#anyways i NEED to take a medieval art history class my brain has just been on that era

[junebugjo]

second iteration of medieval girls with phones after the first print im making for my printmaking class

[script-a-world]

(sorry this is long) I'm creating a fantasy matriarchal society that's a combination of like America post WW2 and like the amazons/valkyries crossed with magical girls. I could use some help figuring out the gender dynamics, since part of my goal is to use the swap to highlight some inequalities that still exist in our gender expectations today by flipping them. I'm trying to figure out if it's better to have the men be primary caregivers (1/?)

since there’s no reason to assume that the gender that gives birth has to be the caregivers) or if I should go the “matriarchal society would value childrearing above other jobs” route. Some thoughts I had: Women are the main magic-users in society (magical girl/amazons blessed directly by the god who rules the city with power)and that perhaps all young women are expected to go through military service of some sort before becoming matrons, politicians and doctors. (2/?)

Maybe women are associated with Life and Death and “important duties” that revolve around them, including duties regarding both killing and saving lives. So healing, leading armies, fighting, hunting, childbirth (possibly care?) and politics are feminine jobs, while “lesser duties” that revolve more around menial labor are relegated to men (manual labor, maintenance, ‘uneducated’ jobs, support jobs like scribe and secretary, cooking, cleaning, perhaps some jobs like fashion design or art). (3/?)

Do you think this is a good balance? What are some other ways I could divide gender roles? The world situation is a magical land with about early 20th century level tech (trains and private schools and like phones/radios).Also, what is the best way to objectify men in this society? I was thinking of making it so men are seen as useless/only for the purpose of providing sexual pleasure and siring children to women. (4/?)

They don’t’ actually create children or take the ‘important jobs’ (the poor dears just don’t have the brains for it, they’re too simple and direct, men don’t have the emotional maturity to handle serious issues, they lack empathy, they only want sex anyway so it’s not like you need to worry about their emotional needs, etc). I’d love some suggestions on how a society like this might work or if there are other ways to divide the gender roles, (5/?)

as well as some ways men might experience objectification in society. How would fashion be different, and how would this society put pressure on men to look or act in certain ways (and women as well). Any suggestions? Thanks, and sorry for the long question(6/?)

Mod Miri Note: If you have a question that requires multiple asks, please use the google form! That way there’s no risk of parts of the question being lost.

Tex: “Do you think this is a good balance?” No, I do not. I disagree with the notion that a group of people ought to be objectified, neglected, abused, pigeon-holed, or otherwise mistreated under the guise of inversion as a way to tout a certain prescription of thought. I think this methodology perpetuates stereotypes, and with stereotypes come all the -isms that are used as excuses to treat people poorly just because they’re different from the originating group.

I’m going to be radical and say “none of the above”. There’s a few reasons for my answer, but aside from the brief overview in the previous paragraph, let me go through and try responding to all of your points in a more precise manner.

Let’s start with American culture post WWII - and I’m going to assume that, because of this choice, you’re working from an American perspective. This is important! But I’ll handle that detail in a bit.

Post-WWII culture is heavily influenced by WWII culture. For women, this meant enlistment in the military, as well as filling the gaps in the domestic labor force left by men being shipped off (History.com, The Atlantic). Their service in the military - quite often voluntary - was as critical and crucial as their domestic work (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2, Wikipedia 3). They usually received lower pay than men, true (though interestingly the women in the UK were often treated better; Striking Women), though governments of the time admitted that without women the war effort would have crumpled.

Rosie the Riveter is a popular piece of propaganda (where it was also considered patriotic for women to join the workforce and military service; National Women’s History Museum), but don’t let that dissuade you from thinking that women were not recognized for other types of work during the war. Many women in the US were recognized for their military service (USO), and other women’s histories endure today - Lyudmila Pavlichenko (Wikipedia), Vitka Kempner (Wikipedia), and Virginia Hall (Wikipedia). I’m going to toss in the official synopsis of Queen Elizabeth II’s involvement in her own military to round things out (The Royal Family), complete with a picture of her in uniform (Wikipedia).

Many women after the war went back to strictly domestic duties, and I think that parallels their wartime efforts - both situations are of the “all hands on deck” type, but the play of gender roles here means that the duties of a functioning society are divvied up by different functional spheres - and make no mistake, men and women relied on each other equally as much to cover the gaps, despite the sexism inherent in modern Western society. The difference between war and non-war time cultures was that the latter wasn’t necessarily cultivated by patriotism that could unite the different “factions”. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History gives a thorough examination of this topic.

The following era - typified by the birth of the Baby Boomer generation - saw a marked increase in economic prosperity (Wikipedia). With that came increased social mobility for women (Citation 1), usually catalyzed by the actions of their fathers (Citation 2). This may typically be achieved by consistent, conscientious public policy formation (Citation 3). In short, many cultures - if they haven’t already - are realizing that it’s good for business to let women control how they participate in society and the flow of money.

In the US, this was precipitated by the boom of social development (American History; archived version). Aside from the Truman administration negotiating price fixing to prevent inflation, a significant factor was the passing of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (AKA the G.I. Bill). This primarily benefited the Greatest Generation, though other pertinent legislation by the 79th Congress benefited the Silent Generation onwards: the Fair Deal, Revenue Act of 1948, Taft-Hartley Act, Employment Act of 1946, National School Lunch Act, and Hobbs Act.

It’s debatable how well this impacted long-term economic development, considering the almost immediate rise of McCarthyism in the US in 1947, which was heavily intertwined with the Truman Doctrine that precipitated the Cold War. The results of the war, at least economically, were… mixed (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2). I have no doubt that this impacted the social mobility of women in all affected countries - which is all of them, but I’m sure hairs could be split on this if you wish.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s tackle the Amazons.

The modern, popular interpretation (that is slow to be shaken by archaeological evidence) is mostly mythological (Wikipedia). While some ideas are thrown in the way of a Minoan Crete ancestry to the myth, there are more similarities drawn to the Scythian and Samartian cultures on the Eurasian Steppe (CNET). It’s possible that instead of the equally-extreme pole end of the gender dichotomy that is patriarchy-matriarchy, the Scythians just scandalized the Athenians with a comparatively more fluid society (Smithsonian Magazine).

As for Valkyries… there’s been a revival of them in pop culture, probably as a net-casting to see what’s out there aside from Amazons. TVTropes covers the many, many ways media utilizes them as a trope, to varying degrees of mythological and cultural accuracy. As they state, valkyries are a form of psychopomp, as they decide who among the battlefield’s dead will go to Valhalla (ruled by Odin) or Fólkvangr (ruled by Freya). Freya seems to have assumed the “type” (as opposed to characteristics salient to a particular individual) of a valkyrie, as the female counterpart the warrior archetype. To wit, Freya herself may be a type (Wikipedia).

Here’s where the issue gets thorny - modern popular understanding of valkyries, and by extension Scandinavian women, is skewed through the modern lens.

@fjorn-the-skald has a lovely series called Viking History: Post-by-Post, or An Informal Crash Course & A Historical Guide to the Vikings, that typically focuses on medieval Iceland. In his post “Lesson 13.c - Women in the Viking Age, Part III: Were Women “Vikings”?”, discusses the particular penchant of modern times to romanticize and/or skew history to their own biases - in this instance, how medieval Icelandic women functioned in their culture, as well as how valkyrie myths play into this.

The TL;DR of that is: “viking” women were a societal anomaly, the battlefield was a male domain (and they were expected to die on it), a woman’s prowess of the domestic sphere was highly respected to a level often equivalent to men, and the domestic sphere was the sphere of commerce. Scandinavian culture prized strong women, just as they prized strong men, and their culture rested upon the concept of different genders having their own distinct, complementary, and equal domains.

Fjörn builds upon this history in an ask about gender roles outside the usual dichotomy of male-female. Valkyries, and shield-maidens, may be classed as a third gender in medieval Scandinavian culture, because women were temporarily occupying the male role in their society. While valkyries are of divine origin, shield-maidens are not, though they seem to have taken on a supernatural bent by performing feminine qualities while living in the male sphere (something that they can literally wear, by the donning of their armor).

That probably comes across as distasteful to, especially, a modern American perspective, but many ancient cultures are like that. There’s a footnote on that ask about links to a contemporary perspective of same-sex relationships, as well, to round out that talking point.

With those historical and mythological details discussed, let’s move on to magical girls.

Interestingly, the genre and trope derive from the American TV show Bewitched (Nippon.com). Its evolution reflected Japan’s changing tone about female sexuality, focusing on girls.  Magical Girl doesn’t seem to be intended to attract the male gaze in a sexual light - and in fact was generated as a form of female empowerment by by way of growing up (TVTropes), but it seems to happen anyways (TVTropes).

Magical girls, as a genre, originated in the 1960s - the archetypical Sailor Moon encompasses not only magical girls, but also the kawaii aesthetic. Kawaii, incidentally, followed after the magical girl trope, and plays upon women performing as girls in society.

As magical girls are intended for young girls, a demographic known as shōjo, it is considered a subgenre of the target audience. Please note that shōnen'ai (Fanlore) and yaoi (Fanlore) are also subgenres of shōjo.

For some context, the adult female target audience is known as josei, the young adult men is known as shōnen, and adult male audience is known as seinen. Many manga and anime are often misattributed to the wrong category, so it helps to know which is which, and why.

Kumiko Saito argues (through an unfortunately paywalled article that I’m more than willing to disseminate to those without JSTOR access) that magical girls reinforce gender stereotypes as well as fetishize young female bodies. She argues this point more eloquently than I can, so I’ll be quoting a few sections below.

Page 148 (7 of 23 on the PDF):

The 1960s “witch” housewife theme waned quickly in the United States, but various cultural symbolisms of magic smoothly translated into the Japanese climate, leading to Japans four-decade-long obsession with the magical girl. Bewitched incorporated the concept of magic as female power to be renounced after marriage, thereby providing “a discursive site in which feminism (as female power) and femininity has been negotiated” (Moseley 2002, 403) in the dawning of Americas feminist era. Japans magical girls represented a similar impasse of fitting into female domesticity, continued to fascinate Japanese society, and came to define the magical girl genre. In direct contrast to the American heroines Samantha and Jeannie, however, whose strife arose from the antagonism between magic (as power) and the traditional gender role as wife or fiancée, the magical girls dilemma usually lies between female adulthood and the juvenile female stage prior to marriage, called shõjo. In other words, the magical girl narratives often revolve around the magical freedom of adolescence prior to the gendered stage of marriage and motherhood, suggesting the difficulty of imagining elements of power and defiance beyond the point of marriage. In fact, these programs were broadcast exactly when the rate of love-based marriage started to surpass that of miai (arranged marriage),4 which implies that the magical girl anime, founded on the strict ideological division between shõjo and wife/mother, may have been an anxious reaction to the emergent phase of romance.

