Oda Nobunaga Finishes Unifying Japan, A More Plausible Draka Timeline, and an Uglier Tanker War

It's been awhile since I've posted about alternate history. Here are some scenarios from the public sections of the forum I used to be a regular member of that you might find interesting.

Nobunaga's Ambition Realized: The Dawn of a New Rising Sun-In real life, warlord Oda Nobunaga was betrayed by one of his own commanders and committed suicide to avoid captured and execution. His efforts to reunite feudal Japan were continued by others, including Tokugawa Ieyasu. The latter brought peace to Japan, but at the price of isolating the country from the world, the functional extermination of Christianity, and establishment of what sounds like an early modern police state. In this timeline, Nobunaga avoids the coup attempt and continues his historical course. He ultimately reunites Japan as the new shogun (a military dictator who rules in the emperor's name), but his government pursues very different policies. Although his successor Hideyoshi's war with Korea is avoided, he and his successors do successfully colonize Taiwan, and Christianity remains a tolerated faith even if some of the excesses that provoked the Tokugawa crackdown (slave-trading by foreign priests, Catholic lords forcing peasants to convert) are firmly dealt with. It looks like Japan is on the way to becoming a major power in Asia rather than turning inward. And this is already having some effects, most notably on China...

Snakedance: A Plausible Draka TLIAM-The author wants to have this whole timeline completed in a month (hence the title) and she seems to be making good progress so far. For those not familiar, here is the canonical Draka timeline through the 1950s. Although it's not particularly plausible, the fiction is entertaining and it's one of the founding texts of modern-day alternate history. The author is focused on the early Draka expansion in southern Africa and depicts the natives putting up a more realistic and much better fight that they did in canon and avoids the Draka's too-fast early industrialization. She also emphasizes sports, the arts, and culture among the Draka, something that is often overlooked in alternate history, and seems like she's planning on emphasizing class conflict among the Draka elite more than canon does.

(The first book Marching Through Georgia has female lead Sofie Nixon pondering the social gap between herself, the daughter of a dock foreman and granddaughter of a Scottish mercenary, and her commanding officer and love interest Eric von Shrakenberg, but I don't recall very much from the later books. The Citizen caste seems rather united on most issues of importance and the points of disunity are limited to grousing, like the urbanite-dominated Security Directorate sneering at the planter-dominated military as living in the past.)

Crushed In Infancy-In this timeline, the "Tanker War" phase of the Iran-Iraq War escalates into a series of direct battles between the United States and the new Islamic Republic of Iran. The Islamic Republic soon goes into a different, more US-friendly direction, after some events I'm not going to give away for spoiler reasons. This in turn leads to some very different politics in the United States, the declining Soviet Union, and a China that is just starting to liberalize after the death of Mao. We're looking at a very interesting late 1980s and early 1990s here.

Blast From The Past Movie Review: VAN HELSING (2004)

I first saw Van Helsing back when I was in college. I don't remember too clearly how much I liked it then--I think I liked it broadly but didn't like the end. I did use a GIF of Richard Roxburgh's Dracula as an AOL Instant Messenger avatar, at least for awhile.

The film podcast Myopia Movies dedicated October as vampire-movie month, with Van Helsing originally planned as the Patreon special. Although I wasn't slated to participate, I'd rented the movie already and so watched it anyway. Here's a free snippet and instructions how to get whole episode FREE. And now my review..

The Plot

Amnesiac Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) is a monster-hunter working for a Vatican knightly order. Owing to how many of the creatures he kills revert to human form upon death and how close-mouthed the Vatican is about supernatural threats like vampires, werewolves, etc. he's viewed by the general public as a serial killer and is the most wanted criminal in Europe. After dispatching Mr. Hyde in Paris when we first meet him, the Vatican sends him to Transylvania to assist the Valerious family in their centuries-long battle with none other than Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh).

Upon arrival he allies with Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsdale), the last living member of the family after the presumed death of her brother Velkan (Will Kemp), and does battle with Dracula and his three brides. Things get complicated...Dracula seems to have some kind of prior history with Van Helsing and the vampire king has a very dangerous and complex plan involving none other than Frankenstein's Monster (Shuler Hensley) and werewolves.

The Good

*For starters, the movie is pretty exciting and never dull. That's why, even though there's so much to criticize about it, I'm going to give it a good review. It's just plain fun. I watched about 1/3 of it on the elliptical at the gym and it made the time go by so much faster.

*The acting works. Hugh Jackman is good as Van Helsing, while David Wenham is fine as the inventor-friar Carl. Kate Beckinsdale does a decent job as Anna. Hensley, who won the Tony Award for his role as the pitiable but dangerous Jud Frye in Oklahoma!, puts a lot of pathos into his portrayal of Frankenstein's Monster. But the one who's clearly having the most fun is Richard Roxburgh, who plays Dracula himself. He chews the scenery like he's chewing on somebody's neck and it's always entertaining. In particular he plays Dracula incredibly snarky and I liked that.

*One innovation Van Helsing brings to vampire films is the characterization of Dracula's vampire brides. Rather than just being residents of the Count's house of horrors in Transylvania without individual characterization (this fanfic even depicts them as a sort of hive mind), they play a major role in driving the plot and have personalities.

*I also liked the characterization of Frankenstein's Monster. Rather than some freak with the mind of a toddler (or in the original film an executed murderer) in the body of a professional wrestler, he's very intelligent, has some very pointed things to say about monster-hunting, reveres Dr. Frankenstein as his father, and is even a devout Catholic despite being, well, the parts of seven men strung together and reanimated with electricity. I think this is more heavily tied in with the novel where the creature was more intelligent.

*There's a lot of humor in this movie. I laughed out loud several times.

*The Valerious patriarch who goes missing before the story begins is referred to as "the King of the Gypsies." Given how in the original Dracula novel and the 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula his minions are explicitly depicted as being Gypsies (or Romani as they prefer to be called), this seems like a deliberate choice to deconstruct the old story. Rarely does one put "thoughtful" and this film together in one sentence, but it looks like they put some thinking into it.

The Bad

*For all its spectacle and fun, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense. For starters, when Anna tells the villagers that Van Helsing is the first man to kill a vampire in over 100 years, that raises some questions as to what exactly the Valerious family has been doing in all the centuries they've been fighting Dracula. Have they been keeping the vampires contained as much as possible to keep them from harming others, but avoiding killing them outright because that might provoke revenge attacks? Given how they don't initially know where Castle Dracula even is, that seems unlikely. Does Dracula primarily use werewolves and human minions, with the vampires only coming out to fight occasionally? It would've been better if Anna had lectured the villagers about their ingratitude for Van Helsing saving their lives.

*The action goes back and forth from Transylvania to Rome, often by carriage. Does distance mean anything? If Dracula has a townhouse, it'd probably be in a much closer big city like Bucharest.

*Also, why does Van Helsing try to kill Dracula with methods that don't work (in this universe) like the silver stake? If the Valerious family has been fighting Dracula for centuries and tried various means of killing him (Anna talks about burning, stabbing, clubbing etc., which means they've gone hand-to-hand with him repeatedly), why aren't they sharing this with the Vatican? And why didn't the Vatican share this with Van Helsing? Someone has blundered.

*Does being a vampire mean lack of volume control? Dracula and his brides sure like to yell and scream overdramatically, especially the shrieking-prone brides. Roxburgh's hammy Dracula is fun, but the brides can get pretty annoying.

