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lesbiansforboromir · 4 years ago

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"Yet even so it was Gondor that brought about its own decay, falling by degrees into dotage, and thinking that the Enemy was asleep, who was only banished not destroyed.

'Death was ever present, because the Numenoreans still, as they had in their old kingdom, and so lost it, hungered after endless life unchanging. Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons.

Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; in secret chambers withered men compounded strong elixirs, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars. And the last king of the line of Anarion had no heir."

Faramir's explanation for Gondor's ‘decline’ is... incoherent.. what the hell are you on about m’love?

The way this reads is so completely misleading when looking at the actual history and reasons for Gondor's receding borders and the loss of the watch on Mordor. Faramir puts the onus on Gondorian Kings wanting to live longer and not having kids... babe? Did you forget... the plague? Gondor WAS watching for activity in Mordor. For 1640 years! And then there was a plague so devastating that it turned the country’s most populous city into a near ghost town. It took 200 years for Gondor to recover, and even then it never truly reached the population levels it had maintained before. Osgiliath was never the same! And by then Mordor had taken the fortresses at the Morannon!

There is absolutely no mention of Kings or Stewards who were desperately seeking to extend their life in Gondor’s history. Where are these tombs more splendid than the houses of the living? All the Kings not buried in Osgiliath are buried in the Silent Street... There is no mention of achingly elaborate tombs anywhere!

There WERE however some Kings who did not marry or have children! ... Two, there were just two of them... out of thirty three. Narmacil I was Atanatar's son and reigned in the HEIGHT of Gondor's wealth. He essentially allowed his nephew Minalcar to run the country whilst he had a great time writing poetry and kissing men. And Minalcar did a really good job! He fought wars, he made alliances, he built the Argonath and when it actually came around to his time to be King, he had a nice and peaceful reign! And when his son Valacar wanted to marry a Northern Princess? Even though the worry in Gondor was that that would ‘weaken’ the King’s line and reduce their lifespan? He supported him! Gave his blessing!

The other King who never married or had any children was Earnur! You all remember Earnur? Oh sure, he desperately wanted to extend HIS life past its natural limits! Fighting in two wars and then riding off into an obvious trap just because he'd been challenged really gives me a whole 'old man in his dotage fears death' vibe. And that was the ‘last king of the line of Anarion who had no heir’. You know WHY he was the last king? Because the King before his father Earnil II (King Ondoher) and his two sons had died! In a massive fuckall war with the Balchoth that nearly saw Gondor destroyed! PRINCE Faramir was TOLD to stay behind! But he was so anxious for his family and so wished to not simply sit and wait for death that he HID amongst the ranks of the Eotheod and went to war anyway!! AND DIED!! Asking questions of the stars??? Making strange elixirs?? Mused uselessly on heraldry??? WHEN? FARAMIR?? Was Ondoher daydreaming about stars and heraldry as he was cut down by a chariot??? Was Artamir brewing potions mid-battle?? WHAT are you talking about!!!

Where are these men fearing death who brought Gondor into it's decline that Faramir is talking about? Is he lying? No, I actually believe Faramir when he says he would not even snare an orc in a falsehood. The things Faramir says are things he believes. But then how, when he is so well known for his loremastership, can he be so misleading and plain wrong about something so basic to Gondorian history? Well I have a suggestion but it means Faramir’s at least a little homophobic so bear with me and I promise this is relevant.

So, obviously, the ups and downs of Gondor society in terms of queer liberation would be complex and rely upon a diverse number of factors. However, I’d say that, if you looked at an overall trend, it goes up in times of peace and takes a hit during times of strife. The basic reasoning for this is that one of the fundamentals of Gondorian society is the concept of doom and fate. This can give both correct and erroneous impressions of cause and effect throughout history. Gondorians tend to believe everything happens for a reason. And due to the (sometimes quiet but always present) elf-and-faithful-numenorean-ruled thinkers, who push ideas of proper marriage, celebacy, romance-superiority and other cis-het-normative agendas, the ‘reason’ that bad things happen is often blamed on the queer liberation of the times. The populace is open to being given reasons for bad things happening and Academia in Gondor is very much elf-revering, so it is often respected scholars who are pushing that narrative.

HOWEVER, the queerness is rarely what is actually remembered or recorded in history, the wording of records are often bound up in the faithful numenorean rhetoric of ‘heretical kings’ and ‘they fell into the trap of king’s men ideology’ and so on and so forth. Scholars might understand what this means at the time, but it gets muddled further down the road and even academics in the future have trouble finding the intended emphasis. So! By the time we reach 3018 TA, the academic community as a whole has reached a general consensus that ‘the old sins of our past’ are to blame and that, whilst queerness was a part of it, it was more a symptom than a direct cause.

So! The thought process I’m proposing for Faramir should be easy to guess at now, but I’m going to go more specific for the sake of... me uwu.

GONDOR has not known peace for the last 500 years, not since Steward Denethor the first’s reign wherein the so called ‘watchful peace’ ended and Sauron returned to Mordor. NOW, before Denethor, his uncle Dior was the Steward and, as you’ve probably guessed, he had no children and nor did he marry. I would suggest that Dior lived through one of the most tolerant and open portions of Gondor’s history. I think he not only was open about his choice not to marry, but he also had a socially accepted partner and lived with him all his life with only a small, vocal minority voicing their objections.

But then Sauron returned! And it was brutal, bloody and horrific. And that vocal minority saw an opportunity to use Dior’s life as a method to push Gondor once again into it’s regular crisis of conscience, faith and purpose. ‘We betrayed our founder’s’ and ‘We should have been ruled by Dior’s son but because of his weakness against his ill-fate we are doomed, he abandoned his duty! A pitiful fate but pitiful for us as well!’ And so on and so forth, there are reems of academic works written about it.

Now, this doesn’t have an immediate crushing effect on queer rights that one might fear. Denethor I loved his uncle dearly and would not hear a bad word about him, as did Boromir I! And Cirion? Cirion was almost more alternative than Dior. He sold off portions of land when the Stewards had been told to keep them IN TRUST for the king’s return. He made enduring and reciprocal alliances with the Eotheod ‘middle men’, he was very much anti-traditionalist! However, it was after his reign that Gondor truly felt the backlash of all this, spurred on by Cirion’s very alternative views, actions and methods. Because whilst he may have been an effective and charismatic Steward, Cirion had not found so much time to be a good father. And Hallas had been fifteen when his father had left him behind and ridden to war. He had a frightening and lonely childhood and was very open to the idea that his father was wrong, had gone too far, that things should be ‘brought back to normal’. Stability being key and all. The vocal minority had his ear.

And since then, whilst opinion has still fluctuated, the constant unrest and simmering crisis of Gondor’s day to day has made progress against such concepts difficult and slow going. And it’s informed the opinion of history too, a lot more academic writing has compared Dior to Narmacil I (the first unwed and unmarried King) and has tried to find parallels between them and Earnur. Any explicit discussion of queerness has been relegated to Sindarin scripts (the language only really understood by academics and the upper classes), but the underlying tone is there HENCE!

“falling by degrees into dotage, and thinking that the Enemy was asleep“ = Dior ‘abandoned his duty’ and Narmacil I ‘was indolent’.

“the Numenoreans still [-] hungered after endless life unchanging.” = A melding of heretical beliefs that occurred over centuries into one monolith that applied longing for endless life automatically.

“Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; [-] compounded strong elixirs, [-] asked questions of the stars.” = This is all both reaching back to heretical practices in Numenor, whilst also harkening back to the periods of time in which Dior and Narmacil lived, peaceful times where more introspective and experimental pursuits could be indulged.

SO! This is where Faramir’s erroneous and misleading opinions come from. And why he is at least a little homophobic. There, I told you all I’d get there.

#soap operas in mannish sindarin #gondor #tolkien #lotr #erran vs tolkien #do I fucking dare put this in faramir's tag... no #no one in there will want to hear this #lotr meta #tolkien meta

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mihidecet · 4 years ago

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Sbi&CO d&d AU: Scott Smajor Character Analysis

It’s time for our all time favourite tournament organizer!!! Strap in friends, it’s Scott Smajor loving hours thanks to @hismilw ‘s lovely request! They asked for a character analysis for Scott in the D&D AU, which is extremely good because I’d been meaning to add him to the canon for a while now!! (And now, with MCC becoming part of the story, it’s even more appropriate!)

I also want to thank @octopus-defence-squad for being able to come up with such brilliant ideas for the MCC tournament in the au! They’ve given me so much inspiration and I can’t thank them enough ahahha

So, Scott! This time, his character is inspired a bit more on his role in the story, instead of only considering his actual online persona.

This is mainly because, in our au, Scott Major is one of the organizers for this grandiose tournament that takes place once every year in a medium sized and primarily tourist town.

And since him, Noxite and his crew have to build the stages for the tournament every year, there’s no better class to give him other than the Wizard!

Wizards in d&d are scholars, people that spend a lot of time studying and practicing, and while they do have a bit of “fame” for being nerds, they are also extremely strong spellcasters.

Therefore, the idea for Scott as a mage and as the headmaster of a wizard school academy was born.

Now, wizards in d&d have got subclasses too, which are centered around a specific “school” of magic. This is because spells in d&d are all divided in different categories, sort of like types of music, and the subclasses kind of reflect that.

So, the initial concept for Scott was a version of him that would allow him to be in a fake creative mode, in order to allow him to work on builds and general organization. But the thing is, the Conjuration subclass, which is centered around making things out of thin air and summoning beings, isn’t really … that strong in my personal opinion. Yes, it is pretty good, but … since wizard subclasses don’t restrain the types of spells you can learn, they just add perks to your magic abilities, the Conjuration subclass just doesn’t hold up in comparison to others.

[basically, if you’re curious, it gives you the ability to conjure small objects (3x3x3ft max) at second level, and teleport a limited number of times at sixth. Blink is a spell that does basically the same thing, and Scott would be able to learn it at fifth level.]

[again this is just a personal preference]

If I had to talk about what I effectively think are the strongest subclasses overall, I’d say either War Magic or Abjuration. The main problem with wizards in d&d is the fact that they are glass cannons: pretty strong, but they need to keep their distance because they go down very easily.

War Magic is the most “attack” version of the solution to that problem, as it gives bonuses to your armour class (which is the thing that defines how hard you are to hit). It also incentivises you to be in the thick of the fight since now you have benefits to whenever you block an enemy attack. But while I do think that is very cool, I don’t really see it fitting Scott. He is a huge team player, and this is a bit of a “one man army” subclass.

Abjuration seems more fitting to me. Abjuration is mainly focused on magic that blocks, protects or banishes. Incoming arrow? Use Shield, now you’re harder to hit. An enemy caster is about to burn your pals to a crisp with Fireball? Use Counterspell, that spell is no more. There’s a demon bearing down on your whole team, with no way to run? Use Banishment, now the demon is no more.

This subclass gives you temporary hit points (so more health), and allows you to use that additional health to absorb damage that the rest of your party takes (and more!).

This, in my opinion, is both very good from a gameplay point of view, and very fitting for the multifaceted role that Scott plays when in a team. He can play support, he can attack, he can help keep control over the battlefield.

Now, I see Scott mainly as an elf. Elves are just very cool and elegant, and I think Scott would enjoy being an elf. It’s just what he deserves.

From a mechanical point of view, High Elves get bonuses to both dexterity (good for avoiding attacks) and intelligence (a given for a wizard).

They also get a bonus cantrip! Which is very good overall, even though you have access to a lot of cantrips as a wizard.

And finally, the background! While I do not like being cliché, Scott is 100% a sage. He’s a scholar, and an academic. He’s getting the sage background.

So, in summary:

Scott Major is born from a small elven family, who are all traditionally artists and performers. Ever since his birth, he’s always displayed a penchant for the arcane, with his magical abilities appearing earlier than usual and his curiosity allowing him to learn a lot in an exceptional short time.

Due to all this, his parents decided to let him develop his abilities in a nearby arcane academy, where he quickly proves himself as one of the most talented wizards of his times. He finishes his studies and explorations of the various arcane schools extremely at leisure pace nevertheless, taking the time to experiment with his own interests and forming friendships with other coursemates.

With one in particular, Noxite, he shares not a dream but a project.

The two of them leave the academic world for a while to explore and learn more about the world of adventuring, then return with enough coin to complete what they’ve set up to do.

They take what was originally the small academy where Scott began his studies, and make it the centre of arcane knowledge in the whole region - scholars of all types and origins flock to their newly born institute, for research purposes and to teach bright faced young students.

Then, they start building.

And many years later, what first began as a small tournament held for only academics, so that professors could show off new abilities and students could experiment the tensions of battle in a controlled environment, became the most renown tournament in the whole material plane.

There, adventurers and students alike can participate and display their own skills and abilities, and try to win a price that is both of fame and more material.

Scott went from taking part to the tournament to mainly overseeing the organization, but he does still sometimes compete if a team is lacking a contestant. He continues to teach, mostly taking under his wing extremely talented students that attend his academy, and his research on the effects of time and space in magic has never really stopped.

#requests are open!#hismilw #scott major #smajor1995 #sbi dnd au #now sbi&co

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warsofasoiaf · 5 years ago

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The Clashing Storm of Shields - Fighting in the Shield Wall (Part 1: Background)

I think I promised @warsofasoiaf a write up on shield wall combat nearly two years ago now but, after several different versions that each took a slightly different approach, I’ve finally nailed down something that works for me.

As my small introduction has become a rather large post, I’ve decided to split the subject into two sections: a section on the background (introduction, recruitment and organisation, equipment) and a section on how the battle actually took place. I’m posting the first section now, and will post the second in a couple of weeks.

Introduction

I.P. Stephenson once wrote that “the single most defining ideological event in Anglo-Saxon warfare came at Marathon in 490 B.C.”. This comment, and all the assumptions that go with it, highlights the single biggest problem people have in understanding combat in the Early Middle Ages. The uncritical application of Classical scholarship to the medieval world, and a failure to up with the current academic consensus, has significantly distorted how many historians think about shield wall combat.

For example, Gareth William suggests in Weapons of the Viking Warrior that the sax was especially useful in a close order, rim-to-boss formation and compares it to the gladius:

Roman legionaries fighting at close quarters were armed not with a long sword, but with a gladius, or short-sword, which was primarily a thrusting weapon, requiring a minimum of space between the individual soldiers in a line.

The problem with this assumption, leaving aside the fact that weapon sized saxes were rare to the point of non-existence in 9th-11th century Scandinavia and that gladius length saxes weren’t particularly common in Anglo-Saxon England either1, is that the famous Roman short sword wasn’t used for thrusting in a close order formation. Instead, it was used for both cutting and thrusting in open order, with each man taking up 4.5-6 feet of space2. It’s not until open order fighting was abandoned completely and the long spatha was universally adopted by the infantry that we hear of the thrust being the preferred method of combat by the Romans3. An assumption, almost certainly based on scholarship from before 2000, has been made about how the Romans fought and how it might be applied to Anglo-Saxon warfare, but no examination of the different context or more recent scholarship has been performed, leading to the wrong conclusion.

(The Bayeux Tapestry)

Similarly, it’s common in historical fiction set in the Early Middle Ages to feature battles that rely very heavily on Victor Davis Hanson’s The Western Way of War4. For example:

We in the front rank had time to thrust once, then we crouched behind our shields and simply shoved at the enemy line while the men in our second rank fought across our heads. The ring of sword blades and clatter of shield-bosses and clashing of spear-shafts was deafening, but remarkably few men died for it is hard to kill in the crush as two locked shield-walls grind against each other. Instead it you cannot pull it back, there is hardly room to draw a sword, and all the time the enemy’s second rank are raining sword, axe and spear blows on helmets and shield-edges. The worst injuries are caused by men thrusting blades beneath the shields and gradually a barrier of crippled men builds at the front to make the slaughter even more difficult. Only when one side pulls back can the other then kill the crippled enemies stranded at the battle’s tide line.

Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

Other works, such as Giles Kristian’s Blood Eye and Edward Rutherfurd’s The Princes of Ireland, follow the same pattern of a physical collision between the two formations and a shoving match where weapons are almost secondary. This is a core concept of the traditional model of hoplite combat - the literal othismos (”push”) - that has been likened to a rugby scrum since the early 20th century. Ironically enough, VDH is a great pains to emphasize the unique nature of the Greek phalanx due to the hoplite shield, so even without the doubts of A.D. Fraser, Peter Krentz and all the other “Heretics” it would be questionable to apply this method of warfare to the Early Middle Ages5.

When you examine the differences between the two periods, for example the early Anglo-Saxon shields are often no more than 40cm in diameter and featuring spiked or “sugar loaf” bosses6, it becomes clear that the use of Greek warfare to represent 5th and 6th century warfare is incorrect. Similarly, the difference in construction between the aspis and Scandinavian shields of the 9th and 10th centuries, the aspis having thickly reinforced rims while the Scandinavian shields either taper towards the edges or remain very thin (<10mm), should offer a similar caution7.

In spite of the litany of criticisms I’ve just provided, it’s still necessary to refer back to our understanding of Greek and Roman warfare when examining combat in the Early Middle Ages, for two main reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, the sources are much more detailed about how fighting was carried out and were very often written by men who had themselves fought. While authors of the Early Middle Ages were not necessarily unfamiliar with warfare, they were remarkably uninterested in recording much in the way of details and there’s frequently little useful information to be extracted from accounts of battles.

