#there is so much more that can be done with medieval history than

[thosewickedlovelies]

A guide to writing fics set in museums / with a museum worker character

Hey hi hello it’s your local museum worker here, offering you some insight and tips to writing museum-related fics! This is primarily organized as a list of different jobs you could have in a museum and what their duties entail. This post might also be useful to you if you’re considering working in museums and want to know What Goes On In There. Let’s go!

For simplicity/fic-writing purposes, I would divide museums into 2 very rough groups: large national or city museums that Have Money (think the Smithsonian or British Museums, or the Chicago Field Museum or the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds); and smaller local museums. These could be local industry and culture/history-of-our town museums, historic houses, or  really niche subject museums run by One Person With A Passion.

Big national museums have a fuckton of staff and money (museums can never have enough money. But these places are very well-off compared to somewhere small that might always be hustling and writing grant applications). If you work here you’re likely to have a specific role in a particular department, and you probably won’t do much outside this role (ex., if you work in collections management, you probably won’t also design exhibits)

The smaller the museum, the more varied your workload will be/the more likely you are to be doing a little bit of everything. You’re probably organizing collections storage, manning the front desk, and desperately running fundraising efforts, all at once. 

To this end, smaller museums are more likely to be closed one or two days a week- you’ll be there, probably cleaning displays or managing storage, but visitors won’t be.

A lot of (most?) universities also have museums, so a college town setting is also doable. But the same big vs small museum disparity is still possible! At Penn State University, for example, the Palmer Art Museum is its own (recently redone iirc) building in the center of campus with a lovely plaza out front, while the Matson Museum of Anthropology is uhhhhh a couple classrooms in the Anthropology Department (which they’re currently rebuilding tbf, so we’ll see what they’ve done with it in 2025).

Types of Jobs

Curator

The one museum job that everyone can name. Nominally the person in charge. Probably laments that their job is way more admin than fun hands-on stuff now.

Actually this is the role I have the least knowledge of, but I think that’s partially because this job might vary the most from place to place? Structural organization can vary a lot between institutions, but I think the higher up you get in any field, the more your job tends to consist of meetings/overseeing, designating, and ~liaising~

A list of things a curator might do:

Planning or approving events and fundraisers, schmoozing with donors and members at said events, approving or designing a schedule of exhibits, publish outreach/advertising or research materials, oversee hiring, approve new object acquisitions (or de-acquisitions), generally make sure that the museum is working within the scope of its mission and if necessary, change or refine their mission

The curator might not necessarily control a museum’s funds; in this case they’ll liaise with the people who do, likely a Board of Executives or Board of Trustees. Once they get the money from these people, though, they could potentially redistribute it as they see fit.

 If you work in a fuckoff museum like the BM, you could also be the curator of a specific department, arranged by overarching subject, geographic area, time period, or even object type (eg Curator of Archaeobotany, Curator of Korean Collections, curator of coins from the medieval period). These categories can be more or less specific depending on what kind of holdings your museum has. I think these types of curators would still be able to do interesting things, as they aren’t the ones who Oversee The Whole Place.

You can also be an assistant or associate curator, like being an assistant manager.

Education/Engagement

These are the people who design fun extra activities (esp for kids) in the galleries or relevant events/workshops/lectures the public can attend. They might be called Engagement/Education Officer or Events Manager or anything similar

Again, the bigger the museum you work at, the more specific your role is likely to be. You might focus on web content/outreach and social media, manage the ‘friends/members of the museum’ program, or engage with shareholders, etc

Or you might do things like develop content and events to engage adult audiences. Workshops or lectures connected to new exhibits, after-hours visits. These people are also probably the ones with an eye on accessibility- you’ve probably seen advertisements for museums’ early or late hours for older visitors, or ‘quiet hours’ for people who might be overstimulated by normal museum hubbub, or tactile workshops designed for visually impaired folks.

I think most places would try to have someone specific for kids activities at the very least. They’ll be designing little activities or dress-up stations for the galleries, kiddie mascots or scavenger hunt trail kind of things, as well as, potentially, activities for any digital elements in the museum. They probably also coordinate school visits and act as a tour guide for classes, and will lead the kids in specific workshops or lessons in classrooms attached to the museum.

As a note on technology- some people would probably say that integrating digital elements into exhibits is the ~next big thing~, that museums have to get with the times in this regard, but opinions vary. Big science and technology museums are the most likely to have the most digital and techy elements in their exhibits, so if this is your setting, your character could also be a generic “tech person”. I would go so far as to say the smaller/more local the museum, the less technology you’re likely to have, but smaller museums are able to get grants, some of them potentially for specifically this type of thing, so it’s totally possibly that they have a few tablets with integrated activities, or some other Digital/Screen Thing.

Engagement Officers are probably the most likely people to be drafted for out-of-hours events, so that’s a potentially fun thing for your character to do. Some museums, particularly bigger ones, have event spaces attached that anybody can rent out, for weddings, galas, markets, etc, so they might also take care of these bookings as well.

Exhibit Design

This role has a lot of nebulous terms: exhibit coordinator, design constructor, exhibit programmer- but these are the people who design the exhibits. They’ll come up with a theme or narrative, a design scheme, choose the objects, write the text. They’ll probably come up with some marketing material as well, that matches the design scheme, or they’ll liaise with the marketing people who will.

These people might not be as familiar with the collections as the collections management folk (below), depending on how strictly divided your roles are, so they’ll likely consult with the collections people on choosing objects for a particular exhibit or theme (they say that good exhibit design builds an exhibit from the objects up, but I digress).

These people will also direct and participate in the install and deinstall (the actual terms) of exhibits- putting the objects on the right plinths/stands and arranging everything just so in the cases. Genuinely there’s a lot of psychology behind exhibit design- colors, lighting, the way you might design an exhibit to be navigated vs the path people will actually take through the gallery, people’s sight lines and where their eyes go first, how the display of any given object affects people’s perception of the importance of that object. Fascinating stuff, many books on the subject. 

There are also a lot of accessibility concerns to be considered here- how bright is the gallery, how large is your display text, at what height is the central eyeline of your cases?

Museums often loan objects to and from each other’s collections, so if you’re building an exhibit and you’d really like to include X type of object but your museum doesn’t have any, you can borrow some from another museum (this isn’t necessarily a guarantee- museums are allowed to say no to these requests, but I think manners would dictate that they should have a good reason)

Museums sometimes tour whole exhibitions as well- the objects, the text placards, maybe even the stands for super special or fragile items- and exhibit coordinator people are the ones who would handle those arrangements.

Potentially good opportunities for angst stories here- wow things come to life at your museum, you fall in love with a statue but oh no it’s only at your museum for three months

Collections Care

People who work in Collections Management have the most direct contact with the museum objects themselves. You probably work here if you prefer objects to people. When a museum gets new material, these are the people involved. They might not always initiate acquisitions, and the final approval is probably down to the relevant curator, but 98% of the time they’d be consulted (I hope).

A mind-boggling statistic is that most museums only have like 10% of their collections on display at any given time. Yeah. Forreal lol. But collections folk will know where the other 90% is and what’s in it (particularly the longer they’ve been there). 

There’s usually a head Collections Manager. Other workers might be a Collection Assistant/Associate, Collections Officer (we like calling people Officers for some reason), Registrar, or some variant of these depending on the specific flavor of your duties. 

Main job duties can be divided amongst documentation and database work, organization and storage of objects, and lite conservation. Just how much/how technical the conservation work depends on your own training, but also on the size/funding of your museum. The more money, the more likely your museum is to have its own lab with people specifically trained as conservators. More on them later. 

Here’s what happens when a museum gets new stuff!:

Ideally, it goes to a ‘quarantine zone’ first. This is a separate space or room where the objects can relax for a few weeks to a few months (ultimate best practice is actually a year, but, you know. that’s a long time) to ensure that they’re not harboring anything icky (bugs, mold, etc) that will infect the rest of the collections. It’s ideally super-sealed and climate-controlled, but the primary feature should be that it’s away from the main collections store.

Collections folk do the paperwork. They’ll give each individual object a unique number (following their preexisting system that will allow it to be identified distinct from all the other objects in the collection). They’ll create a ‘collections record’ for the object- documentation containing any and all information about the object. This includes the accession paperwork (everything that says ‘we legally own this now’); provenance info (all previous owners and everywhere else the object has been in its life); measurements and description (in painful detail); and conservation history and concerns (ie ‘there’s a crack in the side so pick up with care’, ‘this was repaired in the 70s so that glue is gonna fall apart any day now’).

(I'll say as a fic writer that this would be an great time to wax poetic over a beautiful statue or painting; you can’t write “This golden crown deserved to be worn by a great king, or maybe by that broody Roman general in the painting in Gallery B” in the collections paperwork, but you can think it.)

For fiction’s sake, your collections records could be either paper or digital, but in an ideal world a museum would have both setups, for security’s sake. So you’d fill out some long forms and/or input all the information to the digital collections management system (‘the CMS’, or referred to by your specific software’s name, as there are many out there). The CMS is not a static archive, but rather a living register that’s updated every time an object is interacted with. The object records also include where an object is at any given time (‘normally in Case E in the Fancypants Gallery, currently in Conservation Lab A for repairs’).

Once the objects are done in quarantine, they’ll go to storage. If they’re being displayed immediately, they’ll probably go to some interim storage space/shelf with other objects for the same exhibit and in that case only get a temporary setting. Every object will get labeled with their object number (directly on them, with a special pen that’s safe for this. Or if it’s really tiny, like a coin or jewelry, then their own tiny box will get the label). Small or fragile items, or items grouped together, will go in their own boxes (made of acid- and lignin-free cardboard or polyethylene plastic, like Rubbermaid totes; lined with polyethylene foam and then acid-free tissue paper). Stable ceramic vessels might sit directly on lined shelving, particularly if they’re very large or heavy, like many stone objects.

Listen, every type of object has a particular way(s) of storing that’s best for them, you’re gonna have to look that up yourself or consult someone if you need that level of detail

Ideally, before being stored away, objects are also photographed. This could be part of the Collection Officer’s duty, and/or your museum could have a photographer on staff. (say it with me:) This is more likely if your museum is really huge and/or has a backlog of unphotographed collections and has hired someone specifically, even if temporarily, to improve its collections documentation.

I would say a collections person, or anyone with a museum studies degree, should have some minimum amount of conservation knowledge that includes basic storage standards for different object materials, how to spot potential preservation problems (like if your bronze axe head is actively oxidizing or if that green spot looks the same as it always has since starting and pausing decaying), and maybe how to give objects a basic clean or deal with certain types of problems. But the nitty-gritty science is more the realm of Conservators, someone with a degree that ends in -Sci or who’s done some other certification course.

The general collections store should always be dark, slightly too cool for prolonged human comfort, and labeled to high heaven. Objects will most likely be grouped by material- ceramics/pottery, metals, precious metals and stones (jewelry or beads), stone, glass, wood, bone/ivory/other organic material like feathers or teeth or anything that can be decorative, textiles, paintings. A museum often has some paper material/documents, usually part of or related to a group of objects they acquired, but generally paper and photographic material is the realm of archives and archivists. Yet again, the bigger/more well-funded the museum, the more likely it to have a separate archive department, so your character could also work as an archivist in a museum.

Another thing the collections care folk probably do is ship objects. Remember how I said that  museums loan objects and exhibitions to each other? The stuff’s gotta travel somehow! If things are being shipped internationally, they’ll go in big wooden crates, with specifically dimensioned partitions inside. Then it will be lined with our favorite foam and tissue paper, cut so the objects sit snugly inside. I haven’t personally worked anywhere with a possibility of local shipments, so I can’t say where the threshold might be as to when a museum would just pay an employee to drive the objects over vs ship them with a shipping company. But the preparations would be similar, minus the big wooden crate but with extra-careful packing (and paperwork and insurance etc)

Conservation

Conservators are the people who work in labs with fancy equipment. Not every museum will have a formal conservator or a lab of any kind; sometimes the collections care person fills this role, or if something urgently needs care beyond the abilities of the museum’s equipment, they might send it away to a lab elsewhere, the same way you can send your old VHS home videos to a professional archive to be digitized.

If an object is actively deteriorating in a way that could harm itself or other objects (as opposed to like, at risk of fading bc the lighting is wrong, which is a straightforward fix related to the environment), that’s when a conservator would intervene.

