#if you don’t know medieval politics and culture

[the-daily-dreamer]

So like a critical component of understanding team green and Alicent’s motivation for pushing their claim is completely lost on this fandom because of the fact that it’s so irrelevant nowadays that we wouldn’t even consider it.

But like…for most of human history marriages, especially aristocratic marriages, were binding social contracts that were meant to provide benefits and incentives to both parties. The woman would perform her wifely duties of bearing heirs (sons), child rearing, emotional (and physical - sometimes against her will unfortunately) support, and generally running the household in domestic affairs. And in exchange for these labors and quite frankly difficult and at times harmful tasks the woman was provided with safety from the outside world, all her needs being taken care of, and her children being the heirs. And a woman’s son being the heir means consistent protection into her old age when her often much older husband eventually died.

There was a purpose to marriage outside of love and ambition. But because we are privileged enough to live in a more modern society where marriage is a personal contract for which the technicalities can be selected by both individuals to ensure security and happiness, we cannot really even consider that once upon a time in the not so distant past there was a clear purpose. The man got sons/heirs and the woman got sons/protectors to care for her in her old age.

So when Alicent pushes for her son she has a plethora of reasons: believing in tradition, protecting the lives of her children who have competing claims, consolidation of suffering, etc. But she has one very clear and very reasonable reason that nobody acknowledges. She delivered on her part of the bargain and contract and she wants to collect what she is owed. She produced the sons, she gave the emotional and physical support (against her genuine will), she reared the children, she ran the household domestically and the entire kingdom. She did “everything expected of her forever upholding the kingdom, the family, and the law”. And now it’s time for her to collect her dues now that her much, much older husband is dead. To have her son be king and to be taken care of into her old age.

That is the contract she agreed to. That is the contract almost every woman in history agreed to. I give you a son and I get comfort and security when you (the husband) die and my son becomes the heir.

So I can go on and on about the personal, psychological reasoning that Alicent has that are all perfectly valid. But I don’t have to because at the end of the day she did her part of this marital obligation and contract and she deserves to receive her rewards.

[bella-goths-wife]

How alec, Johnny and Jane court Cullen reader

Warnings: obsessive behaviour, possessive behaviour, oblivious reader, inexperienced reader, mentions of abuse from Cullens

Alec:

Alec has to be subtle about his affections and intentions with you

Your ‘family’ already hate him, they have since the day Edward was introduced to the volturi and could report to the Cullens every thought alec has had of you

His courting had to remain subtle for his forbidden flower, for his sweet Juliet to his Romeo

He found that at first his best option for being close to you was ask for a dance at one of the balls that the volturi threw for the introductions of new members of big time clans

These balls were for the most part mandatory, meaning your family couldn’t just lock you away and you could spend time with other vampires with minimal fear

Alec would walk to to you with one of the volturi kings next to him so that If you accepted a dance with him, they could distract the Cullens long enough for Alec to slip the two of you onto the ballroom floor

He never was one for dancing before you, coming from a poor village in the medieval times he never really had to learn

Even after joining the volturi, he copied basic moves whenever he had to dance with someone for the sake of politeness

But after meeting you and realising that you came from a different time period to him, he begged some of the female volturi members to teach him some steps to dances from your time

He tried to master them but sometimes you still have to correct him, to which he’ll claim that you must be seeing things to save himself embarrassment

He also tried to learn courting culture from your time, but he never could do with all the politeness from it

He preferred being improper with you, it gave him the opportunity to see the real you

So he’d sneak up to your room after the Cullens locked you up for the night

He’d sneak through the window and the two of you would spend the night talking and laughing together, considering neither of you needed to sleep

It made him feel closer to you, made him feel special to have that time with you

He knew that no one else had that experience with you, and that made his worries of you being taken from him

He’s done everything in his power to make sure the vampire clans know that he has claim on you and is courting you, he’s seen the newer clans looking at you like a piece of meat and he thought it best to show who you belong to

If any others try and intrude on your time together, they’ll be hissed at viciously and the volturi kings will be told of the interference to their plan to match you with either Alec or Jane

His last act of devotion to you was to swear you that he will free you from the Cullens grasp, and you can only pray he’s truthful

Jane:

Jane isn’t the most loving person

She struggles to express most emotions, but showing her adoration and love is the hardest

So she tries to court you in more practical ways, such as acts of service

Anything that you need doing, she will have the task completed by sundown

Your struggling to find clothes because the Cullens only give you childish clothes? Jane had handmade clothes tailored to match and compliment your body type and skin colour and she leaves them in your room for you

You’re thirsty but you don’t have any blood to feed with? Jane killed a human for you two to share during your teatime

She even asks for it to be baked into pastry’s even though neither of you can digest food anymore so you both end up coughing it up

You need entertainment while you’re locked away in your room? Jane will sit outside your door and read your favourite books and poems to you and keep you entertained

She also tries to work on her physical affection for you

She offers you an arm when you walk together through the garden at night, she places her hand over yours when you need comforting, she will place small kisses on your hand when greeting you in private

These are all things she never thought she’d be comfortable with until she met you, so she’s slowly improving in private

When she’s feeling extra possessive, she will cover you head to toe in her signature scent either by spraying you with perfume or briefly holding you and rubbing her cheek against your neck

This means she can put a subtle claim on you to show that you are hers and that anyone who tries to touch you will feel the wrath of her painful stare

Her final act of devotion from when she saw you last was swearing to free you from the Cullens so the two of you could stay near each other forever

She does all of this and yet your still completely oblivious to the affections her and her twin hold for you

Johnny (post meeting you)

Johnnys methods of courting is mainly just trying to help you discover more of yourself and help you separate your identity from the one forced upon you by the Cullens

I suppose it would fall under the category of quality time as he will spend hours upon hours with you helping you learn a new skill or remember an old memory

He helps you acclimate to the more modern parts of society that the Cullens never taught you about, such as dating culture and party culture

He tries to find things for the two of you to do that he thinks you’ll enjoy the most

An example of this is him taking you to a petting zoo and letting you control all the cute animals because it made you feel better then hunting with the Cullens

He also used his power to his advantage and he will shape his shadows to make shadowy animal figures for you to admire

He will also get very secretly proud of himself every time he sees you’ve enjoyed yourself doing an activity he chose out

He’s also very big into PDA as he’s less afraid of what the Cullens will do to him

He’s always got an arm around your shoulders or waist when you walk or he’s holding your hand as you talk to each other

But always with permission, he understands that you can have a slight touch Phobia because of your time with the Cullens

He was also raised as a lord, so all of his courting will subconsciously be very gentlemanly despite his playful and rough persona

So that means the sidewalk rule is being obeyed, he’s always taking your arm when you walk together and he’s always generally acting with honour and decency

He’ll do all this and you’ll still swear that he hates you though

Thoughts guys? 😭

[inlandempir]

post on one of the dev forums for disco elysium, titled "THE BENEFITS OF A MODERN FANTASY WORLD". text version beneath the cut

There's been a lot of art and tech talk so far, it's all kinda dry or saccharine. I think it's time to juice it up by throwing in a proper essay.

THE BENEFITS OF A MODERN FANTASY WORLD

The world of No Truce! (we do have a proper name for it, but we’re shy) is not what you’d call “a generic genre world”. It is not pseudo-medieval stasis, as Forgotten Realms was, nor is it Fallout’s campy barbarism with guns. It is also not a Harry Potter/Batman/vampire fantasy world, which is basically “our world with a secret/special world within it”. Neither is it the tech-obsessed ‘punks’ of steam and cyber. It’s a modern fantasy world, a fantasy world in its modernity, which roughly corresponds to the middle part of our XXth century. Now that kind of thing opens up an array of new possibilities. It is a world with a promise of non-staticness, meaning, things appear undecided — they could go one way or the other. It is close enough to our own world for things to have meaning in it, it is a proper frame in which to explore themes relevant to our own society such as bigotry, power relations, politics, bureaucratic apparati, geopolitical relations, philosophy, ideology, religion et cetera. A pseudo-medieval world is not a proper frame for truly exploring themes of, for example, sexuality, for it lacks 1) a proper concept of sexuality, 2) an actual idea of societal progress and 3) a clear ideological dominant, which would be the place where values come from. All you can do in a static, societally unstructured world is give out-of-place shoutouts to present day communities for cheap popularity (“this is exactly my sexual orientation, how did they know?!”).