Page 150 (9 of 23 on the PDF):

The combination of magical empowerment and shõjo-ness framed by the doomed nature of transient girlhood naturally created ambivalent, messages in Akko-chan as well. In the societal milieu in which Japan was undergoing the politically turbulent era of Marxist student movements at the largest scale in the postwar era, Akko-chan’s super- human ability to transform into anyone (or anything) is quite revolutionary, implying a sense of women’s liberation. Despite this potential, her metamorphic ability never threatens gender models, as she typically dreams of becoming a princess, a bride, or a female teacher she respects. The use of magic is also largely limited to humanitarian community services in town. Akko-chan’s symbolic task throughout the series focuses on how to steer her power to serve her friends and family, leading to the final episode in which she relinquishes magic to save her father. Akko-chan embraces the cross-generic mismatch between the radical idea of empowering a girl with superhuman ability and the hahamono [mother genre] sentimentalism idealizing women’s self-sacrifice. All in all, the new setting adopted in this series, that a mediocre girl accidentally gains magic, became a useful mechanism for the underlying theme that the heroine is foredoomed to say farewell to magic in the end. This rhetorical device transforms latent power of the amorphous girl into the reappreciation of traditional gender norms by equating magic with shõjo-hood to be given up at a certain stage.

Saito discusses the thematic shifts in the magical girl subgenre in the 1980s to a more sexualized view, and the according rise of both an older audience and otaku fans, the latter of whom, she clarifies, make a habit of recontextualizing canon to categorize characters into stereotypes that are stripped of the majority of their original context.

On pages 153-154 (12-13 of 23 on the PDF):

The conventions of the magical girl genre transformed significantly against this paradigm shift. Both Minky Momo and Creamy Mami originally targeted children, recording a decent outcome in business and eventually leading to the revival of the genre. Because the plots are directly built on the genre clichés, however, the jokes and sarcasm of many episodes appear comprehensible only to adult viewers equipped with the knowledge of the Töei magical girls. The intrigue of these programs largely lies in the way they parody and mock the established genre conventions, especially the restrictive function of magic and the meaning of transformation. The genre is now founded on the expectation that the adult viewer has acquired a diachronic fan perspective to fetishize both the characters and the text’s meanings.

Creamy Mami presents the story of fourth-grader Yū, who gains magical power that enables her to turn into a sixteen-year-old girl. Yū’s magical power is more restrictive than Momo’s, for her superhuman capacity simply means metamorphosis into her adult form, who happens to become an idol singer called Mami. Given that the magic’s ability is self-oriented cosmetic effect and bodily maturation, the heroine’s ultimate goal by means of magic is to grow old enough to attract her male friend Toshio, who neglects Yū’s latent charm but falls in love with the idol Mami. The series concludes when Yū loses her magic, which correlates to Toshio’s realization that Yū is his real love. Mami’s thematic messages teach the idea that magic does not bring much advantage or power after all, or rather, magic serves as an obstacle for the appreciation of the truly magical period called shõjo. The heroine gains magic to prove, although retroactively, the importance of adolescence preceding the possession of “magic” that enables (and forces) female maturation.

It’s noted in the article that the 1990s-2000s period received criticism for showing a physical maturation of girls, so codified euphemisms via garment changes such as additional frills and curled hair were used instead. This “third-wave” magical girl challenged standing norms of its predecessors by doing things such as likening adult responsibilities (“childrearing and job training”) as a sort of game, as well as the transformation implying that the character’s power is in being herself, something that juxtaposes previous norms.

Due to shifting power dynamics and other changes in Japan’s culture, it became more common for boys to become magical girls as well, further separating the magical girl concept from a strict reflection of gender roles. As such, Japanese culture - insofar as my English-based research can guide me - no longer immediately implies a direct and distinct correlation between magical girls and the female gender.

An analysis of Puella Magi Madoka Magica (PMMM) by Tate James (2017; PDF) discusses an additional dimension of the magical girl genre. Two pertinent points of the piece is that 1.) PMMM dismantles archetypes pitting women against girls, and 2.) PMMM reinforces the gender stereotype that the best type of girl is a passive girl.

Now for the issue you’ve raised about who ought to be the primary caregiver of children.

Consistent, immediate, and continuous interaction between a mother and her child benefits both of them (Citation 4, Scientific American 1, Live Science, Citation 5, Scientific American 2, UNICEF, WHO). Mothers have a distinct neurobiological makeup that predisposes them toward caring for infants (Citation 6), and likewise infants have a predisposed preference to their mother’s voice and heartbeat (Citation 7). I would like to think that is sufficient evidence as to why nearly all cultures encourage mothers as the primary caregivers.

This said, cultivation of a father-child dyad is immensely beneficial to the child (Citation 8, Citation 9), and can alleviate the effect of maternal depression on the child (ScienceDaily). Partnered men residing with children have lower levels of testosterone but a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and adiposity (Citation 10). It’s interesting to note that higher prolactin levels in the mother’s breastmilk has a correspondingly higher level of sociosexual activity with their partner in cotton-top tamarins, which stimulates pair bonding (Citation 11), as well as in other species (Citation 12).

Paternal postpartum depression is recently recognized in fathers, to severe and reverberating deleterious effects on themselves and their family (Citation 13). Screening tools for detecting depression in Swedish fathers is not sufficiently developed, and many men may be passed over despite reaching cut-off suggestions in other criteria for depression (Citation 14).

It has been observed that while human mother and fathers have the similar oxytocin pathways, the exhibit different parenting behaviours when exposed to elevated levels of oxytocin - primarily that fathers will react with high stimulatory behaviour and exploratory play (Wikipedia).

Men being socialized in a culture of stoicism and an encouraged reaction pattern to violence have poor mental health that can culminate into death and other long-term effects (Citation 15). Suicide in the US is currently the leading cause of death at time of posting this response, that the total suicide rate increased 31% from 2001-2017, and in 2017 male rates were nearly four times higher than females (NIMH).

On the topic of magical culture: it’s incredibly difficult to research because it’s a component of overall culture, and one that’s not typically available to strangers/foreigners/the uninitiated. As such, a lot of authors default to what they already know. It’s not a bad thing, but if someone wants to reach outside their comfort zone, they’re going to have some trouble.

I’m going to go off the three, four-ish, cultures you’ve already come to us with: American, Scandinavian, Scythian/Samartian, and Japanese just to round things out.

For a very, very rough overview of America, we have:

Native Americans of the contiguous US

Hawai’i

Alaska

Whatever the colonizing peoples brought over (including, but not limited to, English, Scottish, Irish, Norwegian, German, and Italian)

Whatever the myriad cultures of Africa brought over as slaves

Hispanic

NB: I’ve put Hawai’i and Alaska as separate items because they’re not part of the contiguous US.

European settlers were of a few groups:

The merchants working on charters

Indentured servants from the merchants’ homelands

Slavs

Immigrants in post-colonial eras

This is an important distinction because 1.) contemporary culture matters a lot politically, 2.) how people came to the US determined how they and their family were treated, and 3.) the contemporary job culture determined their social class.

(Slavs, as a note, are the origin of the English word “slave”, something that Western Europeans historically liked to propagate.)

I’m not going to go into the details of everything the US has to offer in terms of cultural diversity aside from a nudge in the direction of Santería. What you pick up to research is up to you.

Scandinavian folk magic is known as “trolldom” (Swedish-language Wikipedia), and the region was known for their cunningfolk. Please note that klok/-a, klog/-e, and related words relates to the English word cloak, and these people are so named because wearing one was an integral part of how they interacted with the supernatural.

The InternetArchive has a book (albeit in Swedish) about the history of magic in Sweden, which is available in multiple formats. If you’d prefer to have something in English, you can either buy this book, or inform your library you’d like to them to buy it for you.

I’m a little surprised you hadn’t mentioned either the völva (Swedish Wikipedia, English Wikipedia) or seiðr (Wikipedia), as they’re quite a well-known part of Scandinavian folk culture. Fjörn, as always, is my first stop for this area of research, with the post “Lesson 7 - Viking Spirituality”, the Víkingabók Database, the tag of Old Norse words, and the post “Norðurbók: A List of the Tales and Sagas of Icelanders” as incredibly good starting points. I encourage you to peruse them, especially because the words you learn will help you be more precise during research.

The Scythian culture is quite far reaching, as they had occupied most of the Eurasian Steppe during the Iron Age, and much of this area can be found in modern-day countries such as Russia, Iran, and China, among others. Because of how far their peoples spread out, the Scythians intermixed with their neighbors, and as such there are sub-groups to the culture.

The Sarmatians were more Russian, as that’s where a large amount of their territory laid, and were absorbed into early Slavic culture. Both their and the overall Scythian language group is eastern Iranian.

In order to help you orient yourself, here’s a map from Wikipedia:

Description: Historical spread of Iranian peoples/languages: Scythia, Sarmatia, Bactria and the Parthian Empire in about 170 BC (evidently before the Yuezhi invaded Bactria). Modern political boundaries are shown to facilitate orientation.

Japanese magical culture is intrinsically tied to their religion, and as such it would be beneficial to read about Shintoism and Japanese Buddhism. The wiki for Japanese mythology is a thorough primer, though if you get stuck, then I’m sure @scriptmyth would be glad to help you on not only this culture, but others.

As for the jobs you’ve proposed - I’m going to jump right into scribes because the irony of that is it’s historically a male-dominated job, and is the progenitor of jobs such as “public servants, journalists, accountants, bookkeepers, typists, and lawyers”. It is, with even greater irony, European women that are noted in Wikipedia, and that medieval women are increasingly thought to have played an integral part in manuscript writing (New Scientist, Science Advances).

I’m not the best person to ask for medieval culture, unfortunately, so you’ll need someone more knowledgeable than me on the subject to direct you to the finer points.

The wiki for women in war links to a lot of lists, so I would suggest poking around for historical references by era (that will likely lead to by culture) to orient yourself on how women have participated in war in the past. There’s quite a bit of mythology to be found there, as well, so if you pick up some specific goddesses you get stuck on, then pop over to @scriptmyth.

Likewise, the wiki for women in government is an interesting read, as is women in positions of power. Since both are primarily modern-times oriented, I would suggest looking at the list of queens regnant for a more historical perspective. I would have difficulty giving you more than that, as you would need to pinpoint your reference cultures first.

As history often neglects women’s contributions to society if they weren’t a ruler or similarly powerful ruler - and, frankly, that frequently applied to men as well the further back you go - I’m going to toss a couple of starting points at you for the area of medicine:

Women in medicine § Ancient medicine - Wikipedia

Women in medicine - Science Museum: History of Medicine

One thing to keep in mind is that as goalposts changed for medicine - the standardization of knowledge and the need to attend a medical school to be legally allowed to perform medicine - the availability of women to participate went down.

Another is that medicine, historically, relied upon herbal medicine, and Wikipedia itself notes that there’s a heavy overlap with food history - something that’s traditionally a domain of women. This abstract by Marcia Ramos‐e‐Silva MD, PhD, talks about Saint Hildegard von Bingen, and the first page available tells you that medieval women were in charge of quite a lot despite not being allowed to participate in the male-dominated sphere of war. The Herbal Academy dips briefly into not only the saint, but other historical aspects of herbalism that might interest you.

The wiki of women in the Middle Ages, along with that of Hildegard of Bingen, nicely rounds out this particular topic.

I need to bring out the fact that Ancient Egypt was and is well-known for the equality and respect afforded to their women - in the interest of staying on subject, particularly in the field of medicine (Ancient History Encyclopedia). Isis was well-known as a goddess of healing (Wikipedia), an aspect she has in common with goddesses in many other cultures (Wikipedia). As an added side-note, Merit Ptah in her popularly-known context has been concluded to be an inflated misunderstanding - and misconstrued interpretation - of a historical figure with significant fabrication (LiveScience, Oxford).