*For a world in which Catholicism is factually true, their take on Catholic theology is...dubious. For starters, Valerious the Elder making a vow to God (and apparently some kind of deal with the leadership of the Church) that nobody in his family would go to Heaven until Dracula was dead and the cardinal's worrying the entire Valerious family would end up in Purgatory if the family were killed before Dracula's death. Firstly, even if Valerious the Elder was foolish enough to make such a vow in the first place (see the Hebrew judge Jephthah), the cardinal has no reason to think God would honor it. The only way for this to make sense theologically is if the most extreme version of the apostles' authority to bind and loose (see Matthew 16:19) and that the Catholic leadership and in particular the Pope are the successors to the apostles in authority are both correct. If Catholicism is factually true the latter works, but the former is really pushing it. On a lesser note, Purgatory is temporary, even if it is unpleasant, so the Valerious family will enter Heaven eventually. When dealing with a timeframe of eternity, even a century or two matters little. Also the film implies that Van Helsing is actually the Archangel Gabriel, who has taken human form but lost his memory. Angels do not work that way.

It would have been much better if the Valerious family has been keeping Dracula contained in Romania, but they've recently suffered a series of reverses like the disappearance of Anna and Velkan's father. Van Helsing is sent in as reinforcements, since if the family is wiped out, Dracula will be free to spread his dark influence across Europe. And give Van Helsing a more conventional origin story. He's just a monster-hunter working for the Vatican and that's it.

*Also, Van Helsing's knightly order is pretty multi-faith...there are Muslim mullahs, Sikhs, and Buddhist monks present at its headquarters in the Vatican and Dracula comments that Van Helsing has been trained by "monks and mullahs from Tibet to Istanbul." That kind of ecumenism isn't something that would happen in that era. Leo XIII was Pope at the time and although he was more left-wing politically and economically, he wouldn't acknowledge salvation outside the Catholic Church (that didn't happen until Vatican II), let alone outside of Christianity. Furthermore, when faced with evidence that the Cross and other specifically Christian holy items have supernatural power against evil, I imagine non-Christian witnesses would convert relatively quickly. This is empirically factual evidence of the truth of Christianity, and Catholicism specifically. Better to have it all Catholics, but multiple ethnicities. The Japanese Christians would have just come out of hiding, there's the Eastern Rite drawn from the Greek world, the Middle Eastern Maronites (whom ignorant Westerners might assume were Muslims), etc. 

Hmm...Van Helsing trained in ninjutsu by one of the Hidden Christians? That'd be cool. Such a character could've even been a replacement for Friar Carl if they wanted to go with "martial arts" over "steampunk technology"--a man who'd secretly practiced Christianity as an instructor in the genocidally anti-Christian Shogunate's official ninja academy would do a very good job in training VH in sneaking around and assassination.

*Valerious the Elder's vow is also a missed opportunity for when Dracula attempts to seduce Anna. He can play up the idea that she'll never go to Heaven, so she might as well live forever on Earth. And owing to the people's ingratitude toward the family for protecting them from supernatural threats, might as well eat them too. Even if theologically that's all nonsense, Anna might not know that and Dracula can use it to manipulate her.

*Although the brides do more than just perv on Jonathan Harker (who isn't even in the film), they could have been better developed as characters. Per the almighty TVTropes, in interviews the actresses revealed a lot about their back-stories...one is Dracula's favorite and primary wife, another was a Gypsy in her mortal life, and one hates Anna because she thinks that Dracula will try to make her one of his vampire brides. Some of that stuff is hinted at in the film (Anna and vampire bride Aleera seem to be on a first-name basis with each other), but not enough.

*A "king of the Gypsies" with a bad-Latin name? The Gypsies/Romani originally came from India. Depending on how assimilated they are (this one even became a Romanian prince), they might have Hungarian or Slavic names. The only way this works is if Anna and Velkan's father was elected to the position, as a sort of liaison to the non-Romani. Also, Valerious was the ancestor's first name, not his family name. I don't really have an issue with the first names--being Christians a Biblical name like Anna makes sense and Velkan sounds appropriately Eastern European, but their ancestor's first name becoming their last name? How did that happen?

The Verdict

Fun, but don't think about it too much. 8.0 out of 10. If you want to listen to my colleagues--who were much less merciful--make fun of the movie, sign up for the Patreon here.

Princess Elisabeta The Ibbur, Or a Judeo-Calvinist Interpretation of BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA

The most recent episode of the film podcast Myopia Movies covers Bram Stoker's Dracula, the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola classic known for its beautiful visuals, the awesomeness that is Winona Ryder, and Keanu Reeves' questionable accent. The following discussion contains spoilers for a movie that's nearly 30 years old, so be ye warned...

When I first saw it in high school, what stuck out to me was that they gave Dracula of all people a redemption arc. The count (Gary Oldman) begins the story as a Christian warrior fighting the invading Ottoman Turks and renounces God when his wife Elisabeta, incorrectly thinking he was killed in battle, commits suicide and the priests tell the grieving Vlad she's in Hell. What I remembered was that upon learning Mina Harker (Winona Ryder) was the reincarnation of his lost love, his resolve to do evil weakens--he initially refuses to turn Mina into a vampire even though she very much wants it (!) and when the hunters confront him, he initially flees rather than try to fight them. This I attributed to his realizing that Elisabeta is not in Hell--was his rebellion against God and the atrocities he committed as history's infamous Impaler a mistake? Is he now reconsidering all his life choices?

More recently, as I became more familiar with Calvinism, I even concluded that although most vampire fiction is very heavily Catholic, this one is actually rather Reformed. Dracula was predestined by God for salvation from before Creation (see Ephesians 1:4), but he rebels against God, cursing Him for Elisabeta's death and (he thinks) damnation. However, those who are truly His are never out of His hand, even though they may try to jump from it. God is determined that Dracula be redeemed and so He allows Dracula to become a vampire--the count will be saved even if it takes 400-odd years to do it.

(In the meantime Dracula commits all sorts of horrors, but if God is in control, one could argue He allowed this for His own purposes--delaying the Ottoman invasion of Europe to prevent mass apostasy from Christianity, punishing the corrupt boyars and criminals the historical Vlad was known for treating harshly, etc. And given how some historians think Vlad's crimes might have been exaggerated by his enemies, he might not have been as monstrous as one might think.)

But what about Elisabeta? Doesn't reincarnation go against the Bible? Hebrews 9:27 pretty explicitly says man dies once and then the Judgement and in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Christianity is explicitly true--crosses/crucifixes, communion wafers, etc. have supernatural power against evil. I'm assuming Elisabeta was a Christian and the idea that people who commit suicide automatically go to Hell is not biblical, so one would assume she's in Heaven. However, the Bible does contain the account of the Witch of Endor, who manages to summon from the dead none other than the prophet Samuel, who repeats the prophecies of divine judgement he made on Earth. Some Christians believe this was actually a demonic being impersonating Samuel, but this entity does not seem to be any different from Samuel when he was on Earth. In any event, Samuel's prophecy of Saul's death comes true and a test of a true prophet is whether their predictions come true. And then there's the spirit God sends to torment Saul (see 1 Samuel 16:14-23), although that could be depression or some kind of mental illness rather than an actual supernatural entity--"spirit" in this case could mean "mood" rather than an angel or demon. After all, when David shows up he soothes Saul by playing music, not by exorcising him. :)

So perhaps Mina Harker in the present day is not actually a reincarnation of Elisabeta, but is sort of possessed by her? The notion that a living person can be possessed by the spirit of a dead person actually ties in with the Jewish concepts of dibbuk and ibbur. Although the idea comes from 16th Century Jewish folklore rather than Scripture, it does seem somewhat appropriate given that Winona Ryder's father is Jewish and she describes herself as such too. An ibbur is a dead person temporarily possessing or at least joining with a living person in order to accomplish a religious duty. In this case, tying in with the idea that Vlad was predestined for Heaven despite his crimes, this is Elisabeta returning to Earth for the purpose of leveraging Vlad's ultimate repentance. This would explain why Mina only starts remembering her "past life" as Elisabeta when she encounters Dracula in the present day--there is no indication beforehand she's anything but a sweet-natured (but as I noted in my review, extremely horny) British schoolteacher. And it's appropriate that Jonathan and Mina get married in what seems to be the Eastern Orthodox fashion--as a princess of Transylvania, Elisabeta was probably Orthodox herself, even though Jonathan is Anglican in the novel and I assume Mina is too.

