#good thing I study medieval history anyway

[the-everqueen]

me [takes your face gently between my hands]: hob gadling would not be a history professor at any number of british universities because of how humanities academia works and even if he were, rose walker would not be his student or advisee.

[spiderbitesandvampirevenom]

sorry if you've already answered this (i searched ur blog) but if it's okay to ask, do you have any recommended readings for modern marxism (with a racism or colonialism lense)?

ok so prefacing this real quick I am high as hell. and also before i say anything id like to make it clear that i am not an authority on marxist communist theory, honestly i barely consider myself familiar with it. i went to school to study history so i interacted with marxist thought primarily in a historical/historiographical context, and generally in the context of colonial and postcolonial history. even then i studied mostly pre/early colonial american (in the broad sense not the USAmerican sense) & medieval islamic history. my knowledge of modern marxist theory is far from comprehensive.

with that said, I can certainly offer some suggestions, though some of them aren't necessarily marxist theory. but what the hell, lets get intersectional. for funsies. heres a few contributors to colonial/post-colonial/marxist thought that worked a little more recently than the 1800s

Fanon - Frantz Fanon was a french afro-caribbean marxist who, along with his wife Josie (who was the actual one writing, he dictated most of his works to her), wrote Black Skin, White Masks, A Dying Colonialism, and The Wretched of the Earth. From the portions I read while in school I would heartily reccomend all three. The Fanons were masters of decolonial theory and their commentary on whiteness, primitivism, anti-colonial historiography, and colonial class violence (among a billion other things, they were really prolific theorists) is the first place i would recommend people go if they want to start decolonizing their marxism.

Che Guevara - I really hope I don't need to explain who Che Guevara is. Anyways read Guerrilla Warfare and his motorcycle diaries. Oh and while I haven't read any of his work personally, I would imagine Fidel Castro would also be a good one to read for 20th century anti-colonial marxism.

Subcomandante Galeano - Previously known as Subcomandante Marcos, this guy was the figurehead/spokesperson for the EZLN until pretty recently. Our Word is Our Weapon is a collection of some of his writings translated into English.

Eduardo Galeano - Eduardo Galeano was an Uruguayan Journalist and his book The Open Veins of Latin America is a cornerstone of 20th century colonial theory even if it might not strictly be marxist thought.

Edward Said - Said was a palestinian academic and journalist whose book Orientalism is required reading for any colonial historian and should be for any self-proclaimed communist as well. It's perhaps marxist in the broadest sense but it is first and foremost a book about peeling the white supremacy goggles off of your face when studying the history of SWANA, which is a practice you should then apply to every intellectual endeavor you undertake for the rest of your life forever including your marxism.

anyway thats hopefully a good list to get you started. I know a few of my mutuals can probably add recommendations and provide a more educated communist perspective. Like I said before I'm a marxist historian more than I am a marxist in a communist sense.

[rainyobservationperson]

I had a merthur fic idea that it's keeping me awake at night and I just had to write it down (METHUR PROMPT)

OK, so hear me out. What if merlin after having lived 1500+ years has forgot Camelot?

Like not the idea of Camelot, he knows what happened and knows it's true, but like the specifics are blurry. He suddenly can't remember how did the castle looked, or what was the name of the cook, things that, to him made all of the experience, personal. But it gets worse, he can't remember the face of his mother, or Gaius's voice, he can't remember Arthur, so he panics.

He has had SO MUCH TIME, and so he has studied a lot about his magic, most of it through trial and error and personal experimentation, because most of the magics in the world have already vanished, so he tries to create a new spell, to make himself remember, fearing that he won't recognize Arthur when he came back.

This new spell is meant to help him remember, relive if you will, the memories that he lost. He pours every bit of knowledge into this project, practicing with very advance Alzheimer patients (because of course Merlin is a doctor, and a chemist, and a profesor... he has had time alright) and he makes a lot of progress. He spends years into this, but the progress is too little, he can make an Alzheimer patient remember up to 10 years in the best of the cases, but he has lived thousands, 10 years was virtually nothing.

Frustrated, and honestly more than a little drunk, and sad, he decides to wing it, he shouts the spell sobbing and uses all of the magic that he can, begs the gods to listen and he also threatens them for good mesure and then he passes out.

Basically he time travels, but he DOES NOT KNOW THAT. He thinks the spells work so fantastically he is having a really fucking amazing lucid dream of sorts, he doesn't remember the specifics so he can't know that he is not exactly following his original steps.

So we have a homesick Merlin running around Camelot, way to happy just to be there and maybe a bit high on magic (because of course in the past there's so much more magic than he's grown used to with the years).

Obviously shenanigans ensue, a 21 century mind in a medieval setting, a wizard that is used to using his powers regularly because nobody believed in magic anyways, a doctor with modern techniques, a slightly shortsighted profesor who is use to wearing reading glasses, a lovesick idiot who forgot the face of his first and most true love... He does something (I am yet to figure that part out) and make a big change in the course of the events and finally finds out that he timetraveled and that he is probably fucking up history for good, and tries to fix it maybe.

That's basically the basis of the idea, I think there a lot of possibilities this could go and I really love it. I wanted to write it here so if anybody wanted to write something with this idea or expand on it it could be fun

English is not my first language so im sorry if I made a mistake. Pls let me know what you think about it. I might expand this with more head canons later.

[werezmastarbucks]

1. Be nice to the weird guy and see what happens

barry allen x female reader

word count: 1745

part one out of 8

He liked to sit next to you at the cafeteria because nobody else would have him; he was the chatty, obnoxious dude with the weird laughter who annoyed the fuck out of anybody who had the rotten luck of spending time with him. It was known that during the classes, he was definitely useful to some; being all open and helpful with the late homework, difficult passages and intricate nuances of law. His real love was physics, though, and if he started babbling about it, one could shoot oneself in the mouth.

You didn't mind. Perhaps it was the fact that Barry was extremely easy on the eye - the whole sculptured face and the articulate mouth thing going on. But, rather, you liked to listen to his theories in the breaks, between literature, history of literature, critical literature, medieval literature... well, there was a lot of lit. Once you got through his initial jokes, complicated formulations and extremely long lyrical digressions, you started hearing really interesting things. Maybe you were a little bit more patient than everybody else. Maybe you just clicked.

Thus you spent almost all breaks at college. You'd emerge from the different sides of the building in the messy crowd of peers, and meet at the cafeteria where only one table could tolerate Barry Allen. You'd always switch lunches; you were dead set on eating more dairy because it was good for stomach, but, ironically, you couldn't stomach (pun intended) the feeling of yoghurt in your mouth. Not hard, not liquid, what is this thing, yoghurt? Yet, you bravely bought it every time, and then, after a couple of spoons, gagged, and after several weeks Barry was already accustomed to silently switch trays with you. He always bought the second one anyway. The dude ate for three and was still lean, almost slender.

You'd listen to his ramblings about equations until you got bored, and then would start asking him actually relevant questions.

Barry, how the fuck do we build the ionic engine asap? Barry, is that possible, that a person, not a metahuman, but a usual human, could hold gusts of dark matter inside and have the cells tolerate it? Barry, how the heck do mirrors work?

He was always happy to talk about it with you. You liked each other. You were nice to the weird guy who was being mildly bullied, frowned upon, by other students; and this way, you got your first friend at Central City College.

It's been months before you started noticing some strange things about your hyperactive, gluttonous, OCD, nervous, obnoxious friend.

First, that building collapse that happened on Thursday, 12th of December, and when the phones of the entire classroom started going off, you thought immediately about telling your friend, Barry. It's a natural reaction. You were puzzled not to see him in the cafeteria, or anywhere in the College, although you'd seen each other that morning, and moreover, Barry skipped studies very rarely. You thought it odd and texted him, and only got the reply very late that night:

"Sorry, I had to run, eaten something reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaally shitty. Yeha, I've seen on the news. Crazy. Cool that Batman and the Flash were there".

He always, always misspelt 'yeah'.

You wouldn't build the whole picture until much later, when you started seeing a pattern. Barry acted really weird when talking about metahumans. Not that it was your favorite topic, or you spoke about it often. But every time, he would start nervously stuttering and blinking like thirty times faster, and try to change the subject.

Uhm, yeah? The Flash, he's- he's really cool, yeah? So... fast!

The usually talkative, imaginative Barry was at loss when talking about them. If you'd ask him to characterize the metahumans, he'd describe all of them as 'cool' and 'fast'.

Then, there were these sudden disappearances when something occurred in the city or elsewhere. Of course, when you look at it with the perspective, it's laughably obvious, but while the history is writing itself... yes, Barry has gone rogue here and there during the classes, and then reappeared a day later, and happened to slack at replying to you, but you didn't text to each other that often. So the crazy realization came to you a different way.

The Justice League did not like the spotlight very much. The most outspoken and open ones were Wonder Woman and Aquaman. Those two, they were so invincible that they had nothing to be afraid of. Always smiling confidently and calmly, with nothing but polite words of support, should they happen to meet someone who'd recognize them. Batman, Cyborg and Superman were the different tale. They were secretive, quiet, evasive. They were the real cool heroes, who left the intrigue hanging, made everyone ask questions and hope for excitement. You yourself have written 2000 words on the phenomenon of mysertious identities of the team, for your creative writing homework.

But the Flash. The fastest person on the planet was the hardest to catch, and at the same time, the pictures of his face, out of those four who were hiding their identities, were of the best quality.

There were three pictures: one from Gotham City a year ago, when a bridge has been blown up, and the team gathered to deal with the aftermath. The shot was not too blurry, with his back turned, but you could see the way he was standing, resting, like an Olympic runner.

Second picture was a picture of his face, but relatively bad; it was probably a maximized shot cut out from somewhere. You could be looking at a mashed potato and trying to guess the eyes and the mouth.

Third, was a picture of the whole team from Laos, where they were doing god knows what, honestly, you weren't that interested in superpeople. The news headline said that they had located the position of the weapon smugglers, and Batman took charge unlawfully, and the whole Justice League was in peril. Not for the Flash though! That day also provided a video of him, probably a very foolish thing to do for someone who is trying to stay unknown. You got a close up Batman, who was trying to shove the camera down, and then, seemingly from under his elbow, the bright red Flash appeared, very close, his face at 45 degrees to the camera. Looking briefly into the lense, he said,

"Umm, I, like, see the remains out there, I'll go then chief".

Utter gibberish, said in the same voice that always told you tales of speed, and particles, and timeline, during lunch breaks.

You weren't looking or investigating on purpose; it was just boredom. It was February, and you had cold. You were browsing the news to be aware of the next essay point. And then you saw this guy, with parasite words flooding his speech, so close to the camera that you paused, and leaned in, and yelled,

"What the fuck?!"

Later that week, after you got better and returned to studies, you met Barry at cafeteria during the break. It was pretty much the only times you met at all, but friendship was string, joyful, and mutually respectful. You started noticing the limp that he hadn't had five days ago, and the way his cheekbones might just be the most recognizable cheekbones in the world. Barry Allen was also granted some of the most distinctive voices you'd heard: capricious, like a chainsaw working. Once you'd heard it, you'd never forget.

You pretended to eat like nothing happens as he told you about every little fucking thing that happened at the College while you were away.

You considered being decent and talk to him eye to eye, but the curiosity, boredom, got the best of you, and you snapped right after you've finished your meals.

As you left the cafeteria and walked across the yard to get into the next building, to the library, you phased in and returned to reality, only to discover he was still talking.

"Are you the Flash?" you asked quietly, snugging closer to him.

You could see the closeness at first startled him; his eyes darted from your shoulder to your face, but then the information reached his brain.

