#my thoughts on...

[elucubrare]

to some extent, right, we're demanding more rigor of medievalesque fantasy when we ask "where does the cloth come from" or "how does sewage work" than actual medieval fiction supplies - the closest you'll get to cloth provenance is "it was from 'The Indies'" if you're trying to show how expensive, rare, and/or magical it was, and Lancelot may get locked in a tower for a week or so but he never has to use a chamber pot.

the difference, of course, is that when Chrétien says "a bed had been set up, the sheets of which were by no means soiled, but were white and wide" that is remarkable because his audience knows that laundry, especially laundering to perfect whiteness, is hard and requires resources and time - even if you're trying to write medieval fantasy that's trying to get into the mindset of a medieval person, a modern writer has to do a lot more to signal to the audience that this bed is nice.

but while these material realities certainly shape the mindset of the people living in them, for me the thing that conveys pastness more than describing them in detail is having people act in accordance with them - you can say "Marie had spun and woven this robe" but if Marie then discards it because it was torn or stained, it doesn't matter.

but honestly, more than that, there are a lot of dilemmas that are very compelling to medieval audiences that modern audiences find less so - in le chevalier de la charette, lancelot's greatest fault is that he did accept dishonor for the sake of his lady, but he didn't accept it fast enough. roland waits until the last minute to blow his horn to call charlemange's army back to his aid, and when he at last goes to do so, olivier tells him that it's dishonorable now, when it's clear he's doing it out of fear.

if there's a conclusion here, it's that when a text is described as "feeling medieval" it can mean many different things, and some of them are more immediately accessible to modern audiences than others.

i need a lot of audience buy-in to write a new Arthurian romance with Chrétien de Troyes as a model - the magical elements are rarely explained and are treated in a way that's actually fairly close to a Marquez-like magical realism (Chevalier de la charette: At midnight there descended from the rafters suddenly a lance, as with the intention of pinning the knight through the flanks to the coverlet and the white sheets where he lay), and they often turn on problems that would seem ridiculous to modern audiences.

i need less buy-in to write a story set in a quasi-medieval period where people believe things that people in our middle ages believed, but i do definitely need some - a main character who is genuinely distraught because they saw a raven flying over the road on their way to market might be a hard sell.

and of course it's easiest of all to pay lip service to the idea of realistic medievalism by only putting in the material conditions without the belief system they create.

but we do these things (try to write good medieval fantasy) not because they are easy, but because they are hard - i think it's worth it to try!

[nosimpincurly]

You’re not depressed. You just need $250,000 in your bank account.

[stealingpotatoes]

happy neil banging out the tunes day to everyone who celebrates

[izzythedemigod]

I just found the funniest font ever

Like. What is this. Why is this. Who is the target audience of this?

[ahotknife]

the thing is that childhood doesn't just end when you turn 18 or when you turn 21. it's going to end dozens of times over. your childhood pet will die. actors you loved in movies you watched as a kid will die. your grandparents will die, and then your parents will die. it's going to end dozens and dozens of times and all you can do is let it. all you can do is stand in the middle of the grocery store and stare at freezers full of microwave pizza because you've suddenly been seized by the memory of what it felt like to have a pizza party on the last day of school before summer break. which is another ending in and of itself

[theunfairfolk]

the spirit is unwilling and the flesh it feels not so good also

[and-fishing-equipment]

"i don't comment on ao3 because i don't wanna be annoying or weird" skill issue + you greatly underestimate the power dynamic here, writing multi paragraph comments is like feeding a bunch of deeply insane and possibly starved ducks at the park and watch them go completely mad over having received a piece of bread

[flamboyantly-understated]

maybe this is just me idk

[kuntniss]

actually that no punctuation plot hole ooc wattpad fanfic written by that 12 year old will ALWAYS be better than character ai. and i love that 12 year old btw

[eepykeepy]

true story

[good-to-drive]

My mom kept complaining that all of a sudden the Beatles are back and they're fucking everywhere and they're so obnoxious and were practically having an orgy in her garden under a cucumber leaf and that's when I realized she meant spotted cucumber beetles and not Paul McCartney

[elucubrare]

i'm conceptually pretty down for the prequel as a mode of storytelling - i think it's a fun exercise to show how the worldstate of the original work came about, and when it's about a specific character, I think it's a good reason to do a character study. that said, my reaction to mentor prequels tends to be "but why tho"

I think that's because

when mentors are interesting, it tends to be because a) they have goals that have some kind of mismatch with those of their mentee; b) they have a past with hints of seediness (or worse), especially in contrast to their current image; c) they have skills that are extraordinary in their intensity or their eclecticism; d) they're generally enigmatic and inscrutable.

Thus, it seems like it should be possible to write a prequel exploring either their past or how they acquired their skills, and it's not impossible, to be sure!

However, making the mentor the main character of the prequel tends to take some of the narrative interest of both the idea of prequels and the mentor themself. "how did the Archwizard become Archwizard?" well, probably they gained a lot of experience in magic somehow, or did a lot of political manipulation in their order.* Mentors tend not to have a lot of history, so we have to invent a backstory. Ok, so they came from rags to riches and forced their way into the Mage's Order. Then they did a bunch of cool things. Which is all fine! But by becoming a more straighforward coming of age and adventure story, it loses a lot of the pull of a prequel. 3a. I think there's room in there for the mentor to be doing cool stuff while the forces of history that create the problems their mentee will deal with are slowly moving pieces into place, but honestly that's really hard to pull off in a way i feel is satisfying.

I am thinking of this directly in contrast to villain prequels, which I think are, at least, conceptually more interesting. "what are the specific choices that led a person to become the specific villain they are in the main story" is a story i think has more meat to it than "how did a hero get their skills," if only because the second doesn't need to be attached to a specific preexisting story.

I also think that a lot of cool things in mentors' backstories are cooler if you don't see them on page - "That's Orstariy, who held the bridge at Terion, and who diced all night with a demon prince for the king's soul" is a complete story that I don't think is more fun with more elaboration, & in fact without more details lets me create the legend in my head, while showing it piece by piece would make it more ordinary.

In any case. It's not that it's impossible to write a good mentor backstory, I just feel like without a good reason to exist, they don't really capitalize on the parts of the concept of the prequel that I think are most dramatically juicy.

__ *honestly i would be pretty down for the Archwizard as mostly political office - it's not like the president of a university is the Best Scholar there

[pnfc]

[kensatou]

good thing from jp twitter this week is queen of old man yaoi michiru sonoo discovering the term old man yaoi

update: somehow it got impossibly more wholesome

quick translation: おかえり: welcome home あ 終わった 終わった: ahhh, it's over! it's done! コーヒー? お茶?: coffee? tea? コ~ヒ~ ありがと: coffee, thank you~ ネクタイレア★★ ネクタイ取るレア★★★★: seeing him with a tie on, rarity level ★★, seeing him take a tie off, rarity level ★★★★ にあうな~: it suits him~

also please do follow: AraigumaSha: sensei's twitter account marureviere: maru, who does such valuable work highlighting bl manga for an international audience

[dead-core]

i just need to have more rules for myself. more rules and limits. surely that will help me