#i usually DESPISE medieval-set stories

[beachnet]

actually enjoying reading berserk

[queen-paladin]

March 2024 Reading Wrap Up!

Hiya guys, since I have been on a book reading craze lately (I want to read 30 books before I turn 30 and am now on 13 in March, which says something). I enjoy Goodreads, but little to no people read my reviews. My most popular one on Goodreads has *drumroll* six likes *confetti*. And I have a lot of feelings and thoughts and nowhere to express them...so why not here!

That being said...Books I have read in March of 2024! Better late then never!

What I read and my own personal, take it with a grain of salt thoughts on them below:

Caraval by Stephanie Garber

(YA Fantasy)

Summary:

Scarlett Dragna has never left the tiny island where she and her sister, Tella, live with their powerful, and cruel, father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval—the faraway, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show—are over. But this year, Scarlett’s long-dreamt-of invitation finally arrives. With the help of a mysterious sailor, Tella whisks Scarlett away to the show. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend. It turns out that this season’s Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner.

I am usually not the type to stay up late reading because I have to know what's going to happen. I usually set the book down and tuck in bedtime.

This book was an exception.

I was on the edge of my seat, forgetting the time and hour, wanting to read just one more page because I had to know what would happen. The pacing was just right, the world was beautiful and dangerous, and I enjoyed the characters. Scarlett was a breath of fresh air in a genre notorious for internal misogyny in it's female protagonists. Timid and Proper and Responsible, but grows on her own and learns to take initiative.

The environment was very reminiscent of the Night Circus, imagine like, if the Night Circus was a town built on illusions, and you have Caraval. But the Night Circus, rereading it as an adult, had an insufferable MMC who has a girlfriend who sacrifices so much for him, then the MMC who cheats on his girlfriend for the FMC, and then when the girlfriend has the truth confirmed to her, she gets upset and briefly lashes out, the writing then frames her as An Evil Woman Scorned for doing so (which is...yikes) Justice for Isobel Martin. She should have done a full Carrie White style Everyone Dies rampage and I would have rooted her on the whole time.

There's none of that crap here! We have a lovely romance between Scarlett and Julian full of all sorts of wonderful, chemistry-building moments.

But what got me was the story- the various twists and turns kept me on the edge of my seat, gasping and clinging. I was captivated. Entranced by it's spell. This is a roller coaster of a book, so just hold on and enjoy the ride. I am so glad I read this book, it gave me a feeling and experience I hadn't had with a book in ages, one where I had to stay up late, because I had to read what would happen next.

5/5

The Unlovely Bride by Alice Coldbreath

(Romance, Historic, Fantasy)

Summary: Lenora Montmayne leads a charmed life as the most beautiful woman at King Wymer’s court, surrounded by admirers. And then disaster strikes. The red pox sweeps the summer palace at Caer-Lyones and Lenora’s fair face falls victim to its ravages. Without her looks, what does Lenora have left to her?

If ever there was a knight the crowd loves to hate, it’s Garman Orde. Even his own family despises him. Then one night a heavily veiled lady offers him an extraordinary bargain. And he finds out that Lenora Montmayne was never just a pretty face.

Review: Any marriage of convenience story I will read, and I will devour it. I've been looking forward to this book for a while, and I do love the premise. And most of all, I love the setting! This lovely world that is part medieval England part not because fuck it, it's not history, just the vibes. And I LOVE our female protagonist. Leonora relied on her looks and nothing else for years to get by, and now that they are gone, she relies on her own person. She loves kitty cats, she believes in prophecies and fortune-telling but is smart, pragmatic, and determined. She and Garman have a nice romance with some great lines and moments (and some nice spice). My complaint is that while the first half is amazing, the second half kind of drags, and not much happens, it could have used more tension, more stakes, and more plot. I may read another Coldbreath book sometime, just because I love the world of Karadok, but I'm not sure.

3.75/5

Medea by Eilish Quin

(Historic, Fantasy)

Summary: The daughter of a sea nymph and the granddaughter of a Titan, Medea is a paradox. She is at once rendered compelling by virtue of the divinity that flows through her bloodline and made powerless by the fact of her being a woman. As a child, she intuitively submerges herself in witchcraft and sorcery, but soon finds it may not be a match for the prophecies that hang over her entire family like a shroud.

As Medea comes into her own as a woman and a witch, she also faces the arrival of the hero Jason, preordained by the gods to be not only her husband, but also her lifeline to escape her isolated existence. Medea travels the treacherous seas with the Argonauts, battles demons she had never conceived of, and falls in love with the man who may ultimately be her downfall.

Review: Ok, ok, I have so many feelings about this. I was...sadly disappointed by this book. Medea is probably my personal favorite of the Ancient Greek Women, if not, my favorite of the spicier, more controversial, morally grey ones (Hera, Circe, Medusa, Clytemnestra, etc)

But, my biggest issue with this book, and it's big, is that I don't believe there is a love story between Medea and Jason. The writer makes him unlikable from the get-go, to where he has numerous Kick The Dog (tm) moments like physically abusing Medea and killing one of Pelleas's daughters when she won't stop crying. Medea herself doesn't justify them, and she keeps thinking of "eh, he's sometimes kind of good-looking, but he's okay."

Like, Medea in this book, after meeting Jason, she flat out tells her brother that he is the man she loves the most in her life (which...YIKES for the implications. But in order for any Medea story to work, I HAVE to believe she is madly, desperately in love with Jason. There's no oath where Jason swears before the gods to stay with her, so then there's no hurt. She kind of has to marry Jason to preserve her honor according to Aunt Circe, but not out of love. Since there's no romantic chemistry, the sacrifices Medea takes make more sense and the betrayal hurts even more so then when she does what she does in Corinth, she is extremely sympathetic at least in the beginning.

Like, she has a moment after Jason revealed he cheated on her and is leaving her for Glauce and she goes "oh, poor Glauce is a victim like me." Which begs the question for this version- why doesn't she just kill Jason himself? She calls Glauce a poor baby victim, she kills Glauce, not Jason. If she loved Jason that much, then she would hate him more, and killing Glauce would make more sense. She wants to watch Jason suffer.

Also, I feel like Eilsha Quinn is a bit afraid of the moral nuances of Medea. She has her "I didn't really MEAN to!" moments and there is one character she kills who she then re-animates (like she re-animates her brother, so oopsie Daisy, she's actually not a kinslayer! And he just...vibes with them as the third wheel lives with them, and helps look after the kids. This makes it less tragic because A) She's not a murderer who risked and left everything for him, she's more "perfect" and not as flawed, and B) when Jason betrays her, she's less alone and has an immediate support system there in her brother). And the kid- killing she does to trick Jason and then she re-animates them later, or tries, to but no, that failed and they're dead dead, whoops. Even if Medea purposely killing the kids was the invention of Euripides, I want to believe Medea is capable of purposely, intentionally doing some violent, controversial things and this seems to be afraid of her spice, her teeth.

The writing is pretty, and I liked the beginning with learning about her childhood, but this was a letdown.

I did order Hewlitt's book of Medea, which is higher ranked on Goodreads so my hope is higher for that one.

3/5

Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

(YA, Fantasy, Romance)

Summary:

After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together. Her mother is suffering from addiction and her brother is missing from the front lines. Her best bet is to win the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette.

To combat her worries, Iris writes letters to her brother and slips them beneath her wardrobe door, where they vanish—into the hands of Roman Kitt, her cold and handsome rival at the paper. When he anonymously writes Iris back, the two of them forge a connection that will follow Iris all the way to the front lines of battle: for her brother, the fate of mankind, and love.

Review: This book was utterly beautiful, breathtaking, and heartbreaking all at once and yet uplifting and then it breaks your heart again. The world is simple and lovely. It's a mix of World War One/two aesthetics with a fantasy setting. It's basically You Got Mail but fantasy and more focus on the drama then the comedy.

The romance is lovely, there is such a beautiful love story between Roman and Iris as they sort out their feelings, reveal their secrets, doubts, failures, grief, and insecurities, and learn more about where they fall for each other. Plus, the twists and turns were a lot of fun and the pacing was just right.

I have no faults or complaints, this was just a lovely, lovely book and I look forward to the sequel because THAT was quite a note to end on!

5/5

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

Summary: After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.

A flying demon feeding on human energies.

A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.

And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.

The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.

She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.

Reveiw: This is such a hyped, beloved, popular book that is so many people's baby and favorite series and it...it was okay.

It wasn't bad.

But I didn't find it phenomenal, amazing, spectacular, life chagning.

It was good. It was okay.

I honestly got extremely tired of trying to learn how the over-complicated Arthurian society worked. It's explained in a super info-dumpy way that the characters get, but I don't. And the pacing was way too slow, I feel like it needed to shave off a good hundred pages, or fifty, perhaps.

I do enjoy the main girl, Bree, alright. She doesn't take bullshit, but has moments of vulnerability. As well as exploring race, grief, family history and the scenes with root magic were amazing. The beginning was fantastically done, it was the middle part where it peterred off for me.

But the rest of it, not gonna lie, was kind of...eh.

And, ngl, I am more Team Nick. Sel is a giant jerk who treats her like garbage, yet people root for them and want them to be together, and I'm like....??????? why? At least Nick, white saviory as he can be, is trying and cares for her and affirms and appreciates her strength.

I respect that this is so many people's favorite book and that it speaks to them and moves them. But for me, if none of these people made any content around this book and said nothing, based off of my opinion independent of others, if you plopped this book on my lap and said nothing about the hype about it...I'd still say it was just okay. That might be my controversial hot take, but it's just what my personal experience was from this book.

3/5

Currently Reading: The Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Lemming, The Death of Jane Lawrence by Starling, Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Fairies by Fawcett, and Twisted Love by Ana Huang.

[wine4thewin]

you’re so incredibly talented and i am in love with every inch of your work. with such phenomenal writing i’m extremely curious to know what your writing process is like and how you even come up with some of your plots/au’s in the first place. and have you made any hard or challenging writing/story choices as of late?? it’s such a treat to read your work and you’re so so so amazing.

☺️☺️☺️ I’m so utterly flattered, thank you x1000🥰 I’m glad my writing has been a source of entertainment!

My writing process has changed so much over the years and it’s always developing. I used to fly by the seat of my pants, but I realized that wasn’t what worked for me 😅 I couldn’t finish anything without a real plan!

~

Let’s start with ideas. That’s where things begin, right? I’ll be struck by a plot bunny or a character (usually spawned by a setting, like Zombie Apocalypse, Creepy Fairytale Vibes, Medieval Magic, Space Opera Horror, or Modern Very Dark Problematic Romance) and then I’ll try writing out a “book summary” to see if that idea might sound compelling. I think in terms of: what is the core drama, who is the main character, and who is their villain? (lol but make it enemies to lovers)

I want to know:

Where does this idea start? Why does a reader care?

Where is it taking us? What are turning points in the plot along the way?

How does it end?

✍️

I always think in terms of beginning middle end. 3 simple parts of an idea that make the idea a possible story. Sometimes, it takes me time to see the ending, so I start writing scenes to look deeper into the plot, waiting for an ‘aha’ moment.

I have written & completed massive fics just thinking in terms of 3 chapters. The starting drama, the middle crisis, and the final drama. Magically it grows from there as scenes appear 🤣 I think the 3 chapters is wishful thinking on my part.

~

It took me a few years to figure out I’ve always been a scene writer. This means I mentally work through a story in moments of time. I write out scenes that are important to me, even if they are completely out of order. It helps me shape the story as more scenes appear and I begin to place them in the beginning middle or end.

I sometimes outline in Excel, chapter by chapter. I notate time passing, what happens in each chapter, and what The Goal of each chapter is. I also try to incorporate character arcs. I do this mostly with my Original Fiction, because those are works upwards of 120,000 words.

If I outline in Word, I will bluntly write out a dry summary of what happens in the chapter and also any dialogue that I know off the bat is going to be critical. I mean, literally just write out what happens in each chapter in one doc. It feels strange, because you will want to elaborate, but this gets you writing without worrying about being perfect! Get the idea out there. The scene. The key moments. This helps find pace and purpose to each chapter. Every chapter must have a point!

Feelings: I want my reader to feel when they read. I will note in outlines what the goal is for the chapter, but also how people should feel. Are they disgusted by a choice the character has made? Or are they falling in love right alongside the character? Are they full of hate for the antagonist and whatever act they’ve just committed?

I consider the relationships and how they will change. Where they begin and how they end in the outline. I’m aggressive about seeing change in characters and their relationships…and it must make sense. I despise instant love and I hate when a morally grey character suddenly becomes a teddy bear after a few chapters and is “actually really nice” 🙄 That’s fake and unsatisfying. I will find ways to drag characters through emotional trials so that when they come together, the reader is like, “they feel like real people”.

I edit like crazy. Sometimes it takes hours. I will look at a chapter and determine if the emotional impact has been met or not. Does the change present look organic? Etc. very stressful shit and my eyes get so tired.

I will reiterate…there must be A Goal for each chapter. Do not ever write filler shit. No one likes it and you either lose readers or they skip it.

*

For inspiration and fun, I love finding pretty journals to use for anything that I want to work deeper on. This is for my original fiction. I’ll dedicate sections to a story and just work on what the story is about, who the characters are, dedicate entire pages to characters and their past, decorate everything with cool washi tapes and art stickers. I might draw out the rising drama diagram to visualize plot. I’ll even draw maps. It makes for a beautiful body of work to look back on and be like, ‘wow, I should go write that story!’

~

I like Masterclass for learning tips and tricks from different authors. For instance, I learned some interesting things from Neil Gaiman’s class a few years back that made such an impact. While I do not share the same writing process as NG at all, I took to heart a few key things:

*Dialogue & Voice: speak your lines of dialogue out loud. If it sounds unnatural, it’s probably something no person would say, therefore making your dialogue flat.

*Brainstorming: In your journal, write down everything you know about the story. Words. Places. Themes. Relationships. Symbols. Worldbuilding. Points of contention.

*“What happens next? And then what?”: Keep the reader turning the page. Do not write a chapter that does not keep your reader thinking. If it’s boring even to you, then you probably lost readers.

I always suggest at least doing a trial of Masterclass! There are so many great writers and you can find new ways of thinking just by listening to them. Some things are useful, some things aren’t. While I like Neil Gaiman’s class, I actually resonate with James Patterson far more, especially in process.

~

As for recent challenges, that usually revolves around my original fiction. I have projects I need to finish and I get distracted by writing fanfiction, which is fine because fanfiction is relaxing and less high stakes 🤣

As for fanfic, I have one project I’ve been stewing about doing and it’s something literally no one has asked for but me, so we’ll see if I ever post it lol. I had an ‘aha’ moment thinking about it last night. It was for the key turning point to reach an ending and it was diabolical. That character does not want me to bring them into the story, but oh well.

[panigamermauser]

Had some time, decided to do @ellstersmash 's Dragon Age: The Veilguard HYPE Q&A

It got long and rambly at places, so it's under the cut. But it also has art of my planned Rook😉

1. What was the first Dragon Age game you played?

DAO. But it was after I got hyped for DA2. I was Mass Effect girlie at the time, and I am not big into fantasy in general. And it also had the gameplay I hate and the artstyle that is boring to me. I am just not into pseudo-medieval dark gritty pseudo-realistic fantasy. It is a turn off. If it is fantasy, it got to be Eberron/Spelljammer/Age of Sigmar style to get me interested. Long story short, I was not really interested in DA setting.

But then DA2 demo was released, and I saw gifs of DA2 Isabela, and and I knew I got to play the series now. It was still some time till DA2 release, so I decided to give DAO/DAA a chance. No regrets😁

DAO/DAA is still my least favourite tho, and it was replayed several times only out of necessity to establish worldstates I wanted to import into my DA2 playthroughs. Still, I loved most of the companions, so that was its saving grace, at least.

2. Which Dragon Age game is your favorite so far?

DA2. A lot of criticism it got is very valid. But for me most of those things were either irrelevant (reused environments, enemies dropping down from air), or preferable (art style, gameplay, not having to micromanage companion gear). I was not too happy about unchangeable story bits, but you were warned from the very beginning. The game starts with interrogation about events that already happened. So I accepted it. Still, I see how all of it would piss other people off royally.

Gameplay is my favourite so far. I despise DAO/DAA one and DAI was a massive downgrade from DA2 for me due to return of tactical camera, and environments changing to accommodate it.

I absolutely adore DA2 elves and qunari design. DAI was a downgrade, despite better graphics. Especially with elves being indistinguishable from humans (except ears) again. I prefer non-human races to look drastically different. I loved black sclera, sharpened teeth and claws for qunari. I loved massive eyes and that very distinct nose bridge for elves. Just a matter of my personal taste.