(This could also cycle back to Catholicism--Elisabeta might be in Purgatory and redeeming Vlad, whose renunciation of God was prompted by her own suicide, could be part of the sanctification process prior to her own entering Heaven. However, Dracula's sins are so egregious that even if his last-minute repentance means he doesn't go to Hell, if there's a Purgatory he'll be spending a lot of time there while Elisabeta goes on. That kind of weakens the romanticism a bit, although they'll be reunited eventually.)

However, upon actually watching the film, it seems I didn't recall a lot of the details correctly. Vlad's resolve to do evil does weaken, but his repentance is much vaguer--after he is mortally wounded by Mina's husband Jonathan and their American friend Quincy Morris, Mina takes him to the long-abandoned chapel of Castle Dracula. The dying count reaches for the cross and asks God why He has forsaken him (ummm...you forsook Him). However, when Mina tries to pull the blade out of his chest, Dracula stops her and tells her "it is finished" (sound familiar?).  

Suddenly the light shines down, the candles in the chapel ignite, and the cross Dracula had desecrated so long ago heals. Things get a little theologically fuzzier from there--Mina thinks it was her love that released everybody from the powers of darkness and claims her and Dracula's love is stronger than death--but the light of God does revert the demonic-looking Dracula to his human form. At Dracula's request Mina shoves the knife all the way through his heart and the burn from the Communion wafer disappears from her forehead, indicating that her own growing vampirism has been quelled. Dracula dies apparently seeing something pleasant, Mina cuts off his head to make sure the deed is done, and the film ends implying Dracula and Elisabeta have been reunited in Heaven. Here is the complete scene for your review.

So although claiming Bram Stoker's Dracula is some kind of Christian film is really stretching it (although belief in reincarnation is blatantly heretical, the idea that God temporarily sent Princess Elisabeta's soul back to Earth to ensure Vlad goes to Heaven is still really pushing it), I figured some folks might find this interesting. 

If you want to read BSD in a purely orthodox fashion, Mina remembering a past life as Elisabeta could be the result of Dracula consciously or unconsciously using psychic abilities to fill her head with memories of 15th Century Romania, her consuming mind-altering absinthe, the fact she's a late teen or early 20-something with an overactive imagination infatuated with handsome, charismatic foreigner, or a combination thereof. Mina's thinking it was her love and not God's manipulating circumstances over 400-plus years to save Dracula is her own ego (this is, after all, from her diary written after-the-fact), not a definitive theological statement. After all, the fact she all but commits adultery with a monster who imprisoned and tormented her husband and killed her best friend shows she's not perfect.

Blast From The Past Movie Review: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Myopia Movies, the film podcast I'm a regular participant in, did Bram Stoker's Dracula for our October-themed month on vampires. I remember when the movie came out in 1992 (I wasn't allowed to see it, being in elementary school at the time), although I do remember reading about one of the video-game versions in my friend John's Nintendo Power magazine. I finally got to see the film in high school, when I had my own membership at Blockbuster Video.

However, high school was many, many years ago and the original premise of the podcast was re-watching childhood favorites to see if they were still good. So when the time came to brainstorm for the current season, this one of the movies I really pushed for. Here's the episode. And now for the review.

The Plot

British lawyer Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) is sent by his law firm to make the final arrangements for an Eastern European nobleman to purchase some land in London. There's just one small problem--said nobleman is none other than Vlad Dracul (Gary Oldman), the infamous impaler of history and a vampire to boot. He sees Jonathan's locket with an image of his fiancée Mina Murray (Winona Ryder) and becomes infatuated because she reminds him of his dead wife.

So, being evil, he leaves Jonathan for his vampire brides to consume and sets off to London. He feeds off Mina's friend Lucy (Sadie Frost) and attempts to woo Mina, who begins remembering a previous life as Dracula's wife the Princess Elisabeta (also played by Ryder). However, one of Lucy's suitors contacts Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) to deal with Lucy's mysterious "illness" and Jonathan escapes, marrying Mina in an Orthodox ceremony at the nunnery where he's recovering. Dracula as you can imagine is a bit angry and now the war is on. And Mina finds herself surprisingly conflicted...

The Good

*The film is simply beautiful, even though now with improved camera technology it looks a bit aged. The sets are good, the costumes are good, etc. The clothes are well-designed. For example, I get serious Byzantine vibes off Dracula's brides and the robes Dracula wears in one scene, which make sense considering historically Vlad the Impaler was Eastern Orthodox for most of his life. And they use the costumes to make subtle character points--Mina's clothes are a bit out of fashion because she's a schoolteacher wearing her rich friend Lucy's hand-me-downs. It deserved the Academy Awards it got for costuming and makeup.

*I liked some of the characterization. They made Mina a great deal hornier than I recall from the book--she's eager to get married to Jonathan right away and they have a make-out session right before he leaves for Transylvania and she and Lucy at one point kiss (!) in the garden of Lucy's estate. Add Jonathan's prolonged absence and Lucy's "illness" and it's a lot more understandable that Mina might be tempted by the Count. And Dracula is more sympathetic than one would expect of an explicitly Satanic predator. He was a Christian knight victorious in war against the invading Muslim Ottomans--who to spite him tricked his devoted young wife Elisabeta into committing suicide by convincing her he'd been killed in battle. The priests told Vlad that because she'd committed suicide she automatically went to Hell and Vlad proceeded to totally lose it, railing against God and desecrating the church to become a vampire.

(From a Christian POV this is a warning against idolatrous devotion to a romantic partner, self-absorption, and false doctrine. Had Elisabeta not been so unhealthily devoted to Vlad she wouldn't have committed suicide and had Vlad not been so self-absorbed and possessive--he acts more like God had wronged him than wronged Elisabeta--and valued her more than God, he wouldn't have lashed out like he did. And had the priests not incorrectly claimed suicides were automatically damned at the worst possible time, his grieving might have proceeded along more normal channels rather than leading him to become a Satan-worshiping mass murderer.)

*The soundtrack is good too--the film got another Oscar for Best Sound Editing. The credits song "Love Song For a Vampire" is sad and beautiful and the instrumental stuff does well for setting an ominous tone.

*It's got a very high-quality cast. Winona Ryder does a good job as Mina--much like Alien Resurrection, I think she's the best performer in the film. (And per a well-documented Wikipedia article, she was the one who brought the script for what was supposed to be a TV movie to Francis Ford Coppola, so there's even more credit to go around.) Gary Oldman does a good job as Dracula. Anthony Hopkins might be a little too manic as Van Helsing, but he's entertaining. Although Reeves' accent is inconsistent and sometimes he comes off as a bit monotone, I didn't have a problem with his acting per se.

