#not to mention the entire population of melusine

[that-foul-legacy-lover]

Hellu here with the idea of creator!melusine able to work with the hydro element and childe/foul legacy (and neuvi) showing them all the neat tricks?

*eats your idea in one bite* mmmm delicious and tasty :)

perhaps you're not even given a Hydro Vision- instead you have innate control over the waters of the Primordial Sea. in a way it makes sense, the waters being the oldest and most connected to the Creator, but you're still understandably a little spooked when parts of Fontaine's ocean begins bending to your will. Foul Legacy is absolutely ecstatic, however, chittering happily and gently cupping your mittens in his claws. your siblings curiously peek over your shoulders, oohing and aahing as they watch sparkling water form tiny shapes in your hands before dissolving again- you're just like their sister Sigewinne! except, you don't have a Hydro Vision, but you can control the water all the same!

Legacy admittedly wants to teach you how to fight as soon as he can, but Neuvillette lightly flicks him on the forehead with a frown, met with reluctant grumbles. they can both teach you, but first and foremost Neuvillette wants you to know basic control. he makes sure you never get overwhelmed, helping you learn and tempering the waves with his own power as the Hydro Sovereign if anything begins to get out of hand. when he's not here, Foul Legacy secretly teaches you how to make more complex shapes with the droplets, starting from a perfect sphere and moving your way up to eventual weapons- he WILL teach you how to fight with Hydro eventually, it's best to get an early start! although, his favorite thing to do is helping you make a tiny narwhal out of water, the miniature beast swimming around your antennae and Legacy's horns as he trills in delight

[margridarnauds]

angel-starbeam replied to your post: Gotta love how Tumblr buys into Victorian...

Elaborate please.

I’m not sure if I’m ultimately elaborating or just tossing word vomit into the void here, but here goes nothing!

Obviously, this is dealing more with the specific phenomenon that I’ve noticed re: posts about Europe being essentially unwashed savages while everywhere else was going through some sort of golden age. Which! Around the world, people were doing cool things. Obviously, discussing the events of, say, the Golden Age of Islam or the achievements of the Aztecs and Mayans are important, especially when it comes to combatting Eurocentrism in the study of history.

But, at the same time, there’s absolutely no need to do that while throwing the Middle Ages under the bus, and it’s right next to the idea that somehow all knowledge of the ancient world died after some singular burning of the Library of Alexandria and oh, how painful, we all had to go through the DARK AGES. (Which. No one dealing with the field calls it “The Dark Ages.” Because it wasn’t.) 

Sanitation wasn’t AS GOOD as practiced in, say, the times of the Romans, depending on where you are in Europe and in what time during the nearly thousand years that we call the Middle Ages you’re situated in. (I repeat: A THOUSAND YEARS. THE ENTIRE CONTINENT. Like, that would be the same as lumping people in the present with people who lived in the 11th century and not taking into account regional diversity. It’d almost be like, you know, completely generalizing a 3000 year old civilization. I mean, who would even do that?)Because the Romans had aqueducts all over the place and were meticulous about their cleaning. (Though they also used a little sponge on a stick to wipe themselves with after going to the bathroom.) But, if you’re in one of the Nordic countries during this time, you’re going to have a wash day, and we know they washed their faces every morning. (The idea that they cleansed themselves without washing the bowl is something that has been heavily debated, but the general consensus I’ve personally seen is “they washed it in-between cleanings”.) We have Anglo-Saxon writers talking about the Vikings and essentially going, “Stupid Norsemen with their fancy hair and their wash days and their jewelry, looting our country, running off with our women. What do they have that we don’t?” 

Around the rest of Europe, we know that the common people had communal baths and, for the nobles, they would have their own individual baths, occasionally using it as a source of bonding (much like the Romans did, when they would conduct business together). We get a lovely account of Charlemagne that says that, “he would invite not only his sons to bathe with him, but his nobles and friends as well, and occasionally even a crowd of attendants and bodyguards, so that sometimes a hundred men or more would be in the water together.” And I’ll take this one moment to also mention that one of the most famous legends of the Middle Ages, Melusine, literally revolves around a woman being left in the privacy of her bath as one of the terms of her marriage (which is then broken. Which then causes problems. Because you don’t break prohibitions like that when it comes to marriages in medieval literature. It never ends well.)