The presence of women in medicine fluctuated in every culture, an in ancient times often shared some correlation with the use of magic (Citation 16). Healing, historically, has a high correlation with the supernatural - and if you care to look, women are usually responsible for the domain of the supernatural. (Or at least the feminine part, which was complementary and complemented by the masculine part.)

I’m going to hop back to politics real quick to bring up abbesses, particularly the social power they exercised as women heading religious orders. An article by Alixe Bovey for the British Library gives the TL;DR of medieval women and abbeys, though if you’d like something with a bit more detail, Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 by Eileen Edna Power is also available.

Abbeys, with their rise and fall, are important to modern American culture. Midwives, to be even more particular, have the most direct impact. In Western Europe, a midwife may under certain circumstances perform baptisms. This was a debated topic of its time, as baptisms were rituals of the Church, and the Church had strict regulations allowing only men to perform their rituals.

During the 1500s - and up to the 1800s, in some cases - midwives were defamed to be witches. You’ll notice that this corresponds to a standardization of medical knowledge, with its corresponding legal restrictions on who may practice medicine. For the Church, the politics playing behind the scenes of midwifery and female physicians fluctuated with their observations about women’s power relative to their own (Citation 16).

Malta is an excellent case study of this phenomenon (Citation 17), and encapsulates the movement of witchcraft accusations that took place throughout this period - something historians noted as corresponding to the rise of Protestantism (ThoughtCo). There’s some debate that the increasing orientation to wages in contemporary economy facilitated this adverse behaviour against women, as well as various other social pressures as politically mitigated by the Catholic Church (Wikipedia).

As the practice of medicine was segregated according to sex - male patients to male physicians, female patients to female physicians - there were proportionally fewer men in trades such as midwifery than women despite the medieval shift toward male encroachment of territory (Wikipedia). This corresponding money- and thus male-oriented intrusion into the female sphere of medicine can be seen with the invention of the obstetric forceps (JSTOR). The rising culture of appropriation constituted the witchcraft trials that, incidentally, influenced American culture during their colonization years.

A pertinent name to remember for American history of the witchcraft trials is Margaret Jones, a Puritan midwife and the first person to be accused of witchcraft in the trails taking place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Wikipedia).

The Salem Witch Trials, as an offhand note, could well be an anomaly due to ergotism (Citation 18).

One thing I’m willing to bend on - a little bit - is manual labor, but mostly because you’re describing something very similar to what’s already been invented: corvée labor. There’s plenty of other forms depending on what culture you’re going for, though unlike what you’re proposing, does not necessarily imply the direct and permanent subjugation of people.

I will absolutely quibble with the idea of “uneducated” labor equating to “less valuable” labor - universities offer non-vocational degrees, typically in the areas of research and/or religion, and guilds were created as a means of quality control (that unfortunately got out of hand and committed crimes such as rent-seeking). Women in guilds were a thing, vulnerable to the same fluctuations as their other occupations outside the house.

If we are defining “uneducated” labour as “menial” labour, then this set of occupations inherently varies by culture, as does its relative weight of importance. One example of this would be writing; it may be menial but important, whereas holding negotiations could be a “major” role but wouldn’t exist without the support of workers “less than” them.

Correspondingly, gender divisions may not necessarily mean an assignation of “lesser” or “greater” when compared against each other. In medieval Europe, at least, the creation of textiles was split along the general lines of spinning and weaving. Women held the former (hence “spinster”), and men held the latter. Spinning was often not formalized into guilds then, but it was an important cornerstone of the economy that could support entire families. A guest post on The Freelance History Writer’s blog seems to indicate that this gender division was due to influence by the Bible, which seems to corroborate with the history of both professions as detailed on Wikipedia - the further back we go, and also the less connected to Christianity, the more textile work women presided over. This granted them greater control over their presence in society, since the selling of textiles was useful leverage to support themselves and others.

A similar discrepancy can be found with agriculture. Hamer women in Ethiopia are traditionally the one to cultivate sorghum, a cornerstone crop to their diet, and they exhibit preferences in which varieties they grow according to criteria such as which is easiest to grind and long-term storage feasibility (Citation 19). Accordingly, there’s been an increasing orientation around the growing of crops rather than the pastoralist habits of their men, with trading standards occuring at one goat for one Dore (“pile of maize or sorghum”) (Citation 19).

A study examining the male sphere of hunting within a society discusses the various cultural implications of defendable vs non-defendable meat sharing, with respect to how the meat is distributed and its corresponding social range (e.g. immediate social circle vs entire community), something I find interesting given that the kilocalories obtained from meat is roughly equal to that of the female sphere-acquired agriculture/gathering (Citation 20). The division of labour along gender lines when it comes to food flow in a community seems, historically, to be both comparable and compatible to each other - a recurring theme with many of the topics I’ve already covered.

Gender roles in their historical perspective - especially the further back you go - are often complimentary to each other, and are an economical way to divide up the burden of maintaining a society to a functional level. There are plenty of exceptions to this (see: third genders), as well, and many cultures exhibit the idea that a productive person is good for society; their roles may look a little different from the person next to them, and not only is the work considered equal in terms of importance, but also with a bit of poking around, you’ll find that few cultures have harsh punishments for anyone “stepping outside” their predicted roles.

Men are already objectified plenty. That their treatment by society looks different than women’s, or other genders, is by no means an excuse to sweep things under the room and pretend that they have it best - or worse, purposefully ostracize them in a fictional work to further mock, ridicule, and isolate them. This contributes to the societal issues in your culture that you wish to address, and stems from a uniquely pervasive perspective from modern American culture that differs from many other cultures in the world.

TL;DR - The way you wish to objectify men is already being done, especially in American culture. It is harmful, and will have an impact that will reach further than you might anticipate. This approach is counterproductive to your goals, and the cultures/media you cite either directly contradict your beliefs of said sources or otherwise undermine your beliefs. It is vastly more productive to take a deeper look at the origins of the issues you wish to address in your writing, as well as the reference material that you wish to use. Learning perspectives outside your native culture will benefit you immensely, and the results could surprise you.

Citations

Citation 1 -  PDF - Doepke, M., Tertilt, M., Voena, A.. (2012). “The Economics and Politics of Women’s Rights,” Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 339-372, 07.

Citation 2 - PDF - Fernández, R.. (2014). “Women’s rights and development,” Journal of Economic Growth, vol 19(1), pages 37-80.

Citation 3 - PDF -  Duflo, E. (2012). “Women’s Empowerment and Economic Development”, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 50, No. 4: 1051-79.

Citation 4 - PDF - Crenshaw J. T. (2014). “Healthy Birth Practice #6: Keep Mother and Baby Together- It’s Best for Mother, Baby, and Breastfeeding.” The Journal of perinatal education, 23(4), 211–217. doi:10.1891/1058-1243.23.4.211

Citation 5 - Faisal-Cury, A., Bertazzi Levy, R., Kontos, A., Tabb, K., & Matijasevich, A. (2019). “Postpartum bonding at the beginning of the second year of child’s life: the role of postpartum depression and early bonding impairment.” Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology, 1-7.

Citation 6 - PDF - Bornstein, M. H., Putnick, D. L., Rigo, P., Esposito, G., Swain, J. E., Suwalsky, J. T., … & De Pisapia, N. (2017). “Neurobiology of culturally common maternal responses to infant cry.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(45), E9465-E9473.

Citation 7 - PDF - Webb, A. R., Heller, H. T., Benson, C. B., & Lahav, A. (2015). “Mother’s voice and heartbeat sounds elicit auditory plasticity in the human brain before full gestation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(10), 3152-3157.

Citation 8 - PDF - Pan, Y., Zhang, D., Liu, Y., Ran, G., & Teng, Z. (2016). “Different effects of paternal and maternal attachment on psychological health among Chinese secondary school students.” Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25(10), 2998-3008.

Citation 9 - PDF - Brown, G. L., Mangelsdorf, S. C., & Neff, C. (2012). “Father involvement, paternal sensitivity, and father-child attachment security in the first 3 years.” Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43), 26(3), 421–430. doi:10.1037/a0027836

Citation 10 - PDF - Lee T Gettler, Mallika S Sarma, Rieti G Gengo, Rahul C Oka, James J McKenna, Adiposity, CVD risk factors and testosterone: Variation by partnering status and residence with children in US men, Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Volume 2017, Issue 1, January 2017, Pages 67–80, https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eox005

Citation 11 - PDF - Snowdon, C. T., & Ziegler, T. E. (2015). “Variation in prolactin is related to variation in sexual behavior and contact affiliation.” PloS one, 10(3), e0120650.

Citation 12 - Hashemian, F., Shafigh, F., & Roohi, E. (2016). “Regulatory role of prolactin in paternal behavior in male parents: A narrative review.” Journal of postgraduate medicine, 62(3), 182–187. doi:10.4103/0022-3859.186389

Citation 13 - PDF - Eddy, B., Poll, V., Whiting, J., & Clevesy, M. (2019). “Forgotten Fathers: Postpartum Depression in Men.” Journal of Family Issues, 40(8), 1001-1017.

Citation 14 - PDF - Psouni, E., Agebjörn, J., & Linder, H. (2017). “Symptoms of depression in Swedish fathers in the postnatal period and development of a screening tool.” Scandinavian journal of psychology, 58(6), 485-496.

Citation 15 - Pappas, S. (2018, January). “APA issues first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys.” Monitor on Psychology, 50(1).

Citation 16 - PDF - Kontoyannis, M., & Katsetos, C. (2011). “Midwives in early modern Europe (1400-1800).” Health Science Journal, 5(1), 31.

Citation 17 - PDF - Savona-Ventura, C. (1995). “The influence of the Roman Catholic Church on midwifery practice in Malta.” Medical history, 39(1), 18-34.

Citation 18 - PDF - Woolf, Alan. (2000). “Witchcraft or Mycotoxin? The Salem Witch Trials. Journal of toxicology.” Clinical toxicology. 38. 457-60. 10.1081/CLT-100100958.

Citation 19 - PDF - Samuel, T. (2013). “From cattle herding to sedentary agriculture: the role of hamer women in the transition.” African Study Monographs, Suppl. 46: 121–133. [Alternate PDF link]

Citation 20 - PDF - Gurven, Michael & Hill, Kim. (2009). “Why Do Men Hunt?.” Current Anthropology. 50. 51-74. 10.1086/595620.

Further Reading

Harry S Truman § Domestic Affairs - Wikipedia

Marshall Plan - Wikipedia

Interstate Highway System - Wikipedia

Medieval Icelandic Law (The Grágás) – Women’s Rights: On Reclaiming Property during Separation. By @fjorn-the-skald

Fjörn’s Library

“Notes on Valkyries and the like?” by @fjorn-the-skald

Fjörn’s chronological tag on women

Epigenetic correlates of neonatal contact in humans - Development and Psychopathology

Feral: So, obviously, everything Tex just said- round of effing applause!

I do want to hone in on one specific part of your ask, “since part of my goal is to use the swap to highlight some inequalities that still exist in our gender expectations today by flipping them” and direct you to this blog post on Mythcreants specifically addressing the Persecution Flip Story and why it’s not a great idea from a social justice perspective.