*The film puts Vlad the Impaler's actions in the context of the Fall of Constantinople and the Ottoman invasion of Eastern Europe. Yes, he was a monster (even if there's some speculation that his horrors were exaggerated by his German enemies), but there's a reason he's a national hero in Romania.

The Bad

*My single biggest problem with the movie is how incredibly boring it was. Part of it is that it mimics the original novel, which is written in an epistolary format (letters, diary entries, etc) and so there's a lot of what Nic calls "talky-talk," but there's also the long draggy second fifth or so of the movie in which Dracula comes to Britain to try to seduce Mina. Someone on the almighty TVTropes mentioned a fan-edit that removed the romantic plot that cut around an hour. Seriously, one of the podcast regulars actually fell asleep with a drink in his hand while watching the movie. I got my phone out around 1/3 of the way into the movie, probably during the sequence where Dracula in his guise as a foreign prince visiting Britain is taking Mina out on various dates while, unbeknownst to her, his vampire brides are keeping her fiancé captive and feeding on him.

*Speaking of that, surely Jonathan told Mina about where he'd been and what happened to him after she came to Eastern Europe after getting the letter he was alive and recovering in a convent. She has a lot more reason to hate Dracula beyond what he did to Lucy and yet that's what she seems most angry about when he comes to her and she knows what he is. She should also be angry he had held her fiancé captive and let monsters feed on him for weeks. Taking it a step further, she might have realized that Dracula was keeping Jonathan captive (and thus away from her) and causing Lucy's illness to make her emotionally vulnerable to his seduction. Watching it now I see just how manipulative and predatory Dracula is, and not just in the "drinks blood" sense. Even if Dracula is super good-looking and charismatic, even if she finds his occult nature intriguing or pities his unhappy back-story, even if she's somehow channeling the long-dead soul of his wife and isn't fully herself, why doesn't she realize just how much of a creep he is? In one of their scenes together she seriously Does Not Get It and things just get worse from there.

*Per the above, Mina and Jonathan's relationship doesn't get built up well. Building up Dracula is necessary to realistically show why Mina would be tempted into an adulterous relationship, but what is so special about Jonathan? He's certainly a decent person by any standard, but is he interesting? If they wanted to contrast him with Dracula's physicality and animal magnetism, emphasize that as a lawyer he's schoolteacher Mina's intellectual/career peer? The book does describe him as "uncommonly clever" and "full of energy" and apparently he can speak multiple languages and that's something she might admire. In the episode Nic theorized that they wanted to minimize Reeves' role to avoid accent problems, but that was less of an issue than Mina's actual husband and the original novel's protagonist getting minimized. Even if Dracula and Mina are the real protagonists of this version of the story, Jonathan is underdeveloped even as one of two romantic choices for Mina, let alone a major character. Better a character with a badly-done accent than no character at all.

*What's with Van Helsing getting so excited that Lucy is getting victimized by a vampire? At one point he tells Quincy Morris (Billy Campbell) that Lucy is going to become "a bitch of the devil" and starts humping his leg. Remember, dear reader, that Quincy is one of three men vying to be Lucy's husband. Quincy is right to call him "a sick old buzzard." Hopkins is appropriately zany, but jeez. Someone theorized that he's excited that he's been proven right that vampires exist, but this is at the price of Lucy's safety and ultimately life. There's feeling vindicated and then there's being an ass. Are we supposed to like him?

*The film strongly implies that the historical Vlad's crimes were after he became a vampire, as a consequence of his rage against God. I'd thought that his realization that Elisabeta was not in Hell (because she's been reincarnated as Mina or her soul has somehow become attached to Mina in the present day--never mind that reincarnation is not part of orthodox Christianity, period, and "possessed by the dead" is actually more like the Jewish concept of a dibbuk or ibbur) was making him reconsider his path of destruction. That's what I was referring to when I brought up Calvinism in the episode, although I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about how this would relate to predestination for spoiler reasons. That doesn't seem to be the case here, or at least it's very subtle. Given Dracula's arc in the film, that could have been highlighted more.

*Keanu Reeves' accent is inconsistent. He tries to sound British and sometimes it works, but Ted Logan from the Bill and Ted films comes through quite often. From my understanding, this got mocked a whole heck of a lot when the film came out.

*Sadie Frost doesn't really stick out much as Lucy. Per TVTropes Laura Dern was considered for the part and given her performances in the Jurassic Park films (I don't recall having seen her in anything else), I imagine she'd have been an improvement.

*Dracula was already buying up property in Britain when he noticed how much Jonathan's picture of Mina resembled his dead wife and Renfield--who has no idea Harker has gone to Transylvania--is eagerly awaiting Dracula's coming. So what was he planning on doing in Britain before he got the idea to try to get his hands on Mina?

The Verdict

Much like Blade Runner 2049, a beautiful bore. If you watch it for the acting and visuals, don't forget you have a fast-forward button. 6.5 out of 10.

Missed Opportunities For The Women In FROM DUSK TIL DAWN

As part of our Halloween vampire month, the merry crew of misfits at Myopia Movies decided to do From Dusk Til Dawn, a Quentin Tarantino hybrid of Natural Born Killers and a Mexican vampire movie. Here's the episode itself. The following discussion elaborates on some thoughts I had during the podcast. Spoilers for the canonical film coming...

Although I hadn't seen the movie before, I'd seen some discussion online that made vampire stripper Santanico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek) seem much more important than she turned out to be in the film. At least one person claimed the vampires at the strip club Titty Twister were a matriarchal society that preys on the vices of men, the television series based on the film develops this whole mythology about the vampires and other evil supernatural forces, and Pandemonium herself even had a prequel movie dedicated to her origin. However, Pandemonium and the other major vampire characters get killed off three-fourths of the way through the movie and the rest of the film consists of the surviving humans trying to survive against the zombie-horde of vampire reinforcements gathered outside.

Meanwhile, although we see preacher's daughter Kate Fuller (Juliette Lewis) grow from being this nice, timid girl who can't bring herself to stake a corpse to being a hard-core vampire fighter willing to kill her vampirized adopted brother Scott (Ernest Liu), the film ends with her out of nowhere asking to stay with the other survivor, bank robber Seth Gecko (George Clooney) in Mexico. To his credit, he turns her down, saying he's not that bad, and flat-out tells her to go home. He goes off to retirement in El Rey with the proceeds from his last robbery, while it's implied Kate takes the money that Seth gives her and returns to the United States in the family RV.

Put these two together and there's some serious missed opportunities for both Santanico and Kate.

*Kate and Scott are on a road trip with their father Jacob (Harvey Keitel), a pastor who is losing his faith after the prolonged and ugly death of his wife in a car accident. Although Kate does love her father and brother, she's also a teenage girl who's realistically going to want more independence from her family. This would especially be the case if her father and brother default to relying on her to fulfill her late mother's responsibilities. We see her going swimming by herself at the hotel pool rather than hanging out with the folks and perhaps we could throw in that she really doesn't want to be on the trip in the first place. If we see friction before the Fullers get taken hostage by the Gecko brothers, well, that's a thread that can be followed.

