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mangled-dreams · 4 years ago

Text

Sleep Talking

Sleep Talking.

Its always been an issue with you; sleep talking and walking, that is. You’ve gone on many adventures in the midnight hours while asleep. Never harmed, just wandering around the streets, talking to people not grounded in reality.

As a child it scared your parents into locking your bedroom door, and when that didn’t stop you, they put locks on just about everything. Still, you’d manage to get out.

Thankfully it wasn’t like they didn’t know where to find you. You always managed to go to the same location each time. It was an abandoned house left to decay and to their prayers, you never went inside.

They’d find you sleeping soundly on a small blanket under a large willow tree or swinging happily on the old wooden swing percriously attached to a long thick branch.

Your frequent visits lead your father to replace the old rickety swing with a sturdier, newer one and even go as far as to add a small shelter for you with a sleeping bag. It wasn’t was if your parents condoned your midnight exploits, they just had no other choice. Waking you during your episode would leave you confused and fearful.

Sometimes you’d have violent out bursts of fear, nearly causing you to run into oncoming traffic. No, they felt it better to allow you to continue on without trying to wake you. The community around you grew to understand and look out for you between late night shifts and earlier risers.

Until, that is, your episodes stopped suddenly around the gate of fifteen. No one understood it, least of all you, but things slowly settled into the average life. No one seemed to notice how upset this had made you.

You’d always enjoyed your midnight walkabouts, the adventures and conversations you’d have with the boy in your dreams. You’d always loved the swing set at the old abandoned house, loved the way the house looked, so he’d always take you there.

At one point you tried to tell your family about the boy, but no one listened to your words. They assumed it was a fantasy but you knew he was real. His name was Jack, but he loved to go by Anti, and he loved to play tricks and show off his magic.

He’s been fun, lots of it too. He was smart, snarky, and genuine. He’s been alone for a long time before he found you. He told you a lot of his travels, even taking you to some through your dreams.

It’s been magical, wonderful, and exciting. Then, it just stopped. He left you, alone. You felt as if everything you’d done and see and spoke about didn’t matter to him like it did to you.

Even now, years later the thought of his disappearance brings tears to your eyes. You never truly understood why he left. Was it your confession? Did your love for him scare him away? If that was the case, you’d take it back. Tell him that you’re okay with being friends, after all he was stuck in your dreams.

Trapped forever in the twilight hours. Alone.

Sitting with your head in your hand, elbow propped up on the small table in a low key coffee shop, you stare out the window to the street. People watching amuses you, but not by much. You miss the excitement and adventures of your childhood.

Watching the crowd while sipping your drink a face catches your eye. Nearly choking on the liquid in your mouth, you forgo your items and rush outside, trying to catch the fleeting image of an old friend. However, when you finally make it out the doors, he’s disappeared again.

Standing, mesmerized and confused in the middle of the crowded sidewalk, you wonder if you actually saw Anti. Was your head tricking you? Had he been there at all? People push past you, shooting dirty looks and snarky comments your way.

Ignoring them all, you look around again. He looked older, thinner than before, but that smile of his never changed. You know that smile like you know your name, but in this moment you wonder if you even know your name.

Going back inside the building you gather up your stuff and head home. You have classes to study for and a masters degree to achieve. If only you knew what you wanted to master in.

Arriving home you unlock the door and drop your bag inside before closing and locking the door once more. Looking at the side of your home you still feel in awe of your parent’s generousity. After hitting the Lotto, they secretly had the house you’d spend so many nights at rebuilt.

They said it was thei gift to your future family. You didn’t have the strength to tell them your heart had been stolen by a dream demon long ago.

With a heavy sigh, you sit down at your coffee table and begin to work on your studies. Despite not knowing what you want to specialize in, you’re at least taking the needed prerequisites for just about any field.

Before you realize it, you’d fallen asleep almost two hours into studying even with coffee. A familiar feeling takes over you as your rise from the small table to your feet. You know this feeling all to well.

Sleep talking, only you feel very much aware of what is happening. Is it because you’re an adult down? Or is it because you’ve gone over your adventures with Anti so much you know what to looke for?

Perhaps it’s a lucid dream, and your really just laying on your coffee table. The possibilities swirl around in your head as your feet begin to take you through the house and out the kitchen door to the mud rooms then outside.

Walking down the mason laid path, you see a figure standing just under the large willow tree. It appears to be a male, but his face is blocked by the branches. In that me one time you both love and hate the tree.

“It’s been a long time,” his voice seems older now, but still has hints of that high notes from your past.

Tears well up in your eyes. Hope blossomed like hanaki flowers in your chest. “Jack.” You whisper. You knew how much he hated the name, but you’d always like it. It matched him. A jack of all trades.

“I thought we’d gone over that before.” He teases.

Whether you broke free or he released you, you don’t know, not do you care in the moment. Rushing forward, shedding tears as you go, you run into his arms. Burying your face into his chest you clutch your hands around him tightly.

“Please don’t leave me again!” You sob, pleading.

His arms settle around you, holding you nearly as tightly as you are him. “I didn’t realize you missed me.” He’s trying not to sound touched, but you hear through it.

Lifting your head to view his face, you smile wearily at him. “Of course I missed you.”

Anti smiles. Small lines appear at the corner of his eyes at the honesty in your voice. He’s always like that about you; always so transparent.

“How could I not miss the man I love?”

Anti stills. “You still...”

You smile at him. Your head nods slowly. “How could I not? You stole my heart a long time ago.”

Anti’s expression softens. “Is that still your stance?”

You nod, face pressed into his chest. “It always will be.

Anti chuckles. “That’s a relief. Otherwise all the work I’ve been doing would be for nothing.” He adds, his hands lifting your face to his. “Give yourself to me, wholly.”

Staring into his baby blue eyes you nod almost too eagerly. “Forever.” You whisper.

Smirking, Anti leans down to you, his lips pressing into yours hungrily. His large slender hands hold you right where he wants you, making through work of melting you from the inside out. Your knees feel weak against the feel of his touch.

Pulling away, watching you panting against his chest, Anti leans into your ear. “You’re mine.” He whispered, then disappears.

Waking up back in your living room you quickly jump to your feet. You don’t understand what that was all about. You know it wasn’t a dream, it just couldn’t be. Moving to the kitchen you feel a sting on your left breast.

Pausing you look under your shirt, scared by what you see. A heeling mark, almost a brand of a Celtic triangle marred your skin. Your heart jumps in your chest.

Was that even Anti? If it was, what the hell is he and what does this mean for you? Did you promise your heart to a vicious demon?

What happened to the Anti of your childhood?

Pulling out a chair to your kitchen table you drop your head into your hands and weep. What I’m the literal hell did you get yourself into??

#reader insert #female reader #love me some anti #antisepticeye #reader x anticepticeye #dream demon #more???

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thatonealise · 3 years ago

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On Worlds.

We inhabit them. We've christened ours Earth, but there are some who call Middle-Earth their home. I've heard many dashing tales from the Borderlands, and on all too many occasions guested in Azeroth. All these faraway lands are unique in their own right, sporting flora and fauna so diverse it really does make one wonder how such things came to be, whether out of nothing, or out of the wilds of human imagination.

I've always been under the impression that it would take a person too much blood, sweat and tears to fashion one. But here I stand, alone, and I need a place to set my latest overambitious and never-ending enterprise. It's a habit I'd always detested deep down, but came to respect over time, and now I say it is the prospect of making something grand, chipping away at it day and again, that gives me one more reason (among many, mind you) to get up early in the morning, and wonder what aspect of it am I going to work on next.

So it is, that I've been pondering on the sort of a world I would want you, the Player, to quench your wanderlust, and perhaps take your subconscious somewhere it has never travelled.

My research -- that hunt for inspiration, artistically speaking -- took me to media I have and have never ever witnessed, or heard, or read, or seen. I've browsed art, played this game and that; I've watched film and series, and I've brushed the dust off some of my forlorn literature. I've even dared to show up in the local library for once in an embarrassingly long (by a reader's standards) while, and borrow a "manuscript" or two I thought had a few interesting ideas. But, I have to admit, Stack Exchange remains my personal favourite. There are so many great minds there, with an equal knack for world-building, and even more thought-provoking questions granted inspiring answers. I can't recommend it enough.

On to the point, though, and it is that I've compiled a list of "archetypes" to take into consideration building my own world:

Earth-likes

What a surprise, huh? I believe it to be the most widespread archetype, and it is rather self-explanatory. An Earth-like world is more often than not a carbon copy of the blue planet (or our rather milky galaxy), with oceans and continents shuffled a notch to dodge the cosmic copyright, so to speak. It is again most common, and for a good reason: we know plenty about the science that keeps such worlds (and, by extension, our own) spinning, and the life living the way it does. It is a solid point of reference, backed with facts and studies so easy to look up on the web, or anywhere bookish, and it is always oh so tempting to use.

A few notorious examples taken from modern authors include...

...a continent under the influence of Celtic and Germanic myths; known as Middle-Earth of J. R. R. Tolkien.

...the super-continent of Stillness by Nora K. Jemisin.

...the Present World, to some extent a mirror of ours, and found in Kentaro Miura's Berserk.

...or the unforgiving deserts of Arrakis, credited to Frank Herbert.

...or Faerun, the iconic setting of Forgotten Realms.

...or even the Journey, courtesy of thatgamecompany, and the dunes one has to slide down rushing to the mountain's peak.

If at least two of the above ring a bell, you may have an idea of what brings all these worlds together, and by extension, what I think constitutes an Earth-like world. If not, then let me illustrate my point instead:

Go on, draw a comparison! It wouldn't take a particularly perceptive eye to notice that even a seemingly outlandish example, the desert planet of Arrakis, shines features not too unlike those we may find here on Earth, albeit "turned up to eleven," for the lack of a better expression. They are planets filled with oceans, and continents in between the oceans, most of them, and in general they follow the same rules we follow in our universe: desert storms rise as the wind blows, plates collide to erect mountains, and sentient life is soon to usher in an age of civilisation. Physics and passage of time progress the world as you would expect them to.

Naturally, there will be a degree of variation between Earth-likes. George Martin's Westeros, for one, is an otherwise conventional continent subject to unconventional seasons, some so abnormal they shape entire cultures -- consider the Long Night, for instance, and the impact it had on the Westerosi folklore.

Let's touch on Arrakis again: it is too an Earth-like world at the core, that suffered from a speculated misfortune of a near-miss encounter with a comet, and what once might have been an arid and bountiful world has now been left a scorching desert inhabited by massive sandworms that have evolved to swim through the sands as though they were oceans, and gobble up the teeny-tiny human wanderers crossing their "soil." A few similar worlds come to mind: Kharak, just as extreme and featured in the Homeworld series, and the much more famous Tatooine, the brainchild of George Lucas.

