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I'm back and ready to snark!
I've had some time to do some thinking. Part of the fun with bad books is mentally rewriting them into better books. So I have a question for all of y'all: how would you make Left Behind: the kids into better books. I admit I haven't completely thought it all the way through, but here's some of what I would change.
First of all, Judd and Vicki would hook up. In the aftermath of the Great Slaughter by Zod, their emotions would be running high and they would end up in bed together. Then as a result of their upbringing, they would feel guilty, have a quickie wedding to assuage their guilt, but said marriage wouldn't work out due to them being young and immature. Their relationship would end with bad blood between them.
Secondly, I would get rid of either Lionel or Ryan. Apparently, Ellanjay can't handle having four protags since it seems either Lionel or Ryan disappear for chapters at a time, so I would get rid of one of them. I'm leaning towards Lionel because I still remember the part he played in the Cavalcade of Assholery.
Again, my revision of the series isn't perfect--haven't thought it all the way through--but I believe it's so much more compelling.
Anyway Vicki gets off thanks to the social worker she converted. Now back to Israel where Judd is in prison.
Judd meets a guy named Michael while in prison who tells him about how he was converted by Moishe and Eli and how he helped Token Jew escape. The NWO goons question Judd and Judd threatens to leak the tape he has of them murdering Token Jew's family to the media. Naturally they decide to have Judd take them to the tape. Judd does but they do the whole "Remember when I said I'd let you go...I lied" bit, which really shouldn't surprise Judd, they are evil secret police after all, but it does. Luckily for him, the two witnesses breathe fire and kill them horribly.
So they escape and get back on the plane, but Ryan receives a call from Darrion. Apparently their pilot, whom they thought they could trust, is dirty, working with the NWO, so Ryan is trying to figure out how to tip off Judd without tipping off the pilot. Meanwhile Token Jew escapes to America with the help of Our Buck.
Sorry to do a lot of summarizing but there really wasn't much to talk about this week, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. But next week, we finally see Rayford make an appearance in these books. :cue dramatic prairie dog:
9 comments:
Even though there's not much to talk about these books still have more action in them than the adult series. Has a telephone conversation put in an appearance yet?
They can't kill off the token minority. Plus Lionel appeared in the original series. So they could have eliminated the Ryan character and had Lionel act more like Ryan. (It doesn't matter anyway because I read the series synopsis -- Ryan dies early on, anyway.)
How to improve? Hmm, well I still stand by my statement that turning this into "Wolverines for Christ" would be an improvement.
Alternatively, I think Ryan could show some well deserved anger at God for killing his parents and damning them to hell, so I'd have him do some fun stuff. Either try to help the Anti-Christ or (more entertaining I think) try to send the prophecies off-rails. The massive back door of 'the Tribulations don't start untill the peace treaty with Israel is signed' that the adult books unforgivably failed to comment gives a good option. The other 3 kids would then be individually torn by deciding if they should stop him because it interferes with God's plan, or help him because, you know, it's stopping the Anti Christ.
That would make a great, dramatic story, and allow for some of the discussions (appropriatly rigged for the RTC-side, natch) on why people might feel uncomfortable about this whole Rapture thing. LB has some throwaway lines to that end, but the books don't follow up on them, or forget about the concerns after they have been voiced (see Chloe).
And it needn't even interfere with the prophecy timeline (though it would be better if it did), because they can just make Ryan fail in the end. I'm now thinking either Divine intervention preventing Ryan from succeeding (which could drive him into the arms of the Anti Christ), or he could publicly fail an assasination attempt, giving Nicky some much needed justification for Persecuting(TM) the RTCs who let their children try to murder him for preaching Love, Peace and Unity. And it would be an acceptably false claim for his RTC readers, since Ryan did it because he didn't like God's plan. Either way, the three surviving children then have enough issues and angst to last for another book. And this is just improvments that still color with the narrow lines of the prophecy checklist. Once we can chuck that out of the window, the story could easily be much, much better.
Speaking of 'Wolverines for Christ,' anyone want to lay money down against them turning the remake of Red Dawn into just that sort of thing?
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? No?
No, wouldn't wager about that. I have no idea how (or why) they would remake that, but they can't very well use the Russians anymore, the studio probably doesn't want to piss of the Chinese.
I just googled, and apparently it will be North Koreans. Man, they're lucky Homefront was a Red Dawn rip-off, or they'd sue. Have the moviemakers learned nothing? It wasn't believable when Homefront did it either. It's painfully obvious that they really mean China but don't want to offend such a big market, just like Crysis.
Eh, there's still good odds that the filthy communists will hate religion, specifically the One True Religion.
Huh, according to IMDB the remake should already be out. Wonder what's up with that.
Oh, and from wikipedia; Totally called it:
Instead of depicting a Soviet invasion of the United States as in the 1984 film, the 2011 version's storyline was originally filmed with a Chinese invasion. This was later edited to depict a North Korean invasion in post-production due to concerns from distributors.
Because, you know, North Koreans are tots just like the Chinese.
Admiral Yi Sun-sin would like to have a word with the writers of the new Red Dawn....
Welcome back!
I'd be inclined in a rewrite to have a character mention the unmentionable and ask hard questions - like "this thing calling itself God, it's not exactly behaving in a way we could ever call 'good' now is it?". Sure, the RTC heroes are Always Right, but they ought at least to have some real arguments to make; as it is, this is just evangelism porn.
(In the properly dramatic version, surely Our Heroes would jump out of the plane?)
I rather like the remix you proposed of the book series :)
I'd be rooting for Judd and Vicki to have a kind of on-again, off-again relationship where they end up realizing they're better off as casual sex partners than as husband and wife, so they have an open relationship.
I'm mainly thinking - if they're married in the eyes of the law that could help get Judd or Vicki out of some dicey situations so it helps the whole YTF spy thing or somesuch.
Maybe Judd gets busted and Vicki, by now a high-ranking Young Global Community officer, walks in and starts ordering people around, asking very pointedly angry questions about why her husband's been arrested.
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