*Seth's brother Richie (Quentin Tarantino), who broke him out of prison before the story begins, is mentally unstable and sexually perverse. He kills several people unnecessarily, rapes a bank teller he and his brother had taken hostage before killing her, and he clearly lusts after Kate. He hallucinates that she'd propositioned him and later he leers at her (particularly her feet). Seth uses the possibility he might try to rape Kate to intimidate her father, but he has enough moral sense that when Jacob tells him that he'll kill Richie if he touches Kate, Seth's response is "fair enough." Kate manages to deflect an early attempt by Richie to perv on her, but she has to be aware he's dangerous beyond the fact he's a twitchy kidnapper. Even though she likely doesn't know about the bank teller, the man reeks of creepy.

*Kate's alienation from her family can be combined with improving Santanico's role if, rather than being killed by Seth during the vampires' opening attack that kills most of the Titty Twister's patrons and all but a few of the original vampires, Santanico leads the survivors in a retreat deeper into the club (which the credits reveal is actually the top of an enormous Aztec-style temple). The vampire reinforcements massing outside break in earlier, forcing the human survivors to retreat in the same direction. Santanico, seeing Kate as the lone woman among the survivors, tries to cultivate her as a traitor. At this point Richie is dead, but since she knew he was Seth's brother (got his memories by drinking his blood?), she might know about his creeping on Kate. 

She could use this as a lever to get her to betray the others and join Santanico's matriarchal vampire society that preys on immoral men rather than living in fear of them. Christopher Moore's vampire trilogy, although it's primarily comic, very seriously touches on the same theme with the character Jody. She comes to enjoy being a vampire because she realizes that as a woman she'd lived in a low-level state of fear her entire life before becoming a vampire--now she can effortlessly annihilate any man who bothers her. Although Kate is too nice and too Christian (despite his perversity, she warns Richie about an attacking vampire and later uses her cross necklace to kill another) to fall for it, she might be tempted. This would especially be the case if the human survivors include another male character who'd behaved sexually aggressively toward her. Per TVTropes in the television version the sleazy Sex Machine (Tom Savini) hit on her, so he might be an option.

(To get this to work, the film would have to depict those killed by vampires as staying dead rather than rising again as new vampires as the canonical film does. Perhaps only Santanico, being the vampire queen, can make new vampires. You could also emphasize the Christ-perverting nature of the vampires by emphasizing becoming a vampire as a parody of Communion--like in Interview With A Vampire, "drink from me and live forever." As a Christian, Kate might take particular offense at that.)

*Although she might have offered to join Seth in Mexico because her whole family is dead and she's vulnerable in a foreign country without a strong protector (when the Geckos bring the Fullers into the club, the comically-gross hype man says some very ungentlemanly things), as I said earlier that came out of nowhere. It would make more sense if she had some idea--even if it's a completely wrongheaded one--that Seth would be interested in having her around. That Kate has any friendly feeling toward Seth could be chalked up to Stockholm Syndrome (he's a gentleman in comparison to his sicko brother and has some, in TVTropes terms, Pet The Dog moments), his notion that vampires existing means there must be a God and therefore her father has spiritual power as a preacher she might interpret as a conversion to (or at least interest in) Christianity, the two are the last ones standing against the vampires, and she might further sympathize with him upon seeing the demonic Santanico's infamous threat to enslave him, but what's going on with Seth?

*Well here's an idea. When Santanico threatens to enslave Seth and make him "lick the dog shit from my boot heel," his response in the canonical film is to tell her he's been married before. Perhaps he has a daughter Kate's age and when Richie starts getting pervy, he tells Richie that he wouldn't act that way toward his niece (Seth's daughter) and shouldn't act that way toward Kate. Given how Seth had been in prison for years before Richie broke him out (and was likely divorced before that, given how he compares marriage to slavery), he probably hasn't seen his daughter in some time and might start using Kate as a substitute.

(Per the almighty TVTropes, in the TV series when Kate tells her father that Sex Machine hit on her, Seth pulls a gun on him as well. I would expect a father to be protective of his daughter, but why does a career criminal like Seth care?)

This could especially apply once Jacob is vampirized, since now her actual father is out of the way. Psychologically there's also something called Lima Syndrome, where a captor starts to feel sorry for their prisoner and that can be a factor too. The fact the robbers and the hostages both have a common enemy in the vampires likely helps.

*This all comes to a head in the final battle where the humans realize dawn is near and try to make a break for the exit, fighting both the vampires between them and the sun and a counterattack by Santanico and her minions. One by one the human survivors fall until only Seth and Kate are left to face Santanico and the last vampires. Santanico makes another recruitment pitch aimed at Kate, who when faced with the alternative of simply being killed, is tempted again, but it's Seth who convinces her it's better to die fighting. Then Seth's criminal friend Carlos arrives, smashing open the doors and frying the vampires en masse with the sun. Santanico, stronger than her minions, manages to make one last attack on Kate and Seth, but together they finish her off and meet with Carlos in the parking lot. After all this, it makes a lot more sense that Kate would want to stay with Seth, but Seth knows how bad an idea this is and sends her home.

If you liked what you just read, check out the Patreon feed. That way you'll have access to a bunch of newsletter featuring my ideas on how I would have done many Myopia films.

More Successful Sassanid Persia? Rome Restored From Gaul? Check out "The Darling Of The World"

One of the causes for the decline and fall of the (Western) Roman Empire is the revival of the old enemy Persia under the vigorous Sassanid dynasty. This gave Rome a major military threat to the east at the same time the Germanic tribes were growing larger and more organized and the weaknesses of the Roman imperial system (namely how the armies could make emperors in the provinces) were becoming apparent. However, although the Sassanids could hurt the Romans, their richest province Mesopotamia and their capital Ctesiphon were close to Roman Palestine and Anatolia and so the Sassanids got the worst of it more often than not. And it was the Romans that ultimately survived in Constantinople while the Arabs overran Persia.

But here's an alternative timeline "The Darling of the World: A Persian TL." This time around, the Sassanids do even better, something that combined with the Crisis of the Third Century has the following effects...

*The combination of the betrayal of the Romans by the precursor to the Palmyrene Empire after a series of Sassanid successes deprives Rome of the riches of the East, especially Egypt's grain supply. This in turn leads to a series of usurpations at the same time as the Plague of Cyprian. Taking advantage of the weakening of Rome, the Goths push through the borders earlier than in real history and establish a new kingdom in the Balkans, putting the boot in on the Romans when someone manages to raise an army to contest them. And then the Alemanni invade Italy itself...

*China is reunited after the fall of the Han by the Wu Dynasty rather than the later Sui. The Wu implement the imperial examination system much earlier than in real history and expand into Central Asia much like the later Tang.

*Although the timeline is meant to showcase a more successful Sassanid dynasty, the Persians' various political problems--too many squabbling princes, a powerful nobility, etc. The Persian emperors who crippled their Roman rivals don't have long to enjoy their victory before they start fighting among themselves over the spoils. And the Palmyrenes who helped the Sassanids bring the Romans low start thinking they deserve more.

*Even though Rome itself falls much earlier than in real history, one of real history's breakaway states--the Gallic Empire--manages to hold the Rhine and rides out the storm. Not only that, but they have the loyalties of Britain and Spain. With the armies and resources of these realms, they're able to (eventually) launch a reconquest of Italy, like a western Justinian centuries earlier.

*Ethiopia becomes the world's first Christian state.

Although the author hasn't updated it since late July (a little over two weeks at the time of this writing), there's still plenty of stuff to chew on in the meantime.

Guest Post: The Last Egyptian, A Black Comedy Set In Late Roman Egypt

Got another guest post from Luis "Lou" Salcedo, he who wrote the earlier synopsis for a Seth Rogen comedy set during the reign of Justinian. Now he's decided to write a black comedy set in late Roman Egypt. Behold...

