#medieval trade

[askymzbuki]

Longbow fox

[royaltea000]

Two young knights

[elbiotipo]

I also believe that in a "tech level" approach, though of course I dislike that term, trying to get blood out of the stone of pseudo-medieval settings just constrains you. There are plenty of very, very well researched guides to medieval life and technology, mostly about Europe but you will find them about the Islamic world, Eastern Asia, and so on...

but the thing is, even with well researched settings, even with very welcome switches to other historical inspirations, it's just done and tired. We are talking about fantasy, a genre that can encompass the entirety of human imagination, and people always go back to the same time period of 476-1453 like stuck in a time loop, it's maddening.

There is a lot to talk about this but let's focus on tech for a little. Do you know how ingenious bronze age technology was? Did you read about pre-columbian cities and engineering? What about something beyond the Middle Ages, the inventions of the Renaissance or Early Modernity? I think there has been quite a lot on fantasy with industrial technology but it often feels (especially in things like popular RPGs) that it's a couple of steampunk things stacked upon a medieval-inspired world. How about a world that just skips the medieval aesthetics and goes to an industrial revolution?

And since this is fantasy, you can mix and match technology and inventions. What's more, you can explore art styles and philosophies, that's more complex to reflect but very well worth it. There is simply no need to return again and again to the tired aesthetics, true, but you can also learn how technology shaped history and do something more creative about it that researching just the same time period over and over and over.

I think we're just done with castles and plate armor.

[tillytilli]

art trade with @pajulammas of his au Chivalrous Devotion!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! old man yaoi

[enbycrip]

So this meme about “spinster originally being a word for a woman so good at weaving she was financially independent” seems to have made it into pretty much every group I follow, so after the best part of a week biting my hands not correcting it so as not to undercut the broader point, I’ve now been *forced* to correct it (badly) and write a screed of additional context just for my own sanity.

“Spinster” is indeed a word for women who became financially independent through the cloth and garment-making trade, but by SPINNING, ie making thread from fibres, rather than by WEAVING, which is making cloth out of thread. You can tell by the title being SPINster, not WEAVEster!

The “-ster” suffix indicates that the title is feminine; you can see it in other surnames like “sangster” and “brewster”.

This actually points to one of the traditional points about female-dominated practices; while weaving within the household to make cloth for members of the household was traditionally almost entirely done by women in the house, when weaving became a well-paid trade regulated by guilds, men began doing it and rapidly pushed out the women weavesters or websters who had started the profession and originally trained most of the male weavers.

This never happened with spinsters because spinning was never as lucrative as weaving and thus it never became a guild-regulated profession; it remained a trade women in the household practiced to supplement household income.

Single women could habitually manage to support themselves on their earnings from it, including single women living in lodgings in urban centres as well as single women living in their own cottages in rural places, which was incredibly valuable to them.

This points to one of the ways trade unions, the more modern and proletarian-focused version of guilds, are not *simply by their existence* a solution for worker liberation. Trade unions, like guilds, have frequently enforced societal misogyny by favouring male and male-read workers over female and female-read workers, often actively undercutting the needs of female and female-read workers, because of the societal trope that “men were supporting a family” and “women were working for pocket money”. this kept on applying even when many female and female-read workers were primary wage earners.

Men, especially cis men, in trade union spaces have a responsibility to keep your union intersectionally-aware and actively seek female and nonbinary delegates, officers and activists to fill roles.

As everyone who is privileged in any axis - male, white, cishet, abled - has a responsibility to actively seek representation from marginalised folk, and to actively canvas marginalised folk you represent to make sure you are fighting for needs you may not perceive. It’s easily possible for instruments of liberation to end up marginalising and oppressing marginalised folks unless there is an ongoing commitment to inclusive and liberating practice in them.

