#for most of our processes

[bogkeep]

there's something so deeply dystopian to me how tech companies don't understand that a forced convenience is not a convenience at all. i'm sure autocorrect is helpful for many, but a function that forcibly changes my actual written words and punctuation is taking away my language. photo filters can be nice but i need to choose using them myself or else i have lost the ability to take the picture i want. i don't want a machine to draw or write for me. taking away the option for me to do things manually feels like violence!!!! all this talk of endless opportunity, why are you RESTRICTING me

[serpentface]

how do you come up with the ways cultures in your setting stylize people/animals/the world in general in their artwork, i.e. jewlery, rock carvings, statues, etc? Each culture in your world seems to have a very unique "art style" and I love it a lot - makes them seem that much more 'real'. This is something I struggle with a lot in my own worldbuilding and I'd love to pick your brain if possible 😁

I think a starting point is to have a research process based in the material realities of the culture you're designing for. Ask yourself questions like:

Where do they live? What's the climate/ecosystem(s) they are based in? What geographic features are present/absent?

What is their main subsistence method? (hunter gatherer, seasonal pastoralist, nomadic pastoralist, settled agriculturalist, a mix, etc)

What access to broader trade networks do they have and to whom? Are there foreign materials that will be easily accessible in trade and common in use, or valuable trade materials used sparingly in limited capacities?

Etc

And then do some research based on the answers, in order to get a sense of what materials they would have routine access to (ie dyes, metal, textiles, etc) and other possible variables that would shape how the art is made and what it's used for. This is just a foundational step and won't likely play much into designing a Style.

If you narrow these questions down very specifically, (ie in the context of the Korya post- grassland based mounted nomads, pastoralist and hunter-gatherer subsistence, access to wider trade networks and metals), you can direct your research to specific real world instances that fit this general idea. This is not to lift culturally specific concepts from the real world and slap them into your own setting, but to notice commonalities this lifestyle enforces - (ie in the previous example- mounted nomadic peoples are highly mobile and need to easily carry their wealth (often on clothing and tack) therefore small, elaborate decorative artwork that can easily be carried from place to place is a very likely feature)

For the details of the art itself, I come up with loose 'style guides' (usually just in my head) and go from there.

Here's some example questions for forming a style (some are more baseline than others)

Are geometric patterns favored? Organic patterns? Representative patterns (flowers, animals, stars, etc)? Abstract patterns?

Is there favored material(s)? Beads, bone, clay, metals, stones, etc.

When depicting people/animals, is realism favored? Heavy stylization? The emotional impression of an animal? Are key features accentuated?

How perspective typically executed? Does art attempt to capture 3d depth? Does it favor showing the whole body in 2 dimensions (ie much of Ancient Egyptian art, with the body shown in a mix of profile and forward facing perspective so all key attributes are shown)? Will limbs overlap? Are bodies shown static? In motion?

Does artwork of people attempt to beautify them? Does it favor the culture's conception of the ideal body?

Are there common visual motifs? Important symbols? Key subject matters?

What is the art used for? Are its functions aesthetic, tutelary, spiritual, magical? (Will often exist in combination, or have different examples for each purpose)

Who is represented? Is there interest in everyday people? Does art focus on glorifying warriors, heroes, kings?

Are there conventions for representing important figures? (IE gods/kings/etc being depicted larger than culturally lesser subjects)

Is there visual shorthand to depict objects/concepts that are difficult to execute with clarity (the sun, moon, water), or are invisible (wind, the soul), or have no physical component (speech)?

Etc

Deciding on answers to any of these questions will at least give you a unique baseline, and you can fill in the rest of the gaps and specify a style further until it is distinct. Many of these questions are not mutually exclusive, both in the sense of elements being combined (patterns with both geometric and organic elements) or a culture having multiple visual styles (3d art objects having unique features, religious artwork having its own conventions, etc).

Also when you're getting in depth, you should have cultural syncretism in mind. Cultures that routinely interact (whether this interaction is exchange or exploitation) inevitably exchange ideas, which can be especially visible in art. Doing research on how this synthesizing of ideas works in practice is very helpful- what is adopted or left out from an external influence, what is retained from an internal influence, what is unique to this synthesis, AND WHY. (I find Greco-Buddhist art really interesting, that's one of many such examples)

Looking at real world examples that fit your parameters can be helpful (ie if I've decided on geometric patterns in my 'style guide', I'll look at actual geometric patterns). And I strongly encourage trying to actually LEARN about what you're seeing. All art exists in a context, and having an understanding of how the context shapes art, how art does and doesn't relate to broader aspects of a society, etc, can help you when synthesizing your own.