Secondly, a far larger body of work exists on the how of Ancient hand-to-hand combat. While re-enactors of the medieval period are certainly numerous, perhaps even the most numerous of the pre-modern re-enactor, the sheer output of Greek and Roman re-enactors and the scholars who mine them for insights dwarfs that of medieval re-enactors and, on the whole, is more likely to be up to date with the scholarship of the field in general.

My goal here is to make the best possible use of sources on both Ancient and Medieval warfare in order to present a picture that is as close to a plausible reconstruction as I can manage. I don’t mean for this to be authoritative, and my views do in some cases differ from those of some re-enactors or academics, but I do hope you find this post a useful resource in your writing.

(This? This is what not to do.)

Trees of the Spear-Assembly: Who Were the Warriors?

One of the most important things in understanding combat in the Early Middle Ages is knowing who was doing the fighting and why, since this has a big impact on the way in which they fight, and with how much enthusiasm. In particular, the question of whether they were just poor farmers levied en masse or wealthier members of society who had both military obligations and the culture of carrying them out is an important one, as quite often this is used to demonstrate the difference between two sides.

The answer to the question is that, by and large, men who fought were freemen of some standing, if not always considerable landowners, and wealthy by the standards of their people. I emphasize the concept of relative wealth for good reason, and I’ll get into that as we have a look at the basic structure of the “armies” of the period.

Generally speaking, armies of the Early Middle Ages, across almost all of Europe, consisted of two elements: the Household (hirð, hird, comitatus, etc) and the Levy (fyrd, lið, exercitus, etc). I use “levy” here as a shorthand for any force composed of freemen who are not regularly attached to the household of a major landholder, as they were not usually assembled into a single coherent force with 100% unified command, but I do want to note that there would be a significant difference in the unity of an army made up of regional levies and one made up of lið (individual warbands)8.

The status of those serving in the household of a powerful landholder could vary significantly, from slaves to the sons of major landholders (although militarised slaves, it must be admitted, were rare outside of the Visigothic realm), and the more powerful the landowner the more likely the men of his household would be themselves descended from someone of considerable status. A significant portion could still be made up of poorer freemen who were sons of older warriors or whose family had some close connection to the major landowner.

For someone who maintained a large household, it was important that they present an image of being a wealthy as possible, and the best way to do this was to outfit the men of their household with every piece of military equipment that displayed status. So, whether he was descended from slaves or was the son of a family who owned a thousand acres, once a man had sworn their oath of loyalty to their new patron, they could be expect to be equipped with all the trappings of a warrior. This might only be symbolic in poorer regions (a fancier sword, a specific type of ornament, etc), especially if the landowner already had a number of armoured retainers, but it bound the different levels of freemen together into a single group.

Generally this oath swearing would occur after a youth had spent several years in the household of their future patron, where they would learn all the necessary skills of a warrior, such as riding, hunting, shooting a bow, using a sword and fighting with spear and shield. These youths probably participated in battles as auxiliaries with bows and javelins and only joined the ranks of the shield wall when they were considered full warriors, but we have only have very limited information on this point.

The status of men of the levy or warband varied to a much smaller degree. They were, in almost all cases, free and relatively wealthy by the standards of their region, although you do see a bit more of a variation in warbands, which might have members from a half dozen regions and many more backgrounds. In comparison, any army raised in defence of a region or raised from a region is going to consist entirely of free men and the majority of these will be fairly wealthy.

Simply put, even basic military equipment was sufficiently expensive that farmers who merely had enough land to sustain their family9 weren’t going to be able to afford much more than an axe, shield and spear or, depending on their region, a bow and 12-24 arrows. This is consistent across the Carolingian, Lombard and Scandinavian world during the 8th-11th centuries and, given the mostly aristocratic nature of warfare in Anglo-Saxon England, was likely true there as well10.

Basic military equipment, however, was not what rulers looked for when summoning forces for external wars or internal defence. We know from the capitularies of Charlemagne that only a man with four estates was required to arm and equip himself for service and that, with one exception, only men with one estate or more were required to pitch in to help equip one of their number for service11. Moreover, these estates weren’t even all the land the freeman held, just the lands he held which had unfree tenants, so that a “poor” freeman who merely had his own personal land was excluded from military service12.

(The average Anglo-Saxon fighting man)

Much the same situation appears in mid-8th century Lombardy, where king Aistulf demanded that those who had 7 or more properties worked by unfree tenants should perform service with a horse and full equipment, while those with less than this, but who own more than 25 acres (40 iugera) of their own, were required to perform an unarmoured cavalry service. 25 acres is about half the land later Anglo-Norman evidence suggests is the minimum for unarmoured cavalry service, so possibly this was an attempt on Aistulf’s part to enfranchise the lesser freemen and get them to support his usurpation of the crown at the political assembly13. Note, however, that the minimum level for cavalry service is nearly double what a peasant family would need to subsist off and implies a man of moderate wealth in and of itself14.

England is somewhat different, as we lack any specific requirements for those being summoned to military service, but from at least 806 we can surmise that 1 man from every 5 hides of land was required for the army. By this point a “hide” wasn’t a measure of area but of value, approximately £1, in a time when 1d. was the wage of a skilled labourer15.

The implications of this aren’t immediately obvious, but when you consider that Wessex had a population of perhaps 450 000 people, across an area of 27 000 taxable hides, only 5400 men (1 man from every 20 families) were actually required for military service16. Many of these, perhaps even most, would have belonged in the retinues of major landholders as either part of their household or as landed warriors owing service to the landholder in exchange for their land. In the same vein, the one man from every hide who was required to maintain bridges and fortifications, as well as defend the burhs (not serve in the field!), was drawn on the basis of something like 1 man for every 4 families. These are heavy responsibilities, but still far from men with sickles and pitchforks making up the fyrd.

There are some exceptions, or else cases where the evidence is thin enough that it’s difficult to say one way or the other, and these typically occur in areas that a less densely populated and less wealthy. The kingdom of Dal Riada in the seventh century, for instance, raised about 3 men from every 2 households for naval duties, although it might also have called out fewer warriors from the general population of the most powerful clan for land warfare17.

(A replica of the Gokstad ship)

Scandinavia is somewhat trickier, since a lot of the sources are late and from a period where central authority existed. We know from archaeological evidence that, in Norway, large scale inland recruitment of men for naval expeditions had been occurring since the Migration Era, as the number of boathouses exceeds the best estimates of local populations18. These were initially clustered around important political and economic centers, but spread out more evenly across Norway during the middle ages as a central political authority arose. This system is likely at least one part of the origin for the leidang system of levying ships, which seems to have properly formed in Norway and Denmark during the late 10th or early 11th century as a result of royal power becoming strong enough to call out local levies across the whole kingdom19.

It seems likely, based on later law codes and other contemporary societies, that Scandinavian raiders during the 8th and 9th centuries were mostly the hird of a wealthy landowner (or their son), supplemented with sons of better off farmers from nearby holdings. Ships were comparatively small at this point, just 26-40 oars (approximately 30-44 men)20, and most had 24-32 oars per ship. This corresponds fairly well with what a prominent landholder might be able to raise from his own household, with additional crews coming from the sons of nearby farmers, although whether this was voluntary, coerced or some combination of the two is impossible to say21.

However, these farmers’ sons, while unlikely to wear mail in the majority of cases, should not be thought of as poor. The vast majority of farmers in 8th-10th century Scandinavia would have had one or two slaves and sufficient land to not only keep their slaves fed and employed, but also to potentially raise more children than later generations22. These farmers’ sons might have been “poor” by the standards of the men they faced in richer areas of the world, but they were rather well off by the standards of their society.

Later, after the end of the 10th century, the leidang was largely controlled by the king of the Scandinavian country and, particularly in the populous and relatively wealthy Denmark, poorer farmers were increasingly sidelined from any obligation to provide military service. Ships also rose in size from the end of the 9th/start of the 10th century, regularly reaching 60 oars for vessels belonging to kings or powerful lords, and even the “average” size seems to have gone from 24-32 oars to 40-50 oars23.

Slaughter Reeds and Flesh Bark: Arms and Armour of the Warrior

The equipment of the warrior consisted of, at its most basic level, a spear and a shield. For those who belonged to a poorer region, a single handed wood axe might serve as a sidearm, or perhaps even just a dagger, while in wealthier regions the sidearm would generally be a sword or a specialised fighting axe24. In an interesting twist, both the poorest and the wealthiest members of society were almost equally likely to use a bow, although I expect that the poorer men mostly used hunting bows, while the professional fighting men used heavier warbows25.

Spearheads, at least from the 7th-11th centuries, were relatively long (blades of >25cm) and heavy (>200g), but most were well tapered for penetrating armour. Some, especially the longest examples, weighed around a pound, but were probably still considered one handed weapons26. Others, however, weighed in excess of two pounds and must have been two handed weapons, possibly the “hewing spear” mentioned in some 13th century sagas27. Javelins, too, appear to have tended to feature long, narrow blades that would have made them a short range weapon, while also providing considerable penetration within their ~40 meter range.

Swords, for their part, were not quite the heavy hacking implement once attributed to them, but also aren’t quite as well balanced as later medieval swords would be. Early swords, before the 9th century, tended to be balanced about halfway down the blade, which might make for a more powerful cut, but didn’t do much for rapid recovery or shifting the blade between covers. However, from the mid-9th century, the balance shifted back towards the hilt, which made them much faster and more maneuverable28. This may indicate a shift towards a looser form of combat, where sword play was more common, or it might indicate nothing more than a stylistic choice. After all, the Celts of the 2nd-1st century BC preferred long, heavy, poorly balanced swords for fighting in spite of relying on the usual Mediterranean “open” style of combat29.

(The Ballinderry Bow)

Warbows, with a couple of exceptions, appear to have been short but powerful. Starting with the Illerup Adal bows, which most likely only had a draw length of 26-27″, we see a repeated pattern when very powerful bows are also much shorter than we expect them to be. In particular, the heavier of the two bows from Illerup Adal is very similar to the Wassenaar Bow, a 9th-10th century bow. A replica of the latter drew 106lbs @ 26″, making it quite a powerful bow, and similar bows have been found at Nydam, Leeuwarden-Heechterp and Aaslum. Only the Ballinderry and Hedeby bows break this trend, with both capable of being drawn to 28″-30″. In all cases, draw weights varied between 80lbs and 150lbs, although 80-100lbs is by far the most common30. The consequence of this is that the power of the bows is not going to be as high as later medieval bows, which were able to be drawn to 30″ and, as the arrows were also relatively light, suggests an energy of 40-60j under most circumstances. This is enough to penetrate mail at close range if using a bodkin arrowhead, but at longer ranges mail would have offered quite excellent protection.

When it comes to shields, there was evidently quite a bit of variation. Early Anglo-Saxon and Merovingian shields were quite small and light, about 40-50cm in diameter31, but later shields were generally 80-90cm in diameter. In particular, we have good evidence of viking shields generally fitting this description, although it’s less clear whether or not later Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon shields retained this diameter or reduced to 50-70cm in diameter (see f.n. 7). In all cases, however, the shield was fairly thin at the center, less than 10mm, and could be as low as 4mm thick at the edge. While thin leather or rawhide could be applied to the front and back of the shield to reinforce it, it’s equally possible that only linen was used to reinforce the shield, or even that the shields were without any reinforcement32.

Recent tests by Rolf F. Warming have shown that this style of shield is rapidly damaged by heavy attacks if used in a passive manner (as in a static shield wall) and that the shield is best used to aggressively defend yourself33. While the test was not entirely accurate to combat in a shield wall (more on this in the second part), it does highlight the relative fragility of early medieval shields compared to other, more heavily constructed shields like the Roman scutum in the Republican and early Empire or the Greek aspis. As I’ve said before, this means we have to rethink how early medieval warfare worked.

Finally, we come to the topic of armour. The dominant form of armour was the mail hauberk - usually resembling a T-shirt in form - and other forms of metal armour were far less common. Guy Halsall has suggested that poorer Merovingian and Carolingian warriors might have used lamellar armour34, and there is some evidence from cemeteries and artwork that Merovingian and Lombard warriors wore lamellar armour in the 6th and 7th centuries, but there’s little evidence to support lamellar beyond this. While it does crop up in Scandinavia twice during the 10th/11th centuries, it was almost certainly an uncommon armour that was used either by Khazar mercenaries or by prominent men who were using it as a status symbol35. Scale armour is right out, Timothy Dawson’s arguments aside, as there is no good evidence of it.

(Helmet from Valsgarde 8)

Helmets evolved throughout the Early Middle Ages, ultimately deriving from late Roman helmets that featured cheek flaps and aventails. During the 6th and 7th centuries, especially in Anglo-Saxon England and Scandinavia, masks were attached to the helmets, either for the whole face or just the eyes. The masks did not long survive the 7th century in Anglo-Saxon England, but the Gjermundbu helmet may suggest it lasted in Scandinavia through to the 10th century. Merovingian helmets of the 6th-8th century tend to be more conical and keep the cheek flaps, but do not have any mask36. Carolingian helmets of the 9th century appear to have been a unique style, more rounded but also coming down further towards the cheeks, and it’s hard to say if this eventually developed in the conical helmet of the late 10th/early 11th century or if it was just a dead end37. Regardless, by the 11th century the conical helmet was the most common form of helmet in England as well as the Continent.

And now for the controversial stuff: non-metallic armour. In short, I don’t think that textile armour was very common during the Early Middle Ages, nor do I think that hardened leather was very common either. The evidence from the High Middle Ages suggests that, unless someone who couldn’t afford to own mail was legally required to own textile armour, they generally didn’t, and we have plenty of quite reliable depictions of infantry serving without any form of body armour38. The shields in use were as much armour as most unarmoured men needed - since, as you’ll recall from the previous section, they rarely fought - and they covered a lot of the body. So far as I’m concerned, there wasn’t a need for it, and plenty of societies through history have fought in close combat without more armour than their shield.

Summing Up

This has been a very basic overview of the background to warfare in the Early Middle Ages, and I know I haven’t covered everything. Hopefully, however, I’ve provided enough background for people to follow along when I dig down into the actual experience of battle in my next post. I’ll cover the basics of scouting, choosing a site to give battle, the religious side of things and then, at long last, the grim face of battle for those standing in the shieldwall.

If you’d like to read more about society and warfare in the Early Middle Ages, then I’d recommend Guy Halsall’s Warfare and Society in the Barbarian Westand Philip Line's The Vikings and their Enemies: Warfare in Northern Europe, 750-1100, which together cover most of Western and Northern Europe from 400 AD to 1100 AD. While I have some disagreements with both authors, their works have shaped my thoughts over the years since I first acquired them. For the Vikings specifically, Kim Hjardar and Vegard Vike's Vikings at War is excellent, as much for the coverage of campaigns across the world as for the information on weapons and warfare.

Until next time!

- Hergrim

Notes

1 For the rarity of the sax in the viking world, see Vikings at War, by Kim Hjardar and Vegard Vike. For the Anglo-Saxon sax, see the list of finds here. Just 5 out of 33 (15%) had blades 44cm or more and, if you remove those longer than the Pompeii style of gladius (which is the point where some think the Romans changed to purely thrusting style), just two fit the bill.

2 Michael J. Taylor’s “Visual Evidence for Roman Infantry Tactics” is by far the best recent examination of Roman fighting styles, but Polybius has been translated in English for ages. See, however, M.C. Bishop, The Gladius, for an argument that the Romans changed to close order and preferred to rely on thrusting by the end of the 1st century AD.

3 See J. C. Coulston and M.C. Bishop, Roman Military Equipment: From the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome, for the infantry adoption of the gladius. Any general history of the Roman military will cover the transition from open order to close order during the 3rd century AD.

4 Those of you with a copy of Victor Davis Hanson's The Western Way of War need to perform a quick exorcism. You must burn the book at midnight during the full moon and then divide the ashes into four separate containers, one of gold, one of silver, one of bronze and one of iron. You should then bury ashes from the iron container at a crossroads, scatter the ashes in the bronze container to the wind in four directions, pour the ashes from the silver container into a fast flowing river, and finally feed the ashes from the gold container to a cat, a bat and a rat.

5 A.D. Fraser “The Myth of the Phalanx-Scrimmage” is one of the earliest attacks on the idea of literal othismos. The debate reignited in the 1980s, with Peter Krentz’s “The Nature of Hoplite Battle” leading the charge of the heretics, and the conceptual othismos model is now the accepted version. Hans van Wees’ Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities is probably the best revisionist work to start with. Matthew A. Sears, as attractive as he looks, should be avoided.

6 Early Anglo-Saxon Shields by Tania Dickinson and Heinrich Harke

7 Duncan B. Campbell’s Spartan Warrior 735–331 BC has the most easily accessible information on the best preserved aspis, which is ~10mm thick at the center and 12-18mm thick at the edge, but there’s also a good cross section in Nicholas Sekunda’s Greek Hoplite 480-323 BC. For Viking shields, see this page of archaeological examples by Peter Beatson. Note the similarity to oval shields from Dura Europos in thickness and tapering (Roman Shields by Hilary and John Travis). It’s also worth considering that Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon manuscript miniatures tend to show shields that rarely cover more than should to groin, implying a typical diameter of 50-70cm.