We find the ideological dominant missing because the western world is traditionally culturally critical of ideological dominants – critical of both state and religion. Anyhow, a classic fantasy world would feature two main ideologies – the “good” and the “evil”, of which the former is selfless and compassionate, but the other one is selfish and cruel. The attempts to overcome that have given us the Grittywelt – a world in which everyone is an asshole and pessimism rules the day. Unsurprisingly, Grittywelt is also static as hell and meaningful change is foreclosed from it. It is a “protection from false hopes”. As such, it is heavily unrealistic. Much more realistic would be people living in super gritty conditions, but not looking the part, that is, not really noticing the abnormal harshness of their conditions, because they don’t have much to compare them to, and being hopeful towards the next day, because surprise! This is how you do it. Survive, I mean. Being depressed is a luxury. In a way, I’d say we’re trying to create the obverse of the Grittywelt – a world in which everyone is empathizable, sort of a hero of their own story.

The modern era is also a fitting vessel for anachronisms – do we not have actual cyborg limbs and donkey-pulled carts operating in the same world at the modern era? Capitalism can also contain little feudalisms in a way, in which a single man or single family controls the entire economy of a town or a village and profits from it. And at the same time, it can also contain little socialist utopias, scientist villages, in which everything is provided by the State. Aside from being a basic feature of reality (anachronism is nothing more than time failing to fit the stereotype about it), it is also a lovable creative tool, allowing for a plethora of what-if-scenarios. Imagine a modern world, only without television; imagine a modern world in which there never was a global war, imagine a world in which fossil fuels are less available. Now, if you will, imagine one which has forgotten its antiquity, and one, in which there is not just water between the continents, but something worse as well — an anti-reality mass we call “pale” (also more on that later). Now imagine one, which has a legitimate and operative “religion of history” in place, which seeks for people it deems special enough to be the “vessel of progress”. (This is not an alternate history thing, by the way. An alternate history takes place in our world quite recognizably and has no more than one divergence point from history as it happened.)

One might ask, why would we not create an even more modern world, if we wanted to maximise our possibilities? Well one of the answers is that it would have destroyed the necessary element of escapism, another is that we cannot create a good alternate Information Era because we ourselves fail to understand the Information Era (More precicely, we have the information era in its infancy and it works via radio relays). We are too close to it and it is too new to understand it, it is “in progress”. The third reason would be that technology is not a fascinating subject for modern science fiction. It’s become a natural part of our reality. We don’t believe it’s going to save us anymore – it has failed to deliver for too long. I am of the belief that the themes of science fiction today are societal, political and psychological (one could maybe add aesthetical to it, for we also love the world for its beauty). All fantastic or sci-fi elements are means for best exploring those themes.

I have filled my page. That’s all for the time being. Thank you for reading.

Martin Luiga Writer

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 13 – A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Okay, getting back into writing these reviews before I fall so far behind that catching up is just impossible. Memory is the first book this year that I’ve actually read before; I’m rereading as the first choice for a theoretical book club with some friends. Honestly quite enjoyed the experience, if only because trying to jot down some things to say when discussing it forced me to take it a little slower this time.

To get the technical details out of the way – the book won the Hugo, and did basically deserve it. The writing’s lovely and occasionally downright poetics, the two leads are both insanely compelling, and the court intrigue is appropriately convoluted and byzantine for what is obviously Constantinople IN SPACE. It’s just overall a joyous read.

So Martine’s clearly very fascinated by the experience of having your standards of aesthetics, and sophistication, and civilization defined by a culture which has never even bothered to notice your existence. The simultaneous rapture at being in the heart of the universe that you’ve read about your entire life, and deep alienation knowing you’ll never actually be a part of it. How ever most of the people trying to be friendly and compliment you don’t even notice how patronizing they’re being. And so on and etc. Mahit’s internal monologue does a really good job of selling the ambivalence of it, especially in the party scene.

The book does an excellent job of actually selling the palace district as a site of imperial grandeur, too, every building buried in symbolic aesthetics and ritual significance. But also just, like, actually impressive and grand to read about. All the contrasts between the oveflowing abundance in the city and life on Lsel are fascinating too – Martine makes really good use of the little worldbuilding quotes at the start of chapters to sell the difference. The one that really stuck in my head was a quote from a tourism

guide explaining all the myriad fine dining choices for tourists visiting the City followed directly by a Lseli agricultural report about how new hydrophonic techniques had increased rice yield sufficiently to support a whole hundred non-replacement births in the next generation (it helps that all the Teixicalaanli food legitimately sounds pretty amazing). Though the time where Mahit’s internal monologue short circuited over the idea of carrying a pregnancy to term in your own body – wasteful! Depriving the station of a necessary laborer for months and months when perfectly good artificial wombs are right there! So decadent – is a close second.

Martine is, as I understand it, a Byzantinist, and oh boy can you tell. The city’s a little bit Tenochtitlan in the aesthetics and the religion, but it really is overwhelmingly space Constantinople. The theoretically absolute emperor dealing with mobs in the streets willing and potentially able to acclaim a usurper, the constant risk of legions doing the same, the basic fact that there’s a vast empire which is viewed as nothing but an adjunct or extension of the capital city which is the entirety of all political life and the place everyone whose anyone needs to be, and so on.

In a way, the obvious Byzantine-ness of the Teixicalaanli makes them seem less imperialist than just imperial, at least from Mahit’s perspective. Which is to say, well, first of all that ‘empire’ has far too many meanings and distinguishing them is hard, but the Teixicalaanli don’t expand like the British or French, in constant competition over captive markets and strategic locations, they don’t feel some glorious burden of manifest destination or a mission civilisatrice that requires universal dominion. They already are the universe, or at least everything worthwhile in it, they go to war like medieval kings or Roman princeps – to win glorious victories and so show the empire they have the right to rule it.

The relation between Lsel and Teixicalaan – well, if suffers from the standard space opera lack of scale, first of all. The stationers number in the tens of thousands – the empire must be in the hundreds of billions, minimum. ‘Realistically’ Six Directions would never have found out about the imago device because relations with them would have been handled by some mid-ranking provincial governor, only showing up in travelogues and fanciful ethnographies. But leaving that aside, Teixicalaanli myopia also means that the cultural imperialism that the book’s so fascinated by is oddly...blameless? Teixicalaan presumably has brutal campaigns dedicated to stamping out native cultures and integrating them into the empire, but there’s hardly one directed at Lsel. The general sense you get is one of vaguely tragic inevitability – that the mismatch in size and wealth is such that of course any sort of even slightly free exchange of media and ideas will lead to Stationer culture being overwhelmed. Makes me think about arguments around CanCon regulations.

(The whole Roman, medieval feel of the empire means it all kind of calls to mind various Germanic elites actively reaching for Roman iconography and institutions to legitimize themselves as much as anything, though of course that’s not really right.)

The book’s politics are, I think, a bit limited by the degree it’s laser-focused on the very uppermost tip of imperial society – the book seems to know this too, given the thirty page digression into cyberpunk two thirds of the way through (speaking of which, I absolutely adore the fact that the elegant, ritually harmonious and utterly aesthetic architecture lasts about three metro stops away from the palace before everything starts turning into economical concrete blocks). Which isn’t really a knock on the book, but I do think some of the praise of it does get a bit overblown; there’s a limit to how much insight you can really have on imperialism when you’re so focused on the stories an empire tells about itself in its most rarified and luxurious heart.

In much the same way there’s something very, I don’t know, ‘written in America in the late 2010s’ about the political imagination the book allows itself. There are people who don’t want the world to be the world, and maybe they can help a bit, but the actual players in the game of thrones are corrupt oligarchs and populist warmongers, you know?

