Tag: WWII

Fantasy from A to Z: P is for Prayer

What would fantasy be without religion? Probably much the same as us, when we don’t have religion: aimless, drifting, and lost.

Religion is more than just a useful aspect of worldbuilding. It’s something that lies at the very core of what makes us human—and thus, it’s something that any story needs to at least touch on if it is to be meaningful or important. Most likely, it won’t be meaningful at all unless the religious aspect is incorporated deeply within its bones.

But what is religion? For our purposes, religion is how we, as humans, relate to the powers that are higher than ourselves. It’s not about painting a cross on your cover, or a star of David, or a crescent, or an omh, or whatever else. It’s about how we act in regards to the cosmic and the transcendent. It’s about how we understand how to orient ourselves in this vast and terrifying universe, and find our own place within it.

I grew up in a time when religion was one of those taboo subjects that you never brought up in polite society. Politics, religion, and sex were all taboo like that. Granted, those taboos were already beginning to fray by the time I was old enough to hold an uninformed opinion on any of that, but even in the 90s, the post-war liberal consensus still held.

What was the post-war liberal consensus? It was the set of rules and norms that we all (or those of us in polite society, at least) agreed to live by, after the tumultuous catastrophe of the World Wars. From 1914 to 1945, more than a hundred Europeans died from political causes—and that was just in Europe. For thirty long years, the whole world was drowned in blood.

The wars ended with the invention of the world’s most devastating superweapon, which for the first time in the history of this planet gave us the power to literally annihilate our own species. So at the end of all that, our grandparents felt a very strong need to keep those weapons from ever being used again. Hence, they developed the post-war liberal consensus.

The greatest value of the post-war liberal consensus was tolerance—but they didn’t think of that as a value in itself. The idea was that instead of elevating the values of any one group over another, they would create a world where everyone tolerated each other. Everyone could keep their own culture and religion, along with their own unique (and often contradictory) cultural and religious values, so long as they didn’t try to impose those values on anyone else.

The trouble with that, of course, is that tolerance itself is a value. Which means that in order to maintain the post-war consensus, they had to be intolerant toward any culture or religion that threatened it. Which meant that they had to push their globalism and multiculturalism on everyone, superseding all of their own cultural and religious values. This gave rise to the global urban monoculture, which ultimately gave us the clown world we now live in. Which is currently falling apart.

Religion should not be off-limits, especially for good storytelling. At the same time, that doesn’t mean that stories should bash you over the head and try to convert you to whatever church the author happens to belong to. Indeed, some of the most religious stories aren’t about any particular church or creed at all. 

An example of this is Epic: The Musical. Beyond the old Greek mythology that runs through the story, the religious view is that the universe is utterly unpredictable, the gods (or higher powers) are arbitrary and capricious, and that the ends (getting home to Penelope) always justify the means. Indeed, any means that aren’t justified by the ends are immoral and wrong. Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves. How do we sleep? Next to our wives.

Those aren’t the religious views that I subscribe to, but those are deeply religious views. How? Because they show us how we stand in relation to powers that are higher than ourselves. In the 19th century, it became fashionable to throw out religion, and reverence man himself as the highest power in the universe. Where did that get us? It gave us the 31 years that killed 100 million Europeans and drowned the whole world in blood.

G.K. Chesterton said: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” Now, more than ever, the world needs religion. 

Of course, one of the nice things about writing fiction is that you can explore all sorts of religious ideas that may or may not have a direct counterpart in our world. Indeed, that’s part of what makes fantasy so rich. Tolkien created a whole race (the elves) that is bound by magic and immortality to this earth, contrasting with us humans, who are “strangers in a strange land.” In fact, Tolkien’s entire oeuvre is rich with religious elements, not just in the worldbuilding and the mythology, but in the Christian symbology—and he does it so subtly and so deeply that it draws you into his world, rather than kicking you out. It’s all in service to the story.

There’s a reason why the best stories in the world are in the Bible (and most of those are in the Book of Genesis). Which is one of the reasons why I’m drawing on the life of King David for the fantasy epic that I’m currently writing (The Soulbound King). But I’m also drawing on symbology and mythology as well, to make sure the religious elements aren’t just skin-deep. There is so much fascinating tree-related symbolism within the Jewish/Christian tradition. So much rich and wonderful stuff to draw on for creating a fantasy world.

