#this is about the medieval times food theory video

[error404vnotfound]

very Catalan of me to be both mad and proud when someone with a Catalan surname is credited for something

even if they are referred to as "a Spanish person"

[alpaca-clouds]

Medieval Food - Let's Talk

You know what? One week later and I am still fairly annoyed.

First of all: Yes, I am very much aware that technically one should not take MatPat too seriously and that for the most part if anything the “XY Theory” channels are just mild entertainment… But let’s face it: There are thousands of kids watching this, who are gonna take it seriously. And even a lot of adults, who do not know better.

So, as this is a topic near and dear to my heart and also a topic that the internet just throws around so much misinformation around on, let me talk a bit about Medieval Cuisine.

The Offense

Let me start with the thing that annoyed me so much, even though the issue is not so much about the issue at hand and more about the missing context in this one. Last week the @gametheoreoy sister channel Food Theory uploaded a video on Medieval Cuisine. While some of the information in there was good and included some important stuff that a lot of folks get wrong (like the fact that tomatoes, potatoes and maize were foods that came from the Americas and hence were not around in medieval Europe), the thing that annoyed me most about the video was… that MatPat and team absolutely ignored the fact that the place in question, medieval "Spain", was in that timeframe under under Black Muslim rule. In fact, there was technically no “Spain” at the time in question. Not as we imagine it today. Instead there was Al-Andalus (or Andalusia, how we know it today) and Leon-Castille. While the latter was Catholic, yes, the former was Muslim.

This really makes me angry, as it once again just plays into the misconception that medieval Europe was all white and Christian. Which it was not. For most of the medieval period, large chunks of the Iberian peninsula were under Muslim rule, which was also a reason that a lot of persecuted minorities – for example Jews, some Sinti and Romani people and also followers of Christian sects, that were not Catholic – fled there, as at that time Muslim rulers tended to not persecute those minorities, while the Catholic church did.

Now, it should be said that under Muslim rule, nobody who was not Muslim was forced to follow Muslim religious law, as not eating pork. But from what we know there was a lot less pork consumed on the Iberian peninsula at the time, than elsewhere in Europe. Instead, lamp, veal, dear and poultry were the more popular meats.

And I am sorry, MatPat, but talking about this part of Europe in the medieval times without speaking about Muslim rule is just a super bad look. Because it erases some important history.

While we are on it

But while we are on it, allow me to talk about Medieval cuisine, because bow, howdy, do people get this topic wrong.

For reference: No, I am no historian. But I am an autistic person, who spend a couple years hyperfixating on the history of food and henceforth getting annoyed with a lot of books, movies and the like, whenever they are depicting food in the medieval times.

Some things that I have seen in those contexts are, obviously, the tomatoes, potatoes and maize. But especially potatoes. Oh, boy, howdy, do people love depicting medieval folks eating potatoes. Maybe not surprising, given that the potato is in fact a main stay in modern day European cuisine. Also, obviously, the potato has still the reputation of a pauper’s food, which then easily combines with the common misconception of “people in medieval times were very poor and ate very poorly”. But, again, the potato would not reach Europe until probably 1519, though it would still be a while until people figured out how to eat potatoes (given that the green parts of the plants are in fact poisonous). Same goes for tomatoes, all sorts of peppers and again maize (corn, for the Americans).

Meanwhile people would go up to me and tell me seriously that “people in the medieval times did not have noodles”, which is… ridiculous, given that noodles and all sorts of pasta were around in Europe since ancient times. Even the old Greeks and Romans ate noodles, just not in those many fancy forms we know today. For the most part in medieval times people ate some sort of ribbon noodle, something we might call ravioli today, just noodles cut into square and something that was called lasagna, though it did not resemble today’s lasagna much. But noodles there were.

Another food that people do not associate with the medieval times, even though it was very much around in Southern European places, was rice. Other than the Americas, people kinda always knew about Asia and were trading with them. Even in Roman times. Which lead to the Romans actually cultivating a strain of rice, that did well enough in Europe. Now, while rice was not a common food in medieval Europe, it was certainly around.

Probably the weirdest thing, someone claimed about medieval food, was, that there was no “stew” around in medieval times, because it was “too complicated for the people back then”. You know, stew, the food where you basically just put a lot of different stuff into one pot and cook it… “Too complicated”. Honestly, I do not know what to say about that. Stew was not only around, but also very common. Especially as a lot of people did not have actual kitchens and were instead cooking their food over their fireplace, that often enough would only allow for one pot.

The thing about meat

One thing that MatPat gets mostly right – though, again not for Al-Andalus/Spain, because things were different there – is the bit about meat in the middle ages, though while he says the right thing here, he kinda misses a bit of context.

Meat was expensive in medieval times. Why? Because in a time before factory farming it was expensive to raise an animal. Some of you might’ve heard about “economy of scale”, which basically just says, that the more of a thing you produce, the cheaper it will become. And yes, this very much is true for factory farming. (Note: Factory farming is evil, simple as that. No living being should be treated the way, we treat those animals on factory farms.)

So, yes, without factory farms it was just more expensive to make the meat. Which was especially true for smaller animals like chicken. Especially as medieval chicken breeds were smaller than those chickens we see today.

Hence, for a lot of people, meat was just not a thing that they could eat more than once or twice a week. Or, more realistically, a lot of meat was eaten at once, when an animal was slaughtered, while only parts of the animal that could be conserved would then be served over a longer period of time.

It should also be noted that at least Christians tended to use all parts of the animal upon death, including blood and organs. (Muslims did not, as stuff like the blood is not halal.)

Now, one thing that should be noted, is, that most animals that were kept, were kept for multi purposes. Chicken lay eggs. Cows, sheep and goats give milk, with sheep obviously additionally providing wool, making them a very well-beloved animal in medieval times indeed. Horses you can ride. And yes, the pigs were useful, too, as they disposed of garbage, which was why in a lot of places you would just have pigs roaming the streets to take care of that.

Which brings me to the thing, a lot of folks do not want to hear, but… yeah, no, we have sources that tell us that medieval folks did at least also eat their dogs, when those were too old to help on the farm. We do not know how common this was, but we know that it happened. (Just as a note to the white folks getting all snooty about some Asian cultures eating dog meat.)

Of course, game was not kept but hunted. And yes, some people might go out to hunt when they were hungry for meat, but technically speaking it was illegal in many parts of Europe, based on the fact that game living in an area would belong to the nobility owning the land. Now, how those laws were enforced depended a lot on the area and how much game there was. But technically it was considered as such.

About vegetables

Having established that tomatoes, bell peppers, chilies and potatoes were not around in medieval times, this leaves the question: But what was around?

Well, two stable foods we still eat a lot today were definitely around: Carrots and peas. Especially peas were rather cheap and hence were eaten a lot. There was also at least one type of bean around in medieval Europe. Yes, only one. But horse beans were around in medieval Europe and were in fact eaten. Lentils were also quite popular.

Other than that, we also know of turnips, beets, cabbage, kohlrabi, onions and garlic being eaten. But that is not all, as there were several other types of vegetables, that are not around today that much, having been eaten. Especially a lot of root vegetables, like celeriac and parsnip for example.  

But also fennel, that tends to be rather unpopular with modern people, was very much around and eaten.

One other vegetable that had some types around in Europe, was the pumpkin. Specifically, the gourd, that originated from Africa, but was cultivated in Europe rather early on.

Also there was a lot of salads and herbs, that also might be eaten as a form of salads.

But how do we know about medieval cuisine?

Another big thing that people tend to be kinda confused about, is, how we know what medieval people ate. Because, yes, at the time books were very expensive and a lot of folks could not read or write. While I will always harp on about the point that we greatly overestimate the number of completely illiterate folks in medieval times, as a lot of people were at least able to read a bit and write down the results of the harvest. But… written language was definitely not the main method of conserving information. Hence, there are only a handful of books around, that are primary texts and are collections of recipes. Most of them originate from noble or royal households, where the chefs would write down what the lord and lady of the house favored.

Other than that, we have a couple of letters, in which people shared their recipes.

But a lot of what we know “existed” is more from mentions within letters and diaries of “today I ate this and that” and historians then trying to figure out what that could have been, based around what we know about the foods that we know were available to the people. At times we also have findings of preserved foods. Now, of course those foods did not preserve for hundreds of years, but we can do chemical testing on what remained and hence figure out what originally had been preserved.

And of course there are pictures we have, that depict foods.

What we thankfully do have, is well documented harvests and things like ledgers from the likes of butchers and farmers based on the stuff they might have sold or given off as a form of taxes (which were often paid in goods, not coin). So, we know at least the raw materials and what might have been available.

And yes, there are also those kind of food that we know where around at ancient times and that are around in some form today. So, we can gather that they have been around the entire time. A good example for this are garlic bread and a version of pizza. We know that even in ancient times people baked bread with garlic butter and bread with vegetables, meat if available and cheese on them. It does not take a genius to figure out that bread with molten cheese on it, is pretty awesome.

Something I want to note as well is, that those recipe books we do have basically all originate from France, Germany and England, with two also originating in Italy. Medieval Europe was more than those four places. Which leads to my issue that a lot of folks tend to ignore that there were cultural differences and that, yes, we kinda are forced to rely on finds and maybe letters. (Believe me, as someone who writes about medieval Wallachia for my fics, it is a pain in the butt.)

But what did medieval people eat?

So, let me overgeneralize a bit. Because again, what you would eat in those times was dependent on where you were living and how wealthy you were. Richer people and nobility would eat meat a lot more often than less wealthy folks.

Generally poor folks would most of the time have some form of porridge for breakfast. That was: Oats cooked in water. If they could afford it, those might be cooked in milk. Maybe with honey. When it was the season, there might’ve been some fruits or nuts in there, too. But most of the times just oats in water. As oats were one of the cheapest forms of corn, they were good for that. Some people might use other corn like rye or barley softened in water as well.

If you could afford it, you might have head bread as well. For most folks it was a rye bread or rye sour dough, because rye was cheaper than wheat. This bread would not be eaten in slices, but rather eaten together with whatever was available. Maybe together with cheese. Maybe dunked in stew or soup. (Which, by the way, leads me to the fact that most taverns only served stew or soup with bread. Not “nice pork grilled over a fire” as we so often see it depicted in media.)

And yes, as a main warm meal there was stew and soup – vegetable soup for the most parts, because again: Meat was expensive. When there was meat in the soup, chances were, that It was all sorts of meats and in fact it was more likely that it would be hare or sheep, rather than pork or poultry. At times the same stew would be eaten for more than a week, with just new stuff being added, whenever it was half-empty, so you might actually get a mix of meats in there. (This was, again, also quite common in taverns, where people might just bring some stuff they had lying around and add it to the so called “everything stew”.) While it might sound disgusting to us today, it actually allowed for pretty deep flavor profiles.

Again, poor folks would often not have a dedicated kitchen or stove and rather would prepare their food over the fire place that was also used to heat the house. Which would lead to a lot of “one pot meals” as we would call it these days. And if there was meat, it often would be prepared as a larger chunk, instead of small cuts being prepared in a pan.

Of course, those were things that rich people could afford more easily. Though this did not necessarily mean nobility, but also folks like tradesmen and the likes. Who not only might have a dedicated kitchen, but also some maid to cook for them.

And there was of course the thing about spices: Medieval cuisine for the most part did not use spices, but only herbs. Because spices mostly originated in North Africa and South Asia and hence had to be traded over long distances. This would make them rather expensive, so many folks were not able to afford them. (Again: the entire colonialism affair started, because everyone wanted spices, while the Ottoman Empire controlled the spice trade.) This does, however, not mean that spice heavy recipes were unknown to medieval folks. They were expensive, yes, but we have both archeological and written evidence from meals, we would today call “curry” being prepared both in England and France.

Milk, no matter what animal it came from, would often be turned into some form of cheese, because most animals would only give milk, when it was season for their young. So, making the milk into cheese was a good way of making the milk last for longer. And yes, lots of folks knew how to make cheese. So, cheese was something that was often enough served to the side. Though dairy as well was not as common as it is today.

Wheat, again, was expensive. So, bread and other food based around wheat was more expensive than rye. Often wheat would only be enjoyed by rich folks and men of the cloth (meaning church folks). And only very rich people could afford white flour based food, while everyone else was eating food based around whole grain flour.

And yes, for the observant ones it should be obvious: Poor folks were eating a lot more healthy, than rich people were. Which led to interesting stuff like the fact that poor people often did not suffer from dental problems, even though dental hygiene was not yet a thing. Simply because they were eating better and less sweet.

Oh, and also: Most people would in fact drink alcoholic beverages (though with a lot less alcohol content than what we know today) instead of just pure water. Why? Well, because chances were, it made you less sick. And yes, also it tasted a lot better than stale water you got from a well. For most folks that was beer or ale, for richer folks wine or at least thinned wine. Except, again, in areas where there was a Muslim majority, because those obviously would not drink alcohol, so there would often be fewer breweries.

Medieval people did not eat badly

Now, let me make one thing clear, because it is a thing I tend to get annoyed by a lot: No, medieval people did not eat badly. Which was the other thing that annoyed me about MatPat’s video, given that the title card was “Medieval Food SUCKS!”, which… no, it doesn’t. It didn’t. It was different, from what we eat today, yes, but it was not bad food.

See, it is something that a lot of modern first world folks (especially white folks) are just too picky eaters and with that also kinda wasteful. We will only eat certain bits of dead animals, will not eat a lot of dead animals that are gonna die either way (heck, we have laws against eating certain animals, that are not based in any other reason but people’s emotional attachment to those animals), will not eat many vegetables that would be easier to grow and so on.

And sure, the fact that there was so little spice in medieval food, that makes it kinda… meh. But herbs can be used for those purposes, too. And yes, they can make things rather tasty indeed.

And yeah, I kinda bemoan the way we consume food today. Part of it has a lot to do with capitalism, of course. With the fact that we just do not have the time and means to grow our own food and the fact that of course, that to keep food prices low (which is necessary) but also keep the profits high, food production is plagued by all sorts of inhumanities. Be it slave labor, violence again humans (just look into the history of Chiquita or Dole) and of course the inhumane ways we keep animals.

A lot of folks do not even know how to prepare their own food properly. And do not know where it comes from. And as someone who identifies with the solarpunk culture, I just wish we could change away from that.