The Last Egyptian

Since there are sparingly few notable movies on Roman Egypt, besides Agora (2009), I had a fleeting thought for an A24-style black comedy-drama. The Last Egyptian would be a satirical black comedy starring Rami Malek as Flavius Onuphrius, a mid 5th Century Roman officer from Egypt who comes home after years serving the Empire abroad.

Flavius Onuphrius (Rami Malek) serves under Magister Arnegisclus (Mads Mikkelsen), leading a detachment of the Emperor's Palatines. Onuphrius scouts ahead and is ambushed in a skirmish. Onuphrius and a select few return to Arnegisclus, who decides that it's time to take the battle to Attila (Fabio Ide). On the following day, the Romans meet the Huns at the river Utus.

Arnegisclus' army is wiped out. Onuphrius is shot in the eye and left for dead, witnessing Arnegisclus and his fellow soldiers get cut down one by one. Fade to black. Onuphrius is discovered by Prefect Constantinus (Mark Ruffalo) and made to report his findings to Emperor Theodosius (Chris Sarandon) and he faints from shell shock.

Onuphrius finds himself in the imperial infirmary and receives word from the doctor (Hank Azaria) that he's been dismissed unceremoniously from service. No pension or land, especially since we're talking a millennia and some change prior to OSHA. He finds out that his long term partner, the actress Eudoxia (Dasha Nekrasova) had left him for senator Liberius Babylas (Rob Lowe).

Onuphrius gets a letter from his father informing that his mother had passed away and he would want him to come visit Syene (modern day Aswan) to give respect to her gravesite. Having nothing better to do, he decides that it's time to come home.

In Syene, Onuphrius reunites with his baby sister Kattrin (Yara Shahidi), a Rupi Kaur-esque poet/scribe and his elder sister Lucra (Hannah Simone) who's married to Isidorus (Dominic Rains), a bandit leader who seeks to drive out the Romans. Onuphrius' father Pamoun (Bassem Youssef) is the priest to Isis. He guilt-trips his son into helping him maintain the temple as his youngest brother Shenoute (Mena Massoud) converted to Christianity and is now a deacon in the newly constructed church.

As the weeks turn into months, Onuphrius' assistance turns into being a participant in Pamoun's schemes, chiefly trying to accuse the newly appointed priest Hormisdas (David Chokachi) of being a proto-Pizzagate guy grooming young men and women to serving a foreign god and being responsible for the climate change, barbarian invasions, etc. All these accusations fall flat and the temple continues to fall into disrepair as more people visit the church.

Onuphrius starts a relationship with Sophia (Lucy Boynton), a down to earth baker. He confides that he wants to run away from everything, ever since his father would spend more time worshiping Isis than raising him. Sophia suggests that he tries to rebuild that connection.

The relationship between Onuphrius and his father is slowly rebuilt and he gains more enthusiasm participating in his father's crazy, hare-brained schemes, seeing it as making up for lost time. Onuphrius suggests using Isidorus and his bandits to ransack the church. The bandits do so but this only angers the town. The temple of Isis, also Onuphrius' mother's burial place, is burned to the ground by a mob.

Onuphrius and his family, including a saddened Shenoute watches the temple's destruction from a distance. Pamoun mourns the temple, seeing it as an extension of his devotion to his wife. Onuphrius points out that while the temple's destruction is a loss, the family's shared memory of the mother, the temple and conspiring together made them a much stronger family.

CAST

Flavius Onuphrius - Rami Malek
Pamoun - Bassam Youssef
Sophia - Lucy Boynton
Kattrin - Yara Shahidi
Shenoute - Mena Massoud
Lucra - Hannah Simone
Hormisdas - David Chokachi
Liberius Babylas - Rob Lowe
Isidorus - Dominic Rains
Arnegisclus - Mads Mikkelsen
Constantinus - Mark Ruffalo
Byzantine Doctor - Hank Azaria
Emperor Theodosius - Chris Sarandon
Attila - Fabio Ide

A Hungarian Byzantine Dynasty? Venetian Revival? Italy (Mostly) United in 1848?

Although I'm still self-banned from the alternate-history forum and have no inclination to go back (cutting down on Twitter usage to free up time and avoid social media anger fatigue as well), I still drop in on the public forums. The pre-1900 section has some fun stuff lately.

A History of the Oungrikos Dynasty of Roman Emperors: The Six Emperors – 1180 to 1330-My first professional publication was an article in a military history magazine on the Battle of Manzikert, so the Byzantines during their early decline (after Manzikert, before the Fourth Crusade) is a period of particular interest. Apparently there was an episode of Byzantine history in which seemed a dynastic union of the Byzantine Empire and the kingdom of Hungary was possible--sometime last year someone wrote a timeline called "The Turul on the Bosporus" that covers the same ground (and has a more entertaining narrative besides). In this version, the personal union allows for a revival of Byzantine fortunes in Anatolia and a formal alliance with the Mongol Ilkhanate, which benefits my favorite maybe-heretical Christian branch the Nestorian Church of the East.

(They established the first large-scale presence of Christians in China under the Tang Dynasty, a Japanese Nestorian may have been the inspiration for the alleged grave of Jesus in Japan, and the Mongol ruler Sartaq Khan was either Nestorian or Orthodox.)

The Lion of St. Mark: Venice and the Morean War-The divergence from our history seems to be the early death of Louis XIV, who in real life died in 1715 but in this timeline dies in 1683. This in turn affects The Great Turkish War and leads to a very different Louis XV--the Sun King's adult son, not his real-life grandson. I think the overall "point" of the timeline is that the decline of Venice is averted and its Mediterranean empire continues. I once read a book called City of Fortune about the medieval Venetian republic and although they were oftentimes very unpleasant people (the Fourth Crusade comes to mind, as does their chronic mistreatment of the Greeks under their rule), they were masters of trade and the inspiration for the city-state of Everett in my steampunk novel Battle for the Wastelands.

(Although Grendel, first lord of the Northlands, is the master of the land, Everett controls the sea and thus the majority of the trade with the lands beyond the Iron Desert. They play quite a role in the future of the series.)

The timeline seems to have only just started, but the Hapsburg dynasty of Austria in particular seems to be doing better. No Bourbon dynasty in Spain will also have plenty of effects on Latin America.

Italico Valore - A more successful 1848 revolution in Italy - a TL-The revolutions of 1848 were a major lost opportunity in terms of human freedom, with the kings ultimately suppressing the people and maintaining some form of the monarchical regimes for another generation or so (longer if you count the imperial government in Germany). This time around, the Italians are more decisive and effective when the Austrians are at their weakest and northern Italy is unified in a sort of federal constitutional monarchy, with the son of the Sardinian king as the new king of Sicily. Only Naples remains under the old regime. Side effects include the permanent legal exclusion of the Bonaparte family from power in France, so there's no Second Empire. Good riddance.

How I Would Have Done Ramsey Campbell's THE HUNGRY MOON

A week or two ago, I read British horror author Ramsey Campbell's Lovecraftian tale The Hungry Moon. Although I liked the title and the concept and there were some good moments (like a psychic vision revealing the monstrous Lovecraftian moon god's full back-story), overall I didn't enjoy the book. The American evangelist Godwin Mann came off to me like a massive anti-Christian straw-man, the ending didn't really make a lot of sense, and there was too much psychodrama and not enough otherworldly stuff.