"Why would you say that?" he asked.

You stood in front of him, almost laughing.

"What do you mean? I've seen one video", you whispered, "and realized it was you. I mean- it would be more difficult not to see it. And your voice, it was your voice!"

Barry clasped his hands together as if he was a boy being told off.

"Well, I've also seen the resemblance, and..."

You took your phone and opened the screenshot you'd taken, and put it next to his face to compare. Barry's hand was on your immediately, taking the phone down. Seriousness changed into joking denial.

"Come on, I mean, I take it as a compliment, but I can't possibly be the Fla-hu-huhsh".

His laughter drew a wall between you. In a moment, for some fucked up reason, you felt misunderstood, and hurt.

"Why are you denying this? I won't tell anyone", you looked around, at the utterly indifferent surrounding, where people wouldn't care if you two got completely undressed and started eating soil.

"I am your friend. I was just so flabbergasted to find this out. But I won't tell anyone".

Barry looked lost. He seemed like a boy so much at that moment, not knowing what to say.

He knew you wouldn't tell. He was surpried it took you more than two months to realize who he was. Bruce and Diana were dead set on keeping him anonymous. Bruce especially; he was constantly paranoid about Barry, and what he did to compromise himself, and his social circle (although he said a number of times he didn't have any). He would butcher the idea into his head almost every time they went on a mission: be careful, don't interact with anyone, don't let people look into your face too much; the mask is too revealing.

He was now in between. The idea that Y/N would know him for real made him feel more special than even his powers.

"I'm sorry, I am not the Flash", he said. He watched your face close down with disappointment.

"It's okay, I understand, I guess".

Why did she have to be so stubborn though? It's like, every time Y/N knew something, or thought she knew something, nothing would turn her around, not even the reality.

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

I am trying to expand definitions what what are first, second, third world etc places. But I'm going to need more than that because it doesn't fit sci fi much as some places are medieval or older and others have extremely technology advanced. But even in each, there are different statuses. People who live like royalty/wealthy in a medieval world getting categorised near the bottom is natural when compared to the universe but also a bit unfair? I don't know. And there are obvious poor places in technology advanced worlds - but are miles ahead of royalty in medieval worlds. I'm not how to deal with this.

Licorice: Instead of using “first world”, “second world”, and “third world”, terms which are falling out of use anyway, have you considered using one of the terms used nowadays by aid and development circles, such as “developed country” or “low-income country”? These terms come with their own baggage and some people consider them to be equally pejorative, but they have the merit of describing the metric on which they’re based. 

If you’re building a sci-fi world, your starting place should be the standards which the powers that be in your world use to group, or rank, its communities (planets; countries; civilisations). If you have a Mother Planet that lords it over more recently colonised planets, you could have a literal First World-Second World situation. If the colonised planets then go on to colonise new planets of their own - Third World! If it’s all about which states have the most military power versus those which have little or none, you could invent a different term for that. 

Many sci-fi books and shows divide the world into communities/planets that share advanced tech and the culture that goes with it, and communities/planets that have been judged “not yet ready” for such tech, or communities/planets which are lagging behind in their development of that tech.

Tex: The terms you’re using come from the Cold War era (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2), and are in use mostly as a function of macroeconomics (Wikipedia). As such, in order to expand such definitions, you need to have a similar catalyzing event in your world’s history to have the same functional starting point.

In this respect, I would encourage you to study Star Trek: The Original Series, as it was written during the Cold War and has much contemporary criticism to the social turbulence of the time (Wikipedia, Memory Alpha).

For a perspective that’s roughly a generation or so removed from the Cold War, I would recommend both Stargate SG-1 (Wikipedia, SGCommand) and Stargate Atlantis (Wikipedia, SGCommand), as it’s useful to understand intergenerational impacts of socioeconomic decisions made for the entrenchment of social stratification, particularly in a sci-fi setting.

Historically, the creation of such disparate social classes as seen in, as you describe, the European medieval era, is due to the consequential accumulation of wealth caused by many series of war based upon cultural stipulations like religious strictures. Whatever originally created royalty and nobility, it frequently becomes a fixed social class due to artificial means. If a social norm is artificially devised, then the conclusion usually follows that it is unfair by design and thus not natural, because there are no avenues for change to fix any flaws that crop up.

Addy: It seems to me that you're trying to get a scale to describe societies at different tech levels. I'd recommend looking at the tech level system from the Traveller tabletop game - I think that could be a good spot for getting started. Or look at tech levels from other systems and things - that should help get you what you're looking for, a set of terms to effectively describe the technological level of a society.

Feral: I don’t have much to add to what Licorice and Tex have already said, but I would recommend studying cultural relativism to help with expanding your reasoning on how cultures interact with out reducing the broad spectrum of human experience to “advancement.”

[alagaisia]

Okay I don’t have anything specific to say, but I just finished the fourth book in the Lady Trent Memoirs series (by Marie Brennan), and I’ve been reading these between other books but I don’t think I’ve taken the time to make a recommendation. I wholeheartedly recommend these books. If you like fantasy, or naturalism, or archaeology, or dragons, or books, you should try these. The first one is A Natural History of Dragons.

It’s second-world fantasy set in a pseudo-Victorian era, which is very fun and has a different charm than the pseudo-medieval fantasy that’s so common. Isabella, the memoirist (who later becomes the Lady Trent), is a naturalist who studied dragons in the early days of naturalism when dragons had not been studied very much in the modern era (although there’s a well-known ancient civilization (this is where the archaeology comes in!) that seemingly knew much more about them).

The books are mostly her adventures in the field, but as memoirs, they also address the struggles she faces as a woman scientist in an era where most science is happening through “gentleman scholars,” and both her gender and hands-on approach are unconventional. The books also touch on the classism faced by one of her friends and research partners. Neither of those is the whole book- it’s not a book about those things by any means- but it’s present, and it makes the whole thing feel so believable. Honestly, I should have listed sociology/anthropology as another interest here, because in her travels we encounter a lot of people and spend time in cultures other than Isabella’s pseudo-European background, and the ones we spend more time on and get to learn about are so interesting (and treated with respect by the narrative). (Also, in Isabella’s pseudo-European home country of Scirling, the dominant religion is based on Judaism! It doesn’t come up that often since Isabella doesn’t think of herself as very religious, but is fun if you look for it, and another neat difference in flavor from fantasy religions made up from a Christian perspective)

Anyway the point is the books are very good, Isabella is a very fun character and there are a lot of funny moments, the world building is amazing and engaging and has a lot of depth, and you get very caught up in the excitement of what they’re doing. I am making this post because they just made a big discovery at the end of the book I just finished, and I was really so caught up in the thrill of how groundbreaking this would be, for their, you know, fictional society to learn about this other fictional culture and history.

I would not be making this post at all if I was at home because I have the 5th book in the series waiting for me there (thank goodness!) and I would have moved straight on to that one.

Oh also sometimes there are maps. And illustrations! Isabella sketches a lot of her work and sometimes we get to see them. But I know how we love a fantasy book with a map in the front.

[britneyshakespeare]

So yesterday I read "Slimed with Gravy, Ringed by Drink" by Camille Ralphs, an article from the Poetry Foundation on the publication of the First Folio in 1623, a major work without which most of Shakespeare's plays might very well have been lost today, possibly the most influential secular work of literature in the world, you know.

It's a good article overall on the history and mysteries of the Folio. Lots of interesting stuff in there including how Shakespeare has been adapted, the state of many surviving Folios, theories of its accuracy to the text, a really interesting identification of John Milton's own copy currently in the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the fascinating annotations that may have influenced Milton's own poetry!!! Do read it. It's not an atrociously long article but there's a lot of thought-provoking information in there.

There's one paragraph in particular I keep coming back to though, so I'm just gonna quote it down here:

...[T]he Play on Shakespeare series, published by ACMRS Press, the publications division of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Arizona State University... grew out of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s plan to “translate” Shakespeare for the current century, bills itself “a new First Folio for a new era.” The 39 newly-commissioned versions of Shakespeare’s plays were written primarily by contemporary dramatists, who were asked to follow the reasonable principle laid out by series editor Lue Douthit: tamper in the name of clarification but submit to “do no harm.” The project was inspired by something the linguist John McWhorter wrote in 1998: “[the] irony today is that the Russians, the French, and other people in foreign countries possess Shakespeare to a much greater extent than we do … [because] they get to enjoy Shakespeare in the language they speak.”

Mainly it's the John McWhorter thing I keep coming back to. Side note: any of my non-native-English-speaking mutuals who have read Shakespeare, I would love to know your experiences. If you have read him in translation, or in the original English, or a mix of both. It's something I do wonder about! Even as an Anglophone reader, I find my experience varies so much just based on which edition of the text I'm reading and how it's presented. There's just so much variety in how to read literature and I would love to know what forces have shaped your own relationships to the stories. But anyway...

The article then goes on to talk about how the anachronistic language in Shakespeare will only fall more and more out of intelligibility for everyone because of how language evolves and yadda yadda yadda. I'm not going to say that that's wrong but I think it massively overlooks the history of the English language and how modern standard English became modern standard English.

First of all, is Shakespeare's language completely unintelligible to native English speakers today? No. Certain words and grammatical tenses have fallen out of use. Many words have shifted in meaning. But with context aiding a contemporary reader, there are very few lines in Shakespeare where the meaning can be said to be "unknown," and abundant lines that are perfectly comprehensible today. On the other hand, it's worth mentioning how many double entendres are well preserved in modern understanding. And additionally, things like archaic grammar and vocabulary are simply hurdles to get over. Once you get familiarized with your thees and thous, they're no longer likely to trip you up so much.

But it's also doubtful that 400 years from now, as the article suggests, our everyday language will be as hard to understand for twenty-fifth century English speakers to comprehend. The English language has significantly stabilized due to colonialism and the international adoption of English as a lingua franca. There are countless dialects within English, but what we consider to be standard international "correct" English will probably not change so radically, since it is so well and far established. The development and proliferation of modern English took a lot of blood and money from the rest of the world, the legacy of which can never be fully restored.

And this was just barely in sight by the time that Shakespeare died. This is why the language of the Elizabethans and Jacobeans is early-modern English. It forms the foundations of modern English, hence why it's mostly intelligible to speakers today, but there are still many antiquated figures within it. Early-modern English was more fluid and liberal. Spelling had not been standardized. Many regions of England still had slight variations in preferences for things like pronouns and verb conjugation. We see this even in works Shakespeare cowrote with the likes of Fletcher and Middleton, as the article points out. Shakespeare's vocabulary may not just reflect style and sentiment, but his Stratford background. His preferences could be deemed more "rustic" than many of his peers reared in London.

Features that make English more consistent now were not formalized yet. That's why Shakespeare sounds so "old." It's not just him being fancy. And there's also the fact that blank verse plays are an entirely neglected art nowadays. Regardless of the comprehensibility of the English, it's still strange for modern audiences uninitiated to Elizabethan literature to sit there and watch a King drop mad poetry about his feelings on stage by himself. The form and style of the entire genre is off.

But that, to me, is why we should read Shakespeare. We SHOULD be challenged. It very much IS within the grasp of a literate adult fluent in English to read one of his plays, in a modern edition with proper assistance and context. It is GOOD to be acquainted with something unfamiliar to us, but within our reach. I'm serious. I do not think I'm so much smarter than everyone else because I read Shakespeare. I don't just read the plain text as it was printed in the First Folio! The scholarship exists which has made Shakespeare accessible to me, and I take advantage of that access for my own pleasure.

