Nick. They/Them. Askbox/messenger's always open to chat. Fallen head-first into Shades of Magic fandom, hyperfixating hard on Holland Vosijk and Ros Vortalis, with a fair smattering of everyone else. You'll also be served large dollops of mythology, Tolkien (with a focus on Jackson-verse), poetry and Sanders-style politics, and a sprinkling of whatever else catches my fancy. Am reliably informed all my ships are mere iterations of Elizabeth I/Robert Dudley.
Thank-you to all of my new Internet stranger friends for being so gracious about having my post shoved onto your dashboards. I loved reading all of your kind tags and comments! Both Martin and Bosco have been gone for several years now but for 24 hours, they felt very present in my life. I greatly appreciate this gift. â¤ď¸
Old Elias Hicks had a farm on Long Island. When a young man he had traveled as an itinerant Quaker evangelist between Vermont and the Chesapeake, preaching the Inner Light, "that lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (John 1:9(âŚA decade after his death they would still tell the story of how, in Virginia, he courageously called upon a planter who had threatened to shoot him for preaching against the sin of slavery, and after repeated visits persuaded the man to set his people freeâŚThroughout his life Hicks rigorously defended the right as he saw it: the austere Quaker tradition of refusing to compromise with worldliness. He insisted that principled persons should avoid consuming the products of slave labor, such as sugar, rice, or cotton textiles. Besides slavery, he denounced banks, politics, and the Erie Canal. ("If the Lord had intended there should be internal waterways, he would have placed them there.") As for scientific learning, he considered it as "trivial" as "ribbons on a young woman's head."âŚIn the 1820's, he became the focal point of a controversy that irreparably split the American Society of Friends.
Ever since the seventeenth century, the Society of Friends (nicknamed "quakers" for their occasional emotional trances) had conceived themselves as a people apart. Within Protestantism, they were super-Protestants. Where Protestants demystified and simplified the Eucharist, [communion] Quakers did not observe it at all, nor did they practice baptism. Their silent meetings had no order of service. They wrote no systematic theology. Since both women and men possessed the divine Spirit, the Inner Light, they practiced a substantial degree of gender equality. They did not ordain clergy, though they "recorded" the fact that God's Spirit particularly spoke through designated individuals. They dressed plainly and spoke plainly, using "thee" and "thou," the familiar form of address, instead of "you," considered more polite. They refused to serve in the armed forces. They refused to take oaths in court, on the grounds that one should tell the truth all the time, not just in special circumstances. But the international evangelical movement affected them in ways that two hundred years of persecution had never doneâŚThey started associating with non-Quakers in philanthropic organizations. Sometimes they seemed more interested in cooperating with other white evangelicals than in bearing uncompromising witness against slaveryâŚElias Hicks stood out against these trends. He also criticized those Quakers, chiefly in Philadelphia, who had adapted sufficiently to the ways of the world to become successful merchants and entrepreneursâŚIn April 1827, dissension wracked the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (analogous to a synod in Presbyterianism). The followers of Hicks walked out and set up their own Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Other yearly meetings had to decide which of the two Philadelphia meetings to recognize, and in doing so they precipitated a schism throughout American QuakersâŚ[along with] temperance, prison reform, and public support for elementary schoolsâŚthe Hicksites displayed a willingness to pursue causes that others thought quixotic. Hicksite Quakers provided a disproportionately large number of recruits to the immediate, uncompensated abolition of slavery. And when at last a movement endorsing equal rights for women surfaced, the little minority of Hicksite Quakers would make themselves conspicuous in its support.
âDaniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought, pp. 195-197 [insertions in brackets mine, to make text more coherent after shaving ancillary explanation cause lord Howe can maunder]
God, it's stories like this that make me love history! It's tempting to write Hicks off as a total _crank! But his story forces us to confront how  complex, often contradictory the ideology most people hold is in practice. How they can be entirely! wrong-headed on issue A and still do immeasurable good on issue q over here. And learn the cognitive dissonance of holding what they've done worth applauding alongside that with which we disagree.