So, yeah, Let me just say: The MatPat video was just not that good and ignored an important part of history. Also, a lot of media depicts medieval food culture wrong, leading people to have all sorts of misconceptions about it.

Currently I am writing a fanfic about medieval cooking based around the Castlevania fandom. You can find it on Ao3! Though, yeah, the characters here are rich enough to eat spices.

And if you liked this little rant essay, maybe consider leaving me a little something on Ko-Fi!

[deserttransman]

Intro Post

I joined Tumblr in the fall of 2012, getting sucked in by (big surprise) lesbians (Korra and Asami to be exact. And by the way, I WAS FUCKING RIGHT HAHAHA!!!).

Anyway, I stuck around because of (surprise, surprise) more lesbians. This time it was Emily and Paige from Pretty Little Liars. And then more lesbians kept me around.

Now about me.

I’m 36 years old. I’m a queer panromantic polyamorous dude. I’m happily married. I’m a trans guy whose been out for nine years, on t for six years and had my top surgery 2 years ago. I consider myself a trans elder and am happy to answer questions for those just starting out.

I have ADHD (diagnosed at six), anxiety and depression (what Elder Millennial doesn’t?) and am self-diagnosed autistic. I do still have dysphoria and sometimes it still really hurts. I have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, as well as type 2 diabetes.

Also a leftist/communist.

Fandoms: Sailor Moon, Lord of the Rings, Stardew Valley, Persona 4, LOTR, RWBY, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, X-Men, Pretty Little Liars, The Hunger Games, Candela Obscura, Critical Role (Campaign 2), Batman... Yeah that's just the main ones I can think of. Interests: sewing, costuming, history, cosplay, period dramas, reenacting, art, dolls, crafts, writing, collecting, goblincore, medieval culture and history, food, cooking, reading, YouTube, content creation, politics, sociology, punk music and culture, communism, queer theory and culture, pop culture, ttrpgs, video games, bookbinding, DIY, pretty rocks, witchcraft, heathenry, norse culture, mythology, journaling, LARP NO HOMPHOBES, TERFS, TRANSPHOBES, NAZIS, REPUBLICANS OR RACISTS ALLOWED.

Links for some of my content creation: https://www.tumblr.com/deserttransman/729085543084851200/it-might-help-if-i-gave-yall-some-links?source=share

[mysticdragon3md3]

What Our Utensil Designs Say About Our Culture by Design Theory

When I was little, I got sick of my dad subtly making fun of us every time we went to a Chinese restaurant. He'd ask for chopsticks for himself, then always make sure to chat up with the waiter about how the rest of us didn't know how to use chopsticks or were just not very good at it. -.-;;;;; So after we hosted a big anniversary party for my grandparents, we had an entire freezer full of orange chicken, and I swore I'd use chopsticks everyday, until it ran out. But by then, I had gotten used to using the chopsticks, that I started using them every day, at every meal, every snack, for everything. I told myself I wouldn't stop until I got good at it. That was YEARS ago.

By now, a year or so ago, I finally realized that I don't need to practice anymore. I'm pretty competent at chopsticks, so I should just use whatever utensils I like the best. And I determined that I prefer using a spoon and fork together, in the Filipino style. You know how Westerners chase food around a plate with a fork OR a spoon? Filipinos use the fork to push the food into the spoon. Filipino food has a lot of sauce/broth, and I love getting some sauce/broth with every bite. But also, I eat so much food that isn't always cut into small pieces. And when whole pieces of meats or fish have been in the frig for a day or 2, they don't exactly come out of the microwave, soft enough to separate with chopsticks. With those foods, trying to separate it into smaller chunks with chopsticks, is just asking to fling food around the room, with the forces applied. Sometimes, it's just safer to cut everything up with a spoon and fork, Filipino style, then I bring back out my chopsticks. lol So despite how much I love using chopsticks, I decided, I prefer best, spoon in conjunction with fork, Filipino style.

Otherwise, I still use chopsticks. I love using chopsticks for snacks and finger food. I've used chopsticks for everything from potato chips and popcorn, to yogurt and ice cream. But that was more about my dedication to practicing with chopsticks until I got good. I'd prefer to eat cream desserts with spoons. But unless my hands are slippery from lotion (Curse this pandemic causing me skin problems!), I still find myself eating cakes, pastries, and ANYTHING else with chopsticks. It's just so much more convenient for people like me, who are particular about tempering the flavors of EACH bite of food. I love customizing each bite, very consciously. And if I'm too lazy to use both hands for even the Filipino style of using a spoon and fork, chopsticks are still better.

The video mentioned eating with hands. And I know that Filipinos traditionally eat with hands too---I remember my grandmother eating that way. But I don't think I could eat with my hands. I'm too germaphobic. I'm too uncomfortable with sticky fingers. Oil or cheese dust under my fingernails? Going to drive me up the wall. lol Maybe I'm too hypersensitive, but feeling all that food residue on my fingers, my skin, my fingernails...? Ugh, I don't think I could do it. And I don't think I could ever FEEL my hands would be clean enough. I'd have to wash my hands between each touch of a glass or condiment bottle, before I returned to eating with my hands again. And even then, the stickiness would just feel too gross to me. That's why I use chopsticks for snacks. When people start talking about the joy of licking cheese dust or sauces off their fingers, I just can't relate. lol I don't care if it's called "finger food", I want my chopsticks! ^o^

Kind of surprised this video essay didn't mention forks and spoons replacing personal knives. I can't remember where I heard it, but I remember something about how Medieval(?) people used to always have personal daggers on them, for self defense and whatever utilitarian tasks needed cutting, and those daggers were also used for eating. But people realized that hosting a dinner party was equivalent to inviting a bunch of armed people to your house. So they thought it safer to start having eating utensils. That's why table knives are also blunt. Maybe it was a history video? I remember it mentioning a Byzantine princess marrying into a more westward country and she was kind of looked down on for bringing a set of eating utensils with her, instead of eating with her hands, like everyone else. What was that video...?

[iamnormal707]

JOURNAL [Madness and It’s Myths] Holy Fools

In times pretty very long ago, madness for all intents and purposes was considered something of a gift; but instead of these people being referred to as just being mad, they really, for the most part, were considered “fools.” These fools, also known as “holy fools” during the medieval times, lived life out of step with the life of virtue. Holy Fools generally were considered prophets who publicly acted as if mad or stupid, but really, due to these actions, they were seen as concealing their inner wisdom in a subtle way. They were actually associated with Christianity; the title “holy fool” really was a short way to refer to the behavior called “foolishness for Christ.” Carnivals entertained this idea. Around Christmas time, seven days would be dedicated to this festival, “Feasts of Misrule.” These feasts would be associated with foolishness and drunkenness, but most importantly, rules would mostly be reversed for the days it was celebrated. Fools would be made into kings and/or bishops; particularly, ordinary ideals and practices would be considered blasphemy, and criminal offenses would become legal for the time being. Holy fools were considered prophets who publicly acted as if mad or stupid, but really, due to these actions, they were seen as concealing their inner wisdom.

I wouldn’t particularly say that I, for the most part, was surprised by a lot, but I definitely did learn something. I’m the type of person to go down random YouTube rabbit holes, either that be, videos about medical practices in the Victorian era, real crime documentaries, and general history, which would ultimately include the medieval era. With my prior knowledge of holy fools, both historically and from the media, I knew that they were usually associated with the words mad, hysterical, idiots. What I didn’t know was the meaning of the words, “holy fool.” A “fool” meaning a “mad” person and “holy” meaning “blessed,” and/or a “prophet” to God. During our lesson, I found a connection between holy fools and the witch trials. Both witches and fools were considered hysterical, with the exception that witches were considered evil and fools were considered blessed. These examples show the contradictions between history and what society back then thought. At first, I wondered why these holy fools were always men; why were women not considered holy fools? Women, for a long time, were mistreated and seen lower than men. Thus, only men were considered to have this gift, not women. If women were the ones sprouting “God's words,” they would be considered witches and they would be put on trial. But why? Higher class women had the right to be educated, which was common throughout history, but the poor women on the side were limited to jobs like caring for children, preparing food, and tending to livestock. Although these women were considered important to society, they were expendable. Men, on the other hand, had more freedom. I could expand on this theory but I'd need to do some more research to express my theories factually.

[randomfanner]

SO MORE FUEL TO THE ACE TRAITOR THEORY

I do not love the Ace is a Traitor theory, like, I use it for my own personal stuff if it fits but I have trouble seeing how they would fit it into the game itself is all. But this I just feel like needs to be mentioned. So, the card suits have origins based in Medieval Europe.

Clubs are clubs and meant to be the peasants, and Trey's family are bakers. An occupation was likely to be held by a peasant.

Diamonds are meant to stand for coins, so merchants and the like. And well not exactly a merchant, Cater's father is a banker who works with coins, they also had to move a lot like a Merchant would have had to.

Spades are the swords and stand for the Military(I have also seen it be used as nobility but let us assume it is knights and the military). Deuce is a fighter and also tries his best to be a gentleman. Much like a chivalrous knight. Also side note with Deuce, considering that Clubs were more prominent in the story of Alice in Wonderland considering the painting the roses red. And unless someone looked way too into things or knew beforehand about the card's suit no one would probably care if he was Clover instead of a Spade. So just, possibly hinting they were looking into that detail when Yana gave him that Suit to fit his personality.

Hearts are meant to be the holy grail and stood for the Clergy. Well Riddle is not religious (that we have seen really) they are often depicted as healers in video games, and I am assuming that they were a form of healer back in that time period. And what does Riddle's family do? They are healers.

And now we get to the man of the hour, Ace. He has the heart mark on his face but does not have the suit in his last name. Perhaps meaning he a Heretic, a traitor. Now I might be looking way too into this but it is just some food for thought.

[miraculouswolf99]

Akumatized: Valid Or Not

This is basically a list of every akumatized that has appeared so far. There will be four types of categories that they will be put into that say whether or not their reason for being akumatized was valid or not.

Categories:

1. Valid- The reason they were akumatized is completely understandable and could happen to anyone.

2. Semi-Valid- It is still understandable, but for things that are relatively normal. Like losing a contest, being rejected by a crush, or failing a test.

3. You Brought This On Yourself- Akumatized over something that was basically their fault to begin with and is not valid at all.

4. What The Hell- An akumaization that makes no sense at all and most likely not really much of a reason to be akumatized in the first place.

Season One:

Nino Lahiffe- Bubbler: Valid. Gabriel is a jerk that would not let his son's best friend throw him a birthday party.

Xavier Ramier- Mr. Pigeon: Semi-Valid. Was just trying to feed the pigeons, but had been aware that there was a rule/law against it.

Aurore Beauréal- Stormy Weather: Semi-Valid. Lost a contest, but almost had it rubbed in her face when she was told that she lost by a lot.

Alix Kubdel- Timebreaker: Valid. Had her family heirloom destroyed not even an hour after she got it because other people did not put a pocket watch in their pocket when she asked them to hold it during her race.

Théo Barbot- Copycat: Semi-Valid. Believed that the girl he had a crush on was dating someone else, but was treating the situation more that she was an object that he could take if he wanted to.

Jalil Kubdel- Pharaoh: Valid. While it is never a good idea to try and resurrect the dead, his father rejected his theory about the spell even when they were in a city of magical heroes and villains.

Alya Césaire- Lady Wifi: Semi-Valid. Was wrongly suspended because Chloe was being a brat. She may have been taking pictures of Chloe's locker, but the door was open and Chloe had accused her of breaking into it.

Nathaniel Kurtzberg- The Evillustrator: Valid. Was embarrassed by having his crush revealed by a bully and humiliated when the drawings of his crush were revealed to everyone.

Roger Raincomprix- Rogercop: Semi-Valid. Was wrongfully fired for not arresting a girl that the mayor's daughter accused of theft even without proof, but had not done any sort of investigation at all about the missing bracelet.

Lê Chiến Kim- Dark Cupid: Valid. May have been rejected by his crush but had his heart broken on Valentine's day and humiliated by the girl he had a crush on.

Mylène Haprèle- Horrificator: Semi-Valid. We all get scared and she was trying to be brave for the film, but she was also the one that purposely signed up to be the lead in a horror movie.

Armand D'Argencourt- Darkblade: Semi-Valid. Lost the mayoral election, but was also running because he thought that he should reclaim his family's lost seat of power from back in medieval times. It's been hundreds of years, man. Get over it.

Fred Haprèle- Mime: Valid. Was wrongfully fired from his job because a co-worker had sabotaged him to gain the lost job for himself.

Jean Duparc- Magician of Misfortune: What The Hell. We were never even given a reason for why he was akumatized in the first place.

Rose Lavillant- Princess Fragrance: Valid. Simply wanted to give a letter to a prince to thank him for all the charity work he does, but the letter was destroyed by a bully.

Ivan Bruel- Stoneheart: Valid. Believed that his crush rejected him while also being bullied/teased over the crush in the first place. Was also bullied over being akumatized in the first place and called a monster.

Otis Césaire- Animan: What The Hell. So, he was akumatized because a teenage boy thought that he could out-run a panther. Even for a zookeeper, is that really something to be upset about?

Simón Grimault- Simon Says: Valid. May have lost a contest, but was basically cheated out of a win because Gabriel did not even really seem like he was going to participate in the first place and he was not even given the chance to try his act.

Vincent Aza- Pixelator: You Brought This On Yourself. A creepy stalker that wants a picture of his favorite rock star and will try anything to get it. "Yicks" is all I have to say.

Jagged Stone- Guitar Villain: Valid. Was told that he had to change his look and music to the complete opposite of his own just because his manager liked a teenage pop star more than him.

Wang Cheng- Kung Food: Valid. He lost a contest, but that was only because Chloe was a brat that sabotaged him.

Max Kanté- Gamer: Semi-Valid. He lost a chance to be in a video game contest but was more upset over losing his chance because he lost to a girl.

Juleka Couffaine- Reflekta: Valid. She was trying to break her "photo curse" but lost her chance because Chloe had her locked in the bathroom so she could stand next to her crush/obsession.

Manon Chamack- Puppeteer: Valid. She is a little girl that was simply trying to win a game and did not really see why having a doll that was given to her was wrong.