Some methods/machinery by which you can analyze objects:

Ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) light - Different materials absorb and react to light differently, which you can use to identify them. Useful for seeing things like the different layers of paintings

Stereo-microscopy (microscopes, of varying strengths)

At magnifications of x5-x100 you can see things like tool marks from an object’s manufacture, traces from wear, deposits, and coatings

At x50-x500, with a thin sliver of a sample, you can see (and hopefully identify) fibers, layers, particles, metallographic structures 

You can get information from objects without taking samples, but samples are usually worth the information. 

energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDXRF) - EDXRF allows you to identify the elemental composition of the surface layer of an object. So it might tell you what a tool is made of, and also the composition of the objects it was used on, if they left traces

scanning electron microscopy (SEM) - an SEM uses a focused beam of electrons to produce a magnified, high-resolution image of the surface of an object

X-radiography, both film and digital - X-rayy are beneficial for objects that might be covered by dirt or corrosion and can show you details of an object’s construction or hidden structural weaknesses

I’m not a conservator, so if you want more hard science-based info, ask one of them lol

Listen to me. If you take nothing else away from this post, let it be this:

 Once an object is in a museum, it is never seeing natural daylight again. Sunlight is the ultimate enemy of every object’s lifespan. If you need to see an object in the sun or moon light for ~magical spell reasons~, you will straight up be stealing that object to smuggle it outside.

Okay. That being said, you do hear (and could probably google) stories about museum employees stealing things from their museums on purpose to prove a point about security or insurance to their higher-ups, so like. Depending on your type of museum, it might not be impossible to steal from lmao. (Don’t tell anyone I said that.)

Possibly the most useful advice for you to keep in mind when writing your conservator or collections care characters would be that touching objects hurts them. It might not hurt them now, it might not even hurt them in ten years, but every time you handle an object, there’s a risk that you’ll damage it. Not on purpose, obviously, but to err is human. The simplest, most effective advice my conservation professor ever gave us was “don’t handle an object if you don’t have to.” That means don’t move an object without a plan and a place to put it, first examination should always be visual, not tactile, etc. Unfortunately, that means that your character cannot walk around lovingly handling and caressing their favorite objects (unless this is a Night at the Museum situation where the objects are caressing them back, ykwim)

Museum Technician

These people probably have a lot of different names, but basically, technicians are the background muscle of the museum. They do the technical construction of bigger pieces of exhibition material, up to and including the exhibition cases themselves. 

So they wouldn’t deal with the small mount that the object rests on, but they might build the big plinth that the mount sits on. They’ll help move things around the building, particularly big heavy things, hang big framed works, assist with exhibit installs, and generally do most things which might involve power tools/equipment or heavy lifting

I worked in a big museum that hired a third party company to supply their technicians; I interviewed at another place that hired their own. If you’re a small museum, you might just have a freelance person that comes in once or twice a week to help move things.

Other

Other miscellaneous roles one could have in a museum: researcher (for exhibits and/or collections), gift shop or cafe worker, security guard, room attendant, translator, archaeologist, consultant

Honestly, TL;DR? Just have your character be a consultant of some kind. “Oh no, I don’t work here, I’m Y’s friend. They called me in to provide some expertise on X subject that they’re doing an exhibit on.” This could work for literally any subject- history/archaeology/anthropology, art, transportation, science and technology, anything you might find pictures of in an archive, idk. This could get you into an office or meeting room of some kind in the ‘employee only’ space of the museum, or potentially all the way into the collections store if you’re giving them information they were missing about some objects. Otherwise you’d probably (hopefully) need a key or some other kind of security clearance to get into the collections store.

Whew, that was a ride, huh? I hope this guide was useful to someone! I’m always open to answering questions if you think I forgot something or if anyone wants more details <3

[topazadine]

Things that immediately turn me off a fiction book

I'm pretty picky with what I read, because the time I spend reading is time that I could spend writing. I generally know if I will like a book within the first chapter, and I feel no shame in giving up if I'm not vibing with it.

And no, I don't believe in the "oooh read further it warms up" because does it? Does it really? Do I want to waste time finding out?

Frankly, at this point in life, I read more nonfiction than fiction because there's just so. many. bad. books. that are getting published. Worse than fanfictions.

Anyway, here are the things that make me give up. Maybe hearing this will help you as you write your own masterpiece.

Too Many Proper Nouns

Three characters maximum in the first chapter or two. Do not throw dozens of people at me. I will get confused and give up. Let me get to know the main character, by themself or with a few of their closest companions, before you make me remember everyone else. And go deep with those characters! I want someone to stick with!

You can reference other characters, to create a sense of a deeper world, but do not go all-in on them. Make it clear that they are just there to provide a bit of context, and we don't have to remember them yet. We should only be meeting three characters maximum.

Throwing Us Immediately Into a Dramatic Action Point

This is controversial I know, but I hate when something immediately starts with a battle. I don't care if any of these people live or die. I don't know them. I haven't grown attached to any of them.

Even just a page or two to get to know them first will help. You can have them gearing up for a battle, thinking about what's going to happen, maybe talking to their friends, maybe checking their armor, whatever feels natural for them. But do not just start with stabbing people! I don't care about them yet!

Too Many Details

Many this is just me, but I simply do not care about every piece of armor your character is wearing. I don't need to hear a play-by-play of every single color of every single thing because I don't care. Pick out a few specific things for me to focus on and that's it. Stop overloading me with colors and patterns and armor styles.

Yes, yes, you've done your research on historically accurate gear. That's great. It would be good for a movie. But if I have to look up different armor pieces every five seconds, I am glossing over it and moving on. I don't care. I'm here for the story. If I wanted an infodump about medieval armor, I would simply pick up a nonfiction book (and maybe I will).

White Space Syndrome

Tell me what the overall scene looks like instead of all these hyperspecific details of certain objects, like carts or emblems or whatever. I want to know where I am!!

Don't just say "a forest." Tell me what kind of forest. Tell me if it's a young forest or an old snarly forest or a swampy forest or a cold alpine forest.

Don't just say "a castle." Tell me if it's a bustling castle or a gloomy castle or a rundown castle.

Don't just say "on the sea." Cold sea? Tropical sea? Far far away from land or is land in sight? These are the things I want!

Too Much Backstory

For the love of god do not explain the entire history of this culture in the first chapter. The first chapter is for getting to know the characters we're going to be following. You can introduce those things slowly and carefully as the story unfolds.

I get that fiction writers are delighted by all the worldbuilding (or research, in historical fiction) they have done. But the reader does not care right away. They need to get invested before all those little specifics matter at all. My eyes glaze over and I give up because I don't want to have to remember all of that all at once. It's like you just threw a college textbook at my face.

Plus, if you're doing third-person limited, you have to remember that the character is not going to be thinking all of that! They won't say all of that either! Because they know all of that!

Even a general on the brink of a major battle is not going to go "yes, this all dates back to when we took Iuanfutila back in 181, when the brave Iuanfutilans protested the rule of our Yawwbaawnwhryr leaders ...." They are focused on the present moment, and they may discuss the backstory later. Tell us what we need to know now because that is what the character would be thinking too.

"Oh, but Topazadine, how will the readers understand the context if I don't tell them??"

There's a battle. Two groups are at war. Or something was stolen. Or two people are fighting. Whatever. We understand those things. We can get the basic gist of how things are going to play out by just showing us these things happening. Then, as we have gotten a feel for the characters, you can tell us more about the context.

If you walk into a store that's being held up by an armed robber, do you give a shit about his backstory, or do you only care once that person has been arrested and you have to testify? I think we know the answer. You're not going "ohhh why is he doing this??" at first. You're going "HOLY SHIT THERE'S A GUN WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN NOW???" and then you'll care about the other stuff later.

Too Much Play-by-Play

I also do not need a play by play of a fight scene. I need to know the general movements, and then the overall atmosphere. I want to feel what the character feels rather than feel like I'm watching a football game.

Your reader will fill in the gaps if you give them enough information, but when you overload them with every single action, they're now trying to keep track of what went where instead of how this moment is supposed to feel. And now the action and drama has gone out of the writing because it's become a manual of fighting techniques.

Pointless Dumb Conversations

"Oh, could you turn around for me? I want privacy."

"Sure, of course, I'm a respectable man." Manfred knew that a lady-in-waiting would be unsettled by the presence of a strange man, so he wanted to be respectful.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Oh my god no one cares!!! No one!! We don't need this exchange. Cut it. This is stupid. Unless something is actually happening or something is meaningful about them saying this, shut up.

How to Not Write a Horrible First Chapter That Makes People Ragequit

Can you tell I'm mad today? I started and stopped three different books because they were all so bad.

Three characters max in the first chapter, with deep discussion of each. (One or two is better.) General appearance, demeanor, profession, whatever.

Restrain the urge to infodump! Dribble it out over the chapter!

Give the setting more attention than random little details that ultimately do not matter. I don't need to know the pattern of the curtains on the horsecart that's about to be burnt. Don't care.

Do not give a play by play of every single action that a character takes because it's boring and no one cares.

In media res is great but do NOT start with a big climactic intense battle or fight or whatever because we don't know these characters and don't know who to root for (or why we should care).

Your character is not going to give us a history lesson in why this conflict is happening. Do not do it yourself either. Give us just enough to get intrigued and no more. Think how your characters would think and what they would prioritize in discussions.

If a conversation is just pleasantries and has no purpose, drop it, we don't care.

[insipid-drivel]

Warhorses: Which horses are actually good candidates, anyway?

This post is in honor of @warrioreowynofrohan, who asked the question in the comments under my guide, "Horses: Since There Seems To Be A Knowledge Gap". Their question, "Given what you said about too much weight breaking a horse’s spine, how did that work with knights in plate armour?" is one I'm going to try to answer here, since the answer can be very nuanced depending on where and when you're talking about.

Also, while I was a stable hand for years as well as a rider, I never had the opportunity to directly learn more ancient styles of tacking, horse training, and combat, so I don't have any direct experience to draw from with regard to horses used for military purposes. I'm still gonna do my best here with what I know, and research what I don't.

As I've covered in the past, large horses (draft horses) make less-than-ideal warhorses, and so do carriage horses like the elegant and dramatic Friesians.

Let's begin by addressing this from the perspective of creative writing. For you writers and content creators out there, an essential part to the continuity of any historically-themed work you do involving horses will be depicting breeds of horses that didn't exist before a certain time in history. I'm going to approach this question from the stance of, "Medieval-type era warhorses". Horses were used in warfare as late was World War II, but actual horses you ride into battle with knights and archers and bannermen? We actually have to drop the subject of specific modern breeds altogether aside from using them for comparisons.

When discussing warhorses, various cultures have approached them differently. Some cultures will value a specific type of horse above all others, such as the Mongolian Steppe Horse or the American Mustang. Other cultures, which may be from biomes and territories where multiple types of horses are needed for different forms of warfare and tactics, value whichever horses can get their jobs done without their riders getting killed.

Carrying vs. Pulling:

Horses have been used in warfare since as far back as 4000 BC, but their first applications were more as chariot horses. Humans have been riding and working with horses since before we even had stirrups to more easily ride them with! As archaeologists and anthropologists make more discoveries, the more we learn that we humans have been working closely with horses since before we had specialized tools to ride them with. The very first warhorses pulled chariots or carts, which is much easier for a horse's anatomy to handle compared to carrying a heavy weight like an armored rider on their backs, which puts stress directly on their spines where they have very little supporting muscle for supporting a lot of heavy downward weight.

Warhorse Size Categories:

Really, any breed of horse can apply to a niche in warfare if it's needed enough. Even very small, delicate horses have had their place in the history of human combat! Before I continue, it's important to know that there's a unique unit of measuring a horse's height. Rather than measuring a horse's height in centimeters or inches, they're measured in units called "hands". A single "hand" = ~4 inches/10.16cm, and a horse's height is measured based upon the distance between the bottom of their hoof to the tallest part of their shoulders, just at the base of the back of their necks. We don't actually include neck length/head height in a horse's measurements with traditional measuring.

Another rule of thumb: The average horse cannot safely carry anything heavier than about 30% of their total body weight. This is a serious factor to take into mind when deciding on a type of or breed of horse for a mounted warrior of any kind: You need to factor in the OC's starting body weight, and then add on the weight of armor, weapons, and any armor the horse itself may wear along with the weight of its tack.

Light-Weight Horses:

A few examples of lightweight horse breeds whose ancestors have historically been used in combat are Arabians, Barber Horses, and the magnificent Akhal-Teke. Lightweight and delicately-boned horses like those are best applied for military maneuvers that require precision, speed, and endurance, and the rider themselves should specialize in some form of combat or reconnaissance that doesn't require them to wear heavy metal or laminated armors. Archers are good candidates for riding smaller horses, or lightly-armored swordsmen like an Ottoman Janissary.

Central-Asian and North African horses also benefit from having a higher tolerance for hot climates. They can absolutely suffer from heatstroke and cardiac arrest from being forced to run and work in extreme temperatures and should always be provided with the same protective measures in a heatwave as any other horse, but they have a little bit of an edge over horses descended from freezing and temperate climates.

Medium-Weight Horses:

Medium-weight horses started showing up in the archaeological record around about the Iron Age, where chariot warfare was becoming an increasingly utilized form of mobile combat, and people needed bigger, stronger horses capable of pulling heavier loads - such as a chariot with two passengers rather than just one. As cultures began to develop heavier-duty armors made of metals and laminated materials, it also became important to breed horses that were tall and stocky (muscular and with relatively short spines compared to their height), and therefore more capable of carrying riders in increasingly heavy armor. Medium-weight horses were also essential at the dawn of the gunpowder age when the cannon came into use in siege warfare for pulling the heavy, iron cannons into position.