[jabeur]

2 ppl liked this (grazieeeeee <3) i'm taking it as a yes so. basically how do i start saying no when i've been saying yes all the time????

ok but like if i genuinely ask you guys for advice will anyone listen to me orrrrr

[introspectivememories]

best ending: they talk it out after lewis wins his 8th wdc and we end up with brocedes in each other's lives again. lewis shows up on nico's yt channel. nico is on lewis' insta. vivian dogwalks both of them for letting the divorce last that long. i join the convent because this is clearly a miracle from god and reblog gifsets of brocedes interacting from the chapel. rinse, repeat.

ending we're most likely gonna get: whatever the hell we have now. nico talks about lewis. lewis will say karting is the best time of his career. for two seconds out of the year, lewis will say nico's name. i will sob, rinse, repeat.

worst ending: they shut the fuck up about each other forever. they process the divorce and move on with their lives without each other. i will go on tumblr and reblog angsty web weaves about their relationship and what could've been. i take psychic damage. rinse. repeat.

[gingermintpepper]

As usual I read your tags always and so you said Apollo did not ask for resurrection of Asclepius and Hyacinthus so i just wanted to share this. About Asclepius death I read it on theoi.com, that earlier authors don't make him resurrect as a god but that's a later development mentioned only by Roman authors like Cicero, Hyginus and Ovid. But still Apollo has a role in Ovid's version

Ovid, Fasti 6. 735 ff (trans.Boyle) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) : Clymenus [Haides] and Clotho resent the threads of life respun and death's royal rights diminished. Jove [Zeus] feared the precedent and aimed his thunderbolt at the man who employed excessive art. Phoebus [Apollon], you whined. He is a god; smile at your father, who, for your sake, undoes his prohibitions [i.e. when he obtains immortality for Asklepios].

So here it is actually because of Apollo the decision was taken to resurrect him as god. And with Hyacinthus, I don't think I've read about Artemis playing the primary role. I know in Sparta there was a picture of Artemis, Athena and Aphrodite carrying Hyacinthus and his sister to heaven.

This is not on theoi.com but I saw on Tumblr it's from Dionysiaca by Nonnus

Second, my lord Oiagros wove a winding lay, as the father of Orpheus who has the Muse his boon companion. Only a couple of verses he sang, a ditty of Phoibos, clearspoken in few words after some Amyclaian style: Apollo brought to life again his longhaired Hyacinthos: Staphylos will be made to live for aye by Dionysos.

So since he is singing inspired by amyclean stories it probably means in that place it was believed Apollo was the one to bring back his lover to life.

Apollo as god of order was very important so i think it shows how special these people (and admetus too) were to him that he decided to go against the order for them 🥺

ANON!! Shakes you like a bottle of ramune!! BELOVED ANON!!!!! I'm littering your face with kisses, I'm anointing you with olive oil and honey - you absolutely made my night with this because, not only did I get the pure serotonin shot of having someone interact with my tags (yippee, wahoo!!) I also got to have that wonderful feeling of "oh wow, have I misunderstood something that was integral to my understanding of this myth/figure this whole time or is this a case of interpretational differences?" which is imo vital for my aims and interests as someone who enjoys mythological content and literature.

I'll preface my response with this: Hyacinthus is by far the hardest of these to get accounts for because his revival itself, as you very astutely point out, is generally accounted for in painting/ritual format which muddies the waters on who interceded for what. I wasn't actually familiar with that passage from the Argonautica - and certainly didn't remember it so thank you very much for bringing it to my attention!

That said, what I've come to understand, both about Hyacinthus and about Asclepius is that in the accounts of their deaths, Apollo's position is startlingly clear.