Sabrina Raincomprix- Vanisher: Valid. Had a fight with her best friend and then said best friend also pretended that she was invisible because she was a brat.

Chloé Bourgeois- Antibug: You Brought This On Yourself. She was a brat that was called out for lying about being the reason for an akumaization by the hero that she admired.

Lila Rossi- Volpina: You Brought This On Yourself. She was called out for lying about being best friends with a superhero and trying to claim that she was also a hero with a fake miraculous. Karma will always come back to bite you, Liar Rossi.

Season 2:

Santa Claus- Santa Claws: Valid. Was trying to be a good samaritan, but was instead accused of kidnapping by a superhero.

Gabriel Agreste- Collector: You Brought This On Yourself. Gabriel is Hawkmoth and he akumatized himself. Need I say more.

Nadja Chamack- Prime Queen: You Brought This On Yourself. Her job may have been on the line, but she was willing to leave out information and use a picture taken out of context as her "proof" that the heroes were a couple.

Jean- Despair Bear: You Brought This On Yourself. Was trying to use humiliation to try and make a spoiled brat change her ways and was doing it in front of her class.

Kagami Tsurugi- Riposte: Valid. Thought that a single loss against a formidable opponent meant that she had lost her honor because of an over strict mother.

Gina Dupain- Befana: Semi-Valid. Had a hard time realizing that her grandaughter was growing up, but all grandparents feel that way.

Markov- Robostus: Valid. Even as a robot, he still had feelings, but was told he was just a toy and locked away like an object.

Mr. Damocles- Dark Owl: You Brought This On Yourself. If you are a high school principal with no reason or skill to become a hero, don't try and be one while exhausting the real heroes in the process because they keep having to save you.

August- Gigantitan: Valid. He's a literal baby.

André- Glaciator: Semi-Valid. Was told that the special "soulmate" ice cream that he believed in was not magical, but it was still only one girl that did not want that ice cream.

Ella and Etta Césaire- Sapotis: You Brought This On Yourself. They may be young girls, but they had repeatedly been told to go to bed and were rightfully punished for their bad behavior.

Adrien's bodyguard/The Gorilla- Gorizilla: Valid. He was just trying to do his job and was having an extra stressful day with his charge running off and disappearing with almost half of Paris looking for him.

Anarka Couffaine- Captain Hardrock: Valid. Roger was a jerk to her, telling her that her loud music could not be played during the festival instead of simply telling her to turn it down a little.

Clara Nightingale- Frightningale: Valid. Was told that she could not perform or shoot her music video in France anymore because Chloe was being a brat over not being the star in the music video.

Ondine- Syren: Semi-Valid. She believed that she was rejected by her crush, but there had actually not been any real rejected on Kim's part.

Caline Bustier- Zombizou: Semi-Valid. While she took the akuma to protect her student, the akuma was only there because she made her student believe that she was in trouble for being a victim of bullying

Philippe- Frozer: Valid. He is close to losing his business because of the lack of customers.

Audrey Bourgeois- Style Queen: You Brought This On Yourself. She is a grown woman throwing a temper tantrum because she had to sit in the second row of a fashion show.

Penny Rolling- Troublemaker: Valid. Give the woman a bloody break. She deserves it for putting up with you crazy people and a freaking crocodile every day.

Queen Bee/Chloe Bourgeois-Queen Wasp: You Brought This On Yourself. While she had been trying to impress the mother she thought would never love her, she still stole a miraculous, almost caused a train to crash, and used her powers selfishly.

Marc Anciel-Reverser: Valid. He had his notebook destroyed and confidence ruined after trying to put himself out there for the first time because of a big misunderstanding between himself, Nathaniel, and Marinette.

Nora Césaire- Anansi: Semi-Valid. She was trying to protect her sister, but was being super overprotective and did not have faith in actual superheroes.

André Bourgeois- Malediktator: Valid. He was trying to keep his family happy and together but was faced against a brat of a daughter and a controlling wife where neither respected him.

Boy- Sandboy: Semi-Valid. He was a little boy that had a frightening nightmare, but nightmares are pretty common and normal in life.

Lila Rossi- Volpina: You Brought This On Yourself. She wanted to be akumatized and gladly welcomed the chance to be a villain again.

Nathalie Sancoeur- Catalyst: You Brough This On Yourself. She was willingly akumatized. Nothing more needs to be said.

Rena Rouge/Alya Cesair- Rena Rage: Valid. Took a negative emotions arrow for her boyfriend and had all her love put in reverse and turned into rage.

Carapace/Nino Lahiffe- Shell Shock: Valid. Just saw his superhero girlfriend be akumatized and was both losing hope and was hit by a negative emotions arrow.

Heroes' Day Villains: Valid. They all believed that one of their town heroes had been killed by the akumatized form of their other main hero. They had lost hope.

Season 3:

Lila Rossi- Chameleon: You Brought This On Yourself. She literally grabbed the akuma out of the air purposely got akumatized to try and ruin Adrien's friendships and get another shot at defeating Ladybug.

Thomas Astruc- Animaestro: What The Hell. So, he was akumatized because no one recognized him as a director of an animation movie. I did not really understand it. He was a director of an animation movie. Why would anyone recognize him if they had not seen the movie credits and know who the director was in the first place?

Rolland Dupain- Bakerix: What The Hell. I'm still confused over him. Was he akumatized because Marinette lied about who she was or was it because he was upset over modern baking techniques outshining his own? I did not get it.

Marianne Lenoir- Backwarder: Valid. She had been waiting a long time for the person that she loved, only to believe that he no longer cared for her.

Max Kanté- Gamer 2.0: Semi-Valid. He could not find a person to test out the game that he had made and was told no by a lot of people. A person can only take rejection for so long.

Tom Dupain- Weredad: Valid. He wanted to protect his daughter from heartbreak and was a victim of a lie gone way out of hand.

Luka Couffaine- Silencer: Valid. The song, look, and music that he and his friends created was stolen and his friend had been threatened when they tried to get their music back.

Kagami Tsurugi- Oni-Сhan: Valid. She might have been jealous, but that was only because Liar Rossi lied her way into her friend's home, kissed him without his permission, and claimed that the two were a couple even when he was obviously uncomfortable with her kissing him.

Sabrina Raincomprix- Miraculer: Semi-Valid. She was yelled at by her friend even though she was simply trying to help her after she fought off being akumatized.

Alya Césaire & Nino Lahiffe- Oblivio: What The Hell. They were akumatized over being caught playing a silly video game. That is a very stupid reason.

Wayhem- Party Crasher: Valid. He thought that his friend lied to him about not being able to have friends over and was then rejected at the door of his friend's house when he thought that there was a party there he could attend.

Chris Lahiffe- Christmaster: Semi-Valid. He was upset over not being able to get his presents early, but what kid wouldn't be upset over that.

Manon Chamack- Puppeteer: Semi-Valid. Wanted to play with the big kids and felt ignored by them all day. But that is pretty common for little kids to feel, especially when older siblings and their friends are involved.

Aurore Beauréal- Stormy Weather: Valid. Not only were her grades slipping, but she was also ridiculed by a bully, bullied by her saying 'once a villain always a villain.'

Ms. Mendeleiev- Kwamibuster: Semi-Valid. She was humiliated on live television when trying to prove herself as a great scientist, but she had not even bothered to look at the footage she had before going on the show.

Dormant Sentimonster- Feast: What The Hell. An akumatized sentimonster. I have officially seen it all now.

Juleka Couffaine- Reflekta/Reflectdoll: Valid. She was trying to start her dream of being a model but was basically chased out because Alya was pushing her matchmaking over her friend's dream.

Tomoe Tsurugi- Ikari Gozen: Semi-Valid. Her daughter had disobeyed her to play a game that she did not think was worth the time, but she was still an overly strict mother that was trying to control her daughter's every move.

Vivica- Desperada: Valid. She was fired for a completely ridiculous reason and her boss was quick to try and find a replacement for her.

Claudie Kanté- Startrain: Valid. She was a nervous wreck over if she was close to achieving her dream of being an astronaut while also being a worried mother about having to leave her son if she did get accepted into training.

Xavier Ramier- Mr. Pigeon: You Brought This On Yourself/What The Hell. This guy had been akumatized about 24 times. Enough said.

Future Chris Lahiffe- Timetagger: What The Hell. We are never even given a reason why he was akumatized in the first place.

Cat Noir- Cat Blanc: Valid. He had just found out that his father is the supervillain that has been terrorizing Paris for years and that the mother that disappeared has been under his house the entire time in a coma.

Alya Césaire/Rose Lavillant/Juleka Couffaine- Lady Wifi/Princess Fragrance/Reflekta: Valid. They believed that their friend had sent a horrible message to them in return for their heartfelt messages about them supporting him in his time of pain.

Nathalie Sancoeur- Catalyst: You Brought This On Yourself. She was willingly akumatized again, nothing more and nothing less.

André & Audrey Bourgeois- Heart Hunter: Semi-Valid. They had been fighting and not as in-love as they probably had been once upon a time, but they had never thought about a marriage counselor before.

Queen Bee/Chloe Bourgeois- Miracle Queen: You Brought This On Yourself. Even after being told that she will not get the bee miraculous back, she still tries getting it from Ladybug multiple times. And then she willingly works with Hawkmoth.

[phoenixdragon5411]

The Mercs and their favourite youtubers / what type of youtube videos they watch

Inspired by @letmehugthesupportclasses

Scout:

Best sports bloopers/fails

Shitposts

Those really funny/weird videos that aren’t even a minute long

He looks up to Pewdiepie

Sniper:

Steve Irwin, he has looked up to the man for years, still mourns his passing

He enjoys all animal videos really

He also loves videos about urban exploration

Nature in general is fascinating to him

Spy:

Interior design

Definitely watches wine and cigar reviews

He tries to watch the videos that Scout likes

He does want to bond with his son 

Soldier:

James Blackwood - Raccoon Whisperer

James may be a Canadian, but to Soldier he is a true American hero 

Parkour videos

Videos of people failing at parkour

Engineer:

Guitar covers

Wood carving

Interesting home made machines

Best of rodeo compilations

Medic:

Any videos involving surgery or anatomy

Medieval/outdated medical practices 

Videos that go into detail about diseases or plagues 

Most likely has a concerning fascination for videos about medieval torture methods   

Heavy:

He enjoys videos that teach him about different cultures

Cooking videos, he cooks for the other Mercs most of the time

He has taught himself how to cook traditional food from each of the Merc state/country of origin

He says that it’s important for the Mercs to have memories of home 

Pyro:

Most content that is considered to be for kids 

He loves Cavetown’s music

All cute animal videos

His favourite is Thurston Waffles, he adores that ball of fluff

Demoman:

The same type of short funny videos that Scout likes

Likes watching people blow shit up

conspiracy theories and urban legends  

Near death compilations 

[phantomflower42]

Deciding The Technological Level of Your Setting

When writing a story, it is important to determine what level of technology your characters have access to.  That determines what tools or solutions a character may have to solve a problem.  It will also influence their hobbies.  Before going too far, consider what technology actually is.  It’s not all about electric gadgets.

What is Technology?

Technology is knowledge used to solve problems or create useful tools.  Phones and computers come immediately to mind, but there are others.  Roman aqueducts are an example of ancient technology helping to solve a problem.  Knives are another basic example.  Medical care is a very important technology.

Basic Factors When Deciding Technological Level

If your story is a fanfiction for another work, research what items wouldn’t look out of place in the setting.  Take a look to see what the characters use in the work when completing tasks or performing hobbies.  If the work takes place in a certain real year or time period, look up that period’s available items such as radios or printing presses, and head off from there.

Sometimes, the development level isn’t the same for all areas in a work or for all types of technology.  This is okay.  There are many reasons why this may happen.  Some areas are more studied than others.  Rural areas take longer than cities to adopt now inventions.

The Legend of Korra is set in an analogue of the 1920′s.  Characters drive cars, ride trains, listen to the sport of pro-bending on the radio, and have sepia/black and white photos.  But when Korra and her companions visit the Earth Kingdom in season three, it is heavily undeveloped compared to the other settings.  It is hinted the Earth Queen’s corruption stimmed its growth.

In Naruto and its sequel series Boruto, they do not have cars, tanks, modern firearms, or many modern style shoes.  But, the setting has TVs, refrigerators, wireless radios, batteries, satellites, color photographs, and eventually phones and laptops.  They explore the advancement of the setting in several of the Naruto light novels, especially the first one (Kakashi Hiden: Lightning in the Icy Sky).  In Kakashi Hiden, it is mentioned that the invention of an airship will cause many people to lose their jobs.   

If your work is an original fiction, first decide whether it has its own timeline or is based in the real world.  If it takes place in a real world place and time period, please look up what people in that area used.  If a particular field of science or theory is more advanced in your work than in that actual time period, determine how it would influence the technology in the story, study in related fields, and the social classes interacting with each other.

Should the tale be based in its own world, you have free reign.  How advanced of a setting do you want?  Is it set in the beginning of time, in a medieval era, in your setting’s equivalent of the Victorian or Edwardian era, in modern day, in the far off future, or even at the end of the world?  

Are certain types of technology more advanced than others?  Which kinds are banned or discouraged?  Are certain parts of the world more developed than others?  Are supplies of certain items limited and/or nonreplaceable? How does this affect the average person’s lifestyle? You decide.

Making Original Technology For Your Story

Sometimes, the technology shown in an existing work isn’t helpful for dealing with a certain task.  Maybe your original story needs a special tool for issues specific to the setting or an equivalent item for a modern gadget that doesn’t exist in your world. Sit down, and ask yourself a few questions.

Why is this item needed?  Does your character need a way to store cold food?  Are their culture’s medical techniques different from the norm?  Do your characters need a way to stay in contact while split up on a quest?  Need is the mother of innovation.

What does it look like?  What materials is it made of?  Is it bulky or sleek?  How large is it?  What color is it?  How is it shaped?  Is it expandable?  It is the item’s first version, or an improved model?  How well does it perform?

What situations are this item used in?  Who invented it?  Has it been made in bulk?  If so, how does it affect trade, medical care, communication, hobbies, or travel?  How common is it?  How expensive is it?  