But the best thing was the way companions are handled. While main events of the game were unchangeable, the companion story variety was incredible. Even if you make the same choices, there was still room for dialogue/tonal/timing variety to it that added nuance.

You cannot see it if you play only once. And most people do not replay games. So they missed out on the best part of the game. But I do like to replay games, so I was feasting!

Honestly, I was sceptical about DATV until DA2 comparisons started to pop up. And now I am properly HYPED. The artstyle being more stylized/cartoony brings me joy. I do not care for realism in my games. I prefer it being over-the-top. If I want realism - I can go outside. If they get companion stories right, it just might dethrone DA2. Because visually it is exactly my jam.

3. Do you usually play as a warrior, mage, or rogue? Which class are you planning to try first this time around? Which subclass?

Rogue for life! Bow/crossbow rogue, to be more precise. I do not enjoy melee combat, so daggers - while looking cool af - are never a choice. 

Sometimes I play mage for variety. And it is always an elemental mage, as I have zero interest in blood magic, or necromancy, or healing, or melee magic of arcane warrior/knight enchanter. If I'm a mage, I want to bend forces of nature to my will!

And warrior is only played once, and only if I play the game more than five times. I'm simply bored by how it plays.

Ranged rogues on other hand make me so happy! It took me 20+ playtroughs of DA2 to decide I prefer Hawke as a mage story-wise. So she's the only exception. And only because I liked some companion and NPC interactions with mage Hawke more. But purely gameplay-wise it's always a ranged rogue.

So I am very excited to be Lords of Fortune rogue with Veil Hunter specialization. Honestly, from previews Veil Hunter sounds so cool I am not sure I even want to try anything else. Bows AND lightning? Why would I ever want to be anything else?

4. What does your worldstate look like going into DAV?

This one is going to be long.

This is my import world state. In my headcanon there are six wardens and an Inquisitorial triumvirate. But I cannot import that, so I have to settle for what is possible.

(If anyone is curious, let me know, and I will write out the full headcanon worldstate).

Ferelden is ruled by Queen Cousland, who is in political marriage with Alistair and in romance with Zevran. If someone tries to object - she points to Andraste who was the bride of the Maker while already having a husband. So she just follows her example.

Morrigan has Aistair's son. Connor is saved. Bhelen rules Orzammar. My Cousland sided with mages and helped elves in any way she could. She has recruited and befriended all the companions possible with being a queen(so Loghain had to die) and reached the best outcomes for them.

Mage Hawke has romanced Fenris (friendship route). Carver has become a Warden. She has sided with mages, tried to stop Chantry fucking with Qunari and earned Arishok's respect. Aveline is a happily married guard captain, Danarius is dead and Fenris is reconciled with his sister.

She was disappointed in Ander's choice of the target. She would be 200% down to explode templar HQ. But Chantry - despite their religious fuckery - was still doing charity work(orphanage, reading lessons for ex-slaves etc), and Kirkwall really needed it. So she let Anders go, but their close friendship is over.

Also, Sebastian dared to _order_ her to kill Anders. So that alone would ensure Anders lives, even if she hated him. But she was on board with Anders' activism the whole game. She literally just disapproved of the final target choice, not the action itself.

Inquisitor Adaar is a casual Andrastian (think Varric levels of belief). She does not have the audacity to believe she was ever Andraste's chosen. She still tries her damnest to make this world a better place, because she has the opportunity now.

She romanced (and - in my head - married) Josephine. As far as headcanons go, she used her new title in Kirkwall and control over its port to give Montilyet trading fleet the preferential treatment. Also, Valo Kas mercs are official ship guards now.

She has recruited mages and wardens as allies. She reinforced mages right to freedom at every opportunity. She advocated for diversity in Chantry ranks.

She has recruited all possible enemies as agents because she believes in second chances.

Orlais is ruled by Celene and Briala.

Leliana is inspired, and she has become Divine Victoria. She has absolute public support of the Herald in her reforms (the only time Adaar would wear 'I am Andraste's chosen' mask - to sway the faithful towards Chantry's newly established inclusivity).

Cullen is lyrium-free and runs a rehab. I headcanon that Samson spends the rest of his life there, in comfort. Storvacker is an emotional support animal now. In my head she sees all ex-templars as her cubs.

Cole is more human.

Chargers were saved, so Iron Bull is just a mercenary now.

Sutherland runs thriving and beloved adventuring company.

Blackwall lives as Reiner. Inquisition owned up the fact they used Warden treaties unlawfully and payed back all it could.

Adaar has allied with Sentinels, and Morrigan was the one to take a drink from the Well of Sorrows.

Coriphius' true name and family was made public knowledge to their enemies.

Stroud was left in the Fade (I know they already said it does not matter for DATV, but I do not believe it. Weisshaupt is a location there. So Hawke presence or absence should be referenced, at least in some text notes. I think they just want to avoid spoilers/not get ppls hopes up for Hawke's appearance in person).

She made historians write the truth about Inquisitor Ameridan and made Orlesian nobles pay reparations to his clan.

Ataashi was freed, if this even matters.

Adaar wants to convince Solas this world deserves a second chance too (aka 'redeem' option).

Inquisition was disbanded. Quite aggressively. Because while they bicker, she has a job to do, so fuck you and all your family tree.

5. Do you typically use a preset character and name or spend hours in the character creator coming up with a custom one?

I always make my own chars. Otherwise, what's the point?

6. Do you have your Rook(s) planned out to any degree? If so, would you share some details or ideas you have?

Yep. Felicia The Preliminary Rook. I even have the art drawn already.

Everything is subject to change with game release, ofc. Including the name (I like my names sound nice with the last names, and we do not know Rook's yet) 

So far she is the third generation of Vashoth. Has no knowledge of Qun outside of what general populace of Rivain knows. She considers herself Rivaini first and Qunari second.

Religion-wise she is not interested in any, but respects other people's choices. As far as she's concerned - even if any gods exist, it does not mean they have to be worshipped. But if someone needs spiritual guidance in their life - more power to them.

She loves adventures and life's simple pleasures - good food, nice things, eager lovers etc. Does not have any ambitions other than adventuring till she's too old to, and then retire comfortably.

And with old elven god tearing down the Veil she won't get to grow old and fat and retire comfortably, so she has to do something about it.

Tentatively she will go for Lucanis romance-wise (I mean, he can cook and she plans on growing old and fat, so a good meal is a sure way to her heart). But realistically I need to see in-game character dynamics first. 

I mean, I was so sure I'll go for Isabela in DA2. She's the whole reason I got into Dragon Age. But then I ended up shipping her and Merril so much I am unable to romance either. Also Fenris' voice does things to me😏 So I'll see how it goes.

I have two more ideas, but they are conditional. 

First is a religious Dalish Veil Jumper confronting the reality that her gods are both very real and NOT WHAT SHE BELIEVED.

But it depends on what the game allows. I am still salty - even after ten years - about how shittily temple of Mythal was written in DAI. Like, at that point Lavellan felt like a city elf, at best. Surely not as a future clan Keeper with Mythal tats on his face. So if Dalish Rook does not get to have a very special experience with Solas and Evanuris that is straight up not available to other origins, I will not want to subject myself to this shit again.

Another Rook depends on how Inquisitor is implemented. My Adaar has a younger brother who is a mage. So he could be a Rook and Felicia's fellow Lord of Fortune. But if our interactions with Inquisitor are quite close and prolonged, there might not be enough room for ambiguity and family ties headcanons. We'll see.

And I'm sure I'll end up with at least a Shadow Dragon and a Crow too. But they will be tailored to events of the game itself. I have no interest in being a Mortalitasi or a Warden(even my Wardens never wanted to be Wardens) so far, but I'm open to be pleasantly surprised and make Rooks for them too.

7. Which character from the previous games or other media are you most hoping will make an appearance in DAV?

Absolution crew! They should be our contacts for Lords of Fortune.

We know for a fact that Veil Jumpers and Wardens have their respective Tevinter Nights characters as contacts. Not confirmed but highly likely that same goes for Crows and Mortalitasi too. I am 200% sure Shadow Dragons will get Dorian and Mae as contacts. So why not cartoon characters for LoF?

As for returning cameos... Fenris (maybe his sis got into Shadow Dragons and he's helping?), Merril and Velanna are my top choices. I can see Merril becoming a Veil Jumper and Velanna joining Solas' forces. Bull makes sense as Dorian's BF. DAO Sten as current Arishok. Maybe Josie's sister who has finally ran off with a pirate.

If I have to choose only one, it would be Merril.

8.What faction are you most excited to learn more about?

The ones we did not have before - Veil Jumpers, Mortalitasi and Shadow Dragons. Technically we did not have Lords of Fortune either, but I doubt there's any deep lore behind the pirates and adventurers. LoF are the ones I am most excited to actually play as tho.

9. Which romance, if any, do you plan to pursue first?

DATV might be the first game where I adore all potential romances.

First 'SMASH' reaction upon seeing the trailer were Davrin and Taash. I mean, just look at them! 😍 🔥

Emmerich is fantasy Vincent Price, and how can you not? 

We all know how adorable Harding is 😊

I had no strong reaction to Neve at first, but then her VA described her as working class champion, and I'm like 'yes comrade!' now.

Bellara is extremely cute, and her triangle design motif makes me think she might be an Executioner too, so I'm intrigued.

But the more that I learn about Lucanis - the more he seems like a perfect character for me. So tentatively I plan to go for him on the first run. I already adore this anti-slavery short king with no social skills😘

But I am very excited for all of them. If the game is not a complete burning shit that I will never want to touch again, I plan to make Rooks for all of them.

10. Which location are you most excited/hoping to explore in-game?

Again, all places we did not see before.

And while it's not the most intriguing place, I am very excited for Rivain. 

It is funny. In real life I do not crave tropical places. But for game settings tropics are just the best! Idk why. I never want to go on a beach irl. But always crave the location in the games. Hope there's a beach episode for Rook and the crew😊

11. What's one thing you'd really like to see in this next game?

Infodump on Evanuris, Titans, Old Gods, Moon People etc.  No more mysteries and scattered notes and hints. It's fourth game, ffs. There are bunch of novels and comic books. Just drop the full lore on the setting already! I am not 'let a mystery stay mystery' type.

12. What's one thing you're hoping we DON'T see in this next game?

'Both sides' BS in regards of Tevinter vs anti-slavery groups. It was bad enough with mages vs templars when individual mage criminals were used to portray mages just as bad as systemic oppression Templars facilitated. Which is never equal, no matter how bad individual mage criminals got.

So my 'one fear.jpg' is that they will try to make some shit like 'slavery is bad, but those anti-slaver rebels are just too extreme sometimes, so they are just as bad'. Just NO. Unfortunately, I do not trust Bioware enough to feel safe about it.

13. What's one thing you've seen confirmed so far that you're a fan of?

Not controlling companions in combat/exploration. I never did it anyways, but ability to do so led to puzzles where you had to do it, and I hated every single one of them. So not controlling companion means no annoying stuff like that.

On a smaller note - unnatural hair color. Like, I will never believe that in world with magic no one ever used it to dye hair pink. And finally I can have pink-haired char!

14. What's one thing you've seen confirmed so far that you're NOT a fan of?

Them not wanting people to use same companions for most of the game and forcing us to bring certain companions with us, or send some companions away so they are not available for a time. I am one of those 'bring LI and besties everywhere with you' people. And I HATE being forced to bring certain companions outside of their own loyalty missions. Even if I like said companions. I just want my faves to be with me always, unless others are offering extra content on a mission. And the fact we can take only two companions this time makes it even worse.

Why could not they just go with incentives (certain companions get extra dialogues/cutscenes/choices you won't see otherwise) and detriments (companion really does not want to be there and it will ruin your rapport with them forever) instead? So the choice is in player's hands still?

15. Do you have any unpopular opinions about DAV so far?

I love the artstyle. And judging by the a amount of wankers I already blocked, this opinion is very unpopular.

16. What's one crack theory you subscribe to (yours or someone else's)?

I believed since DAO that DA planet exists in Mass Effect universe.

17. Are you interested in all the lore and speculation or do you focus more on the games and stories themselves?

I love the lore! I have high hopes for DATV dropping massive amount of it.

18. Which aspect of fandom are you most looking forward to? (e.g. reading/writing fic, the bounty of gorgeous art, getting to know new people, etc.)

Art, gifs and meta please 🙏

19. Are you planning to replay any of the previous games, watch Dragon Age: Absolution, or read any of the books/comics/short stories, or are there other games you want to play in the meantime?

I have already replayed DAI a few times. I might do one more run before DATV. I'm already caught up on extended media too.

20. Post a picture or gif that conveys your current level of excitement for Dragon Age: The Veilguard!

[soracities]

hey ! i’m very curious !!

you talked about social media in one of your last posts and i wish you could talk about your relationship with social medias !

honestly i don't know how i would describe my relationship to it simply because i detest like 90% of what social media is about. however i DO try to focus on intentionality and being very mindful of what i use and how i use it. the only social media i use as social media are twitter and instagram but i try to be very careful about the time i spend on them. this is easy for twitter because i have no vested interest in it so i just log in maybe once or twice every few months because i only use it to follow various writers / publishers and see what new releases are upcoming or what books are being talked about. i'll retweet a few quotes / puns / medieval illustrations, make note of books or articles and call it a day for another two months or even more sometimes.

instagram is my "main" one but even then i know how easy it is for me to get caught up in their reels so i try to stay away from that as much as i can (i also despise what it does to music for me): i don't follow brands, influencers, or celebrities (i follow one international musician and like, 3 writers, and that's it)--my feed is predominantly urban gardening / nature / arts accounts, but i use it far more like the morning paper to see what my friends are seeing or follow any little updates in their stories. i have post notifications turned on for some of my closest friends so that the only things i DO get notified on when i'm spending time away from the app are the people whose updates are most important to me--but even then, IG is not my main form of communication because the closest people in my life know how to contact me directly.

again i don't take social media seriously, chiefly because i can't: the idea of needing to be constantly "tuned in" is one i really dislike so i'm never invested in whatever the current trends are. the only consistent main one for me is tumblr and even then i'm on this blog almost exclusively on desktop which limits how i often i log on to begin with. i still try to remain intentional and since it's more an archive or a collection of things i like and want to keep, my main objectives are usually: collect the quotes i want to save, browse my mutuals / favourite blogs, check my inbox when and if i'm able. i can still end up prone to spending more time here than i would like, but i also know that--most of the time, anyway--i'm spending that time gaining something: photos or artwork i love get saved to my computer or notion folders, poems that move me get copied into my ledger or saved on my laptop, links to certain articles get clicked on and read immediately when i can--this is great to stop me from scrolling mindlessly and actually using the time more wisely, but if i can't read it immediately i just move them onto my desktop so i don't forget to read them later on. when i feel i'm still spending too much time here, or simply not devoting enough time to other things that are important to me, i'll set days aside where i do log in and days when i don't.

anyway that's where i'm at with social media at the moment, anon x

[dweemeister]

NOTE: This is the first (and perhaps only) film released theatrically during the COVID-19 pandemic that I am reviewing – I saw Wolfwalkers at the Vineland Drive-in at the City of Industry, California. Because moviegoing carries risks at this time, please remember to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by your local, regional, and national health officials.

Wolfwalkers (2020)

In interviews prior to and after Wolfwalkers’ release, co-director Tomm Moore has described the film as the last panel of Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore triptych. That triptych (an informal trilogy) began with The Secret of Kells (2009) and continued with its centerpiece, Song of the Sea (2014). The global environment for animated cinema has transformed since Kells, and now – unexpectedly – Cartoon Saloon finds itself a hub for not just hand-drawn animation, but animation that rejects the crass commercialism emerging from mainstream animation studios (mostly from the United States). With the triptych completed (as well as 2017’s The Breadwinner), one can trace Cartoon Saloon’s evolution from their beginning to its present artistic maturation. While the film asserts its own uniqueness in the Cartoon Saloon filmography, there are connecting strands – aesthetic, spiritual, thematic – of the studio’s previous features apparent throughout. Upon a week’s reflection, I think Wolfwalkers is the studio’s second-best film, just behind Song of the Sea. Even at second-best, this level of artistry has rarely been seen in this young century.

It is 1650 in Kilkenny. Robyn Goodfellowe (Honor Kneafsey) is an apprentice hunter and only daughter of Bill (Sean Bean). Robyn and her father are expatriates from England, and some of their Irish neighbors will not let them forget that. Oliver Cromwell (Simon McBurney) – referred to as “The Lord Protector” throughout the film – has invaded Ireland and looks to secure his conquest over the Irish people (Cromwell is a despised figure in Ireland and lionized by some in England to this day). On an ill-advised trip outside the walls of Kilkenny, Robyn encounters and eventually befriends Mebh Óg MacTíre (Eva Whittaker in her first film role; pronounced “MABE”), a Wolfwalker. As a Wolfwalker, the animalistic Mebh can leave her physical body and take the shape of a wolf while slumbering. Mebh’s mother – who is also a Wolfwalker – has been missing for sometime while Cromwell has ordered the slaughter of all of Ireland’s wolves. Things are complicated when Bill is tasked by the Lord Protector to destroy the wolves living in the woods surrounding Kilkenny.