Don’t be afraid to play with religion in your own fantasy stories. After all, on the deepest level, creativity itself is something of a religious act.

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Was Winston Churchill the true villain of WWII?

There’s this clip from Tucker Carlson that’s going around right-wing alternative media right now, from a guest who made the claim that Winston Churchill was the true villain of WWII. The best (ie least hysterical) analysis of this claim that I’ve heard is probably from Michael Knowles, which you can see here:

I have to be honest, though: while most of the stories like this that make the rounds on the internet turn out to be cheap ragebait, I think that this claim deserves some actual reflection, especially when you consider the following:

  1. World War I and World War II were essentially two phases of the same global conflict.
  2. The main reason Hitler came to power in Germany was because of the total German defeat in WWI, which only happened because the US entered the war.
  3. The US only entered the war because of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania by a German U-boat and the deaths of nearly a hundred US citizens on board (never mind that it turned out the Lusitania was gunrunning at the time, and therefore a legitimate military target, but that’s another story).
  4. Winston Churchill was the First Lord of the Admiralty at the time, and deliberately withdrew the Lusitania’s destroyer escort knowing that U-boats were operating in the vicinity, because he (correctly) calculated that the sinking of the Lusitania would bring the US into the war. (For more on this, read chapter 12 of The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin, which lays out the whole story.)

Of course, while this does throw some pretty serious shade on Winston Churchill, taken alone it’s not sufficient to make him the “true villain” of the period. For that, you have to accept a couple of other arguments, namely:

  1. The true purpose of WWI was to tear down the existing global order (especially the Concert of Europe) and clear the ground for the rise of a global socialist movement, led by the British deep state and central bankers. The Fabian Society was especially involved in this process, and a rough sketch of their blueprint for the global order they hoped to create can be found in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
  2. The Bolshevik movement was funded by the British deep state and central bankers. Once again, you can read about this in The Creature From Jekyll Island, as well as None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen. The Bolshevik revolution was not a true uprising of the Russian people: it was a globalist coup that hijacked the true revolution, which occured in 1907.
  3. In similar fashion, Adolf Hitler was a creation of the British deep state, who only became the villain after he threw off his leash and went rogue. Which is not to say that he wasn’t evil, only that he was, at least initially, a British puppet.
  4. After WWI, the British deep state recolonized the United States by creating their own deep state across the pond, which is more or less under the control of British Intelligence. In fact, you can draw a straight line from the British socialist movement of the early 20th century to our current American deep state, through the Fabian Society, the Roundtable Group, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
  5. This also gets into Ezra’s Eagle, because the first feather (according to Michael B. Rush’s interpretation) is Herbert Hoover, a founding member of the CFR.

So if you accept most of that, it’s actually not that crazy to entertain the idea that Winston Churchill was the “true villain” of WWII, given how he was clearly an agent of the British deep state during the most crucial decades of the 20th century.

Personally, I don’t think he was the “true villain” any more than I think he was the “true hero” of the war. He was a complicated character from a complicated time. And as tempting as it is to simplify WWII as an epic fight between the “good guy” Allies and the “bad guy” Axis, that narrative has run its course and is no longer a useful way of understanding the world. Most wars are bad guy vs. bad guy, at least in the top leadership, with the little people on both sides doing most of the actually fighting and dying.

Trope Tuesday: Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Oh dear. I’m probably going to take some heat for this one, especially if it gets picked up by File 770.

What is a “manic pixie dream girl”? Tvtropes puts it this way:

An upbeat young woman whose love gives the brooding male hero a new lease on life.

Wikipedia puts it this way:

…the MPDG “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer–directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” MPDGs are said to help their men without pursuing their own happiness, and such characters never grow up; thus, their men never grow up.

You know how the term “space opera” was originally a derogatory term for crappy science fiction? I’m going to go out on a lark, invoke tropes are tools, and argue that Wikipedia is wrong and there’s nothing inherently bad about this trope.

Anita Sarkeesian is not a huge fan of the manic pixie dream girl. In fact, it was the first trope she deconstructed way back 2011, before her scammy kickstarter. I’m not a huge fan of Anita Sarkeesian, but it’s worth rewatching her take on it:

In particular:

The manic pixie perpetuates the myth of women as caregivers at our very core—that we can go fix these lonely, sad men, so that they can go fix the world.