Besides the benefits, consider the item’s weaknesses.  Does it run out of its power source in a certain period of time?  Does it need a long time to recharge?  Is the item fragile?  Is it prone to malfunctions?  Is it too bulky to be hauled everywhere?  Is your setting’s equivalent of cell service patchy?  Does relying on the item for too long cause health problems for people using it?

Technology and Magic

If the story is one where magic also exists, consider how the two interact.  It may depend on the individual setting.  Remember that magic can be considered a scientific field.  If in a world where magical and non-magicals live separately, magic users may use their power to invent versions of modern tech.

Oftentimes, magic is presented as incompatible with modern technology, or at least electronic devices.  In the book series The Dresden Files, the main character Harry Dresden is shown to short out any inventions past the 1950s.  He actually has to leave modern hospitals as soon as he’s mobile after injuries, in fear of his magic shorting out another patient’s life support.  This issue also forces him to drive an old-school car, use an ice box to store cold food, and go without a lot of modern conveniences like heated water or air conditioning.

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it’s stated that technology fails around large amounts of magic or largely magical areas.  However, the limits are not clearly established.  Harry Potter uses a watch until it’s destroyed in the Triwizard Tournament’s second task in the Black Lake.  He continues wearing it out of habit afterwards.  Those usually require batteries.  

Certain technology can run off magic instead of electricity, such as the Weasleys’ car or Colin Creevey’s camera.  Diagon Alley is in the middle of London, yet there’s no fuss about random blackouts in the area or the local security cameras shorting out.   

In other situations, magic may coexist alongside regular technology.  They can even enhance one another.  In Sailor Moon, the Sailor Guardians protected the Moon Kingdom before its destruction, and gain magical abilities while transformed.  Yet, the Moon Kingdom and later Crystal Tokyo are depicted as  high-technology societies; the Moon Kingdom had an artificial climate dome around it, and an advanced computer.

Consider what approach you want, and the consequences there of.  Settings where magic is supposed to be hidden have the risk of ‘outing’ magicals to non-magicals if electronics like phones or crosswalks fizzle out whenever they’re in public.  Modifying items with magic may be a special scientific field.  Imagine a person with a pacemaker or insulin pump wandering into a highly magical area, only for their medical device to fail on them.  Even a few bigoted magical folks would hate that they’re unintentionally causing harm.

Technology and Magic Subsection: Harry Potter

As Harry Potter fanfictions are very common, it’s important to address the series and its approach to magic and technology interacting.  As mentioned above, technology blacks out around high amounts of magic or highly magical communities, but limits on what is affected and what isn’t weren’t clearly established.  Battery-run items like Harry’s watch seem to work fine, but phones and bugging devices do not.  

In post-Deathly Hallows works, think of how jarring it may be for muggleborns or muggle-raised wizards to go from being able to text friends in a moment to having to mail letters to family members by owl.  New Hogwarts students despairing over not having Facebook anymore makes for a good joke, but consider practical problems.  

Say a girl with cerebral palsy has magic.  She uses an electric wheelchair because her limbs don’t work well.  She receives a letter from a wizarding school.  Let’s hope the girl’s parents and the school’s representative talk it over and find a solution to her dilemma before she sets foot in Diagon Alley.  She will otherwise be unable to move under her own power in a magical environment. 

Wizards are portrayed as ignorant to modern trends.  Arthur Weasley goes crazy over various gadgets.  He even wonders what people use rubber ducks for.  It’s implied that Harry Potter misidentified his cousin Dudley Dursley’s broken video game console as a Playstation One in 1994 when writing to Sirius Black.  The Playstation One was not released in Europe until September 1995.  Multiple wizards are shown fascinated with the Dursleys’ microwave when they visit at different times.  It is stated that pureblooded wizards resist adopting muggle tech unless there is no choice.   

That is not to say wizards are a technological blackhole.  Many items like radios, cars, and others can be enchanted to work off magic.  A lot of wizards enchant or create their own magical items.  Sirius Black and James Potter used a set of two-way mirrors during their school days, with the device acting similar to a cell phone.  They and their friends Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew eventually created the Maruaders’ Map, which showed nearly everyone on Hogwarts’ grounds and most of the castle.  The Weasley twins come up with Skiving Snackboxes so students buying them can skip class without too much trouble.     

Maybe Professor McGonagall goes soul-searching after the final battle, and tries finding ways to make the school more non-magical friendly.  She would have ample reason to do so; she would not want the Carrows’ days of cruelty to return in any form.  She may modify the wizarding wireless radios to cast local muggle stations or keep an enchanted phone in her office so non-magical families of her students can contact her in emergencies.          

Keep in mind that a wizard OC can’t sneak their modern video games into Hogwarts or Beauxbatons, but watches, certain cameras, radios, and handheld games with non-rechargable batteries could make it in.  Non-electric devices like notebooks, pencils, pens, paints, or board games have no restrictions.   

How Technology Affects Living Conditions

How advanced society is affects how housing and chores are handled.  Many modern perks like clean water, heating, air conditioning, refrigeration, and fast travel are taken for granted.  If the characters in your setting lack certain conveniences, think of how they will tackle different problems that usually require them.

For instance, a lot of people use electric washers and dryers to take care of their clothes.  Getting them cleaned, dried, and sorted is easy.  But, what if your world doesn’t have these items?  Do the local people scrub them by hand in a river or on a board?  How are stains dealt with?  Are herbs mixed with the clothes to freshen their scent?  Are they dried on a clothesline?  If it’s raining or snowing, what is done instead?

Think along similar lines for various issues.  Water might be boiled for safety, or mixed with alcohol.  Shades will be pulled if too hot.  A lot of food may be canned, cured, or otherwise stored in a root cellar when fresh cannot be bought.  Preparations for any trips may take a long while.  People will sleep under mountains of blankets to retain heat.  

Conversely, works set in the future may find all of this child’s play.  Think of how a lot of appliances can be activated now with a smartphone application.  Do robots grocery shop on the characters’ behalf?  Are clothes dried and sorted in one machine in a few minutes?  Can a room’s windows be programmed to show a certain background, like in the Hunger Games film?  Are fingerprint scanners used so characters may access restricted areas?

Think long and hard how the technology of your world will influence daily life.

In Conclusion

Technology is a powerful force.  Sometimes characters may solve problems too easily with it, but all time periods have some level of it.  It’s important to know what the limits of inventions in your setting are.  Otherwise, someone may complain ‘how did they end up with this issue when so-and-so gadget could have solved the problem?’, or ‘why is the ninja watching television?’.

Have a nice day.

[dtennantdaily]

Safety: Are Gas Forges Safe?

Gas forges are a great tool to have in your forge arsenal. They allow the blacksmith to work without worrying about creating too much smoke or having an open flame. But, with safety comes responsibility. When working with gas, there are some precautions you need to take so that you can keep yourself and those around you safe!

What is a gas forge and what are the benefits of using one?

Gas forges are becoming more and more popular. It's understandable why, they're inexpensive to run, easy to start up, and the temperature is easier to maintain than a coal forge. However, with all that convenience comes some safety risks. Gas forges can be unsafe if not operated correctly or in the right environment. 

Common mistake newbies make when it comes to setting up their first gas forge is having too small an opening at the throat where air enters into the fire chamber below . results in poor airflow which causes forge welding.

Are Gas Forges Really Safe? 

Before we can discuss these safety concerns it makes sense to first make sure everyone is on the same page regarding some basic knowledge about forge design and construction. You can check the gas forge reviews to make sure that the gas forges are really safe or not.

As well as an understanding about possible hazards when heating metal in general which should make you aware. There are potentially pitfalls with the use of any forge type be it charcoal, coal, coke or gas. The way I look at it you should learn some basic theory before ever putting your hands into an oven or forging heat.

Ancient methods of forge construction

So, what is the safest? Most old forges were built with traditional materials like mud, stone and brick (mud forges) or clay bricks (clay forges). Which meant they were built to last forever through use of low tech materials not requiring complex engineering. These kinds of impromptu constructions using field stones and muds are still used today everywhere in Europe on a daily basis. 

Although most often these days as cooking stoves rather than working smithies (for good hot food on the go). There are numerous designs that have been developed over hundreds of years varying from region to region where there was a rich smith tradition. That's why you see old forges even in towns and cities that were never very industrial or used to be industrial until well into the 20th century as can be seen from this example from Belgium, where the local fire brigade still uses the traditional smithy to make ornamental iron work as part of their public relations activity:

And nearly everywhere on this planet you find large granite stones used as protective walls around permanent forges. In Africa these are called "fever stones" because they supposedly protect against malaria that was endemic there at one time (their magic is supposed to come from either that they absorb heat during sunlight hours and release it slowly during colder times, hence protecting against feverish night sweats, or they are supposed to protect you from evil spirits which carry the disease).

Do not be misled by the concept of brick or clay forges. These early permanent forges were never intended to be used with coal but instead using charcoal because wood was free and plentiful, while coal had only become readily available when industry took off in Europe during the early middle ages at about 1000 AD or slightly later because wood was needed for construction of ships to explore the world further.

Until then there wasn't really any industry yet that could make use of coal, hence no call for it. But when large amounts of metal ores started being mined because ore trading routes extended far enough along rivers all over Europe people began wondering what else they can do with these strange black rocks...

Since the smelting of iron ore requires extremely high temperatures, wood fires were simply not hot enough, so you need a hotter burning fuel than charcoal made from wood. The only readily available hotter substance was coal (and sometimes oil shale which burns even hotter but is also very poisonous). Hence coal became widely used for fuel in medieval times and has been ever since.

Ancient forges with clay or brick walls are typically square with four holes into which you insert your air supply coming through pipes or hoses with adjustable nozzles to regulate the draft which affects the temperature of the fire inside. They look like this:

These kinds of forges are typically fuelled with charcoal - keeping costs down - because they cannot burn any other kind of solid fuel like coal because the bricks would melt. There is another problem with using coal for these kind of forges, which is that it typically has too many impurities (like sulphur) that produce poisonous gases (bad breath) and toxic fumes (sulphuric acid droplets).

Conclusion 

Gas forges are safe, but it's important to do your research and follow safety guidelines. They can be used as a heat source with the use of some type of protective gear. However you will need to keep in mind that gas forges produce carbon monoxide so it is very important not only to use them safely but also make sure they are ventilated properly. There are plenty of resources available on the internet about how to set up and operate a gas forge including videos and tutorials- we highly recommend checking out these before purchasing one! If you're looking into getting a new furnace or fireplace insert, don't forget that there may already be models made specifically for this purpose; always look at what type of unit best suits your.

[ad-ciu]

Celts in Pop-Culture: Extra Mythology, Part #1

So, in a likely feeble attempt to ward off the slowly crawling insanity and self-doubt fueled primordial terror of an Old Irish exam today, I have decided to spend this evening doing something I have been promising to do for months now: discuss the Extra Mythology video titled: ‘Celtic Myth: the Island of Destiny.’

Now, before I get into the specifics, I would like to preface this discussion with the fact that I did reach out to the people behind this project and let them know there were issues with the material and offered my assistance to revising or helping provide research for a corrections video if it was of interest to themselves. I was informed that they were drawing on the works of Peter Berresford Ellis, a journalist who is very notably not a trained Celticist, and were comfortable with their choice as it showed the variation in the stories, and that I would look forward to the corrections episode. As it has now been eleven months since the initial video’s publication and no correction video has arrived, I want to start my commentary on it.

Oh, and before we begin, thanks to Thrythlind for transcribing this video and the next one so I can comment on them more easily.

Now, the issue with the version of events presented by Extra Mythology, drawing on Ellis, is that it is primarily absolutely totally and factually made up. Which, you know, bad start. But, lets start in the big picture and then break it down. The events described in this text are a segment of Lebor Gabála Érenn, the ‘Book of the Taking of Ireland,’ (henceforth LGE) and Cath Maige Tuired, the ‘Battle of Mag Tuired.’ (henceforth CMT) These are two exceptionally interesting texts, and a great place to start when introducing someone to Irish saga material as Extra Mythology intended to do! However, there is a large problem: the version of events told by Extra Mythology is only loosely based in these texts.

As you can see here and here, there is not actually a tremendous amount of variation between the extant versions of these two stories. LGE has four medieval versions, each of which I have had the pleasure to read (and you can too! Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5!) and CMT has one medieval version which is one of my favorite texts. I highly suggest reading it, and you can find it here.

So, as we can see, right off the bat we are not dealing with a huge amount of variant texts with a bunch of differences. In fact, there are very few versions of LGE that are very consistent in this relevant section, and CMT has no variants. (There is a Early Modern version, but nobody has ever translated it... or really worked on it. Or done anything with it.) So, I would like to initially begin by pointing out that while Extra Mythology has explained to me that they chose this version of the text to show the different versions, there are none, and the version they used does in fact offer alternatives that are not authentic, not medieval, and made up by Ellis.

Now, to begin.

Void became form and form became Earth and out of the Earth sprang a tree. It was the mighty oak, watered by the river of Heaven, the Danu. And from that oak fell two acorns from which sprang the first of the gods: The Dagda and Brigid. They were the first children of the Danu. And over time the Children of the Danu grew and built four great cities on the banks of the sacred river.

Well, that’s all fictional. The ‘Creation of the World’ for Irish mythology is the Book of Genesis, these myths (if we can call them that, see: Ireland’s Immortals by Mark Williams) are set within a Christian world and a broader Christian cosmology. There is no tree, there is no ‘river of heaven’ named Danu since Danu is a person, in theory (as we never see her ‘on screen’ and might even be dead before the events of these stories), and there is certainly no gods coming out of acorns. And the Four Cities are on islands to the north of Ireland, they are not built along a sacred river.

Now! Where is this coming from? I presume this is Ellis trying to connect Danu, the ancestral figure of the Túatha Dé Danann with the Danube River in Germany which might have a linguistic connection, but no evidence to exists to suggest they were believed to be connected by the time of LGE.

Those cities flourished and in each of them was crafted a great artifact. In one was the Stone of Destiny which would shout with joy when a righteous ruler set his foot upon it. In another was Retaliator, the greatest sword ever forged. In the third could be found the Red Javelin which once thrown would find its mark no matter how its foes hid. And, finally, in the fourth city, lay the Cauldron of Plenty which could feed all the Children of the Danu and still never empty.