This is to say that I disagree with the notion that Shakespeare is better suited to be enjoyed in foreign tongues. I think that's quite a complacent, modern American take. Not to say that the sentiment of McWhorter is wrong; I get what he's saying. And it's quite a beautiful thing that Shakespeare's plays are still so commonly staged, although arguably that comes from a false notion in our culture that Shakespeare is high literature worth preserving, at the expense of the rest of time and history. It is true that his body of work has such a high level of privilege in the so-called Western literary canon that either numerous other writers equally deserve, or no writer ever could possibly deserve.

The effort that goes into making Shakespeare's twenty-first century legacy, though, is a half-assed one. So much illustrious praise and deification of the individual and his works, and yet not as much to understanding the context of his time and place, of his influences, forms, and impacts on the eras which proceeded him. Shakespeare seems to exist in a vacuum with his archaic language, and we read it once or twice in high school when we're forced to, with prosaic translations on the adjoining page. This does not inspire a true appreciation in a culture for Shakespeare but it does reinforce a stereotype that he must be somehow important. It's this shallow stereotype that makes it seem in many minds today that it would be worth it to rip the precise language out of the text of a poet, and spit back out an equivalent "modern translation."

[rainyv-skies]

Dear friend; The Weeping Monk / Reader , Isaac Lahey / Reader

Fandom: Teen Wolf/ Cursed

Story summary: reader is a universe traveler who can enter through different alternate worlds. She meets and bonds with Isaac Lahey in the Teen Wolf universe and recalls her times and dear friend in the Medieval fey world, set in the Cursed universe with The Weeping monk. She remembers her last memories together with the monk, but was it really her time with him? Isaac seems to resemble someone she knew long ago.

Notes: I stood up all night writing this, no exaggeration. If this is not decent , I apologize. This was a very spontaneous idea and I had not written and published something to the public in a longgg time. Anyways, this is sort a cross over au and reincarnation type of thing between The Weeping monk and Isaac Lahey, and a bit of a hint of soulmate au. I hope it makes at least a little sense lmao, I struggled whether the relationship between the reader and Lancelot should be platonic or romantic so I settled on putting it between the lines so the readers have different perspectives . Enjoy , hearts and feedback is very much appreciated

Word count: 5300 ish??

—————————

“He meant a lot to me ,” (Y/N) divulged, keeping her tone quiet while her hands ddled with one another. Sat side by side, Isaacs ears perked at the reveal. His head tilted towards her and his eyes studied her far expression. “He was... good company. The best company. My dear friend,” She all but solemnly disclosed and her hands had stopped fiddling, Isaac took notice. She recalled the times of her old companion with a heavy heart, having not spoken of the formal Weeping Monk in a while. It had been some time since her adventure in the world of Fey and Man, the fighting and survival still fresh in her memory. “He was dear to me. We never spoke of our relationship. We both understood that we meant a great deal to one another. He protected me, he made sure I was ok and he absolutely refused whenever I tried to do the same.” A small smile curled her lips and she huffed a chuckle as she shook her head. Isaacs eyes led astray from her, now casted down at their shoes.

He tried imagining this friend (Y/N) seemed to hold close to her heart. What was he like? Sure, from what (Y/N) told him he was protective and hated relying on (Y/N) . But what else? His heart tugged when the question was raised. “The git was always so difficult when it came to someone else looking out for him. I had to force him most of the time, but we grew very close. Very close. ” (Y/N) inhaled deeply and exhaled then pulled her knees up, propping her elbows on them. The air became sad, and Isaac could smell the sadness slowly seeping from her, but a small hint of...nostalgia. “It was a very different time then, Isaac. Very medieval, and magical. I suppose you wouldn’t feel so out of place there, huh.” Isaac looked back up at her , raising his eyebrows quizzically at the jest. (Y/N) looked over to him and met his eyes with a grin playing at her lips, a twinkle in her eyes. His own grin pulled at his lips in response. (Y/N)’s grin faltered slightly,his smile igniting a sense of familiarity in her brain, though she couldn’t place her finger on it.

He turned his head back forward and leaned his head against the wall, letting out a sigh.

“Ok, I turn into a full blown werewolf during a full moon. I get it.” he retorted and (Y/N) let out a chortle, brushing her train of thought away. She bumped his shoulder with his own and Isaac reciprocated the action. A silence hung in the atmosphere among the two and (Y/N) mind went back to thinking, discreetly taking a glance at his face while Isaac wondered about the mysterious friend of (Y/N). Isaac waited with a bated breath and he wondered if his curiosity was worth sating, but the question sitting at the tip of his tongue itched to be spoken. He didn’t want to intrude on deep history, especially one that seemed so emotionally sensitive to (Y/N). The tug in his heart didn't let up, almost like it was urging him to ask the question.

“What..” The question faltered on his lips in hesitation, (Y/N) looked away in time but glanced at him and hummed in acknowledgment. Isaac gathered his question, his mouth opening to ask once again. “You never mentioned his name. What..what was his name?” Isaac asked softly, looking over to the girl whose head was still turned forward. Initially , he thought he shouldn’t have asked in the first place because the far away look took over Y/N)’s eyes. He gulped.

“Sorry, you don’t have to answer that. I shouldn't have,” Isaac stammered and (Y/N) shook her head. “No,” (Y/N) said softly, although her eyes still held the same expression. “It's ok.” She reassured him. It was a long time since she had spoken his name, and recalled the time when she and Lancelot were riding on Goliath - his horse and another friend of (Y/N)’s - through the forest. At that time, they had not known much of each other, but a small friendship had unknowingly begun to start.

—

Green trees and lush grass filled (Y/N)’s hazy view as she slowly came to after dozing off. Her body rocked as Goliath trotted through the forest, birds chirped and the buzzing of flies surrounded her. She blinked and lifted her head, taking in her surroundings. She noticed the reins were loosely held on from a pair of hands, of which were also circled loosely around her waist.

“Good nap, girl?” The monk's deep and raspy voice quipped from behind her, startling (Y/N) slightly.

(Y/N) grumbled in annoyance and rolled her eyes, although embarrassed of dozing off. She hoped she hadn’t almost fallen off the horse during her short nap, the monk probably would have had to make sure she didn’t. Although, she secretly knew he wouldn’t have minded letting her fall off.

“Shut it. Who wakes someone up before the sun even rises.” She shot at him, shuffling in her spot. God, her ass was numb. The monk smirked, amusement filling him.

“Did you know you snore in your sleep?” The monk took everything in him not to chuckle at (Y/N)’s stiffened posture, his eyes set on the path ahead of them.

“I do not snore!” She growled and felt her ears heat up. She knew she snored in her sleep. Dear god, why had she fallen asleep?! The monk let out a small sarcastic hum with a smile on his lips.

(Y/N) let out an exasperated huff, her head falling forward slightly.

“Ok, so I snored in my sleep. What about it Monk ?” (Y/N) said sharply , rolling her eyes once again. The monk chuckled, deciding that he was amused enough from the interaction. All that was heard now was the annoying buzzing of the flies and Goliaths hoofs pounding on the ground beneath them, and the occasional bird. (Y/N) grew restless and the numbness had not disappeared from her ass. She shuffled once again, jostling the Monk's forearms in the act. The monk glanced at her but continued to let Goliath trot forward. (Y/N) huffed and shuffled again hoping to ease the painful ache that was now spreading to her thighs, the monk sighing as she did so.

“Stop moving.” The monk said and (Y/N) grunted.

“Can we take a break? My ass is numb.” She murmured the last part, trying to shift some feeling back into her bottom. The monk snorted, debating whether he should stop. The next stop wasn't going to be for another day and the sun was beginning to set, so he decided to just set up a fire and camp for the night. Goliath needed a break anyways. He pulled on the reins, bringing Goliath to a stop and setting his foot on the stirrup , swinging his leg and dismounting off of Goliath. (Y/N) let out a sigh of relief but came to a realization she’d have to get off as well. She looked down at the ground on both sides, obviously seeming unsure of how she should get off. She supposed she could just slide off of the beast of a horse, but the numbness had made her legs stiff. This was going to be a bit awkward. The monk took notice, his blue eyes gazing up at her with an eyebrow raised.

She glanced at him and back at the ground.

“Um..” She started and the monk could’ve snickered, but held off.

“Take your time, girl.” The monk smirked. (Y/N) ignored him, figuring out how she should go about it without falling on her ass in front of him. Frankly, she could’ve asked for help, but she knew the monk would see it as a satisfaction. So no. She wasn’t going to ask for help. Awkwardy, she scooted back on the seat and gripped onto the saddle, carefully bringing her leg to the same side the Monk was. She leaned on the saddle, preparing to slide off. Problem was, when she looked down there was no way she was going to jump off, not at how far the ground seemed to be. She was now leaning on the seat with her legs dangling on the side, gripping on for dear life. She grunted, her foot trying to find the stirrup in panic as her weight slowly started to pull her down. The monk had crossed his arms, watching silently in amusement as she struggled to find the stirrup.

“Do you need assistance?” He asked as she continued to struggle.

“No. I'm fine. Just..just,” (Y/N) trailed off as she had finally found the stirrup. She let out a small grunt and started to descend to the ground. The monk took a step towards her for if she were to fall, he would be able to catch her. Thankfully , she landed on the ground on both feet with a ‘hup’. She turned towards him with a triumphant smile. The monk looked at her and held his breath, trying to keep his composure intact. He nodded his head and cleared his throat, sidestepping from (Y/N) to adjust the saddle.

“We’ll set up camp. Stay for the night and start riding at dawn.” He grabbed the pack from the saddle and led Goliath towards the camping area he had spotted a little deeper into the forest. (Y/N) replied with an ‘ok’ and followed closely behind.

Shortly after, a fire was started and frogs croaked into the night. The sun had set and stars twinkled in the dark sky, (Y/N) was eating the packed bread and some rabbit meat the monk had hunted. He was quite skilled at hunting, she had to give him that. The monk leaned on a log opposite from (Y/N) across the fire, maintaining the steel sword he owned. The sword he used that claimed many fey lives. (Y/N) swallowed down her food and looked up at the weeping monk, studying the way his eyes focused on his sword, the cloth held in his hand gliding down across the steel. (Y/N) licked at her lips and cleared her throat. The monk glanced up at her but returned his gaze to his sword.

“Are you going to eat something?” (Y/N) asked, furrowing her eyebrows. The monk gave no immediate answer but continued to wipe his blade. (Y/N) waited for a reply, staring at him.

“No. You eat, and then sleep. I will keep watch.” The monk replied a moment after, putting his sword back into the sheath. (Y/N)’s frown deepened. “Keep watch? You need to sleep and eat. We’re traveling early.” (Y/N) shook her head in disagreement and set the food aside the cloth that laid in her lap. The monk looked up at her, his hood slightly concealing his face.

“Do not worry. It will be fine.” The monk replied, staring right at (Y/N). (Y/N) sighed. Of course he was going to be stubborn about it. Gathering the food in the cloth, she stood up. The monk watched her closely, his eyebrows pinching together slightly in question. His eyes continued to follow until she stood in front of him, now holding out the cloth of food. He glanced at the food and back up at her in confusion. (Y/N) raised her eyebrows and shook the food in her hand.

“Take it.” (Y/N) said, shaking her hand once again when the monk didn't react. The monk pulled a face at her and she rolled her eyes. She gave him a deadpanned look.

“I'm not offering, I’m commanding. I'm not gonna catch you if you faint on the horse from lack of sleep and food. Now, take it. Or else.” She threatened. In truth, she had no idea what she was gonna do. Shoving the food down his throat was not an option. He would probably throw her into the fire.

