chronicbookworm - Tumblr blog

[chronicbookworm]

One of my previous bosses, the Archivist for the State of -redacted for privacy-, had one of these (or very very similar prototype format) that he kept in his briefcase.

Whenever someone in a meeting would say something along the lines of “we don’t need to worry about that/budget money for that/do that, everything is digital now!” He would pull this bad boy out of his briefcase and say “this has digital files on it, please access them. Oh, you can’t? Well what about this? or these?” And pull out a selection floppy discs and CD types.

And that is how he fought the good fight for a budget for the archives because digital preservation is expensive and difficult and there are a million different hardware and software types and technological obsolescence is a nightmare.

[chronicbookworm]

CRESSIDA COWPER AND ELOISE BRIDGERTON BEING UNSERIOUSLY FUNNY TOGETHER

[chronicbookworm]

Source

[chronicbookworm]

The Causal Chain And Why Your Story Needs It

The most obnoxious thing my writing teacher taught me every story needed, that I absolutely loathed studying in the moment and that only later, after months of resisting and fighting realized she was right, was something called the causal chain.

Simply put, the causal chain is the linked cause-and-effect that must logically connect every event, reaction, and beat that takes place in your story to the ones before and after.

The Causal Chain is exhausting to go through. It is infuriating when someone points out that an event or a character beat comes out of nowhere, unmoored from events around it.

It is profoundly necessary to learn and include because a cause-and-effect chain is what allows readers to follow your story logically which means they can start anticipating what happens next, which is what is required for a writer to be able to build suspense and cognitively engage the audience, to surprise them, and to not infuriate them with random coincidences that hurt or help the characters in order to clumsily advance the author's goals.

By all means, write your story as you want to write it in the first draft, and don't worry about this principle too much. This is an editing tool, not a first draft tool. But one of the first things you should do when retroactively begin preparing your story to be read by others is going step by step through each event and confirming that a previous event leads to it and that subsequent events are impacted by it on the page.

[chronicbookworm]

Story Idea:

Set in one of those fantasy settings that are only interested in political intrigue. Sprawling ancient family line that have been backstabbing each other for generations. Centred around the young heir to a cadet branch¹, who is being taught the art of intrigue by their uncle/aunt (henceforth known as the Schemer).

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When the Schemer was 13, they realized that their best friend had been hired by the Schemer's parents for the role 8 months before, and was supposed to kill them after 2 years were up. They murdered the friend, not out of betrayal, but out of a realization that this would keep happening until the lesson to 'not trust anyone' stuck.

The Schemer grows up to be their parents' favourite, stealing most of the attention, and getting VERY VERY good at intrigue. Their youngest sibling disappears. Their oldest sibling, who isn't great at intrigue (and possibly autistic) is kept pretty isolated, living a precarious existence with few allies, unsure what will happen when their parents die.

But what happens is that the eldest inherits. And slowly, slowly realizes that the Schemer is protecting them. That their closest ally was hired by the Schemer to stay close and loyal, no matter what their parents did to try and destroy their trust. That their youngest sibling was whisked away from their parents' influence entirely. That the Schemer HATES the game so much, and decided that the best thing they could do was protect other people from having to play it.

The Schemer doesn't fully trust their oldest sibling. The Schemer can't really trust anyone. But they can still hope. Hope for something better for their family.

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So the main story is about the young heir being taught the distasteful necessity of deceit by someone who hates deceit but is very good at it. Being taught the value of loyalty and integrity by someone who thinks they have none and is very wrong. Being taught that there are good people in the world, but that they, specifically, are unlikely to meet many. And that it isn't their fault.

A flawed mentor and an unsafe environment and the very best of intentions. Supportive parents that are a bit too used to letting a very damaged person make their decisions for them. Nobody quite realizing that getting to grow up with loving parents and siblings has ALREADY changed this kid's trajectory, and that everyone's fear that history will repeat itself is based more on their own trauma then on reality. And relatives that ARE just as dangerous as everyone fears.

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I want a story of generational trauma that is fundamentally, unmistakeably, about hope and healing. Where family can be a good thing, even though it has historically has been a bad one. Where innocence and goodness aren't the same thing, but it's understood that one can make the other easier. Where many of the characters don't understand optimism, but the narrative does.

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¹cadet branches are descended from a younger sibling of a person who inherited the main title. Sometimes they earn smaller titles of their own. Sometimes they inherit various support roles for the main heir.

[chronicbookworm]

Wait, some nuns of the order of St. Claire in Orduña have been asking the bishop for a licence to sell their pastries at the Derio monastery for 10 years, to no avail.

And they're so fed up they have officially rejected the Pope, archbishops, and bishops, and are now creating a schism inside their order because they're gonna sell those fucking pastries whether they like it or not.

WTF is this fantasy!!!!!

[chronicbookworm]

whoops

[chronicbookworm]

🦔

This is Charles. He wants to go on a journey around tumblr. could you show him around?