Medium-weight horses are really where we see the beginnings of knights and other warrior classes on horseback come into the forefront of warfare. When you have a horse that's big and strong enough to carry heavier armor and heavier weapons along with a rider wielding them, you have a much deadlier force at your disposal. Strikes from a sword or spear from the back of a galloping horse basically results in a sword capable of cutting through enemy soldiers like a hot knife through butter.

Important Note: Traditionally, cavalrymen wield blunt swords when attacking from a charging horse's back. When a horse is charging at full speed, the sharpness of a blade becomes less important than the blade's ability to stay in one piece when it impacts hard armor and bone. A blunted edge basically turns a cavalryman's sword into a thin club that's better at holding up against smashing through multiple layers of armor and bone compared to a thinner, more delicate sharpened edge that can shatter from a high-speed impact.

Heavy-Weight Horses:

The direct ancestors of modern draft horses, such as the Shire Horse, only began to appear around about the beginning of the European Medieval Era, and were far and away not even close to the enormous sizes of the draft horses we have today. Any horse counts as a "Heavy-weight" classed horse if its weight exceeds 1500lbs/680kgs.

Heavy-weight horses were really more bred for pulling enormous weights rather than carrying knights. While yeah, there is some evidence that suggests that heavy-weight horses were used by heavily-armored knights, historians argue a lot about whether it was a rule or an exception (such as with Henry VIII, who continued to ride well after he had begun to weigh more than 350lbs/158kgs, and even went to war in France in his final years on horseback). Generally speaking, medium-weight horses tend to be the right balance of agile and strong for carrying someone that's going to actively be fighting. Heavy-weight horses were bred to be a lot more tolerant to the chaos and frightening stimulation of the sounds of battle, but medium-weighted horses generally tended to be more suited to moving efficiently through dense packs of soldiers and weaving around other horses.

Ponies:

While actually being the smallest class of warhorse, ponies were essential when it came to carrying cargo and working as pack-horses. In certain forms of terrain, such as mountains, large horses pulling big carts full of supplies or soldiers could often be extremely impractical. In situations where an army needed to move on foot and form a narrow line in order to travel, ponies were able to traverse much narrower and rougher terrain while carrying smaller loads to their destination, when heavier horses would struggle more under their own weight and dexterity.

Europe-Specific Terminologies:

If you're a writer reading this and writing a piece set in the European Medieval age, there are specific terms used for the different classes I listed of warhorses above that I'm gonna list:

Destriers: The Destrier was a universal term for the iconic knight-carrying, jousting horse. They were also sometimes referred to as "Great Horses" due to their reputations in combat settings. Destriers could have just about any appearance, but were rarely taller than 15.2 hands, or 62inches/157cm. They were capable of carrying heavily-armored knights (although knights in full plate mail rarely rode into battle and stayed on the horse the entire time - they tended to specialize at grouping up and killing a lot of footsoldiers swarming them at once and preventing breaks in defenses from being overwhelmed by an oncoming army; in the case of Edward the Black Prince, we have substantial evidence in the form of his surviving brigandine that a mounted soldier or knight was more likely to wear chainmail and brigandine with a tabard on their body with their arms, feet, and heads the most heavily armored in plate when they intended to fight on horseback, making them a little lighter and more maneuverable, but I may be waaay off base there because I'm thinking of more of Italian soldiers who used full plate and how they applied it in battle more than any other example) and wearing armor themselves.

Interestingly, the sex of a destrier was often chosen strategically. Stallions (horses that haven't been neutered) are more aggressive, and could both act as combatants on their own if their knight was dismounted or killed, but could give away an army's location if they were attempting to move stealthily. Stallions whinny and shriek a lot when they're horny or arguing with each other, which is most of the time.

Mares were often chosen by Muslim armies for being much less vocal, and therefore much more capable of stealth. Geldings (neutered males) were the preferred mounts of the Teutonic Knights, a Catholic military group, since they couldn't be stolen and used to breed more horses for the enemy army.

Coursers:

Coursers were the most common Medieval European warhorse. It's important to remember that in Medieval Europe, most armies were almost entirely comprised of common men - serfs subject to the will of their landlords, not far removed from slaves in many ways - who couldn't afford the highly-prized and expensive Destriers. Coursers were usually a bit lighter than Destriers, but were still strong enough to carry someone wearing armor. Coursers were also a little more utilitarian, because they were also sometimes used in hunting as well as warfare, so they had a valuable use outside of warfare that the owner could benefit from.

Rouncey:

A rouncey was an all-purpose horse that could be used for leisure and travel-riding as well as be trained for war. They were a lot more likely to be found on the farm of a serf or independent farmer of some kind, as they could fill a lot of different roles depending on what they were needed for. Their sizes weren't really important as much as their ability to get the job done.

It's also critical to remember that, when talking about warhorses, we're usually talking about eras long past. In general, thanks to resource availability and incredible advances in medicine, modern humans are significantly taller, and therefore heavier, than people from the European Medieval era and prior. While fatness was valued in many cultures for its suggestion of wealth, most working-class and serf-class people worked intensely physically-demanding daily lives just to maintain their own homes. They were a few inches shorter on average than we are today, had greater fluctuations in body fat distribution depending on how harsh or bountiful the harvest season had been and the season in which a war was taking place (the average person's weight would swing by 30lbs or more on average every year prior to the industrial era), and cavalry were usually chosen based upon skill in the saddle as well as physical size when considering the application of medium or heavy armor being placed on the horse's back and body.

[hero-israel]

#4 sounds like white people at the end of slavery… “we didn’t want to end it because what if there’s retaliation? There have already been slave riots. Imagine what would happen if we gave them freedom or if we became the minority?” It’s not speculative it actually happened the fears had basis. That’s what number four sounds like. It also feels like you only care about one view point like you expect me to believe y’all are perfect victims that did one thing in retaliation?

#4 sounds like that to you because you are an American who thinks the whole world is America and all history must be the same as yours. So you should start by asking yourself what it is in your cultural upbringing, and what in the media you consume, that has you automatically believing the worst possible claims against Jews, to the point of seeing it as understandable for us to be mass murdered.

Jews did not - and do not - want to live in an Arab or Muslim majority society not because of any issues related to "slave uprisings" you are teleporting into this discussion, but rather because Jews had already been brutally oppressed, persecuted, and genocided by Arabs and Muslims for 1,000+ years before Israel or political Zionism were ever invented. Mohammed himself got his hands dirty with this, wiping out the Jews of Yathrib and renaming the gore-drenched rubble into something called "Medina." No less a source than Maimonides wrote in 1172 "God has entangled us with this people, the nation of Ishmael, who treat us so prejudicially and who legislate our harm and hatred…. No nation has ever arisen more harmful than they, nor has anyone done more to humiliate us, degrade us, and consolidate hatred against us... We bear the inhumane burden of their humiliation, lies and absurdities, being as the prophet said, ‘like a deaf man who does not hear or a dumb man who does not open his mouth’.... Our sages disciplined us to bear Ishmael’s lies and absurdities, listening in silence, and we have trained ourselves, old and young, to endure their humiliation, as Isaiah said, ‘I have given my back to the smiters, and my cheek to the beard pullers.’”

Because there is a long history of this, there is much you can read about it, if you care.

Some very random examples:

The "badge of shame" was invented in medieval Baghdad, only later migrating to Europe

Life for Jews in Yemen: The Jews of Yemen were treated as pariah, third-class citizens who needed to be perennially reminded of their submission to the ruling faith…The Jews were considered to be impure, and therefore forbidden to touch a Muslim or a Muslim’s food. They were obliged to humble themselves before a Muslim, to walk on his left side, and to greet him first. They were forbidden to raise their voices in front of a Muslim. They could not build their houses higher than the Muslims’ or ride a camel or horse, and when riding on a mule or donkey, they had to sit sideways. Upon entering a Muslim quarter, a Jew had to take off his footgear and walk barefoot. No Jewish man was permitted to wear a turban or carry the Jambiyyah (dagger), which was worn universally by the free tribesmen of Yemen. If attacked with stones or fist by Islamic youth, a Jew was not allowed to defend himself. Further, the Jews were forced to wear sidelocks or peots. The wearing of such long and dangling peots “was originally a source of great shame for the Yemenites. It was decreed by the imams to distinguish the Jews from the Muslims”. More degrading and insulting decrees to the Jews were the Atarot (Headgear) and Latrine Decrees. The former was a seventeenth-century decree forbidding the Jews to wear a headcovering or turbans. The Latrine Decree was a nineteenth-century edict in which the Jews were forced to clean out public toilets and remove animal dung and carcasses from the streets. Another discriminatory edict was the Orphan Decree which gave the Zaydis the right to convert to Islam any child under the age of thirteen whose father is dead. Further, evidence by a Jew against a Muslim was invalid and a “Jew was forbidden to pass a Muslim to his right, and whoever did so, even unwittingly, could be beaten without trial; the Jews were forbidden to make their purchases before the Muslims had completed theirs; a Jew entering the house of an Arab or the office of an official was only allowed to sit down in the place where the shoes were removed” . Tudor Parfitt summarizes some of these laws in the following: [the Jews] were required not to insult Islam, never strike a Muslim, or to impede him in his path. They were not to assist each other in any activity against a Muslim…They were not to build new places of worship or repair existing one…They were not to pray too noisily or hold public religious processions. They were not to wink. They were not to proselytize. They were not to bear arms. They were required to dress in a distinctive fashion in order not to be mistaken for a member of the Muslim occupying forces. In other words dhimmis had all the times to behave themselves in an unostentatious and unthreatening manner, one appropriate to a defeated and humbled subject people. They were to avoid the slightest show of triumphalism and they were forbidden any activity that could lead to proselytization. Yemenite Jews were “excluded as it almost always…from affairs of state, and from the great institutions of the country”

1941 Farhud pogrom (Iraq)

1929 Hebron Massacre ("They cut off hands, they cut off fingers, they held heads over a stove, they gouged out eyes. A rabbi stood immobile, commending the souls of his Jews to God – they scalped him. They made off with his brains. On Mrs. Sokolov’s lap, one after the other, they sat six students from the yeshiva and, with her still alive, slit their throats. They mutilated the men. They shoved thirteen-year-old girls, mothers, and grandmothers into the blood and raped them in unison....")

1921 Jaffa Riots

1920 Nebi Musa Riots

1910 Shiraz Blood Libel (Iran) ("In the middle of the 19th century, J. J. Benjamin wrote about the life of Persian Jews: "…they are obliged to live in a separate part of town…; for they are considered as unclean creatures… Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mobs with stones and dirt… For the same reason, they are prohibited to go out when it rains; for it is said the rain would wash dirt off them, which would sully the feet of the Mussulmans… If a Jew is recognized as such in the streets, he is subjected to the greatest insults. The passers-by spit in his face, and sometimes beat him… unmercifully… If a Jew enters a shop for anything, he is forbidden to inspect the goods… Should his hand incautiously touch the goods, he must take them at any price the seller chooses to ask for them... Sometimes the Iranians intrude into the dwellings of the Jews and take possession of whatever please them. Should the owner make the least opposition in defense of his property, he incurs the danger of atoning for it with his life... If... a Jew shows himself in the street during the three days of the Katel (the start of Muharram)…, he is sure to be murdered")

1840 Damascus Blood Libel (Syria)

1839 Allahdad Pogrom (Iran)

1834 Hebron Massacre

1834 Looting of Safed

1700 Jerusalem oppression / apartheid: ("Muslims are very hostile to Jews and inflict upon them vexations in the streets of the city… the common folk persecute the Jews, for we are forbidden to defend ourselves against the Turks or the Arabs. If an Arab strikes a Jew, he (the Jew) must appease him but dare not rebuke him, for fear that he may be struck even harder, which they (the Arabs) do without the slightest scruple...")

1679 Mawza Exile (Yemen)

1660 Destruction of Safed

1500s Iran: ("After the ascension of Shah ‘Abbas II the Jews of Isfahan faced a lot of persecution. Most communities were forced to convert to Islam. Furthermore those who refused to convert would have most of their inheritance taken away as the inheritance laws at the time allowed for those who converted to Shia Islam to inherit the property of non-Muslim family members. Some communities did not convert and were thus forced to wear a special badge to show that they were Jewish. The maltreatment of the Jews weakened their community ties and influence throughout the region. By 1889 there were only around four hundred Jewish families left in Isfahan and most very poor.... by the middle 20th century 80% of the Jews of Isfahan lived on the verge of poverty.")

There's so much more I really don't know where to start or where to end. Afghanistan revoked all Jewish citizenship in 1933. Turkey banned all Jewish names and held massive antisemitic pogroms in 1934. Iraq banned Hebrew schools and Hebrew names in 1936, pogroms throughout Libya 1945, Syria fired all Jewish government employees 1946. Tripoli pogrom 1785. Algiers 1805. Cairo 1844. Istanbul 1870. Safed 1517 and 1799. Jerusalem 1665 and 1720. Granada Massacre 1066. Fez Massacre 1033. How many Wiki links do you want, how many textbooks?

