I love this scene so fucking much.....it really has everything!! Bill giving embarrassing big brother vibes, Babe blushing and looking so cute being all bashful, Bull and Johnny's off the charts dad energy, James McAvoy looking like THAT, Web being included in the conversation, Tab in the back flirting...it's giving so much!
Also the lore it provides...most of the wives don't even get namechecked, but here we are, learning about Babe's failed romance with this woman...
having (lengthy) thoughts about mental health & religion while writing the final chapter for my baberoe WIP hungry work
In short: reflections about the serenity prayer in the context of ww2, trauma and grief, contains spoilers/musings for Hungry Work and a potential post-war sequel.
Hungry work has overt religious themes, the most prominent ones being religious homophobia (especially in the beginning) and loss of/struggle with faith over the course of the war, because I've been obsessed by how Gene's prayer (the peace prayer of st. francis) informs his character and gives some insight into his otherwise opaque inside life.
I've spent weeks researching other prayers that would fit the narrative arc of Gene relating to his faith, from being deeply entrenched in it & drawing strength from it, to struggling/breaking with it through some of his lowest points to finding his way back to it, because I could not see him completely abandoning the church or god.
Imagine my anguish when I found that one of the most well-known prayers of all time, the serenity prayer, was the one I resonated the most with for this fic, because it's like the hallmark card / live laugh love poem that everyone has stuck on their walls....
Turns out, it was created around the time of the 2. world war (by Reinhold Niebuhr, a german-american theologist), and distributed to soldiers and army clergy via prayer books & cards around 1944, which made it too perfect not to include it in my fic.
I'll put the full text here so I can dissect it:
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things
I cannot change,
Courage to change the
things I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardship as the
pathway to peace.
Taking, as He did, this
sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it.
Trusting that He will make
all things right if I
surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy
in this life, and supremely
happy with Him forever in
the next.
Amen
To start with, I the first part is arguably the most well-known one, since it has been, among others, been adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous, and for good reason too.
It touches on the concept of acceptance, which is repeated throughout the poem. ("accept the things I cannot change", "Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace", "Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is").
Acceptance is a concept that comes up in mindfulness practice and certain modern therapy concepts such as ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy), and has helped me profoundly in dealing with my personal mental health struggles, which maybe explains why I am vibing with that prayer so much.
Bc this is already turning into an essay anyway, have a quote about it:
Acceptance methods enhance patients’ experiential acceptance, defined as having or allowing private events (including painful ones) free of attempts at regulation —in other words, allowing things to be experienced without needing to change them or push them away. (Goldberg et al. (2023))
Reading the real veteran's interviews, one stuck out to me in particular concerning this concept, it's by Don Malarkey about the experience he had meeting Richard Speight Jr. who played Skip Muck:
"Richard became a great support for me, this kid half a century younger than me. Never made me feel like some sentimental old fool. Told me he understood my emotions. Said it was OK, that I was emotional because Skip and I had meant so much to each other and that was a good thing, not a bad thing. That meant the world to me." (Don Malarkey, Easy Company Soldier)
I think this quote shows how much many veterans would have benefitted from a society that allows them to own and accept their feelings of grief, pain and loss, instead of denying them. And while I don't think mindfulness practice is enough to seriously treat clinical PTSD, I think some of the core concepts would have been incredibly helpful to reduce some of their suffering - and I'm sure a number of veterans did benefit from these concepts, without putting the name to it. While most modern mindfulness practice is adapted from non-western spirituality, I think it's significant that the same sentiments are reflected in Christian Prayers as well.
Why is that significant? Well, throughout and up to the end of my fic, Gene is going through it, he's struggling severely with what he has experienced and I don't see myself writing an ending that glosses over that - instead of a happy ending, I want a hopeful one, and the fact that this prayer existed at that time, in that context, and was distributed to soldiers is exactly what I needed for that to make sense narratively.
Because how does someone cope with all of that in a healthy way? And more importantly, how would someone at the time, with access to resources they did at that moment, get the right idea about what might help them suffer less? There's no way to include modern therapy speak into a ww2 fanfiction without breaking character, so to speak.
The answer, of course, lies in religion. I think many people turned to religion for comfort during & after the war, especially those that were religious beforehand. Since it's already established in canon that Gene turns to the peace prayer of st francis for comfort and guidance, I think it's not a leap to assume he would be able to draw strength from the serenity prayer as well (especially considering it did not have the same connotations and notoriety at the time as it does now).
There's one part in particular that lends itself to exploring how one could approach that, namely "Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time;" - this is something Gene has been doing in the fic, in part, by enjoying his time with Babe, and it's how he's kept himself together enough so he doesn't get discharged.
So this is what has been floating around in my head for a post-war fic that gives his struggle justice without being a complete downer - I want to explore him finding joy in his life after the war, of finding the things that bring him comfort and relief, even while he struggles with what he's seen.
So I think the goal for Gene is, to quote that prayer again, to try and find a way to "be reasonably happy in this life" - which will include, of course, finding ways to be with Babe despite all the obstacles of that time, but also find things that are just for himself, and trying to live each day instead of incessantly worrying.
Not that I am thinking of starting another WIP right now (😭) but hear me out....Baberoe stalker AU?!
Can't stop thinking about the way Gene keeps following Babe around and staring at him in Bastogne, and I think it would be actually so sexy of him if he was a little bit (a lot) problematic and boundary-overstepping and too intense and go too far. Also I want Babe to be sooo not normal about it. Maybe even get off on Gene stalking him. Play into the fantasy.