From the opening moments, lead background artist Ludovic Gavillet (2016’s The Secret Life of Pets, 2018’s The Grinch) sets the contrast between the scenes within and outside Kilkenny’s walls. Kilkenny is suffocatingly geometric, with squares and rectangles dominating the background and foreground. Backbreaking work defines life in Kilkenny, all devoted to the residents’ English conquerors, God, and the Lord Protector. Rarely does the average city resident venture outside the looming outer medieval walls (there are two sets of walls in the city). The structure of Kilkenny is inconceivably box-shaped when seen from a distance. It appears like a linocut. In that distance are the countryside and the forests. As one ventures further from Cromwell’s castle, expressionist swirls define the foliage that seems to enclose the living figures treading through. Green, brown, and black figures twist impossibly in this lush environment. Seemingly half-drawn or faded figures suggest a depthless, dense forest – similar in function to, but nevertheless distinct from, Tyrus Wong’s background art for Bambi (1942). In both Kilkenny and the forest scenes, selective uses of of CGI animation capture the dynamism of certain action scenes – two running scenes in particular employ these techniques (once in joy, the other in terror).

So often in modern CGI-animated films, the animators seem to grasp for heightened realism and minutiae. In such movies, too many details are packed into frames that can only be appreciated if prodigiously rewatched or paused mid-movie. It might feel like completing a visual checklist. In Wolfwalkers, the half-finished details amid breathtaking backgrounds, angular (or round) humans, and simultaneously threatening and delightful wolves almost seem to announce that, yes, humans drew this – and they did so with such artistic flare. In keeping with the references to triptychs in this review, the film itself sometimes divides the frame into thirds (a top, middle, and bottom or a left, center, and right) or halves in moments of dramatic weight. The thirds or halves are separated by dividing lines and are used for various purposes depending on the moment: to save the filmmakers from making two extra cuts, juxtapose differing if not contradicting perspectives, and intensify the emotions portrayed. Less utilized in this film but even more radical than the aforementioned techniques is the film’s use of shifting aspect ratios. Wolfwalkers is principally in 1.85:1 (the common American widescreen cinematic standard, which is slightly wider than the 16:9 widescreen TV standard), but there are notable moments which temporarily dispense of these standards. Like the division of the screen into thirds or halves, the shifts in screen aspect ratio help the audience focus and understand what is occurring on-screen. The most memorable screen aspect ratio shift appears before an eruption of violence.

The Secret of Kells, too, was set in a city designed in a perfect, orderly shape. That film, like Wolfwalkers, evokes Christianity for narrative purposes. But where Kells celebrated God and found religion as a source of comfort, Wolfwalkers’ depiction of Christianity – specifically, Cromwell’s Anglican zealotry – is without redeeming elements. Under his breath, the Lord Protector prays to God that he will execute any providential commands by any means necessary. In public, he announces his actions as essential to rid Ireland of the lupine paganism that inhabits the wild. Without saying as much, Cromwell’s orders are nevertheless Anglican England imposing its will on Irish Catholics. Irish cinema, until the late 1990s and early 2000s, was usually deferential in its depictions of the clergy and religious practitioners (almost always Catholic). Though it is not unheard of for an Irish film to be critical in portrayals of religious belief, it remains uncommon. And though Cromwell is Anglican and not Catholic (and despite the fact he remains vilified in Ireland), Wolfwalkers’ cynical depiction in how he wields his religiosity as a cudgel is an extraordinary development in Irish cinema.

Tied to the film’s depiction of religiosity are its undercurrents of English colonialism and environmentalism. The latter will be obvious to viewers, but the former might cause confusion during a first viewing because it seems to be, at once, on the periphery and yet central to Wolfwalkers. Cromwell being referred to as “the Lord Protector” for the film’s entirety is indicative of screenwriter Will Collins’ (Song of the Sea) decision not to provide much historical context within the film. English colonial oppression usually occurs off-screen or is implied. This seems inconsistent with Cartoon Saloon’s work on The Breadwinner. That film identifies and openly describes Taliban injustices.

So what gives? As much as those who admire animated film disdain perceptions that it is solely for children (like myself), animated film is oftentimes a gateway for children to be exposed, eventually, to other corners of cinema. Can children understand Anglican-Catholic tensions in Cromwellian Ireland? Perhaps (especially British and Irish children), if presented with enough care. But the answer probably lies with the fact that the thematic goals of Wolfwalkers are more aligned with Kells and Song of the Sea than The Breadwinner. Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore triptych is concerned with how the Irish are inextricably, spiritually, bonded to the environment. There is a balance between humanity and nature – a mystical connection that, when disrupted, brings harm to all. The Breadwinner, though very much a part of Cartoon Saloon’s filmography, is grounded in recent history and, because of recent developments in the Taliban’s favor concerning the Afghan peace process, present-day concerns. In the film, fantastical stories are used to bring Parvana’s family together as the Taliban tighten their grip before the American invasion. This has little bearing on the folklore-centric storytelling of Wolfwalkers, but Collins, Moore, and Stewart’s editorial decision to downplay the film’s historical basis tempers any messaging they wished to convey.

Wolfwalkers meets The Breadwinner in its depiction of a young girl growing up in a male-dominated society. This film’s lead was supposed to be a young boy. But the story, to Collins, Moore, and Stewart, just did not click with the original male protagonist. As such, the trio made the decision early in the film’s production to switch the protagonist’s gender. Robyn, an English transplant to Ireland, is allowed remarkable freedom to do whatever she wants with her time in the opening stages of the film. This arrangement cannot persist as her father falls from the Lord Protector’s good graces. She is relegated to washing dishes from daybreak to dusk in the scullery – a task that she, in her heart, rejects for its gendered connotations. Robyn wears a Puritan’s frock while at the scullery, a uniform she has no desire for. While outdoors beyond the Kilkenny walls, she wears what her father wears – pants! – while out hunting wolves. Other than her father, few in the city care for Robyn’s intelligence and instincts. Most everybody ignores her protestations and truth-telling about the things she has seen in the forest. By film’s end, she is vindicated, in spite of Cromwell’s (and, to a lesser extent, her father’s) bluster and bravado.

This film also contains potentially queer subtext between Robyn and Mebh. Writers more skilled than I will provide better analysis of that subtext. Nothing explicit is shown, as the two are still children. Yet the nature of their friendship, the themes contained in Wolfwalkers, and some unspoken moments between Robyn and Mebh seem to relate a possible queerness. The film also does nothing to present either girl as heterosexual. Queer or not, Wolfwalkers shows the viewer a blossoming friendship between two girls – not without its tribulations, but rooted in their common earnestness.

Unlike previous films in Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore triptych, there are no notable original songs in Wolfwalkers. French composer Bruno Coulais and Irish folk music group Kíla are Cartoon Saloon regulars and return for Wolfwalkers. The musical ideas for Wolfwalkers’ score are not as apparent as the previous films in the triptych, as they are not quoting a song composed for the film. But the use of Irish instruments in their collaboration lends at atmospheric authenticity that only heaps upon the film’s sterling animation. Norwegian pop sensation AURORA has altered the lyrics and orchestration to her 2015 single “Running with the Wolves” to accompany a running scene that, by the filmmakers’ admission, was inspired by the running scene from The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013, Japan). The scene pales in comparison to the context and music from the late Isao Takahata’s final film, but Wolfwalkers is a movie more than the sum of its parts.

Production on Wolfwalkers was in its final stages as the COVID-19 pandemic reached the Republic of Ireland. When the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, announced a countrywide lockdown on March 12, 2020, Cartoon Saloon had already started preparing for a lockdown contingency three weeks’ prior. Clean-up was divided between Luxembourg-based Mélusine Productions and Cartoon Saloon’s headquarters in Kilkenny. After assessing the needs of the clean-up animators, both studios moved to remote work where the most pressing complication was their Internet bandwidth slowing down upload speeds.

Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore triptych is finished. In the last eleven years, the studio has proven itself one of the most interesting and important animation studios currently working. They have even proven they can make quality films without its primary director, as evidenced by Nora Twomey’s The Breadwinner (Twomey’s next project for Cartoon Saloon is My Father’s Dragon, slated for a 2021 release). Though just an indie studio with limited resources, their standing in animated cinema has only strengthened with this, their most ambitious film to date. It might seem like a rehash of the animation from Kells, but Wolfwalkers has improved upon its predecessor, and boasts perhaps the most beautiful artwork of any animated movie released this year. The film’s grandeur belongs on a movie screen, but, understandably, very few will have the opportunity to experience it in such an environment. This latest, ageless triumph will outlast these extraordinary times.

My rating: 8.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[teatimeatwinterpalace]

Hello ! Can you tell me about Charles I, King of England? I am curious about this king. Thank you :)

Sigh, my problematic fave... Charlie boy got greedy and forgot he ruled England not France lmao. 

No but no shade, of course it is more complicated than that. Charles is a very controversial figure. A number of Protestant historians have condemn him and his reign. He is often depicted as cold, indecisive, or even as a tyrant. Even though there is a certain truth in each of this qualifying adjectives, I tend to agree with historians who have written a more nuanced portrait of Charles without erasing the shaddy things he did because he did cross the line of legality. I like this quote from Katie Whitaker : "Charles was the last medieval king in Britain, a man imbued with all the ideals of chilvary, who believed he was appointed by God to rule." And here lies the tragedy. His reign was a defining moment where two conceptions of power came into collision : the divine prerogatives of the King against the privileges of Parliament.

Charles as a child had a weak constitution, some historians stated he was suffering from rickets. At some point, he conquered this physical infirmity however his speech came slowly and with difficulty and until his death he had a stutter. He spent his childhood in the shadow of his strong and radiant older brother, Henry, who he loved dearly. When Henry died in 1608, Charles was eleven, he had an excellent education, he studied French, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Greek, theology, drawing, dancing, fencing... His father, James I, was very much interested in the education of his children and one of the first letter Charles wrote to his father was :  "Sweete, Sweete Father, I learne to decline substantives and adjectives, give me your blessing, I thank you for my best man, your loving sone York". In his late teens he spent more and more time with his father even though he despised his "decadent" Court. He was religiously devot and of a strong moral stance which reflected in his Court when he was king. The guiding principles was order and decorum. Contrary to his father, he was also eager to play the role of an international statesman, which made his situation with Parliament even worse. However, he lacked confidence which caused him to be influenced by the ideas of the people he most trusted: Buckingham, his father... James could read the room, Charles unfortunately not so much. After James' passing, he started taking some of his father views to an extreme. However, it's important to note that when he came to power in 1625 the situation was already tense :

His father had a patriachal view of the monarchy. He wrote political treatises exposing his own views on the divine right of kings, stating :"‘Kings are justly called gods for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power on earth". This kind of discourse didn't sit well with the House of Commons which was already sensitive on the matter of its rights and privileges. Parliament thought it had a traditional right to interfere with the policy of the realm. And so the political atmosphere soured quickly between both parties. For instance, when Parliament tried to meddle with the Spanish marriage negociations (between Charles and the Infanta of Spain) James was furious.

Parliament had considerable leverage : was the one holding the purse strings. This proved to be a thorn in the side of EVERY Stuarts rulers and it’s why throughout out the 17th century, England was shy with its foreign policy. Unlike the French King who was doing whatever he wanted, the English monarch had to beg subsidies to Parliament. Schematically, here was the usual scenario : 

King opens a new Parliamentary session because he needs moneeey, the House of Commons says maaay be but before we reeeally need to discuss something else *push his own agenda*, *criticise the royal policy* (rumor has it that you can still hear the king muttering not agaaain), thus ensues many excruciating negotiations and conflicts which usually ends up with the king saying fuck you and either proroguing or dissoluting his Parliament (this hot mess found its peak during the Exclusion Crisis, was a real soap opera lol). 

Again, it is schematical because even in the House of Commons some MPs were content with James' patriachal views. Anyway, at the core, it was truly a battle between royal prerogative and privilege!

THEN, you add the very sensitive matter of religion, its impact on politics was huge.

There were the Anglicans and Presbyterians which didn't see eye to eye. Yet compromises were made which made coexistence bearable for some while others fled to Europe or in the colonies in order to set up their own independent churches. James had hoped to bring the two Churches together and to create uniformity across the two kingdoms (Scotland & England). He tried to establish a Prayer Book similar to that used in England but faced with great opposition, he withdrew. (but guess who tried to follow daddy’s steps but didn’t withdrew?)

And last but not least... who the English despised the most above all? The followers of this boy right here...

... CATHOLICS, satan's minions on earth. 

With the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in Europe the fear of Catholicism was very much alive. Charles and Buckingham pushed James to summoned Parliament to ask for money to finance a war with Spain. The very much anti-Catholic Parliament agreed to the subsidies but unfortunately the expedition failed. James died, and Charles at the age of 24 had to deal with the consequenses. 

Relations between King and Parliament deteriorated quickly. There were the matter of war + Buckingham had negotiated a marriage for Charles to Henrietta Maria, the sister of the French King, promising that she would be permitted to practise her own Catholic religion, and that English ships would help to suppress a French Protestant rebellion in La Rochelle. Obviously, Parliament was furious especially towards Buckingham and Charles was forced to dissolve Parliament. For the King it was a direct challenge to his right to appoint his advisers and to govern. The Privy Council started to consider ways of raising money without the help of Parliament : forced loan, ship money... let's say that from here it started to go downhill.

For the matter of religion, unfortunately the caution of James I was replaced by Charles' desire for uniformity. Moreover, the King was interested by the Arminian group which was an alternative to the rigid Calvinism : the emphasis was on ritual and sacraments and they rejected the doctrine of predestination. Howerver, for many English, this group had too much ties with Catholicism. Also, some of them were great supporters of a heightened royal power which freaked out a lot of people who feared a sort of takeover. Of course, as often with fears and phobias, it was out of proportion with reality. Nonetheless, for many, Arminian meant : Catholicism +  absolute monarchy = tyranny. When William Laud (the Arminian leader) became Bishop of London in 1628, another stormy Parliament session took place. Charles decided to prorogue it but the Commons refused and they passed the Three Resolutions which condemned the collection of tonnage and poundage that Charles was doing without their consent as well as the doctrine and practice of Arminianism. Charles dissolved the Parliament and proclaimed he intended to govern without the Parliament until it calms the fuck down. This proved to be a significant breakdown within the system of government and the situation got a whole lot worse.

It's already a lot right? BUT HANG ON because in this very healthy anti-Catholicism atmosphere who Charles married? A FRENCH CATHOLIC PRINCESS. It made the crown more vulnerable and perhaps a lot of things would have been different if she had been Protestant but damn they were good together!!! The romance of Charles and Henrietta Maria is one of the greatest love stories in history. At first one could say it was a mismatched couple : a Protestant King with a Catholic Princess. Their differences and lack of understanding made their earlier years together complicated and turbulent. There were lot of quarrels and yet, they fell passionately in love. Their daughter, Princess Elizabeth wrote an account the day before Charles was beheaded and she said: “He bid us tell my mother that his thoughts had never strayed from her, and that his love would be the same to the last.” Lina wrote on her blog her top 10 favourite titbits of info of love and heartache about Charles I & Henrietta Maria, go check it out ;)

This is getting too long lol I'm not going to get into what most historians called his "personnal reign" and the civil wars. I just hope that this couple of informations made you want to find more about Charles and his time :) 

Don't settle for just one book about him because as I said at the beginning, he is a very controversial figure and lot of biographies (not so much with the recent ones but still) tend to insist on his supposedly taste for "tyranny" and romanticise the role of Parliament (aka the whole Whig historiography). Charles' reign sparked off a revolution where new ideals of liberty and citizens' rights were born HOWEVER it was a matter of decades/centuries for these ideas to penetrate society and every strats of the political spectrum. The Parliament's ideology of the 1620-1640 (and then during the Restoration) had a very nostalgic vision of politics. The idea of reform was light years away from these ultraconservative men.

But to be honest even outside Parliament. When you look at men such as Fénelon, Bolingbroke or Montesquieu. They were all convinced that a restoration (often of a magnified past) was the only response to the evils of their time. Reform in the early modern period, whether it was religious or political, was thought as a restoration. It's in mid-18th century that the shift happened, the future was at last conceivable. Anyway, all of that is to say that I'm a bit wary of all the authors who depict the MPs of this period as great reformers, who fought against the tyranny. They were mostly conservative men and very attached to THEIR priviliges.