However, it's easy to complain. Like I've done before on this blog with movies like The Last Starfighter, Mortal Kombat, and Priest and on Myopia Movies' Patreon, here are some ideas I had that could improve the book. Warning--here there be spoilers.

*In general, I'd tighten up the cast. There are lots and lots of characters and it's hard to tell them all apart. And so many of them have problems that the story is filled up with their drama rather than focusing on the "American preacher accidentally unleashes a Druidic moon god who now wants nuclear weapons" that brought the story to my attention.

*Ix-nay on how the outside world forgets the town of Moonwell exists. If the events of the story took place on a faster timetable, there'd be no need for it. Furthermore, the fact people in London are forgetting about a town in the Peak District hundreds of miles north raises questions as to just how powerful the moon-god is and whether it even really needs to storm the nearby nuclear base in the first place. Why not just mind-control Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and have her launch one at Moscow?

*Play up the nuclear fears. The placement of U.S. nuclear weapons in Great Britain was a very controversial topic in the 1980s, but other than anti-nuclear protests being mentioned and the danger that the moon god would seize control of nearby nukes in order to effect its revenge on mankind for defeating and imprisoning it, this isn't a big part of the story. It's a massive missed opportunity, especially since the climax of the story involves several characters trying to escape the town to get to the missile base ahead of the moon-god and its minions. Female lead Diana Kramer is already an American working in Britain; in my version, she's the wife or daughter of a soldier on the base who got a job working in the town's British school (perhaps the base's school didn't have any teaching positions but administration knew someone who could get her a work permit) rather than someone who emigrated to Britain on her own. She sees what's going down in Moonwell and owing to her direct connection to the base and greater knowledge of what's there, she knows exactly what could happen if the moon god and its devotees gain access to the nukes.

*Consequently, when the possessed Mann fully manifests as the monstrous moon-god, Diana and her remaining allies (after some are killed by the moon-god or its devotees) rush back to the base to warn them of impending assault by "Mann" and its followers. Meanwhile, the cultists are in hot pursuit and the moon god is tormenting them with psychic visions. The book would then climax with something more like a zombie apocalypse outside the now-warned base's gates but with an extraterrestrial monster as the commander and heavy combatant, rather the rather strange and sedate failed escape sequence and the Deus Ex Machina ending.

*Play up the fears of losing control of one's country more broadly. The British once ruled most of the world, but they lost their empire in the 1950s and 1960s and endured a stagnant 1970s. The defeat of the Argentines in the Falklands War boosted their self-esteem, but at the same time they did receive logistical help from the U.S. The placement of American nukes in Britain--weapons that could be launched at the Soviets and invite retaliation on British soil theoretically without any input from the British themselves--is a particularly extreme symptom of a bigger cause.

To that end, I'd connect the nuclear fears and the semi-villainous Mann. Rather than just randomly showing up, I'd have him associated with the nearby American base in some capacity. Perhaps he's a military chaplain or someone associated with the American Christian Right who pulled strings to travel with some followers to live on the facility and use it as a base for his own evangelical efforts.

(A hanger-on would be better, as a military chaplain has very specific responsibilities and is subject to the chain of command. If the base chaplain is spending all his time having rallies in a nearby town and neglecting his soldiers, his superior officer can put a stop to it. A civilian employee or someone who's associated with the base but nobody can explain how might have more leeway.)

I'd also play up the clash between the more easygoing Anglicans represented by the more liberal-minded local vicar, who protested against the nukes and apparently lost congregants as a result, and the more zealous American preacher and his converts. We do see a little bit of that with the Americans' children bothering British children in the school about the sins they need to confess and Mann's Americans followers willing to work without pay to get teaching positions and making the local school, which already had problems, much more unpleasant, but we could get more theological. Mann could cite Revelation 3:14-22 to claim the Anglican churches are the area are "lukewarm," for example, and that he, being British on his father's side and the son of a celebrity to boot, is particularly qualified to revitalize it. Meanwhile, the older vicar thinks Mann is a combination of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" and too much enthusiasm (Proverbs 19:2 comes to mind) and when he starts trying to interfere with the annual ceremony at the Druids' cave, he's stirring up something that's beyond him. Even from a Christian point of view he might think it's something Mann cannot handle--see the biblical story of the demon the Apostles couldn't drive out or the misadventures of the sons of Sceva.

*I would also tone down Mann. The back-story for him Campbell establishes explains his mentality pretty well--as a result of drug use and sexual abuse at the hands of his British actor father's friends culminating in a suicide attempt, he converts to a very zealous sort of Christianity and then devotes himself to spreading it. And Campbell does avoid the temptation of making him a hypocrite stealing money from the till or sleeping with his secretary--he may be a meddling zealot, but his willingness to confront what he thinks is a demon (the imprisoned moon god in the druids' cave) shows great physical courage (the ropes he uses to rappel into a seemingly bottomless cave could break) and faith that whatever lurks there, his God is stronger. He's an antagonist, but he's not a cliche.

However, although Campbell states that he based him on Billy Graham after seeing him at a crusade in Liverpool, his beliefs and actions (and those his followers undertake in his name) are very out of character for Graham. I have never heard of Graham exhorting his followers to burn "ungodly" books, for example, or engage in subversive and control-freak behavior. Really hard-core fundamentalists objected to Graham's openness toward Catholicism, for example. This Catholic writer agrees with their claims about Graham's ecumenism, although he obviously doesn't think this is a bad thing. The same with this one. And it was the Klan who burned Beatles albums, not Graham or his followers. Graham seemed primarily focused on spreading the core Christian gospel above all else, especially after his association with Richard Nixon burned him so badly.

If Mann is supposed to be an evil (or at least arrogant and bone-headed) version of Graham, once he's possessed by the god he confronts in the cave, it would make more sense for him to have near-continuous rallies--the worshipers' fervor is reviving the moon god to its ancient potency--rather than meddle in the town's affairs overmuch. That would also provide a reason for his followers to persecute those who don't go along--he/it needs as many people fueling it as possible and they're not helping. That way we could still have the confrontation with the local comedian who mocks Mann and the eventual killing of the vicar--"Mann" doesn't want any distractions or rivals for attention.

*Furthermore, although Mann does convert some locals to his way of thinking, the vibe I get is that most of his followers are actually Americans who have moved to Moonwell. I'm not even sure how mass importation of foreigners, even white, English-speaking Christians who won't raise so many hackles, is supposed to work--in order to get a British job visa, an American needs a job offer from a British employer and must meet a bunch of other requirements. And although those are the current rules, Britain in the 1980s was tightening its immigration control, not loosening them. Here's more. If one of the local skeptics complained and was told they had valid tourist visas that would make more sense, but it seems they're living in the town, getting jobs, etc. rather than staying in the local hotel. Tourist visas specifically bar working or drawing on public funds, although the willingness of a couple of Mann's followers to teach for free at the school is a convenient workaround.

It would make much more sense that the majority of his followers are Britons from the town--youth bored with formal Anglicanism, conservatives who objected to the vicar preaching against the nuclear base, people feeling guilty about sins they'd committed (one of his converts is a girl who confesses to stealing from her employer, for example) attracted to the notion of forgiveness, spiritual-seeker types, or bored small-town people just looking for something new and interesting. Rather than leading an army of outsiders, Mann is a charismatic cult leader type who, despite being a foreigner and coming from a religious tradition the villagers find strange, is able to sway most of the people of the town to his side anyway. That would make him more sinister, not less. And the fact the villagers who don't go along with Mann, be they liberal Christians like the vicar or irreligious people, become pariahs so suddenly might crank up the horror even further--it'd be like Jews in early Nazi Germany before the killing starts suddenly finding most of their Gentile friends either don't like them anymore or are afraid to associate with them.

