After You've Gone

[favoritebean]

They were called the Jangl. When they came to Earth, people everywhere rejoiced. The chance to make first contact with beings from a different world was a dream come true to nearly everyone. We fervently desired an alliance with the Jangl, but they had a different agenda in mind.

We were to be punished.

Comments

[jexia]

*thumbs up*

[favoritebean]

Thanks! :)

[nick_101]

Wow. This is an interesting story.

[favoritebean]

Thank you for reading. :)

[kickthehobbit]

This is really, fantastically creepy.

[favoritebean]

Thank you.

[reckless_blues]

You know, it's more interesting to me, reading about people who side with the regime rather than the heroes who fight it. Maybe because it's a rare perspective for a protagonist to take.

Especially, it's interesting how he argues that people will always choose self-preservation, that it's human nature - he's very well-versed in history, he must at least know the story of Jesus, and of countless other people who sacrificed themselves as historical fact. But people can't always see with a clear eye, when it comes to how and why they did things like this. It was a detail that I liked.

[i_17bingo]

I was thinking the same thing. I was forced (long story--don't judge me) to watch the remake of Red Dawn recently, and what went through my head was the question of retaliation and PR. It would be so insanely easy to turn the public against the insurgency, but the stupid, ra-ra America story they wanted to tell had no place for complexity.

[reckless_blues]

I've heeeard of the original Red Dawn, but I've never seen it (though I remembered thinking it would be interesting to me, since I'm a Russian-American who is educated in Moscow, and I kind of feel patriotic towards both cultures, as well as completely disdainful towards both countries as political entities). Why on earth did they do a remake? (Again, I haven't seen it, but) I was under the impression that it was really entrenched in Cold War attitudes and values. Did they find some parallel with that so-called war against terror?

[i_17bingo]

You are correct that the original was a product of its time--there was a lot of fear in the eighties (much of it ridiculous), even though no one wants to admit it, and that crappy movie was a way America could confront it and fight back in their jingoistic imaginations. It wasn't so much anti-Soviet as it was pro-American values.

One of the characters in the remake is an Iraq War veteran, and this is used as a plot device (tactics! guns!) as opposed to a way of looking at insurgencies. In fact, there wasn't even a nod that there was any connection at all to the Iraqi occupation to the American occupation. It was surreal.

[halfshellvenus]

It is a terrible thing to realize too late what your cowardice has cost other people-- including those you love. Things are always so much more brutally clear in hindsight.

[favoritebean]

I very much agree with you.

Thank you for reading.