[hunkpurveyor]

The Traitor Baru Cormorant

The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a sickening, electric novel which completely enraptured me - I read it in 5 days which is a feat I haven't accomplished in possibly a decade. Dickinson's plotting is just incredible. The narrative is constantly churning into new and unpredictable configurations and that once the novel kicks into gear the first primary conflict is about monetary policy, of all things, and remains utterly gripping is the product of inspired writing. 

I don't usually gravitate to such plot-heavy books, I often find them light and immemorable in retrospect and The Traitor possesses that sugary narrative - it is so irresistible, impossible to stop reading but has a question that throbs like a sickening heart at the core of the novel. It's in the title, it sits marinating in the heart of every clever stratagem tangled through its pages. Baru is a traitor. She will betray anything for her cause. The key question: What destruction, what ruin can a person wreak in service of an ideal? And hanging afterwards in the air, waiting to descend like a suffocating smoke: what will be left of them when they have wrought it?

(spoilers throughout)

The theme of betrayal is obviously brought to apotheosis at the end of the novel but an enormous part of the success of the betrayal narrative is that Dickinson ensures Baru betrays not only Aurdwynn but also the reader. Her conversation with Apparitor makes it clear where her ultimate goal lies but as that recedes in the narrative we are taken up with the knife-edge whirlwind of rebellion and romance and in one beautiful, touching moment of hard-won fulfillment with Tain Hu I found myself doubting that fateful conversation. I went back to it several times because I could not help but hope things might end happily. To see treachery coming and hope against it anyhow is a remarkable effect to achieve in a novel.

Baru’s final betrayal is heart-rending, and I think it situates the novel in a really interesting relationship with genre. The Traitor refuses to stay just an exciting and forgettable novel because by the end it sickened me. Baru becomes revolting: completely understandable but horrifying all the same. This project of alienation by Dickinson elevates the novel - and it’s fascinating because it is so often that a novel is striving to do the exact opposite to affect its readers deeply: they want to connect, to resonate. But by writing a genre novel, particularly a low fantasy novel where the expectation is plot and dirt and grime and a heroic-if-compromised protagonist and then to defy it by alienating us completely from what we have taken to be the hero of a trilogy radically transforms the meaning of the novel. Specifically low fantasy - the magic has been plucked out of this setting, it is just a medieval age, filled with disease and cold and it flirts with the 'grimdark' but then deftly sidesteps the stereotypical pitfalls of that subgenre as well: the overwhelming (thematic and textual) brutality of it is not for its own sake but situated specifically within the violence of empire.

And this is utterly a book about imperialism, it's almost on the nose how exact the account of the Masquerade conquering Taranoke is a historical one, with names changed. It's abundantly clear from the outset that the attitude of the book is that the project of empire is deeply evil but it develops that idea in unusual ways, and Baru’s own ideology is inchoate. She is trying to "change it from within," which, whew, but by the end of the book it's clear her attitude is vengeful, her aim is not reform but annihilation, and she thinks the master's tools are the only ones awful enough to do it. We can see also, of course, that she does enjoy power, this is what her brain was built for, what she was specifically shaped into being. But that enjoyment, that self-centredness exists, exemplified in her characteristic inability to account for others’ capacity to act. She confesses her fundamental fear is not that her home will be destroyed but that the world cannot be controlled, or that she is incapable of controlling it. So her idealism, her desperate insistence that all this carnage and ruin is for Taranoke has to reckon with that deeper fear. My fear upon first reading was that idealism must continue to disintegrate as Baru is confronted with the fact that the Taranoke of her childhood no longer exists, annihilated by Empire and furthermore lost in the way that all childhood homes are lost when seen again with the uglier perspicacity of adulthood. With her sole ideal decaying would she become a loose weapon? So fundamentally has she rid herself of her own values that she is at risk of becoming something an empire can wield, or descending into a total nihilism. Which makes Tain Hu’s final play so important: “It was no lie.” Her loyalty, her belief in the existence of truth - of a human - within the ruthlessness that Baru has become instils a seed of that same faith in Baru. The necessity not just of saving Taranoke, “that will not be enough now,” but of obliterating empire. 

Baru’s evil is complicated. There is something easier to accept about total nihilism - I can live beside it, breath with it, I know it: if you despise the world, if you despise yourself within it, that fury has a purity, even a nobility to it. Burn everything down. But the refusal to embrace a villain gone utterly evil, gone over entirely to destruction is another mark of maturity within the genre. Baru is nightmare, machine-savant, her control complete but for the body performing its own limp act of treachery by erasing half her world - but she is human. Her repeated refusal to use her body as coin is a gesture at this remaining humanity. Even when it would bring clear advantage her refusal of the boy at the Elided Keep is a parallel to the test Unuxecome and Tain Hu gave her at Welthony harbour. In refusing to personally execute the Imperial Naval Captain she displays she is not a true sociopath. Here her love for women is the line she will not cross, the single note of conflict and want remaining in her which makes her simultaneously so compelling and so revolting. She is no Sauron, no Star Wars Emperor, she is someone who loves. And this is the sting of reality. That bad people are not cut from an evil cloth whole and perfect, but are made. Curdling a pure fury with one note of love sickens it massively - the roaring void gone putrid.

It actually took me a few rereads of the final chapter to imagine any future for Baru, to be anything other than revolted at Baru’s treachery. How could such a fundamentally broken vessel ever be redeemed? And alternatively what further depravity could she possibly sink to? But upon reflection I can see there is room to explore her future, even if that does not include redemption. I’m biased - a redemption arc is a narrative I am deeply attached to and so I naturally interpret a lot of texts towards this conclusion. But there are other stories, and I suspect Baru’s will hurt all the way and I will be glued to it. 

Some final notes - I think it’s definitely worth thinking about how behaviourism and eugenics are presented in the novel, an immediate criticism is that though they are depicted exclusively as evil tools of an empire they are also depicted as effective in a way that is less complicated than the reality. But the novel touches on these concepts only lightly and there might be more to think about as I read on. The way the novel conceals the ideology of the ruling council until its ultimate pages is interesting as well. An acknowledgment that the whys given by the ruling class are largely irrelevant to the reality of subjugation? But the project of “causal closure” echoes interestingly with Baru’s fear of loss of control - and this is the avenue that will really be fascinating to develop. What does it mean for the Masquerade’s ideal to align so closely with Baru’s methodology? She is relying on her causal mastery to overturn a project of causal mastery. And what happens when it is inevitably proved impossible for both Baru and the Masquerade?

[fabulousahoy]

Original Story - J & O - Chapter 1

I wrote an original story... well part one of it. Dunno if it any good, but imma posting anyway.

A defeated and resigned Pumpkin Man gets a visit from his old “friend” which causes him a lot of trouble.

Far away from all civilization, in a dimension between life and death stands a small house. Hidden from prying eyes of humans and other creatures alike, this house belongs to a certain being. He who once struck fear into the hearts of men, yet now resides here. Alone, detached from everything. He who once commanded the entire might of Underworld, the Lord of Pumpkins himself... Jack'O.

* * *

Returning home with groceries was usually the best part of the "shopping day". Though of course, it's not like Jack'O actually bought stuff. It was more akin to stealing, though he preferred to call it "borrowing without giving back". After all, the only place he ventured to from his pocket dimension is the human world. Buying stuff is quite challenging(impossible) when you have a giant pumpkin for a head. Besides, he did not have any money anyway.

As he crossed over from the usual dirty alley into the dimension his home was in, Jack'O let out a sigh of relief. Navigating human cities always gave him anxiety, even if he does it after dark. Now that he stood at his front porch however, everything was peachy. He snapped his fingers in order to close the dimensional gateway and without even turning back he opened the door with his right foot. There was no need to lock them ever. No one could get into this dimension without him allowing it anyway. Humming to himself Jack'O entered the house, unaware that the gateway did not close completely. A small hole remained through which some sort of black liquid slowly poured in. After couple of minutes it stopped, and the hole closed itself. As if it was alive, the huge pool of black goo began to move towards the house.

After putting away everything he bought, Jack'O sat down down in his favorite(only) armchair by the fireplace and sighed in relief. Reaching out with his right hand towards the table, he took a dart out of a cup full of them and set his aim on the dartboard hanging above the fireplace. This particular one is a custom, which Jack'O made in the image of the creature he despised the most. The dartboard itself had the shape of a demon's head with crudely painted details, such as a shark-teeth smile and an eye patch.

Before he had a chance to throw the dart, a loud knocking noise came from the front door.

- What the...

Jack'O got up from his chair, taken aback by this impossible situation. He simply stood there as the sound continued.

- Who's there?!

The knocking stopped for a couple of seconds, only to resume again at a faster pace. Losing his patience, he decided that the only right course of action is to open the door and face whoever or whatever it is. After arming himself with a frying pan he slowly approached the door and in one swift move opened it. But there was no one there. He stepped out into the porch but he found no signs of anyone or anything.

- Maybe it was the wind. Or maybe I just need more sleep.

With that said, Jack'O returned inside the house and shut the door behind him. Once  back inside however he noticed someone is sitting in his armchair.

- Cozy house you got here, Jacky. Mind if I crash here for awhile?

A long time has passed since he last heard this voice. Voice of the repulsing demon who betrayed him and because of whom he became a literal nobody.

- You...

- Indeed. Me.

The entire house shook to its foundations when Jack'O fired a giant beam of dark matter energy from both of his hands. His poor and trusty armchair exploded into nothing in an instant taking the table and darts with itself. Laying on the floor near the fireplace was a demon woman. Long black hair, pale skin, all white Gothic-like coat, a huge eye patch over the right eye and of course a pair of pointy horns. The look on her face was a mix between shock and genuine confusion.

- How dare you show your face to me, you foul carcass of the abyss?!

Jack'O began preparing another attack. Within his hollow eyes burned a fire, one which hasn't burned for long years.

- Look, Jacky. I know last time we saw each other, we had a bit of an uh... scuffle, you and me but...

The Lord of Pumpkins roared like a crazy beast and fired another shot, this one destroyed the fireplace along with the rest of the wall. The woman avoided the blast at the last second by jumping towards the kitchen then rolling into it like a ball. She stopped by hitting the sink so hard the faucet almost came loose. Now laying on the back with legs over her head she watched as the furious Jack'O towered over her like some sort of murderous madman with a vengeance.

- Okay, could you please stop trying to kill me, Jacky? I'm not here to fight you, and besides, I have had enough of a roller coaster ride today as it is.

- Then why are you here?

- Look, if you'll stop destroying your house and we just sit down like civilized Underworlders, I'll tell you everything.

The Lord of Pumpkins' fire seemed to have been instantly extinguished the moment he realized he just destroyed a wall, an armchair and a table. After short overlooking of the rotten fruits of his carnage he turned to the demoness on the floor.

- This better be good, Ovelia.

* * *

Another day, another load of paperwork done. Although she would never admit it in front of anybody, the amount of dumb requests citizens of the Underworld make is astronomically high. For instance, just today she had to deny thirty different pleas from Underworlders who wanted cleaner air. Like, what is she supposed to do about it?

Yawning, she got up from her chair and looked outside the giant window of the office. Thanks to her efforts the once horribly medieval Underworld became a technological juggernaut. Combining magic and technology yielded results surpassing those of humans. So what if the air is not as clean as it used to be? Everyone(who is a first or second class citizen at least) gets free cable TV and all the wondrous perks of magic and technology at the same time. It's a win-win all around, unless you're a complete failure and can't even afford shoes. In which case, oh well.

Taking out a small mirror out of the pocket in her coat, Ovelia took a look at her eye patch, and seeing that it is crooked she fixed it up.

- Well, nothing wrong with indulging myself a bit.

Back at her desk, she pressed the button four on her intercom. After two beeps a tired voice answered the call.

- Yes, miss Ovelia?

- Hans, if I have any appointments today then I want you to cancel them. In fact, tell everyone I am out and about doing charity or whatever it is.

- You want to watch "Funnies in the Family", right?

There was a brief but tense silence.

- Shut up.

She pressed the button again to terminate the call. Now that all of the "chorepointments" were null and void, she could enjoy the luxury of her favorite sitcom... or so she believed, because the lights went out, and the reinforced glass window behind her simply shattered.

- What. - She mumbled, quite confused.

With multiple pieces of glass now lodged in her back, Ovelia turned into black liquid and then swiftly reshaped back. Now free of the pieces, she took a look around her office which had shards of the window everywhere.

- This is going to be a witch to clean up. Welp, good thing it is not going to be me.

She pressed button four on the intercom couple of times, until it hit her that it wasn't just the lights that went out.

- Drat. Now I'll have to walk.

- Excuse me! Can you finally turn around for scariness' sake?!

Ovelia sighed and turned around towards the raspy voice. What her eyes beheld, could be simply explained as black floating rags, some chains and a bag of bones with barely any meat on them.

- By the seven pits... who let you in here, you filthy hobo?!

- What? I'm not...

- Yeah, yeah. Sure. You probably prefer to be called a "jobless individual". What? Cannot find any work for a fellow of your education?

The bag of bones and rags laughed like a maniac who smoked one cigarette too many in his life.

- Well, you see. I'm not going to be jobless for much longer, Abyss Demon!

- Indeed. That is me.

- Because I'll be taking your seat at the top of the Underworld!

With that said the bag'o'rags laughed again. Ovelia smiled wryly in response.

- Okay, that was cute and all. Now get your tattered bones out of here before I'll have to remove you myself.

- You... you don't remember me, do you?

She raised an eyebrow.

- Should I?

The hobo shrugged and took out a book from behind his ragged cloak. Upon opening it, and quickly skimming through a couple of pages, he began reading a passage in a language most ancient. A magical circle appeared under Ovelia's feet.

- I think I have had enough of your wacky hijinks. Get... out!

Usually at this stage she would make a very scary face, the air would tense up and the intruder would have been knocked out of her office, in pieces at that. Instead, she just lost her balance and fell face-flat onto the floor.

- Buh-wha? - She mumbled, spitting out a shard of glass from her mouth. The raspy laugh resounded again.

- It worked! It worked! Bless your dark heart, Abysswalker!

- What just happened?

Ovelia got up slowly and arrived at the conclusion that she feels much less powerful than usual. It was almost as if she had no crazy broken powers at all anymore.

- This spell was made specifically to deal with you, Ovelia! To be more precise, it seals most of your great power!

Before she could even process this information the raggedy hobo grabbed her by the hair and dangled outside of the window.

- It's a long way down, little abyss runt.

- Who in the seven pits of hell do you think you are?! You will not get away with this!

- Who? Why, I am... The Boogeyman!

With that said, he let go of her hair and in accordance with the laws of gravity, Ovelia plummeted down. In the brief moments during her fall she could hear the raspy, yet roaring laughter of victory. Then, there was only darkness and silence.

* * *

- Hold up. Boogeyman? The same Boogeyman we trashed completely and threw down into the Sea of Gehenna?! That Boogeyman?

- Well, considering he seems to kinda hate me, I think so.

Jack'O sighed.

- Look, if he hates me, then he hates you as well, Jacky.

- He only went after you because you were the top dog in the Underworld. Now that you were thrown away like yesterday's trash I'm sure he has more important things to do than go after me. Besides, he can't find me anyway, secret dimension, no?

- Uhh...

Jack'O sent Ovelia a cold piercing gaze.

- Which brings me to my next point. How did you find me?

- After Boogeyboy noticed I am not dead, he sent multiple assassins after me. I high-tailed it to the human world to lose them. After I wandered a bit, I noticed you going about in the dark with your bags of merchandise. I knew I could hide inside your dimension if I followed you. It was a pretty lucky coincidence, I must say.

- Mhm. - He shrugged. - Alright.

Jack'O turned around towards the kitchen, only to quickly turn back and punched Ovelia right in the gut. The might of the hit sent her flying right into a bookshelf. It immediately collapsed right on top of her. He carefully watched her turn into liquid then reform back into regular form next to him.

- What was that for?! - She asked, pouting.

- You tell me. While I would be otherwise inclined to believe in our "lucky" and "coincidental" meeting, I just simply can't. You said you "knew" about my dimension. From where? Who else knows?

- Uhhh...

Jack'O cracked his knuckles.

- Alrighty! Fine! I kept spying on you after you left, so I could laugh at you! I had special cameras installed at almost every place you visit! That way I always had a fresh stream of your misery!

They both stood there in complete silence for a bit.

- I can't believe this. I need a drink.

With that said, the Lord of Pumpkins simply went into the kitchen and returned with two cups filled with vodka. After staring at puzzled Ovelia for a couple of seconds, he poured both cups down his throat, one after the other.

