Asexual genderqueer 30something, cat person, bibliophile, sci-fi geek with a fondness for avengers, and various other fandoms. Alignment: Chaotic Good. About Messaging: Feel free to message me, but I may not respond immediately.
I hate when king arthur has all these fussy little steps in the instructions and you're like "no way do these fussy little steps matter" but you try it and they do. they matter so much.
I thought you meant Camelot quests and I was like "that's fair, 'never pick a four leaf clover on the last Wednesday of the month' IS a fussy little step that shouldn't matter" but then I was like "wait isn't that also a flour company"
Don't ask me if your tone came off as too hostile in any conflict situation you were in because 90% of the time I'll be like "no you're fine, had it been me in your situation, I would have been meaner" and that is not because I'm rational, it's because I have a very bugs bunny approach to conflict. The only reason I've never gotten into a full-out no holds barred someone's-going-to-get-arrested spite war with anyone is because nobody else has started it.
Also because if you're my friend I'd need nothing more to bite your enemies than a 30 second window of opportunity.
the most #UselessLesbian thing i have ever done was when i was trying to figure out if this girl liked me or not, just constantly arguing with myself about it, and after a couple, uh, months, of this, i was like, “god i wish i could just like… go to court and lay out all this evidence and have a couple lawyers argue over the TRUE MEANING of her text messages, and then a judge tells me if she likes me or not.” and then the proverbial lightbulb went off over my proverbial head, and i dug into my mock trial folder from high school and found the trial guidelines and i wrote out an entire trial transcript featuring a plaintiff (me), my attorney (my wildest hopes and dreams), a defense attorney (my worst fears and insecurities), and a judge (my desperate attempt at rationality). the final product was several thousand words long. it clarified nothing. at any point in this process did it occur to me to ask her how she felt about me? absolutely not. did i ever stop and think, “hey, maybe i should tell her that i like her?” absolutely not. that’s for people who take risks and i don’t take risks i take myself to court in my own head.
random PSA, I know a lot of people use duckduckgo as a Google alternative search engine, but it always kind of annoyed me when I was using it because it felt like No Name Brand Google
I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.
also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo
also private, European based, least annoying search I've used lately (RIP old "don't be evil" Google)
i have one of those, scraped from multiple different rec posts:
Search Engines
Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy
DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)
WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.
Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.
Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.
Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines.
Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted.
Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy.
Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.
Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden.
MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.
Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching.
Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar.
https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results.
https://www.mojeek.com/
https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites.
https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.
https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.
https://yep.com/ is a crawler
https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx
https://www.dogpile.com/
https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)
https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?
https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?
https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.
Other Searchers
www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.
www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.
https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.
www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.
www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.https://cosine.club/ is an electronic music similarity search engine
Before you are two magic buttons.
Button A: you will never have to clean your kitchen again (dishes are automatically done; floor swept and mopped; etc).
Button B: you will never have to clean your bathroom again (toilet & sink & tub/shower cleaned and sanitized; etc)
Which button do you push?
So many comments, many of them wise and all of them heartfelt, and yet nobody has thought to add ...
the fridge-freezer is in the kitchen. Not only are there dishes every day, not only are there food preparation surfaces of various kinds every day, not only are there crumbs and odds and ends that fall on the floor every day ... but the fridge-freezer is in the kitchen. The oven is in the kitchen, the food cupboards are in the kitchen, and above all THE KITCHEN BIN IS IN THE KITCHEN.
I mean, it's not like the bathroom is all sweetness and light, but seriously! Who in their right mind is choosing the bathroom?!?!?!?
Having a magically-self-cleaning bathroom would be cool, but it wouldn't dramatically change my lifestyle.
If I could cook or bake whatever the hell I wanted, knowing that all my pots and mixing bowls and baking sheets would just zap themselves clean when I finished? If I knew that I could spill batter or grease inside the oven or burn things onto baking racks and it would just go away? I would be making delicious shit constantly.
The way all the 2020s have done so far have been making me categorically against every new generation of tech that comes out is insane. Like I'm from a technological boom generation, saw the first portable phones, nokias & blackberries & flipphones etc, and the first smartphones, and the first ipods & ipads & tablets in general while still having cassettes & DVD & MP3 players around so I know how all of it work, I had computer classes in high school, I did the transition between home desktop computers to laptops and back to gaming computers. But then they started to put internet in your printer & microwave, everything has ads & AI now and every update is worst than the last. I literally loved technology and they ruined it
I would LOVE to hear more gripes about accuracy of portrayal of historical monarchies!!!