And, of course, since we’re not just talking hygiene, but a general outlook on culture, which is such a BROAD category as far as talking “sophistication” and “advancement”, I will remind whoever might be willing to read this that medieval manuscripts and stained glass windows are two of the things we IMMEDIATELY spring to when we think “The Middle Ages” and both of them are time consuming, meticulous activities. To give a hint: As an amateur stained glass artist, I can spend probably about 10 hours non-stop on a project of about 40-60 pieces, supposing I already had the glass on hand and a pattern in place. That involves cutting the design out, tracing it in the glass, labelling it, cutting the glass out, getting it sawed to size, foiling it, and then sautering it. The pieces you see in a cathedral, like at Chartres? 

Those are THOUSANDS of pieces, most of which was made in an approximately 35 year period from about 1200-1235. Like, Chartres originally had 176 glass WINDOWS. I can’t even begin to imagine it. And, also. You’re working with GLASS. AKA “One wrong move and you will feel the pain of a thousand cuts.” Ask a stained glass artist. They’ll have stories. And when I’m working, I’m working with the advantage of modern equipment to cut the glass out. And the one thing they did at Chartres that I still can’t do? Painting. So, not only did those pieces of glass have to be perfectly cut and put into place, but THEN they had to be painted. The folds in the robes, the faces on the angels and the saints, the detailing along the edges...all that stuff is painted on. And with a lot of that glass? We can’t replicate those colors anymore. And, I mean, Chartres wasn’t the ONLY cathedral with stained glass in Europe at the time, just probably the best surviving one of the group. 

And, of course, in terms of manuscripts... 

So, yeah, Europe was a “cultural backwater” that was creating breathtaking works of art that took DECADES to create. And, of course, all of this relies on the idea of “Europe” and “The rest of the world’ being isolated which SURPRISE they weren’t. Like, you’ve got Greek and Roman books going to the Middle East, then being translated, then having Arabic natural philosophers working with the ideas and improving on them, then them being brought back to Europe  and translated, usually into Latin because it was the language of the academics and the learned AKA the only ones who were rich enough to buy this type of thing. You’ve got Arabic writers traveling around the place, writing about what they’ve seen, like Ahmad ibn Fadlan. And of course up until Isabella and Ferdinand commit genocide during the Reconquista, you’ve got the Moors in Spain. So, while the majority population of Europe was what we’d call white today, to just lump it all together into a homogenized group to prop up another location really only serves to, for want of a more academic term, shit on EVERYONE ELSE who was in Europe at the time. Like, it’s not just inaccurate, it’s buying into the idea propagated by white supremacists that the face of the Middle Ages was a bunch of white men. 

Alright, now that I’ve probably spent way too long on this part of the rant, onto the “Victorian propaganda”. And, really, I’m being overly harsh on the Victorians here, because the Renaissance (lit. “Rebirth) and the Enlightenment’s also to blame and really set the stage, posturing themselves as the successors to Greek and Roman thought after centuries of darkness. “Enlightenment” - “Dark Ages”, the idea is kind of in the words used to describe them. Which completely ignores the long, long history of natural and other forms of philosophy in the Middle Ages that made it possible for Voltaire, Descartes and co. to so much as wipe their noses. The Middle Ages becomes a time of religion and superstition, not like our time, oh no, we’re above that. We’re Free Thinkers™. This is also where we get the idea of “Gothic” architecture being used to describe medieval architecture, because OH MY GOD HOW BARBARIC. IT’S NOT GREEK. (Yes, they were the equivalent of those fifteen year olds who post melancholy comments on YouTube videos of 60s songs about how “Teens today don’t understand REAL music.) And what’s the classic setting for the 18th century gothic novel? A medieval castle or an abbey, filled with leftovers from the barbaric past, focusing on heightened emotions and the supernatural, as opposed to the focus on reason that characterized the era, especially as exemplified by the French Revolution which attempted to turn rational ideals into political reality. (Whether they succeeded or not, and if they didn’t then WOULD they have if not for *insert factor here* is another discussion altogether and would probably cost me my life.)

That being said, the term would become popularized during the 19th century, so I’m rolling with that. 

But, the Victorians brought one MAJOR development that would kind of determine how ideas of race and civilization would be dealt with for many, many years, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. And, as soon as the book hits, people start talking about it, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And here, we’re definitely dealing with the UGLY. 

“This aggressive colonial competition at the end of the century drew support from supposedly scientific and biological ideas about racial superiority and inferiority. Darwin’s Descent of Man suggested a graduated evolutionary chain of development. It seemed to sanction ideas of ‘primitive’ peoples supposedly lower on the evolutionary scale than the white Europeans who were invariably presented as the model of evolved civilisation.”