8 See Niels Lund’s “The armies of Swein Forkbeard and Cnut: "leding or lið?”” and Ben Raffield’s “Bands of brothers: a re‐appraisal of the Viking Great Army and its implications for the Scandinavian colonization of England” for an examination of how the lið was constructed, and see Richard Abels’ ‘Alfred the Great, the Micel Hæðn Here and the Viking Threat’, in T. Reuter (ed.), Alfred the Great. Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conference for a discussion on the nature of viking “armies”

9 10-15 acres depending on crop rotation and how close to subsistence level you want to peg this category

10 The Scandinavian Gulathing and Frostathing laws were only composed in the late 11th/early 12th century, but it has been argued that they were essentially a codification of earlier oral laws. At least with regards to equipment and service, I see no reason to doubt this.

11 Almost all of the relevant capitularies are translated in Hans Delbruck’s History of the Art of War: The Middle Ages, with the original Latin in an appendix.

12 Walter Goffart has made this incredibly clear in his recent series of loosely related articles: “Frankish Military Duty and the Fate of Roman Taxation,” Early Medieval Europe, 16/2 (2008), 166-90, “ The Recruitment of Freemen into the Carolingian Army, or, How Far May One Argue from Silence?” In J. France, K. DeVries, & C. Rogers (Eds.), Journal of Medieval Military History: Volume XVI (pp. 17-34) and ““Defensio patriae” as a Carolingian Military Obligation”. Although I think Goffart argues too strongly against the dominance and importance of aristocratic retinues in the Carolingian military - the great landowners had the most obligation, after all - he does do a brilliant job of highlighting both the universal requirement of service from eligible freemen and the fact that even a “poor” freeman being assessed for service was, in fact, far better off than most of society. This provides some extra context for the prevalence of swords in Merovingian burials, as note by Guy Halsall: it’s not that swords were cheap, it’s that the average Merovingian warrior was rich by the standards of his society.

13 For the text of the capitulary, see Delbruck. For Aistulf’s possible political motives, see Guy Halsall’s Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West. For Anglo-Norman minimum standards for unarmoured cavalry, see Mark Hagger’s Norman Rule in Normandy, 911–1144.

14 I think it’s worth addressing here the pessimistic low crop yields of older authors and their subsequent conclusion that 25-30 acres would be bare subsistence in the Early Middle Ages. As Jonathan Jarrett has proven (”Outgrowing the Dark Ages: agrarian productivity in Carolingian Europe re-evaluated” Agricultural History Review, Volume 67, Number 1, June 2019, pp. 1-28), these low yields are not supported by the evidence, and we should expect yields to be similar to High Medieval yields. His blog contains an early version of his thoughts on the matter.

15 For a recent exploration of the debate around the Anglo-Saxon military, see Ryan Lavelle’s Alfred’s Wars

16 See Richard Abel’s Alfred the Great for this although n.b. his reliance on old crop yield estimates

17 John Bannerman, Studies in the History of Dalriada. The suggestion that the Cenél nGabráin, being the most powerful clan, might have raised fewer men from the general populace for land combat is my own. They may simply have had the largest number of men in military households and, as such, not needed to rely as much on the general populace when on land. It may also be that calling up larger numbers of the free population for land service from the less powerful clans was in and of itself a method of dominance and control - the largest number of armed men left behind for defence/to suppress revolt would be those from the dominant clan.

18 “Boathouses and naval organization” by Bjørn Myhre in Military Aspects of Scandinavian Society in a European Perspective, AD 1-1300

19 That said, the political control of the Scandinavian kings over military levies should not be overstated - it could be very patchy, even in the 13th century. c.f. Philip Line, The Vikings and their Enemies

20 As suggested by Ole Crumlin-Pedersen in Archaeology and the Sea in Scandinavia and Britain, with the estimate of ~40 oars for the Sutton Hoo ship thrown in as a maximum size. Crew estimates are based on 11th century ships in Anglo-Saxon employ where, based on rates of pay and money raised to pay for the ships, there were only 3-4 men more than the rowers on each ship.

21 c.f. Egil’s Saga and the description of Arinbjorn’s preparation for raiding.

22 The Medieval Demographic System of the Nordic Countries by Ole Jørgen Benedictow. The speculation of larger family sizes is my own, based on other medieval evidence that wealthier families tend to have more children.

23 Ian Heath reproduces the leidang obligations of High Medieval Norway in Armies of the Dark Ages, although he incorrectly applies the two men per oar guideline that only became into being during the 13th and 14th centuries. Archaeological evidence only shows ships of 60+ oars or 26 oars, but from the lengthening of the largest ships and the 40-50 oar ships of the later leidang I feel it is appropriate to assume that the number of oars stayed the same from the 10th to the 14th century, it’s just that the number of rowers doubled as ships became heavier. This is similar to the evolution of the medieval galley.

24 I’ve covered saxes earlier in the notes. For axes, see Hjardar and Vike Vikings at War. Axeheads from western Scandinavia were often over a pound in weight, which is double the weight of specialized Slavic war axes and in the same weight range as the heads of broad axes. Even into the 13th century, these wood axes apparently kept turning up at weapons musters as sidearms.

25 Bows were considered an important aristocratic weapon in Merovingian, Carolingian and Scandinavian societies and, while not a prominent aristocratic weapon, it at least wasn’t shameful for a young English nobleman to use one in battle. The division between “hunting” and “war” bows can be seen in the Nydam Bog finds, where the most powerful bows tend to be relatively short (26-28″ draw length) and the longer bows (28-30″ draw length) tend to be fairly weak. Richard Wadge has demonstrated that civilian bows in medieval England were less powerful than military bows during the 13th century, and I’m applying this to the Nydam bows.

26 Ancient Weapons in Britain, by Logan Thompson

27 See “An Early Medieval Winged/Lugged Spearhead from the Dugo Selo Vicinity in the Light of New Knowledge about this Type of Pole-Mounted Weapon” by Željko Demo, and “An Early-Mediaeval winged spearhead from Fruška Gora” by Aleksandar Sajdl

28 Ancient Weapons in Britain, by Logan Thompson

29 The Celtic Sword, by Radomir Pleiner

30 Most dimensions are from Jürgen Junkmanns’ Pfeil und Bogen: Von der Altsteinzeit bis zum Mittelalter, although the information on the Illerup Adal comes to me from Stuart Gorman. Draw weights are only estimates based on replicas of some bows and a formula found in Adam Karpowicz’s “Ottoman bows – an assessment of draw weight, performance and tactical use” Antiquity, 81(313). Draw weights for yew bows in the real world can vary by as much as 40%, so these estimates are only general guidelines.

31 See f.n. 6 for early Anglo-Saxon shields and Halsall, Warfare and Society, for the early Merovingian shields

32 The shields from Dura Europos, constructed in the same way as Scandinavian shields of the 8th-10th century, feature either very thin leather (described as “parchment”), linen or else some kind of fiber set in a glue matrix. In contrast, two twelfth century kite shields from Pola. d, although constructed only with a single layer of planks like a Viking shield, had no covering at all. See Simon James, The arms and armour from Dura-Europos, Syria : weaponry recovered from the Roman garrison town and the Sassanid siegeworks during the excavations, 1922-37 and “Two Twelfth-Century Kite Shields from Szczecin, Poland” by Keith Dowen, Lech Marek, Sławomir Słowiński, Anna Uciechowska-Gawron & Elżbieta Myśkow, Arms & Armour, 16:2

33 Round Shields and Body Techniques: Experimental Archaeology with a Viking Age Round Shield Reconstruction

34 Halsall, Warfare and Society

35 Thomas Vlasaty has a great article that summarises this subject.

36 No real source for this beyond googling pictures of the various Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian and Merovingian helmets.

37 This Facebook post has some wonderful pictures of the original helmet, a reconstruction of the helmet and comparisons with Carolingian art.

38 eg. the Porta Romana frieze, the porch lunette at the basilica of San Zeno in Verona, the Bury Bible.

#hergrim #shield wall #shield #formation #medieval warfare #submission

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normal-thoughts-official · 4 years ago

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Do you have any headcanons about how the Polycule helps alter downworld relations? Like obviously it’s not just them, but having high-ranking/leading downworlders all loving/trusting each other is bound to make a difference. Although I hate the whole vampire/werewolf rivalry in the show, I like to hc the tension as stemming from 1. The Clave being a dick and working to separate oppressed communities and 2. The fact that immortality/mortality really makes a difference in POV.

YEAAAA BOIII

i mean i completely agree about the vampire/werewolf thing (i mean i just answered an ask about that and stuff so u know). like i don’t hate it in concept but i hate the execution, it could have been great and shown us a lot about how white/shadowhunter supremacy works to alienate different oppressed communities and this make organizing and fighting back harder or even inviable, but nooo of course they had to go with naturalizing the whole thing because god forbid there’s good lore and metaphor

anyway! i do think that the polycule does a lot to change that, not even (just) because of their relationship, but because, they, like... truly believe in bringing their communities together and making them stronger, and are all actively working to do that as leaders. it’s part of what even got their relationships started, really - the fact that they had all been working together to bring their communities closer, and halfway through they realized, oh shit i might actually love them

but getting into more detail!

i have already talked many times about how i think that after the whole jonathan fiasco, seelies would have wanted to radically change their external policies, because, well..... it clearly was only working against them and their own rights and needs, including those to leave the realm, interact with other species (that’s part of their nature! they’re one with all beings, how can they be isolated from them??) and just general freedom, you know? and it didn’t even help them keep physically safe, much to the contrary. the world almost ended and they wouldn’t have been kept safe

and whether or not u hc meliorn as the new seelie queen or as keeping their position as a kind of.... ambassador in this realm, they’re extremely valuable, because they’re one of the few seelies who actually know about the non-seelie cultures, customs, political relations and etc. since most seelies were kept away in their realms, they don’t know where to start, and meliorn has very valuable knowledge, plus again, they’re very loyal to the seelie realm and want to see them thriving

so meliorn definitely works to get the seelies to build meaningful relationships with other downworlder communities. it helps that they already know magnus, raphael, maia, and luke, all important people in that sense. i’ve talked a little bit about how i think their attempts to get closer would go - offering tokens of alliance to other downworlders, teaching warlocks about the workings of their own magic and their knowledge on the forces of nature and ley lines, just generally trying to pick their interest and build something together

i definitely think that seelies would consider education the way to go here - they are the keepers of knowledge after all, so that’s definitely something extremely important in their culture. a treasure if you will. and they know how teaching, exploring, learning and creating can bring people together, help them understand each other, and form meaningful alliances. after all, building knowledge together means that a part of how you think is inherently tied to the other’s culture, and that makes alienating, stereotyping or turning people against each other a lot harder

i say “building knowledge” because i know “keepers of knowledge” kind of implies that knowledge is... a kind of substance, that exists, that can be contained. but really knowledge is ever chaging, it is constantly creating and recreating itself as we create new languages and tools to describe, understand and think of the world around us. and we’re always creating new things too, new technologies, new concepts, new machines, new spells (in sh lore), new laws and societal organizations and ways to help each other.... the world is ever changing and so is the way we think about it. and seelies know that too; they might be immortal, but they’re not static, because the world isn’t either. that’s also why i think that being locked away from other realms was particularly violent towards them - they were being forced into a state of unchangeness that goes against their very nature, that alienates them from their own core

anyway! sorry for nerding out about science and the nature of knowledge. what i’m trying to say here is that for seelies, knowing other cultures and getting educated, educating, and just thinking are extremely precious and valuable. so i definitely think that through things like, i don’t know, creating magical schools where them and warlocks can share their different knowledges and way of using magic, sharing their own conceptualization of the world and listening to others’, trying to create new things together, is a powerful way to build alliances, know each other, and make each other stronger. you know? so in that sense they basically bet on education as a way to bring communities closer, and raise new people with a new mindset who see things differently, in a less... prejudiced, i guess? way

i feel like warlocks are the ones who have the best relationship with the other downworlder communities - possibly because they are needed by all of them - so magnus would be the one who would have the least work to do here dauhdsauhd i mean not that he’s part of the polycule but you know. he kind of acts as consultant to all of them, and sometimes, warlock territory can be some kind of neutral ground for other downworlders to discuss and negotiate, knowing that they’re all welcome and that they aren’t at risk because all shadowhunters are there. pack and clan territories are no-nos and the seelie realm is still adjusting to some quite radical changes, not to mention can be a little unsettling because many people have simply never been there. so i think warlock spaces can become very important territories for other downworlder leaders to meet, build strategies and share

we’ve also seen a little bit on how saia helped build a new paradigm for vampire/werewolves relationships in canon, how their bet was on building communal spaces and communities, you know? like places where they could all coexist and meet, like Taki’s. with raphael into the mix, that’s just. a very promising territory

with raphael in it it means that Taki’s is officially co-run by werewolves and vampires, which in itself makes it feel a little safer - like, vampires might not be as willing to go to taki’s before because it was a werewolf place, even if it wasn’t really, you know? but with raphael there it most definitely isn’t, and that helps them feel a little more comfortable, more willing to go and also to be open and meet new people instead of keeping to their usual circles

also! there’s the very specific situation within the NY clan. we see in sh canon how seelies are a society, warlocks are a community, and werewolf packs are a family, but the NYC clan is not like that at all. it seems like they like each other (mostly) but they’re scattered, they’re not really an unit, or a community

this is definitely because of camille - decades of having a clan leader who did her very damn best to keep other vampires oppressed under her rule and dependant on her meant letting their ways of mutual support dwindle, their relationships fail, and their existence be centered on the dependency they have on her. so once raphael becomes clan leader, he has a lot to do, and the first step is to rebuild the NY clan itself

which. i’ve mentioned in passing in many asks, i know! but i just love the idea of raphael slowly turning the clan into a community, into family, again. getting rid of all the ridiculous cold-feeling, unwelcoming decoration and creating a big, attractive communal space, with less harsh lightning, more colors, more places to sit, games, fucking TV, books. spaces where they can be together and share and create and just chill, you know? the interior design of camille’s clan was extremely hostile, it was built for people to be kept away and segregated in their little spaces, not together, and i’m absolutely sure this was intentional. so raphael takes important steps in the opposite direction: making the place welcoming, lively, theirs

it’s not just the place, either. once the war is over and they finally have the chance to breathe, raphael also changes radically the way things are run. instead of a highly centralized leadership, he starts discussing decisions with the whole clan, putting it to a vote. soon his work is way less making decisions and way more organizing their routine so they’re able to make them, together. soon everyone is participating in decisions. soon they’re making sure everyone’s needs are being met

soon they are building their own supporting spaces for vampires battling addiction (since that’s a huge problem for them for many reasons), soon they are getting closer to warlock scholars/therapists and such that can help them with these issues, building alliances in that sense too, where they can help each other with their communitie’s needs. soon they’re getting pets because why the hell not? (cats in particular love raphael) and every stray has a home in the clan because well. they are all strays, lost and found there. life is a lot better, and happier, and once the clan is strong enough to get back on its feet and empower vampires again, then he starts working on getting closer to other downworlders, especially the werewolves

which is how we get to taki’s because again! i’m a slut. look, raphael is a great cook and he’s good at organizing stuff and he understands food in a visceral way that means he also understands what taki’s is all about - he understands that food is community, it’s culture, it’s bringing people together. he’s probably the person who best understands the concept of taki’s the way maia does, a place to bring people together, a place to build a new future. just by hearing about it, he immediately gets what maia’s idea with taki’s is, and just by hearing raphael talk about food, she immediately knows that raphael is perfect to help her. so they get to it

but taki’s is just, well, one thing. i mean it’s a very important thing that they both worked extremely hard on and that brought amazing fruits that they never truly expected. it becomes a safe space, a hangout place, a place for people to meet others and to seek help when needed and to discuss politics and downworlder relations, all in one. the tables are big and communal and the place is messy in the best possible way, with everyone mingling, talking, getting to know each other without being overwhelming. and it’s great, and maia and raphael are extremely proud of the work they’ve done there, and sometimes they kind of just lie back and look at what they have created and it’s like. wow. and they smile at each other and raphael kisses her hand and says “it’s all because of you, bella” and she smiles so brightly at him and laces their fingers together and-

back to politics. yes. community building. i can do this. i can not be a whore for maiaphael for one second. i believe in myself

anyway they also make it a frequent thing to just like, meet? and create a vampires-werewolves alliance that doesn’t just spam NYC, but all their allied clans/packs and tries to bring them all together in other places, too. it’s a long work, but they slowly make a lot of progress and help bring their communities together as a whole and end the whole dumbass rivalry thing. they push back against shadowhunters and the specific laws and mechanisms they created to pit them against each other, they kind of create a common political agenda that highlights all the things that they have in common, because there are many. and it’s just. wow. incredible? like they get so much done and make such a big difference and aaa

and i mean obviously like you said that’s not just them. all the downworlder communities are really working the best they can to become stronger and closer together (warlocks play a very important part in this too, not just serving as neutral ground but actively trying to start groups like that in different regions, bringing representants from the places where alliances like this have worked to help make them in different places with different contexts, etc) and it’s an amazing team work and im just wow so proud of them i love them. but they definitely work a lot, very actively, to make this happen, too (and magnus as well, and the rest of their people) and it’s just :’) incredible. and yeah i mean their relationship is also iconic in a lot of ways, which also helps because damn, if two vampires, a werewolf and a seelie can be in a four-way relationship and be so clearly happy and thriving and achieving so much stuff together, what happens if all the downworlders unite? and i just duaihdsiahda love that for them