- So... can I stay here?

- No.

As if on cue, the sky of the dimension split open with a loud and terrible noise and through the crack flew in a giant dragon. Alongside him a four armed being, whose head seemed to be composed of flames, descended upon the house.

- I have found you at last, wretch of the abyss! By the order of the almighty Boogeyman, I, Pyreman - Lord of Fire and Ashes, will cast burning judgment upon you and your comrade!

Upon finishing his speech, he threw a bunch of fireballs down onto the house and laughed proudly as everything around quickly went ablaze.

[kouvei]

I got tagged by both @kiwibirdlafayette and @sweetdollywrites and didn’t notice it until now ^^;

Tagging: ...I feel like I’m a bit behind on this and most of the people I can think of have probably already been tagged, so if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged!

1. what’s a motivation for your writing?

I mostly just love making up stories and since I usually write stories I want to read, I want to be able to read my own work again.

2. which of your characters do you love to hate?

Okay, this is a tiny spoilery thing, but Mordred’s current life family. They are all awful in different ways and I hate them so much, but they make for great antagonists.

3. what inspired you to write your wip?

I read Avalon High back in middle school and then sometime in high school, my mind was searching for a new story to occupy myself with and I thought up a story about Arthurian characters. I enjoyed it so I thought up a second one later and started writing my wip.

4. which of your characters would you go watch a movie with?

Hm... Kay. Okay, technically, not entirely my character(almost none are, really) but I’m ignoring that for now. He’d be fun to talk about the movie with later and if we were just watching the movie at home, not in a theater, he’d be up to Mystery Science Theater it with me. (Incidentally, that’s also how I get through horror movies: mocking them until they can’t hurt me.)

5. what old wip would you really like to reboot?

There was a story I worked on a while back about a group of fairytale-esque villains being kidnapped and “reformed” while they’re all really resistant to the idea. They keep pointing out how the morality they’re being fed has some real issues and talk about why they did what they did. For instance, when the reformer guy starts lecturing about how stealing is wrong under any circumstances, a few of them point out a bunch of situations where that is not true. They’re not innocent by any means, and they eventually acknowledge they did some truly awful things and try to be better, but the guy trying to reform them also acknowledges his black-and-white view of the world is probably wrong too.

6. what’s an unpopular opinion you have regarding writing?

It’s a weird one and one I have from experience. I think writers should know punctuation and capitalization grammar before writing, for their own sake. Because especially with dialogue, word or grammar checking doesn’t usually catch that and when you do learn it or want to publish your work, going back and correcting is a MASSIVE pain and with any works you haven’t corrected, it’s not fun reading them when your mind keeps getting swamped with errors.

7. would you say your style’s more ornate or bare-bones?

Probably bare-bones.

8. would you want your story as an rpg game?

Yep! Or at least certain parts of the story.

9. your story’s getting an adaptation! live-action or animated?

I don’t know if I can decide! Assuming it’s either what I’d want it to be in either a live-action or animated(i.e. art style if animated, not Eragon if live-action), I might go with live-action if it’s a movie, animated if a TV show.

10. do you like to draw your characters as well as writing about them?

Very much yes!

1. Why do you write? (ie; what’s your motivation?)

Already answered above.

2. Who, of your characters would you want to spend a day with?

Ooh... that’s a hard one... Mordred probably. Although I would really like to hang out with Arthur or Morgana too.

3. What’s your favorite part of writing?

Dialogue. Might be obvious in my writing, but I like to write interactions between characters.

4. What is one genre and/or trope you despise writing?

There’s a couple, but a less serious one is framing. You know, the evil Badguy McVillain usurped the throne and framed the heir for treason and murder and everyone believes him? 99/100 times whenever I read it I have to put the book down to cool down. Usually if I write it, I’m fine, since I can do it in that 1/100 way that doesn’t stress me out to infinity and beyond.

5. Who are your biggest influences?

Riordan is very much an influence, I love his sense of humor and how he incorporates myth into a modern setting. J.K. Rowling used to be, but it’s turned into using some of her base ideas and going in a different direction for... a lot of reasons.

6. If your work got a film deal- Animated or Live action?

Specifically for film, then live-action. I just have a weird preference for live-action films but animated tv shows. Not sure why.

7. Are you more of an outline person or write-as-you go person?

Both, usually. I have some idea of where I’m going and some plot points to get there, but the in-between is up in the air.

8. What’s the most emotional thing you’ve ever written?

I’m not 100% sure, but it’s probably a reunion scene. I like to write those. For instance, one of my old wips has a scene where the main character meets her previously brainwashed brother, who remembers everything he did, and she hugs him while he’s crying and apologizing for something he had no control over.

9. Would you want to live in the world(s) of your story?

Yes! It has modern conveniences and technology with magic and a medieval air. Also, earth’s basically the same as it is now, just with the option to go to Avalon if you want and a slight risk of getting stuck in the middle of a monster or magic attack.

10. (and, because I’ve seen most do this)- Any goals for your WIP?

I really want to finish the first book and publish it, then write the next book and make a series.

My Questions:

Why do you write?

If your wip got a tv show, live-action or animated?

What’s your favorite thing about writing?

What’s your least favorite thing about writing?

Do you like to plan more or see where the story takes you?

Who is your favorite character to write?

What plotline do you want to put in your wip but probably won’t be able to?

What old wip do you want to start working on again?

What is/are your favorite wip(s)?

Which of your characters would you like as a roommate?

[weirdhistorywritings]

The Battle of Kleidion (or How to Not Quite Kill a Ton of People)

On today’s episode of weird history writings, 

Basil II, more commonly known as Basil the Bulgar Slayer. 

Depending on who you ask about Basil you’ll get two very different answers. To ancient Byzantines and even some modern day residents of that region, Basil was basically a saint who could do no wrong. To descendants of the Bulgars, he’s a dick who needs to gtfo.

Quick Background on Basil: 

When he was born, Basil’s father, Emperor Romanos the Second, appointed him co-emperor. This was just a fluffy title to make sure he got the gig when Dad died, and it’s a title Romanos gave his other son too so don’t think Basil was too special in that regard.

Anyway, Romanos dies when Basil is super young, and word on the street (literally, it was like the tabloid gossip of the day) was that his wife did it. Honestly, she probably didn’t, but everyone already hated her for being a commoner so they jumped on that train real quick.

Anyway, Basil’s technically Emperor now, and his mom is technically regent. But he’s so young and his mom doesn’t know much about ruling, so all the power went to other leaders who all hated each other and were bickering over who got to do what and who killed who and blah blah blah. They’re unimportant. 

Basil finally puts on his big boy pants, and he actually ends up on the throne for several decades.

Quick background on the Conflict with Bulgaria: 

It was over land and power, because let’s face it everything is. 

Bulgaria set up shop in some Byzantine land a couple hundred years prior, and they’d been fighting each other over it ever since.

Bulgaria had actually been a powerhouse a few generations before Basil’s reign, but they’d been under new management for a while. It wasn’t looking good. 

They were being attacked from the north. One of their emperors caved to Byzantium and gave up the entire eastern half of the country. Basically, shit had hit the fan, and they were all sitting around wiping crap off the walls trying to get that shit together and in a bag. 

Unfortunately for them, Basil’s young with something to prove and he likes killing things (or almost killing them as you’ll see). 

War with Bulgaria: 

Pretty much the first thing Basil does when his ass hits the throne is say, “Let’s go slay some Bulgars.” But as Hannah Montana says, “Nobody’s Perfect,” and Basil isn’t either. He attacked, got owned, lost a bunch of men, and was a super sore loser about it.

While Basil was distracted, presumably being butt hurt and putting down other uprisings, the Bulgars were like, “Hey, he’s not looking, let’s steal second base.” So they did, and they took back a bunch of the land they lost. 

And then, once Basil beats everyone else, like all of us, he dwells on that first defeat in the 2nd Grade Spelling Bee to Mitchell McDonald, and he vows his revenge (presumably). 

Basil and the Bulgars, led by this guy named Samuel but we’re gonna call him Sam just because, basically go back and forth over the years. 

Basil wins a battle here. Samuel attacks over there. Basil pillages a town. Samuel burns Basil’s collection of beanie babies. 

Back and forth. Back and forth. Throwing metaphorical punches that literally involve killing tons of civilians.

Sam is, however, slowly losing. It’s just math. He’s smaller and has less men. Every time he loses a guy, it hurts a lot more than every time Basil does. 

The Battle of Kleidion: 

Unfortunately, Sam failed geography class because he forgot that a whole empire was bigger than Bulgaria. 

Sam decides to fight Basil outright. He rallies the troops, does some nice strategizing, presumably doodles lots of x’s and o’s on a white board.

And they actually put up a really good fight. All credit to Sam. He failed geography but that man aced P.E. They beat Basil back, and it was pretty impressive.

Sadly for Sam, Basil did not fail geography class. He sent some troops around a mountain, and now Sam’s being attacked on both sides.

Sadly for Sam’s troops, Sam was not a captain because that boy did not go down with the ship. He jumped out of the boat and saved his own ass, leaving them all to be taken prisoner or die. 

There’s some smaller fights, but for all intents and purposes this was the last great stand of the Bulgars. 

The “Incident”: 

What really makes this story worthy of discussion is the aftermath.

Basil’s left with tons of prisoners, and by tons I mean 8,000-15,000 and what do you normally do with tons of prisoners in 1000 AD? Well, normally you kill them all, steal their wallets and go home.

Not Basil, Basil lines the men up in lines of 100 like it’s grade school. And you quite literally poke their eyes out. 

Basil started at the back and poked out both eyes of 99 men in a row, and when he got to the guy at the front of the line he only poked out one of his eyes. He did that 80 to 150 times in a row for every single line of men until he had thousands of blind men and only a few dozen that could see out of one eye.

Then, like a sadistic DJ, he made them all line up and do a conga line home.

I’m not kidding. The reason he didn’t completely blind the first guy in each line was because he made that guy lead all of the others home. 

I’m sure part of it was that Basil was petty about losing that first fight decades ago. I’m sure part of it was a warning to never do anything like that again. I’m sure part of it was punishment for their crimes. Also, imagine the psychological toll this took on anyone else who was considering joining. It’s one thing to hear that a soldier died. It’s any entire nother thing to see an entire army come back blind.

But also, consider this.

Normally they’d all be dead (or sent home. Some people were nice I guess). Normally, a country would have to deal with the loss of those men emotionally and physically. Yes, there would be a few people coming back with some form of disability, but without modern hospitals you usually came back either dead or alive in those days. 

But here, they don’t have to deal with their loss. They have to deal with their care. They aren’t without those men. Quite the opposite. Basil’s just dropped thousands of people into a medieval country who’s only skill is no longer of any use to them and who now are jobless and need to be taken care of. 

Much as they despise Byzantium, and believe me they do, how are they to scrounge together an army when they need all hands on deck helping at home. 

And that is why he’s called Basil the Bulgar Slayer. 

Here are some credible sources that are far more official and far more polished than me. Because finding credible sources can be hard, and as much as I like dramatizing amusing history, it’s mostly a ploy to get you to look into these things yourself.

For Further Reading Online:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Basil-II

https://erenow.net/postclassical/byzantium-the-surprising-life-of-a-medieval-empire/21.php

https://smerdaleos.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/paul-stephenson-the-legend-of-basil-the-bulgar-slayer.pdf

For Further Reading in Books:

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/in-the-heroic-age-of-basil-ii-emperor-of-byzantium_penelope-delta/542531/#isbn=1931807523&idiq=12472061

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/lost-to-the-west-the-forgotten-byzantine-empire-that-rescued-western-civilization_lars-brownworth/344493/#isbn=0307407969&idiq=3775765

[rhysnrivers]

Odyssey to becoming a Published Author

(Note: with Odyssey being in the title, this is quite a long post.  The link to the facebook page that leads to where my novel can be bought from can be found at the bottom of the post, as can some of the initial artwork done)

So, despite never been a ‘blogger’ per se before, I’ve decided to write this article about my journey from having dreamed about writing and having my own works published, through to actually writing my ideas up and publishing them myself, as I’m sure that there are many an indie author and authoress out there who can relate and have been through the very same journey I have.

First thing’s first.  Rhys N Rivers is not my real name.  It’s a pen name.  There’s something in being anonymous when it comes to writing, almost like a sense of freedom.  This day and age of social media means that almost everything we do is recorded somewhere on the internet, and an opinion or action from ten years ago can be drudged back up to be ridiculed by the Facebook jury and/or the Karens of the internet, in line with the fashionable opinions of the day.  A pen name grants anonymity and to some degree, security.  The only people who know my identity are my immediate family and a few close, trusted friends.

When people embark on a new venture; be it a new hobby, learning a new language, travelling the world, changing jobs etc, the journey actually begins long before said venture starts.  Quite often, the journey always begins in the classroom, at home, in bed, in daydreams.  It begins as a state of ambition.  A plan that one day, will be put into action.

My authoring journey was no different.  Mine actually began around the age of eleven.  I was of the Harry Potter generation where I was the same age as the main characters in the early years when a new film came out each year.  J.K. Rowling got me into reading beyond in school, and I - being one of the cool kids, clearly - read a lot throughout my early and mid teenage years.  It was admittedly predominantly fantasy based, (Tolkien, Pratchett, Philip Pullman, Garth Nix) or Bernard Cornwall’s historical works before I branched out into people like Wilbur Smith and others.  When I was around 14 or 15, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code took the world by storm and I also ended up reading all of his works. School provided a sophisticated reading list, which included Dickens and Golding, and so growing I had read through a rich and broad variety of fiction.

Where actually writing was concerned, I think it was about the age of eleven or twelve that I realised that I wanted to write properly.  I think it was actually after reading William Nicholson’s Wind Singer when I decided, and I set to task in writing coming up with a fantasy novel.  I didn’t start writing the plot straight away; I actually started coming up with characters and places, even drawing out a world map.  That was really fun to do.  It had a sense of total control to it.  What I decided was what things were.  Where a kid may not feel in control of things in other parts of life (insecurities of school, friends, growing up, relationships etc), this was something totally different.  The ability to create your own fictional world, in whatever genre you go for, is a form of escape and release in which you can develop your talents and ideas.  

There were lots of elements to what I was planning out - which included ideas from Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Legend of Zelda, The Wind on Fire among others.  To be honest, I’m actually glad that ‘project’ didn’t get very far.  Poor Christopher Paolini, the author of the Inheritance Cycle quadrilogy of books, was slated by certain groups and reviewers for his alleged lack of originality and using of ideas from other stories.  In Paolini’s defence, he was only fifteen when his first book was published, which is something that most fifteen year olds don’t achieve!  But I think that had I completed mine, it might have faced the same criticisms - not necessarily from reviewers or publishers, but perhaps friends and family reading through it first.

School, in particular, provided me with a lot of enthusiasm and inspiration to write (clearly, I was one of the cool kids).  My GCSE English teacher was a great bloke (probably still is) and gave great, honest and constructive feedback to the entire class’ work.  Our first piece of English Literature coursework was a piece on creative writing and I elected to do a piece on the topic of an opening chapter/opening chapters to a novel.  Having just read Dan Brown I did my piece in his sort of style: bloke copping it at the start, trying to prevent some conspiracy from going ahead, then the reluctant hero of the story gets dragged in to solving it.  My piece didn’t revolve around religious groups or secret societies, but around a historical artefact.

Out of 54 marks, this scored 52.  I was more than happy with that.  I had no idea where the story was going to go but I was determined that I would one day finish the story.  To this day, I still have no idea where the story is going, but I am certain that it will be the last novel of a set of three, dragging the main character, a desperately-can’t-wait-to-retire detective, through painstaking research, learning about history that he wouldn’t usually be arsed about and running away from people, of whom he’s becoming more and more of an embuggerance (word-invention credited to Terry Pratchett) to.

For some reason, I really can’t remember why, but about a year later the option was given to my English class to rewrite that piece of coursework (we were about four out of five coursework pieces done by that time).  I was of course happy with my score but I saw this as an opportunity to try something new and see what ideas could again come spewing from my mind.

This time, again sticking with the opening chapter(s) option, I wrote about a start of a medieval conspiracy, beginning around the Battle of Crécy and going…err…I still have no idea where!  But this piece resonated better than the previous piece, earning full marks from my English teacher, along with the comments “…should come with an 18 rated certificate.”  Again, I vowed that I would complete this story one day and see it published.  This one I think I will try to make into a three-book story.