Now, this section is rather interesting as it is getting some things correct and then absolutely dropping the ball elsewhere. Let us compare this statement with the actual text of CMT where this description of the Four Treasures of the Túatha Dé Danann are named and described! (Using quotation marks to make it less confusing than if I used block-quotes for both the video and original texts)

“From Falias was brought the Stone of Fál which was located in Tara. It used to cry out beneath every king that would take Ireland. From Gorias was brought the spear which Lug had. No battle was ever sustained against it, or against the man who held it in his hand. From Findias was brought the sword of Núadu. No one ever escaped from it once it was drawn from its deadly sheath, and no one could resist it. From Murias was brought the Dagda's cauldron. No company ever went away from it unsatisfied.“

So, what is wrong here? Well, most of it. Lets go treasure by treasure.

The Stone: Extra Mythology claims that the stone would shout when ‘a righteous ruler set his foot upon it’ where as the actual text says it would make a noise when ‘beneath every king that would take Ireland.’ There is zero moral judgement here, the rock is just a prophecy stone that says when someone will be King of all Ireland. Very different.

The Spear: Extra Mythology calls this the ‘Red Javelin’ which is a name I have never heard before, and claims that the spear is unerring. In reality, the spear is just described as the spear that Lug had, and its function is far cooler in that battles cannot be won against the wielder. Pretty.... massive difference to tell the truth. (I think Extra Mythology via Ellis is talking about The Lúin, a colossal spear that distorts reality to always hit and always kill from an entirely different story)

The Sword: Extra Mythology claims the sword is named ‘Retaliator’ and it was simply the greatest sword forged. The reality describes this as the Sword of Núadu (who Extra Mythology will call Nuada) and that no one ever escaped from it, and no one could resist it when drawn. Vague, but way more detailed than what Ellis has informed Extra Mythology with. Furthermore, ‘Retaliator’ is a different sword, one named Fragarach (translated as Retaliator) which is Manannán mac Lir’s sword which can command the wind, cut through any armour, and will always kill someone it wounds. Super weird call there.

The Cauldron: Extra Mythology presents this as ‘The Cauldron of Plenty’ and that it can feed all of the Children of Danu. The reality just calls it The Dagda’s cauldron and that ‘no company ever went away from it unsatisfied’ which probably sounds very similar, but the difference is important. In a culture with such heavy emphasis on feeding and hosting as medieval Ireland, the importance I would put here is not just on the cauldron’s ability to feed everyone, but to satisfy everyone. There won’t be honour arguments over who got better food, there won’t be violence over issues of disparity, everyone will be satisfied and the host’s duty will be completed.

So, they got the treasures wrong. In fact, they just subbed out two of them for totally different magical items from different Irish sagas, and then sort of misrepresented the other two. Anyways, continuing.

But one day, The Dagda called the greatest of his children from all the cities and told them of their destiny. For it was not for them to remain by the sacred river Danu but to head to an island where the sun set. Before they went, though, Brigid offered them a warning. They would not be alone on this island. Others would try to make it theirs. With this warning, the Children of the Danu set out for their new home. Bringing with them their four great treasures for protection.  Unsure of what they'd find on this Island of Destiny. Or so some say.

None of this happens,the only person who says this is Ellis I presume as it is not at all found in any of the medieval texts. We never get an explanation of why the Túatha Dé leave the Four Cities for Ireland, never gets explained. 

Some say they came in a dark cloud from origins unknown and alighted on a mountaintop. Others still say they came from strange cities across the sea.  Where they learned science and magical arts and when they arrived they burnt their ships behind them. Wagering all on the conquest of Ireland.

Oh, this is true! Our first factual bits of information here. So, yes, the variation here is actually mentioned in texts! That either the Túatha Dé arrived in ships of mist, or that this was just people misunderstanding that they had burned their ships when they arrived. Though, in both versions they still come from The Four Cities.

As they started to explore the misty plains of Inis Vale they encountered a curious people already living there: the Fir Bolg.

Also known as: relatives of the Túatha Dé Danann, and also the native people of Ireland at this time. So, the Túatha Dé have arrived, and found a bunch of native people living in the island they want, I am sure they will be very polite and get along well. Yeah? Well no, of course not, the Túatha Dé Danann are conquering colonizers, they’re not good people.

The Danu asked for half of Ireland to be theirs to settle and they could live in peace. But the Fir Bolg refused so battle was decided upon.

Firstly, ‘the Danu’? No. That would be like calling the Romans ‘The Romulus.’ Secondly, the Túatha Dé demanded half of Ireland from the Fir Bolg who, understandably, were not entirely okay with just giving up half of their land no questions asked to a foreign bunch of randoms who just rolled up and burned their ships.

LGE says, “They demanded battle or kingship of the Fir Bolg. A battle was fought between them, to wit the first battle of Mag Tuired” which if I am reading this correctly is consistant through the versions. So! The Túatha Dé rolled up, went ‘we demand either that we are in charge of you all [and your lands] or fight us about it.’ Very different.

But just to be clear, battle back then was a lot different to the way we think of it now. This was a matter of honor. The Children of the Danu made spears for the Fir Bolg to use. And the Fir Bolg crafted javelins for the Children of the Danu. They agreed on how many soldiers each side would bring. And where they would do battle. They even agreed on how many days they would fight for.

This is a weird misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the facts. Bres mac Elatha and Sreng meet each other and exchange the demands for Ireland, and then exchange spears with each other in a very homoerotic scene after handling and inspecting each other’s spears. 

At this point we start getting into a long description of a battle which I’m going to pick specific things out of to discuss rather than going word for word.

Until the leaders of both sides, Nuada of the Children of the Danu and Sreng for the Fir Bolg, met in the center of the melee.

Sreng is the champion of the current high king of the Fir Bolg at the time, he isn’t the leader of the Fir Bolg. The Fir Bolg king at this time was Eochaid mac Erc.

Then, Sreng landed a titanic strike. His blade cleft through Nuada's shield and severed his right arm in one stroke. Nuada stumbled back, dazed. It looked as though the end had come. Then The Dagda himself intervened and spirited Nuada away.

Yes, Sreng cuts off Nuadu’s hand (or arm. Lám in Old Irish could mean either), but The Dagda isn’t even mentioned in this scene. That’s a super weird detail for Ellis (presumably it was him and not Extra Mythology) to make up.

They took him to Dian Cecht; God of Healing, Lord of Physicians; who crafted him a new arm of pure silver that moved like an arm of flesh and blood.

Also Creidne the smith. Everyone always forgets Creidne and I won’t stand for it.

Now you might think that the Children of the Danu would have quavered at the sight of their leader fallen in front of them. That they would break as their king was smote by the Fir Bolg champion. But, no, Bres, Warrior of the Danu, quick of mind and beautiful of form seized the king's right arm and raised it aloft. Angered by such a sight, the Children of the Danu swore vengeance. And plunged into the Fir Bolg ranks.

This is literally all fictional and I have no idea why Ellis would even make this up.

Finally, the Fir Bolg were all but defeated. 300 Fir Bolg warriors remained. Led by Sreng, their great champion. They took counsel and decided to fight to the last.

So this is sort of weird a) because we are glossing over the fact that in this version the Túatha Dé have essentially committed genocide here, and b) because other Fir Bolg escape this battle.

They quickly chose Bres as their leader for his valor and charm of mind.

So firstly, we don’t mention that now we are dealing with an entirely different text? Well, okay. And also sadly CMT is more misogynistic than this as CMT explains: “There was contention regarding the sovereignty of the men of Ireland between the Túatha Dé and their wives, since Núadu was not eligible for kingship after his hand had been cut off. They said that it would be appropriate for them to give the kingship to Bres the son of Elatha, to their own adopted son, and that giving him the kingship would knit the Fomorians' alliance with them, since his father Elatha mac Delbaith was king of the Fomoire.”

So, bit more complicated and has inter-tribal strife along gendered lines in reality.

But Bres was half Fomorian, a name we've not heard tell of yet in this tale. But we soon will. In his rule he acted more as a Fomorian than as one of the Danu. But, the reign of Bres and the war against the ancient and strange Fomorians is a story for next time.

Okay, again, still, ‘the Danu’ just catches my ear and confuses me every time. Bres has come up in this story before and is an entirely reasonable person, and like, most of the Túatha Dé big-names are part Fomorian. The Dagda, Nuadu, and Ogma are all Bres’ brothers and also sons of Elatha of the Fomori. And, ‘acted more as a Fomorian than as one of the Danu’ is just such a loaded statement. Yes, the Fomorians are raiding slavers who exploit less powerful tribal groups for personal wealth. The Túatha Dé are, shockingly, raiding slavers who exploit less powerful tribal groups and we have just seen them slaughter the indiginous population of Ireland and regulate them to a small portion of their original land. There is no moral connection here, the Fomorians and the Túatha Dé are just supernatural peoples hanging out in Ireland. One isn’t good and one isn’t bad.

Anyways, that’s the end of the first of two videos put out on this. Hopefully I shall do the next one this weekend.

In conclusion, what we see here is just a very strange misrepresentation of the events of LGE and a bit of CMT. Entire scenes are made up, ‘the Danu’ as a sacred river is... absolute nonsense. The idea of a world tree and gods born from acorns is fictional. So much of this is just fictional, an outright lie, or very misleadingly represented that I really cannot recommend this as an introduction to medieval Irish saga literature. I am disappointed that so little care or research was put into this by the Extra Mythology series, where when the original texts are available for free and in translation they instead chose a fictional version of the story made up by a journalist. It is incredibly irresponsible in the least, especially that when contacted the concerns on the accuracy and validity of the story they had told to their audience was brushed away.

Oh well, on to the second half of this story.

[thenightling]

I think Lisa was a literal bastard (Castlevania related)

Note: This is not an insult to the character. I love her.

Further note:  this is solely in regard to the Netflix Castlevania animated series version of Lisa and not the actual video games.

Some of this theory is based on actual historic fact about the fifteenth century.  I know Castlevania might as well be high fantasy set in an alternate universe but most of the locations are based on real world geographical locations, as are the cultures and superstitions.

I suspect Lisa was not only a commoner but also a bastard child, which increased her status as a social outcast, before anyone ever thought she might be a witch.

1.  No maiden name:  When introducing herself to Dracula Lisa does not give her house or family name (which was the custom in the fifteenth century).  Instead she says “Lisa from Lupu.”   In most of Europe in the fifteenth century if you were a bastard child, you were not permitted to take your father’s surname / Maiden name.  Nor could you directly inherit from his estate if he owned a title or land.   Leonardo Da Vinci for example was a famous bastard.  Vinci was the town he was born in, not his surname.  He was saying “Leonardo of Vinci.”  (”Lisa from Lupu”).  Lisa was not just announcing her town of origin, she was announcing that she was probably born out of wedlock. That alone suggests she was a social outcast since birth based on medieval / Renaissance cultural stigmas.    

2.  No apparent extended maternal family for Alucard:  Though her screen time is short notice how there is no mention of Alucard’s human family other than his mother.  Lisa was only twenty-five when she met Dracula.  Usually one (if not both) parents would still be alive unless her mother died in childbirth but that still leaves the father.  With the lack of mention of her extended family I think it’s safe to suggest Lisa might be a bastard child from a family line that either does not know she exists or does not wish to acknowledge her.   

3.    When Lisa shows up at Dracula’s castle she mentions that she “might have had some roasted garlic” and “it was all I had left.”   In Wallachia (today Romania) garlic is one of the most common herbs, if not most common.  It grows virtually everywhere (like mint).   It is also one of the cheapest food ingredients in Romania.  It’s very hard to find any Romanian recipe that does not include garlic.  Garlic is common.  Garlic is cheap. Garlic grows in the wild.  If a roasted bulb of garlic as all she had left I think it’s safe to say Lisa was in poverty.  Her clothing also suggested extreme poverty when she arrived at Dracula’s castle.  So she’s hungry, ragged, but all she cares about is helping others.

4.  Lisa’s condemnation:  It was often easier in the middle ages to condemn a bastard of being a witch or some other sinful offense (Leonardo da Vinci was charged with Sodomy) because it was believed that bastards were predestined for sin.  (It’s likely the accusations were true but Leo had powerful friends.)

    It was even frowned upon to write fictional characters who were bastards if they had a happy ending because it was believed it would romanticize having bastard children and make it “acceptable behavior” to have a bastard.

    So there you have it.  This is why we don’t know Lisa’s maiden name.  I am incline to believe she was a bastard child. Whether the bastard of a wealthy lord or peasant though is anyone’s guess.

By the way, I know I’ve said this before and I know I have to accept it as canon within the show but Țepeș is just Romanian for “Impaler.” It was not a surname. The historic Vlad used Dracula (archaic Drakulya and other spellings) as his chosen patronymic surname as to separate himself from his Boyar (noble) cousins of House Bassarb.  He held them accountable for the murders of his older brother and father and so chose his own surname based on his and his father’s membership to the other of the dragon (before Dracul came to mean Devil it used to mean dragon.)  Dracula was the surname, not a nicknamae. he was only called Țepeș (Impaler) by his enemies.   He never used Țepeș to sign his name. This is the one and only detail that annoys me about the show.

[transboygenius]

SE4SON: Chapter 21

Mitzi was at the market, shopping for any necessities her family, and the farm animals, needed to live on for a whole month. She wasn't halfway through the list yet. It was difficult working under a budget, especially with prices like these to bear with. The cheapest deals came in bruised, damaged, or ready to go bad. You can already guess what deals Mitzi went for. Pretty soon the basket will get heavy, and it's a shame Diana didn't came along with her. Speaking of Diana, where has she and the others gone to with those strange boys? Just as Mitzi continued with her shopping, she ran into a strange man wearing a black trench coat and a feathered hat. The man opened his coat to reveal items hidden.

"Pssssssst. Mistress. May I interest you in some optical instruments? For only 5 pence, one of these lovely specimen could take thee on a trip to the solar system where the big dipper awaits. Or you could catch a glimpse of what life dwells outside of these walls from thy bedroom window." Said the salesman. "Thank you, young sir, but your price is far too rich for my blood. And if I wanted to see something up close, I could just walk up to it." 

Suddenly, a carriage came speeding by and everyone quickly jumped out of the way, including Mitzi.