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recentanimenews · 4 years ago

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Bookshelf Briefs 9/30/20

Accomplishments of the Duke’s Daughter, Vol. 6 | By Reai and Suki Umemiya | Seven Seas – Another series down to “once a year” release—I had to jog my memory at the start to recall what had been happening. Many things are going wrong for our heroine, who is trying to be strong and tough but is also starting to break down, and I felt that the scenes with her and Dean struck just the right balance of comforting and letting the heroine cry without making her seem weaker. This sets the stage for her comeback, which is extraordinary. (And also has a corrupt Church, a constant in Japanese light novels, though at least here there are also honest and good religious people in it.) That said, eventually Dean’s identity will come out, and I do wonder how this very good “villainess” isekai will handle it. – Sean Gaffney

The Ancient Magus’ Bride: Jack Flash and the Faerie Case Files, Vol. 1 | By Yu Godai, Mako Oikawa, and Kore Yamazaki | Seven Seas – A faerie switched at birth for a human child, Jack never fit in in either world. Only in the mortal realm could she earn money for anime collectibles, however, so she decided to make herself into a tough, capable woman like her literary heroes and set up shop as a detective. Together with her fellow changeling, Larry the werewolf, Jack takes on supernatural cases in New York City. In this volume, Lindel tasks them with tracking down a missing dragon egg. I liked the resources Jack uses to obtain information, which include a dapper theatre ghost and a spell with components of rat whiskers and taxi tires because “Nobody out there knows this city better than them.” I still found this a bit hard to get into, though, especially the parts involving a perpetually tearful off-off-off-off-Broadway actress and her pickpocket boyfriend. Still, I will check out volume two! – Michelle Smith

Black Clover, Vol. 22 | By Yuki Tabata | Viz Media – At long last, this interminable arc comes to an end. I enjoyed a lot of it, but I cannot deny it should have been about two volumes shorter. Most of the book is taken up by shonen battles, with the villain being nigh unkillable, the heroes almost breaking themselves to stop him, etc. Fortunately, the day is saved, and even the Wizard King turns out to be… sort of alive again? Shota fans should be happy. Asta fans perhaps less so—the sheer amount of damage done to the kingdom in this arc means someone has to be blamed, and give Asta has the “dark evil magic” it’s gonna be him, especially when he takes the incredibly obvious bait they use to get him to fight. Oh well, if Asta were smart, this wouldn’t be Black Clover. – Sean Gaffney

Don’t Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro, Vol. 3 | By Nanashi | Vertical Comics – Part of the problem with titles like this and the other teasing works (Takagi-san less so as Nishikata doesn’t fall into the category) is that they are, at heart, the classic “extroverted girl acts overtly extroverted to bring introverted guy out of their shell,” and that’s not really a plot that feels comfortable in the Gen Z days, where you’re more likely to say “why doesn’t she just let him be in his quiet, safe space?” And by she I mean they, as Nagatoro’s two friends appear far more often here, which offers some good two-way teasing action, as they clearly see her crush on him, if not why. It’s still sort of hard to read, but if you pretend he’s more OK with it than he actually is, this is cute. – Sean Gaffney

Failed Princesses, Vol. 1 | By Ajiichi | Seven Seas – The concept of “popular girl meets unpopular girl” is a common one in yuri manga, and we do indeed hit several of its tropes in this first volume. The amusing thing is that Kanade, the shy outcast girl, is perfectly aware of how things are supposed to go, and keeps pulling back a bit to try to save Nanaki from, well, making herself an outcast by associating with the wrong people. The best part of the volume is that Nanaki really doesn’t give two shits about any of that, and seems set on making Kanade her best friend… and also making her over, which backfires a bit as Kanade cleans up nicely. I hear this gets a bit dramatic later, but for the moment it’s a cute and fluffy proto-yuri story. – Sean Gaffney

In/Spectre, Vol. 12 | By Kyo Shirodaira and Chashiba Katase | Kodansha Comics – The first story in this volume is another “Rikka tries to make people understand Kotoko is an evil Machiavellian schemer,” this time with one of her ex-classmates, but again the response seems to be “we know she’s a manipulative bitch, but she’s a good person anyway.” The larger story, which will continue into the next book, seems to be a chance to write Kuro and Kotoko as an actual romance, as the man we meet here and his relationship with a yuki-onna… as well as his penchant for attracting misfortune… very much parallel them. That said, they’re very cute together, which is why I hope he avoids the murder charge he’s now being investigated for. Still a favorite. – Sean Gaffney

Interviews with Monster Girls, Vol. 8 | By Petos | Kodansha Comics – The author knows what people want to see, but also knows that the best way to get readers is to drive them crazy by not showing it. We finally get what we’ve been begging for here, as Tetsuo asks Sakie out on a date. (This is after rejecting Kyouko’s love confession, both because she’s his student and also, as he is forced to admit, as he likes Sakie.) The stage is set for the date… and the rest of the book is thus spent with the three main student girls going to Kyouko’s for a fireworks viewing and meeting her family. They’re good chapters, and I really liked showing how difficult Kyouko has it as a dullahan in terms of everyday life, but GOD, please get back to the teachers, I beg you! – Sean Gaffney

Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Vol. 16 | By Aka Akasaka | Viz Media – The series has gotten to the point where the more rewarding chapters are the ones as part of a larger arc. Not that the one-shot chapters are bad—though Maki’s journey to India may be the most pointless thing in this entire series to date, we do get Chika’s iconic “shut up or I’ll kill you” here. But the larger arcs, featuring Miyuki and Kaguya attempting to date without interruptions, and setting up Ishigami and Iino for a romance—though given the number of limbs broken in this book, and Iino’s own horrible lack of self-awareness, it may be a ways out—are better. This series is still hilarious, but we’ve come to read it more for the heartwarming moments. Heck, there’s even some serious drama here. Very good. – Sean Gaffney

Nineteen | By Ancco | Drawn & Quarterly – Although it was translated and released second in English, Nineteen is a precursor to Ancco’s internationally award-winning manhwa Bad Friends. The volume collects thirteen short comics originally published in Korea over a decade ago which absolutely remain relevant to today’s world. While understandably not as polished as some of Ancco’s later work—one can observe her style evolving and growing over the course of the collection (which is fascinating)—the comics still carry significant emotional weight and impact. Nineteen includes diary comics, which tend to be more lighthearted, as well as harder-hitting fictional stories, many of which also have autobiographical inspiration. As a whole, the collection explores themes of young adulthood, growing up, and complicated family relationships. In particular, there is a compelling focus on the relationships among daughters, mothers, and grandmothers. Some of the narratives can be rather bleak, but a resigned sense of humor threads through Nineteen, too. – Ash Brown

Ran the Peerless Beauty, Vol. 8 | By Ammitsu | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – Shoujo manga that has couples getting together BEFORE the end of the series is inevitably going to have an arc dealing with how far the lead couple should go now that they’re dating, and this is Ran’s turn, as she and Akira and their friends go to a beach house Ran’s family owns and have some beach fun. Unfortunately, the cast gets winnowed down one by one until it’s just the two of them… and her overprotective father, who arrives in time to provide the cliffhanger and no doubt ensure that nookie does not ensue. Not that I think it should—these two kids are even purer than the couple from Kimi ni Todoke, and I think they should mature a bit more before going further. Plus, watching them blush and kiss is wonderful. – Sean Gaffney

Spy x Family, Vol. 2 | By Tatsuya Endo | Viz Media – Having spent our first volume establishing that our found family can really come to love each other deep down, this volume shows off how they are also, at heart, fundamentally awkward and unable to socialize normally. This is unsurprising—hints of Loid’s life we’ve seen show him as a war orphan, Yor is a contract killer, and Anya basically grew up being experimented on by bad guys. As the school soon finds, this leads to issues. The second half of the book introduces Yor’s sister-obsessed little brother Yuri, who turns out to be a torture expert for Loid’s enemies. As always, half the fun is that everyone except Anya has no idea who their real selves are, and the cliffhanger tells us we’re in for some hilarious family fun. I love this. – Sean Gaffney

Spy x Family, Vol. 2 | By Tatsuya Endo | VIZ Media – After a brief spell atop the waiting list, Anya officially makes it into Eden Academy. Loid is anxious to progress to the next stage of his mission and, believing there’s not much chance in turning Anya into an elite scholar like his agency wants, focuses instead on having her befriend the younger son of his target. It does not go to plan, of course. Anya is very cute in this volume, and I also really appreciated how Loid genuinely listens to Yor and values her input. The arrival of Yor’s brother, a member of the secret police, is going to be a fun complication, and another cast member with a secret, but my favorite part of this series is probably always going to be how much love these three are already feeling for each other. So unique and good! – Michelle Smith

Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, Vol. 6 | By Tomo Hirokawa, based on the story by Reki Kawahara | Yen Press – The weakness of this manga is the same as always—it’s written to tie into the games, and features several characters I just don’t recognize, which can be a problem given this is the big final let’s-save-the-world ending. That said, this is still a decent SAO title. Kirito gets to be cool and badass, but because this isn’t written just by Kawahara others do as well, and it’s a nice balanced effort that focuses on heroine Premiere. I also really liked the point where all the NPCs are worried when everyone has to log out for several days for maintenance. While I’ll still remember this as the “SAO only everyone is alive” manga, I enjoyed reading it, when I wasn’t confused. – Sean Gaffney

By: Ash Brown

#Anime #News #Manga Bookshelf

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daisywords · 7 years ago

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Characters But No Plot?

I’ve been struggling with the exact same issue for a long time, and now I feel like my wip is finally emerging (albeit slowly) from its chrysalis with maybe some semblance of a plot !? so here’s what I’ve learned:

So you have characters? lovely.

You have a setting? amazing.

You don’t have anything remotely resembling a plot? relatable, my dude.

So here’s what we’re going to do:

Step 1: feel out the general aesthetic/baseline that you want the plot to involve—epic battles? ocean’s-eleven-esqe heist? long meandering quest? political intrigue? lots of romance? tons of secrets? self discovery? solving mysteries? petty drama?

how big of a scale will this plot be on? what are the stakes?

is the fate of the world at risk? or just the fate of a relationship? are multiple countries in play, or do the characters never leave their small town?

This will depend on the characters you have, if their backstories are already fleshed out. And obviously the setting and worldbuilding you’ve already done.

Don’t be afraid to have a tight story with relatively small stakes. Not everything has to be about saving the whole world. On the other hand, if you’re really feeling juggling all the politics and diplomacy across an entire continent, you do you.

Step 2: Mash your setting and characters. It’s time to get more specific with all your enlightenment from step one.

Think about your setting, your world—what kinds of problems could exist that match the kind of plot you wanted in step one?

Which problems would specifically apply/relate to your characters?

Specific is the key. Don’t just give me “a war” or “a monster” or “an oppressive government.” Give me “Tina can’t get the supplies she needs for her healing spells because the collapse of a neighboring country’s government really did a number on the safety/success rate of trade routes” or “Prince Gary’s four older brothers have all mysteriously died, and now he’s the heir to the throne, even though he’s been raised in a monastery since he was three and has no idea what’s going on.”

Step 2.5: Why is your main character the Main Character? Or: Make the Stakes Personal

Part of specific is specific to your character. Your protagonist doens’t need to be some over-candied mary sue chosen one. But they need to be relevant. So make the plot/problem relevant to them, in a way that it isn’t relevant to others.

Sure, Tina could just shut her witch-doctor business down, except now her sister has the plague and she really needs that healing spell, so Tina’s just going to have to journey into anarchy-land to get that frickin flower, now isn’t she

Gary could just do what he’s told and shrug his shoulders’ except looks like his brothers were assassinated and he’s the next target. Hard to relax when you’re personally fearing for your life and can’t trust anyone around you.

Except maybe things aren’t working out. Maybe you don’t want to write about Tina or Gary as your precious MC.

Maybe you want to write about a young apprentice named Jane, or a cowardly monk named Sebastian.

So maybe little Jane is the one with the sick sister, the one who begs Tina for the cure, and sets off to find that missing ingredient when Tina explains the problem.

Or maybe Sebastian, Gary’s friend from the monastery is brought along as court scholar, and it’s he who has to prevent Gary’s assassination, because Gary won’t believe that he’s in danger.

Basically: What motivates your MC to get involved in all this nasty business in the first place?

Step 3: Who/What is your antagonist?

You know that problem? The one that’s going to suck for your poor little protagonist? Put a face on it. You might already have a fleshed out antagonist. Great.

(You might not want one specific person, and that’s fine. Man vs. society, man vs. nature, etc. stories can be great and you do you. But I’m going to discuss this like a single person for now.)

Ok so the problem. It’s now caused by a person. Was this intentional, or just a side effect of some bigger plan? What is that plan? What is concrete thing is motivating the antagonist? What inner desire is motivating the antagonist?

Warlord Ren, who overthrew Westland’s government, doesn’t care about Jay’s sister. He probably isn’t even aware that people in Eastland can’t get their medicine. He definitely isn’t doing any of this to hurt Jane. In fact Warlord Ren is the leader of a once-marginalized group in Westland, who were sick of being treated as second-class citizens. Warlord Ren is out for revenge. Violent Revenge.

Lizzy, Gary’s first cousin once-removed, has a two-year-old son who just happens to be next in line for the throne after Gary. If her son were to become the heir, she could be guaranteed lifelong financial security and independence—and the ability to leave her terrible marriage. Too bad so many people have to die.

Step 4: What logical step would your protagonist take to solve their problem?

This is where things start being a plot. Like you get real events.

It goes like this: action > consequence > (re)action > consequence etc etcetec

Once the consequences extend wide enough that they affect the antagonist, that’s when we get the actual protagonist vs. antagonist dynamic we know and love.

So the consequences can start being actions of the antagonist as well.

There’s safety in numbers, so Jane teams up with a caravan also trying to cross Westland. But they turn out to be thieves, who rob her blind the first night on the road.

Sebastian, worried about Gary being poisoned, insists on being present for the entire preparation and serving process of anything Gary eats. However, Gary finds this unnecessary and frustrating, causing friction in their friendship. Better/worse yet, Lizzy hears about this arrangement, and thus knows that Sebastian is on her trail. Maybe she’ll try to discredit him, or get him thrown out of court. Maybe she’ll even frame him for an assassination attempt.

Step 4.5: Put your characters where the action is.

I feel like this is one of the main problems people run into when they kinda have the basis of a plot (the problem) but no real events: The most interesting things are happening elsewhere and are heard about in passing, instead of actually becoming those real plot events.

Bonus: Not sure where the action is? Try this: put your characters where the antagonist is.

This seems obvious, but sometimes it’s hard, because you have to reframe the concept you’ve had in your head for so long. You have to be flexible. You have to be willing to deviate from your original vision. You also have to maneuver things around sometimes in unexpected ways. But guess what? You’re in charge.

Maybe Warlord Ren is up to some wicked schemes. You wanted your story to be all about Jane’s quest through Westland. But if Jane just keeps traveling through different towns and getting stuck in different shenanigans, she’s never going to even hear about those wicked schemes, let alone be put into direct conflict with Warlord Ren. So we sacrifice our journey narrative a little to really spice things up: Jane joins Ren’s army. After all, she was just robbed; if she joins just until the next paycheck, she’ll be able to have the means to continue her journey.

Sebastian, a court scholar, wouldn’t be along on a hunting trip, right? so I guess he’s just have to hear about Gary’s near-death “accident” after the fact, right? Wrong. Turns out Gary feels bad after their fight about “poison paranoia” and invites Sebastian along on the trip. It’s very unconventional, but Gary wasn’t raised as a prince, remember? And the crown prince gets what he wants. Good thing Sebastion is going to be right next to Gary to keep that accident just “nearly fatal” instead of full-on fatal.

Step 5: Reexamine the problem(s)

So things should have escalated by now. Maybe the initial problem is what drew our MC into this whole mess, but things should be a lot messier by now.

So we’re supposed to have a climax, right? But how?

Do not fear, friend. Here’s what we need:

- The most exciting/action based problem

- The problem that tests your character/engages internal conflict the most

- the original problem (from the beginning)

And now put them in the blender. Turn it on. That’s good. A good smoothie. It’s climax flavored. It’s exciting. It’s action-packed. It’s emotionally compelling. It’s structurally sound and resonant.

Jane has turned out to be quite a capable soldier. She’s managed to get quite high in the ranks, and has managed to impress Warlord Ren himself. The trouble is, she’s had to do more and more things she feels wrong about, and is slowly losing the ability to justify her actions based on her desire to save her sister. She’s also witnessed the harsh punishments given to attempted deserters, which makes her plan to join only for a little while seem less feasible. Now, Jane’s been given an assignment to lead a squadron on a killing spree, of people who she suspects are just innocent civilians. If she follows orders, she will be awarded a high-ranking position, granting her the ability to ensure a safe trade route so her sister an finally get her medicine. But this still doesn’t feel right…

Lizzy has successfully framed Sebastion for attempting to assassinate Gary. Sebastian is now facing execution. His friendship with Gary is severely damaged, maybe even beyond repair. Gary believes that he really is guilty. But that’s not all: Sebastian knows that Lizzy has plans to kill Gary herself that very night, while he is locked in the dungeon. Even if he manages to break out, Sebastian has always been a nonviolent pacifist. Will he choose to use violence in order to save his friend, even thought Gary doesn’t trust him?