For Hyacinthus, it is established time and again that Apollo would have sacrificed everything for him - his status, his power, his very own immortality and divinity. Ovid writes that Apollo would have installed him as a god if only he had the time:

(Ovid. Metamorphoses. Book X. trans. Johnston)

Many other writers too speak of how Apollo abandoned his lyre and his seat at Delphi to spend his days with Hyacinthus, but they also all agree that when it came to his death - he was powerless. Ovid gives that graphic account of Apollo's desperation as he tries all his healing arts to save him to no avail:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book X. Apollo me boy, methinks him dead. trans Johnston)

Bion, in one of his fragments, writes that Apollo was "dumb" upon seeing Hyacinthus' agony:

(Bion, The Bucolic Poets. Fragment XI. trans Edmonds)

Even Nonnus in the Dionysiaca speaks constantly of Apollo's helplessness in the face of Hyacinthus' fate where he writes that the god still shivers if a westward wind blows upon an iris:

and when Zephyros breathed through the flowery garden, Apollo turned a quick eye upon his young darling, his yearning never satisfied; if he saw the plant beaten by the breezes, he remembered the quoit, and trembled for fear the wind, so jealous once about the boy, might hate him even in a leaf...

(Nonnus, Dionysiaca, Book 3. trans Rouse)

And the point here is just that - Apollo, at least as far as I've read, cannot avert someone's death. He simply can't. Once they're already dead - once Fate has cut their string - all Apollo's power is gone and he can do nothing no matter how much he wants to. And this is, as far as I know, supported with the accounts of Asclepius as well!

Since you specifically brought up Ovid's account, I'll also stick only to Ovid's account but in Metamorphoses when we get Ovid's version of Coronis' demise, he writes that Apollo intensely and immediately regrets slaughtering Coronis. He regrets it so intensely that he, like he does with Hyacinthus, does his best to resuscitate her:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo's regret)

And like Hyacinthus, when it becomes clear that what has happened cannot be undone, Apollo wails:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo wept.)

Unlike his mother, Asclepius in her womb had not yet died and so, with the last of Apollo's strength, he does manage, at least, to save him.

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo puts the 'tearing out' in Asclepius.)

But it goes further than even that because Ocyrhoe, Chiron's daughter, a prophetess who unduly gained the ability to directly proclaim the secrets of the Fates, upon seeing the baby Asclepius, immediately prophesies his glory, his inevitable death and then his fated ascension:

(Ovid. Metamorphoses, Book Two. Ocyrhoe's prophecy. trans Johnston)

Before she too succumbs to her hubris and is transformed by the Fates into a horse so she can no longer speak secrets that aren't hers to share.

These things ultimately are important because it establishes two very important things: 1) Apollo can't do anything in the face of the ultimate Fate of mortals, which is, of course, death and 2) even when Apollo is Actively Devastated, regretful, yearning, mournful, guilty or some unholy combination of all of the above, when someone is dead, he accepts that they are gone. Even if he is devastated by it, even if he'll cry all the rest of his days about it - if they're dead? Apollo lets them go. In Fasti, when Zeus brings Asclepius back, he does not say Apollo asked him to - Zeus, or well, in this case Jove, brings Asclepius back because he wants Apollo to stop being mad at him.

(Ovid, Fasti VI. Apollo please come home your father misses you. trans. A.S Kline)

Even Boyle's translation which you used above in your findings hints that Zeus made Asclepius a god because he wanted Apollo to stop grieving. (i.e 'smile at your father', 'for your sake [he] undoes his prohibitions')

And like, Apollo was deeply upset by Asclepius' death - apart from killing the Cyclops in anger, in book 4 of the Argonautica, Apollonius writes that the Celts believe the stream of Eridanus to be the tears Apollo shed over the death of Asclepius when he left for Hyperborea after being chastised by Zeus for killing his Cyclops:

But the Celts have attached this story to them, that these are the tears of Leto's son, Apollo, that are borne along by the eddies, the countless tears that he shed aforetime when he came to the sacred race of the Hyperboreans and left shining heaven at the chiding of his father, being in wrath concerning his son whom divine Coronis bare in bright Lacereia at the mouth of Amyrus.

It all paints a very clear picture to me. Apollo did not ask for either of them to be brought back. Though bringing them back certainly pleased and delighted him, they are actions of other gods who are moved by Apollo's grief and mourning and seek to mollify him. Him not asking doesn't mean he didn't want them back which I think is a very important distinction by the by, but it simply means that Apollo knows the natural order of things and, even if it hurts, he isn't going to press his luck about it.