"Gangway, peasants! Prisoners in the King's custody!"

Mitzi got up, and started picking up the groceries the carriage made her drop, while cursing under her breath. Then a thought occurred to her. She could've sworn she witnessed something recognizable in the back of that carriage. As Mitzi seized a telescope from the salesman, she looked fixedly into it. Her hunch was right, but she wished it wasn't. Diana was still as a statue. Rodent Girl was muzzled and shackled. Benson was fearing for his life. Some little girl was trapped in a cage. Jimmy and Nick were chained together, also dressed like a wizard and knight. The expression on Jimmy's face looked to be he was angry at something. Or someone. He was even yelling, though Mitzi couldn't hear nor read his lips. Then, she saw King Jason, who was repeatedly kissing this valuable amulet around his neck.

"Uh, Miss? You're gonna purchase that or what?"

Mitzi tossed the telescope back to the salesman, and decided to follow the carriage.

...............................

[*Back in modern time*]

The squad was still putting together the time machine, piece by piece. Well, mostly the adults, and Goddard, did all the work. Libby was reading through a fashion magazine. Sheen watched numerous conspiracy theory videos on his phone. They wanted to help at first, but it seemed like the grown-ups had everything on hand. Carl, however, served the squad refreshments. He came out of the house with a tray, which held pink lemonade and cookies. The allergy boy served his friends first, then Judy. Instead of drinking the lemonade, Judy used the whole pitcher to drench herself. Through Carl's point of view, the image was more sultry. The scene played in slow motion. From the beverage cascading down like a waterfall, to the sunset glistening on Judy's beautiful frame. Mrs. Dean looked at Carl, absolutely disturbed.

"Oh, Butter Biscuit!" Hollered Hugh. "What is it, Hugh?" Asked Judy. "After we finish assembling the parts on this, thingumabob-thingumajig-kajigger, what's say we pay the prehistoric era a call? Let's hope they'll be home to answer it, though. *RING RING!* Hah hah hah hah hah!" "Do you believe Jimmy might be there?! Oh, dear." "Nnnnnnnnnnoo, frankly. I just wanted to see if I could shoot myself a photograph of the rare bullockornis planei for my duck-lovers blogspot! We call them the demon ducks of DOOOOOM!" "Hugh: Our son's life is riding on it, and all you can think of at this moment is your stupid ducks! The poor little boy is probably lost out there, suffering, and confused! He must be pining for the warmth of his family about now! So, after Jimmy has been found, then you can let yourself get eaten by dinosaurs!"

Mrs. Dean and Hugh were thrown back by Judy's sassy personality.

"That's some woman you got there." Mrs. Dean whispered to Hugh. "Tell me about it. You think I only married her for her looks?" Hugh whispered back.

Elsewhere, Cindy watched everything from out her window, before shutting the blinds. Everyone is putting their best effort to bring Jimmy and Nick back, and here she is, shutting herself in her bedroom. She has nothing to do but eat junk food, watch TV, and continuously refresh her Cheeper account to see if she got any new re-chirps. Even if Libby is just sitting around while reading a magazine, she looks like she's having more fun than Cindy, because she's in the presence of friends. She at least has an adoring company surrounding her, not to mention someone to share chats with. There, Cindy's inferiority complex began to kick in. How dare that traitor think she can have more fun than me? Cindy looked over to her sleeping dog, then had an idea. She went under her bed and reached for Humphrey's favorite bone. Dogs can be much better friends than humans.

"FETCH, HUMPHREY!"

The bone bounced off of the bulldog's head, waking him up abruptly. Humphrey looked at the bone, which was six feet far from him. Instead of retrieving the item to his owner, Humphrey just yawned, and fallen back into his slumber.

"Aw, you're not as productive as you used to."

................................

[*Back in medieval*]

Everyone sat helpless in their cell. Benson was clattering a metal mug against the bars. Rodent Girl was chatting with a rat. Diana was punching the wall, and she's been doing it for about 30 minutes. Jason used his powers to turn the cell indestructible to Diana's strength, but she was determined to find a weak spot eventually. Jimmy and Nick sat with their heads hanging low, while Sally besides them played a harmonica. Jimmy can't help but feel guilty for landing his new friends in hot water. The plan Jimmy discussed with Sally earlier, about turning the tables on Jason in case he decides to double-cross, had actually been a lie. He had no plan for that from the start. Jimmy didn't suspect that King Jason would try to betray them, because the boy genius thought he was capable of changing him.

Jimmy was confident enough to believe that he could manipulate the king, despite his friends claiming they knew him more. Hell, they live in the same town with this tyrant. The boy genius was arrogant in himself as usual. He always had a knack for shrugging off voices of reason. Just because he won every science fair (not counting this year's), just because he has the highest grades in school, just because he successfully saved Retroville and possibly the whole world from countless mayhem, he automatically assumes he's smarter than anyone with experience. Jimmy recalled a year back, in fourth grade, where he wanted to drain his own genius for everyone's sake, because this is what his brain gets people into. Worse, he dragged his best friend, Nick, into a mission he wanted no part in.

"Gee. I'm awfully sorry, everyone! Especially you, Nick. All the blame goes on me!" Said Jimmy.

Rodent Girl was about to give a rude remark to the boy genius, before Diana covered her mouth.

"Hey. It's okay, bruh. Don't beat yourself up. You at least tried your best." Nick provided comfort to his friend. "Where's a reason that I shouldn't beat myself up? I cost Butterscotch his life, got ourselves imprisoned, and possibly endangered the whole village by letting the king take hold of the amulet! Worse: We'll never see our families again." Jimmy continued to doubt himself. "But you didn't know! It's not your fault your brain couldn't predict the obvious!" "Thanks for pointing that out. I'm stupid. I have now lost the right to use the 'Boy Genius' title." "No, I did not mean it like that! C'mon, Jimmy!" "I know you're trying to be supportive and all, but you can't deny that it's true." "It's not true! I deny it! I deny it! You were just doing... ...what your gut was telling you to do!" "I think Nick is right, chum! We knew King Jason for years now! You two hardly knew him at all, so ya can't blame someone for being naive!" Said Diana. "And it didn't help the conclusion that the king manipulated you with kindness in your first encounter!" Added Benson. "In the earlier two chapters of my first and second appearance, I used to address myself by 'me' instead of 'I.' Somehow, I just don't anymore. Strange, ain't it?" Also added Rodent Girl, which only confused everyone. "No need to help me recoup, gang. After all, Butterscotch's demise was all my responsibility." Exclaimed Jimmy. "That's nothing to feel responsible for! Jason was the one who was responsible. He knew the bridge was unstable! To add insult to injury, he pushed the buttons on a sensitive, kind horse! *Starts to tear up* I'm gonna miss that old lug. But that's okay. I'm now sooner to meeting him again." Said Diana. "Why all the forgiveness? I clearly don't deserve it! The gallows are right around the corner, all because of me!" "It's like your friend said! You didn't know! You only wanted to do what was best for us! You two have been good, modest friends, so I can't help not being angry at you! Especially over a mistake! The way you held onto your hope, stirred forward with obstinacy, kinda reminded me of myself during my youth. You know, before I went swole." "Although we've never communicated much, I'd like to pay some blessings to thee. You gents never ridiculed me, or did insult me, for my own way of expressing masculinity. Every other man that I've met aren't hesitant to profane my selfhood. Even father." Quote Benson. "You guys were very nice to us, I guess. And, I've never had a human friend before. Kids never stick around to play with me cuz they always run away whenever I bring out the rats. Most of them just run away from looking at me." Rodent Girl gave her part. "Whether or not you guys may be the legendary Wise Wizard or Silver Knight, which I still doubt that you aren't, you guys are pretty neat, and I'm glad that I've met you." Said Sally. "Look, Jimmy. Mistakes are a healthy part of growing up. You make a mistake, learn from what you've done wrong, and improve it. The more you improve, the better it gets. Trust me, as a young cook, I made a fair share of mistakes in the past." Nick attempted to cheer up the boy genius. "C'mon, gang! Group hug!" Shouted Diana.

Jimmy declined at first, but it was too late. Unfortunately, just like with Mitzi, Diana put in little strength. It was actually quite joyous, getting hug by the people you love. After the group hug was over, Jimmy looked at everyone. In spite of his mistake, they were all understanding. Understanding and naive. They're about to die in the following day, and King Jason might wreak havoc on the whole village. On the up side, Jimmy hasn't felt the purity of friendship in so long. Him, Sheen, and Carl were like this, way before Jimmy spent more time hitting the lab. Why does it have to end this way? He never had the chance to apologize. If any of them start to grow any sense, they'll come to realize how much of a jerk he's been. And Nick... In case this does turn out to be their final hours together...

"Everyone, may I propose a very important promulgation?" Said Jimmy. "All of you are such wonderful people. Each special in your own ways. The whole kingdom may look down on you, but that's because they never took the time to see your full potential. Diana, your strong and full of heart! Benson, you take pride of what you are and what you do! I envy that! Except for the whole eavesdropping gig. Rodent Girl, I'm surprised you don't have any friends! You're only one of the most funnest human beings (or whatever you might be) I've ever hung out with! Sally... Thanks for letting me know about this Wise Wizard and Silver Knight. Actually learned a lot from them, thanks to your father's logs. N-no, don't get the wrong idea that, POOF, I've suddenly 'regained my memory back.' I love you all so very much! There's no where I'd rather be than to spend my last day with you guys! And speaking of love..."

Jimmy turned to Nick.

"I haven't forgotten you. May I tell you something?" Asked Jimmy. "I was gonna tell you something. Something that's very, very personal to me, and now I may finally get it off my chest. But it can wait. Proceed." Replied Nick. "Okay... *Sighs* Nick, ever since you let out the real you, my whole life just lit up. All this time, I've been admired by the formally most popular guy in school and didn't know! We could've been good best friends then. Of course, I can understand your insecurity. I've never met a guy like you before. It's... ...hard to believe you've been hiding this from me!" "That's not all I've been hiding." "What?" "Nothing! Go on!" "*AHEM* As I was saying, you and me seem to find comfort in each other. We agree on the same mindset level. Me and Carl couldn't connect this way. Or Sheen. Or Cindy. You're very honest. Although you may be overdoing it, nobody has shown me that much care other than my own parents. I really appreciate it. And thanks to you, I have rediscovered pure friendship." "*Blushes* Don't mention it." "You're the bestest of best friends I've ever had! But..." "Oh no, not the 'but.'" "This may come as a shock to you. Lately, I've been having these certain feelings that I've yet had trouble summarizing. As a matter of fact, even if I was sure I knew how I was feeling, I was too scared to stomach it. We live in a society, where we're never exposed to this kind of stuff. We've only been raised on the 'default.' I didn't think this stuff would happen to me. Then, a tale of two valiant heroes have shown me that it is possible, and normal as well. They've taught me something a genius like me didn't know." "Huh? Huh?! (Could this mean what I think it means?!)" "*Gulps down* Nick, I... I, I... I..."

Rodent Girl suddenly interrupted.

"I SEE A RABBIT!"

Everyone turned their attention to what Rodent Girl was pointing at. There was that same white rabbit again. Nobody found that exciting, until it began picking up the ring of keys with its mouth. Nick groaned in disappointment. He was looking forward to hearing the rest of Jimmy's confession. The rabbit, holding onto the keys, jumped off the wooden desk. Everyone beckoned for the rabbit's attention, expanding their arms outside of the cell. The rabbit just sat at a far distance, staring at them. Jimmy suspected that they needed to lure the rabbit in to grab the keys. Luckily, Rodent Girl happened to smuggle some food. First, she pulled out a piece of cheese, but the rabbit just backed away from the stench. She tried a piece of meat, but Jimmy pointed out that rabbits are vegetarians. That gave Rodent Girl an idea, and she pulled out a leaf of lettuce. This time, Jimmy wanted to bait the bunny.

"Hey there, Cottontail. Remember me? Now, you look like you could use a snack."

The lettuce was working. The rabbit took its time, and hopped towards the vegetable. As the rabbit got closer, it was soon standing over a floor drain. That fluffy creature began to sniff the lettuce. Jimmy planned to grab the key after the rabbit goes for the leaf. On that spur of the moment, a loud sound entered the dungeon, which startled everyone, including the rabbit. In shock, it dropped the keys and they fell into the drain. There goes their chance to escape. The rabbit hopped out of the scene to get away from whatever disturbance it just heard. Nick patted Jimmy on the back as comfort.

"Well, that was far by a long shot. At least we all have each other!" Said Jimmy. "If only we had told Mitzi. It isn't a family without her." Quote Diana. "Hey, I think our time might be up!" Screamed Rodent Girl. "No it ain't! Our penalty doesn't start till tomorrow!" Replied Nick. "Then why do I see DEATH approaching us?!"

An ominous looking visitor, wearing a black cloak with the hood over their head, was walking towards their cell. Rodent Girl quickly scurried behind Diana for protection. Benson also went behind Diana. Jimmy, Nick, and Sally just stood frozen, with their hands gripping the bars tightly. The two young boys didn't believe that was Death, but they are curious about this unknown stranger. Rodent Girl peeked from behind Diana, then let out a whaling scream. The visitor then uncovered their hood.

"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

It was Mitzi in disguise. Nick was not pleased.

"Mitzi?" Spoke Diana. "Fancy meeting you here. You came to rescue us, or to gloat in me and my friend's face cuz you have substantial proof that we're 'bad people?'" Asked Nick. "What does it look like?" Also asked Mitzi. "Looks like you wanna gloat." "This isn't what you think it is, Mitzi! We have a perfectly good alibi behind-" Said Jimmy, before Mitzi cut him off. "No need for an explanation, young man! I can plainly see what's going on here."

Jimmy put on an expression that was a mix between concern and sadness.

"You were planning to conquer the king! It's a shame you didn't invite me." Said Mitzi. "Huh- How could you tell?" Asked Jimmy. "Well, it must be the story behind why you're locked up down here in the dungeon. Look, I'm not very informed about demons and their history, primarily because all I want to do is forget about them, but I know for a fact that Jason seems like the type of gent who would be good friends with these creeps. Judging by your current situation, it don't look to me like you're his friends at all. Jason is as close to a demon. Whatever you did, I wilt admit: That was quaint noble of you boys."