Much to (Y/N)’s surprise (and relief) the monk reluctantly grabbed the food from her hand and glanced at her. The whole time, he was silent, not expecting the kind action. It stirred something unfamiliar and warm in his chest at the action. He had never once in his life had someone be so kind to him, having spent most of his time massacring fey, he felt like he didn’t deserve such kindness at all.(Y/N) knew what kind of things he did, and still does for that matter. He set the food down and cleared his throat.

“Thank you.” he quietly said, setting his sights down on the ground. (Y/N) smiled in success.

“You're welcome, Monk.” She turned around and made her way back to her spot across from his. She sat down on the blanket and stared at the fire, letting the sound of crackling fire and frogs take over. She was comfortably sitting in the silence, the warmth of the fire giving her some contentment in the cold night. The monk looked at her over the fire and stared intently. The question still hung in his mind and for a while he wondered. For a good five minutes he wondered while (Y/N) sat in silence.

(Y/N) and he had been traveling together for a while, it was his responsibility that had fallen on him after Father commanded to ‘keep the odd woman under his watch’ after she had appeared seemingly from nowhere dressed in odd clothes for a woman, immensely confused and in shock. It was an odd relation, if he could call it that. But she had helped him in many ways. Stitching his wounds that he gained when protecting her and even that one incident when the lashes on his back had grown infected causing him to fall ill. (Y/N) watched over him during his fever. After the horrifying near death incident, (Y/N) had made it her mission she would take care of him when he took care of her. It felt wrong at first; her taking care of him. It often made it difficult to complete his missions, the bond was risky. Father would most certainly banish her from his life would he figure out that his most trusted warrior was becoming soft for a random woman, he was a monk. The Weeping Monk. But, he decided to keep it a secret. Deception was a sin and every day he feared for the girl. But never for himself. Though they often spited each other, she lightened the days and made them less dull, always finding a way to make him laugh every once in a while. He stuck around and made sure she was ok when she became confused again until she wasn’t. It was like clockwork, it became their nature. He cared for the girl. She meant a great deal to him. It was apparent she cared for him too. Their bond was completely natural. Maybe one day she would be his biggest regret, but he didn’t seem to think so cautiously about it anymore.

Suddenly, he spoke, causing (Y/N) to switch her gaze at him in surprise, most certainly caught of guard.

“Lancelot.” He said. And for a while (Y/N) was silent, still staring at him with a caught off guard expression. A moment later, (Y/N) responded.

“What.” (Y/N) finally said . The monk looked at the fire, avoiding the stare (Y/N) gave him, growing slightly nervous at the attention.

“Lancelot,” He repeated himself but firmly this time. He continued, adding more description to his words.

“ A long time ago, my name was Lancelot.” He said, crossing his cloak covered arms over his midsection. (Y/N)’s eyes widened slightly , stunned from the reveal. She slowly recovered from the shock and soaked in the new information.

She said his name in her head, testing it out. It was quite nice. Medieval, of course, but nice.

Huh. I like it. She thought.

“Lancelot.” She echoed, and the name felt foreign on her tongue. The newly learned name gave her a new perspective of the Monk, but it was growing on her already. The monk returned his gaze to her upon hearing his name, and it did sound strange - having not heard his own name being spoken from another person in a very long time, it would take time to adjust to hearing it once again. Now, to think of it, he didn’t mind hearing it from her. It felt like a breath of fresh air and a small weight was lifted from him. Who knew telling someone his true name would’ve given him some sort of relief in his damned life. Although, it unsettled him slightly. (Y/N)s eyes swiftly shifted over to him smirking. At this, his eyes narrowed at her, waiting for whatever would spill out of her mouth.

“Have you gone soft on me, Lancy?”

The monk let out an elongated sigh.

-

Shouts of men were heard from a far distance and the sound of multiple feet pounding on the ground pushed Lancelot further and further, stumbling in his path as he urged (Y/N) forward. They both rushed to find his horse, away from the paladin camp. His arm clutched at his side which bled and burned profusely, but the grip pulling at his sleeve kept him from passing out from pain and the concussion he had gained from the fight with the trinity guards. He barely made it out alive, had it not been for the distraction (Y/N) gave of which worked to his advantage.

“Come on, Lancelot! Keep going!” (Y/N) cried, her voice wavering as she tugged his arm. His chest fell up and down, heaving out breaths. His footing lost balance, tipping over an uneven muddy spot on the ground and fell down on one knee. His grip ripped from (Y/N) to catch himself before he fell completely on the wet ground. (Y/N) let out a small yelp and fell down on her knees, his fall taking her down with him. Bent over with his hand braced on the ground, he gasped from the pain and the utter exhaustion he felt. (Y/N) crawled over to Lancelot and grasped at his shoulders.

“Here, give me your arm.” (Y/N) grabbed the arm that held Lancelot up and put it over and around her shoulders. He grunted as he was pulled up, (Y/N) grunting in the process too from the sheer weight of him. “Christ, how much do you weigh?” She quipped through clenched teeth.

“Leave me.” Lancelot rasped, leaning on (Y/N). The voice of men grew closer, even their torches they carried seemed to be getting closer from the looks of it. Soon they would reach them and Lancelot was in no shape to ride a horse. He would most likely fall off. He would be dead weight.

“What? No! Are you crazy?! You're coming with me!” (Y/N) protested and pulled him along towards the horse. Lancelot let out a pained moan as his deep wound continued to bleed and ache terribly. He was sure he was seeing black spots from blood loss and the concussion.

“Over there!” A red robed monk shouted far from behind them. (Y/N) gasped and looked behind. They were getting closer. She turned back around, fastening their pace even more than last time.

“Hurry, Lancelot! The horse is right there!” Lancelot could hear the men coming closer and closer, their torches more visible and their stomps became louder.

“(Y/N).” he pleaded her name, although (Y/N) kept going, ignoring his plea.

Through (Y/N)s struggling and Lancelot’s wheezing, they had finally made it to Goliath who waited for their arrival. (Y/N) adjusted the saddle and with shaking hands she untied the rope from the tree. Lancelot fell to the ground on his knees a few feet away from (Y/N), beside Goliath when she had gone to untie the rope. He panted, his head hanging down. From behind them , Lancelot could hear the groan of a string being pulled back. He turned quickly at that, and his eyes widened at the archer that stood further away had begun to draw an arrow towards (Y/N) which would no doubt hit her, though she hadn’t the slightest clue. With the remaining strength he had, Lancelot swiftly stood up and ignored the sharp burn and pain in his side. It did nothing to stop him from grabbing a dagger from the pouch that Goliath carried on his saddle and hurling it towards the archer, using his whole body to throw the dagger with a yell. The dagger flew in the air and embedded itself in the stomach of the archer. He fell to the ground in shock and fell to the floor moments later.

(Y/N) gasped and had spun around to see what had happened, her eyes landing on the fallen body and Lancelot who was completely hunched over the ground, moaning in pain. (Y/N) rushed over to him and pulled him up to his knees. She fell to her knees, grabbing his face when his head lolled back while in a daze. She forced him to look at her, using her hands to hold his face upright.

“Lancelot! Hey!” She slapped his face hard enough to bring his attention to her. His eyes were half lidded and his forehead dripped blood down to his chin and over (Y/N)’s hands, but she couldn’t care about the blood. She scanned his body for new wounds that he could’ve possibly got from the encounter but found none. Good. She needed him to stay awake and alive.

“Listen to me, you need to get on the horse.” She commanded him, and she wasn't too sure if he could even comprehend what she was saying by the dazed look in his eyes. She wiped away the blood that dripped down his eyebrow.

“You hear me? Get on the horse, I’ll help you.” She spoke in a rush and tugged him up to his feet roughly, jerking him forward and onto Goliath. He yelped in pain , clutching his wounded side and found purchase on the saddle, barely holding himself up with (Y/N)’s help. There was no way he’d be able to get on the horse if he couldn’t even hold himself up.

“(Y/N)-” Lancelot weakly spoke, but (Y/N) shouted and cut him off, sending him a sharp glare.

“NO Lancelot! Get on the fucking horse!”

He stared at her, the weakening becoming apparent in his eyes. She searched his eyes with rage, but it slowly shifted to a sorrow filled expression. Her lip starting to quiver as tears pooled in her eyes and a lump formed in her throat.

“Please,” her voice cracked as she choked out. “Don’t do this.” She begged. Lancelot's heart squeezed painfully in his chest at the plea, his eyes squeezed shut and hung his head towards the ground. He shook his head.

“No, petal. I cannot go further.” He rasped.

A small sob from (Y/N)’s throat.

“I'm not leaving without you!.” (Y/N) declared, gripping his shoulder. Lancelot shook his head once again and grasped her hand that gripped his cloak , looking up at her through his lashes.

“I'm going to die, (Y/N). One way or another. But I'm not going to get you killed in the process. I'm too weak. You have to leave me, flower.” he pleaded, looking earnestly into (Y/N)s teary eyes. Her nose was red, her eyes were red and her lip couldn’t stop quivering. She whined and shook her head, tears falling down her cheeks.

“No, we can run away! We can! W-we can leave right now Lancelot, just get on the horse!” She cried out in desperation. Lancelot growled lowly in frustration, shouting out to (Y/N).

“No, (Y/N)!” He shouted. His eyes were furious as he stared (Y/N) down. She cried as she looked right back at him, her shoulders shaking from her sobs. He couldn’t leave with her, not even if he tried. He would die anyway, from his wounds or the men that are certainly making their way to them. He couldn’t get on the horse, let alone to keep himself standing up. He was too weak and too heavy for (Y/N) to carry. They would kill him first if he were to escape, knowing he was already mortally injured. He would slow down (Y/N), and then kill they would kill her. He could not let that happen.

“I am too injured, too heavy. Too weak. And even if I were to get on the horse, I would lose consciousness and slow you down. They will kill me and then you. I cannot go.” He firmly explained to her, his bloody hand gently caressing her neck and trailing up to her cheek, smearing blood along her skin. He was losing time, he noticed. His gaze softened, his throat closing too. He pulled (Y/N) into his chest who immediately drew her arms around him and hugged him tightly, crying into his gray surcoat. He stifled a groan that threatened to escape him from the impact of the tight embrace, but regardless of the pain, he wrapped an arm across her back and cradled her head. He pressed his lips firmly to the crown of her head while (Y/N) continued to cry in his chest.

“It’s ok, girl. You will be ok.” Lancelot whispered. At that , (Y/N)s cried harder and buried her face deeper into his chest and gripped onto his back. He cherished the precious moment, knowing it would be the last. After some time had passed, he pulled her apart from him and pushed (Y/N) toward Goliath. She almost protested, after having been pushed away from his embrace but He jerked his head toward Goliath, hunching over as he held his side and urging (Y/N) to mount the black horse.

“Go. Quickly. They are coming.’’ He pushed her back towards the horse, forcing her to mount Goliath who brayed and shook his head. He fastened the saddle once (Y/N) had pulled herself up the horse with his help, tugging at the straps and grabbing the reins. (Y/N) sniffled and wiped at her eyes roughly, though the tears kept coming. Lancelot had grabbed her hands with his hand, still holding onto the saddle to support himself and put the reins within her hands, closing them around the leather. He looked up at her with his cold hand covering her own, gripping them.

(Y/N) looked down to him from the horse, and her eyes locked onto his blue ones. Once again, she couldn’t help the tears falling and her lower lip curling, knowing this too, was going to be the last time she saw him. She hiccuped and Lancelot brought her hand towards his chapped lips, kissing her knuckles while he kept his eyes locked on hers.