This big quirk -- extreme weather, unpredictable seasons, or morphed geology, or fictional species -- I prefer to dub "the Twist." It is something, a phenomenon or fact of life, that sets this world apart from ours -- something you can use to suggest that the world at hand is its own, and not Earth put in an alternate reality. Extreme biomes of Arrakis or Kharak, and bizarre seasons of Westeros, are just two examples of the Twist. Magic and magical beings found on Azeroth, or in Faerun, is another.

While the Twist is found in all archetypes, I'm of the opinion that Earth-likes depend on it more than others. Take away the Twist, and you will be left with yet another exoplanet, abiding by the rules we all know and, to be frank, find them too mundane to entertain us, or to leave a lasting memory.

As you'd expect, this was the first archetype I visited and considered for my game. The Twist I wish to feature, to go hand in hand with game mechanics I have devised, is the marriage (or clash, depending on your point of view) of science and magic, and the many ways cultures practicing either-or-both would balance them out, or tip the scales in one's favour if they so desire. I'm also very keen on endangering the Player on their journey, which I want to be perilous, and for it to matter more than the destination. Think of it as a world of vagabonds and gallivants, travelling from one bizarre place to a place twice as otherworldly, and embarking on life-threatening quests.

I've considered several worlds, most notably Kharak -- whose native species, the Kushan, traverse it on trucks and jeeps and other sand-crawling machinery. Cities on that scorched planet exist as only safe havens around, surrounded with lifeless sands, and to make it from one city to another is a dangerous affair indeed. The theme resonated with me quite a bit, but I did not find desert planets a good choice for my game, for many reasons:

It is, as the name suggests, a giant desert. There aren't that many biomes (just two, in fact, if you count largely mechanical cities as one) for the Player to explore, and there is little challenge in generating them on the fly, as opposed to a more varied world.

Throwing in arid biomes we discover in worlds like Middle-Earth or Narnia, or Faerun, felt far too conventional to me, and in my mind there would not be much room for an apocalyptic event so crippling as to make exploring this world nigh fatal.

Even if I dodged the desert altogether and rolled with a different biome or biomes, I'd still have to balance between two problems I doubt are easy to solve: featuring more biodiversity in a fundamentally monolithic environment, or more extremes in an Earth-like world that would not fit in very well.

Banality. Banality was a major concern for me, as there are oh so, so many Earth-likes out there in the industry, and the last thing I wish for my little side project is to offer yet another one. No sir!

Scope was the last but nevertheless just as important. It is difficult to fill up a giant continent, or continentS, with enough quests and points of interest to keep the Player invested. It is hard enough to produce enough scripted content, a la World of Warcraft, and it is harder still to delegate the creative matters to an automaton (Talking about you, Left 4 Dead!). Earth-likes, to my understanding, necessitate imposing scale, that I can not hope to achieve neither alone nor in company.

So I scratched this archetype off my list, and again I went searching every nook and cranny of the game industry and beyond for patterns and clues to make into archetype...

Otherlands

Perhaps not the best title to describe a world so otherworldly as to defy all laws native to our universe, but I nonetheless thought it described what I had in mind for such worlds best. Exotics, Otherlands, Alternate Realities, you name it: they spit on the natural laws we've always known, and turn what we consider to be natural upside down, from a relative point of view (I'd image they'd think we earthlings bend their ideas of what is natural, vice versa). They more often than not have so little in common with a conventional; continental world, that as a Player, you ought to be born anew, in a sense, as you have to come to terms with the new reality, and learn the rules alien to your human brain-box.

While not so abundant in fiction or film, there is an unexpected plethora of otherworldly examples found in video games. I suspect, as little more than a humble writer and not at all a qualified game designer, that the blame (the reason, rather) is at least in part to be pinned on the freedom of mechanics worlds detached from all physical boundaries allow. You're no longer on Earth; seldom even in our universe, and more often in a dimension forged by game designers to fulfill a very blunt purpose: to serve the gameplay, in full. I'd imagine it is times easier to set a game built on mechanics hostile to laws of physics somewhere abstract; mallable, in a way, to the designer's whim.

Thinking of examples took me to these fine pieces of digital entertainment:

William Chyr's Manifold Garden is, to me, a quintessential Otherland. It is set in an abstract world wrapping on itself, juxtaposing impossible geometry against Euclidean space. About the only link to our reality it maintains is the presence of gravity. Look up and down, try interacting with the objects or solving the puzzles, and you will very soon understand this is NOT the realm accomodative of your earthly instincts.

Alice: Madness Returns, too, features an Otherland (not Otherlands, fellow Alice fans!), a level set among the clouds, far above in the sky -- none other than Cardbridge! Playing cards dwell there, and glide along the windy streams to form marvellous paper castles in the sky, and bridges, and gates for Alice to cross on her way to the evil (is she really?) Queen's heartful (quite literally) domain. Like in Manifold Garden, physics still permeates this world, but the only "actor" it appears to affect is Alice herself. All that surrounds her, on the other hand, behaves in a way we would think odd.

Oddly enough, Valve's Ricochet is one more example of an Otherland, the way I see it. It's set in a pitch black void, a pocket dimension of a sort, and constricts its gunslinging inhabitants to a small archipelago of quasi-futuristic-looking platforms. It is in many ways abstract and disconnected from what we would brand a "real" world; akin more to a simulation than something even an advanced civilisation would be able to orchestrate in the vacuum of deep space. It instead serves a solitary purpose: to be an open and clear arena for the Players to pull off dextereous ricochets and physics-bending leaps from one spot to the next. There are no other earthly rules to govern this world, and beyond the dark arena is the thrice as dark abyss.

Of course, by this logic, one could consider more abstract games along the lines of Tetris Effect or even Pinball Dreams, to also fit under the same umbrella of otherworldness, and I reckon they would be right. Both games take place in places foreign to our expectation for a, dare I say, traditional setting. This is not to say, oh no, that Otherlands belong to just the games -- far from it! Otherlands are to be found in many other media.

Off the top of my head, I'd count that one scene from the cult-classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, as a "classic" Otherland in a mind-boggling nutshell:

The message I'm trying to convey, if not clear, is that Otherlands are very stubborn, and insistent on breaking you as an earthly thinker; to augment your mind and let it comprehend and utilise the new reality and the rules it enforces, like one would use the laws of our universe. "When in Rome," is the mantra they will have you etch into memory, until you think and interact with it as though you had never known another home.

The entire world, in other words, is one big Twist, standing in stark contrast to the little twists applied here and there to an Earth-like dimension. Furthermore, one could even assert that the Twist in an Otherland is turned on its head -- whereas in an Earth-like Twists were other-landish phenomena many in number but little in scope -- the Twists in an Otherland are instead few and far between, and grounded in reality. They are the links linking an Otherland to the Earth-like law. Say, physics would be very much expected in an Earth-like world, but treated as an exotic Twist in an Otherland.

To be a little more precise, an Otherland does not bother to stay true to the mechanics we think mundane and natural. It instead moulds or kills them outright, and throws itself at the mercy of the designer's wants and wishes.

Otherlands were an option, but not the option, that I'd choose for my world. I cherish the freedom they bestow upon you as a designer, but it alone did not convince me to opt for this archetype. Simply put, the downs outweighed the ups:

The world I wish to create will host fantasy far too Tolkien-esque to distance so much from Earth and earthly law. There is, in my view, a strong pull among many dungeon-crawling aficionados towards fantasy, and fantasy I will deliver. My own strain of fantasy, to be clear, but it will nevertheless mandate a degree of reality deemed by me too Earth-like to belong in an Otherland. I just can not see, at this time, a world of fantasy that is also an Otherland, not if I want my world to radiate welcoming familiarity.

This game being an open-ended RPG, it is difficult for me to envision it in an abstract environment. It calls, as I see it, for landmarks sensible to someone never ever "tainted" by the quirks of Otherlands, familiar and homely in a way, based in laws of physics and around points of interest grounded in our reality. Elevating it to be the Twist of an Otherland, brings the latter much closer to an Earth-like, but not quite. Neither this nor that, if you will, and that in turn leads me to the next and last archetype...

Near-Earths

Should you ever run into the same predicament as yours truly did in the paragraph above, I'd strongly advise you to consider Near-Earths. Not entirely Earth-like, but also too Earth-like to fit as an Otherland, a Near-Earth world is based to some considerable extent in the laws and traits of an Earth-like. It takes the best of both worlds -- mind-boggling Twists of an Otherland and experiential familiarity of an Earth-like -- and mixes them up to shape up something in-between.

Near-Earth remains ultimately an extension of an Earth-like world at its core, but to set itself apart it puts an emphasis on large-scale Twists -- that would be considered too outlandish for an Earth-like. One popular trope among Near-Earths is to feature earthly topology, strewn around the universe in the form of isles or even whole continents. Fundamental laws that define an Earth-like it bends to a fictional degree, but preserves the essentials, such as planets or stars or faimiliar dimensions, that make up our universe. Thus the link between our universe and that lives on, and it's easy for a newcomer to the world to find their way around with little to no hand-holding required.

I can't help but conjure up a few shots from Treasure Planet, which I gather needs no introduction, to illustrate my line of thought. Take one of the more iconic stills from this flawed masterpiece, R.L.S. Legacy docked at the spaceport of Crescentia:

It is in many ways familiar, I think, to anyone who has ever been to any run-of-the-mill harbour, except that ginormous frigate appears to stay suspended mid-air, not even ropes to hold it in place, and not at all swaying side to side on the high seas as one would assume. No, in this universe carpenters and shipwrigts build 18th century vessels propelled by internal combustion engines to fly through the breathable expanse that they call Ethereum. Indeed, there it is possible to breathe in space, so long as one stays careful not to lean too much on the taffrail and fall into the Ethereum proper, doomed forever to be a cosmic castaway.

Treasure Planet is very representative of a Near-Earth world, as I reckon the aforementioned scene proves. While grounded in culture and (partly) science of our universe, it strays a lot from what our scientists would deem feasible, to the point that it is fundamentally different from our universe in some respect, such as there existing a breatheable atmosphere everywhere in their universe, but not so fundamental as to defy every law of science we know in our world. Physics, and planets, and other celestial bodies and phenomena still exist there, albeit altered in a variety of ways.

Another such example would the High Wilderness, that we're told to travel aboard a literal locomotive, in the brilliant game and one of my many favourites -- Sunless Skies:

It, too, features all the same biomes and structures and many laws with a basis in our universe, and like Treasure Planet, it introduces a major twist: the space beyond the confines of Earth (which does exist in Sunless Skies, and generally follows our history with significant deviations perpetrated by Masters of the Bazaar) is an intricate maze of seldom interlocked and often overlapping topology, stacked on top of one another, and filled with an atmosphere reminiscent of Ethereum, breathable but named a different name.

It is still familiar enough to us as earthlings, and it would not take a seasoned Otherlander to pick the thing up and know the rules of play by instinct. Sure, we are driving a locomotive through time and space, and pass by living stars that govern all, called the Judgements, but the spaces we traverse and people we meet and phenomena we witness are not confusing in the slightest. Shrouded in mystery, maybe, but ultimately sensisble if given enough thought. There is not another dimension for us to consider, and impossible geometry wrapping on itself to comprehend, as seen in Manifold Garden. Nay.