Rodent Girl was about to explain what really happened, but Diana shut her mouth closed once again.

"Does that mean we're off the hook?" Asked Nick. "I think... Why the hell not? Being upset with you has gone exhausting anyways."

Jimmy then let out a slight smile. Sally stuck her hand outside of the cell to shake with Mitzi.

"Hi, I'm Sally!" Greeted Sally. "I'm Mitzi. Nice to meet you."

Now Mitzi was ready to free them. Unfortunately, she couldn't find the keys to the cell.

"What happened to the keys?" Asked Mitzi. "Apparently, there's somebunny who hates us very much." Replied Nick. "Wait a minute. Hold on!"

Mitzi suddenly dashed off somewhere. Everyone hesitated in silence for a moment. Diana started whistling a tune. Benson continued to clatter his mug against the bars. The gang was waiting patiently for Mitzi's return.

"You were saying..." Said Nick. "Pardon?" Asked Jimmy. "I believe you were gonna tell me something." "Oh, oh, that! Hmmmmmm... I'm afraid I forgot what I was going to say. Sorry." "*Sighs* It's okay." "Keeping secrets again?" There was that familiar voice.

Mitzi was back, with a brand new key in her hand. Wow, that was fast! After she unlocked the cell, everyone ran out free. Rodent Girl even kissed the outside floor.

"Remember who was the best darn blacksmith for 12 years!" Mitzi bragged, while spinning the key around her finger. "It's good to see your spirit has returned, old friend!" Said Diana. "Not so fast! I believe you owe me and my friend something! We've been patient for it." Exclaimed Nick.

Jimmy and Nick were standing next to each other with their arms crossed.

"I-I already have! I freed you, didn't I?" Said Mitzi.

The two boys stayed in position, still not satisfied enough. It's obvious they want an apology.

"*Groans* OKAY. I am sorry! From the way I did treated you from the start, to making Oona watch you in your slumber, and destroying your device! You two were right! I should've have took the time to know you better and check your backgrounds! I am truly a fool." Mitzi finally apologized. "You made Rodent Girl do WHAT?" Yelped Diana.

Jimmy went up to Mitzi and shook hands with her, telling her that she is now off the hook. But as for Nick, he was still standing in place, with his arms crossed.

"What's wrong with your friend?" Asked Mitzi. "I think he wants a straight-forward opinion on his cooking." Replied Jimmy. "Alright! I'll say it! It's good! The damn best! I have never tasted such nourishing delight in years! It's like having dinner with God." "Okay we good." Nick was finally satisfied. "By the way; How were you able to stealth your way in? Isn't the king's facilities heavily guarded?" Questioned Jimmy. "Well, there was no one on post." Said Mitzi. "Really?" "Afraid so. No guards, no knights. The whole castle was unsecured for some reason, and the drawbridge was left opened." "That's strange. Where could everyone be at this hour?"

............................

Little did the Faithful Seven know, the king made the whole staff take a break to join him in this huge dinner celebration. There was enough food on the table to feed the whole village. They had entertainment involving female jesters in skimpy outfits. Even the table was expanded to invite more of his men. Nobody questioned the king's newfound powers. They just greedily stuffed themselves to their hearts' content. Any food that is gone from the table, the king conjured up some more. Jason then raised his glass to make a toast.

"To the young clods, and their misfit friends!"

Everyone repeated the king and raised their glasses as well.

"Uhhhh, your greatness? I-I thhinking I might've left, the drawbridge..." The bridgekeeper stuttered. "Relax! Have a drink! It's on the castle!" Said Jason, then conjured up a wooden jug of beer for him. "Sire?" Questioned Richard. "Hmmm?" "Now that you've successfully possessed the powers of the amulet, what do you plan to do next?" "Why, that's a good question! You see, I plan to use my newfound powers to make the world a place worthy of living in! There's plenty of space to take up!" "Space? What space?" "Oh, you know, the space those unwanted refugees have marked up! Pretty soon, they won't be a problem to us anymore!"

Jason handed Richard a map of around the world. With a point of his magical finger, the pictures started to move. The chancellor was quite amazed, and mesmerized by the moving images. Multiple castles, architectures, and gallow stands appeared in every place of the map. Then, the pretty sight took a turn for the ugly. Climate change was happening in every polar region. A sandstorm was blowing in Egypt. Floods occurred in Asian related regions. Multiple volcanoes rose from the ground. However, English related territories were left untouched. Jason is taking out many innocent lives and establishing a colony for his people. Richard felt uneasy about the king's new plan. He passed the map around to know what the others think. They all had the same reaction as him.

"Your greatness?" Asked a random knight. "Yeeeeeeeeeesssss?" "Are you sure this is all necessary?" "What kind of dumb question is that?" "You see, majestic one, I don't recall... Ehhhhhhhh ...human extinction involved." Spoke one of the guards. "Human extinction?! HUMAN EXTINCTION?! This is not humans we're talking about! I'm referring to those inferior, contemptible pests crawling all over our planet! They are far beyond in compare to real humans like us!" "It seems unfair, if you ask me." Said the royal painter. "Well, I didn't ask you!" "C'mon, your greatness. Don't you think your taking this a bit over the top? Sure, they might be different from us, but they live like us. Eat like us. Work jobs like us. They even have families of their own." "Fish have families! And so do dung beetles!” "I thought you wanted to make the world a better place! Their lives matter!" The royal taste tester spoke up. "SILENCE! It's not 'Their lives matter!' It's 'Every lives matter!'" "Yeah, your greatness, but other than that, you're bound to open up an apocalypse. I'm no physicist, but I don't think the Earth can hold that much physical force. They go down, and we 'Every lives' will go down with them." Quote one of the servants. "THAT WON'T HAPPEN TO US! I AM THE KING!"

The king's voice turned monstrous for a second, followed by a strike of lightning.

"Let's settle this like gentlemen! Who else is opposed to my brilliant proposition? All in favor, say I!"

Everybody, minus the cowardly Richard, all put their hands up and said "I." The king never felt so betrayed in his life.

"Ahhhhhhhhh! All of you are no longer of use to me anymore! You're fired! You ought to be hanged for disagreeing with the highest authority!" Barked Jason. "You can't just hang all of us! It's usually us who are commanded-" "ARE YOU UNDERESTIMATING MY POWERS?!"

The king's monstrous voice was back, and so was the lightning. Not only that, but his eyes turned a bloodish red color. As Jason snapped his fingers, the whole staff's necks where grabbed under nooses, then pulled upward into a painful choking hold. If that wasn't scary enough, the king's physical form began to change. He was also growing as well. Richard hid under the table and watched.

.............................

Back in the dungeon, Jimmy, Nick, and everyone else stood in place, while holding onto each other, as the ground started shaking. After the shaking was over, Jimmy suggested they not question about the occurrence and just move on.

"It's just an earthquake! Nothing to be alarmed up!" Said Jimmy. "Do you have these back at your world?" Asked Benson. "Well... No."

Pretty soon, the gang reached the main door that led to the stairway out of the dungeon. But, they promptly started to hear someone pounding on the other side. Everyone just stood their ground. The threat then got more serious as the person began to bust their way in, breaking down the door. Whoever it might be, they must be really strong. And not nice. The gang went behind Diana. The bulky woman put up her hands, ready to take on whatever comes out that door. Although she was secretly afraid. With one more pound, the stranger eventually broke down the door and sent it flying across the room. The first thing everyone saw was a bright glow illuminating.

This person didn't look like a person at all. It was more of an animal. The most beautiful sight they've ever seen. It appeared to be a white horse, a stallion maybe, with a matching white mane and tail. The rest of its features looked artificial. He had a pointy horn on the center of his forehead, his whole body was glowing and dazzled with glitter, there was a "tattoo" of an arrow impaling a red heart on his flank, and lastly, he was wearing eyeliner.

"Neeeeeiigghhhh! (Glad to see you guys again! Good thing I followed Mitzi!)"

However, the majestic horse looked somewhat familiar to Diana.

"Butterscotch?"

[scriptmyth]

Hi! I was wondering if you have anything on the Norse Goddess Saga and the Mesopotamian God Namtar?

Hello Nonny!

Here is all the info we could find. We hope you find it relevant and useful!

Namtar

Namtar (Namtaru, Namtara) is the son of Ereškigal (Ereshkigal), the goddess of the Underworld, and is the god of pestilence. He is sometimes argued to be the first born of Ereškigal because he is the vizier of the underworld and her messenger. Most stories containing Namtar have him obeying the commands and acting as the messenger of Ereškigal.

In Akkadian mythology, Enlil is Namtar’s father and, after creating humans, Enlil sends Namtar down to wipe them out with a plague because they are so loud that Enlil cannot sleep. A goddess sees what is happening, and stops it by having the humans focus their worship on Namtar who feels shame for killing people who so obviously love him.

In Sumeo and Babylonian mythology, Namtar is the son of Ninazu and Ereškigal, however, in later texts, he is the son of Enlil and Ereškigal or even Nergal and Ereškigal.

The most well known myth involving Namtar is when Ereškigal can’t go to a feast for the gods and send Namtar in her stead. All of the gods show him proper respect except for Nergal. Ereškigal demands he be killed in punishment and Nergal goes down into the Underworld and instead becomes Ereškigal’s husband. In the older version found in Tel-Amarna in Egypt, Nergal marries Ereškigal the first time he goes to the Underworld, in the second version, found in Uruk in Babylonia, Nergal leaves the Underworld and is brought back by Namtar before marrying Ereškigal.

The Babylonians believed that Namtar had power over sixty demons who were each an individual disease that attacked different parts of the body. In The Descent of Ishtar, Ereškigal orders Namtar to set sixty diseases upon Ishtar and he does:

“Disease of the eyes to her eyes,

Disease of the arms to her arms,

Disease of the feet to her feet,

Disease of the heart to her heart,

Disease of the head to her head,

To every part of her and to [word lost].” (The Descent of Ishtar)

In Gilgamesh, it is mentioned that Namtar is also the god of fate:

“To Namtar, who is fate, they weighed out the offering.” (The Epic of Gilgamesh)

Further Reading:

The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Descent of Ishtar

Babylonian Ereshkigal and Nergal

Tel-Amarna Ereškigal and Nergal (this is a youtube video, every time the person says lekuna it means a word is missing)

Best wishes, 

Ajk’in

Sága

“Sökkvabekk is the fourth [home], | where cool waves flow,

And amid their murmur it stands;

There daily do Othin | and Saga drink

In gladness from cups of gold.”

“Grímnismál (Sayings of Grímnir)”, Stanza 7, Poetic Edda

Much of what we know about Sága comes from one stanza in Grimnismal, and there are a variety of translations into English that may change the meaning of the stanza. As Sökkvabekk is cited to be Sága’s home, this is frequently the primary meaning attributed to her - as such, Sága is considered to be the goddess of sunken banks, sunken benches, or treasure banks. As Sága’s home features “cool waves”, she is considered the goddess of water in general, and streams, springs, oceans, and any stretch of water in particular.

Because she drinks from golden cups (which can also vary in translation) with Odin, she’s also attributed to be the goddess of those, and by a stretch of the imagination gold itself.

An etymological deconstruction of Sága’s name leads many to believe that she is also the goddess of sagas, something that could be construed as poetry, history, and stories, depending on the source. Since her name also comes from Old Norse verb “sjá”, which means “to see”, some have taken this to mean that Sága is also a seer, which although Rudolf Simek has contested this interpretation of etymology, his alternate proposal that “saga” and “segja” (meaning “to say, tell”) is a more likely link holds a similar merit to the idea that Sága is a seeress.

Sága is also, as a bit of a footnote, known by the name of Laga - the goddess of cool water, springs, and bathing rooms. In Icelandic, Laga’s name means “to shape, mold” or “to fix, repair”. In Norwegian Nnyorsk, “to make”, and in Swedish, “to repair” or “to cook, make, prepare (food)”. According to her connection to Sága, Laga is also known as the goddess of lasting fame.

There are many theories that Sága is a form of Frigg, who herself is often combined with Freya as a two forms of a single goddess. The two most-formed arguments that scholars have to support this is the connection between Sága’s home of Sökkvabekk and Frigg’s home of Fensalir, and the idea that Sága may be considered a seeress like Frigg.

Frigg is said to visit Sága’s home frequently, and as Frigg’s home is a fen (a type of wetland), this coincides with Sökkvabekk’s being of a similar biome as the banks of, presumably, a stretch of water. Moving between two such highly similar places could correlate to a syncretism of the two goddesses.

Sága’s apparent connection to foresight via an etymological definition of her name, also supports syncretism between her and Frigg. As Frigg is a völva, she practices seiðr. This form of magic is generally restricted to women, and is concerned with destiny and prophecies - both things that require an ability to see the future. Sága may possibly be specifically the personification of seiðr in regards to prophecies (which by a few accounts, prophecies are a form of stories - this is a very loose interpretation), but this would strictly be conjecture and only vaguely supported by either source texts or scholarship.

Further Reading:

@fjorn-the-skald is a graduate student specializing in Medieval History, and his blog focuses on Medieval Iceland.

Sága and Sökkvabekkr - Wikipedia

Grímnismál: The Speech of the Masked One - Germanic Mythology: Texts, Translations, Scholarship

Saga - Goddess of poetry and history - The White Goddess

Saga (Göttin) - Wikipedia (German)

Laga - Vollmer’s Wörterbuch der Mythologie aller Völker (German)

Laga - Zeno Bibliothek (German)

Frigg - Norse Mythology for Smart People

Fensalir - Wikipedia

Völva - Wikipedia

Seiðr - Wikipedia

-the Chorus

[larasati98-blog]

KNB217 Digital Creatures Assignment 1

By Yosephine Vania Devi Larasati | n10129251

For this assignment, I decided to choose Jack from the folktale of a magic beanstalk. Since this is a well-known story for decades, I find it easier to identify the character and setting played in the story.