This is an old, old conflict, and the Americanized "colonizer / slave plantation" frame is off-topic.

[genericpuff]

With LO being done, a mass layoff apparently happening recently, and high profile creators like that of Bugtopia bailing from them, do you think Webtoons is gonna last much longer?

So I had heard about the layoff through the grapevine (as in, pals that I know who are aware of the situation) but honestly, I don't think this is the end of Webtoons as an app... I think this is definitely an end of a version of Webtoons that we were all familiar with as both creators and readers. I've been noticing this shift over the past couple years and now it seems to be coming to a head, a status quo shift from Webtoons being an earnest "anyone can find success with us" community of readers and indie creators to just another enshittified corporate platform that's only interested in churning out content to keep up its bottom line.

Before I continue, obligatory reminder that I am not an Originals creator, just a former Canvas creator and avid webcomic reader. None of this post is to accuse Webtoons of foul play or spread misinformation, these are simply my opinions based on my own experiences with the app and its staff, research that I've done into Webtoons' practices and history as a company, and firsthand + secondhand accounts of experiences on the backend from various Originals creators who have willingly spoken up on the matter. Take the following dissection and rant about Webtoons with mountains of salt.

The biggest sign of this shift I've seen has definitely gotta be the reduction of greenlit Canvas series in favor of imported Korean series. Now I will say there was a time that there genuinely were too many greenlit series, back when they used to do their launch weeks, and I think scaling that back isn't necessarily a bad thing to prevent oversaturation, but oversaturation is still very much happening, it's just through imported series now.

Though I will say a counter argument to this is that Webtoons' own audience has a habit of believing that EVERY piece of work needs to be read and kept up with. This is surely a side effect of Webtoons going from being a smaller platform with only a few select Originals series to suddenly launching hundreds more over the course of the last couple years, there WAS a time you could genuinely keep up with most of the series on the platform if you wanted, but now that's no longer possible, and while some would argue that's a flaw, I'd argue that greenlighting so many series isn't necessarily an invitation for you to read them all, it's just to buff up their library with more choices for those who are more particular about what they read. Do you enjoy isekai but don't like the one about the girl being reborn into her favorite medieval romance book? Well there are 50 other isekais set in medieval times for you to choose from.

That said, the ratio of greenlit Canvas series : Korean imports definitely feels like it's skewed more towards the latter over the past couple years, as we're now seeing them simply opt to import and translate series from their Naver platform. Some people don't really care or notice the difference, and there's certainly lots to be said about the popularity of many Korean works, but many other readers are now feeling iced out by the platform's sudden shift in art styles and storytelling tropes because Korean webtoons and manwhas do generally aim for a different audience than what a lot of veteran Webtoon users are used to. Plus from the creator side of things, it's undoubtedly making the playing grounds feel uneven where greenlit Canvas series now have to compete with the webtoons from overseas that are made in studios with teams of people and seem to also be paid far better than what NA creators are being paid. Webtoons already severely limits what series they choose to advertise and that's only gotten worse over the years with the ongoing oversaturation of the app's library.

That's only regarding quantity though, as there's surely lots to be said about how a lot of the higher quality stories are ones here made in North America, and a lot of that I feel has to do with the benefit of them being comics written in English by people who natively speak English. Unlike Korean manwha/webtoons, they don't have to go through the process of translation and localization which can unfortunately cause an otherwise well written manwha to lose its subtleties and specific writing choices due to rushed or poor translating (people who read scanlations of manga and manwha or who even just watch dubbed vs. subbed anime can certainly attest to this.)

With all that in mind, my own personal theory (*again, this is my opinion and tinfoil hat suspicions, not fact) is that Webtoons/Naver has essentially been outsourcing to North America to build up their app through titles like Lore Olympus, and now that that audience has been built, they seem to be bringing in their Korean series to benefit off that audience while reducing the amount of NA Canvas series they greenlight, particularly their most popular genres like Romance, Fantasy, and Action. How much they'll benefit, I can't say for certain, considering this is a company that has been operating in the red for years and IIRC they even practically admit to this in their IPO proposal (it's actually really funny to read if you're familiar with legal jargon and Webtoons as a company)

Fact of the matter though is that despite Webtoons building up that audience through legacy NA titles, they seem to have forgotten one fundamental thing - most of the people in that audience just don't seem to be interested in the content they're now trying to sell. Credit where credit is due, the aggressive marketing campaign surrounding Lore Olympus for the last 5 years did a great job at pulling in new people to the app, many of whom never read webtoons before. In all its flaws, Lore Olympus is very beginner friendly for people who are new to Webtoons, with guilty pleasure romance writing that a lot of NA readers enjoy nowadays and an art style that was very unique at the time.

But out of all those people who were attracted to the app through series like LO, how many do you think are reading Korean manwha? I don't have the numbers to back up this argument 🧂🧂🧂 but I personally doubt it's very many if all the complaints about Webtoons becoming 'samey' over the years is anything to go off of (right alongside the complaints of LO being marketed way too much lmao)

So no, I don't think Webtoons as a company is going anywhere. They've made it this long operating at a loss, mostly in part to their parent company Naver injecting them with funds (and for anyone unaware, Naver is essentially the Google of Korea, they're a massive tech company that owns Webtoons as a separate venture, not too different from Google owning Youtube in a sense) and now they're turning to public funding.

I do think Webtoons as we know it is dying and changing, for better and for worse however you may define it, and regardless of which way it goes, it's going to come with the consequential shift in both audience and creators that such a transformation brings. I was there when it happened to Tapas, I was there when it happened to DeviantArt, and now we're seeing it in real time with Webtoons all over again. Whether or not they rise from the ashes reborn anew or simply fester like a dying animal, that remains to be seen, but considering this is the same company that's currently exploiting and underpaying creators to keep their bottom line afloat, developing AI tools, and running an app that's held together with staples and glue and doesn't even have tagging implemented, I'm not holding my breath for the best case scenario. The company and its app may live on but the Webtoons that we knew for years is long gone and may never return again.

And that's my many cents on that.

[thethirdromana]

Subscribing to Letters Regarding Jeeves and the Woman in White Weekly has left me preoccupied with the role of servants. So here's a bit of a ramble on servants - and particularly Dracula's servants, or lack thereof.

Jonathan comes from a time when being middle-class means having at least one live-in servant. But the number of servants per head of population in the UK was falling - from 1.38m in 1891 (4% of the population) to 1.27m in 1911 (2.8% of the population). That's why, in Jonathan's time, employing one servant means entry to the middle classes, but 30ish years later, the fabulously wealthy Bertie Wooster also has... one servant.

(To disgress: admittedly Jeeves is likely to be a lot more expensive to employ than the entry-level maid-of-all-work that a middle-class household would have, and there's also no indication that Wooster couldn't afford more servants, but I think it's still significant that he's happy with just the one. Wooster is gently snobbish about being appropriately dressed and going to the right restaurants and so on, but he doesn't see only having one servant as a problem.)

Dracula is a medieval nobleman. I don't know much about Transylvanian history but I would expect that in life, his castle would have been swarming with servants, both as a necessity (it takes a lot to keep a castle warm and clean, and its inhabitants fed), as a duty (to employ people from the surrounding area) and as a status symbol. And I would expect much the same to be true of a living nobleman on his country estate in 1890s Transylvania as well.

So why doesn't Dracula have any servants?

Well, obviously from a storytelling perspective, it's fucking creepy. I think the impact is lessened from a 21st century perspective because "there are no servants" is the default state for most of us, but this is the 1890s equivalent of being in a city and suddenly all the street noise goes silent. And I fear I am myself the only living soul within the place goes hard in any century. From Bram Stoker's perspective, I don't think this needs more justification and if I wasn't analysing every aspect of this book in the minutest detail I don't think I would give it any further thought.

The other obvious answer is that, being dead, Dracula doesn't need any servants. But I don't think that works. He may not need to eat or stay warm and presumably he doesn't produce any waste, but he still wears clothes that need washing and has horses that need to be cared for. Any old building needs an exhausting amount of maintenance just to keep it from crumbling. There's a lot of work that needs doing and I think we can assume that Dracula doesn't want to be doing it himself.

Perhaps he can't have servants. If serving at the castle means death (which presumably it does) then maybe the locals just refuse. And while Dracula has ways to pressure people, I can imagine that he would see that as beneath him just for the sake of having someone to wash his shirts. Maybe as much of that work as possible is done outside the castle, free of charge, by the terrified locals.

So then I find myself wondering, what is the state of the castle usually? Has Dracula spring-cleaned for his visitor? Has he brought the bed-hangings and linen out of ancient storage chests, replacing the moth-eaten ones that usually sit there, decaying? Has he dusted? There is an enormous amount of work involved just in getting the castle to the standard that Jonathan sees. Is there magic involved? Does Dracula usually live there like Sleeping Beauty with the castle crumbling around him? Or is the sumptuous luxury that Jonathan sees just an illusion?

[regulusrules]

Yo, I saw your post about orientalism in relation to the "hollywood middle-east" tiktok!

How can a rando and university dropout get into and learn more about? Any literature or other content to recommend?

Hi!! Wow, you have no idea how you just pressed a button. I'll unleash 5+ years on you. And I'll even add for you open-sourced works that you can access as much as I can!

1. Videos

I often find this is the best medium nowadays to learn anything! I'll share with you some of the best that deal with the topic in different frames

• This is a video of Edward Said talking about his book, Orientalism. Said is the Palestinian- American critic who first introduced the term Orientalism, and is the father of postcolonial studies as a critical literary theory. In this book, you’ll find an in-depth analysis of the concept and a deconstruction of western stereotypes. It’s very simple and he explains everything in a very easy manner.

• How Islam Saved Western Civilization. A more than brilliant lecture by Professor Roy Casagranda. This, in my opinion, is one of the best lectures that gives credit to this great civilization, and takes you on a journey to understand where did it all start from.

• What’s better than a well-researched, general overview Crash Course about Islam by John Green? This is not necessarily on orientalism but for people to know more about the fundamental basis of Islam and its pillars. I love the whole playlist that they have done about the religion, so definitely refer to it if you're looking to understand more about the historical background! Also, I can’t possibly mention this Crash Course series without mentioning ... ↓

• The Medieval Islamicate World. Arguably my favourite CC video of all times. Hank Green gives you a great thorough depiction of the Islamic civilization when it rose. He also discusses the scientific and literary advancements that happened in that age, which most people have no clue about! And honestly, just his excitement while explaining the astrolabe. These two truly enlightened so many people with the videos they've made. Thanks, @sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog

2. Documentaries

• This is an AMAZING documentary called Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Villifies A People by the genius American media critic Jack Shaheen. He literally analysed more than 1000 movies and handpicked some to showcase the terribly false stereotypes in western depiction of Arab/Muslim cultures. It's the best way to go into the subject, because you'll find him analysing works you're familiar with like Aladdin and all sorts.

• Spain’s Islamic Legacy. I cannot let this opportunity go to waste since one of my main scopes is studying feminist Andalusian history. There are literal gems to be known about this period of time, when religious coexistence is documented to have actually existed. This documentary offers a needed break from eurocentric perspectives, a great bird-view of the Islamic civilization in Europe and its remaining legacy (that western history tries so hard to erase).

• When the Moors Ruled in Europe. This is one of the richest documentaries that covers most of the veiled history of Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain). Bettany Hughes discusses some of the prominent rulers, the brilliance of architecture in the Arab Muslim world, their originality and contributions to poetry and music, their innovative inventions and scientific development, and lastly, La Reconquista; the eventual fall and erasure of this grand civilization by western rulers.

3. Books

• Rethinking Orientalism by Reina Lewis. Lewis brilliantly breaks the prevailing stereotype of the “Harem”, yk, this stupid thought westerns projected about arab women being shut inside one room, not allowed to go anywhere from it, enslaved and without liberty, just left there for the sexual desires of the male figures, subjugated and silenced. It's a great read because it also takes the account of five different women living in the middle east.

• Nocturnal Poetics by Ferial Ghazoul. A great comparative text to understand the influence and outreach of The Thousand and One Nights. She applies a modern critical methodology to explore this classic literary masterpiece.

• The Question of Palestine by Edward Said. Since it's absolutely relevant, this is a great book if you're looking to understand more about the Palestinian situation and a great way to actually see the perspective of Palestinians themselves, not what we think they think.

• Arab-American Women's Writing and Performance by S.S. Sabry. One of my favourite feminist dealings with the idea of the orient and how western depictions demeaned arab women by objectifying them and degrading them to objects of sexual desire, like Scheherazade's characterization: how she was made into a sensual seducer, but not the literate, brilliantly smart woman of wisdom she was in the eastern retellings. The book also discusses the idea of identity and people who live on the hyphen (between two cultures), which is a very crucial aspect to understand arabs who are born/living in western countries.

