Onwards to Glory!

The year is turning rapidly.  The nights are drawing in, the leaves are turning brown, cereal has been swapped for porridge as the breakfast of choice in the Jones household, it’s getting increasingly tricky to leave a nice warm bed when it’s cold and dark outside, and across the world tens of thousands of writers are gearing up for the start of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

That’s right, once again I will be voluntarily committing myself to write 50,000 words between midnight on the 31^st of October and 11:59 on the 30^th of November.  My Facebook feed will fill up with word count updates (from many of my friends, as well as myself) and I won’t blame anybody at all if they block me for the duration.

This year’s novel has been entered on the NaNo website under the heading of ‘Fantasy’, but only because, purely for the sake of convenience and to avoid having to do a load of research, I am setting it in a fictional world.  There will be no magic, no elves, no orcs and none of the pseudo-mediaeval trappings that so often come with the genre.

The working title for this year’s opus is ‘The General of Dead Cat Alley’, and the setting is more Regency or Napoleonic than anything else.  It will follow the story of Guil Lucas, a veteran soldier and general in the army of Fleuretia, unjustly blamed for a crushing defeat at the hands of their longstanding enemy Eisenheim.  Disgraced and broken, his estate and fortune seized, he ends up penniless and alone in the crime-ridden slums of the capital city Floriet.

Here Lucas sees an opportunity; the criminal gangs that rule the filthy alleyways are disorganised and inefficient, and would benefit from the military discipline and planning that he can provide. If he cannot serve with honour, he will rule in disgrace. Ruthless and effective, he swiftly begins to gain control of the slums. As his criminal empire grows however, he becomes increasingly aware of the corruption and decadence of the government, and the inequality that keeps so many in the grip of abject poverty. Will he be content with ruling the alleyways and gambling dens, or will he set his sights on the National Assembly led by the new First Minister di Merros, and light the fires of revolution?

Dramatic stuff, yes?  I’m planning on writing it in my accustomed first person perspective.  I’m thinking of perhaps 2 different perspectives; the general himself and a high ranking military officer serving the government and becoming involved in investigating the shadowy new crime boss.  Technology will be more or less Napoleonic, although I’ll have street lights made from luminescent crystal, and in place of gunpowder, piezo-thermic powdered stone, mined in dangerous conditions by convicted prisoners.  There won’t be any steam- or clockwork-powered technology or anything over the top though.

There is a school of thought that suggests that perhaps I ought to work on the first volume in the series I started last year (and the second of which is still only a work in progress), but that theory is nonsense.  I enjoyed (and I’m still enjoying) working on the Zenith stories, but to succeed at NaNo, you really need to be hyper-enthused by a story, and at the moment the above is what I want to work on.  Several key scenes have been written inside my head already.

Fear not though, loyal reader, I will keep you updated as to my progress as the month goes on.  Onwards, to glory!

Impossible Reality

Someone shared the following image on my Facebook feed:

It’s from the webcomic The Awkward Yeti, which features (amongst others) two recurring characters; the logical but frequently-stressed Brain, and the emotional and idealistic, but dippy and easily-distracted Heart.  It’s not one I regularly read, but I rather like it.

(And yes, I know there’s a massive typo in this one.  Yes, as a linguistic pedant, it has given me a nosebleed too.  Try and ignore it, and appreciate the comic.  Just try.  I know, but try.)

This particular one resonates with me on more than one level.  I’ve written more than once on the conflict between idealism and stark reality, and between cold rationalism and the more emotional and subjective nature of religious faith.  The quote at the top of this page, from which I’ve taken the name of my blog says something not dissimilar.

Atheists often accuse theists of denying reality, or ignoring evidence.  Well, obviously I happen to disagree, but even if they’re right, so what?  Do we live in a fantasy world?  Possibly.  The real world does not live up to my idea of what it ought to be, and, if any part of revelation or scripture is correct, of God’s idea of what it ought to be either.  Could God wave His hand and zap it into correctness?  Yes, of course.  But that would defeat the point.  We have been given the choice as to whether we would like to make the world into a Heaven or a Hell, and if I accept the world as it is, I am condoning it as it is as well.

We must acknowledge the state of the world; if we didn’t we wouldn’t know what needed changing, but that doesn’t mean accepting it.  We need to live in a fantasy world.  We need to live in a ludicrous, nonsensical dream-world in which it is possible to love without expecting anything, even love, in return, where people can forgive even when the one who wronged them doesn’t repent, where Grace is unearned, but offered freely, where hope is maintained in the face of hopelessness, where every single person can be, and wants to be, and is the best possible version of themselves, and never stops trying to be better than they are.

Impossible?  Unrealistic?  Sentimental, soppy, bleeding-heart, willfully naive leftie-liberal claptrap?  Probably.  But given the choice between trying (and I make absolutely no claims that I succeed even a tiny proportion of the time) to live my life as though I lived in that world, or living my live as though I lived in this, I know which I choose.  And if everybody tried to live in that impossible, unrealistic dream world, then it would no longer be impossible.  We would have built the Kingdom of Heaven.

Why do I always insist on believing in God, the Incarnation, the Redemption, in Goodness and Grace, in Faith, Hope and Love?  Because this ‘real’ world doesn’t meet with my fastidious tastes.