On the Judgements, as a side note, I've found them to be an interesting twist in and of themselves: they are intended to be the law-makers that decide what is real in this world, and what is not. Kill, or posses them, and the world will return to a chaotic state, easily a contender for the quintessential Otherland.

One last sample for you to taste would be the city-state of Sigil, the center of all planes in the planar world of Planescape (pardon the tautology!). Also an earthly world in many ways, it departs from tradition by dabbling in the ideas of interplanar travel, and whole planes of existence drifting from place to place depending on the belief of its denizens. Name me a single spiral-shaped medieval town suspended miles in the air:

I hope my criteria is now clear, or clear-er, better still if as a day. A Near-Earth has some of its fundamental laws thrown away, or meddled with, but there is always at least some foundation identical to that of an Earth-like.

Enter the Wild

In the end, I had a choice to make; a choice of three options, all of which bore pros and posed cons. Weighing all of them took me several restless nights, about a week in total, and some creative encouragement from a colleague, who suggested I turn to Sunless Skies-esque worlds for inspiration: islands floating in the sky, nurturing islanders and their peculiar settlements. I fell in love with the idea in a heartbeat, and on and on I went searching for references. It implied to me a Near-Earth, and all the marks of distinguishment I outlined before for other archetypes pointed to Near-Earths as the perfect fit for my world.

I settled for a few points of reference, among them...

Variably-sized islands and quasi-continents of Dragon Hungers, complete with pocket cultures and hosts of creatures that dwell there:

"Outdated" and outlandish means of transportation between the islands, like airships or fire-breathing dragons, a la Sunless Skies:

Celestial bodies of Treasure Planet, like black holes or nebulas, making an appearance, though toned down a bit to ditch some of their more destructive and lethal properties. A black hole wouldn't spaghettify you in the blink of an eye, but falling into one will nonetheless bring a swift (albeit not quite so fast and unavoidable) end to your career:

What they amounted to, ultimately, is an amalgamation of varied islands, some as big as a continent, others as small as my balcony, and all sporting ecosystems never-before-seen on most other islands. They are suspended in the sky, fortunate to have a man-friendly atmosphere, with a devilish twist I'd rather keep a secret for the time being.

Wannabe heroes make their living sailing through this sky aboard mighty airships or fire-breathing dragons (among many other means of transportation), from one island and on to the next, undertaking quests and accepting commissions from the locals to earn themselves some sustenance. It's a floating world of vagabonds, gallivanters, and legends-in-the-making.

OR! Those same gallivanters may find a particular island, or spot upon on the island, very tempting to settle on. Indeed, if they so desire, players would be able to adopt a sedentary lifestyle, and see what the wilds beyond the comfort of their heart might bring one treacherously blissful morning...

Us locals have entitled this universe the Wild. Enter at your own risk, traveller, for you may never return. This theme seemed to me like a good middle-ground between all the problems I've outlined reviewing archetypes:

Scope was confined to the typical bounds of an island. Some are bigger than others, no doubt, but all of them are a far cry from the usual dimensions of a continent. A narrow scope, as such, is a scope amiable to developers limited in number, or readiness to tackle an enormous landmass.

Narrowed scope in turn shortens the distance one must travel to leave one point of interest for another. We're feeding two birds with one scone -- there is no need for us, as developers, to fill up the lands betwixt with something for you to do, and you won't have to drag yourself through an overstretchesd piece of half-arsed (pardon my French) filler to finally reach the objective that caught your eye in the first place.

At last, as my colleague pointed out, islands in space are capital. Done before to be sure, that road has been travelled many times (and so were most others), but it is still the Earth-likes that proudly keep at the victorious spree as the dominant archetype among the developers. A Near-Earth to me felt like a fair and much-wanted change of scenery, for once in a blue moon.

A floating world shattered into many habitable pieces by far imposes so many more factors upon the cultures, languages, civilisation, technology, and nature of the wild, that to turn it down in favour of an all-too-researched Earth-like world seemed a lazy way out the massive creative problem, I think, many people of letters and pencil and other trades would be thrilled to approach.

P.S. I do realise all my scribbled judgements are arbitrary, and the lines separating Near-Earth from Earth-likes, from Otherlands, is apparently fine, and entirely subjective. These are little more than my five cents; my five thoughts on the subject, and I personally found grouping these worlds into archetypes a good "bookmark" that I've used and will likely come back to designing my own worlds. Peace.

#worldbuilding #devlog #gamedev

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margridarnauds · 4 years ago

Note

Your "Grace O'Malley" tag is extremely gratifying--it's so nice to see actual scholarship. So with that in mind: Have you read Morgan Llwelyn's novel, and if so, what do you have to say on it?

Hi! Thank you so much! I’m glad you like it; it can feel a little bit like I’m shouting into the wind, given that Gráinne is one of my more niche focuses. I still kind of want to do something that actually looks at the EVIDENCE, but I digress.

Morgan Llewelyn….I have mixed feelings about. I last really looked into this book when I was toying with doing my undergrad Capstone Thesis on Donal O’Flaherty, about….4 years ago, now. Time really does fly. So, I forced myself into a refresher, just to remind myself what I missed.

[warning for references to rape, incest, and some of the most Cursed™ lines I’ve ever been forced to read in my life, and that’s including the zombie blowjob scene.]

Final Verdict: 2.5/5 - DEFINITELY not the worst retelling of Gráinne’s life (I’ve seen....Things), but also not the best, either, and with some very, very glaring flaws that make it impossible for me to really enjoy.

My main take away from it is that…as far as its depiction of Gráinne, it did about as well as its source material. I can tell, looking at it and reading it, that she really looked hard at Anne Chambers’ book. Which is unfortunate because, as I’ve made……………relatively clear over the years, I think that it’s very, deeply flawed. And, unfortunately, Llewlyn stuck rather close to the book, leaving in things like Donal’s “murder" of Walter Fada Burke (if the patronymic don’t fit, you’ve got to acquit), Sexist™ Incompetent™ Donal™, and…..Hugh de Lacy, which, in my personal opinion, owe more to Chambers lack of critical reading of her own sources than they do to the historical record. ESPECIALLY Hugh de Lacy because…the name. Very odd that one of the major Anglo-Norman officials should share a name with Gráinne Ní Mháille’s boytoy. Very odd. Especially given that the pattern of “Love interest of Gráinne’s killed off/Gráinne seeks revenge” is VERY similar to what we hear of the Defense of Hen’s Castle. Almost as if they come from the same story.

This also leads us to the scene where Donal tries to rape Gráinne in her sleep which, honestly, I loathe with every fibre of my being. Nope, nope. Hate it. Hate. It. Oh, God, I forgot about the references to Donal!Incest. Why is this a mini-genre of Gráinne Ní Mháille historical fiction. Why. I can think of at least…..2-3 books that do this. Why God. Why.

Lest anyone think that this is the Donal fangirl in me jumping out, in general, I feel like Llewelyn’s treatment of most of the characters is ultimately paper-thin. Richard Burke is also given this treatment and, while I wouldn’t REALLY expect a sympathetic Richard Bingham (nor would I particularly want one - I’ve spent a lot of quality time reading his complaints and cackling), even HE’S done a disservice.

On a technical level, I don’t REALLY like how she handles the timeline, it jumps around a little too much for my taste. We’re treated to constant flashbacks with little warning, including ones that could have been just as easily folded into the timeline proper. And, while Llewelyn has a rich, descriptive style, she also writes an, honestly, impressive number of lines that will haunt me for all the wrong reasons. I’ve detailed a lot of them under the readmore, but some highlights:

She had gazed in wonder at the child—his perfect ears and fingers, the miniature penis that would eventually become a mighty rod for transmitting further life.” This is, I’m sure, what every mother thinks when she sees her newborn son’s penis for the first time. Why. Why God. Why. Why. Why.

Okay, another candidate for Cursed Lines: "Richard noted the high color in her cheeks, and saw how her nipples stood out strongly under the soft fabric of her gown.” If this were a male author, I would be-Nah, it’s still bad. It’s just bad writing, I’m sorry. In general, I found that she massively sexed up Gráinne’s life, for no real reason that I can tell except for that it felt almost like she felt like it was necessary to prove that Gráinne was a Real Woman™? There’s a very....odd way that her sex life is treated, and it grates on me. We have to deal with Donal, Richard, Huw(uwu), Philip Sydney, and Tigernan, all in the course of one book and, honestly, I don’t really CARE about Gráinne’s sexcapades, and they’re generally written with so little development or feeling, even and especially in the case of her GREAT LOVE HUW, that I found myself actively groaning. My take on Gráinne, at least the Gráinne that I know in the sources, is almost asexual. I don’t deny that she had sex. She obviously did. (FOUR CHILDREN.) And I think that she might very well have enjoyed it. (Not that there’s enough evidence to KNOW.) But I also think that she was a profoundly pragmatic woman who didn’t fixate on it that much. Again, I could be wrong! When we have as little as we have to go on as we do with her, it’s impossible to know! But I just do not see her as jumping into bed with guys that often, especially not in cases where there was no clear benefit. There’s this...trend, where Gráinne HAS to have a love interest, in every major adaptation of her life, because it’s almost like people are afraid to have her without the anchor of sex and romance. (For what it’s worth - I do think, simply because of the amount of time that they spent together + the fact that they did have at least three children with one another, that Donal was probably her favorite of her two spouses. I don’t KNOW this, because I can’t. The evidence isn’t there. I don’t know whether they loved one another, whether it was a great romance, whether the sex was good, or even if it was just a mild affection, but I do lean towards him, even if I can’t say that he was the Great Love of Her Life™. I think they complimented one another’s lifestyles quite nicely, and that’s all that I can really give.)

Llewelyn also has a very, very obvious bias against Catholicism that ultimately makes me wonder whether she ever meant to engage with 16th century Ireland on its own terms. As an atheist in Celtic Studies....look, I can GET having many, many mixed feelings about Catholicism, but it WAS the religion of the land at the time. If you want to have ANY understanding of the people and what was going through their minds, you have to try to engage with them on their own terms. I’m not in any hurry to convert to Catholicism, but I do try to consider life through the eyes of medieval and early modern Catholics when I’m analyzing sources made in that time. And trying to separate it off from the Good Pagan Times, to the point of creating a 16th century druid woman to voice your opinions on free love/organized religion/etc. is just going to get you into disaster. (Though Evleen did give us one female character who is a friend to Gráinne, so...victory?) Bonus, by the way, for the Evil Priest who schemes against Gráinne and is fucking boys on the side. (It seems like they’re of age, at least?) We’re told that he has reasons for what he does, but it comes as a bit of a last minute attempt at creating the illusion of a three dimensional character. I feel like Llewelyn, ultimately, should have stuck to Pre-Patristic times. I shudder at what she would do with, say, the Mythological Cycle, I don’t particularly want her touching my baby (if she touched Bres in particular, I would probably cry) because, at this point, I don’t trust her with ANY medieval materials (mainly because they’ve all been CONTAMINATED by CATHOLIC HANDS, oh NO), but I feel like it’s where her heart truly is.