Jack and the Magic Beanstalk

Jack and the Magic Beanstalk is an English fairy tale. According to Joseph Jacob’s version (1890), this story revolves around the adventure of Jack, a boy living on a farm with his poor widowed mother. One day, his mother asked Jack to go to the market and sell their only cow there, since they run out of money to buy some food. In the market, thoughtless Jack met an old butcher that offered him a magic seed in exchange for his cow. Instead of selling it for some coins, Jack tempted to trade his cow for the seed. Knowing that Jack brought home a seed instead of money, his mother was angry and threw the seed outside. However, the bean grew overnight into a giant beanstalk where there is a castle upon it. Excited, Jack climbed the stalk to find the castle on the top and it was filled with magical animals and instrument which belong to a giant living in it. Realising that he needs goods to sell, he stole a magical hen that lays golden eggs and magical harp that can talk. Unfortunately, the harp began to scream for help and surprised the giant. The giant chased down Jack until he almost reached the ground, but Jack started chopping down the stalk that also crushed and killed the giant. The overall story takes place during the renaissance. The setting happened in the farm, market and a gigantic castle built for giants.

Jack

Jack is often described as a young man that is always taking advantage of any opportunities provided to him. The folktale also shows that he lives in desperation since he and his mother lived in constant poverty. From my personal view, I would describe Jack as a naive and reckless young man, yet caring about his family’s needs. Jack is very spontaneous, innocent, and easily tricked by an old man into trading his cow with what the man called it a magical seed. Not forgetting the fact that he is a farmer, he has a diligent personality.

Jack is physically skinny, due to living in poverty for a long time. He is a tall boy and his body barely shows any muscle, like a twig, I would describe. He weights very light that allows him to sneak into a castle without waking up the giant. His clothes are very simple and comfortable to wear for farming but seem quite dirty from going to the field often. Also, the clothes seem old since those are old clothes from his late father.

In summary, the characteristic of Jack is divided into two:

Personality traits:

Innocent and naive

Spontaneous

Somewhat stubborn

Taking for granted

Soft-hearted and devoted to his family

Physical characteristic:

Tall and skinny

Pale skin with noticeable sunburns

Extremely light

Round face (as he is still young)

Wearing old farming clothes that are lightly covered by dirt

Mood board

First thing, I gathered references based on style and body type that is relevant to the story. I love the idea of loose clothes with a belt that exaggerates his thin figure. However, since it is a low poly character, the clothes might be harder to animate the flow.

Experiment Drawing

After that, I began to draw the character concept based on the mood board. The first picture shows the characters line up consist of Jack, his mother, and the Giant. I love making a character comparison at first, so I know what will differentiate Jack among all of the characters.

Here is I draw rough sketches of Jack. From first glance, he looks like a scarecrow, which I found very interesting. I continued to explore his look by combining shapes.

I tried to combine shapes of circle, square, and triangle. I decided to use many circles for his head to show youth. Later on, I prefer a round shape for the eyes and the nose that emphasise his innocence, friendliness, and soft, while I was still playing around with the shape of the body.

Rough Silhouette

I narrowed down to 5 silhouettes that I find appealing and easier to create in low-poly.

Final decision, I found this very simple yet appealing. Just from the silhouette, this character seems clumsy and soft. I will develop this rough silhouette into a more unique character.

During the renaissance era, men were mostly wearing linen tunic that is belted at the waist and tight legging (Central Coast Renaissance Festival, 2019). The tunic was worn as an undergarment beneath outer clothes, such as cloak by upper class (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998).

I tried to modify the clothing a little, such as cutting short the bottom part of the tunic. This makes Jack looks slender and gives clarity to his body shape. Creating a character turnaround sheet is not something new to me, yet still challenging no matter how many times I have done it. Especially, in a three-quarter view. Also, I am giving Jack a slightly crooked back.

Medieval and renaissance tunic (Larp Inn, 2019).

As for the colour palette reference, I am using a colour wheel and chose to use complementary colours with earth tones. Here, I combined blue and orange as well as adjusted the saturation to bring the two colours together.

Colour wheel sample (Lynton, 2018).

Coloured character turnaround

The image below here is used for reference in the modelling process. The character is drawn from the front, right, and topside view.

Modelling Process

The video below here shows the quick video of modelling the character from a cube.

Due to insufficient storage, I screen captured some stages after the recording. These are where I learned my mistakes.

1. Arm Twisting

I did not pay attention to the anatomy of the muscle. So I had to remake the arm and make a twist.

2. Face Topology

Modelling mouth and nose with the right loop pattern is complicated for me. I followed several other tutorial videos on the internet and other people’s work as a reference. Other challenges include modelling the face to look appealing while maintaining the polygons count to keep it under 1000, for example, changing the hairstyle to be much simpler than the original design.

Overall, I did not find any problems with the UV map process, everything went smoothly. Until I painted the model using Substance Painter. Painting hair surprisingly became the most difficult thing. I mostly do realistic style rather than stylised, so it took a while for me to get accustomed to the painting process. I mostly used polygon fill feature in Substance Painter at first, then added more details(dirt, and collar) using brush.

Rigging Process

First time using Advanced Skeleton 5, many things happened in the process. There are a few steps that I have to repeat until the model can move properly. One of them is the eyeballs that are stuck with the head model and won’t rotate by themselves. Resolved it by fixing the connection between the joint and the geometry. Another problem I had was the knees bend backwards. Turned out that my model’s legs were slightly bending backwards and Advanced Skeleton automatically generated inverted knees.

Animation Test

Final Render

Jack by yosephine98 on Sketchfab

In summary, I am satisfied with the design of the character. Even though the execution of building the 3D model does not meet my expectation. There are many things I have to fix in my model. In the future, I am excited to build another model with better design and 3D model.

References

Central Coast Renaissance Festival. (2019, May 24). How did people dress in renaissance England. Central Coast Renaissance Festival. https://ccrenfaire.com/how-did-people-dress-in-renaissance-england/

Jacobs, J. (2003). Jack and the beanstalk. English Fairy Tales. http://www.authorama.com/english-fairy-tales-15.html

Larp Inn (2019). Guy Tunic. Larp Inn. https://www.larpinn.co.uk/guy-tunic-brown-p-6496.html

Lynton, J. (2018, 29 May). Close to my heart color wheel [Image]. Make it from your heart. https://blog.closetomyheart.com/2018/05/29/color-theory-double-complementary-color-schemes/

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (1998). Tunic. Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/tunic-clothing

[circadianwolf]

realism in fiction

(in response to characterizing and dismissing a criticism of Fallout 3 as a silly concern about “scientific accuracy”)

I don't really want to talk about Fallout (I've done enough of that in the past), but on the topic in general with the various Fallout games as examples. I think the "inaccuracies" of Fallout 3's setting are incredibly relevant to the rhetorical/ideological work that the game is doing (knowingly or not). Presenting a world that seems to have existed in stasis since the bombs fell, which still lives in the junk and detritus of the Old World, is (obviously) a deliberate choice, commonly assigned to the "aesthetic" of post-apocalypse. But beyond this it serves the function of justifying a dioramic world of isolated scenes and disconnected characters, not a society but rather individual survivors and communities which form no larger network, produce nothing, and  whose labor, where it exists, is purely extractive (scavenging), mercantile, or violent. The notion of a post-apocalyptic world as a ruthless every-man-for-himself (gender deliberate) anti-society is common and dangerous; it is a fantasy of unrestrained masculine violence, in the same way zombie stories are by and large fantasies of racist genocide of thoughtless hordes by the imperiled white minorities. Fallout 3's world of tattered three-hundred-year-old clothing and squatting in three-hundred-year-old ruins and eating three-hundred-year-old canned food is one of total scarcity, in which the only gain possible is by taking from someone else.

That this is "inaccurate" is important for the reasons all stories are important: stories serve as life experiences by proxy. Our brain compiles our experiences over time into recurring patterns which become templates for our default reactions to future situations that register as similar - these are our "instincts", which are not programmed in our genetics but largely socially conditioned. Stories are a technology of information sharing, a way for humans to collectivize experiences so that we can react to experiences we have never faced ourselves with the knowledge of others' experiences. Stories are -always- didactic. But this technology opens up the opportunity for false experiences which can teach false reactions. All stories are, of course, "unreal" - even those based in reality are abstractions, even fiction set in the "real world" creates characters and situations, etc. So yes, to criticize "inaccuracies" is on a base level silly; but they are very relevant when these inaccuracies reinforce false patterns. Normally, false patterns are not promoted precisely because they teach false responses; but when culture is controlled by a minority, they can override the normal dynamics to promote stories that falsely justify power, exploitation, and oppression.

This is not just a theoretical or abstract process (as you might look at with Fallout), it is something governments and corporations actively and knowingly engage in. In the 1950s a major priority of the CIA was to promote "anti-communist" media. Perhaps the predominant example of this was the Iowa Writer's Workshop, a literary graduate program which became the model for many similar programs across the US. Its early funding included a grant from the CIA and its founder openly proclaimed his goal of creating "anti-communist" fiction, which meant the elision of "politics", relations of production, and similar structural forces and a rejection of "didacticism" in favor of a focus on individuals, psychological interiority divorced from material circumstances, and atomic social relationships. The epitome of this "anti-communist" fiction was the motto "show, don't tell". What this reflected in a larger sense was the conflict in philosophy between what is termed "idealism" and "materialism", the latter of which is fundamental to communist theory (Marx's theory is specifically termed "dialectical materialism" or "historical materialism").

Now in American culture, the interiority of "high" literature was matched by a false opposition of plot-heavy "low" culture, increasingly dominated across mediums by corporate-controlled franchises that become ever-more enmeshed within their own "canon" (a metaphor from the debates over which Christian scriptures are "true"). Alongside this was encouraged a cultural fixation of quantification, metrics, and consistency - but only of specific things. The early fan cultures which treated corporate fiction as any other mythology, as something to be interrogated, extended, transformed, and played with as people found it useful (and not coincidentally composed significantly of women) became the extensive but derided backwater of "fan fiction" while corporate media instead promoted a fan culture of obsessive cataloguing and collecting "approved" products. The only form of extra-canonical culture encouraged was/is the sort of "could a Star Destroyer beat the Enterprise" questions and "fanon" creating extensive and ridiculous justifications for existing canon - in other words, fan culture that was wholly secondary and subservient to corporate culture.

It is in response to this latter trend that we got to the modern rejection of "scientific accuracy", both in terms of complaints about a lack of accuracy and in false claims of accuracy as justification for pernicious fiction (e.g. "it's medieval Europe so of course everyone is white" which is both a false statement in itself and of course completely nonsensical when applied to fiction not even set in history). But both sides of this are largely unconcerned with "accuracy" in the sense of storytelling that does not promote harmful responses; both position themselves as "apolitical" and in so doing reify the capitalist logic underlying this entire spectrum of criticism. Complaints of "how are people feeding themselves? who is doing the work?" and similar are neither promoted by those invested in "accuracy" nor indirectly promoted by citing them when refuting the desire for such. Materialism remains by the wayside in favor of supremely individualist critiques isolated from any larger context or relevance. (As an aside: even I was surprised when I did a survey of what are today termed "simulationist" tabletop role-playing games and found that while they would spend dozens of pages on rules simulating the physics of gunshot injuries, rules for production relations and political structures were all but nonexistent in every single game. Surveying strategy video games with a global/regional setting for mechanics covering these topics is less fruitless but still incredibly rare.)

In recent years the derision of "accuracy", "realism", "plot holes", and similar has intensified as mainstream culture has become more and more, to borrow a metaphor from other criticism, pornographic. By this is not meant a proliferation of nudity and sex, but rather a structuring of fiction around crude emotional climaxes, with plot, characters, setting, tone, and other concerns set aside in order to achieve the desired climax, no matter how nonsensical. This is spectacle in the basest sense; absent the contextual girding of plot and characters, these climaxes can only move viewers (or players or w/e) to emotion by way of basic visual and audio cues: lurid violence, triumphant music, explosions. Previously this might have been derided even in mainstream criticism (look to the reception of Michael Bay's films), although there has always been exceptions; but, for example, the most recent season of Game of Thrones - which while always a white supremacist fairy tale dominated by a materially unsustainable by fascistically indulgent level of violence, at least at one point paid heed to concepts like "character motivation" and "distances of 1000 miles are significant obstacles" - seemed to deliberately give up on any pretense of its storytelling serving any function other than the delivery of "awesome moments" to be "shared" and discussed on social media the following day. Critics, beholden to the domination of the capitalist behemoth, at most offered tepid laments of the show moving too fast while continuing to celebrate it as an apex of television storytelling.

All of this is not to say that, for example, Game of Thrones would be better with context simply because context is good in itself. Rather, it is that context demands a logic and material basis; when a story undergirds itself with material logistics of how its characters eat, clothe themselves, travel, etc., even if those details are not centered or elaborated (but not if they are ignored for "dramatic purposes"), it forces the storyteller to engage with the processes and conflicts that actually drive human society, and that are therefore of import to us. One critic calculated that based on the stated land area of Game of Thrones' setting combined with the stated casualties in the various battles across the series and assumptions of medieval European population density and farm outputs, the entire continent would be suffering depopulation and famine (as a result of lack of farm laborers and devastated fields). Certainly, the assumptions based on medieval Europe are not "accurate" for the story, but they serve to demand an explanation of how -does- the continent still produce food? Why -do- the armies keep fighting rather than deserting, as many pre-modern armies did when wars stretched long and without result? Among many other unanswered questions.

The point is not that there can't be answers to these questions - c.f. "fanon" above - but that the canonical fiction bypasses them in order to tell the story it wants to tell - a story about endless violence, faceless armies, and nihilistic elites, without any interest in how such a society functions at all. That the values of a story should trump material logistics of the setting and plot is an absolute truism in American fiction and criticism, but this is not a neutral position; this is the CIA's project for anti-communist fiction having triumphed utterly, the idealist ideology of capitalism, of decontextualized individuals driven by abstract values and engaging with material reality only through the lens of violence, having been rendered so dominant that opposition is unthinkable. Similarly elevated is "show, don't tell" and its dismissal of didacticism, its explicit valorization of the elision of ideology. Lost in all this is, again, that if stories matter - and they do - then their ideology matters, and all stories teach ideology, and the rejection of materialism - the wholesale dismissal of "realism" and its ilk in favor of abstract ideals - is a pernicious ideology that works to justify capitalism and undermine anti-capitalist - which is to say, communist - education. We -need- stories about logistics and labor in order to teach ourselves how to survive and escape capitalism, to provide us with experiences we cannot yet have in reality.