Those who signed a temperance pledge were encouraged to put a T after their names if willing to take the extra step [the usual stance was simply moeration] of pledging total abstinence; from this derives our word "teetotaler." âDaniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought
ancient roman women whose husband keeps looking at the neighbour's boy quintus and he never looks at her that way and she can't even chainsmoke in the kitchen because they don't have marlboro blues in ancient times. and she can't even go to the club because they haven't discovered drum and bass music yet. her friend clodia's having visions of a woman named doechii but neither of them knows what that means
This post was great, and then @notbecauseofvictories tags made it marvelous!
I know everyone and their mother has seen this already but I think it's very funny.     #....that said the idea that they haven't discovered drum music by the common era is just flatly incorrect.     #even bass! if you're specifically talking about the electronic bass sure.     #but like. they had the cithara! nero could have been doing cool riffs on the hydraulis!     #a respectably married woman and her friend might not have been permitted to dance like crotalistriae     #but come on. they would have gone to street festivals. they could have danced in her cubicula. there are opportunities.
As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse. It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search termsÂ
As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable. As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.
Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.
â
Google is so powerful that it âhidesâ other search systems from us. We just donât know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.
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.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.
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
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to expanding other peopleâs knowledge on this topic. Information literacy is a huge topic in high schools and universities, and one of the things teachers and librarians are struggling to help students understand is the fact that their search engine is not free of bias and may prioritize ads (or what it thinks you want to see based on your shopping experience) rather than actual information. Itâs made more difficult by the fact that the technology in use is constantly evolving.
Also, big thanks to the folks who reminded me to fix the ref links in the original post. Not sure what I was thinking when I copied it over from FB, but itâs now fixed (canât vouch for reblogs, this is Tumblr afterall).
Someone accurately noted that the bulk of the above links are databases, not search engines. The initial post called them research sites not search engines.  If you want something better than Google, I would usually suggest using Duck Duck Go. Someone in the comments said it skews right, but I have not seen research or evidence to back that up, so proceed as you wish.  I would recommend Firefox as a browser, and you could consider one of these search engines.
https://www.qwant.com/ - Search engine with no tracking or advertising
https://www.ecosia.org/ - Search engine that plants trees â has ads and that ad revenue runs the engine while funding tree planting
Additional Sites Recommended in the Comments
Here are some of the top sites recommended in the comments.
Academic/Reseach
Academia - platform that shares academic research
arXiv - (pronounced archive, apparently) is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for 2,328,899 scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. It is housed by Cornell University
Astrophysics Data System - The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a digital library portal for researchers in astronomy and physics, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant. The ADS maintains three bibliographic collections containing more than 15 million records covering publications in astronomy and astrophysics, physics, and general science.
Bielefeld Academic Search Engine - BASE is a search engine specifically for academic studies texts, and contains more than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.
Bioline - This is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
Education Resources Information Center - ERIC is a comprehensive, easy-to-use, searchable, internet-based bibliographic and full-text database of education research and information.
JSTOR - academic digital library providing access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
PubMed - the National Institute for Healthâs National Library of Medicine, comprises more than 35 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
Research Gate - founded to address the problems in the way science is created and shared. Connects the world of science and makes research open to all.
Research Papers in Economics - Volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science for RePEc.
Sci-Hub - research publication library â technically pirated content, but please note that the researchers do not get paid for publication, and will often send you a PDF of their research for free if you ask, itâs the publications that want to restrict access to paying readers
US Government Science Portal - Science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
World Cat - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where the rare book you need is.
Libraries
Boston Library History & Political Science - The Boston Library has a ton of history and poli sci resources. Big libraries often have things available digitally for free, even if you arenât in the area.
Hathi Trust Digital Library â This library provides free digitized books from all over the world.
Internet Archive - This non-profit library houses millions of free digital books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
PDF Drive - This is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format, claiming over 225 million names. Caution advised as some users report malware may be hidden in with the valid content.
Project Gutenberg - This site provides free downloads of digital books, focusing on works with expired US copyright. Note, if you look for out-of-print books on Google, it will try to sell you books that you can actually download free from Gutenberg (Iâve tested this multiple times).
Z Library â This digital library provides ebooks for free. Currently considered a security risk by Firefox, so maybe avoid.
_
Please visit my Resources for Writers page for other subject areas.