Happy reading!

[theleadbull]

I posted 1,176 times in 2021

8 posts created (1%)

1168 posts reblogged (99%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 146.0 posts.

I added 500 tags in 2021

#video - 142 posts

#lotr - 65 posts

#me - 64 posts

#cats - 58 posts

#art - 33 posts

#ffvii - 32 posts

#nbc hannibal - 27 posts

#nct - 27 posts

#fmab - 27 posts

#bts - 25 posts

Longest Tag: 129 characters

#i was so grumpy because i learned boolean operators in jr high and had been excluding things and narrowing searches all by myself

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

sorry yall i’m rereading lord of the rings rn and it’s maudlin tolkienverse hours until further notice

3 notes • Posted 2021-03-17 04:19:12 GMT

#4

someone invite me to a ffvii Fandom Old discord server so i have somewhere to put all my zangeal feelings

4 notes • Posted 2021-08-29 22:37:02 GMT

#3

this incomplete chart of how authors typecast boygroup idols came to me in a dream, so here it is for your perusal and enjoyment

the 4th category is “dances” but i literally just woke up and my brain is melting

10 notes • Posted 2021-04-03 20:48:25 GMT

#2

14 notes • Posted 2021-03-08 04:09:07 GMT

#1

you have a masters degree in latin, a DEAD LANGUAGE because of MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE FRERARD FANFICTION UNHOLYVERSE BY BEXLESS?

okay so i was really hoping someone would ask about this because it’s a gaud-level anecdote. literally my entire career is because of unholyverse.

tiny 17yo me was in college with literally no idea what i wanted to do in life beyond “teach” but with consistent internet access for the first time (another long story) and finally FINALLY able to use the fabled music streaming services i’d only dreamt of as a wee child. and one thing led to another and i’m deep in a redux of my emo phase, running a bandom blog, and writing and reading mcr fanfiction that is thankfully lost to the void of orphan_account on ao3.

it is from this time period that my career has its origins.

you see, i went to an honors college (of course i did) and it had a hefty 4-consecutive-semester foreign language requirement. any number of languages were offered, but i’m from texas and was a cool slacker my first year before the Frerard Time, so i was planning to take spanish for the easy A+ and just forget about it.

and then i read unholyverse.

another thing you should know about me: i am a huge lore nerd. i have a brain like a magpie that hoards shiny things, and any kind of origin story or mythos just ends up on display in its little autistic brain nest.

so i, raised an atheist, read unholyverse and become absolutely fixated on catholicism. like. obsessed with catholicism. in true high-functioning asd fashion, this blossoms into me taking class after class on ancient and medieval religion. i’m in a roster of classes on medieval islamic and christian philosophy, ancient greek philosophy, the history of christianity in russia, you name it.

but oh, that pesky language requirement.

to properly Study the things i’m studying, you need to know a laundry list of dead languages including but not limited to ancient greek, classical latin, and sanskrit.

so my ass signs up for ancient greek. oh, it’s to meet the language requirement.

but i could. i could do a minor in ancient languages. i could do that.

so i sign up for latin.

at this point i’m 19 years old taking 24 hours of classes. 12 of them are unholyverse, 2 are electives, and the other 10 are core requirements.

i graduate summa with a minor in medieval philosophy, a minor in ancient languages, and having successfully defended my literal thesis on early christian heresy, for which i spent several months of my life slogging through ancient greek, latin, and tolkien (blessedly in english).

i go on to graduate school in classics, where i say “fuck greek” because i’ve decided i want to teach latin, and all the cool courses on church fathers and paleography and whatnot are taught in latin anyway.

i graduate that with a 4.0 and a certification to teach. i am immediately headhunted by schools, including the one i teach at now.

and that is how unholyverse is responsible for my career.

53 notes • Posted 2021-02-16 11:15:27 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[whoinwhoville]

Lab Mates

Okay, I decided to post this here in case you don’t have access to AO3. I know this is a bit of self-promotion, but I’m really proud of this fic. And for some reason, you guys really like it, and it makes me SO HAPPY to give YOU a smile! There are too many sad things in the world right now, and I just want to make the world a little bit brighter.

Ten x Rose Martha Jones Rated All Ages University AU, Professor x Student AU (but no hanky panky), Lab Partners AU, texting fic, UST, mutual pining,

Tuesday September 27

8:42 pm - HoppingForMyLife Hi. Your lab partner here. Name’s Rose. You weren’t in lab when we were given partner assignments. So here’s me, and you have my text now. We need to get going on this project. Sounds like a bugger.

8:42 pm - Doctor10 ???? Which class ???? I’m taking 5 classes this term.

8:42 pm - HoppingForMyLife Blimey. 5? RLY? That’s a lot. I’m in 3. But it’s Psych 221 since you asked.

8:42 pm - Doctor10 Oops forgot that one. when/where?

8:43 pm - HoppingForMyLife Psych building, L400 T/Th 6:05

8:44 pm - Doctor10 Done and on my calendar C U tomorrow

8:44 pm - Doctor10 Thx

8:45 pm - HoppingForMyLife bye

oOo

8:45 pm - HoppingForMyLife Think I got a clunker of a psych lab partner

8:45 pm - PreMed&Dead BIGHUGS guy or girl?

8:45 pm - HoppingForMyLife dunno no profile pic on text. and forgot to ask name. who forgets first day of class? and who takes 5 classes?

8:46 pm - PreMed&Dead 5 classes????????? he’s either a genius or cray-cray.

8:46 pm - HoppingForMyLife gotta go m tired and have my first physics lecture @ 7 am. ugh ugh ugh ugh. :barf face: and i signed up for physics why?

8:46 pm - PreMed&Dead cuz Jack said the prof is hot and u need a science to grad

oOo

8:49 pm - HoppingForMyLife hello doctor10. forgot to ask your name.

8:50 pm - HoppingForMyLife hello u there?

8:50 pm - HoppingForMyLife i’ll see you tomorrow. I’m blonde and wear a pink hoodie.

oOo

Thursday September 29

7:35 pm - HoppingForMyLife partner no show. again. maybe dropped? only one person left to partner with. looks creepy. old guy. like 80. only has one eye - other one all covered with shrivelled up eyelid. :shudders sticker: and he talks to himself.

7:35 pm - PreMed&Dead sorry.

7:35 pm - HoppingForMyLife i don’t have an idea for the project either.

7:35 pm - PreMed&Dead you’ll think of one. more important is psychics prof as hot as Jack says?

7:35 pm - HoppingForMyLife YOU. HAVE. NO. IDEA. I’m still fanning myself. Good thing no teaching today because I didn’t hear a word he said. :heart eyes emoji:

7:35 pm - PreMed&Dead Niiiiiiice

7:35 pm - HoppingForMyLife u still at SBux? i took pic of him and he may or may not be my homescreen pic

7:36 pm - PreMed&Dead hot for teacher?

7:36 pm - HoppingForMyLife ha ha. thx for ear worm Mar. c u in 10 and if u r good will show you the pic of my future husband.

oOo

Friday September 30

8:05 am - HoppingForMyLife martha! helpmehelpmehelpme i just got out of my physics lecture and i’m dead i’m dead i’m dead and in love or maybe lust how am i ever going to pass physics when the prof is so gorgeous that i just can’t even… all i do is stare at his lips and hips and his hair and guh. everything. he talks and talks and talks and all i hear is the ringing in my ears from the blood rushing from my brain. except when i’m listening to his velvet voice of sex. and he wears these glasses. and a suit. and it’s tight. and his tie. i just want to grab it and pull him down to my lips. i’mdeaddeaddeaddead

8:05 am - PreMed&Dead At least you’ll die… happy?????

8:05 am - HoppingForMyLife here’s a new pic. rear view. i will be forever thankful that he uses an old fashioned chalkboard instead of smartboard.

8:05 am - PreMed&Dead :drooling:

8:06 am - HoppingForMyLife did i tell you I’m gonna marry him?

8:06 am - PreMed&Dead a time or ten. but what if he’s a jerk? or dull? physics, Rose. pretty dull stuff.

8:06 am - HoppingForMyLife impossible.

8:06 am - PreMed&Dead heard from psych lab deadbeat?

8:06 am - HoppingForMyLife nope. sigh…

oOo

Tuesday October 4

8:10 pm - HoppingForMyLife Doctor10, i rllllly need to know if you are still in psych lab. u have missed 3 labs now. Need new partner if u dropped.

8:10 pm - Doctor10 I. Am. SO. SO. SOOOOOOOO SORRY. Got tied up with papers. can we meet today? i promise i am a responsible adult AND i’m a genius.

8:11 pm - HoppingForMyLife humble too. maybe psych test subject should be u? god complex? u r taking 5 classes after all.

8:11 pm - Doctor10 u wound me :brokenheart:

8:11 pm - HoppingForMyLife let’s meet today. library?

8:11 pm - Doctor10 my second home. i’m already there. on second floor. i have a standing reservation for study room 2B.

8:12 - HoppingForMyLife ok if I come over now?

8:12 - Doctor10 yep. looking forward to meeting you. oh, and I’m John by the way.

8:12 - HoppingForMyLife Hello John. :goofy tongue smiley:

8:13 - Doctor10 Goodbye Rose. :happy smiley:

oOo

10:32 - HoppingForMyLife i have a problem. world-ending bad.

10:33 - PreMed&Dead Adam got that promotion to shift manager and you’ll have to work for him?

10:33 - HoppingForMyLife worse. much worse.

10:33 - PreMed&Dead SPILL

10:34 - HoppingForMyLife met my lab partner.

10:35 - PreMed&Dead one-eyed guy?

10:35 - HoppingForMyLife Gorgeous physics prof.

10:35 - PreMed&Dead . . .

10:35 - PreMed&Dead That IS bad.

10:35 - HoppingForMyLife And he’s not a dud. or a jerk. at least I don’t think he is. please don’t be please don’t be please don’t be.

10:36 - PreMed&Dead still gonna marry him?

10:36 - HoppingForMyLife yep.

oOo

Wednesday October 12

5:32 pm - Doctor10 Hello Rose Tyler. Something’s been bothering me since we met, and then again all during lab yesterday. and I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking. And then it hit me. I know you. You’re in my intro to physics class! You always sit in the front row, right in the middle.

5:33 pm - HoppingForMyLife yep. that’s me.

5:33 pm - Doctor10 why didn’t you say something?

5:40 pm - HoppingForMyLife because I’ve requested a transfer out.

5:50 pm - Doctor10 Oh. Aren’t I a good professor? Am I boring? A dullard? Obtuse?

5:51 - HoppingForMyLife No. U R a great professor. I have a heavy class load and your class is very challenging.

5:51 pm - Doctor10 If you need help, I’m there for you! I have office hours! Come by any time!

5:55 pm - Doctor10 U there still?

5:55 pm - HoppingForMyLife Yeah.

5:55 pm - Doctor10 Is this because we’re lab partners? And you’re worried it’ll be awkward?