Which, of course, brings us to Admetus. And I'm really not going to overcomplicate this, Admetus is different because, very vitally, Admetus is not dead. Apollo can't do a thing once Fate has been carried out and Death has claimed a mortal but you know what he absolutely can do? Bargain like hell with the Fates before that point of inevitability. And that's what he does, ultimately for Admetus and Alcestis. He sought to prolong Admetus' life, not revive him from death or absolve him from death altogether and even after getting the Fates drunk, he's still only able to organise a sacrifice - a life for a life - something completely contingent on whether some other mortal would be willing to die in Admetus' place and not at all controllable by Apollo's own power.

All of these things, I think come back to that point you made - that Apollo's place as a god of order is very important and therefore these people are very special to him if it means he's willing to go against that order but, I also wish to challenge that opinion if you'd let me. Apollo's place as a god of order is very important and therefore, I would argue, that it is even more important that it is shown that he does not break the divine order, especially for the people that mean the most to him. The original context of my comments which started this conversation were on this lovely, lovely post by @hyacinthusmemorial which contemplated upon Asclepius from the perspective of an Emergency Medical personnel and included, in their tags, the very poignant lines "there's something about Apollo letting go when Asclepius couldn't that eats my heart away" and "you do what you can, you do your best, but you don't ever reach too far" and I think that's perfectly embodied with the Apollo-Asclepius dichotomy. Apollo grieves. He wails, he cries, he does his best each and every time to save that which is precious to him but he does not curse their nature, he does not resent that they are human and ultimately, he accepts that that which is mortal must inevitably die. There is nothing that so saliently proves that those who uphold rules are also their most staunch followers - if Apollo wants to delight in his place as Fate's mouthpiece, he cannot undo Fate. And, if even the god of healing and order himself cannot undo death, what right does Asclepius, mortal as he is, talented as he is, have to disrespect it?

The beauty of these stories isn't that Apollo loved them enough to bring them back. The beauty is that Apollo loved them enough to let them go.

[hannibal-is-my-comfort-show]

Thinking abt how Will and Hannibal are like that old myth where you can cure a werewolf by calling it by its Christian name, making it remember that their true self is human. Except, with them, Hannibal saw Will for who he truly was, allowing him to become the monster he was on the inside.

[perdamian]

thinking about the way i said, out loud, “they should cut the rat grinders heads off and throw them in the lava so it’ll be harder to revive them” mere moments before murph made the same comment… riz gukgak you will always be my most beloved maniac

[marlynnofmany]

Me: *squinting at notes* "What was my endgame here? How did I plan to wrap up the plot threads?"

My Notes: "These good guys stop those bad guys, there's peace for everybody, and the dangerous stuff is thrown into the sun. Whee!"

Me: "That is remarkably vague, Past Me."

[neurosiscocktail]

Season finale spoilers-

Thoughts on why Izzy’s death didn’t really sit right with me.

I really and truly do not like either the “kill your redeemed antagonists” or the “kill your mentors because the mentee has ‘nothing’ left to learn from them” troupes. Now that we have confirmation that the later is what he was going for, it adds an extra layer to the death, and that’s that

Izzy was right

Izzy admits in his death speech, and we as the viewer see that part of what drove Izzy to act the way he did in trying to encourage Ed to be Blackbeard is that he was scared of losing Ed, scared he would outlive his usefulness, scared that if he wasn’t helping Blackbeard Ed wouldn’t need him, and with the life he lived, to not be needed is to be dead. Those who outlive their usefulness get sent to doggy heaven. It felt like his arc this season was about proving this wrong. That he didn’t need to useful to Ed to deserve to live. That he can find meaning and friendship, if only he lets go of this fear.

And then the writer killed him because he… outlived his usefulness to Ed. To kill a character because you love the “mentor dies when they have nothing left to teach” troupe feels bad when the mentors arc was largely about ‘what do you do when you feel like you aren’t useful anymore in the same way you were. How do you find purpose?’

Maybe some people love this and think it adds to the drama of the death, but it’s really not for me.

[pushing500]

What do you do with your toxic wastepacks?