I have been wanting to do this for a while, because there is a lot that irks me. And this ranges across board from big budget period dramas to how people write royalty AUs, which means this isn't one specific thing I'm pointing at. And if it is helpful on a writing tips level, I'll be happy with that.
Long post under the cut:
Disclaimers:
I research 19th century European history, which has a lot of questions about what a monarchy is and why they continue to exist. That's the perspective I am bringing to this.
I probably shouldn't have to say this, but: this is not about modern monarchism. This is about history. I don't want to debate whether you think certain countries should continue to have their monarchs be public figures who are only nominally head of state.
The short version:
Monarchies are institutions. They are part of how the government functions and that should have implications for how someone writes them. A monarch is a person with a built in job that they were born into.
Monarchies are not all absolute. They can exist in a multiple forms with very different structures, and often discontent within a monarchy wants to reform the system not replace it.
My biggest advice would be this: figure out how your fictional or historical monarchy is structured. You don't have to exposit about it, but you do need to know it.
The long version:
The King has a job and there is a right and wrong way to do it.
Fantasy monarchies that draw upon history seem to have Versailles in mind in terms of an aesthetic space and royalty with a lot of power over the people around them. This also includes a lot of lounging around and looking pretty and doing lavish things. However, the issue is that this is a mental image of the dysfunction in the French monarchy close to the revolutions. You can't "Après moi, le déluge" through several centuries of government.
A King (or Queen) has a job, a really important one. They are the head of state, the highest authority in the country, and the highest judge on legal matters. At least in the platonic ideal of absolute monarchy, those jobs being concentrated into one person means their responsibility and good judgement will give the state stability and consistently.
Enlightened absolutism was exactly that: monarchs staunchly holding onto the ideals of the Enlightenment and making reforms from the top down. People who read texts about ideal government and natural rights and put it into practice.
A lot of fiction takes that and goes: Oh, so they have unlimited power and can do whatever they want. Being king means you can do what you want without oversight? That's why someone would want to be king?
And yeah, sure, in theory. But the problem with having a job is that you can do it poorly and people will object to you doing it poorly. If someone is not fulfilling obligations, it is noticeable because the state functions poorly. The premise of Robin Hood is that the king is doing his job poorly. He's overtaxing, the officials are corrupt, there's disorder. The solution? Bring back the true king who is good and fair, and thus functional.
Ludwig II of Bavaria gets ousted from his throne for being more interested in opera and extravagant building projects than ruling. Again, it is a problem and people notice.
Historically, if you want to protect from someone being bad at the job you can support the idea that there should be more oversight and safeguards: Other bodies that control parts of the government alongside the king's ability to approve or disapprove. This tactic takes away the ability to be arbitrary since laws and such are not just coming from the crowned head of state. That would be a constitutional monarchy.
Not everyone needs to be Franz Joseph, waking up at the crack of dawn and working on governmental papers and meetings until bedtime. However, if a monarch is shown in fiction lounging around or talking to courtiers all day but never doing any actual governing, I'm going to assume they are very bad at their job.
2. You're probably understanding Courts and Ministers wrong.
I run into the issue quite a bit that courts are flattened to random servants, ladies-in-waiting, and people trying to be the king's sole advisor (for malicious power grabbing reasons).
The first problem: Being at court isn't an easily accessible thing. You're probably nobility or a scion of an important family. Your presence is built on family prestige and your own skill. Yes, even people in service to the monarch. There are no random people here, because proximity heightens the likelihood of greater promotion.
For example, I'm currently doing my research on a prince from an important dynasty in the 19th century. His secretary is a Baron.
It's not impossible for someone not of noble birth to get to be at court. They could have risen up the ranks of the army or be an exceptionally skilled civil servant promoted to the rank of minister. Though depending on the time period, expect these "new men" to get pushback from nobility by blood.
Ministers also matter.
Unless your fictional monarch is one of the few people who decides (to mixed results) to do all of the thinking about government on their own, there is a cabinet and ministers.
These are skilled people whose job is to think about aspects of government and be knowledgeable about them. A monarch might have many of them that argue and balance each other.