[ID: A painting of a Black man in a high-collared dark orange sweater and black pants against a shadowed tan background. He is looking to his left with heavy-lidded eyes and is leaning back in an armless chair, one leg up and bent, his wrists loosely crossed in his lap. The man has short hair, a close mustache and beard. Light coming from his left brings out the definition of his face, shadows gathering on his right temple, cheek, and jaw. A black cat is draped over his left shoulder, paws bracing on his shoulder/arm and tail upright. /end ID]
I've been utterly obsessed with this art for nearly a month--something about the whimsy of kitty on shoulder contrasted with careworn exhaustion in the shadows across this man's face just mesmerized me. And MaSSIVE hat-tips to op for the gorgeous image description--every one of those who make art accessible on this website needs to be fucking canonized.
Anyway, I went looking for the full profile, which is a glorious piece of art in its own right--link to a nonpaywalled version--. Here are some of my favorite excerpts, for anyone as enthralled by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye as I was:
The show has a melancholy, literary title, "Under-Song For A Cipher," and consists of seventeen paintings hung low, depicting a set of striking individuals, all slightly larger than human scale, though not imposingly so. Most are on herringbone linen; one is on canvas. It's impossible to avoid noticing that they are allâevery man and each womanâphysically beautiful. Mostly they are alone. They sit, stretch, lounge, stand, and are often lost in contemplation, their eyes averted. If they are with others, the company is never mixed, as if too much heat might be generated by introducing that half-naked man over there to this sharp-eyed dancing girl.
In the oeuvre of the British-Ghanaian painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, there are quite a few dancers, lithe in their leotards, but all of her people look as though they might well belong to that profession. They are uniformly elegant. One young man puts his hands on his knees and laughs, with his legs apart and his feet turned out; he is dressed simply, like the rest, in blocks of swiftly laid paint, creating here a black vest, there some white trousers. No shoes. The artist dislikes attaching her figures to a particular historical moment, and there's no way around the historicity of shoes. Sometimes the men hold animals like familiarsâan owl, a songbird, a cat. The colors are generally muted: greens and grays and blacks and an extraordinary variety of browns. Amid this sober coloration splashes of yellow and pink abound, and vivid blues and emerald greens, all tempered by the many snowdrop gaps of unpainted canvas, like floral accents in an English garden.
The surrounding walls are painted a dark heritage red, bringing to mind national galleries and private libraries, but also, for this viewer, the books you might find in such places, specifically the calico covers of nineteenth-century novels. This red has the effect of bringing a diverse selection of souls together, framing and containing them, much like a novel contains its people, which is to say, only partially. For Yiadom-Boakye's people push themselves forward, into the imaginationâas literary characters doâsurely, in part, because these are not really portraits. They have no models, no sitters. They are character studies of people who don't exist.
âŚ
Nor will the titles of these paintings identify them. A dancing girl in the midst of an arabesque bears the caption "Light Of The Lit Wick." A gentleman in an orange turtleneck with a cat on his shoulder: "In Lieu Of Keen Virtue." That antic fellow with his hands on his knees: "A Cage For The Love." We have become used to titles that ironize or undercut what we are looking at, providing conceptual scaffolding for feeble visual ideas, or weak punch lines to duller jokes. For Yiadom-Boakye, titles are allusive; they should be considered, she has said, simply "an extra mark in the paintings." For an artist, she is unusual in describing herself as a writer as much as a painterâher short stories and prosy poems frequently appear in her catalogues. In a recent interview in
Time Out, she reflected on the relation between these twin roles. "I don't paint about the writing or write about the painting," she said. "It's just the opposite, in fact: I write about the things I can't paint and paint the things I can't write about." Her titles run parallel to the images, andâlike the human figures they have chosen not to describe or explainâradiate an uncanny self-containment and serenity. The canvas is the text.
some random adsom inconsistencies and retcons i never see talked about !
1. As Enose vs. As Tascen
In the first book, Kell uses the blood command As Enose (to find), in order to travel to the location of a specific person. This spell is never used again after ADSOM. Instead, they start using As Tascen (to transfer) for the same purpose for the remainder of the series.
