fucking headmates can't agree on a blog title

THERE’S A TIMESKIP

THERE’S A TIMESKIP

THERE’S A TIMESKIP

after losing control of the signal fire there’s a FUCKING TIMESKIP and when the next chapter starts everyone’s hair is several inches longer and their clothes have rotted to shreds and they’re still just kind of chilling!!!!

IT TAKES THE TERRIBLE IMPERIALISM MIND-POISONED EXCESSIVELY BRITISH BOYS IN THE ACTUAL BOOK SEVERAL MONTHS TO COMMIT A SINGLE ACT OF INTENTIONAL VIOLENCE, EVEN THE ONE (1) CHILD WRITTEN AS AN ACTUAL SOCIOPATH

AND then when they DO turn on each other it is because

THERE’S AN UNSPECIFIED WORLD WAR HAPPENING

AND A PILOT’S CORPSE CRASH LANDS ON THE ISLAND POST-DOGFIGHT AND THE CHILDREN MISTAKE THE PARACHUTE FOR A MONSTER AND SPIRAL INTO PARANOIA

BECAUSE CHILDREN INHERIT THE LEGACY AND TRAUMA OF VIOLENCE FROM THE ADULTS WAGING WAR AROUND THEM

HURR DURR IN THE REAL WORLD IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN LIKE IN LORD OF THE FLIES -

yes. yes he did. i’m also gonna direct you to the real life ‘lord of the flies’ which occured in the 1960s, when six tongan schoolboys got stranded on a desert island for over a year before being rescued by an australian fisherman (who, it should be noted, later took on all six as crewmembers because the reason they were out in the first place was because they wanted to see the world, and named his ship the Ata after the island they were stranded on). nobody died. the only injuries that occurred were accidental, and when one of the boys broke his leg falling down a cliff, the others braced it and looked after him so well that it healed perfectly. if they argued, then they would literally go to opposite sides of the island until they’d cooled off. after leaving the island, they remained friends for the rest of their lives. here’s a photo of them as adults, with their rescuer (who is third from the left) and other members of his crew.

the results are in

Okay so basically this all started in 10th grade when my English teacher (idk if this context is needed but she grew up in Yugoslavia in the ‘80s before moving to the US as a teen and she has a VERY thick accent. She’s about 6’4” and has huge black hair that sticks out all around her head. She’s the human embodiment of a corvid bird. Truly such a fascinating person) anyway she was talking about Lord of the Flies in class and mentioned that a few years ago some students of hers tried to convince her that the book couldn’t have taken place during WWII and that she didn’t believe them because “there have been no atomic bombs except during World War Two” and an atomic bomb is referenced as the inciting factor for why the boys were flying over a deserted island in the first place.

But the thing is, if you actually look at all the throwaway historical context details in the book, there is no logical way that it could have taken place in WWII. I realized that all clues point towards an alternate timeline where the Cold War turned hot. About halfway through the book I started bookmarking any scrap of information related the time period and it was getting to the point where each chapter took me twice as long to read because I would continually need to check various articles and Wikipedia pages to cross reference.

Eventually, I ended up writing a 5 -page paper picking the book apart for details which you can read here but I’ll also give you the individual points (a mixture of historical details and borderline headcanon):

Early on in the book, the boys mention that there are probably maps in “the Queen’s library” that show where they are—this was one of the first things that stuck out to me, as Elizabeth II didn’t become Queen until 1952, and WWII ended in 1945

Ralph mentions watching something on television at home. His dad, although a naval officer, would almost certainly not be able to afford a TV in 1945, BUT televisions were already popularized around the time of Lizzy 2’s coronation (or at the very earliest the 1948 London Olympics) and it’s believable that Ralph could have had one at home. There’s also some mentions around space travel/putting a man on Mars that would make more sense during the Cold War

I found Piggy’s character to be very interesting. For one thing, he’s introduced  as being fat due to his Aunt owning a candy store (his parents are both dead). If you know anything about the sugar ration during WWII, you’d know that candy stores would have been non-operational and Piggy would probably not have had access to an excess of sweets.

