I emerge

Hello, assorted spelunkers of the Internet, I have come back to my little brain-dump to contemplate whether I should entertain myself once more with hate-reading Christian fiction. I think it was important for my journey of deconstruction, but am I done with that portion of my life? For a long while I seem to have been done with blarging, but I am definitely overthinking this.

Even if the only reason is to not info-dump this onto my dude (who has little to no baggage of this particular variety and no dog in this fight), that’s good enough reason.

I managed to get banned from Lorehaven, nee Speculative Faith, after, like, ten years. That’s got to be some kind of accomplishment for the record books. What changed? Pure biased speculation, but I think the main editor/showrunner changed. He’s now fostering teenager kids and I think it’s made him more sensitive to having his illusion of Authoritah challenged. To my way of thinking, I was treating him more as an equal because of all the fun I poked at him, but that was probably a sin in of itself. I doubt he wants to be my equal: he wants to be an Authoritah over me. (He’s a Zack Snyder fan, which should tell you plenty about his take on storytelling analysis and why I poke fun at him.)

I still lurk there, tho I do debate the wisdom in that. Plus, the site’s kinda wound down, fewer articles, not much of anything except the podcasts and book reviews. Granted, it’s hard to keep a website’s momentum going, Lord knows I’ve failed. But it’s kind of inevitable that their community won’t grow because they don’t give themselves any room to grow as a community. They generally cover the same ground over and over, and that gets old. Most notable commenters seem to cycle out after a year or two of the same ground covered over and over.

Lorehaven still has a couple-few articles about not being fixated on squeaky-clean fiction as the end-all-be-all, but it makes you wonder if they really mean it when the majority of the reviews and recommendations are stories that do exactly that.

Which brings me to their recommended Towers of Light series that starts with Light of Mine. I had to see what sort of milquetoast crap they propose to inflict on middle-grade/bedtime story readers, so I got a sample on the Kindle app.

I was kinda relieved it wasn’t just another Narnia ripoff, but another Narnia ripoff would require at least a skosh of creativity. This was labelled as a cross between Little House on the Prairie and the lesser-known Christian series the Wingfeather Saga. I mean, I can see that was the vibe the author was going for, but in substance…not so much. I sampled the Wingfeather Saga, and it’s actually pretty creative and interesting.

Light of Mine does not have nearly that amount of creative juice in it. This author seems singularly uninterested in worldbuilding. Within the first chapter we know pretty much zilch about the world the characters inhabit beyond the aesthetic little farm and the Heathenlands far off where the Darkness grows.

Admittedly, worldbuilding is not what this story is for. This story is not about strange new worlds with new civilizations. This story is for holding the kiddos’ attention long enough to hammer in its message of obedience uber alles, because unfortunately, appealing to the lowest common denominator in the Christian submarket means pandering to some of the most paranoid, controlling, authoritarian parents in American demographics.

I’m sorry, but instead of a Narnia ripoff, we seem to have a Pilgrim’s Progress ripoff on our hands. The trigger word in the blurb was “allegorical,” and tragically, the people who most admire allegories are the least capable of writing them because allegories are trash.

[My TL;DR opinion on Pilgrim’s Progress can be summed up as: It’s one of those works of literature that is Important mostly for being widely referenced for two hundred years, not really for being admirable as a piece of literature. It was written by a barely literate hack, y’all.]

The other half of the blurb equation, Little House on the Prairie, mostly promises the subtle flavoring of libertarian horseshit. I mean, it seems on-brand for someone with libertarian rugged-outpost-hobby-farm fantasies to be so blatantly uninterested in even the fictional world outside his immediate orbit.

Now me, I’m two steps removed from a cottagecore bitch. I like quite a bit of the aesthetic, the cabins, gardens, tea time, the handicrafts, etc. Just take a look at my Stardew Valley save files. On the other hand, Little House on the Prairie, and other pioneer romanticism, is weaponized propagandic bullshit. The real pioneers were poor white trash who eked out a miserable, isolated existence rife with abuse and dysfunction, fuck outta here with that pious American mythos shit.