Now, obviously, this idea was used first and foremost to deal with race. BUT if white Europeans are more “evolved” then they have to have evolved from something, and the Middle Ages were convenient to this image, especially when the Enlightenment had already done a decent job of beginning to distort the record. If humans were animals, descended from primates, then, by this manner of thinking, the history of humanity is evolution in action, with the weak being weeded out by the strong and the humanity of centuries past being obviously less involved than the humanity of the present. As Lewis Henry Morgan wrote, “It can now be asserted upon convincing evidence that savagery preceded barbarism in all the tribes of mankind, as barbarism is known to have preceded civilization.” It’s a very convenient, nice little ladder that they’ve created there, and it’s one that conveniently throws anyone who’s not a white Victorian male under the bus.

I wouldn’t say that Darwinism necessarily created anything NEW in terms of dealing with Middle Ages, but it did provide confirmation to Victorian males that they were The Pinnacle of Evolution and that the human race is moving in a grand new direction that will eventually eliminate Lesser Societies (gee, I wonder how THAT theory could be used and abused.) And, of course, with Darwinism, you have the debate between science and religion, the Middle Ages being heavily associated with religion...it’s a mess. 

However, in all fairness to the 19th century, these ideas weren’t NECESSARILY the only belief in vogue, as some people also viewed the Middle Ages through a highly nostalgic lens, looking back at a simpler time, before the Enlightenment. “Many of the qualities the Romantics saw in the period – elevation of faith over rationalism; devotion to hierarchy, tradition, and authority; emphasis on communal rather than individual artistic and intellectual achievement – were the same as those recognized by Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers, only viewed in positive rather than negative terms, prompted by rejection of modernity, religious revival, or some combination of the two.” This was a period of time that was still dealing with the CATACLYSMIC affects of the French Revolution a century before. Which is also why so many white supremacists like to wank over it. Because it reminds them of a happier, nicer time with strict gender roles and little cultural diversity. (NEWSFLASH ASSHOLES: THAT ISN’T WHAT HAPPENED. AT ALL. FUCK OUT OF MY FIELD. but i digress) 

(Okay, technically this comes from 1900, so not a 19th century painting, but STILL Victorian.)

 Which also gives you a harsh BACKLASH, as people start to rebut that by painting the Middle Ages as a period where science was sacrificed to religion, most notably in the White-Draper Conflict thesis, which, suffice it to say, is INSANELY simplistic. And you’ve got people like Auguste Comte who expressed a high regard for both the Middle Ages AND Darwin in his creation of Positivism, which earned him some amount of scorn, such as when Auguste Blanqui wrote, “These blind systematisers’ mania for progress regardless of what happens even leads them to indict, as a reactionary movement and negative impulse, the renaissance of Greco-Latin letters, and according to them this victory over the loathsome works of the Middle Ages was a backwards step.” You’d almost get the idea he didn’t like it. This is also, incidentally, where we get the idea that everyone in the Middle Ages was rolling around, believing that the Earth was flat. Because of course everyone in the Middle Ages was a religious nut. (Note: I’m saying this as an atheist.) 

So, really, there’s a heavy amount of religion VS science, romanticism VS rationalism, etc. 

Really, and this is my own personal opinion/open-ended question that I’m not really sure can ever be answered, any take on “civilized” and “uncivilized” or any real barometer for advancement of cultures is going to be flawed, because ultimately what are you using as your yardstick? Are we really that far up the imperialism ass still that we’re judging historical cultures by how closely they resemble us, with everyone else being “primitives”, or, to use the language of the God-awful Tumblr post, a “cultural backwater”? Does it have to be in ALL areas, or just in a few? If a civilization practices human sacrifice on a massive scale but builds some awesome monuments, do they get the “more civilized than the others” stamp? Hey, at least they had running water! What about if they give rape the death penalty, but only if it’s a free woman? What standards of living do they have to have to make the cut? Is there a minimal limit for monuments, and if so, how are we judging what a monument is?

We all want to show that our pet favorites are “advanced,” that they did marvelous things so much better than everywhere else, but I’m not sure anyone’s willing to have the conversation on what “better” or “advanced” mean in this instance. 

Tl;dr: The Middle Ages were not as filthy as they’ve been made out to be, they DID produce cultural artifacts of great beauty, and do we really want to use descriptions of “cultural backwaters” and “progress” and “advancement” that rely heavily on notions popularized during the 18th and 19th centuries as a means of justifying imperialism? Especially when said notion promotes the idea, POPULARIZED BY WHITE SUPREMACISTS, that the Middle Ages in Europe were populated by a homogenous white population? Like, is that the hill you really want to die on, Tumblr? Is it really?