Continuing with Piggy, I’d place his distinctive accent as either London Cockney or London Estuary. If Piggy was from London, he would have been evacuated to the British countryside via train (the same evacuations in which the Pevensies stay with their uncle in Narnia) long before the dropping of the atomic bombs. Here’s where the headcanon comes in: I’d be willing to bet that Piggy was evacuated to the countryside as a baby during WWII and both his parents were among the 27,000 killed in the London Blitz, hence why he now lives with his aunt. By assuming the years leading up to the book are peacetime instead of wartime, there’s no issue around the candy store.

And finally, the most compelling argument imo…WHY WOULD BRITISH BOYS BE EVACUATED AFTER VE DAY??? In the book, it’s very clear that the LOTF boys are being evacuated from their boarding school after an atomic bomb was dropped. Victory in Europe was May 8th, 1945. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. In what world would British boys be evacuated by a plane traveling over tropical airspace (historically child evacuations in the UK were domestic and carried out by train) to protect them from a bomb dropped in Japan four months after the end of the war in Europe?? The only plausible explanation would be that the USSR dropped a bomb on an Allied power and the boys are being evacuated from Briton all together to avoid nuclear fallout and/or future bombings.

Final note, at one point the boys consider building a new plane and decide against the idea because they “might get shot down by the Reds” even though the soviets were literally allies with Britain during WWII. Do you know when they most certainly weren’t allies? The Cold War.

Anyway, I end up giving her this essay which she reads and then promptly says “these are all very interesting points, but there was STILL no nuclear bomb besides the ones dropped on Japan in World War 2” and I’m like “Yes!! I know this!! And I’m saying it’s an alternate future!!” But she never really seemed to understand what I was saying.

Anyway a few weeks ago I was at my job (I’ve been working IT some summers at my high school after I graduated) and I ran into her and she says “I was going through my desk and I found that essay you wrote on LOTF! I read it again and it was a really good argument piece, especially for a 10th grader.”

So of course I ask her “oh really? Well, were you finally convinced?”

And she basically says “it was good…but no :)  <3”

started out with basically a christian rock concert. which was fun and energetic, and if that had been the whole of the service i would have said "cool! i have learned a new way that people can feel the spirit!" but of course the point is to warm the audience up for the actual main event. oh and i should note that throughout this concert (and indeed throughout the whole event) all the screens had the evangelist's name and face plastered on them

after that the evangelist himself emerged, with huge fanfare. he did a bit of speaking in tongues (apparently evangelists actually do that and it's not a joke comedians made up??????) and encouraging everyone else to pray vocally and loudly. which most people around me did, and which would have been another neat thing in a vacuum

then he started actually talking and hoooo boy. at the beginning–for my roommate's sake–i wanted to give this guy the benefit of the doubt and try to interpret him as if he really believed what he was selling. but it was just painfully clear that he's a grifter. not only was he extremely proud of his newfound (at least, newfound according to him) wealth and popularity, but he was very explicit that his audience should consider his wealth and popularity proof that he was chosen by god. (as a thought exercise, let's all pause and think of a time in the scriptures that a prophet was wealthy and popular. yeah i can't think of any either)

here's some specific things he preached, and my reactions:

"if you are just here to test the waters then there's nothing for you here. you have to commit 100% or else you're a skeptic who will never feel the light of god" -> definitely a normal, not-a-cult thing to start your sermon with, and also coincidentally the opposite of what my roommate told me when he was convincing me to come to this

"you can tell prosperity gospel is real because look at this one time in the scriptures where everyone in the church shared all their wealth and property with one another and there were no poor among them" -> that sounds less like a passage preaching the success of prosperity gospel and more like a passage preaching the success of communism. but it was clear this was the best he could do because most of the scriptural passages about wealth are about how rich people don't go to heaven