“I am not afraid, so do not fear for me, petal. Death does not scare me. Be brave. Be strong. I will always watch over you. And if I cannot, I will find a way.” He promised to (Y/N), and she nodded her head slightly. “You are my salvation, (Y/N). ” He declared, holding a meaningful gaze with her. They held eye contact for a few seconds and (Y/N) quickly leant down to his face and pressed her lips to his cheek. She broke apart from him and stared down at him, speaking the best she could with her shaking voice.

“I care deeply for you, Lancelot. I'll miss you. Greatly.” Lancelot’s face slowly broke into a smile, a smile that reached his eyes and revealed his teeth, and the sight was cruel. Bloody, bruised and cruel, yet beautiful. “And I you, petal.” He responded softly, silence taking over as he stared deeply at (Y/N).

His eyes snapped towards the sound of men shouting and fire blowing, having now caught up to them. They approached from the trees and pointed to the pair, yelling at one another to catch them.

“Hold on!” He shouted and (Y/N) nodded her head quickly, her grip tightened on the rains and Goliath surged forward when Lancelot gave Goliath a smack to his behind, the horse letting out a squeal from the action. (Y/N) looked at Lancelot, committing his face in her memory one last time, him doing the same before Goliath took off in a bolt. (Y/N) let out a scream of fear, but held onto Goliath as he galloped away. The horse was fast, unbelievably fast. For a minute, she rode Goliath but turned back to watch Lancelot. He grew further and further away, turned towards her as watched her ride away until she forced herself to rip her eyes from the view when he turned towards the paladins, dropping to his knees. Surrendering.

And that was the last time she saw him. Her beloved friend.

—

(Y/N) breathed softly, her heart clenching at the memories. Isaac stared at her in silence, giving her a moment to herself before she spoke. He heard the soft beating of her heart and leaned closer to her body, their shoulders pressed against each other.

“Take your time, petal.” He reassured her and looked ahead. (Y/N)’s eyes snapped towards him at the name and stared at him, too stunned to say anything which caused Isaac to look back to her in alarm.

“What’s wrong? Did I say something?” He questioned with a frown on his face. (Y/N) stared into his blue eyes , slowly taking in his features. They were almost similar to Lancelot’s. Almost too similar. Excluding the moustache and the long hair that was always tied in a bun. Don’t forget the Ash folk marks. The tear marks under Lancelot’s eyes. And Isaac. The blue eyes, the youthful shape of his face, his lips, his smile. Everything. At first she thought it was just a crazy coincidence. A lot of people look alike, and quite frankly there's a shit ton of people alone in one world and in addition to many other worlds. Shit, she can even enter other worlds somehow and that was crazy enough, but the resemblance was uncanny….

(Y/N)s eyes widened as she looked back into his eyes and Isaac continued to watch her as she stared at him, his ears even turned red at the attention.

“Lancelot...” She whispered in astonishment as she gazed at Isaacs face again. He heard the beat of (Y/N)’s heart start to pound, and her scent became an overwhelming smell of emotions. Love, sadness, immense happiness.

He blinked at her.

“What.” He muttered, eyes wide as he stared at her. He hadn’t heard her speak from the pounding of his heart and (Y/N)’s combined, completely thrown off as warmth enveloped him from the name she seemed to call him. This was so strange, he thought. Lancelot? Had he heard that name before?...

(Y/N) broke from her trance, clearing her throat she shook her head. Isaac too seemed to break from the trance, now hazy as confusion filled his mind. What was happening to him?

“His name..” (Y/N) began softly, looking at him intently with prying eyes. Isaac listened, staring at her as well, waiting for her to nish as he held his breath.

“His name was Lancelot.” She finished quietly, watching his expression. Hearing the name, a sudden electricity shot through him and a ringing deafened him. He yelped in pain and covered his ears as the high pitched ringing blared in his ears. Suddenly, a rush of jumbled words echoed in his ears, like a sped up record replaying over and over again.

“... petal…Death...be brave...Always watch over you..can't...will find a way..”

Isaac yelled out in pain, grabbing at his head and curling into a ball, the jumble of words giving him a splitting headache. It hurt. It hurt so bad he wanted to tear his eyeballs out and rip out his hair. But eventually, It had started gradually slow, the echos fading away until it had completely stopped. Moments passed.

Until another loud echo of a whisper in his ears.

“You are my Salvation.”

That seemed to have Isaac collapse, like a button was pressed and the lights flickered off , black slowly creeping up in the corner of his vision. He saw a glimpse of (Y/N) kneeling over him, her frightened face fading to another image of her bloodied and despaired tear filled face. Back and forth, like flashes.

“Lancelot!” Was the last thing he heard before blacking out.

[eruverse]

Headcanon: jobs!!

This post talks about human jobs the nationpeoples have. Anyway, I think the nations aren’t always diplomats or politicians, even tho they could indeed take on some tasks along those lines. In general tho the nationpeoples are linked to the state/work for the state so it’s quite rare to find them working corporate jobs or opening businesses. IF they do, then ultimately these corporations have the state as their clients. Basically everything they do typically goes to the state fast.

Russia:

He has a military job (lieutenant general) with medical training. He’s been in the military for the longest time and would love some change + a bit of distance from the state, but the state doesn’t really allow him to (there are indeed some nations with a fate like that). At the same time, he’s not much suited for other things so he keeps returning to the same path? Yeah. He does have hobbies tho, for example he loves studying math and physics and would often sneak into good universities to learn under esteemed lecturers. They love him because he’s such a curious and attentive student but at the same time he’s not much cut out to do the works needed to obtain a degree, so he doesn’t get those. However he’s better than many academics in the field simply because he’s much older than them and has been studying for a hella long time (he’s also naturally gifted in these).

This is stereotypical of him, but yes he’s good at hacking. Often trolls people with his capabilities, which is at times harmless but sometimes he does some unhinged shit which causes legit headaches. Sometimes he uses his abilities to hack into America’s house and wreck shit with his computerized home appliances. Nothing harmful of course, and America also takes it all in fun strides and would call Russia back like “Hey you got lucky this time!! Awesome what you did!!” (They’re both kids ok).

Mongolia:

I mentioned his job before on another post some time ago, but basically he’s a nomad and he works with nomads, not sorry to be predictable lol. He travels all over the country to make sure the nomads live well, so basically some kind of an overseer and mediator. He also works in the conservation side of national parks. His jobs demand him to be out on his feet almost all the time and he’s too happy for it to want other jobs, lol. He only spends maybe a few months a year in the city.

During communist era he used to be in the military and became a general/lt. general (highest rank was marshal, right after army general). As a rule, the nationpeoples who were under Soviet Union + satellite states were all in the military. Even without that tho Mongolia has been in the military for the longest time since Empire era (in general medieval nomads doubled as armies), and these days he’s still called a lot to advise. He still trains a lot and a bulk of that is military level trainings.

Kazakhstan:

He’s a tech engineer for energy field hired by the state. Also does plenty programming but he does best with what he can work with his own hands, and any programming he does is ultimately linked to his main job. He often tinkers with techs at home as sources of inspiration.

(Yes, he’s Rich)

During communist era he was a lieutenant + military engineer. Was, and still is, an excellent sniper.

Uzbekistan:

Is a scholar in Central Asian history/related studies. He has deep interest in everything Central Asian and often does research under state sponsorship. As he’s also a student under sufi masters, his interests also include religion and/or theology.

His side job is gardening. He’s also a resident cook for people around him as he’s really great at it.

Turkey:

He works as a state advisor but his side job is designing bespoke attire for men and women alike. He works with the best quality garments made in his country and his customers are all high-end ones. His hobbies include sewing, knitting and dressing people up — which in fact he’s practiced since Seljuk era, where slave girls became stunning consorts in his hands. He loves beautiful people, but he’s very much on board with spoiling them so they could rise up to his standards.

[kradogsrats]

Hello ! You seem very knowledgeable about the practical side of life in the middle-ages and I love reading your takes on the TDP world-building... So, I am researching for the purpose of a fanfiction about Soren's illness and I intend Lissa to be a doctor. Could you tell me a little bit about what could the treatments for breathing diseases be in the TDP universe ?

HA okay so I don't think I actually know more about history than anyone else with an extremely casual interest, like I didn't study it in school except as adjacent to art history and I don't even read historical novels or fiction or anything? Though to be fair my mother-in-law is a legit academic medievalist publishing books about individual English manuscripts so maybe I just don't have a good calibration of "casual interest in history." Anyway, I don't have an answer off the top of my head, but that means I can walk you through my general research process!

Step 1: Decide on some parameters. Is there a real-life illness that you are applying for Soren? Is it a bacterial or viral illness, or a chronic condition like asthma? Are there additional symptoms that will need to be addressed, like fever? Do some research on the illnesses you are considering, and both their modern accepted treatments and "natural" remedies. (Ignore anything based on essential oils.) For example, some home remedies for cough and shortness of breath are:

Tea: with ingredients like ginger, honey, etc. which are believed to reduce coughing. Caffeine is also a natural bronchodilator, and since coffee is not naturally occurring in the TDP setting, tea is a good hand-wave source for it.

Saltwater gargle: more of a sore throat thing, really? But it might help with loosening mucus.

Other herbs: particularly mint (menthol), thyme, camphor, and marshmallow root. These can be incorporated into teas, or you can explore other delivery systems like more concentrated syrups or tinctures, breathing steam from infused water, or ointments applied to the chest/back.

You can also look at historical treatments for these illnesses, but that's sometimes actually quite hard to find information on. I'll usually look at anything from ancient Egyptian to the antibiotics era. Problems I've run into include things like "asthma was not acknowledged as a medical condition, so the treatment was basically 'breathe better'" or "pneumonia was so awful before antibiotics that you basically just died."

Step 2: Decide on what you're willing to allow in terms of stretching the setting. TDP is... not very medieval at all, actually? So I generally am willing to consider stuff that didn't develop until well into the 1800s. This can get particularly awkward with medical stuff, simply because we generally read any framework of medical understanding that predates the germ theory of disease and antiseptic sanitation as ignorant and primitive, and that makes having a medicine-oriented character come across as intelligent and informed is difficult. To that end, I generally just throw up my hands and say the TDP setting understands modern sanitation and germ theory.

The problem with that is that the germ theory of disease and corresponding antiseptic understanding required the invention of the microscope to be able to actually see bacteria. Prior to that, science understood contagion and various people theorized that disease was caused by some unseen particles or agent. (See the case of Ignaz Semmelweis and his discovery that washing your hands between touching cadavers and delivering babies reduced maternal mortality significantly, but was completely incorrect about why.) I would actually be willing to allow microscopes and the corresponding understanding of cells and bacteria into the TDP setting, I'd just describe them in a sufficiently old-timey and handcrafted way, but you may feel differently! (You can also just hand-wave it, of course... behave as if germ theory is common knowledge but never mention bacteria, etc. I mean, I guarantee that's what the writers would do if it came up.)

Generally my personal limits for something no longer feeling like it fits even the most advanced cutting edge of TDP science are things like petroleum products (the implications give me a headache), chemical electrolysis (eliminates a lot of synthesized chemicals), and penicillin-level antibiotics ("this cultivated natural remedy prevents infection when applied to a wound" is fine, but oral antibiotics for bacterial diseases are not). I don't take any of this into account when reading fic... it's just a helpful set of boundaries for consistency when I'm writing. (Also don't forget to check the actual source material: I somehow remembered the animal doctor using a stethoscope to examine the egg, but there's actually no stethoscopes anywhere in that scene or the later hospital ones. Which isn't at all to say you can't have them, but it would have been an interesting canon setting data point given that they weren't invented until the 1800s.)