Or, you can write a particularly skilled statesman in a leading role that makes them just as prominent as the monarch if not more so. There are many historical examples of ministers who define their period:
If your monarch character isn't a strong person politically, but is intelligent, having them find a minister to take over most of the governing is a good idea. This person is promoted based on merit, even if the monarchy is hereditary.
I have rarely if ever seen fiction do a good job with a prominent minister as a character (except A Royal Affair, which everyone should watch).
Think of monarchies as whole institutions of government. They have people within them who do all the jobs of governing. But the structure of the government and the personality of the monarch can determine whether it is one person (Joseph II, Peter the Great, etc.), a prominent minister (like a Metternich or Bismarck) or a counsel or congress.
The structure can support a person not doing a lot as monarch, but you as a writer need to think what structures are around them allowing that.
3. Revolutions are scary.
There is a common trend in fiction to make your good guys pro-republic. They're revolutionaries who want to get rid of the king, so they must be good.
But here's the thing: Revolutions are a step into the unknown and have historically happened rather rarely and with very mixed results. That's because the system has to be really broken for something totally new to sound better than what you already have.
A monarchy can create a sense of stability: A fixed head of state who will be there until they die. Historically, people aren't seeking to change that. More often, the call is for a change within the existing structure. The Magna Carta or a written Constitution. Firing of Bad Ministers or the abdication of a bad king in favor of their heir. Creating elected bodies under the sovereign. These are all shifting the monarchical paradigm but keeping the monarchy intact.
And historically even the most liberal of people wanted to place restrictions of some sort on voting, especially property and gender restrictions.
There is a myriad of ways to change the system, the person at the top, or both while maintaining a monarchy. You can have a monarchy be elected as the best person among the nobility (though it didn't go that well for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth).
Completely throwing the whole thing out means risking all stability vanishing. That could be anarchy. That could mean a charismatic strongman who is also bad at governing in power. You could end up with a guillotine and rivers of blood in the streets. You could end up with a restoration eventually because Cromwell or Robespierre doesn't actually produce something people want to live under and they want the old certainty back.
People have a sense of inertia about changing government. What you have is better than what you don't know, especially if there can be internal reform. Making your character a Republican (in the Jacobin sense, not the US politics sense) means that they are a radical in most times and places and will likely be in the minority.
If there is one thing I would say is the point here is that monarchies are government systems, and thinking through how someone exists in that system in fiction is important. Being king isn't actually much of a fun job unless you're very good at delegating or very irresponsible. Unless you want to be celebrity, president, congress, and moral center of the state all in one, being king isn't a great deal.
the space seed episode of tos where they find khan and the ss botany bay is so funny because right off the bat you have kirk being like "yeah let's get that historian whats-her-name out there, maybe she can be useful for once" and it's like WOAH what's up with the liberal arts hate?? why is kirk being such a bitch to this lady for no reason. then you meet her and she's fucking obsessed with historical strongmen to the point of covering her walls in her own fanart. she lives on a spaceship in a utopian technofuture and she sleeps surrounded by busts of kings on purpose. her vibes are fashy and kirk is right to be a bitch, actually.
then they get to the botany bay and she's immediately driven to distraction by how horny she is for ricardo montalban under a thick layer of extra-dark foundation. sorry i'm gonna compare montalban with and without the makeup because it is SO distracting
also she refers to sikhs in the past tense implying that at some point in the last two hundred years there was a genocide that they're just glossing over. since she also calls them a warrior race it's also possible that she's just racist and somewhere on board the enterprise there are sikh crew members who dislike her as much as kirk does.
anyway you can assume that this is her first actual away mission and she fumbled immediately because she was so hot for khan but it's much funnier if this isn't the first time this has happened. every time they have to interact with a historical earth artifact she gets so horned up thinking about being a tradwife that she's rendered speechless. spock stays polite but kirk can't stand her. by the time kirk found out she was the type of person to paint her own portraits of napoleon and roman emperors to hang in her quarters it was too late to send her back and request literally anyone else. he's supposed to court martial her but offers to let her stay on fashy eugenics planet just so he won't have to keep her on his ship anymore. it's unclear if he lets her take her paintings or jettisons them into space.
Thank you! Nothing here is wrong tbh. My deep dislike of The Wrath of Khan would drop by ... like, 12% if they'd gone with Marla evolving into a deranged Lady Macbeth gleefully egging Khan on to Manlier Evil in the film instead of trying to convince us Khan would give a single fuck about her fridging tragic death.