All that said, the book sure does portray a city that views itself as synonymous with civilization. I only realized there was a Teixicalaanli word for foreigner that wasn’t ‘barbarian’ when one of the probably-terrorists made a point of using it during the whole cyberpunk interlude. Which retroactively makes, like, every single other Teixicalaanli character in the book waaaaay more of an asshole. (fanfic thought - Teixicalaanli attempts to talk even vaguely respectfully to/about foreigners as analogous to people trying to be gender neutral or talk about nonbinary people in really strongly genedered languages, right down to the awkward neologisms that the ‘average citizens’ rolls their eyes at. What’s the Teixicalaanli term for ‘the woke plague.’?)

Also – not really a better place to put this in, but something I really do like about the worldbuilding is that no one has anything like the same ideas of what constitutes political legitimacy as the contemporary liberal default? Lsel is a corporatist state, where political power is divided between what are basically guilds who seem to have wide remit to make policy within their jurisdiction, with only one seat on the council seeming to have any sort of election. And Teixicalaan is, of course, a bureacratic-verging-on-stratocratic monarchy, with a strong sense of popular involvement in government, but through demonstrations and rioting instead of any formal process. It’s enjoyable that neither place is actually, like, familiar.

The motor of the book’s plot is byzantine (or Byzantine, I suppose) court intrigue, and as someone who loves polite conversations and poetic allusions followed directly by assassination attempts, I adored it. That said, I’m going to be a slob demanding everything be hand fed to me for a minute and saying that it all got positively opaque by the end. Which is, I suppose, entirely realistic, given Mahit’s position and role in everything, but still I wanted an Agathe Christie drawing room denouncement so bad. Was Ten Pearl actively backing the coup? If not, what was up with the Sunlit? And the Cityshocks? Why was the Information Ministry so politically passive and uninvolved in a literal coup attempt? How was Eight Loop involved in the whole final resolution, given it was her people keeping the emperor safe but it was Nineteen Adze who was with him on camera? All these questions and more, unanswered and, probably, irrelevant! But like, inquiring minds want to know.

Though speaking of the coup, I really did absolutely adore how, like,incompetent and amateurish both coup attempts were? Which seems like it would be a plot hole, but actually it’s probably the strongest argument the book can make for Six Direction’s immortality plan – the empire has been peaceful for so long no one remembers how to do a coup.

Anyway, yes! Extremely good book, Mahit and Seagrass are absolutely great protagonists. Not at all sorry I’m peer pressuring people into reading it.

[musicfeedsmysoul12]

The Top Reasons Why You Should Know Geology as a Writer

Hello, lovelies! A project for my Introduction to Geology class was to create a ‘promotion’ of Geology as it can be used for things other then you know, tourism or warning of natural disasters. Me, being the writer, decided to create this post that I will be posting for the fun of it. As this is a creative project, I decided to write it as I normally write posts here on my blog.

First off, writing is a complicated business when it comes down to it. Particularly when you get into the idea of worldbuilding. As someone who has two different worlds I’ve been working on creating, one thing that helps a lot is geology in general. I know, it sounds a bit crazy to think about. But it’s true. Geology is the study of the earth itself, and knowing how the earth works, even if it’s just basic concepts, helps build a world. After all, a town in the mountains and a town by the seaside may suffer from different natural disasters, but it comes from the same thing: the shifting of tectonic plates.

Let’s say that you’re building a world where your main character lives in the mountains. What sort of mountain town? Is it a mining town? Is it a town for tourists? In this little example, I will use a prototype for a story I am working on, where the main character lives in a town with a hot spring. How do hot springs form? Would this affect the area of the mountain town? The answer to this, of course, is geothermal heat that is pushed upwards to the upper crust. Once you know that, trying to figure out the environmental impacts of this occurs next. Then you have to think about the dangers of hot springs and so on, and how the people you have created would react to them.

Hot springs, and in general geothermal sites, have had religious or cultural connections for centuries! Think of all the health gurus talking about going to a hot spring to soak away the pain due to the minerals in a spring. Think of how people will purposely hike to get to a hot springs to soak in! An entire culture can be built around a hot springs to. Communal bathing is quite common across cultures, and a hot springs can be the site for potential political talks or even just a place of relaxation for people.

Adding to the above, you now have a tourism aspect, a possible religious aspect, an environmental concern, and a culture ready to be built up all based on a geological matter! I mean, look at the picture; it’s an image from a national parks website (https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/hot-springs.htm if any of you wanna look). We can see how a geological function like a hot spring can affect tourism here! Look at how many people are watching this! Even in a more medieval setting, you can’t doubt people wouldn’t line up to see this!

Let’s continue with another thought, and that is how places tend to end up settled. There are plenty of guidebooks that inform us how, as well, you can look at history! Natural resources are the answer to that, with water being a primary reason behind the settlement of many areas. But there are other resources that may have a settlement show up. Some may be organic, but others would be things such as coal, materials such as stone to create things, or it could be something like gems that people mine for money. 

As well, by considering what natural resources are around, you determine more landscape as a result of these. The picture below is a picture of the world’s largest open-pit diamond mine. Imagine that something like this exists in your story. 

And how does this happen?

Did you guess geology? You’d be right! Geology is such an ingrained process in world-building that writers don’t tend to see it. And let’s be real, if you have a group of people who live by a mine and a group of people who live by a lake, there are vastly different concerns each other has. This again comes down to the effects geology has on EITHER of these things.

Some writers ignore how geology works. JR Tolkein may have been a fantastic writer, but in the end his ideas on mountains were pretty wrong. Not bad, just wrong. While I’ll never say you can’t bend some rules for the fun of it when writing fantasy, I will say most people enjoy the sprinkling of reality littering the pages of their work rather then not. As well, it’s easier on the writer to. 

I mean, I prefer not to wonder what sort of dangers there are in my worlds.  If I can take a two-second Google Search to get an idea of it, it’s easier than trying to think of these things myself. Look to the above picture! We now have, in fact, at least 6 (6!!) things to include as worries for your little fishing village on the ocean. And guess what?! TWO of these things are related to geology! 

So, to recap so far: Geology can be used to not only give your world either income, but it can also enable you to create a religion based on things around them, it can be used to create interesting landscapes and can give you natural disasters that are connected to said landscapes!

Wanna know what ELSE Geology can be used for?

Naming your little villages and towns. No, I am NOT kidding.

Look, people name places either after relatives, or themselves or they looked around frantically before pointing at the nearest rock and went: ROCK TOWN. Don’t believe me?

In Alberta, we have: High River, Slave Lake, Okotoks (A reference to Big Rock, using the Blackfoot word for rock, "ohkotok"), Diamond Valley, Fox Creek, Milk River, Peace River, Pincher Creek, Rocky Mountain House- the list just goes on and on and on!! And again, GEOLOGY. Struggling with naming your little mountain town? Did you but a mine near it? What does the mine produce? Diamonds?

Boom. Diamondville. It’s that easy when you’ve created the geology of the world, you can just use words from your area! No more hard time thinking about it, just GO FOR IT!

So, in the end: learn geology. It gives you a way to create culture, economic concerns, a name for places and even see what sort of local concerns there are in even the smallest village. 