Or, of course, you could ignore all of that and just go hard mode with Lissa struggling to balance Soren's humors via diet and bloodletting.

Step 3: Brainstorm how the more advanced elements you are allowing could be developed and transmitted. So taking the example of Lissa as a doctor (and oh my god what an idea, that's amazing): how and where was she trained (an apprenticeship, or are you going to include a university system)? What is the human medical community like (isolated individual clinics or some kind of guild network)? Where and how is research being done and how are practitioners informed of new discoveries or theories? (Is there a scientific journal-style circulation of pamphlets? Who verifies them? (That's a place where either a guild or a university would come in handy.) What is Lissa's level of interest in pushing the boundaries of medicine vs. delivering basic care, and how might Soren's illness change that?) A couple possibilities:

If Soren has an asthma-like condition that involves chronic inflammation, maybe she treats it with a form of Ephedra from the region between Neolandia and Duren. (I like trying to match biomes or environmental conditions when transferring real-world plants into TDP, but you don't have to.)

Maybe she hears of a mold that has been cultivated in Evenere that clears infections in wounds when properly prepared, and has to evaluate whether to attempt using it experimentally with Soren against the infection in his lungs.

TDP also has a whole secondary ecosystem of magical substances, which could be effective in various ways even without being used for dark magic spells. Plants from the Sun or Earth primal could have natural healing properties, and combined with ones from the Sky primal could particularly target respiratory symptoms. Basically, if you can't find a natural-ish treatment ingredient, make one up with a goofy name and say it's from Xadia. Maybe Viren goes to collect it himself at great personal risk.

Step 4: Consider magic! I assume part of what's behind making Lissa a doctor is exploring the relationship between magical and scientific medicine in intimate detail with her and Viren, which is amazing. How does the medical community (and/or Lissa personally) feel about magical healing? Is there animosity between practitioners of medicine and dark mages with healing spells, or collaborations that are stronger than either would be individually? Are there medical tools or equipment enhanced by magic (enchanted microscopes or stethoscopes)? Is there disagreement on whether magical Xadian ingredients are more effective than mundane ones for medicines? Does the medical community harbor feelings of resentful inferiority toward the powerful primal magic healing confined only to the elves, or pride in the completely non-magical accomplishments of human ingenuity? Is the overall future of humanity carried in the power of magic, or of science?

So those are overall the kind of things I consider and look up when doing worldbuilding for TDP fic. All the examples here are medical stuff since that's what was asked about, but it's basically the same for anything else from "I wish to intricately describe the fiber content and sources of this luxury clothing item and how it was made" to "I need to make it clear that this basement laboratory is equipped to deal with the possibility of small fires, because fantasy OSHA."

And here are a couple helpful links that I found while doing this:

Wikipedia - List of plants used in herbalism

Wikipedia - Herbal medicine (especially the section on preparations)

Wikipedia - Medicinal plants

Wikipedia - Timeline of medicine and medical technology

[cinematicnomad]

what is the Terror about? is it inspired by true life events? it feels like it is but my brain only brings up unrelated soldier things i sort of learned through the magnus archives (that is 99% due to the fact that i have studied ancient-medieval history and the last time i looked something modern history up it was bc tma mentioned it😭) anyway. it looks...good? is it good?

the terror IS based on real life, but it is definitely a fictionalized take on this piece of history. this is specifically an adaptation of a work of historical fiction by the same name.

there was an expedition in the 1840s where the british were trying to find the northwest passage...aka a potential trade route from britan to asia through the canadian arctic. the real expedition did include two ships, the hms erebus and hms terror, that were manned with 130 men of which none ever returned. evidence tells us they were trapped by ice for more than a year, that at least two dozen men died during that time, and that the men eventually abandoned the ships to try and walk to rescue only to disappear and, presumably, perish on that journey as well. what evidence remains points to a lot of different causes of death (scurvy, lead poisoning, starvation, exposure to the elements, and more....but also some signs of cannibalism).

the show follows all of those facts, and the characters are all made up of the real men who worked on those ships (jared harris plays captain francis crozier who was second-in-command, and tobias menzies plays erebus's second, commander james fitzjames). the fictional element comes into play through the addition of a massive, mystical creature that is terrorizing the ships and the men.

i am VERY obsessed with the show if you can't tell from my daily gifsets, and if you like TMA i think you'll get a kick out of this show. it's definitely a horror show but the relationships between the characters are SO good. i binged the whole first season in a single night (there IS a second season but the show is an anthology series so it's not related to the franklin expedition and i have never watched it). i highly recommend it to anyone who is even vaguely intrigued by the gifsets i've been posting. if you're in the states, the show is available on hulu!

[caelum-in-the-avatarverse]

I was gonna reblog this to say that while OP is right, I don't think it's so much "media literacy is dead" as it is "media itself has been truncated for profit and therefore it doesn't matter how much the writers understand the original point when they have to boil it down to fit the new timeframe the execs decided on anyway".

But then I did the math and it turns out the runtime is exactly the same.

20 episodes x 24 minutes = 480 minutes

8 episodes x 60 minutes = 480 minutes

What the heck. What are the writers even doing with all that time if not going off on wacky adventures?

But OP I do need to say something about these tags:

#like this fanbase's analysis comes close to that of the lord of the rings fandom #and yet you seem to have completely ignored it

1) Until ATLA has a notable population of fans with PhDs in various Medieval Asian Studies who publish peer-reviewed journals dedicated to the show, host annual conferences, and are referred to as ATLA Scholars, I'm afraid this fandom is nowhere near the level of the Tolkien fandom.

2) Even if ATLA did have such things, I doubt it would help, because the existence of Tolkien Scholars did not protect LOTR. A lot of liberties were still taken with the plot and characters in Peter Jackson's film trilogy, the most egregious probably being Faramir's characterization in The Two Towers and Denethor getting boiled down to a selfish and stupid leader, but also Galadriel's moment of temptation, Legolas's entire personality disappearing, Gimli getting reduced to comic relief, and Aragorn's reluctance to take the throne in general. And Tolkien Scholars were not a new or unknown phenomenon at the time--they've been around since at least the 70s, some of them were consulted while making the films, and it's safe to say that New Line Cinema was extremely wary of upsetting Tolkien fans in general (as evidenced by the fact that they completely scrapped all the scenes they'd already filmed of Arwen fighting at Helm's Deep because Tolkien purists pitched a fit).

That intense level of fan dedication still wasn't enough to protect the characters, and those films are from an era when studios still cared enough to put some heart and soul into their work.

But that's turned out to be the Jackson films' saving grace. Because when compared to the source material, the films are sorely lacking--but taken on their own, they're excellent pieces of art. I love the films, but whenever I watch them I'm always running a comparison to the books in the back of my mind. I can see where the missing pieces are. But I can also see why they were removed, and I can feel how much care and love and effort were put into the movies by everyone who worked on them. That's why the Jackson trilogy still captivates new viewers over 20 years later.

We'll have to wait and see if Netflix ATLA manages to pull off the same effect despite its own departure from the source material. Maybe the lack of Season 1's goofiness will be made up for with something else. Maybe it'll stand up on its own merits. Or maybe this'll be a novel blip in ATLA fandom history before we all ignore it and go back to prioritizing the cartoon.

One thing I do know for sure tho is that if Season 1 isn't goofy in live action, people who watch the live action first and then get into the cartoon are gonna complain about Book 1 being too silly or full of filler. Calling it right now, that's gonna be the #1 complaint among YouTube reactors. But it'll be a good way to weed out the weak. :P

Ok now we're just taking the piss right? Right?

Once again this sort of thinking is removing a fundamental character arc that makes this story what it is. A big part of Aang's journey, especially in season 1, but tbh it does return in later seasons too, is accepting that he is the Avatar, and that he's the only one who can end this war. During the whole first season he is in complete denial about who he is and what he's supposed to do, which is why in most of this season there's no sense of urgency, and then once Aang gets faced with a very real, very close deadline he panics. This makes it even more brutal when in season 3, after accepting this responsibility, he gets faced with the reality of failure. He runs away again, this time not because he doesn't want responsibility, but because he knows how heavy his responsibility is and he doesn't want to burden anyone else with it. Removing the first aspect, aka running away and denying responsibility, it in turn also removes the heavy emotion from his later arc.

It keeps surprising me that people who claim to be such fans of the original seem to completely miss the point of most of this story? Like how could you look at Sokka learning about women's rights, Aang learning to accept responsibility, and Katara's motherly warmth which happened because how young she was when she had to step into a motherly role, and think "well we should remove that." You're taking out all of character development and going purely off of plot (which isn't gonna be nearly as good without the character development!)

Atla is probably one of the most analyzed and picked apart story, has one of the most long running loyal fanbases, people are STILL making thinkpieces about this show, and you manage to still misunderstand so much???

[mamsellechosette24601]

In the Green vs the real Hildegard's writings and philosophy

Because of “In the Green”, I started reading a bit about Hildegard and her thinking so as to better explore the themes of the musical. I read the book “Hildegard of Bingen: A Spiritual Reader", by Carmen Acevedo Butcher, which was short and insightful, with lots of excerpts from Hildegard, so I’ll share what I got from it in relation to the musical.

1. The symbolism of the colour green and of the sun

"Hildegard called this vigor viriditas, the “green” energy of agape love pulsing through the entire universe. Over and over in her writings, she chooses viriditas to express God’s vitality and the ways His goodness and love charge the whole world with life, beauty, and renewal—literally, with “greenness.” Her unique, creative use of this Latin word makes it something of a neologism in her work. In Hildegard’s mind, viriditas was first found in the green of the garden of Eden, but it is also the green of whatever twig you or I happen to be looking at in this present moment, whoever we are, wherever we may be. She knew that the natural opposite of this “greening” energy was spiritual desiccation (including what we often call “depression”). But, like God’s mercy, His revitalizing viriditas has no limits. Wherever Hildegard looked, she saw that this “green” force animates every creature and plant on this planet with verdant divine love."

"The patriarchs and prophets who prefigured and predicted Christ were the “roots” of God’s divine tree, on which sprouted the most delicate “bud,” who is God’s Son, and from Him grew the “fruit” of the virtues: Humility, Charity, Divine Love, Patience, and their sisters. This is a favorite metaphor for Hildegard, and in her songs she praises the Virgin Mary as the “twig” or “branch” on which the “bud,” baby Jesus, flowered. By her intelligent selection of this one word, oculus, Hildegard has shown the center of her work—that to see God is to grow."

"In one of this volume’s poems praising Mary, “Grateful for the Unobtrusive Good,” Hildegard’s use of metaphors suggests that she saw no separation between symbol and fact. Metaphors were reality to her. Hildegard’s point in this song is that the divinely made sun giving earth life is also, in a mystical way, the life-giving Son of God who as the Word made creation’s every twig, including Mary, and yet was also Mary’s “Bloom”(…) In this song to Mary, the sun (also God’s Spirit) shines on the Virgin Mary, the “greenest twig.” She is a twig, not even a branch; but she is green with God’s pregnant vitality, and her comparative insignificance (as a woman, and unmarried) prepares her for the greatness of God’s Spirit to grow within her and produce the miraculous “flowering” of God’s divine-human Son. Her weakness is her strength, a recurring theme in Hildegard."

