane just happens to recover an AK-47, which happens to be one of the very weapons that this hippie (whom I suspect was John Rambo with a beard) trained her how to use. I was trying to suspend disbelief, but my arms gave out at this point and like Martin Peters, I barely survived the rest of the story.

As for the scene with the captured radicals, it sounded like the parishoners were trying very hard to have their cakes and eat them, too. There has to be some hand-wringing about turning the other cheek, and giving the chance for the executed to join the Methodist church. After these sad preliminaries are out of the way, the reader gets what he wanted (*) -- an execution scene, with the bonus that one of the captured men possesses a cartoon bad guy's levels of defiance. (He would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those crazy kids.)

Hanging or a bullet to the head isn't suitably dramatic, though. Nor can the executions take place offscreen. Jane has to blow someone away to edge up the drama a few notches. I'm surprised she didn't prop a foot on his chest and say, "yippie-ki-AY, muthafucka".

As for our Martin...well, does anything not go well for this boy? He's got it all, because the author it giving it all to him.

One of the problems of setting up a relationship for Daria...or Jane...is the fact that we've idolized Daria and Jane so much that frankly, nobody is good enough for either of them. Why do you think fans hated Tom Sloane? He wasn't good enough for Daria. Part of the reason Trent was good enough for Daria was that he was offscreen so much you could make him out into whatever you wanted him to be, whereas we were presented with all of Sloane's faults at once.

So what does Martin have going for him?

1. He's a Christian, which seems important to the author.
2. He takes a bullet for Daria. Hey, Trent may have been a nice guy, but he never took a bullet for anyone.
3. He manages to valiantly struggle during surgery, but survives. Now, he's cool instead of just dead. (Which would have been an interesting way to take the story.)

So he's good with weapons (like Ted), reflective (like Trent) and lucky and blessed (like Tom). The major obstacle to any Daria romance is going to be Jane, but Jane approves of this wonderful young lad.

Just a warning: if you read that last Daria/Martin scene, make sure you've eaten no sugar at least three hours before.

(* * *)

Am I scared off? Nah, my blood is up. I'll be reviewing AD21 tomorrow. And like Brother Grimace's beloved Ben Raines, I swear that through hell or high water, I'll make it through AD22 which is the 1/2 way point. Frankly, though, in ordinary circumstances I would have bailed out of "Apocalyptic Daria" with this chapter. Martin, Daria, and Jane would have had to have made their own way without me.

EDIT: I think it's just time for me to climb off "Apocalyptic Daria". I just read the next two chapters. Rather that retread old ground, I think it's time to give some other Daria fanfic a chance. So next time...who knows what I'll review?






(*)- One of the points of melodrama, good or bad, is that all of the reader's deepest beliefs, spoken or unspoken, must be confirmed. Namely, that not only should the bad people die, but you should get a chance to see it in all its bloody glory.