meanderingmedievalist

[meanderingmedievalist]

Most of western culture is based on the idea that no, no, OUR empire goes all the way back to Rome, and therefore Troy because Aeneas founded from after fleeing Troy so there. It’s a totally real heritage that we totally didn’t make up and don’t mind the paganism we fixed that.

I finished playing "Pentiment". One of the best games I've played this year.

Seeing all of that

~ b e a u t i f u l ~

handwriting throughout the game really inspired me to grab one of my fountain pens and take my own notes on my playthrough as I went. 1.1mm italic nib with (I think) Diamine's 'evergreen' ink.

My notes obviously are full to the brim with spoilers, so don't read if you haven't played the game.

And my postgame write-up completely spoils the whole game, so for real DO NOT read this if you haven't played the game!

Final thoughts, relocated from the very end of this post to before the spoilers section:

Absolutely phenomenal game

I love it so much! So fucking much!!

Utterly unique experience! This is the pinnacle of videogames as an Artform!

6 mediaeval scribes still hanging on into the beginnings of the Renaissance outta 5!

👨🏻‍🎨👨🏻‍🎨👨🏻‍🎨👨🏻‍🎨👨🏻‍🎨👨🏻‍🎨

Spoilers below the cut:

Post-game thoughts:

I don't think I actually conclusively solved any of the murders.

All I ever managed to do was finger a patsy and pin them to take the fall :/

Especially with the Baron's murder: too many leads to chase up and not enough time, so I uncovered the start of many trails but never followed any through to their full conclusion

I'm very pleased, however, that I did manage to puzzle out the mastermind and almost realised their motivations before it was all revealed

In hindsight, my primary blind spot and biggest stumbling block was presentism:

From my contemporary atheist's perspective I completely and utterly failed to recognise the significance of the through line connecting Tassing's revered mythological figures

I was all like "yeah, duh, it's patently obvious that each era of the community copied the prior era's homework and just changed the names to make it not seem obvious"

Tassing's cultural narrative is "this valley is so fertile because there was a magic guy who was blessed by magic lady with the magic water of the spring, and also there was a bad guy and sometimes a wolf was involved too"

In pre-history, the barbarians had Raetus and the goddess Percheta, and the bad 'guy' was a hunting trap, and the wolf was in the trap

Then during the Roman conquest, those characters were reinterpreted to be the gods Mars and Diana, and the bad guy was a satyr, which Mars transformed into a wolf to slay

(And there's the other Roman version where the guy was a Roman knight, and the 'lady' was Mars, and the bad guys were the barbarians, and the wolf was a messenger sent by Mars to lead the knight to the spring)

Then during the Christian conquest, the characters were reinterpreted yet again, this time into the Catholic saints Moritz and Satia; and the bad guys were the Romans (famous for their wolf motif)

And the whole time I just didn't pay any heed to that cultural evolution because I was all like "yeah, that's just what people did back then. So what?"

And so I utterly failed to recognise that the people back then DIDN'T know that's what they had done with their cultural heritage! It wasn't just a cute little story to them! That was their REALITY!

So I utterly failed to recognise how universe-shattering of a revelation it would have been to a 16th century Bavarian peasant to discover that their Catholic saints were completely fictitious blorbos, and what's worse is that they were plagiarized from the Roman blorbos who were in turn plagiarized from barbarian blorbos!

It's blorbos all the way down!

The lynchpin of our town's economy are the pilgrims who specifically visit to see our shrine to the blorbo relic!

This is a secret that must be protected by murder!

And that is a mindset so alien to me that I couldn't even see it was there until the game told me about it via Evil Mastermind Exposition Dump.

[meanderingmedievalist]

finally playing Pentiment and reinforcing that the only good video games are actually just books

[meanderingmedievalist]

shit I replied to your text in my head but I forgot you haven’t subscribed to my bimonthly telepathic newsletter yet

[meanderingmedievalist]

I won't spam but since it gained a little love when I posted earlier: my kickstarter is live! It'll be live from June 1-30, 2024, so if you'd like to support and get 50 medieval magic items of your very own to traumatize your players, you can check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/themaniculumpodcast/marginal-worlds-magic-item-expansion-pack?ref=a7esad

Obligatory self promo bc I'm really proud of this project and if you like medieval shit or enjoyed Pentiment or just like TTRPGs then you may like this!