2. Onase Aven vs. Aven Essen
Tieren introduces himself to Lila as the onase aven (the head priest) during ADSOM. This title/term is literally never seen or used again. Friendship ended with the onase aven đ¤ the aven essen is my new best friend ig
(I wrote about this on the adsom tv tropes page btw under early installment weirdness, if the words seems familiar. dw they are mine haha, i wrote basically half the entries for adsom on that site lmao, you should check it out if youâve never read it!)
Shades of Magic is a fantasy trilogy by V. E. Schwab. The first book was released on February 24, 2015. A sequel trilogy called Threads of P
While most of these def fall under "continuity, not always V.E.'s strong suit" I think As Enose may be a little different.
In Chapter I of "Fire and Festival" Kell notes "there were stories, of non-Antari who tried to open doors and got stuck"
It is true he also says travel by token won't work if she's been trapped between the worlds.
But! We see at several earlier points Kell's actually a very excellent spell inventorâthe healing salve, the guards' swords, spelled for short-term severance of targets' magic.
He also sees magic closer to friend than thing to dominate, as typified by his and Holland's dispute later. Earlier, when he can't travel courtesy of encountering the wrong side of said bespelled swords, he coaxes, and magic complies.
All the other times we've see characters using As Tascen, they know the other people are somewhere--it may be in a different world, but it's at least a tangible, corporeal place. Using something different from As Tascen, I've always thought, was an implicit ask: Try! to find her, even if that means taking me _between the doors into the sort of place which shouldn't exist even for Antari. Because for all he says it was Lila's choice to come, he doesn't want her to come to any harm--he was as blown away by her coming back and knocking Holland out for him as she was him coming to Holland's trap, after all.
Okay Iâm a little sleep-deprived but if I must suffer these thoughts so should you:
cw: vague discussion of non-con sex acts
So while it isnât stated in canon, it isnât hard to surmise that the Danes would sexually abuse Holland. They have complete power over him, donât regard him as a real person (not that they treat average people well either), and are both sadistic in general, especially Athos.
My current thought is what that extends to (for fic purposes) while feeling in character.
Did Athos share him with Astrid as a disturbing twin bonding activity or did she have to wait for her own Antari pet? Did Athos ever involve other people (mind controlled or otherwise)? Could he let Holland top to give him the illusion of control or would that feel too vulnerable (insert something about toxic masculinity)? How/would any of these elements be affected if one or both were trans?
Oooo thank you for the three A.M. excuse to compare bleak smut headcanons on main! Putting the rest of this beneath a readmore, for anyone who'd rather skip my fucked-up noncon musings.
As you say, we get so! little of them you could about make anything workâI try to stay grounded in-text, but honestly sometimes whether "my" Athos would do x is three quarters vibes.
Sharing with Astrid: For me, two questions. _would he share and _did he?
Would: Absolutely. We already know they shared some things. She enjoyed watching Holland kill in his final ACOL flashback pov, and in the Danes reel of horror from the Maresh dungeons, there's at least one moment Athos is telling him to kneel and she's mocking him to stand. So did Astrid play? Sure.
But she is just so. nonphysical where Holland's concerned. Astrid takes Kell's hand, electrocutes him, runs her fingers up his coat. Even Lila, we see her sit astride and mock. Holland, by contrast, we only see her touch once: "playing her cool fingers" up his arm and running a nail along his shoulder. Only _after Athos has put the Seal on, and in context of saying he should kill the pet anyway. Even when she stabs him, she's twisting the knife, not touching Holland.
But in the bedroom? I'm def in the minority here, and have def loved! permutations of yes to this question.
More literal bedwarmer/heater who I will sometimes poke a stick at just to watch bare its teeth, with Athos securely holding the other end of the chain than totes wanna climb that vibes, imho.
Maybe early on, just to notch "Antari" in her bedpost, or some horrid Holland ordered to look like Kell for her name-day shit.
Other people: Suspect I'm gonna be in the minority here again, but going the other way. Oh hell yes, but with heavy control of both parties. That's essentially (nonsexually) the whole blood into goblet with Kell: forcing witness, knowing he's young, afraid of Athos, without self-confidence to intervene. And reminding Holland: always new humiliations.