5:56 pm - HoppingForMyLife yes

5:56 pm - Doctor10 Don’t worry. I grade all of my assignments by student ID. Completely anonymous I don’t know whose paper is whose. And I’d miss your cheerful face every morning. :happy smiley:

6:02 pm - HoppingForMyLife I’ll think about it.

oOo

6:03 pm - HoppingForMyLife Heeeeeeelllllllp

6:03 pm - PreMed&Dead Again? What’s up with Prof SexyHair this time?

6:04 pm - HoppingForMyLife I got a 52 on my first physics assignment. I can’t concentrate.

6:05 pm - PreMed&Dead You HAVE to go to his office hours Rose!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Imagine he’s one eyed creepy guy.

6:06 pm - HoppingForMyLife :headbanging on desk gif:

6:07 pm - PreMed&Dead You can do it. You can do it. I’m here for you. You can do it.

oOo

Friday October 14

8:34 pm - Doctor10 I have an idea for our project.

8:34 pm - HoppingForMyLife another one? this is your 5th i think.

8:34 pm - Doctor10 8th idea. double-blind of course. NO! triple-blind.

8:35 pm - HoppingForMyLife triple? I don’t think that’s a thing. r u always such an overachiever?

8:35 pm - Doctor10 i take my work seriously Rose Tyler.

8:35 pm - HoppingForMyLife so what’s your brilliant idea?

oOo

Sunday October 23

6:30 pm - PreMed&Dead What did Dr. SexySuit say when you asked him why he’s taking classes when he’s already a professor AND has a PhD? And why psych??? He’s a physicist.

6:30 pm - HoppingForMyLife Said he wanted another degree. His third. THIRD. that’s 3. And you know what this one is in? Fine Arts! He’s taking history of medieval choral music, classical sculpture, and learning how to play the pipe organ. And modern dance.

6:31 pm - PreMed&Dead WHUT?

6:31 pm - HoppingForMyLife The psych class is so that he can “better understand the human condition and transfer that into my study of the physical world.” That’s a quote.

6:32 pm - PreMed&Dead If you weren’t so in love with him, I’d hit that. In fact, don’t turn your back, Rose. I might try anyway.

6:52pm - HoppingForMyLife :side eyes smiley:

6:32 pm - PreMed&Dead JK

6:32 pm - HoppingForMyLife Like I would ever even have a chance with him. He’s probably got some amazing girlfriend with a PhD or two just like him.

6:33 pm - PreMed&Dead Has he ever mentioned anyone Rose?

6:33 pm - HoppingForMyLife No. But I’ve never asked either.

oOo

Wednesday October 26

8:04 pm - HoppingForMyLife Martha, the subject actually moaned. MOANED. And it wasn’t the first time. i didn’t mention it before because i thought it was an anomaly. thought maybe she had indigestion or something.

8:04 pm - PreMed&Dead And tell me again why you agreed to this particular study?

8:04 pm - HoppingForMyLife How was I supposed to know that the test subjects would get so worked up! Right there in the lab! Doesn’t anyone have any self-control? I’d be humiliated if I moaned as a test subject during a psych experiment! It sounded completely innocent when he described it!! Well, not completely innocent. But my point stands. Moaning. And panting. In a lab. In front of people. It’s just chocolate! And a piece of silk!

8:05 pm - PreMed&Dead Uh, and handcuffs. And a blindfold. And didn’t you tell me you had a dream about that very same chocolate and a silk necktie and handcuffs and blindfold and Prof SexySpecs just the other night?

8:05 pm - HoppingForMyLife :blushing smiley: Maybe we should add a second element? Put him behind one-way glass?

8:05 pm - PreMed&Dead Results are results. And science doesn’t lie. It’s all about the data Rose.

oOo

Thursday November 3

9:00 pm HoppingForMyLife Moaning Myrtle is 10 for 10. That’s not her name of course. Just for the record. You reading this MI-5?

9:01 pm PreMed&Dead :smiling in sunglasses emoji: At least your results data are consistent.

9:01 pm HoppingForMyLife I sorta just roll my eyes now. Not sure I’d fare any better. He didn’t wear a tie today. Had this layered t-shirt and henley thing happening. And cut his hair shorter in back and spiked it up front. It. Is. HOT.

9:01 pm PreMed&Dead I dare you to give it a good tug.

9:01 pm HoppingForMyLife In my dreams. He doesn’t have a girlfriend BTW. Told me that today.

9:02 pm PreMed&Dead And you’re just telling me this NOW?

9:02 pm HoppingForMyLife He asked me if I had a boyfriend, and I said no. And then he tells me he’s not seeing anyone either. I just stood there chewing my stupid lip. Didn’t say a thing. And then he turned around and left.

9:02 pm PreMed&Dead Oh Rose. sigh

oOo

Wednesday November 30

5:05 pm - HoppingForMyLife I GOT A 98 ON MY PHYSICS EXAM!

5:05 pm - PreMed&Dead You go girl! :party emoji:

5:05 pm - HoppingForMyLife He’s a really great teacher. And I mean that. He helped me understand something that was a complete mystery.

oOo

Wednesday December 1

6:02 am - HoppingForMyLife Remember how I told you he’s been acting weird the past few days? really quiet. About 2 this morning, my mobile rings. It’s him. Middle. Of. The. Night. He asks me about my Christmas plans. If I’m staying in town, going back home, working… And then he asks me if I’m taking physics winter term.

6:02 am - PreMed&Dead Like a real live voice? Not a text?

6:02 am - HoppingForMyLife TALKING in that amazing gorgeous sexy voice of his. I tell him I’m staying around to work until Christmas Eve and that I have a psych internship planned, and no physics cuz I need to focus on my major and he says oh good. and then he hangs up.

6:03 am - PreMed&Dead Just hangs up?

6:03 am - HoppingForMyLife Just hangs up.

6:03 am - PreMed&Dead Ask him what he’s doing over Christmas.

6:03 am - HoppingForMyLife I can’t do that.

6:03 am - PreMed&Dead Yes you can.

6:04 am - HoppingForMyLife He. Is. My. Professor.

6:04 am - PreMed&Dead It. Is. A. Conversation. AND he is your LAB PARTNERRRRRRR.

oOo

Saturday December 3

11:05 pm - HoppingForMyLife I sent you the data did u get it?

11:05 pm - Doctor10 Yep

11:05 pm - HoppingForMyLife And… ????????

11:06 pm - Doctor10 Not the results I expected.

11:06 pm - HoppingForMyLife How’s that? We proved the theory. Did you want to disprove it or something?

11:11 pm - HoppingForMyLife U there?

11:11 pm - Doctor10 Yep.

11:13 pm - Doctor10 I have some thinking to do. We can start working on the conclusion piece tomorrow.

11:13 pm - HoppingForMyLife K. Bye.

11:13 pm - Doctor10 Nighty-night sleep tight with sweet chocolate dreams. I know I will.

11:15 pm - Doctor 10 For the past 8 weeks it’s been chocolate chocolate chocolate.

oOo

11:17 pm - HoppingForMyLife Martha. MARTHA. Look what he just texted me.

11:17 pm - HoppingForMyLife :screenshot:

11:17 pm - HoppingForMyLife What does that even mean? HE. IS. KILLING. ME. And I think he’s clueless, too. He’s been as friendly as can be. FRIENDLY. And now this. Is it flirty? Or friendly? It’s all how you read it.

11:17 pm - PreMed&Dead he’s a professor and you are his student. Assume it is friendly. Now what the two of you get up to in your dreams… :saucy wink smiley: :smiling devil smiley: :chocolate bar emoji:

11:18 - HoppingForMyLife :heart eyes smiley:

11:18 - PreMed&Dead Still gonna marry him?

11:18 - HoppingForMyLife yep.

oOo

11:25 - PreMed&Dead Rose… did you notice the timestamps between the last two messages???????!!!!!!!!

11:25 - HoppingForMyLife So?

11:25 - PreMed&Dead You’re the psych major. You figure it out.

11:25 - HoppingForMyLife 11:13 nighty night 11:15 chocolate chocolate chocolate :wide eyed blushing smiley: Was he flirting with me?

11:25 - PreMed&Dead :rolling eyes gif:

11:25 - HoppingForMyLife HE WAS flirting with me. I didn’t respond, and he backpedaled. I am such an idiot.

11:25 - PreMed&Dead You may be an idiot, but there are only one week of classes left. In one week the two of you can be idiots together.

oOo

Saturday December 10

4:55 pm - HoppingForMyLife Professor Smith. This is a physics thing. Not a psych thing. And I apologize if this isn’t appropriate. I mean texting you because we’ve only ever texted for psych. Never for physics.

4:55 pm - Doctor10 I don’t see a problem Ms. Smith. :regular smiley:

4:55 pm - Doctor10 HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA MS. TYLER. T Y L E R. :regular smiley: :regular smiley: Damn autocorrect.

4:55 pm - Doctor10 HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

4:56 pm - HoppingForMyLife ha ha ha. I wanted to thank you for all of your help. I couldn’t have passed your class without it, let alone with a 95.

4:56 pm - Doctor10 You were the 95! Only gave 2 grades above a 90. Brilliant! I knew you had it in you! Congratulations! You deserve a celebration! :balloons and confetti gif:

4:56 pm - Doctor10 Taking off Professor Hat putting on Psych Lab Partner Hat. ROSE TYLER! WE GOT PERFECT MARKS ON OUR CHOCOLATE STUDY!

4:56 pm - HoppingForMyLife WE DID???????!!!!!! How’d you find out?!!!!????!!!!!! I didn’t think the final grade would be released for a week.

4:56 pm - Doctor10 I may have used my Professor Smith powers of genius to get into the grading system. Shhhhhh! Don’t tell anyone.

4:56 pm - HoppingForMyLife I won’t. YAY! HUGS HUGS HUGS HUGS!

4:56 - HoppingForMyLife And those text hugs are to you as my lab mate, not to you as my professor. In case anyone’s reading this.

4:56 - Doctor10 Molto bene.

oOo

4:56 pm - HoppingForMyLife calmingbreathcalmingbreath. Read this screenshot

4:56 pm - HoppingForMyLife :screen shot of conversation with the 'Ms. Smith' typo circled in red:

4:56 pm - HoppingForMyLife :X eyes emoji face: I’m dead. DEAD. What do I say to this? Just a typo? But his HAHAHAHAs! He's obviously embarrassed. And then the two smileys! They are casual smileys! Not embarrassed smileys!

4:57 pm - PreMed&Dead two things come to mind. 1: he has practice written your name so many times as Ms. Smith on his three ring notebook and put hearts around it along with JS + RT = LOVE that it is second nature to write Ms. Smith. Or...... He has Freudian slipped Ms. Smith so many times that he can't even type Rose Tyler anymore. Because there is no possible way that TYLER would EVAH autocorrect to SMITH.

4:57 pm - PreMed&Dead or it could be a third thing. He's subtly proposing. You have told me about a billion times that you're going to marry him, you know.

4:58 pm - HoppingForMyLife Ha ha ha ha. So not autocorrect?

4:58 pm - PreMed&Dead :Antione's You're So Dumb gif:

4:59 pm - HoppingForMyLife  A+ gif usage. That’s my fave gif. Hide yo kids hide yo wife hide yo kids hide yo wife

4:59 pm - PreMed&Dead Thx for the earworm. We gon find you we gon find you

4:59 pm - PreMed&Dead And by the way, YOU ARE SOOOOO IN LOVE

4:59 pm - HoppingForMyLife (((whispering))) I may have text-hugged him too.