Step 6: Resolve Everything

And that’s all, folks

#writing help #characters but no plot #what to do with your oc #writing advice #finding a plot #And I mean actually resolve everything #don't just leave us hanging like I just did #My examples always have terrible names #Idk if this will work for any of you guys but here #obviously not just talking about fantasy but this was originally in response to someone's fantasy wip struggles

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quranreadalong · 6 years ago

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SLIGHT PROBLEM: NO ONE KNOWS HOW THE ISLAMIC AFTERLIFE WORKS

So. Last time we read this, in reference to the evil pharaoh of the Exodus story.

Allah warded off from [Moses] the evils which they plotted, while a dreadful doom encompassed Pharaoh's folk, The Fire; they are exposed to it morning and evening; and on the day when the Hour upriseth (it is said): Cause Pharaoh's folk to enter the most awful doom.

The pharaoh and his underlings are currently being tortured, before the Day of Judgement, at which time they will... be tortured even more.

This is our first taste of the poorly-attested, barely-understood, but nonetheless mostly agreed-upon concept of adhab al-qabr, literally the “torment of the grave”. This is not a concept that is mentioned in the Quran, beyond the ayah above, but it is found in several ahadith.

You see, Islam has the same problem as Christianity with regards to the whole afterlife thing--the Day of Judgement is meant to sort people into heaven and hellbound categories, but there are stories within both religions indicating that people are punished or rewarded long before this day. Maybe early Muslims didn’t care much about this topic because they believed that the Day of Judgement was approaching fast. Mohammed enjoyed scaring his followers by indicating that the day was getting close, as we’ve seen in the Quran itself. But, uh, that didn’t happen. And so here we are around 1400 years later, and the question of what happens to people’s souls between their deaths and their resurrection at the end of the world has become increasingly pertinent.

Islamic tradition largely holds that this period takes place in a metaphysical realm, time, or just a condition called barzakh, meaning “barrier” (between life and the “actual” afterlife). The word comes from this line in surah 23:

behind them is a barrier until the day when they are raised

Now, tbh, this just says the barrier is behind them, meaning the dead can’t come back to life (Unless Allah Willeth, etc). As we’ve seen multiple times now, Mohammed said that on the Day of Judgement, the disbelievers will beg Allah for a second chance at life and he’ll tell them to fuck off into hell. It’s usually implied that this is their first conscious experience after death. In fact, throughout the Quran, we’re made to believe that people won’t even notice that any time has passed between their deaths and resurrection. The doomed disbelievers who are raised on the Day of Judgement say they were “sleeping” while in their graves, which is odd if they spent the entirety of their time there being tortured, either physically or spiritually (no one knows if the torture is meant to be inflicted upon their bodies or just their souls).

Regardless, the reason why barzakh is a thing is because both the Quran and the ahadith refer to people enduring torment before the end of the world, and scholars needed to come up with some sort of theological explanation for this. Barzakh was the nearest equivalent, so they went with that (though what “barzakh” actually meant varied within the first two centuries of Islam).

In the barzakh realm/time/whatever after death, people will be subjected to two fates: punishment and reward, similar to the Christian theological idea of “particular judgement” preceding the final judgement (which was also debated among different sects of Christians, with some saying that the dead were just unconscious until they were resurrected). The punishment is for wrongdoers, and is the adhab al-qabr in question. A hadith assures us that this is a real thing, and perhaps tells us where Mohammed got the concept from.

There came to me two old women from the old Jewesses of Medina [who] said: The people of the grave are tormented ... He (the Prophet) said: They told the truth; they would be tormented (so much) that the animals would listen to it. She ('A'isha) said: Never did I see him (the Holy Prophet) afterwards but seeking refuge from the torment of the grave in prayer.

The torment of the grave is clearly distinguished from the torment of hell in other very reputable ahadith--so there is a definite basis for the concept, despite its absence from the Quran itself. A variety of other ahadith flesh out the concept. First of all, that line about animals hearing it was apparently meant to be taken literally:

The Messenger of Allah went out after the sun had set, and heard a sound. He said '(It is) Jews being tormented in their graves.’

As for the disbeliever or the hypocrite, it is said to him (in his grave): 'What did you say about this man (Mohammed)?' He says: 'I do not know; I used to say what the people said (ie, he is an idiot moron).' It is said to him (by the angels): 'You did not understand and you did not follow those who had understanding.' Then he is dealt a blow between his ears and the man utters a scream which everything near him hears, except for the two races (humans and jinn).''

Even dead Jews bothered Mohammed. Christ.

Secondly, the “sins” that cause you to be tormented range in severity from disbelief all the way down to............. uh...

The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) happened to pass by two graves and said: They (their occupants) are being tormented, but they are not tormented for a grievous sin. One of them [gossiped] and the other did not keep himself safe from being defiled by urine. He then called for a fresh twig and split it into two parts, and planted them on each grave and then said: Perhaps, their punishment way be mitigated as long as these twigs remain fresh.

...not changing your nasty-ass urine-stained clothes. Nice of Mohammed to have pity on that guy, though. This indicates that some of the torment of the grave can be lessened by the actions of the living, though why putting an object on someone’s grave accomplishes this is A Mystery Of Allah.

Whether Muslims will be subjected to any of this torture is unclear. A hadith suggests they will not.

“Allah will keep firm those who believe, with the word that stands firm.” [14:27] This has been revealed concerning the torment of the grave. It will be said to him: ‘Who is your Lord?’ He will say: ‘My Lord is Allah, and my Prophet is Muhammad.’

(It’s said in less-reputable stories that angels named Munkar and Nakir are responsible for asking these questions, sometimes with a third angel named Ruman thrown in. They are generally depicted as very scary looking in order to frighten people.)

As for those Muslims who get to experience their pre-Day-of-Judgement rewards, it’s... also unclear what happens to them. Islamic scholars sometimes point to this verse from back in the third surah, following the Battle of Uhud, as a reference to barzakh:

And never think of those who have been killed in the cause of Allah as dead. Rather, they are alive with their Lord, receiving provision, Rejoicing in what Allah has bestowed upon them of His bounty, and they receive good tidings about those [to be martyred] after them who have not yet joined them - that there will be no fear concerning them, nor will they grieve.

And in a hadith, it’s said that these dead soldiers are turned into green birds who live in jannah... presumably temporarily, so they can enjoy their lady-lovin’ rewards later. But both the hadith and the Quran make it clear that Muslims who die while waging jihad (in addition to prophets etc) are given express tickets to heaven itself... they’re not in some in-between state. So this can’t be barzakh or the good equivalent of the torment of the grave. I mean, it can, if you want to connect the two badly enough, but it doesn’t make much sense.

So some Islamic scholars proposed more modest rewards. After satisfactorily answering the angels’ questions, they say, dead Muslims in their graves will get a sneak peek into jannah, filling them with hope and tiding them over until the Day of Judgement. The grave itself will be made spacious and well-lit for them, then they can sleep peacefully. (“Wow this is rly helpful!!!” - guy who has been dead for 800 years and is now a femur bone and some ashes.)

The sneak peek hadith linked above basically states that people will know whether they’re going to hell or heaven right after answering the questions, though, so why does the Quran show the disbelievers being shocked when they’re sentenced to hell? What’s even the point of the Day of Judgement when they’ve already received judgement? Why bother with the bridge thing and all the dramatics? Lo! It is a mystery. Then again, Allah judges everyone before they’re even born, so I guess it makes just as much sense as everything else in this religion, which is to say none at all.

At the end of the day, what we really have here is a disconnect between the Quran itself and the ahadith, which does happen every now and then. Nothing in the Quran beyond this one line clearly says that dead people will be doing or experiencing anything other than... being dead, with the exception of those granted Instant Jannah. But the ahadith make it abundantly clear that this is not the case. The ahadith referencing this are very strong and can’t be dismissed as later fabrications.

As for why this disconnect may have arisen in the first place, the hadith from Aisha perhaps suggests that Mohammed made adhab al-qabr a more central part of Islam only after he heard Jews in Medina talking about it a lot. Perhaps he himself didn’t fully understand how all of this was meant to work, since neither Jews nor Christians offered a solid, unified explanation for it, and he didn’t want to incorporate it into the Quran beyond this line. Or maybe he just needed to give his followers some extra motivation to keep following him--now they weren’t just risking torment in hell, but also torment before hell. I don’t know.

What I do know is that the concept of the torment of the grave, and a consciousness-after-death concept more broadly (even if only for a moment), has become an accepted part of Islam over the centuries despite its near-total absence from the Quran. Not everyone can agree on the exact nature of it all, since there really isn’t much material to base it upon, but most do agree that it is a thing. Somehow.

Anyway the real answer to this and many other theological mysteries is that Mohammed didn’t think all of this through clearly enough and so Islamic scholars had to try to fix his mistakes for several centuries. O well!

⇚ previous day | next day ⇛

#historylesson #quranreadalong #surah 40 #ghafir

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alexicacvs-a-blog · 5 years ago

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🔥

This is going to be really salty. Though it’s not RP related but more so based on my experiences going into multiple Pagan communities over the years. This will be under a read more.

Anyway a post I saw reignited a massive pain in my ass and that’s the whole White Witchcraft movement that’s been a thing since the 1950′s. This is going to delve into the history and why it’s such a pain in the ass and also go into my reasons for hating Silver Ravenfuck. I mean Silver Ravenwolf.

So before I begin let me just say that White Witchcraft isn’t a thing that solely white people. It was never a thing that solely white people did. In fact it’s whole start was during McCarthyism. We all know about McCarthyism right? For those who don’t, McCarthyism was a period in the 50′s where McCarthy would round up people who were perceived as being Commie scum, typically those who were athiests and Jewish. Believing good American citizens to be god fearing Christians, anyone else is a commie scum. Thus why 90% of Jewish Filmmakers were blacklisted and spent time doing trials in the 50′s.

Also to note that Wica or commonly known as Wicca or British Traditional Wicca (Due to Scott Cunningham writing Wicca: A Guide to the Solitary Practioner and it being a hit in the US and Canada and distingtion needed to be made. However everywhere else in the the world BTW is simply Wicca.) came about in 1954, created by Gerald Gardner and helmed by Doreen Valiente (until I think either the 60′s or 70′s then she helped out Robert Cochrane with his 1734 tradition.). Now Doreen and several other high profile witches were trying to not get caught into the web of McCarthy, and did the one that that Christians have perfected for centuries: Throw people under the bus.

Now mind you this group of witches weren’t all white people. According to Amber and Jet, Desi Arnaz was one of the witches involved in this new movement. Desi was a Cuban immigrant who practiced Santeria. Santeria is an indigenous form of witchcraft that combines witchcraft with Christianity, it’s what Issac Bonewits would describe as a idiosyncratic form of witchcraft. And there were probably several others. Again when you have McCarthy breathing down your back the only thing left to do is to throw people under the bus.

Now the terms for black magic or white magic weren’t chosen because of racial attitudes. In the west and in the east colors have meaning, this is known as symbology. We know that white means pure in the West and black means evil. If you played Final Fantasy, White Mages do healing. Black Mages hurt and poison.

Now in modern times there should be no classification for a color for witchcraft. Your classification should be the type and intent of witchcraft that you do. If you’re a Storm Witch, you work with storms. Water Witch, you work with water. Want to heal people? Then you’re a healer. What to harm people then you’re a Hex Witch. Like Chaos well you’re a Chaote/Chaos Magician.

Even Anton LaVey, leader and founder of the Church of Satan said something similiar in his book The Satanic Witch in his first chapter “Are You A Witch?”. Now mind you this book is more so focused on the notion that only girls are witches and boys are warlocks, also given that the cover is pink it’s possible that he was gearing this book more so towards women and having them embrace their femininity.. Never mind the fact that the word warlock means oathbreaker in Scottish Gaelic. But whatever. I’ll amend it so bear with me.

Aside from the tricks of the movie or TV witch, usually accomplished with special camera techniques, there is no reason why any girl who puts her mind to it and learns the proper methods cannot become a full-fledged witch in accord with the popular conception. Only those who either do not know the means or are too stubborn to use them, once having been told, will persist in defining themelves as witches by using the sanctimonious definitions of so-called “white witches” working for “the benefit of mankind.” There will always be those who, furitvely desiring personal power but unable to do anything about gaining it, will devise their own definitions of what a which should be like, seeing to it, of course, that their definition fits them.

The “white witch” is the by-product of an emergence in England of an above ground witchcraft interest at a time when witchcraft was still technically illegal. In order to pursue the “craft” without harassment and prosecution, the spokesmen for witchcraft attempted to legitimize and justify what they were doing by proclaiming the existence of “white” witchcraft. (The footer note states that the term was first used by William Seabrook in his book, Witchcraft, its Power in the World Today. Which was written in 1940. So it hasn’t been a term that’s been used long. ) “White” Witchcraft, it was simply a belief in the religion of the old wise ones or “Wicca.” (This is based more on Scott Cunningham than Gardner. Also Margret Murray incorrectly stated that and was debunked. Several times.) The use of herbs, charms, and healing spells was only employed for beneficial purposes.

It was believed that the kind of witches that were dangerous to have around were “black” witches. These were supposedly evil in their pursuits and worshipped Satan. The fact that the “good” or “white” witches employed a hormed god in their ceremonies was justified because it “doesn’t represent the Devil.”

Of course, no one admitted to practicing witchcraft ceremonies of any kind. Anything that was associated with witchcraft was pursued in the name of “study” or “research.” This was the climate in England between 1936 and 1951.

With the repeal of English witchcraft laws in 195, all of the underground witches started creeping to the surface and as their eyes became accustomed to the light of sudden legality, they ventured forth. Unused to such freedom and heavy with the stigma of illegality, they went about shouting “white witchcraft” even louder than ever, as if expecting at any moment to be snared by a heretic hook.

About this time, interest in the occult was becoming popular in the US, so naturally attention was focused on the British Isles with its rich heritage in all matters ghostly and fanciful. As might have been expected, newly emerged English witches saw the US as a fertile stamping ground for safe recognition of their “witchiness”. Concurrent with the first post-war writings out of England came the first diplomats of witchdom, and America was more than curious. Having no other literature but Margaret Murray, Montague Summers and Dennis Wheatly to read it, it was assumed the new revelations by Gerald Gardner and his followers were the straightest stuff available.

“White witch” became a definitive term, and thousands who wouldn’t touch the practice of witchcraft with a ten-foot broomstick found a conscience-redeeming opportunity to follow the “art” by using the new rules of the game. Regardless of what these people would like to believe, the image of the witch had been stigmatized for centuries. All witches were considered to be agents of the Devil, antagonistic to scriptural teachings, and a direct part of the dark side of nature. As there is always a relative outlook as to what is good and what is evil, once witchcraft emerged from its “all evil” state into neutral territory, a differentiation was bound to occur. The righteous, of course, will always wear the mantle of “good”, white light”, “spiritual” and varying shades of holiness.

An analogy might be made concerning “white” and “black” witches. Let us assume that warfare had, for centuries, been called wholesale murder and the men who fought called “murderers”. One day it was decided that there was something quite noble and dignified about this old activity of wholesale murder. All the murders, basking in the light of new-found legitimacy, began calling themselves “good murderers”. The enemy’s troops, of course, were the “bad murderers.” The stigma of the word “murderer”, still remained, but at least the good murderers felt more at ease. Now, maybe these murderers always had a fairly legitimate reason for going into battle. Maybe they succeeded in saving their homeland from that which threatened it. They might have even had a scholar among them who had traced the origin of the word “murder” to an ancient word that meant “murder”. But the fact remained, “murder” was still a negative term in the public’s mind. So instead of simlply revelling in their subsequent acceptance by the public, necessitated their placing of the word “good” in front of “murderer” as sort of a self-reassurance that they doing the right thing!

Basically to gather from this that in England there was a witchcraft law. It lasted for about 100 years or so and only was repealed in 1951, because a psychic during WW2 was helping naval officers find a ship or something, seeing that she was a psychic threw her in jail. Parliament thought it was a stupid law and abolished it.

Now while Seabrook does place Voodou to be under black magic it’s less that it’s apart of the African Diaspora and more that involves a level of harm. Silver Ravenwolf says the same thing in her 1992 book To Ride A Silver Broomstick and several of her books (along with the Llwellyn Crew) along with curses, hexes, and other means that does harm. That’s the whole crux of the matter. If it does harm then it’s bad. And this new crew of white witches all follow the Wiccan Rede as law. (Which is ironic cause the word rede means advice.). “An it harm none, do what ye will.”

For this new group if you harm. You’re doing evil and worship Satan. Doesn’t matter if it’s a practice passed down for generations. If you harm others, you are evil. Are you reconnecting with your roots? Don’t care if you harm you’re evil. And that’s not just for those that practice Voodou, Hoodou, Santeria, or other practices among the African Disapora but also for those witches who are White. For those who are Satanist. Who are Chaos Magicians or Thelemites. If you harm you are evil. It’s a black or white morality when it comes to White Witches.

Especially when those whose first book into witchcraft is Silver Ravenwolf. No matter who you are the first time you get interested in witchcraft is as a young teen is always going to be Silver Ravenwolf. That’s what you see in a bookstore or at your library, that’s what you’re going to read. That’s what your friends read.