Here's where we go less text and more Raven speculation: the way Holland stares at Beloc, "lodged somewhere between distant surprise and disinterest" I'd be shocked! if Athos didn't have a revolving door, god help everyone involved.
The mindless I think he'd use as casually as people use toys to add spice.
Especially in early days when the sheer depravity was still a shock. Seven years is roughly 2600 daysâeventually how much is it oh joy, the novelty! of. what you did three weeks ago fuck why do bodies exist?
For those with slightly more faculties, Athos loves putting folk in Hobson's Choice: he lets Beloc keep his mind "So I can watch the war play in your eyes every time your body obeys my will instead of yours."
Particularly for longer-term favorites. Even if it's crows you snore and your elbows are bony, Holland knows these people. That would delight Athos in every permutation, whether they're both disgusted, frightened, angry. Or just: "yeah let's get this over so we can sleep."
They still have to look at each other the next morning knowing Holland will outlive this person, just as he did the last. Or maybe Athos will grow bored or pleased and send them to another task and Holland. Will keep living the monotonous constancy of Athos' fascination.
It's all watching "Holland play at being hollow" but [knowing] it was a ruse."
And "involve" covers so much. His line about Beloc "suffering" but not as beautifully as Holland. Such obscenity, because we know Holland has to be well for stone-related emergencies. That line could just as easily read "hurt him because I can't hurt you, and he was * shrug* fine, I guess. Nothing to write home about but I'm making due."
What an awful thing for Holland to carry. How many nights was it "if you're going to be so lackluster, send so-and-so on your way out."
Topping: Def happened, but not a lot. "That's where you belong, on your knees," Athos says in the Astrid bit of Maresh dungeon horror reel. I think he usually had very little warning or control of what came next. For him, he's downright frazzled in the Maresh dungeon and it's noteworthy Osaron, with his up-close trauma ride, blinds him in that final fight.
That said, oh, I think Athos enjoys watching Holland get caught in the angry joy: for once, it's _Athos who has to wait. _Athos who has to mewl. He can bite, and Athos bleeds so much more easily than an Antari.
Because Athos' control's a word away, and Holland only keeps the illusion by not overstepping.
And Holland always keeps himself. apart from the Danes. Kell notes he "trailed a few steps behind" Athos when they come into the throne room and then goes to stand by the back wall. I think if Holland actively wanted something, toppingâwith all its presumptions of willing enthusiasmâ" a tacit trump card. Given one of the only! things Holland takes pride in is actively not! saying please. Rare activity is officially the underadjective of the century for this varian.
Transness: Tbh, most of the above comes from my low-key default of Athos as trans and Holland as cis male. Massive, massive rush for Athos controlling someone with all the aces he wanted. The SHOULDERS! Astrid just goddamn will you look at them.
Putting Holland on his knees, making him pillowbite, performing "feminine" gender/sex positions.
Making Holland scream, cry, be too afraid to sleep: all wrapped up in the "real men don't" ergo I, self-made man, am better than you.
And you achieve your best potential only when you are "my" handsâ_I taught you to kill without all that whinging. Toxic mess on every level.
And oh goddamn, I'm now fascinated with @pinkcupboardwitch idea of monogamous concubine, given western royal expectations of royal women as wives and mistresses. To be touched by others as Athos' extension, but never of his choosing.
Text: (Muppet Fozzy is driving and talking to the camera). I really want to make a good impression on Beckyâs parents. Sheâs the first girl Iâve dated in a long time.
When your online profile says âpassionate bear looking for love,â you get a lot of wrong responses.
Well, not wrong. Just wrong for me.
funniest holland character trait is he is always game to pledge himself to others its ljke rlly nbd to him. my man ros v tried to kill him for yearsssssssss like constwntly and all it took was for him to be like hey man no hard feelings anyways want to protect me with your life for years. and he accepted???2)/)/?????? all the disembodied consciousness he met in fuckedupdeathdesteuctionworldlimbo had to do was be like uhhh itll be like.... both our will....... i pinky promise........ and then the shit w rhe inheritor him nominating himself immediately . when one half of the ppl hes abt to share a Life Source With just tried to kill him legiterally like a few days ago MULTIPLE TIMES like damn dude atp twinsies shldve jst tried asking politely
something i always found interesting: itâs not stated anywhere in canon how old holland is in the present day! trust me, i looked.