[chronicbookworm]

Reading a book about slavery in the middle-ages, and as the author sorts through different source materials from different eras, I am starting to understand why so many completely fantastical accounts of "faraway lands" went without as much as a shrug. The world is such a weird place that you can either refuse to believe any of it or just go "yeah that might as well happen" and carry on with your day.

There was this 10th century arab traveller who wrote into an account that the fine trade furs come from a land where the night only lasts one hour in the summer and the sun doesn't rise at all in the winter, people use dogs to travel, and where children have white hair. I don't think I'd believe something like that either if I didn't live here.

[chronicbookworm]

should i make a part 2?

[chronicbookworm]

feeling like an insane leftist compared to people irl and like a right wing crackpot compared to everyone on here

[chronicbookworm]

I know Cressida did some bad things, but she didn't deserve anything that she got. She didn't deserve a life of misery, moving from an abusive household to another abusive household. She deserves happiness and a fulfilling life; she was dealt a bad hand early in life and it seems like every single card she puts down is always the wrong one.

Even now more than ever I want to write her a love story, because she deserves to be understood, loved, cherished, and she deserves happiness - never forget that.

Cressida is a mere product of her upbringing, and she's been callous and rude, but she's not an evil monster like some portray, she's a woman, living in a society that sees her only as a prize to be passed around with no inherit value other than to make more children.

Cressida deserves love.

Cressida deserves understanding.

Cressida deserves happiness.

[chronicbookworm]

BRIDGERTON (2020 - ) | SEASON 3 PART 2 + Bridgerton Family

[chronicbookworm]

The fact is tho that no matter how you look at it, no matter how insufferable she is, no matter how Out Of Touch, regardless of whether she’s doing herself no favours: Eloise is right about society and just about everyone else in the show is wrong.

Like, she’s not got the full picture, she’s blinkered and her political philosophy is not very in depth or well thought out. But she’s right, and I think that’s why a lot of people watching really don’t like her because she’s breaking the illusion. All in all, the 1810s were a shit time to be alive for most people, and you can “well actually” it all you like, but the Luddite movement existed for a reason, the Chartists existed for a reason, Porto-feminist writers like Wollstonecraft and de Gouges wrote what they did for a reason.

So when you keep being reminded that it was a terrible social order for women - in a show targeted mainly towards women for escapist purposes then that character is going to come across as irritating, because she’s ruining the immersion.

Really, her attitude isn’t more anachronistic than the dresses, or the hairdos, or the diamond necklaces (men and women had been advocating women’s right to vote since before Eloise was born, lads), but it’s a problem because people are watching the show for the sweeping romances and the general regency vibe, they don’t want to think about how the regency was for most people. Which inevitably leads to some incredible projection, when watchers of a show with the central conceit of only being interested in the love lives of the top one percent of the one percent of the British aristocracy acting as though Eloise is the only privileged person on the show.

And yeah, she is better off than most of the people who exist in all of Regency Britain (though if you were to take the show as read, Britain is made up of about 70% aristocracy, 1% gentry, 5% urban bourgeoisie and 24% urban workers), but she’s the only one whose privilege is harped on out of her whole family and social circle. 99% of the speaking characters in the show come from a posher background than Beau fucking Brummell.

And! Eloise is literally just about the only main character who ever has to question her privilege! And when she is in season 2 she doesn’t throw a shitfit, she’s willing to learn! She goes out of her way to hear perspectives that she wouldn’t have heard in her social circle! But the narrative punishes her for that, and that’s because for all the criticism she gets about needing her privilege checked, they don’t actually want her to learn, they just want her to shut up and enjoy the trappings of regency decadence as much as they do.

Also - I know it’s really fashionable to rag on “pick-mes” and “Not Like Other Girls” - but actually, no, “traditional femininity” has never been socially unacceptable for women the way being GNC is, and it is in fact ruthlessly socially enforced against GNC women, even more so in the 1810s. Eloise is a teenaged girl in a society that stigmatises her for her wish for more legal autonomy, the idea that she’s somehow the villain for not being able to enjoy “feminine” hobbies without seeing them as just another element of the way women’s education is trivialised as ornamental, is farcical. “Sewing is a valuable and useful skill” so is cooking, but there’s a reason my mam, and not my dad, had home economics lessons, and that reason is still misogyny, despite the fact that it set her up better for being able to operate independently as an adult.

Idk I’m just kind of uncomfortable that in a world of rising reactionary political sentiment towards women, and this seemingly increasingly re-normalised view that women need to be wives and homemakers, people feel that the person on the show who needs to do the most introspection regarding their politics is an eighteen-year-old who is vocal about the fact that she has limited legal rights, and not any of the adult men in the show (a lot of whom probably have seats in the Upper House!!!) who never mention politics at all.

And frankly, given the shower who were Having Political Opinions in the long eighteenth century, Eloise’s brand of semi-anachronistic protofeminism is infinitely preferable to Hannah “I refuse to teach the poor how to write in my schools” More, or Edmund “don’t read my big thesis on revolutions too closely it’s definitely not all lies and junk history” Burke, or even a load of prominent members of the Bluestocking Society.

[chronicbookworm]

me and the bad bitch i pulled by being silly