Here’s the thing, though: when you study the men who have fixed the world, you almost always find a strong, caregiving woman behind them. This is portrayed very well in The Darkest Hour, with Winston Churchill’s wife, Clementine:

Granted, Clementine Churchill is no manic pixie, but she did provide critical support to her husband, and was one of the key influences that shaped him into the great man of history that he ultimately proved to be.

Here’s the thing: men need women, just as women need men. All the feminist eye-rolling in the world doesn’t make that untrue. And for men who are lonely, depressed, or overly introspective, a perky outgoing woman can really have a positive impact.

The key to doing this trope well is to make the MPDG a complete character in her own right. Critics rightly point out that something is wrong when she exists solely for the benefit of the male protagonist. That’s not a feature of this trope, though: that’s just bad writing in general.

The best example of a MPDG in my own work is probably Deirdre from Heart of the Nebula. The rest of this post is going to be full of spoilers, so if it’s on your TBR list, you should probably skip to the end now.

Deirdre is very much a character in her own right. She’s the ship’s historian of the Chiran Spirit, a generation ship that James liberates from pirates before going into cryosleep. In spite of her perky, cheerful demeanor, she has experienced deep pain in her life. She immediately latches onto James, but over time this transforms from an interest in a living historical figure to genuine attraction and love.

James and Deirdre round off each others’ rough edges. She helps him to recover his optimism and self-respect, while he helps her to understand herself better and decide what she truly wants. They both help each other to reconcile with difficult baggage from each of their pasts, and though they both go through a period of disillusionment, they ultimately come out stronger for it on the other side.

Here’s the thing, though: if Deirdre was anything but a manic pixie dream girl, she wouldn’t have been able to help James through his darkest hour. It’s her bouncy enthusiasm, clumsy excitement, and unfailing optimism that draws him out of his callused shell. Without those characteristics, the story—and her character—wouldn’t have worked.

In short, I believe that the manic pixie dream girl trope very much has a place, and isn’t inherently sexist or mysoginistic at all. It can be, if done poorly, but when done well it points to the reality that men need women just as women need men, and that’s actually a good thing, no matter what the feminists say.

Thoughts on Dunkirk

This movie is fantastic. It’s so fantastic, I saw it in theaters twice.

It’s one of the best war movies I’ve seen in years, but it’s not like other war movies. There is no one main character, there is no heroic charge or last stand, no clear victory or defeat. At the same time, there are cowards as well as heroes. There are men who care only about survival, and there are others—many others—who put their lives on the line to save people they’ve never met.

There’s lots of chaos and death, but very little blood. There’s also very little gunfire for a war movie, and very few explosions. When they happen, though, they’re all the more earth-shattering for the long lulls between them. That seems a lot more realistic to me—and a lot more terrifying.

I really love the fact that you never see the face of the Germans. For the guys on the ground, they’re more a force of nature than something they can actually fight. Even the guys in the air are more worried about how the dogfighting depletes their fuel than they are about actually getting shot down.

One of the things that really fascinates me about this movie is the context in which it happens. Most World War II movies take place in the second half of the war, during or after the Battle of Britain. When the Nazis failed to invade Britain, it was clear that they were going to lose (or at least that it would end in a stalemate on the western front). But when Dunkirk happened, everyone fully expected the Nazis to invade and conquer the UK just like they’d conquered France. It appeared at that time that the Germans were going to win.

It also strikes me that Dunkirk was where World War I met World War II. In the run up to the first world war, the Germans expected to sweep across France and push the British into the sea. They expected that victory was only a matter of weeks away. In the run up of the second world war, they expected a repeat of the brutal trench warfare that bogged down the western front for years. Instead, they got exactly the scenario that the Germans had expected in the first war but never gotten.

This movie made me think a lot about the major defining conflicts of previous generations and what our major defining conflict is going to be. I don’t think we’re far from another Dunkirk. Will we rise to the level of heroism that the British civilians showed when they rescued their soldiers stranded across the channel? Will we come together in the face of the next existential threat, or will we come completely apart?

Dunkirk is a fantasic movie, and I highly recommend it. It’s definitely one of Christopher Nolan’s bests.