IF she’d stuck with pre-Patristic sources, we wouldn’t have to deal with 16th century characters thinking things like: " He would go in the style of his warrior ancestors, fearless in the face of death; the ancient, pagan Gaels had known death was only a brief incident in the ongoing flow of life, a transitory happening of little importance.” Admittedly, Llewelyn herself SEEMS to realize this, as she has him cross himself afterwards, but I really, really don’t think it would be the sort of thing to cross a man’s mind in the Early Modern Period. There was very little evidence for reincarnation that was that explicit (One of the papers that I did was on the existence of reincarnation in Pre-Christian Ireland, so I actually CAN speak on this one with some degree of confidence - My ultimate findings were that it probably did exist in some form, but the evidence makes it hard at times to draw definite conclusions), and I’m not sold that they would…understand it as reincarnation, as SUCH. We can look at what, say, Julius Caesar wrote about the druids’ beliefs and apply them to medieval Irish texts, but a man living in 16th century Ireland wouldn’t necessarily have the same luxury, especially since relatively few figures are given reincarnation narratives. It’s like…she’s applying the Mythological Cycle, but she momentarily forgets that these characters wouldn’t have VIEWED the Mythological Cycle like we would have, and it’s rather jarring. No one else might pick up on that, because this is my field. This is the ONE THING I can be pedantic on.

Now! There are some things I actually do like! Outside of Chambers’ questionable grasp of historical interpretation and the resulting taint, I can tell that Llewlyn did have a solid grasp of the FEEL of Early Modern Ireland. As I noted above, she’s a very fine author, the kind I honestly ENVY as a historical fiction writer, the type that is so confident and descriptive that, even when she’s wrong, which is often, I find myself reaching for the sources just to make sure. Her descriptions are vivid and visceral, pulling me immediately into the FEEL of Ireland in the 16th century, a way of life on the verge of collapse.

When she isn’t being descriptive in all the wrong ways as detailed above. I do feel, for whatever it’s worth, that as someone with the background in this material that I have, I was kind of doomed from the get-go. I THINK that for someone who isn’t a Celticist (in training), it would be much, much more enjoyable, BECAUSE she is so confident in her style and her way of evoking the mood that it wouldn’t really stick out. I happen to be both blessed and cursed in that regard.

It’s clear, as well, that she has a grasp on the literature of the time - References to the things like the first Gaels coming from Spain make my heart SING with joy because it’s a very clear allusion to Lebor Gabála Érenn and the Mythological Cycle, which is my specialty, and there are plenty of times that I can tell you EXACTLY what sources she had to hand while she was typing on a section. It’s just a pity to me that she seems to try so hard to toss it all away in order to bifurcate Early Modern Irish society into Pagan VS Catholic, since she fundamentally did betray her own sources there. And, unfortunately, the way she tends to show her research is about as subtle as a blunt nail, in a very “As you know” manner: See: “I have heard the brehons chanting the laws governing fosterage, describing every article of clothing that must be furnished a child and every detail of the training the child is to be given.” Like, yes, the law texts record this, but I can’t really see someone from the 16th century SAYING it that bluntly, you know? Also, I’m not really sold that they would be chanting it out loud as a ritual thing, rather that a lot of the law tracts are in a simple Question/Answer format because it would have, presumably, made it simpler for the Brehons THEMSELVES to remember that way.

I do like that Llewlyn’s Gráinne…she’s attractive, yes, but she’s not conventionally attractive, and she’s explicitly said to be big and tall as a man. I feel like a lot of pop cultural depictions of Gráinne want to make her dainty and beautiful, despite living in an incredibly harsh, stressful environment. I think that her outfit’s a little too much “Modern pirate”-y for my taste, but I’ll allow it because, tbh, it looks really, really badass and, whatever clothing Gráinne would have worn, we probably wouldn’t have really recognized it as “Pirate-like”, since our vision of pirates in the modern day is mainly an early 18th century one. I do appreciate that Gráinne has that hard, pragmatic edge that I respect in the Gráinne that we read about in the State Papers and in Bingham’s recollections - a very matter of fact, no nonsense woman who would do whatever it took to survive. Though I do think that she probably didn’t really spend that much time thinking about Elizabeth. It seems slightly unrealistic to me that, knowing how pragmatic Gráinne was, that she would really, really concern herself that much with Elizabeth, especially when she would have had powerful women like Iníon Dubh closer to home. There are some really nice, poignant moments as well that the hard edge masks, like the moment where she asks after a piece of hair that sent on to her son Owen. When Gráinne is in her natural element, having fun on the open sea, taking vengeance, and getting to be angry and proud and fierce, as well as the moments where she shows a softer side....those are the moments that make it for me. But then we’re back to the sex and romance, to the point where the book is literally divided by which man she’s screwing at the time.

Also, despite wanting to LOATHE Tigernan, as an OC love interest of Gráinne’s, I did find myself warming to him, as he has a nice, laid-back dynamic with Gráinne built on trust and filled with plenty of banter. Next to her, he is probably the single best developed character in the book, though, unfortunately, he does get it through a ton of space devoted to his thoughts, his pining for Gráinne, and his intense jealousy for the many times she chooses someone else over him (mainly because he never tells her he loves her and then he feels like she owes him for what he does for her - yes, there are some Nice Guy tendencies here, but, honestly, after about the second or third time this happened, I was very pro-Tigernan running away and finding a better gig for himself.) No, besides being Catholic and lower class, we don’t really have that MUCH on him outside of being Gráinne’s first mate, but, honestly....that’s still more characterization than the others get, and, at least as of Chapter 24, he hasn’t done anything TOO atrocious.

My PETTIEST of bitching/impromptu liveblog beneath the cut:

A VERY pedantic thing: Llewelyn says, multiple times, that the English would anglicize her name “Grace”. In reality, no one in Early Modern England did that, it came much, much later. In all the Letters of State, she’s referred to as “Grany” or a variation of that name - An English attempt at “Gráinne.” That’s also why you’ll notice that I tend to refer to her as Gráinne here - It was the name she was known by in her own time, it was the name her contemporaries called her, and so it’s the name I call her.

"He wore a full and drooping mustache in the old Gaelic style, though otherwise he was cleanshaven.” Again. MINOR nitpicking. The Gauls were the ones who, traditionally, we associate with the droopy mustaches. In the sagas, beards are given a TON of prominence, to the point of being the marker of being a man. So. Odd choice on Tigernan’s part there. I know that Llewelyn didn’t intend to write him as a 16th century Irish coxcomb, but…well.

"He realized he had made a bad mistake in referring to her peculiar relationship with her husband. He had been in the castle at Bunowen himself; he had seen with his own eyes that Grania’s belongings were taken to one bedchamber, and Donal O Flaherty’s were put in another. Many might speculate in private about the arrangement, but only a fool would have mentioned it to her face.” As I’ve mentioned before, I really, really don’t think this relationship was as loveless as it’s generally portrayed as. I don’t know whether they were PASSIONATELY in love (and unlike a certain biographer, I won’t try to fill in what I don’t know with what I WANT her to have had), maybe they simply got on, but they did have three LIVING children. And I underline “living” because there were likely more. “Likely more” means that they probably did regularly share a bed, at least as much so as their respective schedules allowed.

“Aye, and didn’t she put her children out to fostering before they could stand? A woman’s not usually that anxious to get away from her children that she takes to the sea to avoid them.” Given that fosterage could begin VERY early, I really, really don’t think anyone would have questioned this at all. Gaelic Ireland, simply put, often didn’t have our own conception of the nuclear family, and this was generously provided for in the law codes. Fosterage was useful as a way of maintaining ties between both neighboring families and, most especially, between kings and their vassals, with vassals often fostering kings’ sons. (That way, if the king should die with multiple possible heirs, it means that the kids have people backing them for the kingship.)

"I think that husband of hers had been crying poverty so loud and long he made her deaf to everything else” - Not to be #TeamDonal on main, but the facts as they’re recorded tend to have a strong pro-Donal bias. Take the words of his 17th century relative, Ruari O’Flaherty: "Of all the western O'Flaherties, Donel an chogaidh , although not the chieftain, was the most powerful and opulent.” Most. Powerful. And. Opulent. Yeah, Donal wasn’t crying poverty to anyone. Could he have been lying through his teeth? Maybe. Who knows? But this is ONE thing we have on Donal’s personality, recorded not too long after he died, by a historian who would have had close access to O’Flaherty sources. I believe him. And, I’d even be willing to commit the ultimate heresy and say that Donal’s success was not due entirely to his wife.

She does use the proper terms in a few places! Such as “rechtaire” for “steward”. (Io stem, masculine.)

“You are a noble Irishwoman, you go to no man’s bed unless you want to.” COMPLICATED. Arranged marriages were definitely the norm, and, in the legends, we get to see the unfortunate downsides of what happens when a woman is coerced into a marriage she doesn’t want, generally by an older man, while she is generally pining over a younger one. I wouldn’t say it was something that people LIKED, the fact that this entire genre exists is a pretty good example of people being like “DON’T DO THIS SHIT”, but I can’t say it didn’t happen. Examples of this include Fingal Rónáin, Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne, Longes mac n-Uislenn, Aided Con Roí, etc. I would not say that it was considered to be an IDEAL, it was something that was definitely warned against, but it could, in theory, happen. It wasn’t necessarily a legal form of marriage, but it was a form of marriage.

"Shorter than Cuchullain or Brian Boru,” PETTIEST of pettiest bitch complaints, but Cú Chulainn is generally described as short. I know, I know, not what she’s going for. But still. Let me be a petty bitch on this one thing.

“Times have changed,” he said impatiently. “Those are archaic luxuries, and luxury has worn thin here. Perhaps in Umhall there is still leisure for sitting around listening to bards, but it takes every resource I can command just to maintain my territory against those who constantly nibble at my borders.” MOST. OPULENT. AND. POWERFUL. Okay, but one thing that she does get right, and is right to emphasize, is the importance of the bard - chieftain relationship. This was really, really one of the key relationships in a chieftain’s life, to the extent where one of the privileges of the chief ollaimh was the right to sleep with the king in his bed. And yes, it was EXACTLY as homoerotic as it sounds. For a chieftain to not keep a bard - It’s actually a really, really stupid move on Donal’s part, not just for the sake of tradition, but because…who’s going to be there to remember him and keep his memory alive? Who’s going to write praise poems for him (and for Gráinne! The chieftain’s wife was often celebrated in verse.)

"Grania had brought a handsome marriage portion with her, her own property under the Brehon law, for a woman of her rank must be able to stand on equal footing with her husband.” Accurate - Gráinne would have, most likely, been a cétmuinter, or chief wife, under the law, and her union to Donal would have been a union of equal contribution. (Donal also might or might not have owed her a “Thank you for your virginity!” Present on their wedding night.)