TL; DR: Magic is based on intent. Basing one’s intent on a color is stupid. The terms black witchcraft or black magic or white witchcraft was boiled down into good or bad. Voodou got lumped in cause it dealt harm. That’s the only reason why it got lumped into black magic.

#ooc #asks #answered #inheireted #[[should be noted that the satanic witch was written in 1970 and geared towards empowering women]] [[hence why it mentions girls and uses s #[[ also anton levay is fucking weird]]#[[but some of what he says makes sense]]#inheirited

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mi6021izzyviney · 3 years ago

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THE 12 JUNGIAN CHARACTER ARCHETYPES - RESEARCH

The term “archetype” means original pattern in ancient Greek. Jung used the concept of archetype in his theory of the human psyche. He identified 12 universal, mythic characters archetypes reside within our collective unconscious. Jung defined twelve primary types that represent the range of basic human motivations. Each of us tends to have one dominant archetype that dominates our personality. Within character design and development for both animated and live action film/tv, concepts such as the Jungian archetypes can greatly support the process of creating character’s appearances and roles within the plot as a whole.

THE 12 JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES LIST (and how they are typically described as):

Ruler

Motto: Power isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

Core desire: control

Goal: create a prosperous, successful family or community

Strategy: exercise power

Greatest fear: chaos, being overthrown

Weakness: being authoritarian, unable to delegate

Talent: responsibility, leadership

The Ruler is also known as: The boss, leader, aristocrat, king, queen, politician, role model, manager or administrator.

Creator/Artist

Motto: If you can imagine it, it can be done

Core desire: to create things of enduring value

Goal: to realize a vision

Greatest fear: mediocre vision or execution

Strategy: develop artistic control and skill

Task: to create culture, express own vision

Weakness: perfectionism, bad solutions

Talent: creativity and imagination

The Creator is also known as: The artist, inventor, innovator, musician, writer or dreamer.

Sage

Motto: The truth will set you free

Core desire: to find the truth.

Goal: to use intelligence and analysis to understand the world.

Biggest fear: being duped, misled—or ignorance.

Strategy: seeking out information and knowledge; self-reflection and understanding thought processes.

Weakness: can study details forever and never act.

Talent: wisdom, intelligence.

The Sage is also known as: The expert, scholar, detective, advisor, thinker, philosopher, academic, researcher, thinker, planner, professional, mentor, teacher, contemplative.

Innocent

Motto: Free to be you and me

Core desire: to get to paradise

Goal: to be happy

Greatest fear: to be punished for doing something bad or wrong

Strategy: to do things right

Weakness: boring for all their naive innocence

Talent: faith and optimism

The Innocent is also known as: Utopian, traditionalist, naive, mystic, saint, romantic, dreamer.

Explorer

Motto: Don’t fence me in

Core desire: the freedom to find out who you are through exploring the world

Goal: to experience a better, more authentic, more fulfilling life

Biggest fear: getting trapped, conformity, and inner emptiness

Strategy: journey, seeking out and experiencing new things, escape from boredom

Weakness: aimless wandering, becoming a misfit

Talent: autonomy, ambition, being true to one’s soul

The explorer is also known as: The seeker, iconoclast, wanderer, individualist, pilgrim.

Rebel

Motto: Rules are made to be broken

Core desire: revenge or revolution

Goal: to overturn what isn’t working

Greatest fear: to be powerless or ineffectual

Strategy: disrupt, destroy, or shock

Weakness: crossing over to the dark side, crime

Talent: outrageousness, radical freedom

The Outlaw is also known as: The rebel, revolutionary, wild man, the misfit, or iconoclast.

Hero

Motto: Where there’s a will, there’s a way

Core desire: to prove one’s worth through courageous acts

Goal: expert mastery in a way that improves the world

Greatest fear: weakness, vulnerability, being a “chicken”

Strategy: to be as strong and competent as possible

Weakness: arrogance, always needing another battle to fight

Talent: competence and courage

The Hero is also known as: The warrior, crusader, rescuer, superhero, the soldier, dragon slayer, the winner and the team player.

Wizard

Motto: I make things happen.

Core desire: understanding the fundamental laws of the universe

Goal: to make dreams come true

Greatest fear: unintended negative consequences

Strategy: develop a vision and live by it

Weakness: becoming manipulative

Talent: finding win-win solutions

The Magician is also known as:The visionary, catalyst, inventor, charismatic leader, shaman, healer, medicine man.

Jester

Motto: You only live once

Core desire: to live in the moment with full enjoyment

Goal: to have a great time and lighten up the world

Greatest fear: being bored or boring others

Strategy: play, make jokes, be funny

Weakness: frivolity, wasting time

Talent: joy

The Jester is also known as: The fool, trickster, joker, practical joker or comedian.

Everyman

Motto: All men and women are created equal

Core Desire: connecting with others

Goal: to belong

Greatest fear: to be left out or to stand out from the crowd

Strategy: develop ordinary solid virtues, be down to earth, the common touch

Weakness: losing one’s own self in an effort to blend in or for the sake of superficial relationships

Talent: realism, empathy, lack of pretense

The Everyman is also known as: The good old boy, regular guy/girl, the person next door, the realist, the working stiff, the solid citizen, the good neighbor, the silent majority.

Lover

Motto: You’re the only one

Core desire: intimacy and experience

Goal: being in a relationship with the people, work and surroundings they love

Greatest fear: being alone, a wallflower, unwanted, unloved

Strategy: to become more and more physically and emotionally attractive

Weakness: outward-directed desire to please others at risk of losing own identity

Talent: passion, gratitude, appreciation, and commitment

The Lover is also known as: The partner, friend, intimate, enthusiast, sensualist, spouse, team-builder.

Caregiver

Motto: Love your neighbour as yourself

Core desire: to protect and care for others

Goal: to help others

Greatest fear: selfishness and ingratitude

Strategy: doing things for others

Weakness: martyrdom and being exploited

Talent: compassion, generosity

The Caregiver is also known as: The saint, altruist, parent, helper, supporter.

THE 4 CARDINAL ORIENTATIONS

The 4 cardinal orientations that the archetypes are seeking to realise are:

Ego – Leave a Mark on the World

Order – Provide Structure to the World

Social – Connect to others

Freedom – Yearn for Paradise

CHARACTERS IN MY FILM THAT FIT INTO THE JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES AND THE CARDINAL ORIENTATIONS:

Isaac - Explorer - Freedom/Social

Therapist - Sage - Order/Ego

Christina - Jester/Everyman - Social

Alexandra - Rebel/Ruler - Order

Jane - Innocent/Wizard/Ruler - Order/Social

Malcolm - Lover - Social/Freedom

Isabelle - Everyman/Innocent - Freedom

Erin - Hero - Ego/Social

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neuxue · 7 years ago

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Oathbringer thoughts

I was hoping to be able to liveblog Oathbringer, but it turns out I was too optimistic by half. Well, by about 5/28 anyway, given that I have two and a half WoT books left. I thought about just waiting to read Oathbringer (if there’s anything liveblogging WoT has taught me it’s patience) but I’m going to the Sanderson signing tomorrow so I was running out of time. Anyway, here are some thoughts upon finishing, for the 2 or 3 of you who are interested. I was reading probably a little too fast, so probably missed everything and will at some point need to reread, but here you go.

LOTS OF SPOILERS BELOW. ALL THE SPOILERS. HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

In no particular order (but there are 10: a nicely Vorin number to go with my coincidentally Vorin username)

1. Talenel. Taln. Talenelat’Elin. Stonesinew, Herald of War, Bearer of all Agonies.

That guy.

Taln was a Problem for me literally from the moment he was introduced in the Prelude (offscreen! He didn’t even show up on-page! Why am I like this?!) with the line “Taln had a tendency to choose seemingly hopeless fights and win them. He also had a tendency to die in the process”. A doomed last stand in the form of a character. Why would you do this to me.

So I’m sure you can guess that Chapter 38 (‘Broken People’ what a chapter title) thoroughly broke me. I mean, it wasn’t even anything we didn’t already know, really. But... “The nine realised that one of them had never broken.” And “The Bearer of Agonies. The one abandoned in Damnation. Left to withstand the tortures alone.” And the fact that it took four and a half millennia for him to break.

I’ve long had a fascination with the idea of ‘everyone has a breaking point’ (when I was 11 I tried to write a novel based entirely on the concept of someone who does not - or cannot - break; the ‘cannot’ turned out to be a rather interesting thing to explore, but the story overall was terrible because, amongst other reasons, I was 11) and with the idea of breaking characters, and what it would take to break certain characters, and what the result would be.

As I mentioned, I also have a thing for doomed last stands, so basically Talenel was created to be my breaking point, it would seem. (“Herald Talenelat during several of his many, many last stands...” just @ me next time)

And then. And then

“Four thousand years?” She held his hand tighter. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” [...] “Four thousand years?” Taln asked again. “Ash...” “We couldn’t continue--I...we thought...” “Ash.” He took her hand again. “What a wonderful thing.” Wonderful? “We left you, Taln.” “What a gift you gave them! Time to recover, for once, between Desolations. Time to progress. They never had a chance before. But this time...yes, maybe they do.”

And then...lucidity abandons him, because he is broken, and it’s been four thousand years. But in that one moment, in the moment when he is briefly himself, it’s as if he isn’t broken at all. The fact that this still exists within him, even if the rest of the time he’s found a refuge in madness or forgetting or in the recitation he gives over and over, the advice he needs to give to humanity, the duty he has to them. It’s like name, rank, serial number. It’s very probably the thing he held on to throughout those four and a half thousand years, the thing he could not allow himself to let go of or forget, even as he broke. And the thought that the one point he fixed on, the thing he held fast to even as he broke, was his duty to humankind, is...a lot.

2. Speaking of Taln, let’s talk a little bit about Kaladin

There are plenty of things I could say about Kaladin, but I mostly just want to throw a few quotes out there For Your Interest. Because...I don’t know if there’s anything to this but here.

Quotes about Taln:

“The one who wasn’t meant to have joined them in the first place, the one who was not a king, scholar, or general”

Um.

“One of them had never broken.”

Quotes about or by Kaladin Stormblessed (surgeon’s son, neither king nor scholar nor general):

“That granite will, that warrior’s poise.”

(As an aside, how do granite and obsidian exist on a planet with no tectonics? How???)

“Ten spears go to battle” [Kaladin] whispered, “and nine shatter. Did that war forge the one that remained? No, Amaram. All the war did was identify the spear that would not break.”

One unbroken, of ten.

Eight months. Eight months as a slave, eight months of slop and beatings. It might as well have been an eternity. --from Way of Kings

An eternity of torture? Also Taln’s Scar is high in the sky during Kaladin’s time as a slave. Maybe meaningless.

Why were they going through all of this? What was the point? Why were they running so much? They had to protect their bridge, the precious weight, the cargo. They had to hold up the sky and run, they had to... --Kaladin’s thoughts, WoK

Take that just a little out of immediate context and that last part especially sure sounds like someone tasked with endless agony for the sake of the world

Yet the sheer glory of what he did seemed at odds with the desolation he caused --Kaladin’s thoughts, WoK

Somewhat less relevant to the thing I’m sort of vaguely postulating but still an interesting choice of words, and the Desolations happen when the Heralds break and return, so.

“His body dead, but not his will” --Hoid, WoR, telling the ‘Fleet’ story

Taln dies a lot. It’s sort of his thing. But his will takes four millennia to break.

“Then I hope I end up in Damnation.” --Kaladin, WoR

I’m just saying.

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s leftover from one of the things I got hilariously wrong when first reading WoK - obviously Kaladin was gaining the powers of a Radiant but I really, really wanted him to somehow be Taln. (Amusingly, I read Way of Kings before I started Wheel of Time, otherwise it would be easy to see where this notion came from). Maybe it’s Maybelline. Regardless, it’s an interesting set of possible parallels.

3. Wow, he just up and told us what caused the Recreance in book three.

And it felt like the perfect time for it. It’s the sort of thing you’d normally expect an author to sit on for more or less the entire series. I was tentatively prepared to wait for at least the first five books before getting this much stated outright on-page.

I’m so glad Sanderson gave it to us now, instead. For one thing, it felt oddly refreshing to have such a big question answered so early. Playing the long game with reveals can work, obviously, but it’s fun to mix things up a bit. It also plays into some of what I ended up talking about in the ‘Dalinar’ section of this list regarding plot twists and the execution thereof. The Recreance is a good example, because it was revealed in full at the point in the story when it could have the impact it needed to have. In-story, it was both the probable and logical time for the secret to come out - it would have started to strain suspension of disbelief if that many characters had some knowledge of it, and none of them ever put it together on-page either in their own thoughts or for the other characters. For the reader, it brings everything together at a point when it’s all very relevant, and at a point when there’s enough information to figure it out if you’re careful and lucky, but not so much that it loses all surprise value whatsoever (For the record, I was close about a lot of it, but there were some pieces I missed and/or put in the wrong place. It did, however, satisfy the one thing I was really hoping it would).

Narratively and thematically, it makes sense alongside the other questions that are being asked or otherwise addressed - the issue of colonisation and ownership and agency, the question of war and protection and the justifications for either or both, the contrast of unity and division, and of course the question of oaths and honour and betrayal.

Answering this question now also makes the whole story suddenly feel so much bigger, because when something set up to be this much of a central question is almost just handed to you, it serves to put it into perspective. It makes the rest of the story, and next set of questions we’re starting to ask, and the questions we don’t even yet know to ask, seem so much larger, and the story so much vaster.

4. OH THANK THE LISTENING GODS THE LOVE TRIANGLE SPUTTERED AND DIED BEFORE IT COULD EAT EVERYTHING

I breathed an actual literal sigh of relief. I hate love triangles so much, mostly because I usually struggle to maintain ‘bored indifference’ rather than outright irritation at romance subplots in general, so love triangles are almost always intolerable because not only do they double the romance but they turn it into a point of conflict and miscommunication and angst and I cannot fucking stand it. If I had a dragon for every unnecessary love triangle I’ve had to read, I’d have been able to take over the world a long time ago. Or have the world’s most epic bonfire.

Anyway. Through WoR (and I guess WoK but to a lesser extent) I was torn between trusting Sanderson to avoid or subvert that particular cliche and...not trusting him to do that. There are a lot of things I do trust him with as a storyteller (especially one who has clearly evolved in his writing, storytelling, and awareness) but I wasn’t sure if I could trust him on this. He earned quite a bit of trust from me for how he ended up writing this, actually.

The exact moment I breathed that sigh of relief? It was the conversation Shallan and Kaladin had about her particular coping mechanism. Specifically:

“No. No, Shallan! I wish I could do the same. [...] How nice would it be, if I could simply shove it all away? Storms.” [...] “This way, I’ll never face it,” Shallan said. “It’s better than being unable to function.” “That’s what I tell myself.”

Because this was the moment when it became exceedingly, abundantly, absolutely clear that Sanderson was doing this on purpose. I had hoped he was, because this was something that felt off about Kaladin and Shallan during their chasms conversation in WoR as well (the ‘she smiled anyway’ thing), but then there was the possibility that it was...accidental. Now, though, I have significantly more faith in Sanderson, because this is a really...I can’t think of the word but I’m glad he did this the way he did.

And I am SO INCREDIBLY GLAD THE LOVE TRIANGLE DIED. And the way in which it died. And the fact that everyone involved respected its death. And that it didn’t stop the characters involved from communicating with and trusting one another. And also that said death included the line “Shallan. he can literally fly.”

(Adolin Kholin is not straight. Just tossing that out there).

(Shallan consistently using the word ‘passion’ when thinking about or describing Kaladin is interesting, though, in light of certain other reveals. Not sure if there’s actually anything to that, but it’s just a thing that stood out).

5. Dalinar

So the identity of Odium’s Champion was one of the things I saw coming as soon as the champion idea was mentioned in this book. (It was brought up in previous books and this was one of my theories but I definitely wasn’t certain, and I was also Distracted by what I wanted to have happen, which is not something that would ever actually happen. I’ll write the fic at some point).

Anyway, it was predictable...but that didn’t matter, because it was beautifully executed. “You cannot have my pain” is a cool line out of context, but in context it was magnificent.

I like the way Sanderson does plot twists, because unlike with some authors, it doesn’t feel as if his sole intent is to be able to say ‘ha ha, tricked you, aren’t I so clever’. His goal, it seems, is to tell a satisfying story. Rather than withholding all of the information relevant to the ‘twist’ to make it actually impossible to guess (which doesn’t make you a master of the plot twist so much as it makes you an asshole), he includes the necessary and sufficient foreshadowing to allow the ‘twist’ to make sense and not feel like it came out of nowhere.

This means, of course, that some readers are going to guess it in advance. That’s just how it works. If you put the information out there, some people are going to put it together correctly and completely. Some people are going to put some of it together, and have a sense of where things are heading. Some people are going to be absolutely sure of where it’s heading...and then be completely wrong. Some people are going to have absolutely no clue. The truly impressive plot twist, I find, is the one that can satisfy people in all of those categories. YMMV of course, but having been in each of these positions at least once while reading Sanderson’s books, I feel like he manages this impressively well. It’s fun if it’s at least a little bit of a surprise, but even when it’s not, it’s satisfying because it’s written as part of the story - as a point of emotional or narrative impact, or a turning point for the characters - well enough that it still has the desired effect. Mostly because ‘gotcha’ isn’t the (only) desired effect.

