“Hey there, pilgrim. Welcome to the world of the Real Man.[1. Photo by Saman Rashidi on Unsplash.] We’re hard-livin’, hard-drinkin’, gray-area kinds of scallywags. We ride fast horses an’ drive faster cars. We got eleventeen girlfriends and one on the side. Sometimes we even shoot folk with guns and abandon our families and never cry or get diseases and we don’t ask folks nicely for nothin’. Ya wanna know why? It’s cuz we’s Real Men.” And now, inspired by Nancy R. Pearcey’s new book The Toxic War on Masculinity, we shall compare this notion of the “Real Man” with the good men in fantastical stories, and especially the best Hero of all.

middle grade • teens + YA • adults • onscreen • author resources • gifts • guild

I’m writing this as both a Christian and as a fan of things many mainstream churches easily frown upon, including J.K. Rowling. When I tell people what I love to read and do, I don’t give trigger warnings or nuances for why I enjoy them, so I don’t explain how I can enjoy the fiction of someone with clearly opposing political views than my own (otherwise, what I’ve read would be down to perhaps a third, and I’ve read over 800 books so far). If someone writes a good story, I’m reading them.

With that said, anti-Rowling trolls are hilarious in how they rant and rave about how she’s anything but humane, but fail to provide one single tweet where she’s shown actual hatred against any community. They themselves show to have less tolerance than most street preachers I encounter, easily more hypocritical than the churches they rail and cry against. The usual response I get is either a general “It’s all over her Twitter/X feed” or get blocked.

What if sixteen-year-old Alice fell into that famed rabbit hole and discovered Wonderland is actually a dystopian world—where you need to survive the annual and deadly Wonderland Trials and then confront The Looking-Glass Illusion? Sara Ella, author of these two dark-whimsical fantasy adventures, joins Lorehaven to explore how fictional stories reflect curious realities.