But there are barely any mentions of neighbors or a community outside this farm. Father builds a heavy-handed allegorical lighthouse on the farm from local cedar planks within the first chapter, but where the fuck do the planks come from? Did he buy them in town along with the square-headed nails mentioned? Does Father have a sawmill on his property, along with a smithy to make the square-headed nails? How the fuck did one man and a few children build a three-story lighthouse — by hand — within the timeframe of maybe a month — amongst all the other chores that would need doing on a farm with no modern machinery? Do the kids have friends their age? Do the kids even SEE other kids their age???

The pastor drops by for half a page to deliver the ham-handed allegory brass lantern for the lighthouse Father build several hundred miles from the ocean. Is this an alternate fantasy American Wild West (that fights with medieval weapons instead of guns)? Is it a completely separate world that only bears a passing resemblance? I’ve already given the question about 500 times more thought than author apparently has, but I have to remind myself, that’s not what this story is for.

At least the author has gone to the trouble of giving his child characters distinctive quirks? Further down on the Amazon page, there’s a cute little graphic introducing the main characters and their familiars cute mascot pets.

Lauren, the girl and the oldest at 12, is called the leader, but I dunno if I should take this at face value, or if she’s just parentified after the Plot disappears their parents. She’s carrying a spear, but I’d have to pay five bucks to confirm if she gets to go action-girl with it, because unfortunately the lowest common denominator in the Christian submarket is also sexist dickheads, and Lauren doesn’t even get to wear pants. Not in the text of the book, not in the cute cartoon on the Amazon page. Bitches expect her to fight in an ankle-length skirt and apron?

Aiden, age 9, is blurbed as the builder/planner. He doesn’t do any of it within the first chapter sampled, but whatever I’m willing to take the blurb’s word for it. He has a sword on the cover, and his cute mascot pet is a special golden duck.

Ethan, age 5, gets the informed attributes of the element of Heart and is shown on the cover as being the shield hero, which damn, he got the short end of the adventuring stick, but I’m not convinced about the party balance on this adventuring team anyway. I’m not really disappointed because he seems very cute, and his mascot is some kind of magic rainbow sparkle frog that serves as the team healer. Probably the most noticeable trait he mentioned as having is his mass of cute, red curly hair, but it hits a harsh note when the narrative repeatedly mentions that their mom hasn’t cut his curls into a proper short boy haircut yet. Yeah, just more weird sexist undertones to ruin my mood.

Lauren serves as the viewpoint character for most of the first chapter, but this story isn’t above headhopping (which is whatevs), but the more grievous writing sin is that these don’t feel like actual characters. They do not think nor act like people. They are little plot-robots whose purpose is to hammer in the message of obedience. They admire their parents’ Authoritah, they do their chores diligently, they police their siblings when their parents aren’t watching, but like, out of love and not petty power flexes (LOL, yeah right).

So their dad went to join the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Mercenaries (readers, I cringed so hard) on their mission to the Heathenlands after building the tiresome lighthouse that is powered by their faith mojo, and some guy reported him missing and presumably dead, and their mother goes absolutely gottdamn ballistic on the poor guy, because wimmen be overemotional or some shit, before making the absolutely bees-headed but plot-necessary decision to ditch the kids in order to get disappeared while looking for her dude. The Idiot Ball strikes again, and the Inciting Incident spurs the kids to obey the Plot.

But controlling parents, what happens when your kids are put in the situation of obeying an adult that doesn’t agree with you on everything? That seems to be the question tackled in the next book, Still Small Voice, when the kids meet their uncle, whom the blurb says leads them astray omg, and I have this sneaking suspicion that all the kids have to do is believe their parents over anyone else and the Plot will reward them, problems solved. Cultlike behavior? What cultlike behavior?

Could I pay five bucks to confirm my suspicions about this book? Could I sample and/or pay for the next one to see if I’m right about it, too? Or would it be a better ROI to just pay Tapas that money to put isekai romance manhwa in front of my face? The answer is obvious but there’s still that contrary part of my brain that likes the rush from hate-reading.