"people who say prosperity gospel is a myth are just lazy salty losers who are blaming their personal shortcomings on god" -> the first, but far from the last, instance of name-calling in this sermon. cause that's a thing prophets are known for. name-calling

"a major and valid reason for believing in god is for financial success. you can tell this is true because nobody prays for god to take their wealth away" -> i could make a snarky remark about false equivalences but it was at this point it struck me that a lot of people in this room with me were probably in desperate financial circumstances searching for a miracle and instead being asked to give what little they had to an already rich guy

"next month i am going to the great monolith of sin that is california and set the city of los angeles on fire with the light of god" -> wow great metaphor dude. i'm sure jesus loves being compared to a natural disaster that ruins innocent people's lives. and speaking of innocent people, i happen to have met a few californians in my life and they don't strike me as a legion of satan idk could just be me

"when i go to los angeles i have permission to say whatever i want and you can bet i will be speaking about lgbt and gender ideology" -> at this point i became extremely aware of the fact that the dozens of people crowding me were all in a heightened emotional state and hanging on to this guy's every word. and since i didn't trust myself not to talk back when this guy came around to our row i figured i would rather bail out now and miss the healing than stick around and risk actually getting hurt

so yeah, i didn't get to see the evangelist really "healing" people, much to my roommate's disappointment. he still thinks that if i'd seen the guy do some miracles then i'd be more convinced my him, and as a christian skeptic i have two responses to that:

the christian's answer: i've spent my life building a picture of what god looks like, what faith looks like. there is no place in that tapestry for a prophet resembling this evangelist. if i was to believe that this guy was a real prophet of god, i would be, in a sense, abandoning my own god. (i told my roommate a softer version of this, essentially "this isn't the sort of worship i've come to appreciate")

the skeptic's answer: big, high-energy, high-emotion events can evoke an altered state of being in people. if you've ever let yourself go wild at a concert then you've experienced this! this state of being feels good. you feel energetic, you feel happy, and any pain or fatigue you were feeling beforehand is probably lessened. this a normal and neat thing that happens to people, and unfortunately "faith healers" use it to convince you that their godly power has resolved whatever ailments might have caused that pain and fatigue. you're not healed, but you're feeling better long enough to proclaim the faith healer's power to everyone else in the room and pull them even further into that heightened physical state. and no, this state is not a direct manifestation of god's power, because it if is then that means god is giving his stamp of approval onto all kinds of wildly contradictory messages. you could argue that this state can be caused by the spirit, but it isn't proof of the spirit. you need to use a little more critical thinking of your own to figure out what the spirit is actually trying to tell you

prosperity gospel has combined with several other beliefs such as the belief that prayer can lessen suffering into a horrible amalgamation that ruined lives.

prosperity gospel, is, arguably, the source of and sourced by victorian-era classism that still has effects today, hidden in common phrases heard everywhere like "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" (basically a non-theistic version of "pray harder and you'll be rewarded") and "don't give homeless people money, they'll just buy alcohol" (do """immoral""" acts).

the most horrifying effect it's had is on health. prosperity gospel was originally equal parts based in money and health, cemented in religion by 1950s faith healers.

prosperity gospel is the reason people don't get vaccines, because "jesus will protect them".

prosperity gospel is the reason kids with chronic illness don't get treated, because they're told to either pray harder or the parents assume they've "sinned" in some way.

prosperity gospel is the reason my dad and hundreds of other missionaries, when they were forced to go home early due to health problems, are told they must have not prayed hard enough.

PROSPERITY GOSPEL IS THE REASON UTAH'S GOVERNOR TOLD US TO PRAY FOR RAIN INSTEAD OF IMPLEMENTING PROPER WATER CONSERVING MEASURES !!!

it's genuinely the worst and it's so foundational in society

This question is for all plurals and systems.