Step 1. Get your constructoids to build a big freezer near a steam geyser for continual power

Step 2. Wring your money's worth of chemfuel out of your boomalope and smoosh the wastepacks in transport pods

Step 3. Continue humanity's trend of polluting every ocean we come into contact with

Step 4. Oh no! Anyway, do you guys from The Green Clam Gobar want some of this nice yayo I found? Oooooh, it's so nice! Goodwill isn't an issue, and toxic waste is dealt with! 👍

[campbyler]

hey guys it’s me again…i was wondering if we could see a (non-spoilery!) glimpse of your planning doc? i’d love to see how you guys are keeping the story going smoothly through the three of you and also just. what it looks like. if that’s ok.

ok love uuuu bye running into the sunset

since we got a couple of asks about this i'm just going to answer them together :-) it's been a hot second since we've talked about our writing process and since we have a few chapters now and are no longer at risk for spoiling Everything in one fell swoop, attached are chapters 1-5 from our official outline document! this is the one we use to actually navigate and reference for the fic as we write, but we've had two or three versions before this where we did the majority of the actual planning/going back on forth on scene ideas. those got really difficult to navigate after a while, so we cut out a lot of the commentary (we are hilarious. #trust) and fluff and made this one pretty bare-bones, but we have the entire fic planned out this way and have had it planned out before any of it was ever written! it definitely helps with continuity, because other than some minor changes to the dates and stuff (we realized at one point that like three chapters all occurred within the span of one week lol) and some retconning to some vestigial scenes from our original fic concept - which was very different in some aspects when we first thought of it back in january - we've stayed pretty consistent to this outline while writing. we also have a million other documents as well - playlist organization, an entire document we used to plan out titles lol, a google slides presentation breaking down the timeline, etc etc. thea and andi are much better outliners than i am because i rarely do it for my own fics but this process might have converted me fr. to some extent. anyways! enjoy snooping! or don't. lol. hope you like my commentary xoxo

(side note: chapter 5 probably had the most retconning of the chapters so far - the closet scene was one of the first ones we thought of for the fic and therefore heavily relied on how we originally imagined their dynamic to play out, which was really really different than how we ended up writing them! needless to say i definitely struggled with it lol. but it worked out fine. i think.)

[soop-jpg]

oc reveal ?!

[sofiaruelle]

So....our Dressmaking Batch 97 got to participate in a pagent, Mr & Ms Technowear 2024 for TIIC (Technical Institute of Iloilo City)'s 30th Foundation day.

✨And we got to do 2 lewks, Streetwear and Technowear.✨

While trying to figure out what we were going to do, we raided the fitting room (stockroom) and found a whole bunch of Retazo (hiliganon for scrapped fabric) from previous projects of batches before us. And it just so happens we were asigned the color 💚Green💚 for our team. Green = Nature = lots of fabric flowers. And to make it easier for us, we raided our closets and a few thrift stores for garments to upcycle and ofc every crafter has a few knickknacks to embellish with!!!!

[mod2amaryllis]

Pepper passed away this morning. last night jose called me over while tending them; she was dehydrated, lethargic, wheezing, I'd played with her normally the day before. she's been slowing down with age, but this was a crash. we gave her water and heat support, i was planning to bring her in to work first thing this morning, but when we woke up she was gone in the same cozy position we left her in. i believe she just faded peacefully.

we're pretty devastated. she was 14, our first animal, we've had her almost half our lives. she was very much jose's baby. it really hit me when i carried her to my clinic and prepped her for cremation; that's a task i do frequently after euthanasia and it's become a kind of ritual, but carrying your own animal is just so different. I'm really sad.

[heartofstanding]

Did Edward I have a serious tendency towards violence towards Edward II?

I highly recommend reading Hannah Kilpatrick's article "Edward I’s Temper" in The Medieval Chronicle, vol. 12 (2019, doi) if you can find it because not only is it brilliant but because my entire answer will based on it. The short answer: probably not, because our main sources for Edward I being violent are two accounts that have been mistranslated or mistranscribed.

In a way, it's understandable. Edward I has frequently been understood as the ultimate embodiment of the brutal, dark and hyper-violent Middle Ages and the story that he physically assaulted his son both not only feeds this image but is likewise fed by this reputation. It becomes cyclical: we know Edward I was violent and angry because we know he assaulted his son and we know he assaulted his son because we know he was violent and angry. The actual story of this assault is goes something like this: the future Edward II foolishly petitions his father for an earldom for his unworthy and unpopular favourite Piers Gaveston. The king erupts in a fit of violent temper. He swears at his son, tears out handfuls of his son's hair and then throws him to the ground and kicks him.