I digress somewhat.

So before we move on, I’d also like to point out that Dalinar Kholin and Lews Therin Telamon clearly need to form a support group for men who murdered their wives in a fit of madness and fucked with the psyche, memory, and identity of their future selves.

6. “The apocalypse is coming; we don’t have time for bullshit gender roles”

Adolin being absolutely here for Shallan-with-Shardblade. Kaladin going ‘yeah okay’ to women joining the Windrunners. Dalinar learning to read. Jasnah as queen because honestly was there ever actually another choice?

This is another one that’s just so refreshing to see, especially because it’s clearly something that’s being deliberately examined and played with, but is also integrated into the story. It doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb the author didn’t know what to do with, but it also plays a very real role in the story. It’s not just there so the author can point to the one sword-wielding woman in a cast of thousands of dudes and say ‘but I gave you a Strong Female Character’.

This ties into something I really appreciate about Sanderson, which is his demonstrated ability and willingness to learn and grow when it comes to issues of representation - not just in terms of including it, but in how he includes it.

7. Venli

I don’t have a lot to say about her except that I was genuinely surprised by this one. So well done on that, Sanderson.

Also, given his propensity for writing brothers in love with the same woman, I’m almost surprised we didn’t get some sort of reveal about Venli and Eshonai loving the same person.

8. Cosmere convergence

There was a lot more than I expected at this point in the...series? Continuity? Mass of interconnected stories that have evolved into a semi-eldritch being? I enjoyed it and had no problems with this, but I’d be curious to know what someone who’s only read Stormlight thought - does it still work? Do they just play as intriguing and mysterious characters alongside all the other intriguing and mysterious characters, or has it reached a tipping point where you actually need to have read some of the other books?

Also Cosmere-related...Hoid. He’s sure getting more and more screen time, isn’t he? I’m Interested. I have Thoughts. I need to think about them more but I definitely have some Thoughts on who and what he is. Regardless, any character who can say “if I have to watch this world crumble and burn to get what I need, I will do so. With tears, yes, but I would let it happen” is going to Interest me. Not to mention the sheer number of times he tells various characters not to trust him. And then there’s “you turned your back on divinity.” Which is...um. Yeah I’m fine this is fine.

9. Odium

Has to be number 9, because of reasons. Odium was great. Nice subversion of imagery there, and to great effect.

10. Ideals and Oaths

I mostly find it amusing how a book called Oathbringer is the first to plainly exhibit failed Ideals. Elhokar. Kaladin. (My best guess at the Windrunners’ Fourth Ideal would be something along the lines of “I will protect those I can, and forgive myself for those I cannot” but I’ll have to reread and see if that holds up). The broken Oathpact (there’s a part of me that really wants the gem-encrusted probably-a-fabrial-of-some-sort pillar to be the Oathpact; its manifestation or sealing or what-have-you. Not sure that holds up though). It’s a fun little irony.

#definitely need to reread #thoroughly enjoyed it though #I had been feeling a little unsure #because his most recent book(s) in other series #felt a little underwhelming #but this definitely made up for it #oathbringer #oathbringer spoilers #stormlight archive #stormlight archive spoilers #cosmere

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rudolf-rokkr · 8 years ago

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Heyo. I've been trying to get into more heathenry/norse paganism kinda stuff (what can I say, I love folk metal), but the one thing that's kind of been a damper on the concept for me is the concept of Hel - specifically, how (as I understand it) dying of sickness or old age is a form of cowardice and punishable by eternal torment. Being chronically ill myself, that doesn't really sit right with me. Do you have any thoughts/corrections/resources on this topic in particular?

Thanks for the question. Basically the image of Viking afterlife concepts that has entered popular culture is extremely shallow and not a good representation of what we know believe actually existed. This is a big topic so it’s easy to get lost but I’m gonna try to keep it simple without leaving too much out but feel free to follow up if it seems like I’ve missed something. It’s long so the rest is behind the break.

I’ll start with the major point I want to make and then we’ll fill in the “so what then?” after. The reason you’re disturbed by this is because it’s, at least partially, a recruitment tactic. It’s designed to tempt you to suspend your reason and even if it did apply to your personal situation you’re better off not falling for it.

I know some people find strength in the Valhöll idea and I don’t want to take that away from anyone but my uncensored opinion is that it’s for dupes. It’s full of people who wasted their lives in service to kings who didn’t give a shit about them, who used them to gain rule over them. Óðinn isn’t vetting them for bravery, he’s vetting them for certain personality traits that are bad for self-preservation but good for early proto-state-formation. That’s why it’s the afterlife we find out about from Snorri. He was a court poet, trying to piece back together a cosmology from shreds of court poetry that extolled the virtues of fearlessly taking an axe to the face in defense of your favored tyrant. Frankly, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to go to an afterlife where you have to die every day. I think this was more of a prestige factor among the living than an actual hope for the afterlife. I could be wrong though since the primary audience of such a myth would have been, like, 18-year-old kids hopped up on adrenaline, having just left the family farm for the first time in their lives, suddenly being adorned in gold and addressed by kings and making their first kills and drinking unending ale. Frat boys to whom the world is suddenly open (note that we’re mostly talking about higher class people anyway because they’re the ones who could afford weapons, so the world was already more open to them than others). Like the primary source for details about Valhöll is Vafþrúðnismál which rather likely was performed before an audience of these young, drunk warriors far from home (see Terry Gunnell for theories about performance of Eddic poetry).

So yeah, I could see them falling for this, or thinking it sounds appealing, or whatever. But at the same time I doubt anyone would have admitted out loud that killing each other all day every day for eternity would be awful (in fact it sounds a bit like the Buddhist hell Sañjīva but with good food). If it’s a real thing its full of people who can’t admit they’ve longed for Niflhel for centuries.

That isn’t to say it can’t be a legitimate belief as well, just that this is its primary social function from the perspective of our sources. I’m sure that another motivating factor for the preservation and distribution of this belief is that those promising 18-year-olds also had families back home and maybe wives and kids and they were supposed to come home from exploiting the Karelians for the King’s tribute to take care of all this, and the pain of such a loss is made somewhat more mild by believing that these individuals have been called to the higher purpose of preserving the cosmic order. Not saying I agree, just that I get it.

(Note that in reality we have substantial evidence that the actual motivating factor for at least some “Viking” warriors wasn’t a glorious afterlife but rather they were mercenaries and maybe not even locals).

Now onto the next point. In Gylfaginning Snorri says that Óðinn decides where people go when they die and that good (siðaðir, literally more like ‘ethical’ I guess) people go to Vingólf or Gimlé (note: not the same as Valhöll; this might be where Snorri thinks good people who aren’t killed in battle go) and that bad people go first to Hel and then to Nifhel. The problem is that he’s full of shit. This isn’t corroborated anywhere. We can put the “full of shit” onus on Snorri the Christian who believed literally in an all-powerful God and Heaven and Hell, or we can put it Snorri’s depiction of Óðinn as Hárr/Jafnhárr/Þriði lying to Gylfi, but either way it’s obviously wrong and easily refuted.

For one thing there’s nothing moral about it. It’s just down to the manner of death. The greatest hero of Germanic mythology, Sigurðr Fáfnisbani, went to hel because he was killed in his sleep or stabbed in the back. And we know he went to hel because Brynhildr committed suicide in order to follow him. And according to skaldic poetry, King Hákon góði went to Valhöll despite not even being heathen because he died in glorious battle.

Grímnismál says that Freyja gets half the slain warriors; Þorgerðr Egilsdóttir (who is not a warrior) in Egils saga expresses expectation that she’ll spend the afterlife with Freyja. In Hárbarðsljóð Hárbarðr (Óðinn) makes fun of Þórr because he receives slaves into his halls rather than rulers like Óðinn does. Snorri himself tells us that Gefjun receives those who die as unmarried women which doesn’t apply to your situation but is another hole in the Valhöll/Hel paradigm. He also says that Rán (the sea-gýgr) takes those who die by drowning, which is corroborated by Eyrbyggja saga (chapter 54, when the drowned men show up to their own funeral, perpetually dripping wet).

Meanwhile, other than very specific parts of it that might be designated for people marked for obliteration from existence (this is based on lines in Vafþrúðnismál describing Niflhel as the place “whence men die out of hel,” what precisely that means is not obvious), we don’t have much reason to believe Helheimr is really so bad. Hel herself seems to thrive on death and decay and all that but I mean, it’s the world of the dead, that kind of seems to make sense and we can’t frame it according to our perspective as the living. On the other hand though, most of our evidence actually points to the world of the dead having a relatively strong sense of continuity with the world of the living. That seems to be why people were buried with their stuff – they weren’t done using it.

Whether or not we should place Glæsisvellir or Ódáinsakr in the “world of the dead” (they get an association with Jötunheimar in some sources – it’s not clear if this is part of the Euhemerizing process where mythological places are mapped to geographical locations, or if Jötunheimar was part of the “world of the dead”) is unclear. Glæsisvellir ‘shining fields’ are a sort of “otherworld” more like what you normally see in Gaelic myth and legend that tend to show up a bit later in Norse mythology but seems to possibly play on things that show up as early as Ahmad ibn Fadlan’s description of the Rus’. It’s pretty much Valhöll for peaceful people. Ódáinsakr is a place within Glæsisvellir where there is no death and everything comes back to life. They’re usually ruled over by a very benevolent and hospitable jötunn named Guðmundr or Goðmundr (though split from the same origin, guð is used more for the Christian god and goð more for heathen ones, so calling him Goðmundr is marking him as heathen). Basically it seems to be Norse Elysium.

Finally, the afterlife that has the most support from the Íslendinga sögur, which means it’s probably the best reflection of the day-to-day beliefs of average people during the Viking age is some kind of continued existence in the landscape. The most clear description is in Eyrbyggja saga wherein it’s seen that the mountain Helgafell opens up to receive Þorsteinn þorskabítr and his companions; the mountain contained a whole hall full of people with fires burning and horns blowing and everything to welcome Þorsteinn. It was later discovered that Þorsteinn had drowned (note that this is the same saga I mentioned before where drowned sailors go to Rán).

Some scholars think that this is actually the origin of Hel and Valhöll. That they were just the continued existence of the dead, basically underground or living in rocks or other natural formations (like the elves do in Icelandic folklore). The abstraction of Hel and Valhöll from geographical location might have been part of the universalization/mobilization that some scholars propose for the development of the Óðinn cult (see: Tracing Old Norse Cosmology by Anders Andrén).

We also see a sort of double-afterlife in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II (a.k.a. Völsungakviða in forna) wherein Helgi has some kind of mobility between his burial mound and Valhöll… and then is later reincarnated.

Reincarnation pops up a couple times in Norse lore, this aforementioned poem being one of them. It actually says:

Þat var trúa í forneskju, at menn væri endrbornir, en þat er nú kölluð kerlingavilla.

‘It was a belief in heathen times that men would be reborn, but that is now called an old wives’ tale.’

It’s also implied in Flateyjarbók that Saint Ólafr is the reincarnation of an old heathen king who was worshiped as an elf in death, Ólafr Guðrøðarson (Ólafr Geirstaðaálfr). I did a post about reincarnation on my other blog that covers a lot of the same ground as this post.

Reincarnation is also a more or less fixed part of Urglaawe, a variant of modern heathenism focusing on the experience of the Pennsylvania Dutch (although these other afterlives are as well – just part of a process that ultimately results in reincarnation. To my mind such a view is perfectly compatible with everything else I’ve mentioned above).

The Wild Hunt does not factor much into Norse mythology but we have a pretty good idea that the concept was around based on its appearance in later folklore and its general wide spread across world cultures. It could possibly be related to the Valhöll afterlife concept, perhaps among a different class of people. We are pretty sure, for example, that Óðinn was popular in Denmark before Christianization and we are not able to connect him clearly to a ruling class like we are able to do with Norway (largely because of a general lack of literary sources for heathenism for that time or place). While no evidence compels us to do so, we have room for envisioning an Óðinn-centric afterlife that is not Valhöll, nor restricted to the upper classes. I mean he’s clearly a “god of the upper classes” but he’s no less a wandering hobo.

Anyway, the point so far is that there are lots of alternatives to the “Viking heaven” vs. “Viking hell” bullshit. This is probably not exhaustive and it partially conflicts. That isn’t surprising given that there is no centralized heathen authority and what we’re actually talking about is a huge variety of religious ideas that circulated differently along localities, social classes, time periods, social contexts, etc.

If we can point to something underlying all of this, it’s that there was believed to be some kind of continuity between life, manner of death, and afterlife. People dying in battle and going to Valhöll is, to my mind, an extension of this. “Those who die violently have a violent afterlife.” Whether or not that’s good will depend on the person, I’d imagine. Those who die in illness (and remember that there was a relationship between illness and trolls and elves or other unclean or vengeful spirits) may unfortunately find themselves in an afterlife characterized by fever and coughing and other unpleasant things. However the afterlife also seems negotiable, fluid, and furthermore determined at least partially by the activities of the survivors. When Ahmad ibn Fadlan attended a Rus’ funeral one of the Rus’ made fun of him because to him, the Muslim practice of burying the dead meant that the deceased would have to lie there in the ground while they decomposed, as opposed to the Rus’ who were cremated and thereby went immediately to the gods (by the way both burial and cremation happened under heathenism, so this is clear evidence of discontinuous religious belief among heathens and that we can’t call it “one” “religion.” Snorri associated burial and cremation with the cults of Freyr and Óðinn respectively in Ynglinga saga but of course he didn’t have all the archaeological evidence we do so we shouldn’t take that as necessarily true, but it’s interesting that he knew about both). We also see worship of the dead in the sources as the dead were considered to continue to have contact with the world of the living, for example by influencing crop yields and local weather patterns. Snorri’s Euhemerized history of the kings of Scandinavia exploits this to explain how the human king Freyr became a god – he was a human king who died and was worshiped as an ancestor at first before being reanalyzed as a god in the popular tradition. Though maybe not with Freyr specifically, this probably actually happened, even if more strictly localized, like in Vita Anskarii wherein it’s said that a certain King Erik was accepted by the gods as one of them when he died.

This is why I can’t help but think of Valhöll as “if you spend your life bootlicking you’ll spend death doing the same.” Indeed, even in the old sources, hierarchy in human society is replicated in Valhöll when Helgi Hundingsbani goes there and humiliates Hundingr by ordering him around.

We might also gain some insight by comparing other cultures that share beliefs in common with the pre-Christian Norse. Though close reading of literature and comparative religion most people believe that the Norse did not believe in a single soul but rather something of a personal complex. We see this in other circumpolar cultures that also recognize things like the World Tree, ancestor worship, nature spirits, etc – that doesn’t mean we can just lift ideas from these other cultures but they do give real-life examples of how these abstract concepts can work in day-to-day life. Personally I have been very inspired by and influenced by Buryat Mongol belief and custom, especially because they themselves are often eager to share (reminder that it not being strictly “closed” does not mean that inappropriate appropriation is not possible). Buryat Mongols recognize three “souls,” each of which go their separate ways at death. One becomes a nature spirit, one which goes to the underworld and is eventually reincarnated, and another which becomes a bird on the world tree which is also eventually reincarnated (but, if I understand correctly, not along with the soul which had gone to the underworld). Among many such cultures going to the gods in the afterlife is a possibility, but a major exception to the norm. The reason I find this so interesting for this conversation is that if the Norse believed something similar, it would explain why our sources are in such conflict, how people can be going to Hel and living in the mound at the same time, how Helgi Hundingsbani can go to Valhöll and be reincarnated, etc. If you’re interested in learning more about Buryat Mongol belief try the site I already linked and also the works of anthropologist Katherine Swancutt (note that the families she stayed with had complete agency in determining what and how she would share what she learned… she talks a lot about this in Fortune and the Cursed: The Sliding Scale of Time in Mongolian Divination).

This next part is gonna be even more opinionated than what I’ve already written. I think it’s tempting to believe that people get what they deserve in death. That people who are treated unfairly in life are compensated in death and that those who were unfair themselves get their comeuppance. But to my mind heathenism lacks a mechanism for identifying or producing desert. That means it’s up to us, the living, and maybe those dead who continue to exert an influence on the world of the living, to vindicate those who were oppressed, or robbed of a good death; and to mitigate the legacy of unfairness. I do not believe that “the universe” or “wyrd” or whatever punishes wrongdoing – not because it wouldn’t be nice but because how exactly is that supposed to even happen? Do we really want to rely on gods who often act immorally themselves and use their supernatural abilities to exert their wills, to judge us? We might ask for their help, but we shouldn’t leave it in their hands. It would be great to take the burden off of ourselves but for better or worse, that’s where the burden is. This concept is a major spiritual informant to my belief in social justice, it’s (among many other things) a way to achieve a symbolic (and restorative, rather than retributive) equivalent to the social role of blood vengeance, for people who faced oppression. And what’s more, if we’re prepared to accept the possibility of reincarnation, then it actually is helping ourselves as well as our dearly departed awaiting rebirth in the underworld to make the world a better place for future generations.