[dandelionjack]

re: the post below. fantasy vs reality

a discussion in the notes got me thinking about the recent trend (perhaps not the right word, maybe “tendency”) of communist/marxist bloggers on here, especially those concerned with decolonisation (as we all should be), to blanket-condemn all media which “romanticises” pirates, cowboys, knights, outlaws, and other “historical” (in quotes because, let’s be real, it’s more legend than history when we talk about the modern portrayal of these lifestyles) morally dubious yet immensely alluring occupations. there’s been this discourse spreading: the idea that somehow indulging in art which presents these figures in a generally positive or fun light is the same as being uncritical of manifest-destiny expansionism (i.e. the notion of the ‘wild west’ and an ‘untamed frontier’ is colonial), christian imperialism (since knights participated in the crusades) or even an apologist of the slave trade (because some pirates engaged in it).

to which i say, plainly, bollocks. if you’re 16 or younger, your critical thinking faculties are an untrained muscle, your media analysis capacity not yet switched-on, then yeah, you’re allowed to be susceptible to the inability to distinguish between what’s cool in fiction and what’s permissible in reality. any older than that, i start getting doubts. i question the frankly patronising notion that an adult with a basic understanding of history and politics is incapable of recognising when something fictional doesn’t map one-on-one onto the modern world, whether that be the mechanics of a story, the interactions between characters, the beliefs and goals which drive them, or the social mores and cultural norms (hierarchy of gender, race, nobility etc) which they accept as fact.

you should be able to hold (more than) two truths in your head simultaneously. you should be able to cheer when the knight pulls the sword from the stone and reclaims his long-denied royal heritage to become a well earned leader, and, at the same time, recognise that we live in the 21st century where monarchy is a long-obsolete, unjust and inhumane system of government. same as you’d readily accept that somebody in a novel can cast a spell, but you wouldn’t believe that a real guy could set a tree alight with his mind.

all fiction is fantasy because we don’t live in history. yeah, we have sources, but they’re not perfect. even the author attempting to be as accurate as possible will inevitably sneak in some tiny anachronisms, even if in language alone. medieval europe didn’t have potatoes. you will find potato stew boiling in every tavern in the fantasy pseudo-german towns your protagonists take a rest stop in. that’s fine. that’s normal. pirates in reality were mostly cruel hardened criminals with no respect for human life, which is why they gladly partook in slavery as well as pillaging and looting, anything for profit. pirates in a show can be kind, considerate, a rag-tag team of outcasts and freedom fighters with views that most correspond with modern anarchism. as long as you know the difference, as long as you’re not pretending that this fantasy is how historical events actually happened, it’s fine. you’re good. go watch your bridgertons.

make sure to stay prudent and always tell the difference, though. never ever fall into the trap of wanting to ‘retvrn’, and that goes towards ever cottagecore homesteader. let fiction remain fiction, and work to better the world.

[asparklethatisblue]

I asked my dad who is an ex catholic priest and has a degree in theology about whether Christianity was fucked by becoming Rome's religion way back when and it's complicated but the short answer is yes. The second you had politics and kings mixed in with the shit it became a deadly poison for anything else.

Oh thank you! I both don’t know enough about Christianity and am not Christian so I didn’t want to cause offence. But so MUCH of early medieval christianity and so on is based on “the Romans were cool and we must be like them”? Both in politics and in religion. You can’t suddenly tie control of half a continent to a religion and expect it to be normal either. Especially not based on the culture of Rome

[ndiebrioxhe]

Another Rambling post about Ascendance of a Bookworm:

BLUE - ORANGE MORALITY

(with minor digs at Harry Potter)

When I was younger I used to browse Tv Tropes and I really enjoyed looking at them describe things I noticed in media but didn’t have a name for. On a rare occasion, I would find a trope that I had no real reference for and one of those was “blue-orange morality”.

The concept of having a morality system completely divorced from our own that we can’t really judge it. Now it’s not like I have never seen like a series or text attempt to create a character or species that has different standards of morality but the issue I always had was, that the supposed “different moral standards” were always included as a contrast to a more recognisable real world standard - which meant it was framed from a real world standard anyways.

It is always seemed like one of two scenarios:

Scenario A:

Alien/Monster/Non-human: “Here is our horrifically barbaric practice that has no functional purpose to our society and entirely superstitious!”

Human/Humanoid 1: “That’s bad”

Human/Humanoid 2: “Oh that’s just their culture”

And its like no… the narrative framing still shows that is weird and barbaric and not at all a foreign concept which is it’s own morality system so divorced from our own. If we have to be advised not to judge it on our own standards, it can be judged by our standards.

Scenario B:

Olden Times!

Stories being set in a distant past/medieval times where there are different moral standards is not true blue-orange morality. They are just the worse models of current moral standards. We are not divorced from those at all. They are just uncomfortable to think about. Like, yes it is fucked for dudes to claim to be kings and murder thousands to maintain their power… but people weren’t super cool with massmurder back then either - it was just an inevitability due to the social economical problems. It’s like being a billionaire with hundreds of sweatshops now. Even with people who are cool with the system - we all know that shit isn’t our “moral standard” - it’s our uncomfortable reality. Pushing the setting back or forward a 1000 years doesn’t really change anything. Our countries’ leaders still go off to kill and exploit people to maintain power, they just don’t get crowns for it anymore.

And I don’t care if you chose to do this with fictional races and places, that is just set dressing. They still resemble human society as we know it.

So I just never really saw a series that really grabbed me as authentically blue-orange… just typically shades of grey.

But then I read AOAB… and I really saw the potential of blue-orange morality. And it was done well.

Now it might seem logical to treat Bookworm as a Scenario B.

After all, it’s literally nobles presiding over commonfolk and elizabethan era political drama… but heres the thing… the framing of Scenario B is based on understanding that some characters still fit our present mold of a good person:

caring

considerate

fair

just

humble

attractive (no literally)

would not murder babies

religious in the right way

And these characters are the ones we root for. The characters we aren’t rooting have qualities we do not desire

mean

selfish

powerhungry

bloodthirsty

unattractive

will murder babies

over zealous or cult-like

Like in a Scenario B you can’t show the main characters enslave children in a sweatshop and allow grown adult attendants put their hands on them - and still be the good guy. You can’t plan the purging of an entire faction and hold their children hostage under penalty of death - and be THE GOOD GUY . Can’t overtly tax a city to the bones and deny them the best possible harvest because the previous mayor annoyed YOU — AND EVER HOPE TO BE THE GOOD GUY.

Well you can in ascendance of a bookworm tho.

And the readers will agree with you.

And it’s NOT because readers can overly moralise the actions of main characters.

And it’s because unlike a Scenarios A and B which are just OUR WORLD where we are all AWARE that we don’t really need kings or billionaires and antiquated traditions that rely on human suffering for the world to work. AOAB is different

The world of AOAB is not our own. Nobles have more rights because the world explicitly requires their mana to function. Nobles are human plus. They are what rich people in the regular world pretend to be.

Remove the army, the wealth, the status of a king and he is commoner. AOAB Nobles are literally magic batteries that build cities, make harvests happen, keep the population safe from deadly magical creatures …like the yearly giant blizzard monster that won’t literally won’t let spring come unless you have an army of trained magical knights slay it. Without Nobles the world literally be a giant sandpit.

So right of the bat, the nobility are integral to society. You simply don’t live your life raised as a necessary part of the world functioning and not have a social structure that reflects that. Its our world turned on it’s head. All the commoners could die and all that means is the nobles have to do more work. Instead of rich needing the poor, the commoners need the nobles. Otherwise they rarely even interact. The commoners and nobles are almost different species.

And not like it’s particularly unfair on the commoners. Not having mana simply bars you from a lot of activities, duties and experiences. Hell, not having a lot of mana as someone born into a noble family arguably sucks more than being a commoner. Nobility is earned, not given. Being born into a noble family that doesn’t have the means to regulate your mana means you won’t even make it to age where you are considered a separate entity from your parents in that society. If you have enough mana to make it to the Royal Academy without getting sent to the temple and the ability to pass or even excel at the Royal Academy - congrats you are now an asset to your duchy and that includes the commoners inside it. Just make sure you don’t blunder and cause your own execution.

So if murder, classism, deception and greed aren’t necessarily immoral in AOAB, what is?

The only real way to be a labeled a bad person in AOAB noble society is to endanger your duchy and cause widespread problems. Which only means the real way to be immoral in AOAB is to be incompetent or to FAIL.

You might initially think The Veronica-Georgine faction are the antagonists because they try to murder a barely baptised child but the guardian trio literally admitted they had plans to kill her too. They are ones committing the most one sided mass murders in the series. Ferdinand being able to outmanoeuvre and manipulate his enemies in the ring of politics is considered a SEXY TRAIT.