This is how I would have done the book. Obviously I'm not going to try to tread on another author's turf so blatantly by trying to write "Matthew W. Quinn's The Hungry Moon" or something with the serial numbers filed off in a more subtle fashion, nor am I going to write a "How I Would Have Done It" fan-fic like I did for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I don't have the knowledge of 1980s Britain, nor do I have the time with my own things to work on. Still, this was a fun thought exercise. :)

A 1632 War Between the Spanish and Tokugawa Japan?

Although I'm self-banned from the alternate history forum to keep myself from wasting too much time online, I do drop in the public forums to check for interesting new material. Here's one new story, "Reconquista Basara: A 1632 Spanish-Tokugawa War TL."

It diverges from real history in 1632 when Matsakura Shigemasa, a strongly anti-Christian daimyo (Japanese feudal lord) escapes an assassination attempt that might have been ordered by the Shogun due to his misrule and brutalization of the peasantry. Per the Wikipedia article he was planning to launch a maritime invasion of the Spanish colony of Luzon in the Philippines!. Not being dead this time around, he's able to launch the campaign with the assistance of the Dutch, who would welcome the chance to open up another front against the Spanish and don't like the Jesuits much more than he does. Luzon falls, but the Spanish (and the Portuguese, with whom they were in a dynastic union at the time) strike back, landing an army in Japan proper and gaining  support from the Catholic peasants and ronin (masterless samurai), who in real history would soon launch the Shimabara Rebellion.

Some highlights of this timeline include:

*Early modern Japanese expansion outside of the Home Islands, which with the weakening Ming Dynasty in China and the relatively weak European presence elsewhere in Asia would have been something they'd have a strong chance at pulling off. Yes, they failed in real history to conquer Korea the first time, but Korea was a well-organized state backed up by Imperial China. The Philippines are farther away, but the Spanish and their local allies are far weaker on the ground. Although the Shogun knows there's going to be hell to pay for this, the other lords of Japan view Matsakura as a hero and Japan as whole is now in on this for reasons of saving face if nothing else. That in turn has consequences--see below.

*When the Iberians strike back, the Shogunate gets what is coming to it for its mistreatment of Japanese Christians and squeezing of the peasants more generally. Although I have a fairly high tolerance for movie violence, one film I'm not interested in seeing is Silence because based on the trailers it looks like a cavalcade of "Japanese Christians getting tortured and murdered by the Shogun." The near-genocide of Japanese Christians is proof that one can kill an idea (although "hidden Christians" survived here and there until the end of the Shogunate Christianity was effectively obliterated) and the fact that some idiotic modern people view this as some kind of anti-colonial campaign or an attempt to protect traditional Japanese religion from the Inquisition is even more galling. This time around Japanese Catholics might be on "the right side of history" and the Shoguns on the wrong, even though as a Christian I'm inclined to think Judgement Day will see the Church's ultimate vindication.

*This additional front in the worldwide war between the Spanish and the Dutch and the Protestants and Catholics in turn has some major effects in Europe. Although globalization is typically viewed as a modern phenomenon, even then the world was very interconnected--silver from the Americas funded Spain's wars against the Ottomans and Protestants and purchased luxury goods from Asia via the Manila galleon. I'm not going to go into detail for reasons of spoilers.

The last update on the timeline was last Thursday, August 22. I hope the author keeps up the good work.

THE THING IN THE WOODS, The Workers in the Vineyard, and the Cost of Discipleship

Although I don't buy the idea that all art "has a message" or "all art is political," odds are the longer one's book or the deeper its ideas, the more likely it's going to touch on something pertaining to politics, culture, spirituality, morality, etc. even by accident. And art very often reflects its historical-cultural context and the values of its creator. Since I am a Christian, my horror novel The Thing in the Woods does reflect that, in particular the journey of the character Sam Dixon.

The following discussion contains spoilers for Thing, so be ye warned...

Sam, one of the four (human) point of view characters in the book, is a middle-aged veteran of the Persian Gulf War and a member of a cult that has been worshiping an alien horror in the woods outside the small Georgia town of Edington for several centuries. Early in the novel, he begins to question the cult for its murder of a homeless veteran. Later on, he begins to suspect the thing in the woods is not actually a god (after all, an "unethical" deity is still a deity and disobedience will likely have unpleasant consequences, but something lacking in demonstrable supernatural powers might not be), undermining his faith still further. The final straw is when the cult leader sends his enforcer Reed after Sam (ostensibly just to beat him severely rather than kill him), but Reed exceeds his orders, beating Sam's wife and nearly killing Sam himself before another character intervenes. Not long after, Sam explicitly renounces the worship of the monster in the woods and vows to serve "the real Lord."

Sam's story is explicitly based on Jesus' Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, in which a generous landowner pays day laborers a full day's pay whether they worked a full day or only a short time. Per my college pastor, if you were a hired laborer in Roman Judea, if you didn't work a particular day, you didn't eat that day. From a salvation point of view, someone who becomes a Christian later in life is just as "saved" as someone who has served the Lord from childhood. Although many critics of Christianity object to the idea that one can repent of a lifetime of horrible behavior (including theoretically Hitler--the movie Fury features a discussion on this) and still be saved, someone who intends to sin until the last minute and then "repent" and be forgiven is clearly not remorseful and thus isn't really "saved." A person who is aware of this particular doctrine and believes that God will decide their fate in the hereafter clearly believes in God, but he isn't obeying him. As the Apostle James pointed out, even Satan believes in God.

Furthermore, as James put it, true faith produces works. The man who would become Saint Francis of Assisi abandoned his hedonistic lifestyle and crass materialism to become a begging friar, the murderous WWII governor-general of German-occupied Poland Hans Frank voluntarily turned over extensive documentation of the Nazis' crimes that was then used to convict and hang him, serial killer David Berkowitz refused to seek parole for many years (to the point of skipping mandatory parole hearings), admitted he deserved his life sentence, and wanted monies made off him by lawyers and others donated to his victims' families, and the infamous "General Butt Naked" of Liberia testified before the country's war-crimes tribunal and is now a preacher who raises money to rehabilitate child soldiers.

(A more secular example of this is the 1998 American Godzilla film in which the reporter Audrey steals military secrets from her still-infatuated ex for what she hoped would be the scoop of a lifetime, causing him to lose his job. She--and her wacky ethnic comic relief cameraman who along with his wife had encouraged her in her misdeed--follow him into Godzilla's lair and ultimately plays a pivotal role in preventing a mass breakout of Godzilla's offspring that could destroy human civilization. Given how pretty much everybody involved knew the risks, most of them ultimately ended up lizard lunch, and it was Audrey herself who broadcast the "kill us to save humanity" message, "prove your repentance by your deeds" indeed.)

And although American Christianity doesn't emphasize this to the degree it should (*cough* prosperity gospel *cough*), following Jesus has a cost. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote The Cost of Discipleship on this very topic, ultimately died in a concentration camp for his involvement in the German resistance against Hitler. In Thing, Sam assists protagonist James Daly and his not-yet-girlfriend Amber Webb in infiltrating the cult's compound to rescue James' abducted father where, to make a long story short, he ends up getting eaten alive by the monstrosity he'd spent most of his life worshiping. His repentance, although it meant he would go to Heaven rather than Hell, ultimately cost him his life.