• The Story of the Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole. This is a great book if you're trying to understand the influence of Islamic culture on Europe. It debunks this idea that Muslims are senseless, barbaric people who needed "civilizing" and instead showcases their brilliant civilization that was much advanced than any of Europe in the time Europe was labelled by the Dark Ages. (btw, did you know that arabic was the language of knowledge at that time? Because anyone who was looking to study advanced sciences, maths, philosophy, astronomy etc, had to know arabic because arabic-speaking countries were the center of knowledge and scientific advancements. Insane, right!)

• Convivencia and Medieval Spain. This is a collection of essays that delve further into the idea of “Convivencia”, which is what we call for religious coexistence. There's one essay in particular that's great called Were Women Part of Convivencia? which debunks all false western stereotypical images of women being less in Islamic belief. It also highlights how arab women have always been extremely cultured and literate. (They practiced medicine, studied their desired subjects, were writers of poetry and prose when women in Europe couldn't even keep their surnames when they married.)

4. Novels / Epistolaries

• Granada by Radwa Ashour. This is one of my favourite novels of all time, because Ashour brilliantly showcases Andalusian history and documents the injustices and massacres that happened to Muslims then. It covers the cultural erasure of Granada, and is also a story of human connection and beautiful family dynamics that utterly touches your soul.

• Dreams of Trespass by Fatema Mernissi. This is wonderful short read written in autobiographical form. It deconstructs the idea of the Harem in a postcolonial feminist lens of the French colonization of Morocco.

• Scheherazade Goes West by Mernissi. Mernissi brilliantly showcases the sexualisation of female figures by western depictions. It's very telling, really, and a very important reference to understand how the west often depicts middle-eastern women by boxing them into either the erotic, sensual beings or the oppressed, black-veiled beings. It helps you understand the actual real image of arab women out there (who are not just muslims btw; christian, jew, atheist, etc women do exist, and they do count).

• Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. This is a feminist travel epistolary of a British woman which covers the misconceptions that western people, (specifically male travelers) had recorded and transmitted about the religion, traditions and treatment of women in Constantinople, Turkey. It is also a very insightful sapphic text that explores her own engagement with women there, which debunks the idea that there are no queer people in the middle east.

---------------------

With all of these, you'll get an insight about the real arab / islamic world. Not the one of fanaticism and barbarity that is often mediated, but the actual one that is based on the fundamental essences of peace, love, and acceptance.

[irisbleufic]

@eidetictelekinetic, I'd like to follow up on something we keep discussing in comment threads to my Devil's Minion stories, because I've found the paper trail in my archives. There's indeed something I wrote as an undergraduate ca. 2005 that I had forgotten about that underpins a common theme (namely: Daniel and Armand wondering what might've happened if they'd met when they were young in Armand's time and place, when he was still mortal) periodically haunting the dialogue across my various unconnected stories. I'm somewhat in disbelief that I can prove this exists, and I needed a spark of joy like this in an otherwise bleak, snowed-out week.

This is a ghost story in that the work I'm discussing here was written under my deadname, but I don't tend to shy from people knowing it. Still, it's times like this when pieces resurface that I realize I block facets of my former self so thoroughly at times that I do my writing history a disservice. This felt like knocking down a wall, and I'm really startled at what's sitting covered in dust on the other side. Mindfuck your characters long enough and you might even mindfuck yourself.

In the spring of my senior year at Wellesley, I took a poetry seminar with Frank Bidart. He didn't like my work much, which was a source of amusement to me; if somebody doesn't like my writing, I just dig in and crank up the annoyance factor by being even more myself. The number of professors and editors that I've gone out of my way to irritate in my higher ed and writing careers is vaguely embarrassing at this point, but that's another story for another time.

At the same time as I was in this poetry seminar, I had also overloaded my schedule with Medieval literature seminars. I'd done that for about four consecutive semesters, actually. The Early Modern and Medieval course offerings at Wellesley, at least at that time, were so numerous that you really could do about two years solid of nothing but that type of coursework. I was fluent in French at the time, so I was able to pull some unhinged shit like reading La Chanson de Roland in Anglo-Norman with minimal dictionary assistance while reading it in English in one of the courses, and then I started haunting the used bookstores in Harvard Square and digging up volumes of lesser known Anglo-Norman ballads and fragments, and there was this one book that focused on early surviving trobairitz poetry, songs by women from that period. There was one fragment that really, really haunted me. I don't know if I still have the book, that's the one piece in the documentation chain I'm still hunting down, but I have my translation of that fragment because I found the poem I wrote around my translation. That poem got published twice after I graduated; that publication history is neat in its own right.

So, the poem I wrote for the seminar is really the thing I want to talk about here. I had this short 10th-11th century trobairitz ballad fragment that I translated out of Anglo-Norman, and I was very excited about it, because it was very gay. I thought, hmmm, I'll write a narrative poem about a couple of nobodies set in that time period. Who are my nobodies? I'm picturing teenagers, just a couple of boys. They can't be more than sixteen or seventeen. Where are they? I'm also taking a class on crusader states at this point in time, and I'm extremely interested in various cultural migrations in and out of Italy and Spain (the good, the bad, and the ugly). So I just go, okay, I'll have them fleeing a noble household in Italy, heading for Spain. My head's entrenched in those places thanks to a history class; it gives me something to hang onto as geographical starting and endpoints. Why are they running away? Kid attached to the noble household has fallen in love with a stonemason's apprentice from somewhere a lot further abroad; they don't speak the same language, but since when has that stopped people from falling in love? Stonemason's apprentice wants to save the kid in a bad situation in the noble household, get him out of there. Yeah, let's do that. And I'll cover just the journey, not what happens before they leave or after. And I'll show what they run into along the way, and they'll hear someone perform that piece of the song, and one of them is able to translate it for the other as they gradually learn enough pieces of common languages to communicate with each other.

This poem was never going to be long; the poems in our portfolios for this class couldn't be long. The concept work behind it was much longer than the poem itself, as was the work I put into the fragment translation. This kind of storytelling in lieu of confessional poetry was going to annoy my professor. I knew exactly what I was doing with all of this: satisfying a storytelling itch, letting myself practice translation, being the inveterate fandom writer I already was by that point, just being generally obnoxious in my early 20s. It's a living.

I wrote the poem. It got workshopped in class; classmates loved it, Frank made faces and was barely polite about it. The written feedback in it on my final portfolio called it "pseudo-medieval pastiche," and I was so happy I could've framed that shit. I put the poem away for a few years and didn't think about it. I moved to the UK and started an MA program in Medieval Studies. My poems started getting published in SF/F/Spec publications. In 2009, I learned about a call for poems for a 10th anniversary special issue of a magazine called Mythic Delirium, and something about the themed call made me remember my pain-in-the-ass, labor-of-love portfolio poem, which was called "Journeying." I submitted it.

"Journeying" was published in Mythic Delirium Issue #20, which, (in)famously, also first featured a poem by the now-disgraced Neil Gaiman called "Conjunctions." If I'm honest, it's bizarre to have that as a major point of memory in this poem's first printing. Here's how "Journeying" looks in that issue of the magazine:

The italicized portion at the end is my translation of the trobairitz ballad. It's all that survives of one particular song that happened to be written down. It always amazes me that so few lines can express so much longing across so many centuries.

Flash forward a few more years to when I learn about Erzebet YellowBoy's brilliant Papaveria Press hand-stitched limited artbook editions of poems. One of my oldest friends, Paige (@dreambreathing) and I decide to collaborate as we've done so many times before: they did a set of two watercolor illustrations for the poem conceived as a fold-out frontispiece and backplate, and we pitched it as an artbook. Papaveria said yes. In 2012, "Journeying" was released as an edition of 18 of these little books:

You never see the boys on the road or under the tree overlooking those ruins (those ruins, those fucking ruins, I forgot) until you pan in. Don't get distracted. Look closer. Imagine me, @eidetictelekinetic, getting more and more spooked every time we talk about this recurring thing in the dialogue I'm writing across stories. Why am I doing this? Why is it familiar? And by the time we get to "Guard Your Heart," why do I have the feeling it's hit peak hilarity by the time Daniel's looking at those Talamasca photographs?

This is an awfully long punch line, but it's here. I wrote it, some version of it, some version of them, in another life. And for me it was another life, too, a life with the name of a girl I now barely recognize. Who is Adrienne? I know that Adrienne wrote this poem, but I no longer know her as well as I would like. However, I do know that she gave up almost everything she had to give me what I have now, and I'm the writer that I am because of her. I carry these characters with me because of her; she's the one who first read them.

(Also, here's another shout-out to @dreambreathing not just for being one of my best friends through all of this and one of the most talented artists I've ever known, but also for being the namesake of my current biggest troublemaker in Caldera. Love you, Paige.)

[dresshistorynerd]

Favorite Historical Architectural Styles

Since I've done my favorite historical fashions, I thought it would be fun to do historical architectural styles too. I want to write more about architecture too, but I've started thinking should I do a separate blog for architecture and architectural history or should I just do it all here? I think it would be better in a way that I wouldn't have to worry if anything I want to write is too far from the actual topic of the blog, but then again, there is a lot of overlap, especially when it comes to Arts and Crafts movement (which I'm currently writing my thesis about and which I definitely will talk a lot about), and also I would have to manage yet another blog.

Anyway, I'll again do this from oldest to newest. I will limit myself to western styles (except when we get to Modernism all styles are very international), even though there's a lot of non-western styles I enjoy, but it's what I know most about.

Perpendicular Gothic

I love Gothic architecture in general and the several first entries will be my favorite sub-styles of it. I love the the way Gothic Cathedrals try and so often succeed to feel like forests. I love how the structural elements are used to create the aesthetic. I love the organic visual elements. I love that it's such a unique style in Western architecture. And I love the amazing craftsmanship that went into it.

I'm particularly a fan of English Gothic because of it's insanely beautiful and complex ribbed vaults. From English Gothic my favorite though is the Perpendicular style, which was basically the English late Gothic. It's characteristics can be seen in the second pic. It has the stretched arch and the very flowing and organic traceries. I do include here the rest of English Gothic too, since even though the Perpendicular style is my favorite of them, all if it is still one of my Gothic favorites.

German Late Gothic

As it's becoming clear I love Late Gothic architecture in general the most, and in the geographical axis I also love German Gothic. Early and High Gothic were mainly divided into French and English styles and the French style dominated in the continent, just being altered a little to the local building traditions outside of France, but during late Gothic it diverged much more strongly into different styles.

German Gothic also has beautiful complex faulting (though less insane than English) and it also has that same pursuit of massive height French Gothic has. Those combined with that Late Gothic's more streamlined flowing and organic aesthetic, some of the German Late Gothic cathedrals really sell that feeling of standing in a forest.

Finnish "Gothic"

I have a soft spot for the Finnish Medieval stone churches, which are not nearly as sophisticated or detailed as the other European counterparts, but still made with beautiful craftsmanship and they have some cool own features. It's very far from the European Gothic traditions, as you can see, but that's still the influence, hence Gothic in scare quotes. I love the simple outward appearance with the exposed thick stone walls, the details of the gable that worked as the calling card for the building master and the very steep roof. Like everywhere at the time, the roof in these has wooden structure, which is frankly super cool. It was not a simple engineering problem to make a roof that steep and massive at the time, but the structure works so well there's 600 year old roofs with the original logs still working perfectly well. I also really love the original medieval murals in them, which were painted over during the Reformation (you can't have color in a Lutheran church damn it), but thankfully some of them have been restored from under the paint.

Finnish "Renaissance" Log Churches

Renaissance also didn't land in Finland similarly as it did rest of the Europe. When Renaissance was going on in Europe, they still were building those "Gothic" churches here. These log churches were based on Scandinavian version of the Renaissance church, but they didn't really look like Renaissance churches, and were kinda it's own thing continuing a lot of the aesthetics from those Gothic churches. This is a highly specific style, but I just think they are so cool and pretty? Like they really made a CUPOLA out of log.

Arts and Crafts Movement

Arts and Crafts Movement didn't have exactly a style, rather a design philosophy that was more important than specific style. There's of course a lot of stylistic similarities in the works of the different members of the Movement, because they had overlapping sources of inspiration and were influenced by each other, so we can think of it as a style. I could, have and will talk about them for hours, but briefly now: It was a moment in latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century and their goals were reviving craftsmanship skills and professions, socialism, opposing industrialism and abolishing the hierarchy between fine arts and applied arts. They were very much influenced by Medievalism and Gothic art and architecture, though unlike Gothic Revivalist, they took more from the guiding principles than the aesthetics. They basically started Modernism and lay ground to all the Modernist architecture's main principles, like form follows function.

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau was directly influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement and was the first mainstream Modernist style. I especially love the more toned down Finnish Art Nouveau, or Jugend as it's called here, but I do love the style more broadly too. I'm not that into those almost Baroque style versions of it though, with barely any straight lines. I love the round doors, the stylized floral patterns and the use of light.