Myself and my co-host @maniculum have made a deck of 50 magic items pulled directly from medieval manuscripts that you can play in any TTRPG, and it's launching next week!

We've spent about a year translating, designing, play testing, and creating gorgeous art for this deck. All of it is done by hand and we have not and will not use AI on Marginal Worlds. These items are a love letter to the stories we love as academics and we as gamers want to play. So if you want to support the project, you can sign up here to back it on launch day:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/themaniculumpodcast/marginal-worlds-magic-item-expansion-pack?ref=a7esad

[meanderingmedievalist]

Do you think that it was easier for Jesus not to be tempted by sin when He knew his purpose? When he knew He would go home, and that all would be well, in the End? That He would lay waste to the Unrepentant, in the Final Days? When He knew that He deserved love? Is sin ever so great a temptation when one knows that one is Worthy?

[meanderingmedievalist]

Obligatory self promo bc I'm really proud of this project and if you like medieval shit or enjoyed Pentiment or just like TTRPGs then you may like this!

Myself and my co-host @maniculum have made a deck of 50 magic items pulled directly from medieval manuscripts that you can play in any TTRPG, and it's launching next week!

We've spent about a year translating, designing, play testing, and creating gorgeous art for this deck. All of it is done by hand and we have not and will not use AI on Marginal Worlds. These items are a love letter to the stories we love as academics and we as gamers want to play. So if you want to support the project, you can sign up here to back it on launch day:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/themaniculumpodcast/marginal-worlds-magic-item-expansion-pack?ref=a7esad

[meanderingmedievalist]

[meanderingmedievalist]

In the middle ages, clerics were actually the most likely to practice necromancy and it was their heavy use and dissemination of magical texts by these clerical men led to the rise in blaming women for witchcraft — leading to the mass, female-dominated "witch" burnings in the 1600s. From Richard Kiekhefer's introduction to Forbidden Rites: “To the extent that these early witch trials focused on female victims, they thus provide a particularly tragic case of women being blamed and punished for the misconduct of men: women who were not invoking demons could more easily be thought to do so at a time when certain men were in fact so doing.” “The study of late medieval necromancy gives an exceptionally clear and forceful picture of the abuses likely to arise in a culture so keenly attentive to ritual display of sacerdotal power. Our own society, more fascinated with sexuality and its abuse, has its own concerns about miscreant priests and their abuse of young boys; the clerical misconduct most feared in the late Middle Ages was of a different order.” During the middle ages, the church controlled through the lens of spiritual and magical power: women's use of herbs and medicines to control reproductive rights and bodily autonomy was marked as witchcraft. Queer folks' identities and lives were marked as demonic possessions & expressions of devilry. Ideas not in line with Church doctrine were marked as heresy and marks of moral corruption - to believe in heresy was to risk your eternal life. Books deemed too dangerous for "the masses" were burned. Meanwhile, clerical men were summoning demons and using their role as spiritual leaders to coerce women into romance or marriage, to control their congregations, to defeat and punish their opponents and enemies. Does it not sound familiar? Perhaps they did learn from the devil. After all, the devil speaks in inversion.

To quote my cohost over on @maniculum: "History doesn't repeat; it rhymes."

Never forget: every accusation is a confession.

[meanderingmedievalist]

@maniculum Oh HECK YEAH I was! Of COURSE the dialogue rings false, because it's not reflective of many women's lived experience. Depicting women (especially in historical of historically-inspired fantasy settings) as either men-warriors-with-tits or feisty feminine-standard-embracing plucky-femme-fatales (to hyperbolize both sides) is just gross.

Now, let me be clear: both tropes are wonderful and well-loved. I love a female warrior, I love a femme fatale, and I love a stick-it-to-the man feisty chick. AND that's not possible for all women. It's not their nature, or personality. It's not SAFE for them. The battered wife who needs to keep her head down and NOT stick it to the man may very well be MORE courageous than the woman who is able to speak her mind and make public-facing change. The woman who chooses to be a mother in a time when birth was a mortal risk, when she looses babies is courageous. Only depicting heroines as counter-cultural women disenfranchises the experience of women overall.