So what’s the difference between the Florencia faction and the Veronica-Georgine faction? Easy. The V-G faction is DESTABILISING AN ENTIRE DUCHY WITH SHORTSIGHTED NOBLE BULLSHIT. And just escalates into the entire nation being in jeopardy… because the Ahrensbachian Archducal family keeps producing nobles that are profoundly worthless with no sense of noble duty. They are defective.

In the next paragraph, I’m just going to state something this legion of defective nobles did and the names of who did it/involved.

They don’t respect the authority or wisdom of nobles of higher rank so they disobey orders (Bezewanst, Veronica). They force already new brides on married nobles that ruin established marriages for no benefit besides sating their schoolyard fantasies on a whim (Gabriele). Their spitefulness and cruelty to one of the biggest archnoble families in the duchy has made the Ehnferestian faction politics a disaster (Veronica) and were forced to create an entire section of mednobles not even loyal to Ehnferest because archnobles rightfully disliked them (Shikikoza and Gloria). They’re such suck ups it endangered their own duchy’s stability to the point where their only options is an intermediate archducal candidate that was poorly raised by all metrics (Gieselfried). Ahrensbach archducal children are regularly raised to be puppeteered by the parents instead of independent thinkers (Detlinde). Which is a real fucking problem for duchies when you keep trying (and typically succeeding) in making these children the Aubs of duchies (Georgine).

Ultimately it comes down to the fact they believe in their ideological RIGHT as nobles over their ideological DUTY to prioritise their duchies running smoothly. And that leads them to overestimate their APTITUDE as nobles.

Which is REALLY telling when a little powerhouse is redefining what it means to be an accomplished noble and entire political career is to the benefit of Ehnferest. Which is why the Ehnferest archducal family and Florencia faction who prioritise the stability and growth of the own goddam duchy instead of their own personal grudges are the good guys.

Bad guys are bad because they are bad what they are supposed to be doing and the good guys are good because they focused on what they should be.

There’s even a moral gray zone which is “trying your best but not being enough” and the prime example of that is the current the royal family. The country is only in this sorry state because one prince allowed his ineptitude and thirst for power to spiral and cause the nation lose the most important tool, and now it has a king that was only ever raised as a vassal is struggling (impressively) to keep a nation that should have dried up to keep running… A shame his intel gathering is dogshit so he keeps making mistakes and even overlook things that could have solved the problem.

So the dynamic of magic and morality is baked in the worldbuilding and it’s doesn’t feel dumb that nobles have all this power but somehow DON’T really interfere the non magical inhabitants in the world on a grand scale. These features, not flaws.

It is so much better than making a magical world where wizards hide their shit IN non magical places but don’t interact with non magical humans and have poverty and slaves that do house chores despite HAVING MAGIC that handles that shit. And also celebrate non magical people’s holidays despite thinking non magical people are beneath them because despite the book apparently being about fascism being bad - it doesn’t address any of the core issues of it and even has extra issues layered on top!

AOAB doesn’t operate on regular morality so it’s not mind numbingly incongruent when bad things happen in the universe because the magic people choose to let it happen despite thinking it’s bad. Even tho nobles do not care about the commonfolk it would stupid if they hid magic from the non magical folk and even dumber if entire spinoffs were based in fighting to keep it secret. Having a series where the protagonists realise that a faction in their world is a problem and getting RID OF THEM? Imagine getting rid of people who are the problem instead of fighting them in a WAR and reading checking the epilogue and that faction caused the fascism is STILL THERE and children are scared to end up there?? WHY DOES SLYTHERIN STILL EXIST—

Anyways,,,

I haven’t had the pleasure of reading past the translated pre-pub myself, but from what I do know is the Ahrensbachian penchant for stupidity and shortsightedness in the pursuit of positions of power they couldn’t hope to manage effectively… while destabilising as much of the nation as possible continues and I can’t wait to read it.

[jeannereames]

weird question but what do you think Alexander would’ve thought of Machiavellian philosophy toward ruling? i feel like he employed some aspects of it throughout his life / career

A Machiavellian Alexander?

Because he didn’t write anything on the topic (that survives), it’s hard to know what Alexander’s theories on kingship/rule were, although I suspect he had theories, having been a student of Aristotle. Yet if some of the anecdotes about his days as a student can be believed, he resisted letting theory eat pragmatics—frustrating his teacher. (Although his teacher was more pragmatic than his teacher, Plato.) He purported to believe in what we might call “situational decision making.” As his time as the buck-stops person increased, he grew even more creative and less wedded to theoretical scaffolding. There was a lot of throwing ideas against a wall to see what stuck.

Although The Prince is Machiavelli’s best-known work, it’s actually atypical of his other writings. Dedicated to Lorenzo de’Medici, it was intended to teach rulers how to maintain power successfully. As such, it’s amoral (rather than immoral). A practical guide that divorced philosophic ethics from political theory. (To what degree he really believed it himself is, I understand, a point of contention.)

The Prince is the opposite of Plato—or Aristotle, for that matter. Rulers had been utilizing many of the ideas Machiavelli suggested, but nobody writing about politics advised them. Philosophers and political theorists had been trying to teach kings, tyrants, emperors, and other rulers to exercise power in moral ways, not amoral ones: Neo-Pythagorean idealized societies or Plato and his “philosopher king.” Stoics later went in one direction, Epicureans in another, and Neoplatonists in yet another, etc. That pattern would continue down into the medieval world. Until Machiavelli. (And even after him.)

To theorists, politics should be bound up with ethical thinking in order to create the best, most just society.

That’s the tradition Alexander was raised in, so I think he’d have been somewhere between offended and impressed by The Prince. He’d recognize the soundness of the advice, while being astonished anybody would set it down AS advice to be followed. I think he’d regard it as “last-ditch policy,” certainly when younger. Age and experience sanded down the idealism, but I don’t think it ever entirely sanded it off.

It’s hard to know just how devoted to philosophy Alexader actually was. This owes to the narrative programs inserted by later writers. For instance, Plutarch wanted to portray him as a “philosopher in armor.” I think most serious Alexander scholars these days dismiss that as a fictional portrait that served Plutarch’s moralizing and elevation of Hellenic culture during the Roman imperial period. But how much did the historical Alexander pursue philosophy? And did he do so for personal reasons (preference), or as a “show” to impress the Greeks (and is that division an artificial one, in itself)?

Some scholars, including Ernst Badian, Ian Worthington, and Peter Green would, I believe argue that he was pragmatic with little patience for philosophy unless it served his purposes: e.g., very The Prince-like. Others, including N.G.L. Hammond and Robin Lane Fox would rather see him in more Plutarchian terms. Yet others, such as Sabine Müller and Yossi Roismann, would regard him as a gifted statesman and diplomat, but not somebody marching around with his head in the clouds. I probably come closer to that latter view.

Yet I do think we need to take more seriously than we sometimes do the fact that he was Aristotle’s student. If he did not adopt some of Aristotle’s specific views on, say, non-Greeks, he would still have been a different sort of (Macedonian) king as a result of his education, probably more inclined to think about what he was doing in terms of political theory. If you wanted to put it in modern terms, we might regard him as a “first-generation college student.” Ha. And an enthusiastic one, not simply someone there to get a degree in pursuit of a higher-paying job. By all accounts, he appears to have been a deep-thinker—as was his father, albeit without the formal training. Philip worked out a lot of things about successful rule on his own…then made sure his son was given the proper educational scaffolding to make him even better at it.

So, while we may not have a good idea of Alexander’s personal political philosophies, and if—as he aged—he appears to have grown more cynical, I think it would be a mistake to see him as intentionally amoral in approach. He wanted to be, and saw himself as, a “good” (i.e., just) king. When he did “bad” (immoral or cruel) things, he would have blamed situational necessity.

In that, he’s like most people. By-in-large, when the average person behaves badly, they don’t see themselves as “bad” people, but as people who want to be good stuck between a rock and a hard place. “The devil/[circumstance] made me do it.” Alexander was no different.