Organic architecture

This has to be my favorite modernist/post-modernist (?) style. It's direct successor of Arts and Crafts movement and it's also more of a design principle than a unified style. There is some stylistic similarities, but it is stylistically very diverse philosophy. It was most prominent during the 20th century, but it always stayed in the sidelines, though there are still architects who might be considered practicing organic architecture. Organic architecture is all about living in harmony with nature, taking inspiration from it, designing the building to fit the building spot and the surroundings, extra care taken in to preserve the nature already there, and using local natural materials when possible. My favorite architects are Raili and Reima Pietilä, who were most prominent organic architects in Finland. (I almost moved into apartment designed by them, but it was in pretty bad condition, so it wouldn't have unfortunately been worth the price.)

Brutalism

I know it's not for everyone and it's not easy to make it work but when it works, it really does. It was born in 1950s during the reconstruction era. Brutalism is not just concrete though. The point is to show the raw materials and the structural elements. Technically a lot of Gothic and Arts and Crafts architecture is then brutalist. Timber frame architecture? Also brutalist. I'm only half joking, of course the style itself is also very bare and, well, brutal, but I love it for the same reasons. I really love bare textures of materials and exposing the materials of the structural elements. And I do actually really like the texture of concrete. Though I will say concrete is destroying our world and we should use it as little as possible. But we should also protect old buildings and keep using them rather than built new ones, so I feel fine admiring the old brutalist buildings. The best brutalist buildings combine materials very intentionally and make works of art with the light.

Bonus - Favorite contemporary architecture: Traditional methods

As we're living in the post-modern times, there's not really unified and specifiable styles or architectural ideologies anymore. They all kinda flow into each other and architects don't organize themselves into clear groups based on style and design philosophy. So it's hard to put into words the style I like in contemporary architecture. There's been growing interest in studying traditional structures and methods, learn from their sustainability and incorporate them into contemporary architecture. They are techniques that have been developed through trial and error on the span of centuries, so we really don't have to reinvent the wheel here. Traditional methods of a given area have also been developed for that area and it's climate, from the materials available there, so they also push us to use local materials. Typically these traditional structures are very simple, often made from solid material, which makes them easier to built without construction error (a huge problem in modern structures), and easier to fix and maintain, when inevitably there is issues. Also they are beautiful, definitely more so that steel and glass. I love solid brick structures, log structures, timber frames, natural stone, rammed earth and all of them, especially when these beautiful materials are left bare.

[lemonhemlock]

S02E03 First Impressions

- this episode annoyed me a lot less than the last one. i really liked the harrenhal sequence. my gosh, what a great actor simon russell beale is! i mean, i knew already, but goodness. matt smith plays really well off of him. great, moody vibes, great decor and a terrific introduction to alys as a character. daemon conceptualizing rhaenyra as her teenage self.......delicious! this whole section looked lifted off of an A24 movie. loved it!

- i like that they at least attempted to create some tension within the black faction with 1. rhaenys insisting to corlys that he name rhaena his heir and him being meh about it and 2. rhaena feeling resentful at rhaenyra for sending her away to care for children. it's still quite tepid for my tastes and i remain unimpressed because it took them this long to depict even the seeds of disagreement

- you know, i don't even dislike this version of rhaenyra. i don't even dislike this version of mysaria. but they're totally different characters from the book. i've spoken about this before but someone with rhaenyra's current assigned personality would not have done the things rhaenyra has done. i like how anxious she is during council meetings, for example, and i appreciate how she tries to avoid bloodshed, but they want to make her into this reasonable leader because they don't know how to write a story that has two >problematic< sides. they need the dichotomy of good v bad, because the only deconstruction they know how to do is to make the "good guys" just a tad questionable and not perfect and to make the "bad guys" at most a little humanized. they just don't have the guts to go all out from the beginning. i know we will get to mad queen rhaenyra because the story beats demand it (hopefully), but they have to start rhaenyra off as wise and temperate. they don't know how to write book!rhaenyra, who was awful but raw and real in her grievances and could have been sympathetic as such.

- not even going into mysaria the unicef goodwill ambassador. they defanged her so much but without even redistributing her involvement in b&c to daemon. instead, it's all just a harmless fuck up. the diminishing of b&c is such that helaena seems over it this episode. ?? way to gloss over one of the most horrifying scenes grrm has ever thought up. i swear to god, rhaenyra was depicted as feeling more sorry for jaehaerys than helaena. 😵

- my main gripe with this episode, though, is the glorification of viserys. please, i am so tired. i get why otto would be ultimately fawning over him, i get why rhaenyra would hold on to a rose-coloured glass view of her father. i even get why alicent would inhale so much copium as a survival mechanism. but why are we, so often, throwing around so many uncritical statements about viserys being a great king and person? he forced pregnancies on his ailing first wife, killed her to get a son out of her, engineered a succession crisis and maritally raped his teenage wife, impregnating her against her will, too. why is there nothing, not one statement by anyone inviting the reader to contest that? it's one of the grossest things they're doing. is this a joke?

-as such, i don't careeeeeeee about viserys' death bed wish!!!!! i understand why it may be important to alicent and rhaenyra personally. FINE. have them quibble over it in the sept. but no one is making the legal argument that aegon is viserys' heir by andal law! no one! the show wants you to believe that it allllllll hinges on viserys' death murmurings. oh ffs. it can be a good propaganda tool to use, but the king's word is not law as this fantasy setting was imagined with its political structures in place, political structures that the author didn't bother to change from the european medieval history he took inspiration from. he left them as is, so they function as is!!! there are no explanations given as to how or why the westerosi power structure would function differently! the only MARGINAL argument we have heard is that the lords would never accept a woman for a monarch, but never the law itself: a son comes before a daughter and a daughter comes before an uncle. watch the greens in the next episode claim aemond is aegon's heir over jaehaera because the writers won't allow them to remember their own laws. ☠

-as it is, alicent's actions don't make any goddamn sense. if she always thought that somehow viserys' has the last say in naming his successor, then why is she yelling at teenage aegon that he is rhaenyra's challenge simply by living and breathing? why is otto telling her that she has to prepare aegon to rule or else cleave to rhaenyra's mercy? why is little aemond telling teenage aegon that helaena will be his queen? where did he hear that from? if alicent always intended for rhaenyra to take the throne? why is she telling her children since they were small that aegon will be king? it obviously didn't matter to her that viserys failed to actually nominate aegon. it's obvious that she was planning this for a very long time. also, the fact that they wrote that the council "went behind her back" to crown aegon doesn't make any goddamn sense either. it's just a plot hole. they are so inconsistently writing this schroedinger's alicent - she meticulously prepares for years so that aegon could be a legitimate king - gives him the conqueror's name, makes him marry his sister, make him have heirs of his own, tells her children this is what is going to happen, but somehow isn't aware that the council she headed for years was planning the same thing. somehow she was waiting for viserys' say-so. i don't have a problem with highlighting hypocrisy, but this is just a straight-up plothole.

- gwayne. listen, i love freddie fox as much as any man. i knew i was going to stan gwayne since he was cast, no doubt about it. i love how sassy he is. i'm intrigued by the buddy-cop comedy they seem to be building for him and criston. but did they really have to make him sneer at criston specifically because he is dornish and lowborn? and no one is batting an eye? this is so unserious. dorne is not even part of targaryen rule at this point and it hasn't even been mentioned once. no one has said anything about the status of dorne, about how the dornish are viewed throughout the rest of westeros and why. i bet the general public didn't even catch on that being dornish is viewed through a racist lens and that criston is not considered white. 🤦‍♀️ not to mention that ofc they gave the racist line to a green character, whereas rhaenyra gets to collect POC characters like pokemons to prop herself up as a diversity champion

[miapcain]

I feel like you've probably read a lot of medieval history stuff. So have you, and if you have how do you think it impacts your work on vesna? p.s. I'm reading a Medieval Life by Judith Bennett and its an awesome read so far can't recommend it enough

Hello! Thank you for the ask!

I read a lot and have for a while. Vesna is the composite of a LOT of interests of mine, many of them specifically historic and regional. I've always been interested in the medieval period, and I loved Pillars of the Earth when I read it as a teen (still like it, the second book especially, though I take issue with some of Follett's character work). Name of the Rose too, naturally. Recently I've enjoyed Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman, and the game Pentiment. I like the ASOIAF books, which are obviously less interested in intricate medievalism than tone and complex political and personal interplay, but imo aren't any worse for it.

In terms of non-fiction, currently reading "Felix Austria" by Stephan Vajda on that front. I love The Once and Future Sex by Dr. Eleanor Janega too. A lot of my process for Vesna involves researching specific points, though- I was trying to find out how exactly rushes worked, and stumbled on a 19th c. text which documents rush-bearing in certain parts of england and goes into the history, for example. I try to read as much of this stuff as I can. The region Vesna is set in doesn't get much materialist history done to it. It's very hard to find out what sort of agriculture was practiced in the hills at the time, for example. Even Felix Austria, a pretty hefty book, mostly brushes over it and says "life was on the whole easier and fruits and crops more abundant than in other parts of europe at the time," which is a bit meagre.

Visually, it's influenced by whatever visual art I consumed recently. I read Dungeon Meshi and fell in love with Ryoko Kui's solid figure drawing and character designs. I read Berserk and fell in love with Miura's landscapes and shading. I played Dark Souls and fell in love with the intricate architecture and tranquil emptiness. I visit ruins and castles here in Austria whenever I can, ideally one a week, and forests and rivers even more. I already mentioned Pentiment, but I have a huge reference folder of 13th century art on my pc. My biggest artistic influence is probably Socar Myles, who does better hatching work and dark fantasy illustration than anyone I've ever seen.

For the character work I would have to point to my best friend Digital Poppy's work. I liked her games before I knew her, and actually getting to talk to her about them (and helping make them!) opened my eyes to what you can have characters do in a story.

I hope this answered your question! Sorry i don't have a specific text to point to!

bonus: Vesna appearing in one of Digital Poppy's games

[kydrogendragon]

Dec 17 - Decorations

(Ao3 Link) (Masterpost Link)

“I think that’s the final box,” Hob says, setting down the plastic storage box on the ground next to the others by the tree.  Morpheus was kneeling down, already sorting through the various boxes and tissue protected containers full of ornaments that Hob had collected over the years.

It used to be, for most of Hob’s memory of actually decorating a tree during Christmas, that they’d place fruits and nuts and candles on the branches.  Even some small presents or little handmade decor pieces were found in his trees of the past. Nowadays, it’s almost always little figures or glass works or something branded as Hallmark.

Hob watches as Morpheus pulls out a small, crocheted cardinal out of a bundle of long-worn tissue paper.

“My girlfriend of the time gave that to me, back in the 1830’s or so. She made it herself. Was one of the first non-perishable ornaments I’d ever had.” Hob says, taking a seat next to Morpheus on the floor. He watches as his friend trails a finger down the length of the delicate red yarn of the bird’s back. It was well done, all things considered. The yarn was definitely fraying in a few places. Hob did his best to do repairs (with no crochet knowledge), but he knows that the little birdie probably doesn’t have much longer to live. It was sad to think.

“It is well made,” Morpheus says, turning the bird around on the tips of his fingers. “Shall we hang this one?”

Hob smiles. “Yeah, go ahead and find a good spot for it.” Morpheus turns his gaze to him, his brows pulled close.

“You do not wish to hang it yourself?”

Hob waves a hand. “Nah. Go for it. You can have the honors of putting the first one up.”

Morpheus nods and stands. He looks the tree over, moving from side to side, appraising each branch for the best spot. Hob works on unpacking some more ornaments and baubles from the boxes while his friend deliberates.

Finally, he hears the shuffling of needles and looks up to see the bird perched towards the top on a branch, hanging proudly against the dark green foliage. Morpheus turns to him, expectantly. Hob gives him a thumbs up.

“Looks good!” He says, holding up another ornament for Morpheus. “Want to hang up another?”

Morpheus looks at the figure in Hob’s hands. It was a little bear dressed as a knight, riding on top of a horse. He’d gotten it from a co-worker a few years back. Said it was the closest they were able to find to anything medieval themed. It had made him laugh at the time and always gets a spot on his tree.

They go through the boxes, slowly. Hob explains the story behind each one as he goes. He knows that Morpheus enjoys hearing their histories. There were a few that were more special to him than others. One was the first bauble he’d ever owned. It was a certified Lauscha Glass silver bauble he’d gotten way back in 1853. He’d traveled down to Germany to the actual town and bought it. He has a similar one, but much more modern, back in the late 1990’s from the same place.

There was quite a collection of ornaments revolving around his various jobs over the years. There were at least seven different teaching or history themed ones: stacks of books, laptop, Best Teacher mugs. There were three bulls and two bears back from his stock market trader days and even one little wooden chair back when he attempted carpentry. That job hadn’t lasted long. Turns out he was decent enough for his own personal woodworking uses, but utterly unskilled in a professional capacity. He’d also racked up quite a few soldier related ones, both for surviving the first one and some “in memoriam” to his “son” during the second war.