Finally the last thing I want to say is that all of this is just theory. Not believing it doesn’t make you not heathen. We don’t have a Bible, there is no centralized authority, nobody living a thousand+ years ago was totally sure what happened in death – the lore we have received is just whatever models they came up with that best explained their experiences (probably especially mystical experiences of religious specialists, but still) and informed their behavior. For that matter, plenty of this shit is probably Christian speculation about what heathens believed anyway. If you have reason to believe otherwise it isn’t “un-heathen” to trust in your own ability to reason. Like, I think I did an alright job of framing my distaste for Valhöll in heathen discourse which just means it’s a productive set of religious beliefs that’s capable of autocritique. A person can’t possibly read the sagas and conclude that everyone agreed with each other all the time; variation, dissent, and creativity are generally speaking all good signs.

Hope this helps.

P.S. I know there are a lot of people who see entrance to Valhöll being granted to anyone engaging in struggle, whether physical or otherwise. I don’t agree, and if you’ve read this far you know I haven’t factored it into my understanding at all. But I don’t necessarily have a problem with it. I think it comes down to the active conception of “violence.” I do not believe that violence is strictly an act of causing physical damage to a person or object in a single event. I think that rearranging Valhöll to conform to a modern conception of violence that also includes systematic oppression is a literally incorrect way to interpret it according to Old Norse religion – but fuck it, my opinion of Valhöll is low as shit, so do whatever you want for all I care.

#ask #heathenry #heathenism #valhöll #hel

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shadowlineswriting · 8 years ago

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Lewis

“Make your choice, adventurous Stranger; Strike the bell and bide the danger Or wonder, till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had.”

C.S. Lewis wrote a lot of books, and at one point in time I owned a full collection of his works. I don’t anymore, but I do still have several things of his that I’ve never read. We’re going to break him into two posts because frankly I feel The Chronicles of Narnia deserves its own. We’ll read the other six or seven books of his later, okay?

SO. Narnia! You’ve probably heard of these books even if you haven’t read them. There are seven. They were written out of order, but their chronological order is as follows:

The Magician’s Nephew

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Horse and His Boy

Prince Caspian

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The Silver Chair

The Last Battle

It is not at all uncommon for writers to shape their stories around allegory, and hopefully from my collection of books alone, you realize that religious allegory is one of the most popular. However, it is NOT so easy to take religious allegory and apply it to children’s stories, but that’s exactly what C.S. Lewis did.

For those who are unfamiliar with the story, it tells of a world connected to ours (but separate). This other world is called Narnia. In Narnia, the God character is a huge lion named Aslan. He goes through the same trials God went through--dying for our sins and rising again, most notably--and over the course of the seven books, Aslan creates Narnia, helps Narnia through thick and thin, and triumphs over the Antichrist and Rapture.

Of course, if you’re a child reading this, the story is basically about children who have adventures in a mythical land sometimes. Still good, but not quite so impactful.

Lewis was a masterful storyteller. He’s very famous because he and J.R. Tolkien were best friends (Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, which will get its own post when we reach the Ts). I’m honestly not sure which series I love better because they are both very close to my heart. In fact, you know that game where if you were on a deserted island and you could only take five books...well, Narnia and LotR would both be on my list, hands down. The reason they aren’t on my Top 10 Favorite Books of All Time list is because they’d take up the whole list, between the 7 Narnia books and 3-5 LotR books (depending on who you ask).

Anyway. Of all the Narnia books my very favorite is The Magician’s Nephew. This was one of the last Narnia books that Lewis wrote, but it’s sort of the “prequel” to the rest of the series. In this story, two children find Narnia before it is Narnia. They arrive as Aslan is creating it. They get to see as he creates the lands, the stars, the animals, and elect the first King and Queen to rule. This is not only allegorical for Genesis for those reasons, but the finer points, too, though Lewis changes things a bit. For one thing, it’s man who brings original sin to Narnia (through the form of an evil witch who becomes the key villain throughout several of the novels). For another, the tree of life is the protection and salvation of Narnia, not the source of evil. Furthermore, there’s a widely-debated religious figure known as the Lilith, who first appeared in ancient Jewish texts but is also included in the modern Bible. Generally scholars agree that the Lilith is a head demon (usually a woman) but in many Jewish sects they believe that Lilith was actually Adam’s first wife before Eve. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there, but Lewis actually brings Lilith into the story (very briefly) and writers back then weren’t quite so brave about that, so I have to give Lewis mad props for being a trendsetter.

One reason I love Lewis’s writing so much is that he’s able to take major concepts and simplify them so even children can understand. He does that a lot in the Narnia books but especially The Magician’s Nephew. One of my favorite examples is when Aslan explains to the children why their Uncle cannot hear Aslan speak, and why he is afraid.

“He thinks great folly, child," said Aslan. "This world is bursting with life for these few days because the song with which I called it into life still hangs in the air and rumbles in the ground. It will not be so for long. But I cannot tell that to this old sinner, and I cannot comfort him either; he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If I spoke to him, he would hear only growlings and roarings. Oh Adam's sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!”

BRILLIANT.

I’m not sure words will ever fully express the love I have for these stories, but hopefully I’ve given you at least a small understanding.

Needless to say, I’m not getting rid of these, ever!

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maxwellyjordan · 4 years ago

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Ask the author: The evasive virtues and Supreme Court confirmation hearings

The following is a series of questions posed by Ronald Collins to Ilya Shapiro concerning his forthcoming book, Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (Regnery Gateway, 2020).

Ilya Shapiro is the director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute and publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review. He is the co‐author of Religious Liberties for Corporations? Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the Constitution (2014). Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 300 amicus briefs in the Supreme Court. He clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

Welcome, Ilya, and thank you for taking the time to participate in this question-and-answer exchange for our readers. And congratulations on the publication of your latest book.

* * *

Question: What prompted you to write this book, and why now?

Shapiro: I’ve been a “professional” court-watcher for over a decade, and even before that was riveted by Supreme Court confirmation hearings whenever they came up. I recall once walking into a law firm partner’s office for a job interview and he had Samuel Alito’s hearings on TV; we watched for half an hour before getting on with the interview (I got the offer). I even own a complete bound set of volumes from the Robert Bork hearings — picked them up from a library that was discarding these treasures. But anyway, the battle over Brett Kavanaugh showed that the court is now part of the same toxic cloud that envelops all of the nation’s public discourse. I wanted to dive into why that is and whether it can be fixed. And after the central role the vacancy in Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat played in the 2016 election, I knew I had to get this out before the 2020 election.

Question: How would you summarize the thesis of your book?

Shapiro: Politics has always been part of judicial nominations, but we feel something is now different. The confirmation process hasn’t somehow changed beyond the Framers’ recognition, and political rhetoric was as nasty in 1820 as it is in 2020. Even blocking or not taking up nominees, as happened to Merrick Garland, is hardly novel. But all these things are symptoms of a larger phenomenon: As government has grown, so have the laws that courts interpret, and their reach over more of our lives. Senatorial brinksmanship is symptomatic of a problem that began long before Kavanaugh, Garland, Clarence Thomas or Bork: the courts’ aiding and abetting the expansion of federal power, and then shifting that power away from the people’s representatives and toward the executive branch.

As courts play a greater role, of course nominations are going to be more fraught — especially when divergent interpretive theories map onto partisan preferences at a time when our parties are more ideologically sorted than since at least the Civil War. But in the end, all the “reform” discussion boils down to re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, which isn’t the appointment process, but the ship of state. The basic problem we face is the politicization not of the process but of the product. The only way confirmations will be detoxified is for the court to rebalance our constitutional order by returning improperly amassed power to the states, while forcing Congress to legislate on truly national issues.

Question: What was one of the most important discoveries you made while researching this book?

Shapiro: American history is long enough that there’s little new under the sun. We think we’re at a period of heightened opposition to potential justices, but of 163 nominations formally sent to the Senate, only 126 have been confirmed, a success rate of just 77%. Much of this can be explained by party control of the Senate and White House. Historically, the Senate has confirmed fewer than 60% of Supreme Court nominees under divided government, as compared to about 90% under unified government. And nearly half the presidents have had at least one unsuccessful nomination, starting with George Washington and running all the way through George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Even qualitatively, I would put the Louis Brandeis nomination in 1916 ahead of modern battles in terms of controversy — and it took the longest time — even if he was ultimately confirmed by a more comfortable margin.

Question: There is a notable element of legal realism in your book, especially in the chapter titled “What Have We Learned?” All seven lessons you set forth there suggest there is no way out of the politicization of the judicial confirmation process. Is that your view? Might the real problem be not so much the confirmation process but the modern use of federal judicial review?

Shapiro: That’s exactly right. We have severe — and sincere — disagreements over the substance of constitutional law and methods for interpreting statutes, ones that can’t simply be waved away by invoking “norms” or “courtesy.” What courts decide really matters, so who decides also matters. I don’t think the problem is with “judicial review” as such — the Supreme Court really doesn’t invalidate many laws, and the Roberts court overturns precedents at a significantly lower rate than its predecessors — but it’s absolutely appropriate for senators (and voters) to debate the theories that potential nominees would apply. Given a finite number of seats, political clashes are unavoidable.

Question: The inside flap of your book states that the judicial-appointments process has been adversely affected by “decades of constitutional corruption.” Tell us about the nature of that corruption and when it began.

Shapiro: I would trace the corruption to what legal scholars call the “constitutional revolution of 1937,” but that goes beyond that year’s key cases of West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, Helvering v. Davis, Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, and NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin, as well as the previous year’s Butler v. United States, the next year’s United States v. Carolene Products, and the infamous Wickard v. Filburn (1942).

In 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt wrote to the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee: “I hope your committee will not permit doubts as to constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation.” Eventually, the court rendered constitutional limits on federal power unenforceable and made certain rights more equal than others. After the “switch in time that saved nine,” when the court began approving grandiose legislation it had previously rejected, no federal laws would be set aside as going beyond congressional power until 1995. But even the 1930s and ’40s don’t tell the whole origin story: If the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) hadn’t eviscerated the 14th Amendment’s privileges or immunities clause, for example, we wouldn’t have the warped conception of unenumerated rights — “penumbras and emanations” and the like — that’s also central to confirmation battles.

Question: You argue that the court “has let both the legislative and executive branches swell beyond their constitutionally authorized powers.” Can you give us an example of this under the Roberts court?

Shapiro: The most obvious example is National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sebelius (2012), in which Chief Justice John Roberts transmogrified Obamacare’s individual mandate penalty into a tax. It’s certainly gratifying to those of us in that fight that a majority of justices rejected the government’s assertion of power to compel commerce in order to regulate it. But justifying a mandate with an accompanying penalty for noncompliance under the taxing power doesn’t rehabilitate the statute’s abuses. It merely created a “unicorn tax,” a creature of no known constitutional provenance that will never be seen again. And by letting the law survive in such a dubious way, Roberts undermined the trust people have that courts are impartial arbiters, not political actors.

Question: You talk a lot about the administrative state (or, as you sometimes refer to it, a “faceless bureaucracy” or “alphabet agencies”). How does this relate to the confirmation process as you understand it?

Shapiro: The collection of ever-expanding powers in the administrative state has transferred decision-making authority to the courts. Indeed, the imbalance between the executive branch and Congress — especially the latter’s abdication of its leading constitutional role by delegating what would otherwise be legislative responsibilities — has forced the Supreme Court to decide complex policy disputes. What’s supposed to be the most democratically accountable branch has been avoiding hard choices since long before the current polarization.

Gridlock is a feature of a legislative process that’s meant to be hard, but it is compounded of late by citizens of all political views being fed up with a situation where nothing changes regardless of which party is elected. Washington has become a perpetual-motion machine and the courts are the only actors able to throw in an occasional monkey wrench. That’s why people are concerned about the views of judicial nominees — and why there are more protests outside the Supreme Court than Congress.

Question: During his 1987 confirmation hearings in the Senate, Bork violated every norm of modernity in word, demeanor, appearance and tactic. He did not feign meekness or prevaricate. He did not fully disavow his former views. He did not kowtow to the whims of his senatorial adversaries or play to the press. He remained conceited and confident throughout. And all of this in the face of a voluminous record of speeches, scholarly writings and judicial opinions certain to invite opposition. In short, Bork did not pretend to be the man he was not. The result: 58 senators voted against his confirmation and 42 for. As Judge Richard Posner viewed it: “He had posed as supremely apolitical, as just letting the chips fall where they may.”

Would you characterize Bork’s strategy as principled or foolhardy?

Shapiro: Both. A nominee has to understand that his or her only goal is to get confirmed, while Bork seemed to think he was there to pass an oral exam. The Justice Department would’ve coached him better, but this nominee didn’t want coaching, blowing off so-called “murder board” sessions. As Senator Paul Simon (D-Ill.) put it: “Bork tended to want to score debate points, rather than appeal to the Committee for votes.” But the White House also erred in its strategy, which was to portray Bork as neither a conservative nor a liberal — much like the “swing justice” he was nominated to replace, Lewis Powell. The demagogic attacks from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and various left-wing groups caught the administration on its back foot.

Question: Building on the last question, and given where we are, it seems that the formula for any nominee to the Supreme Court who hopes to be confirmed is simple. Be evasive yet engaging. Let long-winded senators steal your time. Appear sophisticated, yet avoid controversy or complexity. Deliver soundbites instead of professorial gradations. And be sure to appear groomed, well-suited and TV-friendly.

Will we ever see an end to this in our lifetimes? If so, how? If not, why shouldn’t senators be even bolder in countering such “Kabuki dances,” as you label them?

Shapiro: Indeed, successful nominees talk a lot without saying much. Ruth Bader Ginsburg refined that tactic into a “pincer movement,” refusing to comment on specific fact patterns because they might come before the court, and then refusing to discuss general principles because “a judge could deal in specifics only.”

Around the same time, Elena Kagan wrote a law review article criticizing judicial nominees for being too cagey. But when she sat in the hot seat herself, she realized why they did so: There’s no incentive to be more forthright and thus open yourself to attack, and every incentive just to demonstrate deep knowledge and an easygoing manner.

So no, I don’t see a change possible, particularly when senators themselves have an incentive to collect clips of gotcha questioning for reelection or presidential campaigns, as we saw with Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) at the Kavanaugh hearings. I mean, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) can declare that he won’t vote for anyone who doesn’t explicitly come out against Roe v. Wade, but that seems like shooting yourself in the foot barring a huge Republican majority that can afford to lose moderate votes.

Question: Assume that the Democrats win the 2020 election, but in late November, one of the liberal members of the court steps down, and President Donald Trump promptly nominates a staunch conservative to replace them. Against the backdrop of the 2016 nomination of Garland, which you discuss in detail, what would you urge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to do?

Shapiro: As I discuss in my book, this is all about raw politics. The last time the Senate confirmed a nominee from a president of the opposing party to a high-court vacancy arising during a presidential election year was 1888 — that’s the Garland situation — but now the Senate and president are politically aligned.

Moreover, vacancies have arisen 29 times in presidential election years, during the administrations of 22 of the 44 presidents preceding the current one, and those presidents made nominations all 29 times. Nine times presidents made nominations after the election, in the Senate’s lame-duck session, and all but one of those was confirmed, including several after the nominating president lost the election. (Chief Justice John Marshall was one.)

So again, this is purely about politics, not law or precedent, and what McConnell will have to consider are such things as whether confirming someone would hurt the court’s legitimacy and ultimately whether the Democrats would pack the court in response. Of course, some on the left claim that all of the Republican-appointed justices are illegitimate for one reason or another, and McConnell can’t control the Democrats, who may add justices regardless. Judicial nominations are a winning issue for Republicans, so I say go for it.

Question: You seem cautiously amenable to the idea of term limits for the justices. What is your thinking in this regard?

Shapiro: “Amenable” is the right word. They’re probably not worth the effort to get a constitutional amendment, which I’m convinced would be required despite clever academic theories to the contrary. If the most common proposal, 18-year terms with a vacancy every two years, had been around the last few decades, the court’s makeup would hardly be different; there would now be three Bush II appointees, four Obama appointees, and two Trump appointees – in other words, still five Republican-appointed justices to four Democratic-appointed ones.

In the last 50 years, there have been 30 years of Republican presidents and 20 years of Democratic ones; if anything, liberal voices have been overrepresented. But even if term limits wouldn’t change the court’s decision-making, they might be worth trying anyway because at least there would be less randomness. As Orin Kerr put it: “If the Supreme Court is going to have an ideological direction — which, for better or worse, history suggests it will — it is better to have that direction hinge on a more democratically accountable basis than the health of one or two octogenarians.”

Question: So far as the judicial confirmation process in concerned, toward the end of your book you write: “I’ve come to the conclusion that we should get rid of hearings altogether, that they served their purpose for a century but now inflict greater cost on the Court, Senate, and the rule of law than any informational or educational benefit gained.” Do you think there is any real likelihood of this?

Shapiro: Well, there’s no law saying that the “advice and consent” process has to include hearings. The Senate didn’t even hold public hearings on Supreme Court nominations until 1916, and it wasn’t until 1938 that a nominee testified at his own hearing. But their utility has largely run its course at a time when nominees come with voluminous paper trails that are instantly accessible to all.

Maybe there would still be a need for closed sessions to consider the FBI’s background investigation, privileged documents and other ethical concerns, but the open hearings now produce more heat than light. It’s against the interest of the party not in control of the White House to dispense with the hearings — how else can their senators extract their pound of flesh? — but perhaps this is something that both parties can eventually agree on.

The post Ask the author: The evasive virtues and Supreme Court confirmation hearings appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

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