Rafi, the Music Major Whovian

It was an okay opening. I played a variation of the london system opening which tends to lead to slow yet interesting positional games.

But then the computer sent a knight back in time, and a few moves later, I realised I could send my own knight back in time to get an enemy bishop.

And that was when chaos ensued.

At first I could keep track of the game ok and felt like I was understanding the rules. But then, some timelines started breaking off the present and staying in the past, becoming unplayable.

I thought this meant I had lost some pieces, especially when two of my queens got stuck in the past.

But then, I somehow managed to reset the whole thing back to the past and then the game picked up some timelines that had gotten broken off, leaving most of the other dimensions in the future.

I got excited as this meant I got back my two queens which were previously stuck in the past.

But a few moves and timelines later, the game seemingly crashed and has been looking for legal turns for the past 20 minutes.

My buddy and I used to sit around and play our own made up wacky variations on chess. Like:

“what if you could move off the board on one side and reappear on the other like an old video game screen?”

or

“okay we’ll put the box lid upright in the middle so we can’t see each other’s side of the board and then set up our pieces any way we want, and then we’ll remove the box lid and start playing”

Of course he’s going to not take anything seriously. Of course he can shoot. The drinking, the skittishness, the recklessness, the sense of ‘keeping your head down’, the scepticism about traditional heroism….

The one with more actual experience of death, carnage and fighting is Jonathan. Not Rick. Not Ardeth Bey. Jonathan.

When Rick says ‘I’ve had worse (situation/odds)’ and Jonathan replies “ Me too”. That’s probably true. 

Drop The Mummy into the real world context and that’s a character who’s going to have seen a lot of his school friends die, along with the myths and tales of heroism they were raised on. Sort of makes the line where Evie’s scolding him for drinking/messing about a lot darker…

Wait a minute. Why is it being assumed that Rick and Ardeth wouldn’t have fought in WWI, as well? Johnathan isn’t that much older than any of them–in fact, there is a good chance that he, Rick, and Ardeth are all of an age. Just because Johnathan’s hair is thinning doesn’t mean he’s a decade older.

It was a LOT easier to lie about your age back in the day. So much easier.

Johnathan is the soldier who fought in WWI and became disillusionsed with pretty much everything except wanting to live (most of the time) and live well–and where is the shame in that? He would have seen some of the darkest shit humanity has to offer, and he kept going. And the thing is, though, archaeological digs at that time were DANGEROUS. Not from curses (usually) but from assholes who would turn up with guns to try and steal anything you discovered. Johnathan never really STOPPED having to deal with dangerous pricks, it was just less dangerous than death raining down from the sky in bomb, bullet, and mustard gas form all the time.

Rick grew up in Egypt as an orphan. What paperwork? He joined the French Foreign Legion, which fought in World War I in some seriously critical battles on the Western Front in Europe. Rick is the soldier who quickly grew disillusioned with everything, but he didn’t know how to stop being a soldier. Johnathan had a career and schooling to fall back on. Rick had guns, the talent of not dying easily, and not much else. When the army finally left him behind because he was literally the only survivor of his last FFL battle, he literally didn’t know what to do. At all. “Looking for a good time” was code for “Please someone give me a fucking purpose.”

Winston: “Is it dangerous?”

Rick: “Well, you probably won’t live through it.”

Winston: “By Jove, do you think so?”

“The Mummy” is set in 1926, so Winston is far too old to have been a pilot in WWI (actor Bernard Fox was 72 at time of filming). He should have been a “young soldier” or more correctly, “young airman” of about Rick or Jonathan’s age.

The script was also a wee bit confused about what he served in…

The British air arm was the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) until 1918, when it became the Royal Air Force (RAF).

His survivor’s guilt and heavy drinking is spot on, though: average aircrew life expectancy was between ten days and three weeks. In “Bloody April” (1917) when superior new German aircraft were introduced before the Allies had anything to match them, average life expectancy dropped to about two days. The RFC lost almost 250 planes during that month, the Imperial German Air Service lost just over 60…

WWI pilots didn’t have parachutes until 1918, and even then Allied pilots NEVER had them: the top brass, who of course didn’t fly, considered they would “impair a pilot’s nerve” to continue fighting.

Pilots who saw combat soon saw the results of that policy when a plane caught fire (gasoline, linen and canvas in a 120 mph draft makes a great barbecue). No parachute left three options: a long jump, a slow roast or the service pistol carried “in case of being forced down in enemy territory”. Seeing that happen, and the thought of experiencing it personally, would make anyone hit the bottle.

The pilot of this German aircraft is having a very bad day final few minutes…

Also, in WWI the only oil that didn’t thicken at altitude was castor oil - it’s where the “Castrol” oil company’s name originated - so aircraft engines were lubricated with that. Breathing the vapour had the same laxative effect as swallowing the stuff, so aircrew fought diarrhoea as well as enemy aircraft, trying to stun their insides with enormous amounts of booze. US ace Eddie Rickenbacker swore by cherry brandy. Pints of it.

Funny thing is that Winston could have been Biggles - not the silly subject of Monty Python skits, but the original character from WWI air-combat stories written for late-adolescents, before they were revised for children with the removal of serious adult elements like alcohol abuse and PTSD.

Biggles in those early stories was like many real-life WWI pilots, a chain-smoking, heavy-drinking young man of about 20, living on his nerves and skating along the edge of a breakdown, whose principal talents were killing the enemy, not being killed himself, and not letting the deaths of his squadron mates affect him. He wasn’t as good at that last one as he thought he was.

Left to right: Major James McCudden, VC, DSO & Bar, MC & Bar, MM, killed in action July 1918, aged 23. Lieutenant Arthur Rhys-Davids DSO, MC & Bar, killed in action October 1917, aged 20. Captain Albert Ball, VC, DSO & Two Bars, MC, killed in action April 1917, aged 20.

The unrevised stories suggest Biggles might well have turned out like Winston. By the time of “The Mummy” he’d have been about 27-28, and looking like this pilot painted by J.C. Leyendecker.

I agree with the probable motivations for age adjustment of the character. Balancing the worldbuilding and the way the audience will most likely relate at the time any given story hits the public eye seems astoundingly challenging.

Its a little unsettling how 1999 feels a world away right now.

Example: Alec Guiness, in 1975, filmed his role with Harrison, Mark, Carrie, & Co. at the tender age of 57. In today’s terms of fifties, he looks like he’s in his late 70s to early 80s.

Peter Cushing, same year, same film: age 62, looked like a healthy and well-groomed modern era mid-to-late 80s.

Here is a sketch wherein I have reconstructed, to the extent I am able, the ancient post format in its natural environment: 

Observe the vertical tendrils: there is something romantic about them, in their symmetry and order, is there not? There is a delicate grace in the bloom of the text to the right, in the visual balance of the reblog hierarchy.