There was also a stained glass ornament depicting a robin sitting on a branch. He’d found that in a market in France in the 1970’s. He hangs that one himself beside the small bauble with an engraved E in delicate script. Subtle enough not to be called out by people in his lives, but clear enough that he wouldn’t ever forget.

Hob rubs his thumb over the smooth glass front and presses a light kiss to its surface before he hangs it on the branch. Morpheus watches him at his side, silently. Hob repeats the motion with the E on the front of the bauble before placing it next to Robyn’s. It never does get easier, the loss. It’s easily the hardest part of his long life. Loving people, that was always easy. Too easy, in fact. It made it that much more painful when they eventually left. There’s other ornaments, memories, to those he’s held close over the years.

In another box, there’s a small ship in memory of Peggy and their adventures on the sea when she’d been younger, an orange tabby for Audrey because she always had a soft spot for those crazy beasts, and a variety of other figures and baubles of lovers long past. Hob’s tree wasn’t simply a tree. It was a time capsule of his life, in a way. Memories of those in their graves, of lives he’d once lived, and times he barely remembers - they’re all here, immortalized in glass and clay and yarn.

There’s a hand in his. Hob turns to a blurry Morpheus whose cool hands hold his. Ah. He’s crying. That explains that. And explains why his hands are shaking. He sniffs, raising his free hand to wipe away the trails of tears from his cheeks and eyes.

“Sorry,” he manages through the thickness in his throat. “Forgot how emotional some of these here can get me.” He tries for a laugh, but it comes through sounding more forced than he wanted.

Slender arms wrap around him and black hair fills his vision. Morpheus is warmer than he thought. Hob winds his arms around his friend, holding him close. It settles some piece in him, Hob thinks, knowing that the person here in his arms isn’t one he’ll have to say goodbye to in a decade or two. He gets to keep him, keep Morpheus. Even if his friend decided to head out, explore the world in his own time and take his life in his hands, he won’t be gone. Not like the others. Not like he thought he was after the funeral in his dreams before he’d seen Morpheus standing outside his door with Death beside him. No. No, he can keep Morpheus for longer. For as long as him, if that’s what Morpheus wants.

Ah shit, he’s crying harder now, isn’t he? He feels Morpheus’s hold on him tighten and it just squeezes Hob’s heart knowing his friend, his old stranger, his one constant in life, cares for him so. A shaky sob breaks free from his mouth as he ducks his head into Morpheus’s shoulder. The soft padding of the black cable knit sweater hugs his skin and absorbs the salty tears that pour from his eyes. Hob can vaguely make out Morpheus saying something as his slender hands rub circles into his back.

Minutes pass and the worst of it seems to fade. Hob stays there, enveloped in his friend’s hug and warmth. With a deep breath in to steady himself, Hob leans back, letting his hands raise to rub away the wetness and dried trails of tears from his face.

“God, sorry for that,” he says with a more convincing chuckle this time around. He does feel lighter, though. In hindsight, Hob’s pretty sure he hadn’t taken any time to process this change to his life until now. He’d gone to bed, dreamt through his best friend’s funeral, woken up knowing it was true deep in his gut, then was greeted with the sight of his very much alive friend who was now a human. No time for processing the death that still occurred. Guess a bit of a breakdown had been brewing for some time.

“There is nothing to apologize for,” Morpheus says, still eyeing him with concern. “You have told me many times that tears are nothing to be sorry for.” Hob smiles at that.

“Still. Probably not what you were expecting, I’m sure.”

Morpheus hums. “No, but I do not blame you for it. These decorations hold many memories. Memories have always been excellent catalysts for emotions, both happy and sad. And bittersweet.” He gives Hob another once over before placing his hands on Hob’s biceps and guiding him to sit on the couch. Hob lets him and lets him pull a blanket over his form, tucking it over his shoulders. “Now sit and stay. I will make us tea.”

That gets Hob to laugh. “Thanks, duck,” Hob says, smiling to his friend. “You’re becoming a true Brit.”

Morpheus shoots him that small smile only reserved for him, a good book, and cats, before disappearing to the kitchen and it sends a lance through his heart. God, he really loved him. Maybe one day, he’d even tell him that.

[queer-ragnelle]

Hi! I was wondering if you had any advice on how to craft a well-written, compelling Arthurian OC that isn't obnoxious or out of place but is still unique. I recognize the difficulty in doing so with so many different source texts (I'm most familiar with Le Morte, so that's usually my go-to) and the vast list of already existing characters. I'm just curious about your thoughts on the matter, since you're an author and also very knowledgeable about Arthuriana 💖

Hello there!

This is a tough question to answer! I think it's important to note that everyone will have a different opinion on this, but that shouldn't alter you writing your story how you want to. Some think adding any characters at all is too big of a change, while others write a full cast of original characters and then Merlin shows up randomly and makes the story "Arthurian."

I'm going to say something controversial.

Every Arthurian character is an OC.

Even King Arthur himself is an OC.

I'm going to elaborate on this quite a bit, as it's very important to me. But the TL;DR is that reading more will definitely help you conceptualize the boundaries of what's possible. Le Morte d'Arthur is a great start, but there's so much out there, both medieval and modern, that'll undoubtedly aid in your Arthuriana writing journey! :^)

While I do say things like "I love Arthurian OCs" as a means to convey that I view everyone's new creations as valid and interesting, I actually don't believe in a strong differentiation between Chretien de Troyes' Sir Lancelot or Marie of France's Sir Lanval and what you or I are writing today. We're participating in a tradition which can, at times, necessitate the creation of a new character or repurposing of an existing one. I think as soon as you create a character for your Arthurian story, they're an Arthurian character. Some refer to Lancelot or Galahad as "French OCs" or call Knight of the Cart or the Vulgate "fanfiction" as a means to degrade it's validity. Some seem to have an arbitrary timeline on which the full body of Arthurian works is measured, and the more recently something was written, the less authentic it becomes. I think they're wrong. I believe that whether or not we enjoy an installment in the ever expanding Arthurian tradition is irrelevant; it's all equally entitled to a measure of respect, even the new characters. No character or story is lesser than another by virtue of its age or language of origin or target audience or medium. I disdain the excess of scrutiny put upon certain arbitrary groupings of Arthurian tradition. Each story is full of original characters and building on the foundations of what came before. That's the nature of creative influence. Whether or not Arthur was a real person at some point in history is moot. The guy in the Mabinogion or the Vulgate or Le Morte d'Arthur or BBC Merlin is a character. He's a tool to tell a story. Such as your creation will be! Your brand new Arthurian character stands equally with all the rest who preceded them. :^)

Now, it can be helpful to distinguish between a medieval character and a modern one, sure, as they may represent different things depending on what point in history (or part of the world) they were created in. But Arthuriana isn't a franchise one must obtain express permission to contribute to, and it doesn't have a "canon," so therefore differentiating a character as "other" can be counter productive when developing a story. I don't believe Sir Robin from Monty Python and The Holy Grail (1975) or Brian from The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956-1957) are any less valuable as characters, even if they do draw on traits of existing Arthurian motifs in order to commentate on them or otherwise expand. In fact I think they're great characters and serve their narrative roles beautifully. One simple and one complex. I recommend watching those to see how it's done well and that may help you develop your own characters. But I'll delve into it a bit here to illustrate what I mean.

Sir Robin carries the coat of arms of a chicken, he's a cowardly knight followed around by a troupe of musicians that sing songs about all of his exploits. That is, the things he's run away from. Rather than use an existing Arthurian character and degrading them, Monty Python developed Sir Robin in order to tell their joke.

The flipside is Brian, a bona fide kitchen boy, who attaches himself to Sir Lancelot and desires to squire for him. Brian's narrative purpose is to deconstruct the nobility in a way that Gareth Beaumains, whom Brian is plainly inspired by, could not. Brian begins as a true serf forced to endear himself to Sir Lancelot to elevate his station. Merlin forges papers of nobility to convince King Arthur that Brian is worthy of this privilege. Even after that, Brian must face the brutality of his fellows while living in the barracks with them, as they don't take kindly to a "smelly kitchen boy" in their midst, plotting to get Brian to incriminate himself as a thief and get evicted from Camelot by Sir Kay. This role is incongruous with Gareth as Sir Gawain's brother, who was always noble, always a prince, and merely cloaked himself in the guise of poverty to prove a point. Gareth could return to the comforts of wealth whenever it suited him and his reason for going stealth was to intentionally distance himself from that privilege. The character Brian exists in order to commentate on the injustice of the upper class's oppression and dehumanization of the lower class in a way Gareth, or even Tor, could not, as they are of noble blood, even if it came by way of reveal. That's why Brian is a great addition to the Arthurian tradition.

Really, it comes down to treating the creation of your new Arthurian character like you would developing one for any other work, one entirely separate from the tradition. If they're a good character, they're a good character! Try not to get hung up too much on whether or not they're going to mesh well with the rest of the cast. For centuries, writers have transformed historical figures into Arthurian characters. (See: King Mark of Kernow better known as the Cuckhold King from the Prose Tristan, Owain mab Urien better known as Sir Yvain from Knight of the Lion by Chretien de Troyes, Saint Derfel better known as Derfel Gadarn from The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell, etc.)

Speaking of Prose Tristan, would anyone consider Sir Dinadan an OC? Or Sir Palomides? They're characters added to a story drawing from a much, much older tradition, and I think they enrich the story. I feel likewise about the many Perceval Continuations, including the German Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, which adds a half brother named Sir Feirefiz, or names Chretien's anonymous haughty maiden Orgeluse. What about Sir Aglovale's son Moriaen in the Dutch tradition? Amurfina in German Diu Krone by Heinrich von dem Türlin? Morgan le Fay's daughter Puzella Gaia in Italian La Tavola Ritonda? Not to mention the countless Middle English additions. The Green Knight and his wife? Dame Ragnelle and Sir Gromer? Or how about everyone's favorite Savage Damsel, Lynette of Castle Perilous? Is she not a late-era addition to the tradition courtesy of the man, the myth, the legend, Sir Thomas Malory himself? And then here comes Tennyson, who read Le Morte d'Arthur, and got to the end of dear Gareth Beaumains' story and had the same reaction we all did: "What the hell? He marries her sister?" And then he went about changing that in Idylls of the King. Speaking of Lynette, what's up with her niece Laurel? She's just a name on a page, the vast majority of retellings choose to ignore her, even if they do keep Lynette and Lyonesse. Laurel can scarcely be called a character, after all. She doesn't even have dialogue. So as I've gone out of my way to make her a prominent, fully developed character, with her own culture and back story and motivations, does that make her an OC of mine? And Henry Newbolt who included Laurel in his play Mordred: A Tragedy. And Sarah Zettel, who wrote from Laurel's point of view in Camelot's Blood. We did all the work, but we threw an Arthurian name on the character, so therefore, she isn't ours? But if we changed her name, she would be? Who gets to decide?

All of the Arthurian characters belong to all of us. That's the beauty of writing in a long-standing tradition, which exists apart from all other forms of writing. We have complete creative liberty to do what we want and refer to it how we want and no person or corporation or anyone can dictate otherwise. The intellectual property of Arthuriana belongs to the people. So invent a brand new wife for Gawain, and well, you're only the millionth author to do it! Just make sure she's an interesting character and that's literally the only requirement. Can't wait to meet her. (And all others you create!)

Have a great day!

[choochooboss]

Introducing your station master & Magma event host!

Since there's already a lot of passengers visiting this station and I haven't spared much time to get to know my fellow submas fans over Tumbrl yet, an introduction would be in place!

I'm Jun, nice to meet you! *offers a hand for for a shake* I am a devoted submas artist & a monthly Magma event host! I go by ChooChooBoss everywhere (Twitter/Bsky/Twitch/Ko-Fi)!

This will be a long post! I will write a short intro as well which you can just skim through but here is a more in depth view how I got into submas, my other interests and life in general, in case you'd wish to know more about your conductor on this silly train!

How did I get into submas in the first place?

PLA. I met this certain mysterious & cool fellow time traveler and got curious! After the cave scene I went to read his Wiki, found out about Emmet, and... yeah. The emotional impact blasted me right out of a miserable cycle I was going through back then and set my soul on fire!! A month later I set up my first art account on Twitter, and the rest is history. They've become my greatest source of strength and inspiration and I enjoy drawing them every single day!

I love both twins very much! I tend to vibe with Ingo a little more than Emmet, but I draw Emmet more. People say I remind of butler Ingo the most, hehe. I certainly don't mind because I'm a big fan of butlermas!! In fact I got into submas & started playing Pokémon Masters EX in April 2022, a week before butler Ingo banner rolled in, so they truly got a special place in my heart ahah! (pssst draw more butlermas for me pls pls pls-)

However I don't draw warden Ingo as much as I would like to. I still get pretty emotional over his fate ahah, I can't draw him without a single tear! This sweet & kind man leading a good life and being an inspiration to others has been torn from literally everything he had for seemingly no reason apart from his name, clothes and the muscle memory and even those are barely intact. It seems like a miracle he's still standing and breathing after put through everything judging by the wear and tear on his uniform and body. Despite all that he carries a positive attitude, assists everyone in need, and does his best to help people and pokémon understand each other, unconditionally... Oh, my face is wet again...