This account is a conflation of two contemporary accounts, one found in the chronicle of Walter of Guisborough (where Edward II's hair is pulled out) and the other in the Fineshade chronicle (where Edward II is thrown to the ground and trampled). Kilpatrick argues, quite convincingly, that both accounts have been misread - mistranslated or mistranscribed - and offers corrections wherein Edward I's violence is directed at himself (he pulls his own hair out) and the physical copy of Edward II's petition, not his son.

On Walter of Guisborough:

But here is no assault. Walter of Guisborough never claims that Edward I tore out his son’s hair. ‘Et apprehensis capillis vtraque manu dilacerauit eos in quantum potuit’, he writes, following Edward I’s last speech, literally: ‘And seizing hair in each hand he tore it out to the extent that he could’, with no possessive pronoun. In English, of course, we cannot leave the ownership of a body part ambiguous—we would have to say ‘his own hair’, or‘his son’s hair’—but this construction is perfectly possible in Latin. In fact, in the absence of grammatical indications to the contrary, it should be assumed to refer back to the subject, as in Latin’s modern descendents—and as we see here with reference to the hands (‘manu’, not ‘manusua’).

In short, an alternative, more plausible translation of the original Latin is that Edward I tore out his own hair in a rage at his son's request, not his son's hair. It is violent, but violence directed to the self rather than at his son.

In regards to the Fineshade chronicle, Kilpatrick argues that George Haskins's transcription of the scene features an error. That is, he silently expanded the abbreviated pronoun, ipm, to the masculine form, ipsum:

For reasons of grammar and syntax, I argued that ipm should, in fact, be expanded to feminine ipsam: in other words, it is the petition which is flung to the ground and crushed underfoot (‘peticionem importunam ferens, indignanter ipsam ad terram deiecit pedibusque conculcauit’). The most recent masculine referent is the king himself, preceded by Gaveston; and it would be syntactically awkward to have to reach back past so many clauses to a previous sentence, when a more immediate and logical referent is (as it were) directly to hand.

So, rather than Edward I flinging his son to the ground and kicking him, Edward I flings the petition, an inanimate object, to the ground and tramples it.

To me, Kilpatrick's alternate readings of these chronicles are more believable. Seymour Phillips also has rejected Walter of Guisborough's account as "exaggerated" and either inaccurate or unable to be confirmed, but without reassessing the chronicle accounts that Kilpatrick does. The acceptance of this story speaks to what Kilpatrick calls "modern preconceptions of medieval emotionality" - the tendency to read the Middle Ages as a place of casual and excessive violence and to stereotype medieval individuals as being unable to control their emotions.

This accounts, Kilpatrick goes to argue, also use "public emotionality" or the public performance of emotion - in this case, lordly anger - to make a point. That is, that Edward I's anger serves a political and social purpose:

...public demonstrations of anger had a paradoxically crucial role in mending social bonds (particularly between a lord and his dependent), by 'announcing to all that the current situation was unacceptable and that social relationships would have to be restructured'. This would (ideally) initiate the process of negotiation and reconciliation.

Both writers use this display of lordly anger in different ways to achieve different messages in their writing but both are "interrogat[ing] the idea of effective kingship". Walter of Guisborough's account is more critical of Edward I, whilst also anticipating problems in his heir's reign. In contrast, the Fineshade chronicler is writing in the last decade of Edward II's reign and is more concerned with the failures of Edward II's kingship in comparison with his father's more stable reign.

So, Walter of Guisborough depicts Edward I's anger as dysfunctional, showing Edward as embodying Ira, uncontrolled and self-destructive rage while Edward II's lack of response to his father's anger is problematised because Edward II should be filled with a shaming anger that drives him to correct his fault (the favouritism of Gaveston):

In the scene as written, the king enacts a powerful and very public demonstration of the extent of the prince’s transgression against both his own role and his father’s, and of the serious breach in the relationships between father and son and between the realm and its future king. He attempts to solve it by trying to prick on his son to be the honourable knight that he ought to be. He fails—he does succumb to a violent, uncontrollable passion—not because he is a medieval man, but because Walter of Guisborough was critiquing specific flaws in his kingship. His transgression is not physical violence but violence against social norms governing acceptable emotional display: not the uncontrollable outburst of a passion that ought to be contained, but a failure to embody what it is to be a king, to engage and empower the emotionality of his followers.