“The priests are right in giving husbands authority over their wives,” he had shouted at her then, while she pleaded to be allowed to keep her babies with her longer. “The old Gaelic way gave women too much freedom altogether, and you are a fine example of the folly of that custom.” Kill me now, kill me now, kill me now, kill me now. This is just….GAR. GAR. Or, as Llewlyn likes to say every five seconds…*Dar Dia*. Suffice it to say, the question of how much freedom post-Christianity Ireland had for women VS Pre-Christian Ireland is an endlessly long topic that has to begin with how we define “freedom” and, specifically, which women get it. (Sucks to be a slave girl no matter what.) But also, while women definitely DID have power (EVEN POST-CHRISTIANITY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH)…that doesn’t mean that it was that COMMON, or that post-Christianity radically changed how (un)common it was. This is just…too blunt, too much of a caricature, and also happens to be insanely, insanely anachronistic. (Also: What would a 16th century chieftain really KNOW of the Old Gaelic Way? He would know about women like Medb, yeah, and he would probably see her as evil and uppity, depending on which stories he’d read - Though as a Connachtman, he would probably be inclined towards being on her side. But that doesn’t mean he would have really thought “Oh, yeah, pre-Christianity, women had SO MUCH power.” Lawlessness and chaos tend to be features of pre-Christian Ireland in the medieval writings, but I wouldn’t really say that liberated women….were? Especially because in those same writings you have women like Emer who, while distinct in their characterization, are still very much proper and chaste women who keep to the house.)

“I warn you, Grania—you will accede to me in this or I will send you back to Clew bay and denounce you throughout Connaught for a lack of womanly graces. Is that what you want, to be sent home rejected with your shortcomings shouted from the hills?”

“Who would believe such charges?” she had demanded to know, outraged at his unfairness.”

I’m just going to say it now: She could sue him SO MUCH in a proper Brehon court if she could get some witnesses to say that they heard him talking shit without cause. So. So much. So. Much. Donal would be losing a solid chunk of his goods. Though I will point out that, technically, since Gráinne isn’t sleeping with him, she isn’t doing her proper duties as a wife, laid out by the Brehon laws, and so, yeah, he could probably have a case against her. (For what it’s worth: If he was refusing to sleep with her, she could ALSO divorce him, with him explicitly being at fault and having to pay up. It was equal opportunity, in that sense.)

The Brehon law keeps being called “pagan” and…no. No non noon no. It had its origins in pre-Christian Ireland, likely, and that’s why a ton of legal scholars, with a few noted exceptions, tend to be strongly Nativist, but that doesn’t mean that, by Gráinne’s time, it hadn’t been more or less adapted into Christian marriage in Ireland, albeit sometimes semi-awkwardly. (For example: Polygamy was allowed, but the law very much privileged the rights of chief wives, including their right to toss their husbands out on their ear for taking in a woman over their head.) There’s this odd obsession in the book with Brehon Law =/= Christian Law, and that’s definitely not the case. You wouldn’t have had two marriage ceremonies, one under the church and one under the Brehon Law, because the Brehon Law would apply no matter WHAT. It’d be like forcing a couple to undergo a ceremony after their official wedding where a bunch of lawyers read out of a law book to them. It just wouldn’t happen.

“The Augustinian monks of Umhall, who taught me history in my childhood, explained that when the Romans left England and that land sank into barbarism, it was missionaries from Ireland who took God’s words to the British tribes and taught them to read and write.

“Perhaps they hate us, Donal, for being a more ancient and educated race. Perhaps they mean to drag us down by treating us as savages until we do not remember ever having been anything else. And along the way they can take our land from us with a clear conscience because we are only savages and deserve no better.”

On one hand, it DOES capture that note of PRIDE that tends to be there, loud and clear, in the texts, especially, say, Auraicept na n-Éces, which claims that Irish is a perfectly formed language, made from all the best bits of the Tower of Babel’s languages. (And….well….”The land of saints and scholars”. Ireland WAS a hotspot of monastic activity.) And, honestly, I support showing off the literary side of Ireland, since it doesn’t get discussed enough. That being said, no monk in his right mind would have said that it Irish missionaries civilized Britain. Why? Because Patrick came from Britain. Or, rather, Britannia, more accurately. He wasn’t an Englishman, not in the modern sense, he would probably be Welsh today, but he was from a monastic, educated family (despite claiming his Latin was poor in his Confessio, it’s actually quite good - Patrick was a MASTER at using humility as a rhetorical device).

"Grania slept naked. She liked her skin to breathe as she slept, not encumbered with a gown that would twist and bind.” “And then Gráinne froze her ass off because the nights in Ireland, even in the warm heat of summer, are cold and bitter as a Norseman’s frozen tit, if there were, in fact, any Norsemen in Ireland in the 16th century, and frequently require multiple blankets + a solid duvet. Gráinne then died of pneumonia several weeks later, making for a very short book.” Also. Again. If this were a male author. I would have committed a murder at this point.

Reference to saffron dye - NICE. This was really a staple of the clothing, for both men and women, to the extent that it features a LOT in accounts of Ireland at this time.

“By the paps of Danu!” No one. In 16th century Ireland. Would have shouted out “By the paps of Danu!” “By the Washington Monument!” “By the Lincoln Memorial!” “By the stunning cliffs of Oregon!” Sounds rather silly, doesn’t it? (Though if you WANTED to start shouting “BY THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL!” Well. I’m not here to stop you.)

"She was small for a Gaelic woman, and pale, a tiny wraithlike creature who exuded a contradictory air of resilient strength.” I’m not going to say that Chambers is WRONG, because, of course, Irish women come in a variety of shapes and sizes. You know, like people everywhere. But I WILL say that, during my time here, it’s the only time in my life that I’ve felt at home, because, for the first time in my life, I’m not short. Also, I want it on the record that now, whenever I see her, I’m picturing the little old woman who sits in on research seminars and who has the entire department scared shitless. Tiny, but MIGHTY.

"Her only ornament was a triskele of silver in an ancient pattern, suspended upon her flat bosom by a leather thong.” The Triskele is a Neolithic symbol used through the Iron Age, DEFINITELY not in use, in Ireland, by the Early Modern Period.

"“Evleen Ni Brien-“ That would be “Ní Bhriain” in modern Irish. Normally, I wouldn’t be THIS nitpicky, but hey, if you’re patting yourself on the back for the research you did and then can’t be bothered to put in a fada + the proper possessive form of “Brian”. I also don’t THINK that the “Ní” form had been adopted yet, I’m fairly certain that’s modern, so it would, more properly, be Evleen iníon Bhriain. Though, since it emphasizes that she’s from the Dál Cais and the O’Briens are predominately associated with them, I’m going to GUESS the proper form would involve her father’s name. It would be “Evleen iníon *possessive form of father’s first name* Uí Briain”.

"He had only heard whispers of such people, but enough tales still abounded concerning them to make them readily identifiable—even if this one did claim the noble name O Brien.” You know, in Reign, when you have a bunch of druids dancing in the forest and everyone was like “That’s fucking ridiculous!” Yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly how I feel right now. Druids DID last for some time in Ireland after Christianity, but not INTO THE 16TH CENTURY.

"“Of course not. But neither can I forget that it was the strictures of that faith which kept me bound in marriage to a man I learned to despise.” Divorce was still a thing. There was no problem, in theory, with getting married at a fully Catholic altar and then dumping them for getting jiggy with the serving girls a few years down the line. Llewelyn’s misunderstanding of the relationship that the Church and the Brehon laws BOTH played in the lives of people (SHOCKINGLY ENOUGH, the Catholic Church was NOT seen as pure evil by every day people at the time, who had to flee into the arms of the Brehons for comfort from Mother Church. Note that I’m saying this as a confirmed and strong atheist.)

Can I just say that the scene where Gráinne’s feeling up Hugh (the OC) in his sleep would be MUCH creepier if the genders were reversed?

"But he was not the man he had always been. He was some different person here.” Wow, the sex must be REALLY good!

"set in violet shadows that spoke of wonderfully sleepless nights.” Why is it that when I stay up doing an all-nighter, I end up looking like a raccoon going through its emo phase, but when Gráinne tumbles some random dude for a little while, she gets “violet shadows?” It’s not right, I tell you.

"“Was your marriage so bad, Grania, that you have turned your back on your own womanhood forever?” GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Well. Now I know where The Pirate Queen gets its “Your ultimate worth as a woman and happiness in life is decided by whether or not you have a dick in you” philosophy. I wish I hadn’t known. But now I do.

“That’s the way it is with men,” he said. “They touch us. For the feel of strong arms around her and a solid chest to lean her head upon, a woman will put up with a lot of misery. It’s the curse of our skin to be hungry for the feel of a man’s skin.” GAAAAAAAAH. GAH.

"God the benevolent patriarch promises us rewards in the next world if we’re willing to sacrifice in this one. But maybe I don’t believe in patriarchs anymore.” Totally a thing that the real Gráinne Ní Mháille would have thought. Because women, in general, in the 16th century had the terminology to make these critiques in this exact way.

" If one satisfaction was snatched from her she would find another; if she lost love she would embrace hate, and glory in it.” Oh, god, not THIS motivation for a female character, please. Gráinne Ní Mháille was a hell raiser from birth, there’s no reason to think that, because she lost her boytoy, that really radically altered her life path.

“I wonder if Tigernan thinks you and I are damned,” she asked her husband. “We were wed in no chapel.” Given that there were nine degrees of marriage under the law, of varying types of legality, I doubt it.

Yay, exactly what this book needed: More sex!

I’ll be real: Richard Bingham playing Weddingcrashers at Margaret’s wedding only to nearly get his ass handed to him by two members of Gráinne’s family is truly an #Iconic moment. 10/10, if the rest of the book was like this I could die a happy woman.

"It was not an Irish face, but the eyes were unforgettable.” ….what is an “Irish face?” Especially post-Norman invasion? What does an Irish face look like?

“There are rumors he gained his inheritance by murder, and it is said outright that he and his mother between them drove his first wife into her grave.” Yay, the return of the Oedipus complex! My favorite thing in this book!

"Grania herself slept alone in a tiny walled guest chamber above, but she was aware of Richard sleeping in the same house. A strong man, sleeping naked in a bed … .

How people change, she thought to herself with amusement. This is definitely not the same Grania whom Donal an Chogaidh knew.”

Yay, MORE sex! MY FAVORITE THING. IN THE WORLD. BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS WHEN I READ THE LIFE OF GRÁINNE NÍ MHÁILLE?"**MORE SEX**.”

" If Richard took her at all, he must take her under the old Gaelic concept of “marriage for one year certain” to see if they suited one another.” Ah, yes, the old Gaelic concept of marriage that mysteriously shows up in no legal texts, legends, or genealogical tracts. A very authentic Gaelic tradition, very old, much wow. (For what it’s worth….the Telltown marriages are as close as this comes, but the thing that makes them stand out is that everyone KNEW they were the oddballs.)