My other interests besides submas?

Monster Hunter! Zelda! Genshin Impact! Super Mario! Trine! Crash Team Racing! And many many more! My favourite genres are platformers, kart racers, and action games, with a side of rhythm games. I'm a big fan of co-op games! I also watch my sis play JRPGs!

Monster Hunter is the dearest to me out of all. I've been hunting for well over a decade starting from MHFU. The games have charmed me with their incredibly satisfying combat system, world building, creature design, great attention to detail, character customisation and the games being nearly fully co-op!!

Other things I do:

Pokémon is practically the only turn-based game I enjoy, mainly because of the characters and collection aspect. However!! I adore Pokémon Colosseum (the first pkmn game I ever played!) and it's double battle focus, so The Indigo Disc has been a delight after the long starvation for double battles, coming up with different combinations makes the battles much more fun to me!!... I sound like Emmet here do I ahahah! We also share the fact we are both left-handed!

Shuffle dancing, daily pull-ups, and expanding my ever growing VGM collection! I also enjoy traveling and taking photos to keep as a diary! I've played piano in a music school for 9 years, and I can also play kalimba. I've done casual boxing, gymnastics, horse riding and medieval swordfighting. I used to read comics/manga and watch movies and anime but nowadays I barely do that, I just rather use that time for drawing instead of just sitting and watching, unless I have company!

I share the apartment with my anxious brother and our two sweet female cats, Laku (11, stubborn and cuddly) and Kalevi (21, demanding and full of love) in a city center. My parents are both entrepreneurs and run a farm in the countryside & I have 4 siblings with me as the middle kid!

Where can you meet me?

I am a game artist by profession, with 4 yrs of studies and roughly 7 years of EXP in the field doing game art, UI design, character/prop design, in mobile games as well as PC titles, 2D and 3D. At the moment I am looking for work; I keep up the motivation and learn new skills by running my art accounts while looking for new opportunities.

I hail from the land of darkness, snow, salmiakki, metalheads and renownly reserved people, Finland! (UTC+2)

Despite having my roots here I am pretty much the opposite of a typical Finn in almost every sense ahah! I'm a small guy who's not afraid talking to strangers and laughs a lot. And I dislike coffee for the contrary, it's very popular amongst finns.

With the inspiration from submas I've finally stepped into the world of cosplay so you can usually meet this small and excitable Ingo in the biggest local conventions, Desucon and Tracon! Come say hi!

About my social battery:

I'm both social and socially anxious ahah! I love making new friends and talking to all sorts of people and writing comments, and gathering together with my mutuals to do cool stuff together! However my social battery is very small... I often struggle with my AD(H)D and anxiety issues, so my replies can be extremely slow. I'm easily overwhelmed when life gets busy and I deal with it by withdrawing to minimise the the stimuli and then sorting my stuff out one by one. This is a frustrating shortcoming, but I'm working hard to find a balance I can maintain without getting exhausted. Please be patient with me! If you don't hear from me in a while, please don't take it personally! In fact, it makes me really happy if you contact me, for any purpose!

Which pronouns do I go with?

I go by they/them! I am also aroace, so if I appear to show any sort of romantic interest, it's definitely not that. I love meeting new people and am quite interested in people in general so I'm excited to get to know you better, but the thing is... I have been confusing people on several occassions for saying things that could be taken as flirting. I am terribly sorry for that, that's just the way I show how I care!

I don't really identify myself by any specific gender either, but rather by my roles or interests (Magma host, submas fan, game artist etc.). Submas encouraged me to enjoy dressing formally even if I'm just sitting at home, because I love formal clothing in general and wearing them makes me feel confident and stand taller! I usually wear collar shirts and black or white slacks.

More about my AD(H)D:

I don't have an official diagnosis but deal with the same problems as AD(H)D people do; poor work memory, dissociation, hyperfocus (drawing and people), sleep deprivation, impulsiveness (juggling too many things and going with the wind), getting sensory/information overloads, and feeling like I don't fit in. I figured it out after I finished school & lost my job for that I am unable to handle big tasks without anyone giving me directions. It has taken a while but I've figured out things that help me manage my daily life as well as have a medication that mainly boosts my capability to get things started which is another great struggle ahah.

How do I manage to keep myself on track?

I use a Pomodoro timer to keep up a good flow and remember to take breaks! This is what I use the most:

I should set it up on my tablet as well. I think it's really cool to see how many hours I have actually put into drawing! Last year I clocked in well over 3k hours, ahaha!

How to catch me?

Right now I have great difficulty managing replies, but usually you can reach me by DMs! I check Discord and Twitter the most often! However I must ask you to respect my current DNI status. It means I am really overwhelmed so I wish nobody comes asking for my attention until it has been lifted, unless it's really necessary. I really love talking to you all but I also have to accept and deal with my own limits strictly like this or it won't work out.

What am I working on at the moment?

Besides the holiday set I have several short comics under works as well as one big comic (100+ pages!). That one is my personal greatest goal! I started working on it in June 2022 and I have currently 40+ pages sketched and 60+ thumbnailed.

I was afraid of starting any comic projects before submas, but the sheer excitement over them carried me over that personal wall ahah!

The story's beginning and end are looking good and somewhat functional but there's still a lot to work to do and holes to fill in the middle before I dare to start fleshing out the pages. I have little experience in writing or comic making so I hope you forgive if some things don't make sense or the dialogue is a little on the nose so to say ahah!

The story will be packed with action with the overall tone being on the darker side, but it sure won't be lacking in humor! The project's main goal is to make it a celebration of all things submas & to prove to myself I can handle a big scale project despite my shortcomings!

This train has reached the terminal!

Thank you for riding my silly submas train!! I adore reading all your tags and comments! They brighten up my day & fuel my passion even more!! I hope to bring many more fun things for you to look forward to!! See you again soon!

ALL ABOARD!!

[elbiotipo]

Workbuilding Fundamentalist question: when it comes to dates, times and calendars in a fantasy setting where do you stand? I'm always conflicted as a writer just because changing the length of a year or what all the months are called all makes sense given that most fantasy worlds aren't earth and because every month is named after a person or deity and our calendar has been changed like 7 times in the real world. And yet I don't want to throw all this extra work at the reader.

Example I have a gas dwarf planet with like, winderwaker islands poking out above the gaseous ocean what people live on. And there's only 4 months in a year there so a 64 year old is still a teenager and it just seems like a lot to make someone keep track of.

First of all, very cool setting, I love islands among the clouds! Now, this is actually something I've given a lot of thought into, and might become a real concern if humanity goes to other planets.

There's, for example, an opening line of a Heinlein novel (IIRC) where a girl says she's 10 years old and thus old enough to marry, which is true, on Mars (the year is 687 days there). There is no reason, if one is designing a new planet, or even finding one IRL, to expect it to have the same day and year lenght to Earth, not even close. Mars with 21 hours is pretty close, but the length of our year and day is really just a cosmic coincidence. You could easily have an reasonably earth-like planet with shorter years (because it's closer to its star, or just revolves faster), or longer days or years.

However, very few fictional settings bother with this, and it's not hard to see why, you can have all sorts of exotic additions to your setting, but to wrap our head through different lenghts of the year or the day is a bit too much. Even different week lenghts, which did exist on history, sound strange. There are all sorts of different fantasy and sci-fi calendars, but at the root, most authors operate with "Earth-time". I don't blame them, it is 'extra work' for some readers, and it's not easy to wrap our head around, it's easier to say "this is sort of an alternate Earth" and be done with it. Also, to lenghten or shortern the year or day might bring all sorts of consequences from ecology to climate that should be considered, otherwise it's just a lame gimmick in my opinion.

HOWEVER, it's still an interesting piece of worldbuilding to consider!

Calendars of a sort have existed since humans started to count seasons and days, but our current society where there are calendars and clocks everywhere is quite recent, actually. I'm sure you are aware of the different calendars besides the BCE-CE one was imposed as the standard, many cultures . But there are also different ways of counting years;. The classic one is seasons, farming societies of course need it the most but hunter-gatherers also follow and know the seasons. There is no reason at all for them to correspond to the "temperate" seasons (summer, fall, winter, spring). Dry and wet seasons, cold and summer, and other options are not only possible, but have actually been widespread on human history. I recommend reading on Wikipedia about seasons, especially the section about non-calendar based seasons.

Of course the above applies to pre-industrial civilizations where timekeeping isn't as widespread. But even in those, counting years and ages is treated differently. Birthdays, for example, don't exist in all cultures. Koreans still count age based on the Korean new year, not your birthday. Some medieval Christian celebrated on the feast of the saint they were named after (and there are lots of them) or IIRC, their baptism. And so, a culture as yours might use different ways of counting the age of a person, perhaps by more "qualitative" rituals than just counting the years (though I have a feeling they would quickly adapt to their own calendar). Much like I told you about different kinds of seasons for different climates, I imagine that in worlds where the years are too short (or too long) to really make sense for the average person, some other ways of counting time will prevail. For example, are there predictable climate cycles in your planet? Moons (lunar calendars are always fun)? I can assume your planet has shorter years because it's closer to your star (by any chance, did you base it on red-dwarf orbiting planets?), so perhaps you could use something regarding the very visible star to count time?

Like I said at the beginning, this will be a real concern when humanity expands through space, and there's even a bit of debate if the human body can adapt to such heavy changes on its circadian rhytm. In any case, my prediction is that there would be a "Earth time", that is, 24-hours day and 365 day year, that is kept as standard out of convenience and in spaceships and space habitats (in my own setting Campoestela, it's called "ship time" because human spaceships use it as standard) and lots of "local times" on different planets with all the quirks I mentioned above, with everyone going into space learning how to convert their own time to "Earth time". Or maybe, to make things even more fun and, admittedly, complicated to the reader, the time of another time is taken as a standard. There's lots to play with here.

DON'T even ask me about relativistic time (like in Interstellar) because it makes my head hurt, even if I did use it a couple times on my stories. But "ship time" might be a real thing. Some cultures might have completely different 'times', not calendars, actually *times*, depending on relativistic time delation.

BTW anon, sorry for using this to promote myself, but if anyone loved this rant and would like to see more, I would appreciate some tips on my ko-fi (given the situation down here, now more than ever) and suggestions for other topics to talk about!

[brothermoth]

I'm reading Game of Thrones and watching the show at the same time just to compare...and honestly I think the show really fucked up from the start.

The books are a perfect example of empowering women in a historical setting. There is much less on page sexual assault than in the show. For example: Daenerys is a 14 year old girl married to a 30 year old man for the sake of her brother's political gain. It's horrible, and yet it's the most free she has ever been. She verbally consents to sex on her wedding night (she's a minor and it's always inappropriate but I would like to express that there was no age of consent in the past. This series is based off the medieval period which frequently saw girls married to older men; the fact that he even ASKED for her consent is very indicative of respect for her) and Khal Drogo is gentle with her, not forcing her into it or harming her. He touches her hair, asks her if it is something she wants (despite the language barrier the intent is clear). GRR Martin has genuine empathy and respect for the women he writes. They are people, good and bad and making the best of the world around them.

As a history student and a feminist I think ASOIAF is easily one of the greatest examples of genuine historical empowerment. I can tell Martin is very knowledgeable about powerful women of history and has gone out of his way to examine the social climate of early medieval Europe. For a middle aged man he's done an absolutely admirable job of it.

Cersei is a terrible person, but the narrative has sympathy for her. She is married to a man who gave her power but only a shell of it. He openly laments not having been able to marry Lyanna Stark in front of his wife and berates her and insults her in public. Her actions are awful but Martin's writing asks you to wonder: is she so wrong? Her husband is lucky she didn't kill him YEARS ago. Everyone would have been better off if she had. Yes she fucks her brother which is...which is deeply uncomfortable, but there's psychological implications to the action. Her brother is the only person who genuinely cares about her. He says openly that he loves her when nobody else does. It's very Freudian I hate when that man is right.

I'm only about halfway through the first book but considering I'm late to the party I do know like half the plot points that are yet to come. Despite being put in an awful situation, Dany MAKES something of it. She finds a confidence and position that she never would have had otherwise. That is how many women lived in history. They were married off like chess pieces on a board and yet they etched their names into history books because of it. Her brother sold her for his own benefit, but in the end she is the one who got a throne, not him.

I adore the way Martin works with symbolism and that sense of foreboding that he builds up before any main characters even start to die. He's a really underrated writer, dropping hints for plot points that don't come about until BOOKS later (and years, he's slow as molasses). The show is interesting and all but the books deserve praise far more.