[jurassicworldtieindrpepper]

Reading List

to be updated constantly

Articles:

"Why Women Online Can’t Stop Reading Fairy Porn" by C.T. Jones for Rolling Stone

"They Called 911 for Help. Police and Prosecutors Used a New Junk Science to Decide They Were Liars." by Brett Murphy for ProPublica

"‘I Think My Husband Is Trashing My Novel on Goodreads!’" by Emily Gould for The Cut

"Woman in Retrograde" by Isabel Cristo for The Cut

"The unwanted Spanish soccer kiss is textbook male chauvinism. Don’t excuse it" by Moira Donegan for the Guardian

"I Started the Media Men List" by Moira Donegan for The Cut

"What Moira Donegan Did for Young Women Writers" by Jordana Rosenfeld for The Nation

"The Key Detail Missing From the Narrative About O.J. and Race" by Joel Anderson for Slate

"The Coiled Ferocity of Zendaya" by Matt Zoller Seitz for Vulture

"OJ Simpson died the comfortable death in old age that Nicole Brown should have had" by Moira Donegan for The Guardian

"Norm Macdonald Was the Hater O.J. Simpson Could Never Outrun" by Miles Klee for Rolling Stone

"Trans Stylists and Makeup Artists Are Reshaping Red Carpet Looks. Will They Get the Credit They’re Due?" by James Factora

"The ‘perfect Aryan’ child used in Nazi propaganda was actually Jewish" by Terrence McCoy for The Washington Post

"There Are Too Many Books; Or, Publishing Shouldn’t Be All About Quantity" by Maris Kreizman for Literary Hub

"An O.J. Juror on What The People v. O.J. Simpson Got Right and Wrong" by Ashley Reese for Vulture

"Super Cute Please Like" by Nicole Lipman for N + 1 Magazine

Essays:

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture edited by Roxanne Gay

Creep: Accusations and Confessions by Myriam Gurba

"On Chappell Roan and Gen Z Pop" by Miranda Reinert

"In Memory of Nicole Brown Simpson" by Andrea Dworkin

"My Gender Is Dyke" by Alexandria Juarez for Autostraddle

"Columnists and Their Lives of Quiet Desperation" by Hamilton Nolan

Nonfiction:

Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women by Lyz Lenz

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life by Lyz Lenz

The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination by Sarah Schulman

Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Rachel Monroe

The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory by Carol J. Adams

Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson

Who Owns This Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs by David Bellos & Alexandre Montagu

The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society by Eleanor Janega

Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America by Krista Burton

University of Nike: How Corporate Cash Bought American Higher Education by Joshua Hunt

What it Feels Like for a Girl by Paris Lees

Female Masculinity by J. Jack Halberstam

The Theory of Everything Else: A Voyage Into the World of the Weird by Dan Schreiber

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper

Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration by Alejandra Oliva

Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate by Anna Bogutskaya

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Eyeliner: A Cultural History by Zahra Hankir

Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami

Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Fiction:

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Just as You Are by Camille Kellogg

Just Happy to Be Here by Naomi Kanakia

The Misadventures of an Amateur Naturalist by Ceinwen Langley

Family Meal by Bryan Washington

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera

Blackouts by Justin Torres

We Do What We Do in the Dark by Michelle Hart

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Less Is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer

The Faithless by C.L. Clark

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

The Institute by Stephen King

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin

Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Travelers Along the Way: A Robin Hood Remix by Aminah Mae Safi

Only a Monster by Vanessa Len

[ilbenmalpensanteus]

I think I cannot hold myself back anymore, so I will say it.

The fact that Sasuke and Naruto decide to marry two stereotypical, canonical, a-characterized girls is not a sign of a necessarily brotherly (merely platonic) bond.

In the medieval Japanese culture, in fact, true love often could be found only between two man (‘cause they are similar creatures and they can understand each other better than man/women couples - yeah, I know, how sexist, but we are talking about the 13th century sooo). It is possible to recognise the same idea in the antique Greece (even if usually the relationship is between teacher and his student - but the concept is, more or less, the same - you can see Platon about it). Marriage is a tool to grant reproduction and connection (Sasuke’s idea about “I want to repopulate the clan”, -yeah, alone and far away from home for 12 fucking years (r’u okay, dude?) Naruto dream of becoming hokage - never at home after:

-Hashirama that went for a walk everyday with his bff

-his brother who spent more time masturbating on proibite jutsu than actually ruling

-the third that, like the first, went for a walk but with Naruto instead

-the fourth: a loveable father and husband that had dinner at home with her wife and cooked as well

-tsunade: alcoholic, gambler, one of the sannins AND medic nin

-kakashi… well, you all know about his addiction for porn

-NARUTO: orphan, love-starved for life, can’t find the force to stay at home, shitty dad ecc ecc in time of peace.

Buuut oookkkkaaaayy?!).

Many aspects of Kishi’s plot and characters are inspired by historical Samurai’ customs and figures (also, the ninja world’ structure described by Kishi is more similiar to Samurai’ than that’s of true ninjas - whose usually are mercenaries and more similiar to bandits than heroes).

ALSO, who knows something, even if only the basics, about literature, can easily read in the entire story the most important iconographic topoi of romance and LOVE.

I will summarize some of them because there are many:

-Romeo and Juliet: “I’m the only one who can bear the full brunt of your hate! It’s my job, no one else’s! I’ll bear the burden of your hatred… And we’ll die together!”. Then, summarising the rest: “in the afterlife I will not be the vessil anymore; you will not be an uchiha ecc ecc”= Capuleti and Montecchi: Juliet and Romeo tried to bear the hatred that their families had for each other; finally only death permits them to love and realise their dream to stay in each other arms.

-in their afterlife (pre-mortem experience) Sasuke and Naruto are found together (no itachi, no parents - only the two of them)

-Achille and Patroclo (I think I won’t speak about that because I could spend VOLUMES)

-the love triangle

-star-watching while whispering the name of smone we love (or desire)

Anyway I have no watched Boruto and I don’t intend to: everything after the second Valley of End is no more than “found raising” (without charity) and politically correct (that of 15 years ago - especially in Eastern Countries). Same thing about The Last and these other craps: BULLSHIT: Naruto, suddenly, DON’T understand love anymore… came on, are u serious man?

PS when I think about chakras of two siblings I cannot not think about soulmates:

- chakra, like soul, have NO gender (and we all know that Naruto and Sasuke are not brother)

-if you insist about they being siblings thanks Indra’ and Asura’ chakras I have to remind you that VERY OFTEN in EVERY MYTHOLOGIES of the world (yeah, in Japan as well) between deities there is no incest concept and ooops Indra and Asura WERE SEMI-DEITIES, so..

I would thank my current occupation as phd student in History and Religion: that has helped a lot to understand the implicit tune of the show/manga

PSS the shit about “clingy Sakura yelp cause sasuke taps her forehead” is, precisely, bullshit: Itachi (sasuke’s real brother) did the same thing to keep away sasuke. When he says “I will always love you” he doesn’t do that, no SIR; also, when sasuke asks Naruto what he really means by “friend”, Naruto, at the very end says “I DON’T FUNCKIN KNOW, but when you hurt I hurt”. He is the one that really understands Sasuke NOT SAKURA

Also, Naruto frees Kurama (8 tails) after Hinata’s (fake) death, okay but, seriously? The seal is merely there at this point, everyone is dead, she tried to help him but cannot do it because is not a real ninja and he got LIVID. I understand that.. than he forget all that she had said

When the kages asks for sasuke elimination, Naruto is not angry, Naruto is broken and has a real panic attack, so… I think there are some difference due the circumstances.

The hints ‘bout canonical ships during the series are, really, unuseful like an ass with no hole.

So, I have to stop here. This is my deposition, your honor.

Sorry if I made mistakes but it’s late here, I’m tired and English is not my native language

[gemsofgreece]

any pronunciation tips when pronouncing greek names? any common errors i should avoid? trying to impress a very important greek teacher in an interview and hoping to convince them that im competent enough to start studying the language! any other general tips would be super appreciated hahah x

You didn’t tell me what kind of studies it is (classical studies, modern studies, just linguistics, generally Greek culture and history studies) to be more precise but I believe I can give some tips anyway!