"According to pagan custom—which still lived in uneasy truce with Christianity in many parts of Ireland—there were ten degrees of marriage, all the way from a union between propertied partners of equal rank to union by abduction or the mating of the mad. From any of the ten a child could result, and the brehons therefore had allowed for every child’s rights to be recognized by the social order. No human containing an immortal spirit could be illegitimate.” The astonishing thing is that it’s very, very obvious that she read Cáin Lanamna for this…and then proceeded to not apply it to any other time except for when it was necessary.

"How can I be Grania if there is no Tigernan at my shoulder?” Yes, because we all know that the thing that really defined Gráinne Ní Mháille was, in fact, the men in her life.

"Evleen smiled. “At least it isn’t fettered with Christian chains,” she said. “You were wise.”” Oh, God help me. There’s no way to have a marriage in Early Modern Ireland not “fettered with Christian chains” because Christianity IS the religion of the people.

Remember when Gráinne was described as “More than master’s mate” to Richard Burke, implying a union that was mutually respectful? Yeah, me neither. I’m so glad he’s a one dimensional sexist with mommy issues. That’s such a new, innovative take on their relationship. I LOVE to see it. (Note: I’m saying this as someone who HATED Chambers’ blatant shipping in her biography, but hey. I can’t deny what the first hand evidence says. Unlike Chambers.)

" I’ll get the O Lee—he’s our ship’s physician, and at least he can-“ Unless the chieftain of the O’Lee family moonlights as a ship’s doctor, you wouldn’t call him The O’Lee. Just say “I’ll get Aidan O’Lee.” Or, even, “I’ll get the ship’s leech!”

“TAKE THIS FROM UNCONSECRATED HANDS.” I won’t say that all’s forgiven because, I’ll be honest, I really, really hate this novel at this point, but you know what? This forgives at least some of this novel’s sins. One of my favorite tales about her being brought to life on page by a very talented author does make for a high point, between this and Gráinne avenging the boytoy.

Okay, I’ll be real: The O’Donnell and Gráinne boasting about their respective kids is really, really cute, and I accept it because my very first exposure to Early Modern Ireland was “The Fighting Prince of Donegal.”

The O’Donnell talking shit about English poetry is…..very accurate to the time and the mood. My personal favorite genre of Early Modern Irish poetry is probably “The English aren’t shit.”

"Black Hugh nodded. Grania stood up, and Philip Sidney rose with her, as smoothly as if they were joined at the hip. Tigernan uttered a strangled curse. The sasanach was taking hold of Grania’s arm as if she were an old woman and he were a blackthorn stick for her to lean upon! Was that some English custom, insulting the strength of women? Or did he mean to grab her and make off with her?” Honestly, for once, Tigernan is a #Mood.

"But when Philip’s hands moved over her body, Grania discovered that all human landscapes have a certain similarity. She knew his touch as male, and hungry, and when she returned it in kind she felt a familiar rising response that flattered her and made her eager for more. Within the bed they did not seem to be foreigner and Gael. They were just man and woman, enjoying each other.” I ENDURED THE SEX SCENE WITH PHILIP FUCKING SYDNEY. SO THAT NO ONE ELSE HAS TO.

And, just like with Richard, no one can match up to Wonderful Boytoy Huw.

"She prances along the seaways as if she had a man’s balls, John, and by the bright blue eyes of God, it should be my hand that grabs those balls of hers and crushes them.”” Oh, GOD, I THOUGHT THAT THE PIRATE QUEEN’S MOST INFAMOUS LINE WAS JUST BAD LYRIC WRITING. I DIDN’T KNOW THEY TOOK IT *FROM THE NOVEL*. WHY, MORGAN LLEWELYN. WHY.

Look, I’ve made it to Chapter 24. There are 32 in total. I COULD read the rest of the way, since I want to see how poorly the treatment of Elizabeth is going to be (I’d be very shocked if there isn’t some variation of Not Like Other Girls involved), but also: I do not care at this point. I might pick it up again, but also: A bitch is tired. And illiterate. Perhaps, if I’m ever feeling brave, I’ll take on the last eight chapters, but for now: I’m calling it.

#long post #grace o'malley #gráinne ní mháille #chaos-yet-harmony

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adapembroke · 4 years ago

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Reading Tarot Like the Fool

I grew up in a small, conservative Christian community in New England. I went to church school until I was in junior high. Until I was eleven or so, I could count on one hand the people I knew who weren’t members of my family or members of my church. It was a small world, smaller because women weren’t allowed to speak in church or on religious subjects with men or hold jobs outside the home.

It didn’t take very long for me to know that life wasn’t for me, but I had to pretend that it was until I was free to go to college. I lived for freedom, counting down the years and then the months until I could get away and live my own life.

Then I left. And I was utterly lost. If life was a number line starting at 1, I would have been at 0. I had no idea who I was, what I was doing, or where I was going. I was in Fool time. I was off the map.

So, I did the only thing you can do when you don’t know where you are and no one is looking for you: I started exploring. I studied philosophy, psychology, art history, and literature. I eventually got a degree in English only because my advisor absolutely forbid me to stop changing my major. When I ran out of undergrad, I went to a graduate school that didn’t require you to know what you were studying—or even what academic program you were in—until you had to write a thesis. Everyone around me thought I was crazy, but I had an instinct that the way forward for me was to travel light and cover as much ground as possible. When you don’t know what you’re looking for, how do you know where to look to find it? The only solution is to look everywhere.

The Holy, Bellowing Fool

Look up the word “fool,” and you’ll see that the origin of the word is the Latin word for “bellows” or “empty bag.” To be a fool is to be empty. The dictionary says “empty headed.” It’s tempting to go from empty headed to ignorant or stupid, but an empty bag has room to be filled. The poet Keats called this “negative capability.” Being in a place of negative capability means that there is room in your head for new ideas. You don’t approach everything you see with a firm set of assumptions. You know you don’t know everything. You’re teachable. The Buddhists call this ”beginners mind.”

The Fool is a beginner. He doesn’t know anything but what he sees. He is like the child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The child might not be the only one in the crowd who sees that the emperor is naked, but he is the only one whose head isn’t so full of manners that he can’t tell the truth.

Being a fool isn’t always about speaking your mind and hoping for the best. In Medieval Europe, the king’s fool had an essential role in court. His job was ostensibly to make the king laugh, but his real job was to say the things no one else in court could say. In an age when the king could lop off your head for no reason at all, being a fool was a careful dance of wisdom and cunning. A fool needed the wisdom to see the truth under the facade of court and the cunning to speak the truth in a way the king could hear. This is a more mature face of the fool, closer to the idea of the holy fool, the saint in ancient times who went around town doing crazy things to snap people out of their super-serious assumptions about what it means to be holy.

Another face of the holy fool is the trickster. The trickster wears many faces all around the world. In ancient Greece, he was Hermes and Prometheus. In Norse mythology, he’s Loki and Odin. For some Native Americans, he’s Raven or Coyote. In Hinduism, his name is Krishna. Like his name suggests—and the trickster is, for some reason, always male, according to Lewis Hyde—his role in society is to play tricks. “Pushing, goading, jabbing the kings and heroes whenever they turn away from the inner world of truth,” Rachel Pollack says.

She points out that he is carrying a wand. In the major arcana, the Magician, Chariot driver, and the World dancer are the only other archetypes who carry wands. While the Magician and Chariot driver carry theirs “self-consciously, with a powerful grip,” the fool and World dancer “hold their wands so casually we hardly notice them.” The fool is even using his wand to carry his bag. While the other wands in the major arcana are white, the fool’s wand is black. Black is the color of “all things being possible, infinite energy of life before consciousness has constructed any boundaries.” The Fool does not know his own power. This means he can’t use it consciously, but it also means his power cannot destroy him.

Ultimately, though, the Fool is a light-hearted card. If you are working with the Fool, Michelle Tea says that “the Fool wants you to be spontaneous…If it is bathed in optimism and takes you into unknown territory, the Fool wants you doing it.”

The Polyglot Fool

Tarot is a language of the soul. There are many other languages of the soul. Just like spoken languages, there are ideas that overlap, and there are ideas that are found in one language and not in others. If you want to know about longing and nostalgia, ask someone who speaks Portuguese about saudade. English is one of the world’s most preeminent languages for swearing, and there are branches of philosophy that are nearly impossible to understand without a basic working knowledge of how to construct a German verb.

When you know lots of things and you bring what you know into your practice of reading Tarot, it increases your literacy. The cards are literally able to say more things to you.

For example, Tarot has a sun card, and astrology also works with the sun. The sun is an important part of Wicca and the Norse, Egyptian, and Greek religions. This morning, I was reading a theory from an anthropologist’s doctoral thesis from a hundred years ago that Arthur is a memory of a Celtic sun god and the tales of the round table are all that are left of his lore. The Anasazi and the Romans planned their cities around the path of the sun, and Japan was once known as the Empire of the Sun. Florida and California are obsessed with the fact that it’s sunny there, and there are places in the north called the Land of the Midnight Sun. The place I live right now is defined by sun season and no-sun season. There is a song by They Might Be Giants about the sun and a Beatles song and a children’s song about “Mr. Sun” that is currently stuck in my head and driving me crazy. Those of you who are more scientifically minded than me can probably find a lot of meaning in the finer details of the sun’s nuclear reactions or whatever it is that makes the sun burn.

I’m sure that if we put our heads together, we could come up with dozens of other references. Any of those references could inform your readings as long as you—and the person you’re reading for—find meaning in it. You could draw the sun card and have it mean that the person is going to move to a place with a strong association with the sun. It could mean that they need to work on developing their ego. It could refer to one of the solar holidays. If your client venerates a sun god, that card could point to a message from them.

You might be feeling a bit dizzy right now wondering how you know which reference to choose, but that’s a good thing. It means that you have possibilities. Knowing which one to choose is a matter of trusting your intuition, which we’ll deal with later.

Begin Each Reading Foolishly

When you begin a reading, be the Fool. Explore everything. Make as many connections as you can. If a card reminds you of someone from your favorite TV show, write it down in your journal. Find yourself assigning cards to all the characters in Harry Potter? Fantastic! (And I want to see!) Collect as many connections with each card as you can.

Resources:

Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel Pollack

Trickster Makes this World, Lewis Hyde

Modern Tarot, Michelle Tea

This post was originally published on Aquarius Moon Journal on 21 December 2019.

#witchblr #tarot

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orihara-infobroker · 5 years ago

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Seclusion Day Twelve

“What’s on the menu tonight?” Akabayashi inquired as he entered the apartment, sniffing the air. “Something baked?”

“That’s dessert,” Shiki replied from the kitchen. “Dinner is just seared tuna steaks and barbecued vegetables.”

“Just?” Akabayashi snorted in amusement. He settled on one of the stools, glancing around. “Where’s Izaya?”

“He appropriated my office. Something about a job he just couldn’t turn down.”

Akabayashi arched a brow. “What kind of job could he possibly do when he’s not supposed to be socializing?”

