Fic: Protect and Survive

[jjpor]

Fic: Protect and Survive, Part II: Fallout Warning Black

The next part. Some 1960s-style casual racism in this part, so be warned. I'll be honest; this fic does not get any more upbeat or uplifting; the nuclear angst continues, and there are references to some really old-school nuclear nightmare stuff; Hiroshima and so forth; some actual atomic scientists from back in the day are namechecked. I'm sure Curtis E LeMay was a really nice guy in real life, and a great American patriot, so no offence intended there. And any movie buffs among you will no doubt recognise the guy in the wheelchair with the Austrian accent; believe it or not, it isn't just a silly in-joke, honest.

The link:

www.whofic.com/viewstory.php

Comments

[clocketpatch]

I'm very eagerly waiting for it, must say.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the review on Teaspoon! Gah, but it's...well, a bit downbeat, isn't it?

[clocketpatch]

It is, but it's well written, and it's very suited to Seven who always seemed to be having that sort of adventure. Your interactions with him and Ace are amazing: it feels like I'm reading a lost episode or something.

And the meta Dr. Strangelove reference is awesome, as are all the details of real and alt history that you lay out.

It is dark and terrifying stuff of the sort that haunts nightmares (I remember watching the documentary Black Rain on TVO when I was younger and not being able to sleep for weeks), but there are reasons for that. I'm very interested in seeing who, or what, caused this dark, alternative world.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for that indeed, it means a lot; you know how I love Seven and Ace. I think you're right, Seven did seem quite often to find himself brooding upon the evils of the universe, and Ace always had an opinion on that sort of thing. That 80s earnestness; it's easy to sneer at it from the standpoint of our more cynical age, but it came from the heart, at least the writers cared about something.

I love Dr Strangelove, and put in quite a few references to it; not just the man himself, but Wing Attack Plan R and the big board all that stuff... The best character in the film, though, is Group Captain Lionel Mandrake; I love that little argument he has with the paratrooper: "What kinda suit you call that, fella?" "This *suit*, as you put it, is the uniform of Her Majesty's Royal Air Force!" "Know what I think; I think you're some kinda deviated prevert, and I think General Ripper found out about your preversions and that you were planning some sort of mutiny of preverts!" The best line in a film full of 'em, that and "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" And God help me, I quoted all that from memory; I've seen that film too many times...

Yes, joking aside, though, any of that post-apocalyptic stuff gives me chills, from nuclear war to zombie movies, not because I think those things are particularly likely to happen (well, I'd really hope not, in the case of zombie movies!), but because they show how fragile our society is and how it wouldn't take very much going wrong at all to put us at the mercy of nature, and each other... Even the swine flu thing, as overblown by the media as it is, gives me little niggles of doubt...but that probably says more about me.

[akashasheiress.livejournal.com]

Oh, there's no reason to sneer on Ace's earnestness. It's certainly not worse than the ''good war'' attitude of the 'mature'. What, the British are somehow inherently more moral and brave than Germans just because they were born on the right side of the fence and were drafted into the right army?

Argh, sorry, I can rant about this for ages. Reading Howard Zinn and Kurt Vonnegut does that to you.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Oh no, rant on; I think you're absolutely right. I think it was one of the good aspects of the 1980s (and God knows, there were plenty of bad ones as well!); people were engaged, had an opinion, were prepared to take action; people in general, I mean. And it's something that seems less common now, which is a crying shame. The thing about Seven and Ace is that if their methods were sometimes, well, questionable, they were always morally on the right side...or so they believed...which opens up a lot of moral ambiguity about the end justifying the means and so forth. Which is strangely appropriate when it comes to the issue of total war, twentieth-century style...

[akashasheiress.livejournal.com]

The thing is, once you've read enough on-the-ground accounts of Hiroshima or Dresden or what have you, it's very difficult to look at a bomber aeroplane with admiration.

Yes, things are quite lukewarm these days. Who the hell asks for permission to protest, anyway?

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Well, exactly. What you said above has got me thinking a bit about Seven and some of his actions and how they relate to these real world issues...I may incorporate some of this into the fic, when I get to the bit where Seven is eventually confronted by the main enemy of the story...whose real identity I cannot yet reveal...