So, when Jutta sings “I can see the last of the light / Reflected in the green / Of everything”and we know what is going to happen, we’re supposed to cry at the distortion of life’s goodness

Sun Song gains a much more religious meaning, when we see everything that the sun and nature meant for Hildegard. In her “Book of Divine Works”, the Holy Spirit says: "I’m the divine flame of life, I burn above the golden fields, I sparkle on water, and I shine like the sun, the moon, and all the stars. Together with the loving, hidden power of the wind, I make everything come alive. Remember that I’m also Reason. I inform the wind of the first Word that created all things. I’m your breath, I’m the breath of all things, and none die because I am that Life." (should I read into In the Green’s “Air leaves my lungs/ I’m lying on my back / I’m staring at the sky / I open up my mouth but the air swallows my cry”? Jutta was forsaken by God, completely).

Death Ceremony, with its translation of “O Viridissima Virga”, introduces us to Jutta’s and Hildegard’s quest away from Eve’s curse and towards the Virgin Mary. The “little green branch” seeks the “branch of freshest green”, instead of rotting.

The idea of strength in weakness, which the Hildegards find in First Verb, appears, together with the aforementioned notions of the “green” and the “bud”, in Hildegard’s “Play of the Virtues”. "The virtues and the souls: 'When the world began, everything pulsed with life and was the tenderest shade of green.Flowers blossomed everywhere. But, after the Fall, everything green faded." The Warrior-of-Truth saw it all and said: 'I see what happened, but my house is not yet full. Look at me instead. I’m the image of your Father. Know my broken body broken for you. I’m exhausted. I’m tired of being made a laughing-stock. It goes straight through me. Even my followers lose heart. But remember this. The original abundance of green did not have to shrivel up, and your faith will see its way to strength, until you know the divinity of my jewel-covered body intimately, a gem in each injury, and each injury a bud. Look, Father! See my wounds? Now, let people everywhere kneel before God the Father, who’ll hand us strength on strength." 

2. Hildegard’s “Scivias”, where she first shares her divine visions vs Jutta

In “Scivias” Hildegard writes a metaphor of the sinning soul. Turning away from God and towards sin (the “North”), the soul speaks “I regret that so much now! For I was captured, robbed, blinded, and violated. My garment was torn. I was dragged to a gruesome place and subjected to the worst kind of slavery”.

Then the soul repents, and hides in a cave, like Jutta hid in the Undergound: “After I’d said this, I went down the narrow path and hid from the eyes of the North. I went into a tiny cave and wept because I’d lost my Mother Zion. I wept, too, for all my wounds. I wept for my sadness. I wept and wept. I cried so many tears, they absorbed my pain and bruises. Then I smelled something very sweet. It reminded me of my mother’s soft breath on my cheek. That small comfort made me cry some more. I was so full of joy that I cried until it shook the mountain of my cave." The crying out of joy that will force the soul out of the cave also kind of reminds me of The Ripening, especially in this connection to a mother’s love (“In living I have learned/ to love another as a mother/ And I’ve felt that love inside my wicked flesh”) but I may be reading too much into it.

The soul then is persecuted by her enemies, and we are told “Then I saw poisonous snakes, scorpions, and other hideous reptiles slithering towards me. The snakes were hissing. I screamed, “Mother! Where are you?! Help me!” I heard my mother say, “Run, daughter! The Omnipotent, Unconquerable Provider has given you wings. Fly! Fly over these things blocking your path!” And I did." Compare this to “I’m not going back / I’ll run until I die / And when I can no longer run / I’ll teach myself to fly / I try”. All in all, the world of Hildegard’s visions is far from the reality Jutta faced.

The soul faces self-doubt and recovers remembering it was created by God: “The Devil’s poison arrow is the evil robbing me of my spiritual joy. I don’t want to celebrate people or God. I doubt everything when I feel this way, including my salvation. But when God helps me remember that He created me, then—even in the middle of my depression—I tell the Devil, “I won’t give in to my fragile clay. I’ll fight you!” How? When my inner self decides to rebel against God, I’ll walk with wise patience over the marrow and blood of my body. I’ll be the lion defending himself from a snake, roaring and knocking it back into its hole.” It echoes Jutta’s advice to Hildegard in The Rule, but of course, she is not whole like she claims she is. (“When you are whole, you will be like me / When you are whole, you will move confidently / Through your life / And you will understand how the boulder becomes sand / And you will know how to not become sand / When you are whole, you will never be scared / When you are whole, you will always be prepared / For a dragon's attack! / And you will slay the beast..or scare him away at least / And you will never again be the least”)

3. In “The Play of the Virtues”, Hildegard focuses a lot on clothing, as a metaphor for the “wearing” of salvation, as something we’re born with and must keep clean. This enhances how soul shattering Jutta’s experience was, “His hand pulling at my skirt”.

4. Letter to the Belgian Monk Guibert (1175) and Light Undercover: "My spirit is ever illuminated by what I call the shadow of the living Light. It has no physical limitations whatsoever and is much brighter than a cloud through which the sun shines. I can never predict when or how I’ll see it. As water reflects the sun, the moon, and the stars, this shadow of the living Light reflects God’s Word, sermons, virtues, and the things that humans do. Whatever I see in that Light’s shadow stays in my mind for a long time, stored away. I see and understand, hear and know at the same time. I only know what I see in these visions, because I’m untaught. I record what I see and hear, without adding my own words, and my Latin is unrefined, because that’s how I hear it in my visions. I’ve not been taught to write like a philosopher. Also, my visions are filled with images and sounds that are nothing like words spoken by any human. They’re more like a blazing fire and a cloud floating through a clear sky. I can’t comprehend this Light’s shadow any better than I can look right at the sun. Also, sometimes in that shadow (but not very often) I see another light. This is the living Light I spoke of earlier. I’m even less able to explain what this Light is like in comparison to the other. But I can say that when I look at it, every feeling of sadness disappears, and my every ache leaves me. I’m no longer an old, sick woman. I become young again." “Light is in the dark”, strength is in weakness.

5. The entire play gains a deeper, metalinguistic meaning, when we learn that for Hildegard, “When we sing, we repossess some of the Eden lost when Adam fell”. (Letter to the Prelates at Mainz, 1178).

6. Becoming Whole

Hildegard’s visions in “The Book of Life’s Merits” and Underground"I saw a very tall man. His head and shoulders were above the highest clouds. His torso was in a white cloud below this, while his upper legs were in the earth’s atmosphere. From the knees down, he was planted in the earth, and his feet were rooted in the deepest waters of the abyss, which represent the virtues and their power. They are the antidotes to sin, because they have the might to make anything whole. They do this by cleansing whatever they touch and making it holy. They nurture and sustain the world, and they bear all things. Everything on earth steeps in the moisture of the virtues and is made strong, in the same way that the soul makes the body moist and healthy, regenerating it."

In contrast to Jutta’s teachings about the body, Hildegard finds more balance in her writings, as Butcher puts it “Hildegard understood the symbiotic relationship between body and soul. She knew that when the body and soul are not in sync, a person’s whole world is out of whack. While she believed that the physical body is easily wayward and must be controlled, she did not teach that the body is evil (…) Hildegard’s work also emphasizes taking care of the body, because it is the sacred temple of the Holy Spirit”. Against ideas of duality, Hildegard brings “God’s goodness and the essential wholeness of a divine creation that refuses to be separated into neat-but-useless categories of earth and spirit, body and soul, nature and people”.

[baeddel]

Please. Please can you tell me what a baeddel is and why people (terfs?) used it in a derogatory manner on this website for a hot minute but now no one ever uses it at all

you asked for it, fucker

[2k words; philology and drama]

baeddel is an Old English word. i have no idea where it actually occurs in the Old English written corpus, but it occurs in a few placenames. its diminuitive form, baedling, is much better documented. it appears in the (untranslated) Canons of Theodore, a penitential handbook, a sort of guidebook for priests offering advice on what penances should be recommended for which sins. in a passage devoted to sexual transgressions it gives the penances suggested for a man who sleeps with a woman, a man who sleeps with another man, and then a man who sleeps with a baedling. so you have this construction of a baedling as something other than a man or a woman. and then it gives the penance for a baedling who sleeps with another baedling (a ludicrous one-year fast). then, by way of an explaination, Theodore delivers us one of the most enigmatic phrases in the Old English corpus: "for she is soft, like an adulturess."

the -ling suffix in baedling is masculine. but Theodore uses feminine pronouns and suffixes to describe baedlings. as we said, it's also used separately from male and female. but it's also used separately from their words for intersex and it never appears in this context. all of this means that you have this word that denotes a subject who is, as Christopher Monk put it, "of problematic gender." interested historians have typically interpreted it as referring to some category of homosexual male, such as Wayne R. Dines in his two-volume Encyclopedia of Homosexuality who discusses it in the context of an Old English glossary which works a bit like an Old English-Latin dictionary, giving Old English words and their Latin counterparts. the Latin words the Anglo-Saxon lexicographer chose to correspond with baedling were effeminatus and mollis, and Lang concludes that it refers to an "effeminate homosexual" (pg 60, Anglo Saxon). this same glossary gives as an Old English synonym the word waepenwifstere which literally means "woman with a penis," and which Dines gives the approximate translation (hold on tight) male wife.

R. D. Fulk, a philologist and medievalist, made a separate analysis of the term in his study on the Canons of Theodore 'Male Homoeroticism in the Old English Canons of Theodore', collected in Sex and Sexuality in Medieval England, 2004. he analysed it as a 'sexual category' (sexual as in sexuality), owing to the context of sexual transgressions in the Canons. he decides that it refers to a man who bottoms in sexual relationships with another man. i don't have the article on hand so i'm not sure what his reasoning was, but this seems obviously inadequate given what we know from the glossary described by Dines. Latin has a word for bottom, pathica, and the lexicographer did not use this in their translation, preferring words that emphasized the baedling's femininity like effeminatus, and doesn't address the sexual context at all. Dines, however, only reading this glossary, seems to decide that it refers to a type of male homosexual too hastily, considering the Canons explicitly treat them separately. both Dines and Fulk immediately reduce the baedling to a subcategory of homosexual when neither of the sources to hand actually do so themselves.

by now it should be obvious why, seven or so years ago, we interpreted it as an equivalent to trans woman. I mean come on - a woman with a penis! these days I tend to add a bit of a caution to this understanding, which is that trans woman is the translation of baedling which seems most adequate to us, just as baedling was the translation of effeminatus that seemed most adequate to our lexicographer. but the term cannot translate perfectly; its sense was derived from some minimal context; a legal context, a doctrinal context, and so forth... the way Anglo-Saxons understood sex/gender is complicated but it has been argued that they had a 'one sex model' and didn't regard men and women as biologically separate types, which is obviously quite different from the sexual model accepted today; in any case they didn't have access to the karyotype and so on. the basic categories they used to understand gender and sexuality were different from ours. in particular, Hirschfield et al. should be understood as a particularly revolutionary moment in the genealogy of transsexuality; the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft essentially invented the concept of the 'sex change', the 'transition', conceived as a biological passage from one sex to the other. even in other contexts where (forgive me) #girlslikeus changed their bodies in some way, like the castration of the priestesses of Cybele, or those belonging to the various historical societies which we believe used premarin for feminization [disputed; see this post], there is no record that they were ever considered men at any stage or had some kind of male biology that preceded their 'gender identity.' the concept of the trans woman requires the minimal context of the coercive assignment at birth and its subsequent (civil and bio-technological) rejection. i have never encountered evidence that this has ever been true in any previous society. nonetheless, these societies still had gendered relations, and essentially wherever we find these gendered relations we also find some subject which is omitted or for whom it has been necessary to note exceptions. what is of chief interest to us is not so much that there was such a subject here or there in history (and whatever propagandistic uses this fact might have), but understanding why these regularities exist.