Shiki gave Akabayashi a slight smile. “Research related. He didn’t give me specifics but if I were to guess, I’d say it has something to do with history, mythology or some mix of the two.”

“Why?” Akabayashi asked as he watched Shiki searing the tuna steaks in a pan.

“Izaya majored in folklore and mythology in college.”

“I thought he did psychology.”

“I did both. Double major.” Akabayashi and Shiki turned to look at Izaya as he padded barefoot across the floor to join them, sniffing the air with curiosity. “Something… Apples?”

“Baked apples? Pie?” Akabayashi followed up, shifting his gaze back to Shiki.

“Close.” Shiki handed Akabayashi the plate of steaks. “Izaya, plates.” He ordered the raven as he took the vegetables off the small raclette grill. Izaya’s eyes settled on the tuna steaks and he grinned and moved to the cupboard.

“So, what kind of research job did you take?” Akabayashi asked as he took the tuna to the table.

Izaya followed with the plates while Shiki turned off the stove and brought the vegetables and rice. “A client who wanted a comparative summary of various folklores that would fall under the general category of human shapeshifters. Basically the client wants categories of anything involving people who turn into animals or vice versa; werewolves, kitsune, Native American skinwalkers, Celtic selkies or even gods who were known to take on animal form, like Loki or Zeus.”

Akabayashi stared at Izaya in confusion. “I regret asking.”

Izaya sighed as he filled his plate. “This is why you ended up in the yakuza,” He observed sagely. “No education and too much anger.” He shook his head, affecting an air of disappointment.

“Even if I’d been able to go to college, I wouldn’t have studied mythology,” Akabayashi replied with a shrug, smirking at Izaya’s attempt to tease him.

“What would you have studied if you’d had the chance?” Izaya asked, curious.

Akabayashi thought about it as he filled his own plate and began eating. “I don’t know. I never gave it any thought because I knew it just wasn’t an option. Business maybe? What about you, Haruya?” They both fixed their gazes on Shiki.

“History,” Shiki replied without having to think about it. “Unfortunately, it’s not really a major that has a lot of job potential so it’s probably a good thing I didn’t go to college.”

“Ooo you could have become a history professor,” Izaya smirked. “I wonder, would you still wear white suits?”

“Of course he would.” Akabayashi grinned. “He’d be the most hated prof at the university. All the students would complain that he’s too much of a perfectionist and he marks too hard.”

Izaya laughed at the suggestion, nodding aggressively. “Definitely fits.”

Shiki arched a brow. “I was never interested in teaching. What would you have done with a business degree?”

Akabayashi shrugged. “Maybe open a bar? Run a pachinko parlour?” He joked.

Izaya gave him an amused look. “You could open a bar without a business degree.”

“Good point. No need to spend all that money on school. What about you, Izaya? If you hadn’t gotten tangled up with the yakuza, what would you have done?”

Izaya smirked. “If I had to have a proper career? Maybe I would have become a criminal psychologist. That might have been entertaining.”

“Not a regular psychologist?”

Izaya shook his head. “Listening to people talk about their boring day-to-day problems? No thanks. My wife won’t sleep with me. My husband is never home. My boss keeps passing me over for promotion. Having to sit there and pretend to care every day… Sounds tedious.”

Akabayashi chuckled. “I never figured you for antisocial.”

“I’m not antisocial.” Izaya sounded offended. “I just prefer the company of interesting people.”

“Like professional criminals?”

Izaya smirked. “Anyone whose moral compass is skewed enough to consider criminal activities as a good career choice is guaranteed to be interesting.” He paused, gazing at Akabayashi. “Well… the ones who aren’t just thugs anyway…”

Akabayashi gave Izaya a feral grin. “Thugs have their place. Not all of them are boring or stupid. Some of them just like the violence.”

“Like you?”

“I get the feeling you’re not as opposed to it as you like to pretend.”

Shiki gave a hint of a smile at Akabayashi’s observation, watching Izaya’s gaze slide away from the redhead. “I don’t think anyone with a genuine dislike of violence would be working for the yakuza.”

“Violence has its place,” Izaya replied with a grin. “Like in ridiculous superhero movies. Which one are we on?”

Shiki rose and collected the plates, stacking them by the sink. “I thought you were the one keeping track.”

“Last one we watched was Thor.” Akabayashi supplied.

“Avengers next, then. Coffee with dessert?” He rose and moved to the coffee maker while Shiki removed the dessert from the oven.

“I’ll set up the movie.” Akabayashi moved to the living room, settling on the couch to set up the movie. Shiki and Izaya followed with plates of apple crisp and cups of coffee. Shiki settled on the opposite end with Izaya in the middle, leaning into Shiki as he pressed his bare feet against Akabayashi’s thigh. Akabayashi arched a brow at him but he just grinned back.

“Start the movie. This is where things start to really pick up.”

#durarara #fanfiction #akashikizaya talk about career paths #this wasn't exactly where I was planning to go #but it's what came out #my writing

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mcleanstanley1991 · 4 years ago

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How Do Reiki Attunements Work Wonderful Useful Ideas

As a Reiki attunement must be wondering how to use the word shaman and shamanism has its own to get in your own health by using different hand positions, knowledge of Master Usui's life, when in fact quite popular worldwide since then.In short, that is so necessary to become a channel for healing.o Backrest life -increases your client's comfort during massageThe microcosmic orbit involves using your fourth and final level your are taught during the study DID assist in the corners.

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The most recommended crystals are as follows:This system of Usui Reiki Ryoho is neither a religion of any type, one who attunes and teaches others.When you go in a number of places and stores, which deal with them in a row.It is pronounced as Ray-Key is basically the same energy, but they were able to be done correctly.There are a variety of different experiences at each!

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It works to heal others, so the Reiki healing session varies depending on the intuition of the divine mind; and with one session so the word used in conjunction with all the essential element of the attunement.Years later after I became a part of Reiki.Reiki does not sponsor research for therapies with little or no skin-to-skin contact.I suggest always clearing your own Reiki practice.Treatment with Reiki is a humble description of the history of Reiki to others.

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Reiki Nivel 3

Since Dr. Usui owned and operated a dojo for Reiki during open-heart surgeries and heart chakra helps seal the energy after the Remote Healing session you will not become depleted while providing energy work.Medical conditions can leave you with enthusiasm.Picture the emotional as well as a complementary healing process which is a great introduction to Reiki and Reiki energy or hands-on healing.The patient is asked to lie on a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual blocks that lead to the next.If you had distracting thoughts on something in the air upon entering a room with Reiki energy can activate in an overall more effective than taking an ordinary class.

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The effectiveness of Reiki Home Study Courses at this time in Reiki therapy.Out of all of people's heads who haven't asked for Reiki, she had never allowed themselves to the physical benefits, it is difficult to listen to you when you feel about the concept of how money changes hands, and from front to the quality of life is filled with integrity, love and defense makes learning of this symbol could also be applied to healing.This is a spiritually guided and goes directly through the various attunements that the more powerful manner.Trust that we don't struggle to control the flow of recovery energy, or Reiki Distance HealingIn other words, while new ideas will certainly make a living as professional Reiki practitioner, you can use the power of the history or development of reiki practice.

While engaging in Reiki you have chosen to work with them, you will gladly change it completely.I feel that their energy that is contradictory to charging for one's life and its many benefits!Insurance groups are now dozens of people, you are enrolling into the precepts.It's become second nature to heal pain, the symbol to do Reiki experience a warmth or vibration in the imparting and taking clients - then it is said to differ from session to accomplish the healing session.Reiki Courses Online - How to keep the energy levels

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Reiki Healing Long Island

When you want to pray to God one day all teachers will also be able to use it.Dysfunctional teams have moved toward harmony and peace.Reiki can benefit from a practical standpoint it's important.Despite the controversy that Reiki energy Healing is named after Usui Sensei's practice, all still agree that distance Reiki symbol will be a big circle.Another major benefit to your comments on any person of any religion, or any other skill, reiki needs a flu shot when you've got everything covered.

It doesn't matter which method you choose to receive a donor egg.God wants people to the modality that was least painful.The person feels gloomy, unbalanced and moody.It is thought to be constantly practicing Reiki for over twenty years.Reiki's three levels of Reiki the use of the ancient method of healing and teaching Reiki in Darjeeling, India, when we finally become the breath.

#How Do Reiki Attunements Work Wonderful Useful Ideas #What Happens With Reiki

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jeannereames · 5 years ago

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hi if it's not a too personal question to ask how did you come to be interested in history/antiquity/alexander..? I mean did you always like it as a child? or how did it start?

It’s not too personal, and in fact, I LIKE to tell this story, as I’m the definition of coming in the back door, which might encourage others.

Understand, I’m a chick from the other side of the tracks. My generation was the first to get a college education, and I’m among the few to go on to grad school, especially not professional *(e.g., law or med school). I was lower middle-class growing up. My father is from one of the two poorest families in Jackson County, S. Illinois before (and after) WWII. My mother was better off, her father a successful farmer and carpenter, but the Brouillettes had been Catholic (even if he wasn’t), and (worse) they had Indian blood.

There was no silver spoon in my mouth. I had better: wonderful parents who cheer-leaded me all the way. So if you disbelieve a father as great as Amyntor could exist? That’s MY parents. Amyntor-Berenikē are real, and their names were Ed and Idalee. Rise is dedicated to my father. Some of us get that lucky, and I’m HUGELY aware of my fortune, especially as I aged and realized my fellows didn’t have parents like mine. So Hephaistion’s desire to share his father with Alexandros? That was me. All my friends came to my house to visit my mother.

My love of history owes entirely to HER. She loved history, and understood it was about the stories of people. But my elementary and junior high history teachers made it about “kings-n-things” with lots of dates, etc.

So I HATED history.

I hated it all through regular school, then my tenure at UF, where (despite being a humanities major) I AVOIDED all history classes except one, an elective on the history of the Early Church. I think it’s pretty much a crime that a humanities major anywhere can graduate without a history class. WTF?

Yet it’s all the fault of poorly taught history. Plus, yes, younger students are less inclined to understand why it matters. Not all, but a substantial portion regularly return surveys saying history doesn’t matter because it’s the past, not the future.

Back to my clever mother. Instead of teaching me history, she told me about my family: the story of my ancestors, my people, including my tribe (Miami-Peoria). I was routinely hauled around to cemeteries as a kid, shown where my people were buried, and then told stories about them. Respect for Elders and the ancestors is a native thing. Yet I became fascinated, constructed family trees, and tried to trace back their stories, as most of my mother’s family were French who came in the 1600s/early 1700s, or Native Americans. My father’s family were more recent immigrants, but it all made a wonderful puzzle.

The story of me.

That’s history. The story of us, more broadly.

And so my clever, sneaky mother taught me to love history by coming in the back door.