Fictional Religion

I’ve mentioned a few times before that one of hobbies is table top roleplaying games in the vein of Dungeons & Dragons and its ilk.  Many of these games revolve around medieval fantasy worlds more or less in the style of The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones; worlds which approximate Earth’s middle ages, but with the addition of elves, dwarves, orcs, wizards, magic, dragons etc.

A vast array of settings have been created to facilitate these games, from professionally published worlds that are specifically designed to accompany one set of game rules, such as the worlds of Glorantha, Harn or Titan, or worlds originally created for novels and adapted for roleplaying, such as Middle Earth, Hyboria or Westeros, to those created by individuals players and games masters (GMs) for their own use and tailored to their own individual tastes.

One thing that almost all of these have in common is the presence of religion in some form or another.  Because these worlds are not our own, neither are the religions.  There is no Christianity, Hinduism or Islam in these worlds, although homages, parodies and approximations appear in many of them.  In early versions of D&D, the ancient Norse and Greek pantheons were offered as gods that the Cleric could worship.  Normally though, fantasy religions are created out of whole cloth, sometimes inspired to a greater or lesser extent by real world religions.

The majority of fantasy religions are polytheistic, in which an array of gods covers various different domains, ideals and concepts.  These are largely created with the game in mind, and presented as gods that player characters are likely to follow.  As such each god has a fairly limited portfolio, and individual cults tend to be fairly straight forward, and while many games outline creation myths and stories covering the relationships between the gods, and outline each god’s teachings and commandments, few settings tend to go into too much depth regarding theologies or the details of regular ceremonies, rituals or services.

This presence of fictionalised religions is one of the things (along with the in-game presence of magic, demons and devils) that alarmed some Christians, and helped give rise to the hysterical religious anti-roleplaying movements of the 80s and 90s (and which still linger amongst some groups).  Needless to say, I share no such concerns.  I have no problem whatsoever with the concept of fictional religions, nor do I think that they trivialise real world faiths.  I have myself created two fictional religions; a standard fantasy polytheism for my Caledain setting, and a religion based on dual gods worshipped together as a single united faith, for use in a fantasy world which currently exists only in my head and a couple of very rough maps, and which may or may not see future development.

This is all a rather long-winded introduction to what I really wanted to talk about, which is the mental exercise of looking at Christianity as if it were a fictional religion.  How would it appear as detailed in the ‘Gods’ section of the D&D player’s handbook, with its scant details and basic information?

I’ve already said that most fantasy religions are both very specific and very poorly detailed, and this is largely because very few roleplay games are going to involve the minutiae of religious observance.  A cleric stating that they will spend an hour or two praying in order to recover their magical powers is about as much as you’re likely to get in the majority of games.  Individual gods will have tightly defined portfolios: Law and retribution; Fire and light; Healing; Plants and animals; Learning and wisdom etc etc.  Fantasy religions are also almost entirely devoid of metaphysics.  Because the gods are known to exist, and frequently intervene in the material world, primarily by providing their priests with magical spells and the ability to perform regular miracles, but also sometimes directly, there is little requirement for it, and for any concept of religious faith as we would understand it.  Games set in a fantasy version of the real world usually portray a very restricted, narrow version of Christianity, suited to the particular tone and requirements of the game (after all, they neither need nor want to be theological or anthropological treatises), and have it as either an oppressive force complete with bloody crusades, ruthless and unscrupulous witch hunters and sadistic inquisitors, or as a protective power, helping hold back evil and defeat monsters (or sometimes both versions at once).  What they actually have though is only the faintest approximation of Christianity as it is recognised by real world Christians.

My main conclusion is that Christianity is simply too large and too vague to function as much of a fantasy religion:

Symbol:  Which one?  The cross?  The dove?  The fish?  The Chi Ro?  We even use boats sometimes...

Associated colour:  Um, white maybe?  Or the rainbow?  Or none at all? 

Favoured weapon:  None really.  The sword? 

Portfolio:  That would be life, the universe and everything… 

Core teachings:  How long do you have?  Pull up a chair… 

It is also wholly counter-intuitive in its concepts of salvation and the Trinity, paradoxical, rich, wide, deep, mixed and baffling.  Many people shy away from this, or use it to claim that it must therefore be false, since no single, true thing could be this way.  Conversely (perhaps even perversely) I see this as being wholly supportive of its claims and teachings.  If Christianity truly claims to best represent the infinite vastness of God, then it must, almost by definition, be paradoxical, counter-intuitive and almost beyond understanding.  If it could be fitted into a column in a rule book, then I would assume that it was indeed fictional.

In short, any theology that could work as a fictional religion in its entirety, and which I could wholly understand, must be far too simplistic to even approximate reality.  That’s obviously not to say that if it doesn’t make sense, it must be true; madness that way lies.  There must be enough solid sense to be able to hang all the apparent vagueness from, a frame to hold up all the concepts that stretch further than the mind is able to go.  There seems to be a belief amongst some people that humans should be able to understand everything, and anything we can’t understand must therefore be false, or can at least be disregarded as unimportant.  I do not agree.  I believe that Christianity has such a frame, and if I can’t understand parts of it, it is only because its canopy stretches far further than I am able to see, and I am content with that.