In Fineshade chronicler's narrative, Edward I is idealised as the representation of "the stability and the link with the past that his son rejects" which renders the idea it depicts Edward violently assaulting his son even more suspect. Instead, the petition is trampled in an appropriate display of royal anger: "the transference of royal violence onto the petition (and the imagined Gaveston) rather than the body of his son allows the king to make a powerful performance of his fury without violating the feudal bond in return."

In brief, then: our evidence for Edward I's "serious tendency for violence" against his son comes from one event that has likely been misread (mistranslated, mistranscribed) and show Edward's violence enacted on his own body or an inanimate object rather than the body of his son. Seymour Phillips and Kathryn Warner both point out there was no serious breach between father and son, no suggestion that Edward I was disappointed with his son and, while there were conflicts between them, they were not unusual for a king and his son (n.b. Warner believes Walter of Guisborough's account is accurate, Phillips does not). The chronicle accounts may not have be a truthful depiction on what happened but a reflection on what made a good king and the function of lordly anger in kingship.

Of course, there's great difficulty in proving a negative. We know very little about the personal/private relationship between father and son (this is not unusual) and whether Edward I was ever violent towards his son (and if so, whether this would be seen as excessive or as indicative of a serious tendency towards violence) is something we don't and cannot know.

But what we can say is that our understanding of their relationship and the likelihood of its violence has been driven by our own tendency to stereotype history. Typically, the Middle Ages is seen as an extremely violent and backward time and Edward I as the ultimate representation of these impulses. Thus, he has been stereotyped as a particularly brutal and barbaric figure who would naturally enact excessive violence on his similarly-stereotyped son, read as a effeminate failure of kingship and manhood trapped in the "wrong time". Kilpatrick argues, quite convincingly in my opinion, that the supposed evidence or "proof" of Edward I's excessive violence and temper towards his son is no such thing. The reality of their relationship was undoubtedly much more complex.

Again, I really recommend you read the full article because this is only a summary of the broader points made.

(Also, I apologise if the quotes have mistakes in them. When I copied and pasted from the PDF I have, somehow the spaces between words didn't register so every word was smushed together. I've attempted to fix it but there may be some things I overlooked.)

[chimerafeathers]

there's an essay jumbled up in my brain about dunmeshi's beginning and how clever and deceptive it is as a sleight-of-hand trick that distracts the audience from the depth and scope of the worldbuilding and foreshadowing that's being set up the entire time by dangling zany characters and wacky dishes and biology fun facts in front of us, and how that serves to catch invested viewers off guard when those elements come to the forefront, but also how it works against it with other viewers wanting "more" and not seeing it because the plot bait isn't laid out up front

how people getting frustrated with the characters "not taking things seriously" is mirrored and refuted in the confrontation between Laios and Shuro. how the characters' attitudes aren't just a result of shallow low-stakes "comedy rules" where nothing matters, but are an extension of their personalities (Laios's nonstandard expression of emotions being offputting even to people he knows) and the world and social environment (adventurers being desensitized to death and injury because resurrection magic is commonplace). the way the party refers to "saving Falin" instead of "retrieving Falin's corpse," indicating that they still see her with full personhood, and how that phrasing leads to some readers/viewers believing that Falin is alive in the dragon's stomach, conscious of being slowly digested while the party carelessly fucks around "wasting time." how the weird tonal dissonance makes sense in-universe and yet is deliberately challenged more and more the deeper the party goes

all the character building and pieces of lore slowly weaving together the shape of the larger world, laying the groundwork for the major themes that will surface later. so much is right there in the "low-stakes" early episodes if you know what you're looking for (or pass the perception checks).

it can be so satisfying to see new viewers/readers pick up on the clues even in the earliest "simple" episodes, or notice new things and make connections yourself....and it can also be frustrating to see people dismiss oddities and dissonance as shallow or bad writing because they don't expect a "cooking anime" to have depth like that. why try to question and understand and peel back the layers when you don't expect there to be any layers?

why can't laios take things seriously for once?