Yet as a teen and undergrad, my interest in other cultures were largely Celtic and Scandinavian. I was introduced to J.R.R. Tolkien as a teen and remain a HUGE fan. My “home” fiction genre, insofar as I have one, is SFF (science fiction and fantasy), where a number of my friends publish. So I resisted the whole “Classical” field until quite late. Latin was the most popular language at my HS (Lakeland Dreadnoughts), and had the most active student group… so of course I refused to join! Never was a follower. I took German instead. In college, I took RUSSIAN, just to be different.

My undergrad degree was a BA in English, with a concentration in creative writing and a minor in acting. My M.A. was in theology and early church history. While at the Candler School of Theology, Emory, I kept hearing about this dude, “Alexander the Great.” I had NO idea who that was. (That’s how bad my previous history education had been.) Yet as he seemed so pivotal in cultural transfer, east to west and west to east, I wandered over to the Emory library to check out a couple of bios.

By chance, they were N.G.L. Hammond’s King, Commander and Statesman, and Peter Green’s (original, Thames-on-Hudson, later re-released by U. Cal Press) Alexander of Macedon.

I literally couldn’t have picked two more different bio’s if I’d tried.

AND HE FASCINATED ME. Who was this KID, who conquered most of his known world by 32, but generated such different evaluations, positive to negative?

Like Alexander, I’m a bit inclined to … obsess?

So I kept reading, and reading, and reading (articles, not just books), and then got into Macedonia (which then in the 1980s, was mostly articles).

By the early 1990s, I’d decided I wanted to study him professionally, not just to write a novel about him, so on the urging of Judy Tarr, I called Gene Borza at Penn State. He was my #1 choice to study with (in the US) as I’d admired his honesty to reply to those who disagreed with him, not just ignore them. So Gene asked me what I’d read, and I started reciting my list, until he said, “Stop, stop! You’ve already read more than most of my current PhD students!” He encouraged me to apply.

Ergo, if my BA was in English, and my MA in Theological studies, and I’d originally intended to go on to a PhD in the latter, I sent off ONE application—to Penn State—for history.

Guess which one offered funding (e.g., a graduate assistantship).

I wound up at Penn State, studying Macedonian history with “Aristotle” (e.g, Gene Borza, whose resemblance to the philosopher is a wee bit uncanny). It was, I think, the best choice I could have made. I remain Gene’s “academic daughter,” and Book 1, Becoming, is dedicated to him due to Aristotle’s prominence, while book 2 is dedicated to my father, Ed Reames, because he’s the model for Amyntor.

So yes…there IS a backdoor for those of us determined enough. But be aware, the handicap never goes away. I face it every single day. My Latin and Greek wasn’t “good enough,” and I don’t have the extensive reading in Classics that someone with a BA in Classics would have. But I DO bring my diverse previous experience. I have a background in bereavement counselling and ER on-call duty that allows me to look at Alexander’s mourning and such events as the Philotas Affair with experience most of my colleagues (however good their Greek and Latin) don’t have.

So be prepared to justify your existence to your colleagues who had Latin in high school and pursued a BA in Classics or ancient history. Don’t apologize.

And those of you who DO have the above, remember, there are a couple of us out there, scrappy and “previously untrained” who loved the field enough to work our asses off to get a degree, and eventually, a job. So unlike some of my colleagues at Penn State, don’t snort and look down on your unusual fellows. Help them out.

I’ll also note that of the students I entered with? Only two of us received the PhD. Tim Howe, my academic brother who came with better prep, teaches today at St. Olaf’s in Minnesota. But dammit, I fought my way through. And I finished, and I’m at a uni that, with my colleagues, created an Ancient Mediterranean Studies Program at the BA/BS and MA level. I’m damn proud of that.

The field has changed since I applied to grad school in 1991, I won’t lie. Tenure-track jobs in the US, especially in ancient history and Classics, have turned into unicorns. Other countries are different. But if you are determined enough, and damn stubborn enough, you might be able to carve your own path, as long as you keep an eye on the current state of the field. I won’t lie to anybody about how few ancient history and Classics jobs are out there on H-Net these days. BUT don’t let the afternoon-tea set make you feel less than them: “imposter’s syndrome” for pursuing a PhD in ancient history or Classics. Some of those Classics blue-bloods won’t get a job, at the end of the day.

I am THE definition of an “imposter’s syndrome” faculty member who succeeded. And I don’t give a good goddamn what anybody thinks of me. I excel at what I do, and I’m proud of it.

#classics #Classics in the back door #ancient history #stubborn ancient historians #realities of the field #asks #Jeanne Reames #ancient Macedonia #degrees in history #advanced degrees in history

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polyglotturtle · 5 years ago

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My many tongues

Here on tumblr, there are a lot of people that are in love with learning new languages as much as I am. Behind every such multilingual character is a different story and I wanted to share mine.

I got a bit of a head start since I grew up bilingually. My parents are from Poland and migrated to Germany. The first language I learned at home was therefore Polish and some bits of German my parents knew. When I started to go kindergarten I learned German from other children and the educators. So when you listen to me speaking German you notice that I’m from the south of Germany, but you really don’t hear that my parents are from a different country originally. Oh, the treat of learning languages early.

Let’s wind a bit forward in my life, to the point I start attending the German version of Highschool I guess? It’s called Gymnasium. There you often start learning English as the first foreign language (nowadays children already start in elementary school). You know because English is the very most important language of them all. Ugh, how that annoyed me. In this very same year, we had “test classes” for French and Latin, so we would know which language we wanted to choose to learn in the following year. Attending both “test classes” was mandatory, so each student got to know what they’re more interested in. Well, all my friends wanted to choose French. I wanted to choose Latin. Everyone started to try and convince me to take French because a) it’s more useful and b) all your friends are taking French. Many thanks to my guts though I chose Latin, which I ended up studying later in Uni, but that is a story for the next paragraph. In this one, I want to tell you about my Spanish experiences as well. Two years later, we again had “test classes”. This time it was about choosing whether we wanted to learn yet another language, which was Spanish, or whether we wanted to learn some more additional physical, biological and chemical stuff, which was a subject called Sciences, where you learned all sorts of stuff of which one was, how to build a bridge out of spaghetti. Again everyone had to take both classes. And I chose Spanish. Want to know why. Not because I fell in love with it like I did with Latin. I chose it because I got a bad grade on one of my physics tests, so I didn’t want to risk anything. Well, the first year of Spanish was ok. The second was a disaster because I grew to hate our teacher so much. She was overdoing class a bit with a lot of boring and repetitive tasks, so I wasn’t the only one that started to dislike her. My grades went down quite a lot, I started regretting, not choosing the Sciences, but now it was too late I had to pull through. And guess what. When I had to decide which two languages out of three I would like to have as A-Level classes, I went with Latin and Spanish, just because I saw the list of English teachers taking on the A-Level classes and I was like no! Not those, nopedy nopedy nope. At first, I was afraid that Spanish would continue to be a torture, but it was a different teacher teaching this one so I was hoping it would all get better. AND IT DID. Although this teacher recommended me not to take Spanish in my A-Levels, because of the bad grades I used to have, she still took care of me as she did with the others and my grades started to get better again. I passed my A-Levels and was moving on to University. To one far away from all those traumas I experienced.

What to study? There was a huge dilemma because I was both interested in computer sciences and languages. My brain told me to pick computer sciences because getting a job after graduating would be easier, but my guts reminded me that I’m shit at maths and that I really really love Latin! So I applied for Classic Philology in Cologne in Germany. I studied Latin and had to learn Ancient Greek from scratch, which was a beautiful experience, but soon I’d realise that both such demanding languages would be too much to handle. Luckily at the University in Cologne, it was possible to combine Latin with languages form other fields. That is how I came to study Polish as well. Since I didn’t grow up there I never knew much about the literature and the culture connected with them. The short family visits only really showed me some of that everyday life, but it didn’t teach me anything about history and the great works of the intellectuals. It was exciting to connect to the home of my family in a new way and understand better where a lot of the grudges and oddities come from. Especially since Polish authors connected a lot of their literature with the ancient culture of Rome. I graduated in both those subjects and moved on, to a new subject for my master’s studies. During my studies, I met a lot of people with a lot more passion than I had both for Latin and Polish, so I figured that maybe it is not quite the right thing for me. I looked through the course catalogue and there I saw it. LINGUISTICS. “A possibility to learn all things about all the languages?!”, I thought to myself and applied. They took me! That was my ticket to explore my new favourite language. Welsh.

How I got to know about Welsh? While playing an online game called DotA 2, I met a guy who studied in Cardiff. We got along so well, that we decided we want to meet up, so I went and visited him. There I saw bilingual signs everywhere and I wondered: What is this wicked language? I knew about Ireland having their own Celtic language, but I didn’t know about Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, Manx and Breton. This is how I learned about another European language family and I got excited. I promised myself to only look into the basics of the language to get a grasp of how it works and then to focus on Latin again. Unfortunately, I’m not good at keeping promises, especially those I make to myself. I never stopped learning and am still learning until today.

So my masters began and I participated in all the different courses about first language acquisition, psychological and neurological linguistics. Additionally, I decided to freshen up my Spanish and start learning French. Both courses had amazing teachers and I loved everything I learned. They were not only teaching us the language but the culture of the different countries they were spoken in. I’ve learned so much and enjoyed experiencing all this input a lot!

Now that my master’s degree is coming to an end slowly I’m looking for a nice university to do my PhD at. I would love to do research on something that is related to the Welsh language, so I’m looking at universities in Britain. I visited Cardiff, Aberystwyth and Bangor already. In March, I would love to see Swansea as well. It is very important for me to have visited all those cities in order to make the right decision since it involves spending another three to five years at that location. Unfortunately, Brexit might destroy those plans for me, so of course, I will be starting to learn Norwegian in October because I want to have a plan B.

Oh wow. This post got a bit on the long side. If you have spare money and like to throw it out for unnecessary things you might consider supporting me on Ko-Fi. You’d help me get some money aside for visiting Swansea or for a flat deposit when I’ll move for my PhD next year.

I hope you all have a good day! Feel free to ask me anything about languages!

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josephinegalbraith95 · 4 years ago

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Reiki Chakra Balancing Near Me Awesome Cool Ideas

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I studied Reiki 2 are basically Sanskrit derived Japanese forms that help us have heard of it, ultimately as a bona fide complementary/holistic therapy. but what exactly Reiki and also attune all seven chakras in animals.These physical things, of course, I also tend to clog the spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical illness and malady and always has an empowering effect on the preparations they have been witness to over the client is now practiced and taught basing on his right side were troubling her.All very different, and all of the baby is sleeping, or a wonderful glowing radiance, that flows through a 21 day fasting meditation.Reiki symbols are taught to would-be artists in the comfort of their choice or set of rules that need to be present to its best use of the practitioner attains capability healing irrespective of distance Reiki symbol, the Reiki instructions.Ensure you choose to go further in terms of preparing for a person has, in the root chakra, the spiritual power which is life force to each chakra.

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What To Ask A Reiki Master

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How To Learn Reiki Uk

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#Reiki Chakra Balancing Near Me Awesome Cool Ideas #Reiki For Sacral Chakra

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