Use modern Greek pronunciation for any instance of speaking Greek to them, including addressing them. Even if you go for classical studies, outside the classroom you should use modern pronunciation to earn their attention.

If you are going to speak any basic Greek with them, you should definitely apply plural of politeness. Greet them with a “Ya sas” or a “Hérete” or a “Kaliméra sas” if it’s morning or “Kalispéra sas” if it’s afternoon. Always with plural of politeness. In the language that you are going to do most of the talk, use please and thank you and all forms of polite talk when it’s necessary within the context. These things are valued in Greek academic communication.

Address them with the word κύριος / κυρία + their surname. Kírie + Surname, if it’s a man, Kiría + Surname, if it’s a woman. You don’t have to address them after every answer or anything, just in the beginning and whenever it feels like it makes sense to do it. And plural of politeness. Please note that they may not apply plural of politeness to you, they may not call you mr or mrs and they might call you with your first name. All this is totally normal in Greek dialogue etiquette, you are the student, the younger person, and they can address you informally. THIS DOES NOT MEAN you can drop the plural of politeness. No matter how they talk to you (I mean unless they would insult you or something LOL) you have to use the plural. You can drop it ONLY if they explicitly tell you to do so which I doubt they will but anyway. And even if you drop the plural, you will still address them Kírie / Kiría + Surname unless they also tell you to call them by their first name which I also doubt and then you will STILL have to address them as Kírie / Kiría + First Name. Don’t drop the Kírie / Kiría under any circumstances. Unless they also tell you specifically to do that but the chances are very very slim.

Go in there with a pleasant but serious demeanour, you know, like in a typical interview. Depending on how they are, you can follow along their demeanour but always be one step more reserved. So if they are serious, you stay serious. If they are relaxed and humorous, you can loosen up as well but do remain a little more serious than them.

If they take note of you speaking Greek (regardless of how well or bad you do), you can smile reservedly and be like “Yes I am trying, I am really hoping / looking forward to learn more / improve”. But don’t make light of it, like “hehehe I am speaking Greek… opaaaa!” . Show you are interested in it seriously, academically.

I am pretty sure the professor will value much more your genuine interest to study the Greek language or culture, rather than any technical mistakes you might make. Show a contained mix of fascination and focus to them and you will win them over, I am sure! But don’t go in there like “idk the alphabet looked cool” XD

You can of course add how it might be very aesthetically appealing to you or having some practical significance for you to learn the language. But keep this supplemental and focus on scientific fascination and Greek’s academic / cultural impact.

I think I got the ultimate trick to impress them. Whatever they ask you about why you want to take these studies, push modern Greek culture in your answer or, even better, talk about how it fascinates you to explore the continuation or evolution of Greek culture / language / history through ancient, medieval and modern times. Talk about the special case of Greek being so well attested, giving us a window to explore cultural evolution in big spans of time with more precision. If these are modern Greek studies, definitely do not talk about how you love Greek mythology or ancient philosophy. I mean, it’s not bad to say that, it just won’t make the difference you hope for to the professor. Show that you value all eras of Greek history / linguistics and if it’s modern studies, then do emphasise on the modern era and maybe talk about exploring the impact of Byzantine / medieval in modern history and literature and culture. Maybe talk about how perhaps you were exposed to Modern Greek history and culture and realised how overlooked / under appreciated it is and how, I don’t know, it could prove to be impactful in certain ways. I mean, use the one of these that applies best to you and work around your answer, I am just giving you some ideas! But the point is, don’t focus on classical Greece or Greek mythology. Express an interest for the civilisation / linguistics throughout time, talk about exploring continuation, evolution and impact and I believe you got them :)

To summarise, be serious, focused and pleasant. Show respect and interest in all Greek linguistics / culture / history without discrimination. Talk about continuation. If they ask you if you have some niche interest about it, definitely choose something less known, more overlooked like something from medieval or modern times. Don’t stress over potential mistakes you might make. Use polite language.

And success is imminent 😁

Καλή επιτυχία!

[horizon-verizon]

Rhaenyra's children have never been legitimised. Even though the king has claimed them as his grandchildren, even though corlys claimed them as velaryons. And even though laenor claimed them as his children. Even though they were claimed in front of multiple witnesses including the entire court, they’re still not legitimised. because they were never acknowledged as bastards in the first place. They have always been claimed as 'true born' children, not as bastards, and of course you can’t legitimise a true born child.

This better be about Fire and Blood, anon. I’m working from the assumption that it is.

I get your point, anon. I’ve both heard it and debated about it myself many times.

You're saying that even though Viserys and Corlys accepted them, by the rules of legitimization and acknowledgment they are and always will be bastards and illegitimate. People would have to have the official revelation for Viserys to publicly legitimize them.

My thing is that:

in real life, what determined a child’s legitimacy in Europe was nebulous right from the start and had to do with property and changed according to the needs of the people involved. In Wales–before the Norman conquest of it and its incorporation into “England” around 1093–had “bastard” meaning a child whose father doesn’t acknowledge them. All children acknowledged had equal legal rights. That included the right to share in the father’s inheritance. The real-life House of Tudor, Elizabeth I’s house, was a house that ruled England after Henry VII took the throne through conquest and after presenting himself as a candidate to those opposed to the Plantagenet York House. The Tudors weren’t a “big” house compared to these houses. And yet it produced notable people…. including Elizabeth I. William the Conqueror was not mocked for having unmarried parents, but specifically for his mother not having a good or illustrious lineage.

In Westeros, riverman Benedict Rivers/Justman/”the Bold” and Orys Baratheon (last one rumored bastard) loyally or dedicatedly lead armies for other lords or lead loyal soldiers themselves, completely negating the idea that bastards are inherently “monstrous” or “treacherous”, which is the bulk of disdain and trepidation for illegitimate people. Benedict Rivers, a bastard born from a Blackwood and a Bracken, became a King over all the riverlords and lead the riverlords into years of prosperity and peace. Orys founded the very house that currently rules Westeros (the irony is not lost on me, but that’s because Robert himself is a fucker and patriarchy).

illegitimacy doesn’t exist as a reality and an independent fact without political context; it must be actively enforced by the active decision of the people around to have any actual true effect

Rhaenyra, as a woman giving birth to children not her husbands’, would be getting a stronger even maybe deadly punishment for something that a man would get off scot free for, and her kids -- through no fault of their own -- would also have their lives taken or ruined. And for what? Something that has no real substance in of itself and is more conviently hidden for power if done right? [go to point #4] -- the further political and personal ramifications are is why the V boys’ parentage will never be admitted....just as her adultery would never be admitted (we don’t know if Book!Rhaneyra did the arrangement with Laenor of HotD)

both women and men have had affairs and lovers for millenia in ancient and medieval cultures....why? Because marriage is about resources and joining families together for power/security, not love or intimacy. And both men and women want love and/or real intimacy, or just horny. This means that there is a higher possibility for there to be "unexposed" "illegitimate" children on either side than you might think or have clear archealogical or otherwise historical evidence for. 

Sometimes affairs and illegitimate kids were tacitly and publicly known already ( @the-king-andthe-lionheart), but if a person were to want to gain something from a princess', noble lady's, queen’s reputation falling or outright removal...then whether or not she actually cheated on her husband or slept with others, they could engineer claims of her “ruination” and “treason” 

Jon Snow. Enough said.

Power is the thing that is really sought for, not moral righteousness. Alicent & Criston both are so out of the loop for this. Bastardy is a societal excuse and invention. It is a tool to be used, to flaunt, to slice others, to hide, etc. How you use it and for what purpose determines your ethical status. Add in circumstance and that will determine whether you will “win” or not.

EDIT: As what la-pheacienne says HERE, Viserys I, Corlys, and Laenor all tacitly/silently accepting Rhaenyra's sons is legally valid, as it is in all legal contexts, so yes they are all legitimate.

Aside from how Viserys and Corlys both voluntarily decide so, never revealing anything.