The summer after completing my GCSE exams I did the normal stuff: went on holiday with family, chilled out with friends, even attended the World Scout Jamboree that year.  But I also by then had a set of ideas in my head that I wanted to turn into novels, and wrote that list onto a computer, and saved it to my USB memory stick.  I have no idea where I last saw that USB stick…

After I left school I joined the British Armed Forces.  I’m not going to write too much about what I did, where I went etc (not because I was part of some uber-top-secret unit, but more-so that it just doesn’t contribute to this post) but my priorities changed.  I read a lot less and writing properly in the near term future just was not a possibility, or something that I wanted to concentrate on at that time.

In early 2017 I was considering a career change, and during that time I joined fanstory.com, under my real name.  The purpose of doing this was to put myself into an environment with other amateur writers, gain inspiration from other budding authors (and hopefully give some inspiration back), and be in a place where my works could be read among ‘peers’, giving me a good steer on things.

It was on this website where my first novel, Payment, was conceived.  There was a competition going for short stories up to 7000 words long in the horror genre (“Put your readers on edge or terrorize them”) and so I thought this was a good place to test out to see what people think and to  develop my writing style.

It took me a couple of weeks to put Payment together and submit it.  I had never considered writing horror before but this, again, was an ample opportunity to try something new and see what I could come up with.  I decided to go with a 19th Century narrative; much like Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker.  I prefer to think or the horror genre as the old neo-gothic styles of writing - the old ghost stories.  Horror, in recent years, both in writing and film-making, has taken more of a gore and shock factor turn.  Personally, I think that will turn horror more into the thriller genre.  To me, horror should be about ghosts, vampires, witches - the occult and the supernatural.  And that’s that I have tried to achieve with Payment. 

What surprised me the most during the writing of this were my decisions to use the first-person narrative - something I used to despise growing up, and the use of a one-word title.  For some reason it used to bug me no end that it was becoming more and more common that artistic projects, be they novels, films, dance, visual art etc, would use one-worded titles.  I used to think that was a cop-out.  But here I am with Payment - a novel told in first-person narrative…

I have always thought that my writing style was/is closest to Terry Pratchett’s.  I’ve never tried to emulate him but his style of using irony, dry humour and satire, whilst also plummeting to some very deep philosophical ideas.  But I couldn’t do that whilst writing Payment.  The thing is with writing horror, is that you have to be able to maintain that macabre atmosphere all the through.  That actually isn’t easy.  I found there always has to be a sense of the character’s isolation, a sense of doom and gloom, and a sense of something about to happen.  

I didn’t win the completion that I entered.  I don’t think it even made the top three.  The votes are cast by the other entries’ writers and maybe a few other people.  I can’t remember if you could vote for your own project but I think you could.  The entries placed above mine, although I thought their storylines familiar with ideas already done, were admittedly much easier to read than my entry.  A 19th century style of writing will always lose to simplicity when people have a number of works to read.

But that didn’t deter me.  I’d created a fictional work and was determined to show it to the world.  I didn’t go ahead with the career change at that point but decided to fully review Payment, at get it out there as a completed project.

Fanstory is a good platform, it really is.  I’m not sure why, but after only a couple of months and having written a few competition entries, I came to stop writing on it.  My old job was getting in the way and to be honest, I was getting impatient with writing on it.  I had the mentality that I wanted to be published right now sort of thing.

A couple of years later, I did go ahead in a change of direction career-wise.  This provided the opportunity to fully revise Payment and make it into a ‘novelette’, more than 7000/7500 words but fewer than 17,500.  I would then prepare it for editing, get the artwork sorted and then publish it online for maybe a couple of quid.

I was actually in Tanzania at the time when I thought that Payment had been expanded enough to put out as a novelette.  Once I’d finished writing, I showed it to a couple of the volunteers I was working with and they both enjoyed it.  Although I was pleased about that, I still wasn’t satisfied with it.  I had touched on quite a few themes in the work but I don’t feel like I had explored them all as much as I could have.  Although complete, it felt very much incomplete.  At the same time I wanted to expand the work into a full novel and also I didn’t - mainly because of the challenge of maintaining that horror atmosphere.

I decided that, in order to put more meat onto the bones and develop this short story/novelette into a full length novel, I needed a goal to work towards; something that has an end achievement that will make me work to expand on what I had already done.  And so I set about looking for horror writing groups and/or competitions on the internet. 

In not much time at all I came across the Horror Writers Association (HWA).  They are a group that cater for all things horror and occult in fiction.  There, you can advertise your works, read or recommend other people’s works and learn about events - namely the StokerCon.

But what attracted me to them the most was their sponsorship of the Bram Stoker Awards (“for Superior Achievement”).  These are awards that are given out to authors and authoresses who have had their works judged in certain categories.  The one that has caught my eye is the ‘First Novel’ category.  A quick reading of the rules informed me of the minimal word limit:  40,00 words.  Perfect.  There’s something to work towards, with a chance at winning what is described as ‘the Oscars of horror writing’.  When I returned from Africa I set about the task of bolstering a 17,000-ish novelette into a 40,000 word minimum horror novel!

I have read Edgar Allan Poe in the past, and even bits of Mary Shelley.  For more inspiration in keeping that spooky, Neo-Gothic atmosphere, I read some parts of Bram Stoker and H.P. Lovecraft.  Despite all of that, I initially found it difficult to write again on the same piece of work that I started almost three years previously.  It was only after reading Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black, where I became inspired by her power of description to turn chapters, paragraphs and sentences that belong in quick short stories to ones suitable for a long read.

In January, this  year, I had finally finished.  I expanded heavily on the ideas that I was before concerned that I was rushing through and before I knew it, my word count was well over the 40,000 words I wanted to achieve!  I read it all again myself, edited out any spelling or grammar mistakes that I had seen, and sent it out to beta testers (readers) for opinions and editing.

Following the last edit - of which there wasn’t relatively much to do - my debut novel stands at a word count of 53,850 words!  That isn’t considered very long by today’s standards.  To give a point of reference, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is estimated to be around 77,000 words long (depending on who is doing the word count).  But my novel is longer than The Woman in Black as well as other novels such as The Great Gatsby and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and considering it came from a short story of 7,000 words I am still happy with it.

Concurrently with writing the novel came the task of finding an artist/illustrator for the cover.  That was a more difficult task than I expected.

Not only did I want to find someone who could create a suitable cover, I also wanted that someone to be able to do ‘scene art’; by which I mean a picture at the start of certain chapters.  The reason for this is that I see a completed novel itself as a form of art, and scene pictures add to that completed projected.  In fact, I actually wanted a sort of teamwork between the writing/art found in the Edge Chronicles books by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell.  

I combed Facebook for a very long time, joining all sorts of groups and pages for amateur artists to show off their works, hoping to find someone who I thought was suitable for my work.  To my dismay, there was very little, I thought, that I could go off.

Around October time I put an advert on a freelancing work website, just for an idea of who else is out there and possibly able to take this up.  I did receive a fair few responses but, again, there wasn’t really anyone whose work suited what I was after.  A couple of them, one of them being an art company based in Central Asia, actually got quite nasty about it.  They were expectant 

It was when I was on a course in Spain that it was suggested to me to look on Reddit, as Reddit “literally has everything on it.”  I had never actually been a proper Reddit user before; I’d clicked the odd link from Facebook but had never really interacted with it before. 

The guy who suggested Reddit to me was right - Reddit has literally everything on it.  There’s so much information to be found on so many topics it seemed unlikely that I wouldn’t find what I was looking for on it, and so I combed through a few sub-reddits dedicated to (freelance) artists and checked some of them out.

So I once again posted out an advert looking for artists and this time the response were much more positive, and enthusiastic!  It really was quite uplifting to see and hear from so many people who were interested in taking up the project and I received so many messages.  Everyone who commented on the post and/or messaged me with links to their portfolios, I checked out their work.  I honestly don’t think there was a single person whose works of art that I wasn’t impressed by.  There is so much that can be found at deviantart.com and artstation.com and so much talent to be viewed and be in awe at!  Everyone who directly messaged me got a return thanking them.

One of the people I got talking to was a young lad from Sweden called Daniel Percy, whose artwork I also checked out.  My preferences came down to him and another guy from Germany, and after speaking with Daniel he agreed to take on the work.

Daniel does a lot of freelance art work, predominately doing concept art work for electronics companies (I want to say video games but don’t take that as gospel), but he still found the time to do this properly, compiling several drafts of the cover and inside sketches.  We collaborated quite often on what to change, ideas to put in etc.

The finished artwork is incredible!  I’m showing some of the initial first-sketch ideas here along with the final book cover, along with a couple of since-altered scene pictures, just for an idea of his talent.  You’ll have to buy the book to see all of the finished sketches ;)

And the final thing to think/worry/mull over until stupid o’ clock in the morning, was the publishing aspect.  Luckily, ever since I’ve thought about writing (as an adult), it has become increasingly easier to get your works out there.  The rise of the internet and social media age has made self publishing so much more accessible, and that is the route I have gone down.

At first, I wanted to go down the traditional printing route.  I - again showing cool I was as a kid - always liked the idea of a fresh and printed book in my hands.  But, there are two reasons why I haven’t done this:

The first one is environmental.  Even before the climate change debate became a fashionable thing to signal your virtues about, I was uncomfortable about the idea of trees being cut down for my creation, unless I could be 100% certain that exact same area would be immediately replanted.  It’s true, there are forested areas specifically for this kind of thing but the amount of bureaucracy involved, along with the middle-men, wouldn’t make it an immediate thing.

The second reason is that the majority of writers who send their works in get rejected by so many publishers.  Yes, people refer to J.K. Rowling’s story of being rejected twelve times (and again later by one of the same publishers when she first wrote as Robert Galbraith) before Harry Potter became a hit, but as the option of the internet is there, it makes sense to negate that possible rejection.  In the event that my works do get noticed and attract the attention of publishers, then great!  But if they don’t, at least by online publishing, I’ve still achieved putting my novel out to the world.

Finally, today, Friday the 13th (intentionally - it is a horror novel after all ;p ) of March 2020, I officially became a published author.  It is a fantastic, monumental feeling.  My story, my novel, my creation, is out there for people to buy, read and hopefully, enjoy.

If there’s any advice that I can give for anyone aspiring to be an (indie) author, it is this: just write your ideas down.  Sounds simple, if not downright obvious, but it really is incredible that so many people don’t achieve their dreams or aspirations simply because they don’t do them.  The world of authoring and indie writing is so much more accessible now than it was even fifteen years ago, that is takes a great lot of effort not to find at least one platform to get your works out onto.

It is also incredibly easy to find every excuse in the book to not write at all.  School, work, family etc, being the big ones, and they are legitimate reasons.  But they are only obstacles themselves to an extent, before you yourself make them obstacles.  Start small.  Set yourself half an hour on an evening.  No more, no less.  Half an hour to start getting your ideas onto paper and then after a week, you’ve spent three and a half hours writing.  You’d be surprised at how much you’ve achieved after three and a half hours of concentrated effort.

If you need motivation, there are plenty of people out there, particularly on the internet, who give great examples of motivation that apply to all disciplines.  Joe Rogan, for just one example, has plenty of people on his podcasts who talk and give advice on self-betterment, and it can apply to anybody.  If you want to write, you will find the time and means to do it.  It doesn’t matter how long it takes; everybody finds their ways at different times. 

As to my next works, what am I going to be writing next?  Well, shortly after writing Payment as a short story I thought of another idea to write about, and use that particular project to actually develop my writing style.  This next one, of which the first ‘act’ as such does already have a skeleton outline to it, is a light hearted yet philosophical at times medieval adventure, combining humour and seriousness together.  I’m not going to divulge ay more information the storyline because, although it’s a simple idea, I believe it’s one that no-one’s done before and some smart-arse with more time on their hands than I can easily bash something together using my idea!

The school coursework pieces?  They are still on my ideas list and will no doubt be developed into their own proper projects and they hopefully will also be published just as Payment is!  The fantasy that I started aged eleven?  Absolutely no idea.  Whilst I would certainly like to do fantasy, going for originality is going to be difficult, as the standard format (young hero finds out he’s the ‘chosen one’ and goes on a long quest) has been done to death, as have a lot of fantasy ideas already.  George R R Martin had the idea of using the idea of old English houses warring against other in the past, and that was used to great effect even before he threw in the ice zombies!  So that one is going to be a case of properly allocating some time to sit down, think and decide how I’m going to go about, but make no mistake, I will go about it!

Thank you all for taking the time to read through this!  I hope its provided at least some entertainment or light (ha!) reading, and I hope you’ll feel interested to buy my debut novel!

My Facebook page can be found at:  

https://m.facebook.com/Rhys-N-Rivers-Writing-101015961412385/?ref=bookmarks

All the places where Payment can be bought from can be found there.  I thought it better to post one central link than the individual ones.

[exultedshores]

How do you manage writing characters speech outside of our usual modern world, like Game of Thrones or Dishonored? I think I write it alright, but I can never tell

Okay, I’m not sure if I’m qualified to give writing advice, but I’ll try my best!

I think writing for period-specific fandoms comes down to knowing the world you’re writing about. Obviously, the first thing to think about is the approximate time period in which your story is set (Game of Thrones being medieval-esque and Dishonored taking place in a more technologically advanced version of the 1800s). You need to be aware of which words would and would not be used in those settings. That’s not to say you ought to start writing in Ye Olde English for a medieval setting, but it does mean you shouldn’t use words or sayings that clearly originated in modern times. So when a character wants to sit in the front of a wagon, don’t have them call shotgun when guns haven’t even been invented in their universe.

More importantly, in my opinion, is to think about things like the religions and customs of the world, and use those to create dialogue (and descriptions!) that inherently belong in the world you’ve chosen to dabble in. Like, in our modern day universe, in the place where I live, Christianity has woven its way quite strongly into language, and the same phenomenon will occur in fantasy worlds. Let’s take exclamations of surprise, for example. In modern language, one might call out “Oh my God” when surprised. But in Game of Thrones, we often hear “Seven Hells” (stemming from the Faith of Seven) and in Dishonored characters regularly exclaim “Outsider’s eyes” (in reference to the black eyes of the deity the Outsider). Things like religion and customs will always weave their way into language, so make use of that!

Finally, as in all fiction, be aware of what character you are writing dialogue for. Different characters have different speech patterns, and different characters also have different beliefs. An Overseer from the Abbey of the Everyman in Dishonored would likely be more inclined to say “By the Strictures” when surprised than “Outsider’s eyes”, because the Abbey reveres the Seven Strictures and despises the Outsider. And a Northerner in Game of Thrones might not be so keen on evoking the Seven when they worship the Old Gods instead. Be mindful, adjust appropriately, and play around! Does your character in the Game of Thrones world specifically worship the Warrior, or the Mother? Have their thoughts and speech incorporate it! Is your Dishonored character connected to the Void? “By the Void”, “For Void’s sake”, “Voiddammit”, “To the Void with you”, “Void take you”. Let little things like that bleed into your dialogue, and it will seem like it belongs in the world much more easily.

I hope that helps! Good luck writing!

[an-incurable-affection-blog]

Ivanhoe

Sir Walter Scott. 1819. “Romanticism and Gothic” list.

“Rebecca and the Wounded Ivanhoe” by Eugene Delacroix.

“The knights are dust, And their good swords are rust, And their souls are with the saints, we trust.”

In the style of Sir Walter Scott, whose books and chapters open with epigraphs, I begin with a quote that Scott adapts from Coleridge’s “The Knight’s Tomb” (although in Ivanhoe we find this in the main body of the text). 

The quote is just one of countless places where the narrator calls attention to the fact that the book is set in an earlier age (the reign of Richard I, in the 12th century) than its time of publication (1819). Whereas a contemporary historical novel typically presents a self-contained story, without extradiegetic references to its nature as a period piece, Ivanhoe scuttles between its setting and (Scott’s) present-day: for example, to contrast what a certain building looked like in the period with how it does now; or contrast the customs of the time with current customs, sometimes to help readers understand an event (“And as there were no forks in those days, his clutches were instantly in the bowels of the pasty”), sometimes just because; or offer reasons why we should believe in the plausibility of his fictions, naming his historical sources. As the first historical novelist, Scott seems to feel called upon to explain and justify his new genre even within the text itself. In their context, the Coleridge lines are trotted out to justify why the narrative declines to include lengthy descriptions of the devices and colors of the knights at a particular tournament⁠—contrary, the narrator explains, to “my Saxon authority (in the Wardour Manuscript).” 

Of course, no work of fiction needs to justify why it includes certain details and leaves out others—it is the author’s job to decide what material is relevant, and there are far too many choices involved to justify each one. But the narrator brings up his reasoning behind not describing knights’ heraldry—namely, because they’re all dead now—to play up the theme of nostalgia, a staple of the Romanticist movement. Not only are we, in the nineteenth century, looking back at knights (how nostalgic), but remember, readers, they no longer exist (aw!). 