a very parsimonious explanation is that gender is a biological reality, and there is some particular biological subject which a whole host of words have been conjured to denote. if this were the case then we would expect that, no matter what gender/sexual system we encounter in a given society, it will inevitably find some linguistic expression. if, like me, you find this idea revolting, then you should busy yourself trying to come up with an alternative explanation which is not just plausible, but more plausible. my best guesses are outside the scope of this answer...

anyway, all of this must be very interesting to the five or six people invested in the confluence of philology and gender studies. but why on earth did it become so widely used, in so many strange and unusual contexts, in the 2010s? we're very sorry, but yes, it's our fault. you see apart from all of this, there is also a little piece of information which goes along with the word baeddel, which is that it's the root of the Modern English word bad. by way of, no less, the word baedan, 'to defile'. how this defiled historical subject came to bear responsibility for everything bad to English-speakers doesn't seem to be known from linguistic evidence. however, it makes for a very pithy little remark on transmisogyny. my dear friend [REDACTED] made a playful little post making this point and, good Lord, had we only known...

it went like this. its such a funny little idea that we all start changing our urls to include the word baeddel. in those days it was common to make puns with your url (we always did halloween and christmas ones); i was baeddelaire, a play on the French poet Baudelaire. while we all still had these urls a series of events which everyone would like to forget happened, and we became Enemies of Everyone in the Whole World. because of the url thing people started to call us "the baeddels." then there was "a cult" called "the baeddels" and so forth. this cult had various infamies attatched to it and a constellation of indefensible political positions. ultimately we faced a metric fucking shit ton of harassment, including, for some of my friends, really serious and bad irl harassment that had long-term bad awful consequences relating to stable housing and physical safety and i basically never want to talk about that part of my life ever again. and i never have to, because i've come to realize that for most people, when they use the word baeddel, they don't know about that stuff. it doesn't mean that anymore.

so what does it mean? you'll see it in a few contexts. TERFs do use it, as you guessed. i am not quite sure what they really mean by it and how it differs from other TERF barbs. i think being a baeddel invovles being politically active or at least having a political consciousness, but in a way thats distinct from just any 'TRA' or trans activist. so perhaps 'militant' trans women, but perhaps also just any trans woman with any opinions at all. how this was transmitted from tumblr/west coast tranny drama to TERF vocabulary i have no idea. but you will also find - or, could have found a few years ago - i would say 'copycat' groups who didn't know us or what we believed but heard the rumours, and established their own (generously) organizations (usually facebook groups) dedicated to putting those principles into practice. they considered themselves trans lesbian separatists and did things like doxx and harass trans women who dated cafabs. if you don't know about this, yes, there really were such groups. they mostly collapsed and disappeared because they were evildoers who based their ideology on a caricature. i knew a black trans woman who was treated very badly by one of these groups, for predictable reasons. so long-time readers: if you see people talking about their bad experiences with 'baeddels', you can't necessarily relate it to the 2014 context and assume they're carrying around old baggage. there are other dreams in the nightmare.

the most common way you'll see it today, in my experience, is in this form: people will say that it was a "slur" for trans women. they might bring up that it's the root of the word bad, and they might even think that you shouldn't use the word bad because of it, or that you shouldn't use the word baeddel because it's a slur. all of this is a silly game of internet telephone and not worth addressing. except to say that it's by no means clear that baeddel, or baedling, were slurs, or even insulting at all. while Theodore doesn't provide us with a description of how we can have sex with a baedling without sinning, and it may be the case that any sexual relations with a baedling was considered sinful, sexuality-based transgressions were not taken all that seriously in those days. there was a period where homosexuality within the Church was almost sanctioned, and it wasn't until much later that homosexuality became so harshly proscribed, to the extent that it was thought to represent a threat to society, etc. and as i mentioned, there are places in England named after baedlings. there is a little parish near Kent which is called Badlesmere, Baeddel's Lake, which was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Domesday Book (as having a lord, a handful of villagers and a few slaves; perhaps only one or two households). it's not unheard of, but i just don't know very many places called Faggot Town or some such. it's possible that baedlings had some role in Anglo-Saxon society which we are not aware of; it could even have been a prestigious one, as it was in other societies. there is just no evidence other than a couple of passing references in the literature and we'll probably never have a complete picture.

[keshetchai]

I agree that people do this to "the ancients" a lot, but a lot of the problems are frequently like...people relying on 18th-19th century pseudo-history and victorian romanticism of historical events. As opposed to any actual historiography. There isn't actually any debate about the whole eggs and rabbits thing.

(I mean....from your examples, Roanoke was definitely not ancient. And the Maya people still exist today. So that also contributes to how much we know today as opposed to actual ancient peoples/events.)

There's also whole sub-specialties of studying this kind of popular cultural conceptions of historical periods too! Like "medievalism studies" is sort of...about describing the popular understanding of What The Middle Ages Were Like, but filtered through a post-enlightenment lens/and fads, and often in direct contradiction with the actual history of the middle ages. But also ahistorical reimaginings of the time period, borrowing the popular ideas of what the middle ages were like for fantasy (yes, Game of Thrones!), and so on. Stuff like "girls got married at 12 all the time back then!" Is a good example. But also things like neo-gothicism/gothic revival, romanticism, the pre-raphaelites...all that can be viewed through the lens of medievalism.

At any rate, all Christians originally called it Pascha (in Aramaic and Greek) and Pasch which is derived from *drumrolls*  פֶּסַח pesach!

Which is Hebrew for Passover!

Meanwhile the ONLY attested reference to an old English (Saxon) goddess named Ēostre being the origin for the later English word "Easter" is from an 8th century (725) Anglo-Saxon Christian monk named Bede.

Bede was explicitly writing the text "The Reckoning of Time," in order to explain and justify the Synod of Whitby's 664 decision to favor the Roman reckoning of time over the Irish custom.

translatation of the Latin (pulled from wiki):

Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.

Eostur-monath, qui nunc paschalis mensis interpretetur, quondam a dea illorum quae Eostre vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant, nomen habuit, a cuius nomine nunc paschale tempus cognominant; consueto antiquae observationis vocabulo gaudia novae solemnitatis vocantes.

He's stating this goddess exists, a month was named after her, and now the English use still use this name to refer to the season of passover which is basically at the same time of the year (spring).

At most we could argue:

It's a natural syncretism of using the old month's name for a spring period while adopting April as the name of the actual month OR,

It's an intentional tactic on the part of the church to associate the old pagan terms with Christian holidays and Christian religious worship AND to further create distance from Judaism and the Jews.

But there's no other details other than this. The Saxon-German argument is basically the same.

Jacob Grimm (yes, like Grimm brothers Grimm) wrote about this in his 1835 book German Mythology (title translated) and he was arguing that the origin of the German month of Ostermonat is the same (more or less) as what Bede argued. Eosturmonath = Eostre, Ostermonat = Ostara.

But then literally everything else Grimm claimed about this proposed goddess is fully speculative and not based on any recorded proof Another writer Adolf Holtzmann also wrote a book "German Mythology" in 1874, and he was also just speculating when he guessed about the origins of the Easter Bunny.

Anyways all of these earliest examples claiming the eggs, rabbit/hare, etc relate to this Anglo-Saxon goddess that is "the inspiration for Easter" — are all from the 19th century, and are broadly speculating about late antiquity/and early medieval culture...which is an example of medievalism itself!

Within just twenty years, the association of rabbits laying or bringing eggs for became an "ancient pagan story" which influenced Easter.

All of this is just 19th century storytelling! None of it is historically grounded.

More fun egg points:

Christians originally weren't supposed to eat eggs during lenten, so Easter is obviously when they can eat eggs again. Meanwhile chickens still lay eggs during lent. The English developed the tradition of Egg Saturday where children go around asking for eggs and throw crockery at the windows of people who refuse.

Actually that whole article details allll the eggy traditions pretty well: Newall, Venetia. “Easter Eggs.” The Journal of American Folklore 80, no. 315 (1967): 3–32. https://doi.org/10.2307/538415 and the range of eggy related traditions that aren't even Anglo-Saxon.

The use of an egg during Pesach maybe started because the volume of an egg would have been a reference measurement (for determining a kaza'it, the amount of an olive, which is the amount of bitter herbs and matza people must eat. How much is a kaza'it? Different sages argued for different fractions of an egg. Rambam said it was 1/3 of an egg.) 🥚 but it also had symbolic meanings ascribed to it, and there's no singular origin known for it.

Saw a friend post a meme about Eoster being the source of Easter and CORRECTING it to say that the source was ACTUALLY Ishtar, and I want you to know that the noise I made was inhuman, darlings.

[qqueenofhades]

I'd love to read your thoughts on powerful/badass/interesting medieval queens! I love the Queens of Infamy series on longreads. com, if you're familiar with it. Sending extra love and hugs. <3

Aha, thanks dear. It is much needed. I am sending you hugs in return.

As for badass medieval queens: they're obviously fun to read about, and most people with a passing acquaintance of history will know the most famous ones (Empress Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Catherine de Medici, etc etc). However, as a historian who works on (among other things) medieval social and gender history, one of my chief focuses is getting people to think about all medieval women differently, not just the well-known royal ones. We all discard the "great men and European kings are the only people who played a role in medieval history and/or had influence in the world before modernity" hypothesis, and rightly so. But I feel as if the fetishizing of certain medieval queens, where the modern historiography and/or popular history points at them and goes, "LOOK HOW AWESOME THIS ONE WOMAN MANAGED TO BE IN A TERRIBLE RAPEY PATRIARCHAL WORLD!!!" is... to say the least, somewhat wrong-headed.

This is because it promotes the "exceptional woman" theory of history, where it is implied that one woman with superlative personal qualities managed to overcome the limits of patriarchal medieval society, and that all other women who weren't as "gifted" didn't do the same. You may recognize this as an offshoot of the "Extraordinary Negro" racist pseudoscience of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, wherein it was proposed that a few "superior" African-Americans could become almost (if not quite) culturally, intellectually, and socially white, overcoming the limits of their "inferior" race in these isolated special cases. If you can doubtless easily see why that is hella racist, you can also understand why applying the same framework to medieval women is equally ridiculous, reductive, and sexist.

Likewise, there is a lot of recent scholarship that strives to finally discredit this hypothesis once and for all, such as Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power 1100--1400: Moving Beyond the Exceptionalist Debate. Likewise, somewhat appropriately given what has happened today and the mustering of informal female social networks to effectively counter an unfavorable legal climate (once again, if anyone tells me Things Were So Much Worse Back Then For Women, I will punch something), the study of medieval women in community shows that they had collective as well as individual agency. As Women and Community in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia puts it:

First, the emphasis on communities moves us firmly past any narrative of the exceptional woman who found ways to engage in independent political, social, or economic activity within otherwise constraining legal and social norms. Women, both as individuals and as groups, had the knowledge and skills to successfully interact with a variety of communities, and even create new ones when necessary. These communities also reveal the degree to which communities were structured around women's agency. [....] By moving beyond the binary of inclusion/exclusion, these authors acknowledge the ability of patriarchal norms to constrain women's activity and at the same time, for women to take action on behalf of themselves and their families.

This topic is likewise explored in Relations of Power: Women's Networks in the Middle Ages, and others that I can't think of right now. Anyway, this was a long-winded way of saying that while I love me a good badass medieval queen as much as anyone, that often comes with the prevailing stereotype that queens were the only medieval women able to wield any power at all (and then only if they were personally motivated to do so) and that therefore they're the only ones who are "interesting" or worth learning about. This obscures a lot of the important work that has been done on ordinary medieval women, their lives, and their networks of influence, and likewise props up other damaging myths about the Middle Ages that are continuing to be repeated today. So yes.