Badfic As A Learning Tool

I blame neintales for this, but I have just found one of those helpful intersects wherein some spectacularly bad piece of media affords one with some serious insight.*

Yes. I am now addicted to Slacktivist’s Left Behind Fridays.

I was only peripherally aware of Left Behind—pretty much “crazy evangelist books about the Rapture” was it. And indeed, at this point apparently the series is passe in its own subculture. But blogger Fred Clark is still finding a use for this really awful series—in between his beautifully thorough sporking of the abysmal writing, I’m getting some actual insight into evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity—something I’ve never quite understood. Clark’s an evangelical Christian himself—a relatively sane one, even, and so it’s a view by someone who sorta gets where they’re coming from, if not where they end up.

Hell, even the abysmal writing itself is instructive. These authors have got a couple of the most spectacular Mary Sues running loose—Clark immediately identifies them as the authors’ stand-ins. It says a lot about them that they expect us to take a couple of characters named “Rayford Steele” and “Buck Williams” seriously.** (Not only that; they're Rayford Steele, Jet Pilot, and Buck Williams, Greatest Investigative Reporter Of All Time.) But the fact that they clearly believe these guys are heroes, and the subsequent behavior of these heroes (constantly ignoring scenes of carnage around them because they have to get to an internet connection to check their e-mail; assuming they know what women would say if they let them talk, bravely running away, etc.), says quite a lot about the authors' values. Similarly, their abysmal plot points—the lack of any social repercussions to the Rapture,*** the bizarre role of the UN in the Antichrist’s quest for World Domination, and the nature of Antichrist himself comes in. It provides a frame for me to get some Biblical knowledge the way sane and insane evangelical Christians see it.

My only problem is, even though it's passe by 15 years, now I want to write some kind of parody of Left Behind in which the author actually knows how ridiculous the Mary Sue is. I know exactly how to start it:

Dirk Hardpec, greatest astronaut ever to go into space, began to suspect that something was wrong on Earth when he received a panicked message from a senior expert at mission control.


*This is one of the reasons I love MST3k shorts—aside from the incessant snarking, I’m fascinated by the didactic propaganda and what it said about the people who were making the films. This harkens back to my pre-MST days, when I was in the habit of analyzing the videos in eighth-grade health class.

**Crunch Buttsteak! Splint Chesthair! Blast Thickneck! Trunk Slamchest! Punch Sideiron!

***I mean, for crying out loud, dude, regardless of your faith, a suddenly-Raptured world could be one hell of a setting for some cool stories. I could give you any number of plots off the top of my head that could follow the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of adults and ALL THE KIDS. Clark gets a little repetitive in pointing out that HOLY SHIT ALL THE KIDS ARE GONE HELLO, but it’s because the books consistently don’t seem to notice.

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Yourself Into A Mermaid!

I think I read a short story like this once, but damned if I can remember where. Either way, though, this is definitely the sort of thing I’d do.

Seems there is a silver lining to being an amputee.

I have a character in my sci-fi whose psychological trauma at his loss of a limb is somewhat mitigated by his lifelong geek-wish to become a cyborg. He doesn’t even know, man.

Thanks for the link, lycheetwist!