But the Romanticist project here is ambivalent, with the narrator both criticizing (explicitly) and glorifying (usually more implicitly) the Age of Chivalry. The narrator frequently opines on “the disgraceful license by which that age was stained,” and how “fiction itself can hardly reach the dark reality of the horrors of the period,” and so on. “In our own days...morals are better understood” (he’s no relativist). But on the other hand, as Richard the Lionheart comments upon hearing the Saxon noble Athelstane detail how he escaped from a crypt, “beshrew me but such a tale is as well worth listening to as a romance.” That’s because it’s a tale within a romance, and romances, the implied author seems to agree, are well worth listening to. “The horrors” are seductive. The horrors are romantic. (Cf. the Gothic.)

The title may be Ivanhoe, after its chivalric Saxon hero Wilfred of Ivanhoe, but the real hero(ine), arguably, is the beautiful and long-suffering Jewess Rebecca. Here we can see the real divergence of this 19th-century Romantic work from its medieval-romance inspiration. In what can be read as an implicit criticism of medieval romance and the age that gave rise to it, the show, I think, is stolen from the titular knight-errant by a Jewish woman. 

The only character with no flaws or foibles, Rebecca is even more perfect than the heroine we would expect to star in this romance—Ivanhoe’s lady-love, the Saxon princess Rowena. As the similarity of their names suggests, Rebecca and Rowena are doubles. They appear in back-to-back chapters, simultaneously unfolding chapters that feature them, imprisoned in separate rooms of the same castle, spurning the sexual advances of their respective captors. Heroines locked up in castle chambers, besieged by would-be rapists and the threat of forced marriages; heroines demonstrating their noble character by rejecting wicked seducers—all tropes. Less predictable is the use of these tropes as a means of contrasting the situations of women from different classes, and with a Jewish woman emerging as the superior character, no less. 

Both women do triumph in their goal of averting the fates their captors intend. But Rowena, normally haughty, crumples in a flood of tears when she realizes De Bracy’s power to force her hand in marriage. (Luckily for her, De Bracy is soft at heart—this would not have worked on Rebecca’s admirer, the still more wicked Brian de Bois-Guilbert.) Rebecca, though bearing herself with “courtesy” and a “proud humility” (in contrast to Rowena’s haughtiness), shows herself to have more spirit and strength of character. As a member of a despised race, Rebecca is approached with an offer far less honorable than marriage. (Also, Bois-Guilbert’s vows as a Knight Templar forbid his marriage to anyone.) Instead, the Knight wants to make her his mistress. In such a station she will be showered with riches and glory, he promises. She answers with true fighting words: “I spit at thee, and I defy thee.” In a classic (literally, going back to classical mythology) heroine move, Rebecca threatens to commit suicide, jumping to the ledge of the high turret and warning him not to come a step closer. This both dissuades Bois-Guilbert from his original intent and heightens his passion for her: “Rebecca! she who could prefer death to dishonor must have a proud and a powerful soul. Mine thou must be!...It must be with thine own consent, on thine own terms.”

Thus Rebecca finds herself at the center of a Gothic-heroine-threatened-with-rape-in-castle-chamber scene turned into a Samuel Richardson-style seduction narrative—that gives way, at this part, to a Gothic castle siege passage. Whereas Rowena’s persecutor uses the interruption presented by the siege as an excuse to desist in his ill-fated suit, the Richardsonian plot starring Rebecca continues as a dominating strand of the novel, another respect in which her character appropriates the literary territory of the highborn Englishwoman. Before Brian de Bois-Guilbert closes his first scene with Rebecca to go defend the castle, he established himself as that tantalizing character-type, the potentially reformable rake. “I am not naturally that which you have seen me—hard, selfish, relentless. It was woman that taught me cruelty, and on woman therefore I have exercised it...” He came home from knight-errantry, he explains, to find that the lady-love whose fame he spread far and wide had married another man. Here the reader can glimpse the possibility for Rebecca to be a Mary (another Jewess) to the former lady’s Eve, the means to redemption for a man who was led by a woman into corruption. Whether the Knight Templar will turn out like Richardson’s reformable Mr. B or the irredeemable Lovelace remains to be seen.

In another aspect of Rebecca’s and Rowena’s doubleness, Rebecca’s (rejected) lover is antagonist to Rowena’s (accepted) lover, the hero Ivanhoe. Brian de Bois-Guilbert is the ultimate 12th-century bad boy: he has “slain three hundred Saracens with his own hands,” and he slays with the ladies, too. He is described, in the Ann Radcliffe tradition, with all the dark fascination of a Gothic villain: 

“His expression was calculated to impress a degree of awe, if not fear, upon strangers. High features, naturally strong and powerfully expressive...keen, piercing, dark eyes, told in every glance a history of difficulties subdued and dangers dared...a deep scar on his brow gave additional sternness to his countenance and sinister expression to one of his eyes...” 

and so on. One of the most interesting things about the novel for me is the way that Bois-Guilbert—over and above whatever is appealing about bad boys—is a strangely sympathetic character, more so than Ivanhoe, and to what degree that was built into the narrative intentionally. When the narrator weighs in with moral judgments (as he often does), it can offer insight into what his take might be on those scenes unaccompanied by commentary. So for example, when the narrator calls “the character of a knight of romance” (here, describing King Richard) “brilliant, but useless,” it implies an author for whom Rebecca is a mouthpiece when she comes down on the anti-chivalry side of a debate with Ivanhoe. So the narrator—and most modern people—likely agree with Rebecca’s opinion of the laws of chivalry as “an offering of sacrifice to a demon of vain glory,” to which a highly miffed Ivanhoe responds that she can’t understand because she is not a noble Christian maiden (unlike Rowena, is the unspoken subtext). 

Applying this to the case of Bois-Guilbert, the villain, we might conclude, to our confusion, that his views of race are closer to the narrator’s (more progressive). I have already discussed the novel’s treatment of Rebecca, one of two major Jewish characters; the other, her father Isaac, conforms to some offensive Jewish stereotypes (stingy, money-hoarding, obsequious etc.) but is ultimately portrayed as good-hearted. Moreover, anytime the narrator draws on negative stereotypes he accompanies it with vindications of the Jewish people based on their historic oppression. As in other areas, the storytelling is here flavored with a decidedly 19th-century sensibility (even perhaps progressive for 1819, when Jews still could not hold public office in England). The narrator repeatedly describes the anti-Semitism of his characters as “prejudiced” and “bigoted.” All the characters seem to feel Rebecca’s beauty and greatness, but Bois-Guilbert is the only one who sees her as an equal, without qualifying her noble traits in terms of her Jewishness. Her race seems to be a non-issue for him. Contrasted with Ivanhoe, whose admiring male gaze turns into a demeanor of cold courtesy when he learns Rebecca’s descent, the medieval villain looks more and more like a hero for the 21st century. Could he be Scott’s real hero? 

Moving forward, the evidence piles in favor of Rebecca as the real star (despite her complete lack of mention on the back cover of my 1994 Penguin Classics edition). The penultimate chapter, the novel’s denouement, decides Rebecca’s fate in the Richardsonian narrative. The two chapters prior, separating the conclusion from when we last left Rebecca, in danger of being burned at the stake as a Jewish sorceress, are sort of like...okay, Ivanhoe, Rowena, Richard the Lionheart, blah blah blah. Every chapter in Ivanhoe is fun, and there’s a surprise in these chapters, but it’s ultimately an example of Scott’s mastery of the suspense trick of drawing out a cliffhanging moment by switching to a different plot, one that is slower and more predictable and less emotionally captivating. It’s all great reading, but whether or how Rebecca will be saved is what we really want to know, what we will read through anything to find out. Rebecca’s importance—and Rowena’s as her foil—is also borne out by Scott’s choice to close the novel on their farewell scene. 

The penultimate chapter contains Rebecca’s trial by combat. Rebecca’s life is at stake, but the real trial is Brian de Bois-Guilbert’s. Since backing off the whole raping Rebecca idea, he has saved her life and then put it at risk again. Bois-Guilbert’s rescue of Rebecca from the burning castle of Torquilstone, by the way, is an example of Scott’s practically cinematic sense of humor and flair for dialogue. Essentially, the Knight Templar appears in the room where Rebecca has been nursing Ivanhoe, when they’re all about to go up in flames; Rebecca is more fiery than the fire (“Rather will I perish in the flames than accept safety from thee!”); Bois-Guilbert picks her up and carries her off anyway (“Thou shalt not choose, Rebecca; once didst thou foil me, but never mortal did so twice”); Ivanhoe, unable to move, yells hilariously impotent threats of rage from his sickbed: “Hound of the Temple—stain to thine order—set free the damsel! Traitor of Bois-Guilbert, it is Ivanhoe commands thee! Villain, I will have thy heart’s blood!” The perfectly timed next sentence: “‘I had not found thee, Wilfred,’ said the Black Knight, who at that instant entered the apartment, ‘but for thy shouts.’”

After this daring rescue, in which the Knight Templar uses his shield to protect Rebecca at the risk of his own life as they gallop on his horse through the flying arrows of the battle, he spirits her to the prefectory of his Temple with the purpose of keeping her captive until she feels forced to “consent” to sex with him. As one might expect in the case of two equally indomitable people with a difference in values, this isn’t going well, until it goes even worse: the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, a stickler for all those pesky rules about not drinking and fucking, makes a surprise visit and finds out about Rebecca. The leader of the prefectory, who knew about Rebecca and was cool with it but has to save face for himself and his most important Knight, convinces the Grand Master that the Jewess has literally bewitched Bois-Guilbert (an easy sell). So in all fairness, she should really be burned to death and he should be given a few Hail Marys. Learning of this horrific prospect, Bois-Guilbert returns to Rebecca with his final offer: he will leave England, abandoning the Knights Templar in all its attendant glory and ambitious prospects, in order to save her, on the condition that she accompany him to start a new life back in the Middle East, where he can conquer everything (his reigning passion) there instead; if not, he’s not giving up his whole life for nothing, and she will see that “my vengeance will equal my love.” For the third time, Rebecca’s answer is that she’d rather die. Bois-Guilbert despairs, wavers, makes a plot to save her without compromising his position—he gets her, when inevitably convicted, to request a trial by combat, imagining that he can be her champion in disguise. Then he is required to fight for the Knights Templar against her champion (if she can even find a champion). Brian de Bois-Guilbert is like the third best knight in the world, so that’s probably a death sentence for Rebecca. He offers to save her again when she’s at the stake, with no champion for her yet appearing and time running out, and is again rebuffed. Ivanhoe rolls up at the last minute to be Rebecca’s champion, still really wounded, and his horse is totally exhausted. Under these conditions, the Knight Templar knocks Ivanhoe off his horse, as everyone expects. But no one, not the live audience, certainly not me, expects Brian de Bois-Guilbert to fall off his horse for no reason, practically untouched, and die. The Grand Master says, “This is indeed the judgment of God.” True to genre, the narrator replaces divine intervention in human affairs with a very Romantic and scarcely more probable explanation: “he had died a victim to the violence of his own contending passions.” 

Rebecca’s would-be seducer dies of being unable to decide whether he is a Mr. B or a Lovelace. Some readers may be left in similar indecision about how to judge him. Not so Rebecca, who has actually loved Ivanhoe the whole time, "imput[ing] no fault to [him] for sharing in the universal prejudices of his age and religion.” Rebecca is very unusual among Romantic heroines from the long 18th century in that her love goes unrequited. She may meet the type’s standards of perfection notwithstanding her Jewishness, but ultimately she cannot escape its limitations to claim her full literary-generic inheritance, the hero’s adoration. Happily ever after goes to the less deserving Rowena, and Ivanhoe only has the decency to recall Rebecca’s beauty and magnanimity “more frequently than [Rowena] might altogether have approved.” Rebecca must withdraw and devote her life to God. In this genre, there is no such thing as second love, and that is one of many points on which the narrator remains silent.

[sunnysynthsunshine]

A “Ted Talk”/Analyisis of what it means to be a “Peoples Poet” and why Rik Mayall means so much to me.

It’s like Alice in Wonderland constantly travelling through worlds.

When I enter “the realms” the galaxies I can see in my dreams and music hallucinations.

My childhood is like a cloud sometimes I like a colourful rainbow of positive nostalgic memories, rainy cringe-worthy memories and then there are the thunderstorms that are the memories I don’t want to think about.

I’ve always been fascinated by what I’d see in Films, TV Shows, Musicals, Songs, Video Games and books but not many really connected with me.

I am a complicated person,I can go from being cheerful, relaxed and happy to being dazed and clumsy or cynical or entranced and hyper-fixated to Pessimistic and Cold to Quiet and Timid to Mellow and Loud,my personality is all over the place with fiction I could only partly relate to certain characters or worlds either because we liked a few of the same foods or films or because we simply looked alike, I’ve had my role models,idols and inspirations sure but I didn’t really realise their full importance in my life until recently and while I loved writing about fiction and imagining myself in fiction I would be the person with the quill, not the damsel or leading man.

I’ve always been interested in Media and Theatre but the latter I couldn’t pursue as far as I wanted to,

I’ve had goals and ambitions but they always kept changing in a way some of them are the same they just ended up being expressed in ways I didn’t expect,

Ever since I studied English I’ve been in love with poetry and literature

When I saw him….his voice was familiar it was a sort of high pitched English sounding male voice..sometimes sounding low toned and posh other times not.

As a kid who watched lots of cartoons, films, adverts and public information films I was exposed to lots of familiar sounding voices in characters on silver, big and animated screens

I recall a cartoon I’d sometimes watch about a knight always trying to win over Queen Guinevere, the cartoon was like Shrek because it satirised fairy tale tropes but in the medieval world of King Arthur.

In Between that would be adverts for cleaning products, one with a golden labrador puppy playing with some toilet roll, an animated duck and villains in the Domestos world that would put the villains of Flushed Away to shame.

He was a voice,I didn’t know his name then even though his name was in the credits of the cartoon mentioned prior but there were so many names in my head at the time (Ant and Dec, Spice Girls, Horrid Henry, Shrek, Toy Story etc.) that his name got lost in translation.

Then years later I got interested in film critique and learned about a film,a film that was considered very bad by the American box office about a peter pan esque imaginary friend...it was then that I heard his voice again but I didn’t know at the time that they were the same.

Since I couldn’t form my own opinions much I went by what the critic said and avoided that film afterwards.

I wouldn’t hear his voice again until 6 years later….

By that time I was about to start college, after leaving secondary school, I was in a bit of a dark place,I had been in some drama,and often when I’d see movies I’d remember the panic attacks rather than the movies themselves due to the experience being ruined by idiots making noise and causing all sorts of nonsense.

I could still laugh at times but usually only in a self-deprecating way, I barely left the sofa and just felt like I was drowning in a void of nothingness.

One night changed that, I was about to start college in a few days, I was in the living room with my mother switching channels when on BBC2 there was a special programme on.

Some bloke named Ben Elton was on a podium talking like a university lecturer about the intellectual aspects of the sitcom format of entertainment, while also paying homage to the late great Ronnie Barker a second generation British comedian I adored the work of when I would watch Open All Hours and Porridge.

When near the end of the lecture, Ben mentioned a show, a show I had never heard of before from the 1980s, called The Young Ones and then proceeded to show clips of it, I kept seeing this pigtailed character in a fringe and this orange-haired punk argue and fight only for one of them to give a detailed tantrum about some show called “The Good Life” and the other to fall down the stairs knocking over the bannisters and ranting about some actress named “Felicity Kendall”.

After quickly researching I became intrigued by this show, I had seen the character’s faces before in two places,one was on Amazon while looking for comedy DVD's and on a dodgy “meme” site called Encyclopedia Dramatica which referenced the scene where the orange haired punk loses his head after sticking  it out a train window.

I then looked up the first few episodes and I was hooked, but it wasn’t like other sitcoms where I’d simply laugh at the stupidity of the gags and characters although that was one aspect of it.

The characters felt relatable while it was in the same nihilistic way I saw myself and some of humanity, that’s how I perceived it, at first I didn’t like tantrum throwing Rick I thought he was too whiny at times and I was drawn to Vyvyan and Neil first,Vyvyan because he felt like the side of me that I rarely showed, the side of me that had a dark sense of humour,  had a sort of free-spirited attitude and liked mild,playful slapstick type of violence, I did have a softie side too but I rarely showed my “Vyvyan” side, now though I couldn’t be prouder to show my “ Vyvyan” side I used to dislike it when I’d walk along my school playground only to see random fights breaking out that would block my walkway but on the inside when I’d watch Japanese cartoons I’d laugh at some fight scenes and I realised there was a side of me that did sort of like violence when it would be in a playful context.

