Military Science Fiction & Fantasy Author John Ringo Explains "Why Woke Stories And Characters Suck"
New York Times bestselling military science fiction and fantasy author John Ringo known for his series like Black Tide Rising and the Legacy of the Aldenata explains why “woke stories and characters suck.”
In a post to X, Ringo observes that characters and scenes are based on the author’s personal experiences, “They are melds, exaggerations, direct representations of real people.”
From there he points to J.R.R. Tolkien and his The Lord of the Rings trilogy where he speculates that Samwise Gamgee is based on his batman while he believes Boromir is based on C.S. Lewis.
To his point, Tolkien did indeed admit that Samwise Gamgee was based on his batmen. He wrote in a letter, “My ‘Samwise’ is indeed (as you note) largely a reflection of the English soldier—grafted on the village-boys of early days, the memory of the privates and my batmen that I knew in the 1914 War, and recognized as so far superior to myself.”
From there Ringo also notes that his characters are also heavily influenced by people he’s met, “Think about some of my characters. Pahner comes to mind. This is a person who has their act together to almost insane degree. Stolid in battle. Wise in character. A good mentor and trainer. An absolute stud personally.”
“He's based on a real guy, one of my NCOs in the Army. And he's not far off,” he continues. “ Miles A. Rutherford was NCO of the Army, Infantry Board, Mortar Board, Airborne Board, President's 100 Rifle and Pistol. The guy really was a fantastic trainer, fantastic mentor, stoic to an unbelievable degree and an absolute stud.”
He went on to provide other examples of his characters and noted that his protagonist and heroes “are based upon the best of humanity.”
It’s not just his characters, but it’s also scenes that he draws from his own experience, “Various moments in my books have come from personal experience or from stories told by such people. One scene that comes to mind (two come to think of it) are when Mike O'Neal is caught in an underground current in his suit and the feeling of complete loss of control. The other is when Butch's suit is breached.”
“I've been caught in a current cave diving as well as had air malfunctions and thought I was going to die,” he said. “Been there, done that. I can write it from personal experience. Overcome fear any number of times to complete a mission.”
After sharing all of this, Ringo then asks readers to think about Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Don Lemon, and other woke individuals, “Imagine being a creator SURROUNDED by people like that. Imagine BEING a person like that. Where are they going to get truly heroic, stoic, mature, sane characters? People who work the problem instead of be the problem? People who work the problem until it's fixed or they're dead?”
He then points to the ridiculous scene from Star Trek: Starfleet Academy where one of the cadets admits to swallowing her combadge, “It's probably taken from some incident in their own lives where some idiot swallowed a key or something fiddling around with it nervously. Their friends and acquaintances are the sort of people to suck on something like a child when they're nervous. And stupid and incompetent enough to swallow it. Hell, it might have been the writer themselves. THAT'S TRUE TO LIFE FOR THEM.”
Ringo continued to hammer home this point. These woke shows and creations are because the people making them only know other woke people, “Every character is queer, gay, [expletive] up, because THEY AND ALL THEIR FRIENDS ARE QUEER, GAY, INSANE AND [expletive] UP.”
As for why all the shows feature some kind of lecture, he again stated, “Been around leftists? All the[y] can do is lecture on Marxist critical theory. They can't just [expletive] about 'cabbages and kings' because they are inherently ignorant of anything that they weren't catechized on in college.”
Finally, he concluded, “You cannot take a 'woke' writer and create anything of value. They have no personal experience of value, no role models of value, to draw upon. Same for directors, producers, etc. Since they are surrounded by nothing but [expletive] people, they will always write [expletive]. Woke stories and characters suck because the people involved suck.”
Aside from Ringo’s points, there are some other factors. One of the biggest is the fact that the people making and financing these films were given significant financial rewards for promoting woke ideology to improve their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings. If companies received high ESG scores they were rewarded with a reduction in the cost of capital. Large investment companies like Vanguard and BlackRock were more likely to invest in their company and less likely to divest from them.
Additionally, numerous corporations and their leadership showed extreme cowardice by bowing to woke mobs on social media who threatened to boycott them and try to tarnish their images.
One of the most glaring examples of this came from Sweet Baby Inc. CEO Kim Belair when she appeared at the Game Developers Conference in 2019 and threatened, “If you’re a creative working in AAA, which I did for many, many years, put this stuff up to your higher-ups. And if they don’t see the value in what you’re asking for when you ask for consultants, when you ask for research, go have a coffee with your marketing team and just terrify them with the possibility of what’s going to happen if they don’t give you what you want.”
All of this boils down to the fact that the stories lack virtue. Prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance are nowhere to be found. Additionally, humility, generosity, chastity, patience, piety, true kindness, and diligence are also absent.
Without virtuous stories you get fiction that is hollow and uninspiring. And that is what woke fiction is.
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Everything to them is either a Political Soapbox to signal for Validation and Brownie Points or A therapy session or struggle session to help them through their own issues, problems and inadequencies. They treat all writing drafts, assignments and tasks as a personal journal or diary. These people are unhinged and mentally ill. Everything has to reflect THEIR VIEW or THEIR PERCEIVED WORLD AS THEY WANT IT TO BE. Thats how they reconcile their failures or project their failures onto others to get validation and brownie points from other ill woke people or to help reconcile the fact the world aint what they want it to be so they have to work through their own issues and problems like a dear diary therapy session otherwise they go crazy.
Let's take as an example a typical Horatio Alger story. Poor kid struggles through life, supporting a mom, aunt, kid brother, or just himself. He keeps at it until he rises to a place in the world where he IS somebody. Whatever you might think of this kind of story, it works because there is an arc to the rags to riches concept. If a "woke" writer had tackled this assignment, she (I'm assuming most of this crap is churned out by disgruntled women), would have spent the entire book/movie/episode "proving" how unfair the world is because implying her "poor" protagonist had any growing to do in it would be tantamount to admitting he was the "problem." What might have been an interesting story becomes a "woke" screed against the Mammon-worshipping world, as if all that was needed for the protagonist to live his best life was for the "bad guys" to give him respect, position, wealth, even dignity.