[fairytalefem]

I didn't get a chance to take pictures until I got home and I was all sweaty and rumpled but my costume for the ren faire this weekend came out so cute! I just barely got everything finished in time and I didn't get to try it all on until I was in the parking lot of the faire but I was so lucky and everything fit perfectly! Everything was designed and made by me with fabrics and trims I already had laying around 🌿🦄🌸✨

You can also watch me design this costume in an asmr sketching video here! 💕

[chaosfairy18]

Race: what a great run, I didn't only steal stuff but also heard some interesting info from the gossiping ministers-

Spot, the King he is stealing from currently: I think you chose the wrong balcony

This is from the medieval/fantasy-esque AU that I'm doing with @thatoneandlonelyemo2005. Most of it is concentrated on Bumswiftery at first, but also this is set in the same universe, we're just talking about what everyone would do in a world with magic and Kings and kingdoms :)

It will also go into a fake marriage AU for Sprace due to plot and cultural reasons I am making up but who cares if we get fake marriage turning into real feelings.

Bonus:

Did them in a picrew earlier because the clothes fit so so well.

Pose reference:

From mellon_soup

[leprzilla]

Verter

Although the Deity of Trade is not the supreme god of any domain, it deserves special mention as it does not belong to any particular domain. Verter (Verter Dot) - the god of Trade. He is depicted as a contented, plump cat with a greeting paw raised. Sacred symbol: a handshake sealing a deal. He appeared relatively recently, with the rise of civilisation, culture and trade. Although he has grown powerful enough to rival the more ancient deities, he has yet to find his specific place among them and remains unattached to any domain.

[supercantaloupe]

this is absurdly pedantic i know but i think it's kind of dumb when people say that spices like ginger, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc being traditional in european holiday recipes (think gingerbread and its thousands of variations) is the product of colonialism. like yeah sure colonialism helped make those spices more cheaply available and therefore widespread in europe but come on, europeans were trading across asia and north africa for those very same spices for centuries before modern transcontinental empires existed

[annieumiandnenebones]

Historians will say they’re the best of friends 🫢

My part for the OC Renaissance Collab hosted by @demerathdraws, @kayspnart , and @ nyeh.exe ! 

Here’s the Sugar and Spice Corp employees, Gwenaveer and Morgana, dressed as medieval ladies♥️💙

Check out the collab and support all the artists here!

[holyguardian]

@soldier-lodbrok | X

The young man seemed surprised about the sudden encounter. Little wonder, it was the very first time Ifalna had paused and spoken a word to him — she often spoke with others as though there were no divide between them, because a title was merely that, a title. She tried to keep her feet on the ground. To not allow her pedestal to be raised too high.

Because truly, she wished to be seen as simply Ifalna. And she imagined a lot of people felt the same wish. To simply be seen, even in a passing moment.

Though there were only so many hours in a day. Only so many moments to spare, when there was only one of her, and hundreds of people in her employ, thousands more that surrounded her walls who depended on the crown upon her head for food, for shelter, for a brighter tomorrow.

She learned a long time ago she couldn't stop for a chat with every single person. For most, her public speeches would have to suffice. Those within the castle walls however, those who were a little closer to her home, they were the ones she could catch in a passing-by conversation. Such as this one.

And oh, full glad was she to have stopped here and now.

Ifalna's lips spread into a wider smile as he offered her the same courtesy as her daughter. "I won't demand it, I'm not as bossy as the young Princess. However I am curious."

Her head tipped a little. "Would you give me a demonstration, my noble guard?"

[hanzajesthanza]

don’t let me reread because i saw this

and an image of reynevan pleading innocent like the crying cat meme flashed across my mind

[keepthemacramesecret]

not attaching this to that post because obvioulsy the unexamined colonialism is more important than like. nitpicking historical details. but also its such a shame so many fantasy settings are so incurious about actual medieval european food because its so much more diverse and interesting than a bland assumption that everyone is eating either a big cartoon roast Meat™ or a potato stew and thats all there was. like im not a food history expert at all but ive been to reenactor banquets prepared by people who Are and these guys are out here doing the absolute most. making reproduction menus from specific stories or events and reconstructing recipes from extant medieval cookbooks (that are just online for free btw!) and re-building awareness of local native staple ingredients that have been all but lost (in this case lost largely due to the cultural impositions of that same colonial empire) and learning how to grow historically common fruit and veg that has been left behind. your modern day diet is probably more monotonous in terms of veggies than an average medieval irish person's but you'd never think so going by any fiction thats ostensibly set pre-1500

idk i just think if u Are writing a medieval-europe-based setting this information is pretty accessible and makes your world more interesting and more real and its FUN, so resorting to the genre classics of Ambiguous Potato Dish is genuinely lazy. sorry.