5:00 pm - HoppingForMyLife :screen shot of hugging part of the conversation:

5:00 pm - HoppingForMyLife But only cos we nailed the project.

5:00 pm - PreMed&Dead Riiiiiight. text hugs. cos they don’t count. :massive eye rolling emoji:

5:00 pm - HoppingForMyLife Wish you were here so I could hug YOU.

5:00 pm - PreMed&Dead Awwwwwww.... Hugs right back. See? text hugs are real.

5:00 pm - HoppingForMyLife I AM pretty proud though. didn’t even’t think I’d pass physics. He told me I deserved a celebration. he’s right! I do deserve a pint or two! He said he didn't know that the one 95 that he gave in his class was to me. Only had two students even in the 90s.

5:01 pm - PreMed&Dead Here’s what you’re gonna do. Tell him you’ve taken his advice and you’re gonna celebrate passing physics AND for getting perfect marks on your psych project with some friends you down at McKenzie’s. But we will come later. But don’t tell him that. And we’ll come down when you text. If you even WANT us there.

5:01 pm - HoppingForMyLife I’m biting my fingernails. Literally.

5:01 pm - PreMed&Dead Don’t. Now put on that sexy red wrap dress and keep my posted.

5:01 pm - HoppingForMyLife Wish me luck.

oOo

4:56 pm - HoppingForMyLife Hi. I’ve decided to take your suggestion and celebrate. Both things. Physics AND Psych. I’ve invited some friends to meet me at that pub on the corner of Winston and Main. McKenzie’s. You know that one, right? And I think I’ll arrive around 8:00.

4:56 pm - Doctor10 That is an excellent plan. 8:00 is a fine hour to start a celebration.

oOo

8:25 pm - HoppingForMyLife He’s didn’t come, Martha. :single tear emoji: I suppose he was just being friendly. And stupid. And perfect. And flirty. And one of those blokes who is clueless about his effect on women.

8:25 pm - PreMed&Dead I’m sorry. :hugging friends emoji:

8:25 pm - Doctor10 Rose… I’m a bit embarrassed, and nervous to ask this if i’m being honest because I have no idea what you are going to say. Here goes. can I come to your party?

8:25 pm - HoppingForMyLife Standby Mar! He just texted me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

8:26 pm - PreMed&Dead SQUEEEEE!!

8:26 pm - HoppingForMyLife You want to come?

8:26 pm - Doctor10 Only if you want me to come.

8:26 pm - HoppingForMyLife  I'd like you to come

8:26 pm - Doctor10 OK. Good. I’d like come too. I’ll be there in a few minutes.

8:26 pm - HoppingForMyLife HE’S COMING. I REALLY didn’t think he would. Maybe I was too subtle with my hint. My heart is pounding. :red heart emoji: :red heart emoji: :red heart emoji: What do I do Martha???????

8:26 pm - Doctor10 Rose ????????? You really thought I wouldn’t come????????? Of course I’m coming!!!!! I wouldn’t miss it for the world!

8:26 pm - HoppingForMyLife Oops. I sent that text to wrong person.

8:26 pm - Doctor10 Your heart isn’t the only one that’s pounding. :red heart emoji: :blushing smiley emoji: Look behind you.

“Rose Tyler. It needs to be said. I am really glad that this term is over. You are very distracting. Why do you think I spent so much time with my back to the class writing on the chalkboard? I have every single lecture committed to memory, but the words evaporated from my very big brain every time I looked at you.”

“I didn’t really mind the view. Oh, I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Cheeky, Ms. Smith. And I thought I might die every single time you ate a piece of chocolate. Did you know that you make sounds when you eat chocolate?”

oOo

9:02 - HoppingForMyLife He brought me flowers. And twenty bars of chocolate.

9:02 - PreMed&Dead You are SO going to marry him.

The End.

[ciathyzareposts]

Quest for Glory III and IV

The VGA remake of Quest for Glory I. By this point, Sierra’s graphics exceeded the quality of most Saturday-morning cartoons, and weren’t far off the standard set by feature films, being held back more by the technical limitations of VGA graphics than those of the artists doing the drawing.

Quest for Glory, Lori Ann and Corey Cole’s much-loved series of adventure/CRPG hybrids, took a year off after its second installment, while each half of the couple designed an educational game for Sierra’s Discovery Series. After finishing her Discovery game Mixed-Up Fairy Tales, a less ambitious effort aimed at younger children than Corey’s The Castle of Dr. Brain, Lori headed a remake of the first Quest for Glory, using VGA graphics and a point-and-click interface in place of EGA and a parser. While opinions vary as to the remake’s overall worthiness — I’m personally fonder of the original version, as is Corey Cole — no one could deny that it looked beautiful in 256 colors. Sierra was, like many other media producers at the time, operating in a short-lived intermediate phase between analog and fully-digital production techniques, which gave the work a look unique to this very specific period. For example, most of the characters in the Quest for Glory I remake were first sculpted in clay by art director Arturo Sinclair, then digitized and imported into the game. One can only hope that contemporary gamers took the time to appreciate the earthy craftsmanship of his work. Sierra and much of their industry would soon fall down the full-motion video rabbit hole, and the 3D Revolution as well was just over the horizon, poised to offer all sorts of exciting new experiential possibilities but also to lose almost as much in the way of aesthetic values. It would, in other words, be a long time before games would look this good again.

Thankfully, the era of hand-drawn — or hand-sculpted — art at Sierra would last long enough to carry through the next two Quest for Glory games as well. Much else, though, would conspire against them, and in my opinion neither the third nor the fourth game is as strong as either of the first two. Today we’ll have a look at these later efforts’ strengths and failings and the circumstances that led to each.

Well before starting work on the very first Quest for Glory, Lori Ann Cole had sketched out a four-game plan for the series as a whole. It would see the player’s evolving hero visiting four different cultural regions of a fantasy world, all drawn from cultures of our own world, in adventures where the stakes would get steadily higher. The first two games had thus covered medieval Germany and the Arab world, and the last two were slated to go to the murky environs of Eastern Europe and the blazing sunshine of mythic Greece. In fact, Quest for Glory II ends with an advertisement of sorts for the “upcoming” Quest for Glory III: Shadows of Darkness, the Eastern European game. Yet almost as soon as the second game was out the door, the Coles started to have misgivings. To go with its milieu drawn from Romanian and Slavic folklore and the Gothic-horror tradition, Shadows of Darkness was to have a more unfriendly, foreboding approach to gameplay as well. The Coles planned to make “aloneness, suspicion, and paranoia,” as Corey puts it, the hallmarks of the game. They didn’t want to abandon that uncompromising vision, but neither were they sure that their players were ready for it.

Shortly before leaving Sierra to join Origin Systems, staff writer Ellen Guon suggested that the third game could easily be set in Africa instead, following up on an anecdote mentioned by one of the characters in passing in Quest for Glory II — thus extending the series’s arc from four to five games and postponing the “dark” entry until a little later. The Coles loved the idea, and Quest for Glory III: The Wages of War was born. Sure, making it did interfere with some of the thematic unities Lori had built into the series; its entries had been planned to correspond with the four classical elements of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water, as well as the four cardinal compass directions and the four seasons. But perhaps that was all a little too matchy-matchy anyway…

Other, less welcome changes were also in the offing: the new game’s gestation was immediately impacted by the removal of Corey Cole from most of the process. Corey had originally been hired by Sierra in a strictly technical role — specifically, for his expertise in programming the Atari ST and the Motorola 68000 CPU at its heart. His first assigned task had been to help port Sierra’s then-new SCI game engine to that platform, and he was still regarded around the office as the resident 68000 expert. Thus when Sierra head Ken Williams cooked up a scheme to bring their games to the Sega Genesis, a videogame console that was also built around the 68000, it was to Corey that he turned. So, while Lori worked on Quest for Glory III alone, Corey struggled with what turned out to be an impossible task. The Genesis’s memory was woefully inadequate, and its graphics were limited to 64 colors from a palette of 512, as opposed to the 256 colors from a palette of 262,144 of the VGA graphics standard for which Sierra’s latest computer games were coded. Wiser heads finally prevailed and the whole endeavor was cancelled, freeing up Corey to reform his design partnership with Lori.

This happened, however, only in the final stages of Quest for Glory III‘s development. Among fans today, this game is generally considered the weakest link in the series, and the absence of Corey Cole is often cited as a primary reason. I’ll return to the impact his absence may have had, but first I’d like to mention what the game undeniably does right: the setting.

Importantly, Quest for the Glory III, this “game set in fantasy Africa,” encompasses the whole of the continent. It’s often forgotten that Egypt, that birthplace of so much of human civilization, is a part of Africa; this essential fact, though, Lori Ann Cole didn’t neglect. Conforming to real-world geography, the northern part of the game’s map, where you begin, is based on ancient Egypt, complete with the pyramids and other monumental architecture we know from our history books. As you travel southward, the desert turns into tundra and then jungle, and the societies you meet there become reflections of tribal Africa. It’s all drawn — both metaphorically, through the writing, and literally, through the graphics — with considerable charm and skill. Sub-Saharan Africa in particular isn’t a region we see depicted very often in games, and still less often with this degree of sympathy. As I noted in my first article on the Quest for Glory series, there’s a travelogue quality that runs through its entirety, showing us our own world’s many great and varied cultures through the lens of these fantasy adventures. The third game, suffice to say, upholds that tradition admirably.

Also welcome is the theme of the game. In contrast to most computer games, this one has you trying to prevent a war rather than win one. The aforementioned Egyptian and tribal African cultures have have been set at odds by a combination of prejudices, misunderstandings, and — this being a fantasy game and all — the odd evil wizard. It’s up to you to play the peacemaker. “You start getting a better and better idea of just how senseless war is,” says Corey, “and how everybody loses by it.” Of course, there’s a certain cognitive dissonance about an allegedly anti-war game in which you spend so much of your time mowing down monsters by decidedly violent means, but props for effort.

In fact, any criticism of Quest for Glory should be tempered by the understanding that what the Coles did with this series was quite literally unprecedented, and, further, that no one else has ever tried to do anything quite like it since. While plenty of vintage CRPGs, dating all the way back to Wizardry, allowed you to move your characters from game to game, the Quest for Glory series is a far more complex take on a role-playing game than those simple monster bashers, with character attributes affecting far more aspects of the experience than combat alone — even extending into a moral dimension via a character’s “honor” attribute and the associated possibility to change to the prestige class of Paladin. It must have been tempting indeed to throw out the past and force players to start over with new characters each time the Coles started working on the next game in the series, but they doggedly stuck to their original vision of four — no, make that five — interlinked games that could all feature the very same custom hero, assuming the player was up to the task of buying and playing all of them.