[setokaibapetty]

5 + 1 Fic Friday Roundup: Uplifting Women

Some fics revolving around women (and one man in a woman’s body) who lift their family/community/world up. May is the month of Mental Health Awareness after all - though I went for tech uplift instead of creating an uplifting atmosphere via emotional labor (though there is some of that in some of these as well).

1. Down the Rabbit Hole to Westeros (AO3)  -  A SI into Selyse Florent, later Selyse Baratheon. Refusing this time around to be vexed by a mustache, lack of indoor plumbing, and no more guacamole in favor of keeping her eyes on the prize: Surviving the upcoming Long Night and not letting Melisandre go Full Melisandre.

2. Compass of thy Soul (FF / AO3) -  Being reborn into the Uchiha clan during the Warring Clans Era is surprisingly idyllic, so long as you don't mind hard work and are too young to know any of the people who are actually dying. But innocence never lasts, and trying to help family stay alive is a road strewn with a surprising number of pitfalls and last-minute diversions. [SI-OC. Fluff, politics, fix-it. No Aliens.]

3. Sanitize (FF / AO3) -  Basic medicine and sanitation are simple. During the Warring Clans era, they become revolutionary. [OC-Insert]

4. Cold Winds Blowing (SB) -  Maia, a young woman without much direction in life, awakes in the snows of the True North beyond the Wall in the year 295 After Conquest. Equipped with a power she barely understands, the Celestial Forge and the endless potential it represents, she struggles to find her own path on the foreign world of Planetos. Will she be wrapped up in the schemes of the great players? Can the best of intentions truly bear out good results, or are they a mere hindrance to true power?

5. Taylor on the Edge of Forever (SB) -  A Worm AU/Star Trek AU where Taylor Hebert has alt powers related to having been in the Star Trek future before being returned to her teenage self in Brockton Bay.

Bonus: Coin and Conformity (SB / AO3) - A man wakes up one day to find that he isn't in his apartment, isn't in his own body, and isn't even on Earth anymore. The language, the geography, the culture, the stars, and even the technology level are all different. Even worse, in this backwards medieval society he had found himself in, he woke up in the body of a woman. A woman who had just given birth to her first child, a son.

[gendiebrainrotreceipts]

Girl boss culture is so stupid and you radfems are making it worse. You think you’re making women look so bad but it’s just toxic don’t come crying to men when it all backfires. There are many rumours and beliefs about mystical phenomena happening every time Constantinople was attacked. What I did not know is that apparently this is mentioned in Ottoman scripts as well. That’s certainly interesting. In any case, this is folklore at this point and I am not at all sure it is credible. I read there in the comments below the video someone saying that there must have been some sort of high voltage produced in the midst of the battle. Or maybe a lightning stroke the church for all we know. Surely it must have shocked medieval people but I believe there was some natural explanation for it or that in the heat of the moment people certainly made it out to be more otherworldly than it actually was. something abt fate's glamorization of historical figures (including giving them tits) seems so epic at first glance, then u skim thru their wikipedia page and they're like... *lives after the Great Schism of the Catholic and Orthodox church*, "which Council of ____ are we following?", *invaded by an empire that just disbanded 100 years ago*, political marriage and matchmaking is hard, "our city was terribly ransacked after the fourth crusade back in 1204, we can't ask help from the West!", *civil wars in neighboring states probably*, *Istanbul (Not Constantinople) by They might be giants playing in the background*, the Habsburgs family tree is dangerously getting close to being a vine, Margaret of Anjou GiRlbOsSinGggggg her way thru England, maybe another chapter of the Hundred Years War. constantine xi was like existing with by social and political forces of their time. sucks to be him though! imagine being a legit heir of capital R=Rome, only for the austrians to like rebrand themselves as the Holy Roman Empire which according to Voltaire is neither holy, nor Roman nor an Empire while u, the legit remnant of the glory that is Rome is shrinking with forces beyond your control. the city has fallen and you're still alive, you stand singular against the invaders. the glory that was Rome is in you and you'll perish with it. On right there is the antithesis, Dracula, on a background of blood-red. A simple stylized city is shown behind the theatrically dark-clad Dracula, and a many-tailed dragon roars before his feet. In this way he is presented as the saint of death, as the Dragon is a mythical being most closely associated with evil and destruction. In the Biblical book of Revelation, a seven-headed dragon appears in sky, being one of the heralds of the End Times. ‘The Christian dead totalled about four thousand, many more were wounded, and tens of thousands were taken prisoner. Blood flowed in the streets of Constantinople, encircling the cobblestones like red mortar. Some of the bodies were thrown into the Dardanelles, where they "floated out to sea like melons in a canal". Others were piled up as there had been no time to bury them; the stench was terrible, but even more terrible was the task of identifying the bodies of friends and relatives, because many had been beheaded.’

[rhetoricandlogic]

Against All Gods by Miles Cameron review

Review

Epic Epic Epic awesomeness!!

Such a fun and epic start to a fantasy story. These are exactly the type of stories I look for when reading fantasy. A wrap tag group of people brought together by one insurmountable goal. The ultimate David vs Goliath underdog story. Humans against Gods!

The premise alone already enticed me since I’m a sucker for a story where Gods are used as a mechanic, even better that they’re the enemies. The Gods really didn’t disappoint, they felt equal parts powerful, petty, vain, and threatening for all the wrong reasons. I like that they’re seems to be a mystery behind them too. They obviously came from somewhere else 1000 years ago, possibly running from something. There is something going on with their true appearances, the fact that they’re these hideous insect like creatures (and one lion creature) masquerading as these perfect beautiful people. It’s fascinating and something you couldn’t really do if the is was just another Greeek mythology narrative. The politicking was engaging as well, I don’t normally care for politics but the scheming of the Black and Blue Goddesses and the Storm God kept me wondering what was going to happen next and trying to get a sense of they’re overall plans. I didn’t quiet understand why the Storm God didn’t just kill them if he even suspected them(or why he kept them alive in the first place if they’re the “Enemy”) There is history there and I can’t wait to find out what it is. Overall I’m excited to get more from them and see the Storm God get punched in the face by Zos. Thats’s going to be epic

Speaking of Zos, the human characters in this book were all great. Zos is the perfect aging hero I want to follow, Era is badass and capable, we need a women like her in the group, Pollon’s magic, Archery and general knowledge is that wild card we need and even Anat and his family were endearing and will do well to ground our heroes. Gamesh and the black smith were fun too. They all read like epic heroes being told throughout the ages and I know they’ll be even more powerful when they get their hands on these God weapons. I know it’s coming!

The magic was basic but I still liked the idea of Aura being used. I’m a sucker for magic weapons in fantasy and I want to see more of these in the vault in the next book.

The plot itself flowed at a fair pace that always kept me from getting bored. It does this thing I really like where it skips over the travel time or prep work to get to the next plot relevant point/place. So many books will decide what to do next for the plot then spend 30 pages talking about and preparing to do that thing. It’s tedious and I always catch myself thinking “All this could have been cut out”. So I’m so happy this book didn’t have that problem. I tend to like faster paced plot heavy stories though. It wasn’t a ton of action throughout but I didn’t mind since what we got was well done and I had fun seeing everyone get where they needed to be. I was super happy when all the POV characters got together fairly quickly. Freeing the slaves, killing some demons and Gods where all super fun to watch. The ending was epic and on par with anime scenes I’ve watched.

The worldbuilding was cool. I liked the Dry ones, The Jekers and the different cultures we caught a glimpses of. The location names themselves were a little confusing and did not really stick in my mind but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment. Overall the Bronze Age aesthetic was refreshing (I’m so tired of English medieval fantasy) I want to see more from this world and lore.

A couple negatives:

*For Whatever reason I never cared Pollon’s POV chapters/moments. I was always so bored during them. I like him as a character but I think he works better as a side character rather then a POV character

*The writing was a tad bit bland. It didn’t take away from my enjoyment but I do think it played a part in why it took me so long to read this relatively short book. Normally a book this size would take me 3-4 days but it ended up taking me about 7 days.

*I’ve seen a few review where people say the villains were just evil for the sake of being evil. I agree but it doesn’t really bother me but I thought I’d mention it