I'm getting so sick of major female characters in historical media being incredibly feisty, outspoken and public defenders of women's rights with little to no realistic repercussions. Yes it feels like pandering, yes it's unrealistic and takes me out of the story, yes the dialogue almost always rings false - but beyond all that I think it does such a disservice to the women who lived during those periods. I'm not embarrassed of the women in history who didn't use every chance they had to Stick It To The Man. I'm not ashamed of women who were resigned to or enjoyed their lot in life. They weren't letting the side down by not having and representing modern gender ideals. It says a lot about how you view average ordinary women if the idea of one of your main characters behaving like one makes them seem lame and uninteresting to you.

[meanderingmedievalist]

the “please drive slowly, in loving memory of” signs on the side of the road are the skulls in renaissance paintings. modern day memento mori.

[meanderingmedievalist]

Anyway pentiment be like. This is an inescapable tragedy. This is incredibly beautiful. This is unspeakably mundane. This is going to have you lying on the floor thinking about art and the soul and life's calling and, above all, love.

[meanderingmedievalist]

author’s commentary editions of books.

tell me when you thought the chapter was shit. tell me when this character wasn’t cooperating. tell me about the first version of a chapter when the main character had a different personality and her love interest didn’t exist yet. tell me how you adored writing that love scene, or cried when you killed a character off. tell me that line was something your best friend said 10 years ago and you kept it all this time waiting for the right moment. tell me what moment inspired the whole book. tell me all the secrets you long for people to ask you about but can’t see between the lines, because they’re made up of the ink on the page.

[meanderingmedievalist]

So, so excited to announce this today - if you're into medieval stuff, D&D, or cool marginalia, check it out!

Hey, y'all. We'd like to unveil a project we've been working on in the background for the past year: the Marginal Worlds Magic Item Expansion Pack!

This is kind of a trial balloon -- we'd like to create a whole series of TTRPG materials inspired by medieval literature & history in general, and medieval marginalia in particular. (Hence the "Marginal Worlds" umbrella: we want to help people play in the fantastical worlds suggested by the drawings in the margins of medieval documents... you know what, you get it, moving on.)

The Marginal Worlds Magic Item Expansion Pack is a collection of 50 playable, hand-illustrated magic items and a Game Master’s Guide, pulled straight from the pages of various medieval manuscripts. (And a few based on archaeological finds -- this project leans more towards the literary material though.)

What to Expect:

50 meticulously crafted magic items

Unique and game-changing abilities

Stunning illustrations and lore

Compatible with various tabletop RPG systems

If this seems like your vibe, sign up on Backerkit to be notified when we launch. We're small creators who only got this far with community support, and we're so excited to bring this project to life! Check it out at the link below.

Writing by Mac Boyle (Maniculum Podcast) & Zoe Franznick (Maniculum Podcast, Pentiment). Art by Soojin Paek (Pentiment).

[meanderingmedievalist]

Do you think the animals know we love them? The wild birds we leave food for? The raccoons who eat the scraps of apples I throw out into the yard, just for them? The seals we watch on Instagram, whom we name and cheer on as they swim and grow and eat and scavenge? Do you think they know that, across species and world and time, they are loved? Do you think that’s how the angels look at us?

[meanderingmedievalist]

Fuck it we ball words of today:

“You’re making the best thing you can make. It’s a devotional practice. The outcome happens regardless.”

- Rick Rubin

[meanderingmedievalist]

The Seven Social Sins

Founds this scrolling through Instagram and thought these make great villain/character flaws. Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Knowledge without character Commerce without morality Science without humanity Worship without sacrifice Politics without principle

[meanderingmedievalist]

"Hope is a luxury for those who have a choice." going absolutely feral over this line in bg3. the vibes?? immaculate. the sheer desperation?? the attitude?? fuck yeah.

What a statement to make. I always really liked the phrase "we have not the right nor the reason to despair" and the general sentiment that Tolkien wrote about with eucatastrophe, the idea that you can always choose hope, there is always the "turn" in the story where all things turn to good --

but this?

I love the idea that you. Don't. Need. Hope. That the human condition is so powerful, so withstanding, that a frail human can stand in the face of despair, of hopelessness and heartbreak and ruin and say "I will endure."

Heroes don't need hope. They don't need to "stay positive" or always feel good about the fight they're in. They can acknowledge the despair, the anguish, and choose to keep going.

Sometimes you don't have a choice - you have to endure, hopeless, just a little longer. And sometimes that's victory enough.