But, fundamental to the Coles’ conception of their series though it was, this approach did have its drawbacks, which were starting to become clear by the time of Quest for Glory III. Corey Cole himself has admitted that “the play balance — both pacing and combat difficulty — and of course the freshness of the concept were strongest in Quest for Glory I.” Certainly that’s the entry in this hybrid series that works best as a CRPG, providing that addictive thrill of seeing your character slowly getting stronger, able to tackle monsters and challenges he couldn’t have dreamed of in the beginning. The later games are hampered by the well-known sense of diminishing returns that afflicts so many RPGs at higher levels; it’s much more fun in tabletop Dungeons & Dragons as well to advance from level 1 to level 8 than it is from level 8 to level 16. Even when you find that you need to spend time training in order to meet some arbitrary threshold — more on that momentarily — your character in the later Quest for Glory games never really feels like he’s going anywhere. The end result is to sharply reduce the importance of the most unique aspect of the series as it wears on. For this player anyway, that also reduces a big chunk of the series’s overall appeal. I haven’t tried it, but I suspect that these games may actually be more satisfying to play if you don’t import your old character into each new one, but rather start out fresh each time with a weaker hero and enjoy the thrill of building him up.

Sanford and Son make an appearance.

Quest for Glory III also disappoints in other ways.The first two games had been loaded with alternative solutions and approaches of all stripes, full of countless secrets and Easter eggs. Quest for Glory III is far less generous on all of these fronts. There just isn’t as much to do and discover outside the bounds of those things that are absolutely necessary to advance the plot. And one of the three possible character classes you can play, the Thief, has markedly fewer interesting things to do than the others even in the course of doing that much. The whole game feels less accommodating and rewarding — less amendable to your personal choices, one might say — than what came before. It plays, in other words, more like just another Sierra adventure game and less like the uniquely rich and flexible experience the first two games are.

This lack of design ambition can to some degree be laid at the feet of the absence of Corey Cole for most of the design process. Corey was generally the “puzzle guy” in the partnership, dealing with all the questions of smaller-scale interactivity, while Lori was the “story gal,” responsible for the wide-angle plotting.  And indeed, when I asked Corey about his own impressions of the game in relation to its predecessors, he acknowledged that “certainly Quest for Glory III is lighter on puzzles, while having just as much story as Quest for Glory II.”

Yet Corey’s absence isn’t the only reason that the personality of the series began to morph with this third installment. The most obvious change between the second and third game — blindingly obvious to anyone who plays them back to back — is the move from a parser-based to a pure point-and-click interface. I trust that I don’t need to belabor how this could remove some of the scope for player creativity, and especially what it might mean for the many little secrets for which the first two games are so known. I’m no absolute parser purist — my opinion has always been that the best interface for any given game is entirely contextual, based upon the type of experience the designer is trying to create — but I can’t help but feel that Quest for Glory lost something when it dumped the parser.

One issue with Quest for Glory III that may actually be a subtle, inadvertent byproduct of the switch to point-and-click is a certain aimlessness that seems baked into the design. Too much of the story is predicated on unmotivated wandering over a map that’s not at all suited to more methodical exploration.

I hate the Quest for Glory III overland map with a passion. Unique locations aren’t signaled on it, but it’s nevertheless vital that you thoroughly explore it, meaning you’re forced to click on any formation that looks interesting in the hope that it’s more than decorative, a process which disappoints and frustrates more often than not. And while you’re wandering around in this random fashion, you’re constantly being attacked by uninteresting monsters and being forced to engage in tedious combat. Note that what you see above is only the first of several screens full of this sort of thing.

When I played Quest for Glory III, I eventually wound up in that dreaded place known to every adventure player: where you’ve exhausted all your leads and are left with no idea what the game expects from you next. This was, however, a feeling new to me in the course of playing this particular series. When I turned with great reluctance to a walkthrough — I’d solved the first two games entirely on my own — I learned that I was expected to train my skills up to a certain level in order shake the plot back into gear.

But how, you ask, can such problems be traced back to the loss of the parser? Well, Corey has mentioned how Lori — later, he and Lori — attempted to restore some of the sense of spontaneity and surprise that had perhaps been lost alongside the parser through the use of “events”: “Instead of each game scene having one specific thing that happens in it, our scenes change throughout the game. Sometimes the passage of time triggers a new event, and sometimes it’s the result of the ripple effect of player actions. It was supposed to feel organic.” When this approach works well, it works wonderfully well in providing a dynamic environment that seems to unfold spontaneously from the player’s perspective, just the way a good interactive story should. That’s the best-case scenario. The worst case is when you haven’t done whatever arbitrary action is needed to get a vital event to fire, and you’re left to wander around wondering what’s next. Finally, when you peek at a walkthrough, the mechanisms behind it all are revealed in the ugliest, most mimesis-annihilating way imaginable. I understand what Quest for Glory III wants to do, and I wholeheartedly approve. But there needed to be more work done to avoid dead spots — whether in the form of more possible triggers or just of more nudges to tell the player what the game expects from her — or, ideally, both.

Another odd Quest for Glory tradition was to give each game in the series a new combat system. Quest for Glory III tried to add a bit more strategy to the affair with buttons for “swing,” “dodge,” “thrust,” and “parry,” but in my experience at least simply mashing down the swing button works as well as anything else. Thus another Quest for Glory tradition: that of none of these multifarious combat systems ever being completely satisfying.

Still, whatever the game’s failings, few players or reviewers in its own time seemed to notice. Upon its release in September of 1992 — just four months after the Quest for Glory I remake — Quest for Glory III was greeted with solid sales and positive reviews, a reception which stands in contrast to its contemporary reputation as the weakest link in the series. With this affirmation of their efforts and with Corey now free of distractions, the Coles plunged right into the fourth game. Quest for Glory IV would prove the most ambitious and the most difficult entry in the series — and, in my opinion anyway, its greatest waste of potential.

The game officially known simply as Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness — Sierra inexplicably dropped the Roman numeral this time and this time only — is indeed often spoken of as the “dark” entry of the series, but that claim strikes me as, at most, relative. My skepticism begins with the unbelievably cheesy subtitle, which put my wife right off the game before she saw more than the title screen. (“Someone should tell those people that darkness doesn’t make shadows…”) Banal subtitles, perhaps (hopefully?) delivered with an implied wink and nudge, had become something of a series trademark by this point — Trial by Fire? The Wages of War? Cliché much? — but this was taking things to a whole other level.

Dr. Brain fans will presumably be pleased to meet his alter ego Dr. Cranium in Quest for Glory IV. (Frankie, for the record, is a female Frankenstein whose “assets” Dr. Cranium very much approves of.)

To speak more substantively (or at least less snarkily), the “dark” aspects of the game come to the fore intermittently at best. I’ve played games which I’ve found genuinely scary; this is not one of them. It certainly includes plenty of horror tropes, but it’s difficult to take any of it all that seriously. This is a game that features Dr. Brain channeling Dr. Frankenstein. It’s a game where you fight a killer rabbit lifted out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It’s a game where you win the final battle against the evil wizard by telling him the Ultimate Joke and taking advantage when he collapses into laughter. From the Boris Karloff imitator guarding the gates to the villain’s castle to Igor the hunchbacked gravedigger, this is strictly B-movie horror — or, perhaps better said, a parody of B-movie horror. It’s hard to imagine anyone losing sleep over this game.

In fact, I was so nonplussed by its popularly accepted “dark” label that I asked Corey what he thought about it, and was gratified to find that he at least partially agreed with me:

Maybe a better word would be “unforgiving.” A Quest for Glory III theme is friendship and the need to work together with others. In Quest for Glory IV, we turned that around 180 degrees. The player would start out on his own, mistrusted by everyone. Through the course of the game, he will gradually win people’s trust and once again have allies by the end. This is not an easy theme for players new to the series to handle.

Lori Ann Cole elaborated on the same idea in a contemporary interview:

You’ll be very much alone [in Quest for Glory IV]. In Trial by Fire, you had a lot of friends to help you. You always had a place to go back to to rest. You always had a place of safety until the very end of the game. Once you get into Shadows of Darkness, you’re not going to have any sanctuary. You won’t be able to trust anyone because nobody will trust you.

It’s true that a few subplots here strain toward a gravitas unlike anything else the Coles have ever attempted. In particular, the vampire named Katrina can be singled out as a villain who isn’t just Evil for the sake of it. She’s kidnapped a little girl from the village that is your center of operations, and one of your quests is to rescue her. In the course of doing so, you learn that the kidnapping was motivated by Katrina’s desperate, very human desire for family and companionship in her isolated castle. You end up killing her, of course, but her story is often praised — justifiably on the whole, if sometimes a bit too effusively — as a benchmark for intelligent characterization in games.

Structurally, Quest for Glory IV is most reminiscent of the first game in the series. You arrive in the village of Mordavia, part of a region that goes by the same name, which has been plagued of late by vampires, ghosts, mad scientists, and most of the other inhabitants of the Hammer Horror oeuvre. As you solve the villagers’ considerable collection of problems one by one, they go from being spit-in-your-food hostile to lauding you as the greatest hero in the land. In the best tradition of the series, and in contrast to some of the most commonly voiced complaints about Quest for Glory III, much of the game is nonlinear, and some of it is entirely optional.

The combat system in Quest for Glory IV owes a lot to the Street Fighter franchise of standup-arcade, console, and computer games, which were among the most popular of the era. Corey Cole considers it the best combat engine in the history of the series; opinions among fans are more divided. For those not interested in street-fighting their way through a Quest for Glory game, the Coles did make it possible for the first time to turn on an auto-combat mode.

Sadly, though, the game is nowhere near as playable as Quest for Glory I, II, or to some extent even III. This fault arises not from doing too little but rather from attempting to do too much. At the risk of being accused of psychoanalyzing its designers, I will note that the Coles had clearly been psyching themselves up to make this game for a long time — that, even as it was being pushed back to make room for Quest for Glory III, it had long since come to loom over their conception of the series as the Big Statement. Even when they were giving interviews to promote the finished Quest for Glory III, the conversation would keep drifting into their plans for the fourth game. “It will be a very intense game to design,” said Corey in one of those interviews, a comment that could be taken to reflect either excitement or trepidation — or, more likely, both. This was to be the place where the series departed from being easygoing light fantasy to become something more challenging, both thematically and in terms of its puzzles and other mechanics.

So, they just kept cramming more and more stuff into it. The setting doesn’t have the laser focus of the earlier games in the series, all of which portrayed fairly faithfully the myths and legends of a very specific real-world culture. Quest for Glory IV, despite including some monsters drawn from real Eastern European folklore, is more interested in Western pop culture’s idea of Transylvania than any real place — a land of shadows and creatures that go bump in the night and “I vant to bite yer neck.” Then, because the parade of Gothic-horror clichés apparently wasn’t enough, the Coles added H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos to the mix (or, as the manual calls him, “P.H. Craftlove”). The two make decidedly uneasy bedfellows. Gothic horror, as expressed best in Bram Stoker’s ultimate Gothic novel Dracula, takes place, explicitly or implicitly, in an essentially moral universe drawing heavily from Christianity, in which Good and Evil, God and the Devil, are real entities at war with one another, thus setting up the narratives of sin and redemption which predominate. Lovecraftian horror, on the other hand, posits an utterly uncaring, amoral universe, in which Good and Evil are meaningless concepts, mere ephemera of the deluded human imagination. To combine the two in one work of fiction is… problematic.