After rewatching and rewatching and thinking back….I grew to like the “Rick” character a bit more, I related to his at times timid social awkwardness, his hypocritical attitude and the questioning of his sexuality.

I had then realised….he acted a bit like I how I did back in secondary school,always being overdramatic if I wasn’t quietly timidly working or being cynical, going on about socialism and the importance of it despite hanging out with problematic internet bloggers at the time who was the complete opposite,I would be lowkey interested in poetry and literature and the fact that at the time he hated Thatcher while I despised Theresa May, who was just starting to use her power to control the UK,I vaguely knew who Margaret Thatcher was because I was in a production of Blood Brothers and before we performed the play we had to research the background history of the play’s setting that’s when I found out about the miner strikes and how the way Thatcher was acting was similar to how Teresa was today.

I also kinda had my own gang in my final years of secondary school but we didn’t go anywhere, some of them stayed in touch others just moved on with their lives.

We would play card games, I’d rant about politics and “Tumblr Aesthetics” and sometimes one of my pals would play metal and pop-punk music in the background, we were the cool kids.

I realised I related to both the “Rick” character and the “Vyvyan” character, after months of not writing stories based on the media I liked,I started writing (again) short stories about “The Young Ones” my ideas for episodes if more than 12 episodes were made,how I would interact with the characters if I lived with them or in the stories case the “alternate universe” version of me.

I’d draw them, I’d write about them, I’d think about them when I’d listen to music, but that wasn’t all.

I had started my Performing Arts course and was learning what skills you’d need to be in “Theatre”.

At the same time I was watching a bunch of the other shows the actor who played “Rick” had been in,sometimes I’d realise I had a lot in common with not just “Rick” from The Young Ones but “Richie” from Bottom,”Richie Rich” from Filthy,Rich and Catflap,”Lord Flashheart” from Blackadder and even the horrific  “Alan B’stard” even though I disagreed with tories despite still hanging out with bad internet “skeptic” people and being raised conservative.

For someone who used to be a massive “weeaboo”, I was becoming quite the Britcom enthusiast

Yeah at times I would mimic his and Ade’s character voices,facial expressions and actions but other times I didn’t need to copy him because we already acted similarly and even if we didn’t I’d realise later in life I did have those other traits It just took a long while before I could proudly express them.

In Between Drama class, I had met some new people and if I was having a day where I felt low, I could just put on a show he was in and cheer up.

That was when I realised his voices and the voice from the bad movie about the imaginary friend and the voice from the cartoon and adverts from my childhood were of the same person.

The person I had finally figured out the name of after all those years.

I had fallen in love, the same love I would’ve had for musicians and fictional Japanese cartoon boys I had for him

His charisma, his looks, his characters, his wise words, his personality, his iconic moments, his variety of facial expressions, his creativity, his eclectic work from Sitcoms to Dramas to Theatre to Video Games to Music.

I couldn’t stop thinking about him...at first, I thought it was going to be like all the other “role models” I had….that changed in 2018.

2018 certainly was a year...I went through my first work experience in a local theatre production,I had met more new people some of which I had met because of our love of him and his work,I took up a new course and even when I did my old drama course,I got to write my own monologue for our final play and I had gotten back into the activity I used to only do when I was an “emo”.

“Poetry!”, the art of putting together multiple rhyming sentences that are all relevant to a certain emotion, feeling or topic.

I was always into literature and English but I was more the type to write stories and read poetry not read stories and write poetry.

After having some big life realisations I decided to pour all of that into a big poem in February,some of my friends read it and loved it,this convinced me that not only were these amazing friends that I will love and cherish to this day but that poetry was something that with a bit of work I could be quite good at….

So I wrote and wrote and wrote I got better with each one, my dreams when listening to music got more vivid than before, so vivid they were almost real like I was visiting another universe.

like an out of body extraterrestrial/paranormal experience.

I had finally moved on from my drama of the past, Self Reflected on my actions learning how to change for the better and I took that punk “free-spirit” of mine and learned how to fully express and how to be more accepting of myself and others.

I got into new and old music, tv shows, films and books...but he was still there

As I went through each show or film of his that I hadn’t watched yet, the love just kept blossoming whether I was laughing my arse off or grinning at a relatable moment from one of his interviews.

It was soon Christmas, a few weeks before, my lucid dreams had a new feature,my Wiccan powers of communication with spirits had gotten powerful enough to the point that when I’d listen to some music I’d hear voice waves in between, voice waves of people I looked up to who unfortunately are not physically with us, I recall it was My Generation by The Who that triggered it,that was a song he performed once on the Young Ones live events,I had interacted with the dead in dreams before,but this was different when I had heard his voice in the dreams where I thought of his characters or of himself, the voice would be vague and barely audible, but this time the voice was more clear and natural almost like he was actually talking to me.

Then Christmas happened, it was a mixed day but I got good gifts and I stood up for my political beliefs for the first time.

Some of the gifts were related to him like his book, box sets of some of his work and…...a red hat

A red hat just like the one his young one's character had on.

A took a few photos and loved the way it looked on me with the blazer I had on, a black blazer similar to the blazer he had on the first few episodes of The Young Ones.

In the middle of the night, I got an idea for a poem, I had written a poem about his show before but this poem was different.

It was a tribute a poem dedicated specifically to him, yes it would reference his characters, but the poem was mainly about him, the impact he made the world and how I felt this amazing ethereal, psychological and philosophical connection to him.

The Lord of Misrule, one of the best poems I’ve ever written, the days after I uploaded photos of me in the hat, and almost everyone I knew loved it,even the friends of mine who didn’t know the young ones but knew the name and look because of me loved the hat and pictures of me in the hat.

It was a sign, my lucid dreams got more vivid than ever and his face became more visible. sometimes when I’d dream about him it wouldn’t be the usual dream of me being in the young ones or me filming a comic strip presents episode or me going to a Ziggy Stardust concert with his teenage self,it would be dreams where I’d be travelling through the galaxies only to end in his place,it looked like something out of the grand Budapest hotel with how well it looked with the pastel-toned colours and minimalist decor and there he would be,he wouldn’t always be in a Jesus esque robe like before,he would be chilling on his sofa, looking exactly like how he looked before in the early 2010s, wearing a plain sweater or dressing gown his long grey hair flowing like an angel, waving and sometimes talking with me,it felt more clear than before it was probably a response from all those times before when I was learning how to spiritually communicate where I was usually the one doing most of the talking,

Usually I’d see him as an idol, icon, deity, legend, role model of sorts but now I started seeing him as a mentor and grandpa sort of figure,his mantras stick with me to this day, we have enough in common to be good pals from other dimensions but such a difference in age and living status that he can be a grandpa figure to me,the angel cheering me on before and after an exam,allowing my spirit third eye self to stay over at his place when I’m feeling low and lost, tickling me, offering advice and I love being able to have these abilities, I’ve always loved astrology and anything to do with ufos, magic or “other worlds”.

He is my guide and I am his apprentice, in my poems and philosophy, I say most of us are peoples poets because of our strong free-spirit opinions and attitudes even if we don’t all have a quill to write those opinions with.

But in the context of his young one's character and the traits of his(him and the character) that I already shared and the traits I overtime learned to accept. 

From the poetry to the similar personality and interests to the spiritual connection,

 to the times my friends and comrades had said that “he would be proud, that I even looked like him and I carried his “energy”, one of them referring to me as a “People's Poet”.

I’ve now realised after all these years that I’ve finally found my meaning, to bring Art, peace and love into the world.

When his character gave that speech about his revolutionary life and how the new generation would gather round for their fallen leader only for  a  sensitive and articulate teenager to say “How can he be dead if we have his poems?” (or shows in this context)

I was a sensitive and articulate teenager as we are all.

I am also the next People's Poet

Step aside,  let’s share the rikosophy by carrying on his legacy into the 21st century 🌈🖇🏴⭐🌠

I shall produce art for the world to see, teach them how to see it in new perspectives, and I shall guide us while we try to stop fascism for good,

let’s be free!

you and me!

Thank You, Doctor.Richard Rik, Michael Mayall  you’ve changed my life  

It is an honour to carry on from where you left off, bringing joy back into the world, inspired by your art while creating my own experimental ideas, I know your listening from the heavenly afterlife clouds and all those galaxies beyond.

Now let’s share that wonderful energy in the ruddy 21st century.

While I’m not the man himself Rik Mayall, I just share his energy and personality 

I am Kelsey….and I am bloody brilliant    

[wild-west-wind]

Hey so below the cut is the beginning of my Western/Fantasy/Mystery story Coyote Draw. It’s a very rough draft, I’m not really trying to edit as I go so it should be readable by grammar/spelling alone (readable content-wise now that’s dubious). Tell me what you think, or tell me that it’s trash. Well, I guess if it’s trash tell me something constructive with it like “Do this better.” That’d be cool. Anon message me if that’s easier.

Synopsis: In this section Gertrude Bell and Elizabeth Cagney are introduced as members of the Hesselius National Detective Agency, a semi-international private detective firm specializing in supernatural cases. Gertrude and Elizabeth have been sent out to Sun Springs, NM to prove a potentially wrongly convicted man innocent of the brutal murder of a surveyor.

Notes: It’s probably pretty bad. The style is very brief and to-the-point and I don’t know if I’m going to stick with that. I’m not sure if it’s to brief or too long for the content that it covers. I think I should describe characters more. It starts with an animal dying. If that bothers you skip to the third sentence.

Anyway, here it is:

A few hours outside of Santa Fe the 8:45 to Springer hit a bison. The impact shook Elizabeth Cagney awake. Her companion on the trip, as in all matters, was still awake. It was too loud to sleep. Gertrude Bell thought it was funny how quick her Elizabeth nodded off. City folk sleep through anything.

Elizabeth grimaced as she stirred. Bags under her eyes betrayed a late night wasted in Santa Fe. She wished she could say it was spent drinking and gambling. It was spent reading. Drinking was a strictly a secondary venture. That is not to say that she had not drink a great deal. Elizabeth scrambled for her coffee. She held the canteen of muddy coffee so tight her knuckles went white. She whispered a bit, her eyes closed tight. The canteen popped and fizzled as it got hot. She offered it to Gertrude first.

Gertrude almost smiled. “I’m fine, I ‘spect you need that more than I do.”

Gertrude was right. Elizabeth threw back the canteen. Her face was red with pain, but she brightened up instantly. Gertrude appreciated the routine. Elizabeth always offered, she always refused. Elizabeth was always flushed. Always smiled.

“So how far out are we?” Elizabeth asked. She shook the residual heat out of her hands.

“About 3 hours,” Gertrude guessed. Her watch stopped working after a sand storm in Barstow. “We get off in Springer, then we ride the rest of the way.”

The Hesselius National Detective Agency gave them an advance to pay the thirty-one dollar train fare. They did not offer to pay 25 for a pack horse. They didn’t offer a ticket to ship Gertrude’s horse either. Gertrude never thought to ask for it.

Out in the desert flowers were blooming. Word was there was a big storm a few months back flooded most of the southern Rockies. As the train shot by there were explosions and gold and pink cactus flowers. The effervescent yellow of agave and ragleaf. A spatter of lilac Elizabeth said could have been columbine. Without much prompting she could rattle off every possible name and use for every one of those flowers. Every spell they were good for. It came with the territory. Gertrude mostly knew which ones you could eat, which ones could make a person sick, and which ones could kill a horse.

On a rainy January morning Elizabeth and Gertrude got a letter from the Hesselius National Detective Agency. The two of them had been Hessians in variously official capacities since the war. Usually they would take jobs off the board in their home office. Gertrude didn’t want to hear the message. She took the paper and sent the messenger away. She held it tight in her hand, crushing the paper and cracking the small wax seal on the back. Elizabeth had to read the letter for her. They had been called in. The Director wanted to see them personally.

“Aw hell,” Gertrude spat, “We walked headlong into this one Lizzie.” Her lip trembled, but her hands were dead still.

Elizabeth rested a hand on Gertrude’s shoulder. She brushed a lock of hair from her brow. “We’re not on the outs Gert,” Elizabeth spoke to Gertrude like a child. “It might be a job. May be a promotion.” Gertrude threw herself into her old rocking chair. The floor creaked loud.

“Listen Gertie,” Gertrude looked away. Elizabeth stepped in front of her and forced her head up. “Listen, if we get fired, we can just banish him. That old boggle won’t know what hit him. Hell, we’ll be on the outs but we might get a medal for the trouble.”

  Gertrude coughed up a dry laugh. “Okay, but it better be a big medal.”

  “Of course.”

“Gold.”

“I should expect nothing less.”

Elizabeth helped Gertrude dawn a white bodice and her hound’s-tooth riding jacket. Gertrude tossed Elizabeth her waxed canvas cape from the coat rack. They set out into the rain.

Cole Boggs was a squat, broad man. As a boy some poor soul must have asked him to speak up. He chose to head that advice literally, and has not spoken in less than a bellow since. For 15 years he had been the director of the American branch of the Hesselius National Detective Agency. He despised those under his employ that called themselves “Hessians,” and so almost all did.

Boggs’ office was littered with what might charitably be called mementos. On the wall behind him, between two bay windows, was a rack containing four medieval swords. Every wall was lined with mismatched glass-doored curios. Each was full of old books, tarnished jewelry, carved cubes and spheres with various arcane writings. A suit of rusted Viennese armor stood sentry over two seven foot tall safes in the opposite corner of the room. Save for three chairs and a path from the door, every horizontal surface of the office was covered with superficially valuable trash.

“Ladies?” He roared over a newspaper written in indecipherable script, “Do come in, I need just a moment to finish up here.”

Elizabeth and Gertrude stepped inside, and sat down in adjacent leather chairs. Their arms were worn through by hundreds of elbows. The leather was dry and cracking. They may have been the second oldest thing in the room.

After a moment’s pause, and without looking up, Boggs began to speak; “I presume you know why I’ve asked you to come in here.”

Gertrude’s face flushed. Elizabeth reached over and grabbed her hand.

“Now, you’re aware that our last client was less than pleased with your performance—“

“Sir allow me t’explain I—“ Gertrude tried to interject.

“Ms. Bell, please allow me to finish as I think you will be pleased by what I have to say,” Boggs filled his mammoth lungs, “but you were right. Entirely correct. Mr. Lux was indeed stealing from the town’s till, and he was indeed conspiring to use that money for nefarious purposes, though the authorities are not yet sure what those were.”

Gertrude slouched as much a whalebone corset would allow. Boggs continued; “While we were certainly not hired to have our client imprisoned, you’ve brought a spattering of good press for the agency.”

Cole Boggs finally lowered his newspaper. “We have a client in New Mexico. He has asked for you two specifically. He believes a man was wrongly accused of murder in Sun Springs. Charming little town. He’d like you to go out and prove him right.”

“Who—“ before Elizabeth could inhale Boggs barked, “Who is none of your business.”

“—Is the suspect?” Elizabeth finished. Her crystal blue eyes found Boggs’. A ripple coursed down his body, and for a brief moment something closer to his true form was visible.

“Of course. Yes. The suspect. The accused is a Mr. Balthazar Farkas. A lycanthrope. The evidence is quite damning. A surveyor by the name of Oramel Hawkins was working near Farkas’ home. He was slaughtered and dismembered early in the morning. A local magician, Grant Heston, saw the dismemberment. A local deputy found blood-soaked rags in Mr. Farkas’ cabin. Farkas has been in trouble with the law before: in ’67 he killed a Shiner who had a bounty for his hide, in broad daylight. The folks in Sun Springs remember that well. It’s a quiet town.”

“So he did it?” Elizabeth asked, sensing that Boggs was done.

“It certainly seems that way, doesn’t it.”

Elizabeth winced. “So, are we to try and get a guilty man freed from facing justice then?”

Boggs hummed, “No, I wouldn’t say that. He may not be guilty. It may be a case of mistaken identity. The murder wasn’t observed, focus on that.”

Gertrude, taking care to avoid eye contact with anyone in the room, mused, “Out in the country like that you see what you expect to see. If you’re scared of the werewolf down the way, you’ll see him when you may’ve seen a coyote or a damned cactus,” She glanced at Elizabeth. “Plenty of ways you could choose to see something when you’re looking right at another.”

Elizabeth laughed. Boggs didn’t get it.

To call Springer a town would be an overstatement verging on an outright lie. Most of the 320 acres called Springer on a map were farms. Right around the banks of the Cimarron River were a few buildings. Most of them were liable to get washed away if the river got any nearer to its banks. There were two general stores, a livery, a spattering of houses, a warehouse, and a tavern. The tavern must have been built old because no one lived here 7 years ago. Every month the trail was passable a wagon train full of copper would come in from Sun Springs. All spring and summer folks would drive their cattle and sheep out of the hills for sale.