For all that one has to wonder whether any fans of this heretofore genial series were truly saying to themselves, “You know, what these games really need to be is harder,” the Coles’ determination to make this entry more difficult than its predecessors isn’t invalid in itself. In trying to make their harder game, however, they sometimes fall into the all too typical trap of making a game that’s not so much more difficult as less fair. The CRPG aspects are yet further de-emphasized in favor of more puzzles, some of which push the bounds of realistic solubility. And, for the first time in the series’s history, there are irrecoverable dead ends to wander into scattered across the design, along with other situations that seem like dead ends. The latter arise because the design once again relies heavily on “events” that the player triggers without being aware how she does so — and, once again, this isn’t a bad thing at all in theory, but in practice it’s too easy to get stuck in a cul de sac with no idea how to prod the plotting machinery into motion again.

Greatly exacerbating all of these issues — indeed, virtually indistinguishable from them, given that it’s often unclear which design infelicities are intentional and which are not — are all the bugs. Even today, when patch after patch has been applied, the game remains a terrifyingly unstable edifice. If your (emulated?) machine runs just a little bit too slow or too fast, it will crash at random points with a cryptic “Error 47” or “Error 52.” But far worse are the hidden bugs that can ruin your game while letting you play on for hours without realizing anything is wrong. The most well-known of these involves a vital letter that’s supposed to show up at your hotel, but that, for reasons that are still imperfectly understood even after all these years, sometimes fails to do so. If you’re unfortunate enough to have this happen to you, it will only be much, much later, when you can’t figure out what to do next and finally turn to a walkthrough, that you realize you have to all but start over from scratch.

In my experience, an adventure game must establish a bond of trust with its player to be enjoyable. My dominant emotion when playing Quest for Glory IV, however, was just the opposite. I mistrusted the design, and mistrusted the implementation of the design even more, asking myself at every turn whether I’d broken anything, whether this latest problem I was having was a legitimate puzzle or a bug. When you have to meta-game your way through a game, relying on FAQs and walkthrough to tiptoe around all its pitfalls, it’s awfully hard to engage with the story and atmosphere.

Still, I can be thankful that I first played Quest for Glory IV a quarter-century after its original release, after all those patches had already been applied. The game that shipped on December 31, 1993, was in a truly unconscionable, very probably unwinnable condition. This wasn’t, I should emphasize, the fault of the Coles, who would have given anything to have a few more months with their baby. But Sierra was having an ugly year financially, and decided that the game simply had to be released before the year was out for accounting reasons, come what may. If there was any justice in the world, they would have been rewarded with a class-action lawsuit for knowingly selling a product that was not just flawed but outright broken. To give you a taste of what gamers unwise enough to buy Quest for Glory IV in its original incarnation got to go through, I’d like to quote at some length from the review by Scorpia, Computer Gaming World magazine’s regular adventure columnist.

My difficulties began after the game was installed and it simply refused to run, period. A call to the Sierra tech line revealed that Shadows of Darkness, as released, was not compatible with the AMI BIOS (not exactly an obscure one). This was related to the special 32-bit protected mode under which the software operates. Fortunately, a patch was available, and I quickly got it online.

After the patch was applied, the game finally came up. Unfortunately, it came up silent. The 32-bit protected mode grabs all of upper memory for itself, so nothing can be loaded high, and a bare-bones DOS boot disk is necessary. This made it impossible to load in the Gravis Ultrasound Roland emulator, and I found that with the Sound Blaster emulator loaded low, the game again wouldn’t run. So, I had to play with no sound or music, which explains why there is no commentary on either.

I ran from a boot disk without sound, and for a while everything was fine. However, the further into the game, the slower it was in saving and restoring. Actual disk access was quite speedy, but waiting for the software to make up its mind to go to disk took a long time, often a minute or more. Some online folk complained of waiting three minutes or longer to restore a saved game. It was usually faster to quit the game, rerun it, and then restore a position. For saving, of course, you just had to wait it out.

Regardless of the frustrations, I got through the game [playing as] a Paladin and a Mage, and then moved on to the Thief. Three quarters of the way along, the game crashed in the swamp whenever I tried to open the Mad Monk’s tomb. This turned out to be a “random error” that might or might not show up. It hadn’t done so with the other two heroes, but this time it reared its ugly head.

Well, Sierra had a patch that fixed both this problem and the interminable waits for saves and restores (this patch, by the way, came out some time after the first one I had gotten). There was only one drawback: because of the extensive changes made to the files, my saved games were no good and I had to start over again from the beginning.

So, I started my Thief over. By day 11 in the game, all the quests had been finished, the five rituals collected, and it was just a matter of waiting for a certain note to appear in my room one morning (this note initiates the end of the game). On day 26, I was still waiting for it. Nothing could make it appear, even replaying from some earlier positions. Either the trigger for this event was not set, or somehow it was turned off. I had no way of knowing, and, with that in mind, I had no inclination to start from scratch again. This also happened to other players who were running characters other than Thieves, and we all eventually abandoned those games.

A way around the dead-end problem was worked out by Sierra. The key is spending enough nights in your room at the inn to hear several “voice dreams,” and, most importantly, hearing the weeping from the innkeeper’s room one midnight (you are awakened by this; don’t stay up waiting for it). These events must happen before you rescue Tanya.

Once those situations have occurred, it should be safe to rescue the girl. I tried this in my Thief game, and after spending two extra nights in my room, the problem was cleared up and I finished the game with the Thief. So, if you have been waiting around for that note, and it hasn’t shown, follow the above procedure and you should be able to continue on with the game.

Scorpia’s last two paragraphs in particular illustrate what I mean when I say that you can’t really hope to play Quest for Glory IV so much as meta-game your way through it with the aid of walkthroughs. She was extremely lucky to have been among the minority with online access at the time of the game’s release, and thus able to download patches and discuss the game’s multiple points of entrapment with other players. Most would only have been able to plead with Sierra’s support personnel and hope for a disk to arrive in the mail a week or two later.

What ought to have been the exciting climactic battle of Quest for Glory IV was so buggy in the original release that the game was literally impossible to complete. It’s remained one of the worst problem spots over the years since, requiring multiple FAQ consultations to tiptoe through all the potential problems. Have I mentioned how exhausting and disheartening it is to be forced to play this way?

Some months after the bug-ridden floppy-based release, Sierra published Quest for Glory IV on CD-ROM, in a version that tried to clean up the bugs and that added voice acting. It accomplished the former task imperfectly; as already noted, plenty of glitches still remain even in the version available for digital download today, not least among them the mystery of the never-appearing letter. The latter task, however, it accomplished superlatively. In a welcome departure from the atrocious voice acting found in their earliest CD-ROM products, Sierra put together a team of top-flight acting professionals, headed by the dulcet Shakespearian tones of John Rhys-Davies — a veteran character actor of many decades’ standing who’s best known today as Gimli the dwarf in Peter Jackson’s Lords of the Rings films — as the narrator and master of ceremonies. Rhys-Davies, who had apparently signed the contract in anticipation of a quick-and-easy payday, was shocked at the sheer volume of text he was expected to voice, and took to calling the game “the CD-ROM from hell” after spending days on end in the studio. But he persevered. Indeed, he and the other actors quite clearly had more than a little fun with it. The bickering inhabitants of the Mordavia Inn are a particular delight. These voice actors obviously take their roles with no seriousness whatsoever, preferring to wander off-script into broad semi-improvised impersonations of Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, and Rodney Dangerfield. Would you think less of me if I admitted that they’re my favorite part of the game?

https://www.filfre.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/qfg4.mp4

Of course, one could argue that Sierra’s decision to devote so many resources to this multimedia window dressing, while still leaving so many fundamental problems to fester in the core game, is a sad illustration of their misplaced priorities in this new age of CD-ROM-based gaming. The full story of just what the hell was going on inside Sierra at this point, leading to this imperfect and premature Quest for Glory IV as well as even worse disasters like their infamously half-finished 1994 release Outpost, is an important one that needs to be told, but one best reserved for a later article of its own.

For now, suffice to say that Quest for Glory IV was made to suffer for its failings, with a number of outright bad reviews in a gaming press that generally tended to publish very little of that sort of thing, and with far worse word of mouth among ordinary gamers. For a long time, its poor reception seemed to have stopped the series in its tracks, one game short of Lori Ann Cole’s long-planned climax. When a transformed Sierra, under new owners with new priorities, finally allowed that fifth and final game to be made years later, it would strike the series’s remaining fans as a minor miracle, even as the technology it employed was miles away from the trusty old SCI engine that had powered the series’s first four entries.

The critical consensuses on Quest for Glory III and IV have neatly changed places in the years since that last entry in the series was published. The third game was widely lauded back in the day, the fourth about as widely panned as the timid gaming press ever dared. But today, it’s the third game that is widely considered to be the series’s weakest link, while the fourth is frequently called the very best of them all. As someone who finds them both to be more or less flawed creations in comparison to what came before, I don’t really have a dog in this fight. Nevertheless, I do find this case of switched places intriguing. I think it says something about the way that so many play games — especially adventure games — today: with FAQ and walkthrough at the ready for the first sign of trouble. There’s of course nothing wrong with choosing to play this way; I’ve gone on record many times saying there is no universally right or wrong way to play any game, only those ways which are more or less fun for you. And certainly the fact that you can now buy the entire Quest for Glory series for less than $10 — much less when it goes on sale! — impacts the way players approach the games. No one worries too much about rushing through a game they’ve bought for pocket change, but might be much more inclined to play a game they’ve spent $50 on “honestly.” All of which is as it may be. I will only say that, as someone who does still hate turning to a walkthrough, the more typical modern way of playing sometimes dismays me because of the way it can — especially when combined with the ever-distorting fog of nostalgia — lead us to excuse or entirely overlook serious issues of design in vintage games.

But lest I be too harsh on these two middle — middling? — entries in this remarkable series of games, I should remember that they were produced in times of enormous technological change, in a business environment that was changing just as rapidly, and that those realities were often in conflict with their designers’ own best intentions. Corey Cole:

Lori has commented that we started at Sierra almost completely clueless, and had to figure out how to design a Sierra-style game “from scratch.” Then, armed with that knowledge, we confidently started work on the next game, only to have Sierra pull the rug out from under us. Each time the technology and management style changed, we had to rework many of the techniques we had developed to make our previous games.

They may be, in the opinion of this humble reviewer anyway, weaker than their predecessors, but neither Quest for Glory III nor IV is without its interest. If you’d like to see the progression of one of the most unique long-term projects in the history of gaming, by all means, have a look and decide for yourself.

(Sources: Questbusters of May 1992, September 1992, December 1992, September 1993, February 1994; Sierra’s InterAction magazine from Fall 1992, Summer 1993, and Holiday 1993; Computer Gaming World of January 1993 and April 1994; the readme file included with Sierra’s 1998 Quest for Glory Collection; documents and other materials included in the Sierra archive at the Strong Museum of Play. Most of all, my thanks go to Corey Cole for once again allowing me to pepper him with questions, even though he knew beforehand that my opinion of these two games wasn’t as overwhelmingly positive as it had been the last time around.

The entire Quest for Glory series is available for purchase as a package on GOG.com. And by all means check out the Coles’ welcome return to game design in the spirit of Quest for Glory, the recently released Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. I don’t often get to play games that aren’t “on the syllabus,” as a friend of mine puts it, but I made time for this one, and I’m so glad I did. In my eyes, it’s the best thing the Coles have ever done.)

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/quest-for-glory-iii-and-iv/