37 comes from a random tumblr post schwab made years ago, but itâs never said anywhere in-textâyou canât even extrapolate his age from flashbacks! read my way-too detailed explanation below at your own peril !!
to start, letâs label/describe the flashbacks first.
Alox flashback
Talya flashback
meeting Vortalis
discuss plans to kill Gorst / killing Gorst
holland and vortalis stand on a balcony waiting to open the gates to the people for the first time to start off their reign + child kell visits the throne room
vortalis dies + danes takeover
And now letâs list the canon info we are given about hollandâs age during said flashbacks.
Holland is 9
Holland is 18
Holland is (?) âyearsâ have passed since #2
Holland is (?) âmonthsâ have passed since #3
Holland is (?) a few days/maybe a week or two have passed since #4. (also child kell is âno more than 12 or 13â y/o)
Holland is (?) â2 yearsâ have passed since #5
if holland is 37 (and Kell is 21) in present-day adsom, then we can assign these ages to Holland in the flashbacks
9 y/o
18 y/o
27/28 y/o
28 y/o
28 y/o (kell always HAS to be 12 here bc he is canonically 21 nine years after this flashback)
30 y/o
which means vortalis hunted holland for basically 10 years! and that holland put up with it for 10 years and did nothing about it despite knowing who was sending all these hitmen after him. imo it was unlikely this went on for a decade. to me itâs way more reasonable if it went on for like 3/4 years max. which means:
9 y/o
18 y/o
21/22 y/o
22 y/o
22 y/o (kell is 12 again)
24 y/o
which makes holland about 31 in present day adsom. my point is that both of these hypothetical age timelines work bc of the ambiguity. just depends on how much time YOU think passed between flashbacks 2 and 3.
interestingly enough, schwab said in a youtube video recap of the series, that during flashback #5 âkell is like 10 and holland is like 20â (said around the 11:35-11:40 time stamp). this is wildly inconsistent with holland being 37 in ADSOM!
Holland being 37 and Kell being 21 hard locks their age difference as 16 years. So if Holland is 37 in ADSOM, and was 20 at the time of flashback #5, that makes Kell 4. Which he very clearly was not.
The math doesnât quite work out though bc if Holland is 20 in flashback #5 it means he is 29 in present day. And bc of the 10 year age gap, Kell is 19. But he is canonically 21. Kell HAS to be 12 in the #5 flashback, but this makes their age gap even smaller at only 8 years! (v different than 16!)
all these inconsistencies lead me to believe that in schwabâs mind, kell and holland are about a decade apart but she never worked out the timeline very intricately. and that my proposed second timeline is very close to correct and reconciles all the conflicting word of god data the best đ
anyway, this post exists bc i thought holland was like 28 the entire time i was reading the trilogy and then i found out he was 37 and was shook. i then went looking for evidence and found a mess đŤ˘
ââ¨â¨â¨â
bonus: hereâs more reasoning on the flashback math written out in words if any of it was confusing đ¤Ż
in his first flashback, holland is 9, in the second flashback, holland is 18. but in the third flashback (silver wood with vor) his age is not mentioned! and because of this, we cannot definitively state his age in the present.
in the third flashback the only clue we get is that vortalis has been âhunting Holland for yearsâ and Holland refers to him as a âlegend.â
contrast this with the second flashback where holland thinks of vortalis as a ânobodyâ and a âthug.â obviously a few years have passed between the second and third flashback, but we are left to speculate how many.
the time between the fourth and fifth flashbacks is a few months. because in the fifth flashback (standing on the balcony, newly crowned) holland mentions meeting vortalis âmonths agoâ.
the sixth and final flashback occurs âtwo yearsâ later. (which also means vortalisâs reign was approximately two years long). the flashback ends with holland being enslaved by the Danes. we know his enslavement was 7 years long which takes us to the present.
Some thoughts regarding the "Vortalis hunting Holland for ten years" thing because I think that part of the timeline can still make sense with some wiggling:
Vor was actively sending assassins after Holland around the time of Talya's death, enough so that Holland knew his name.
At an unstated point in time, Queen Stol killed the other White London Antari in an attempt to gain his power. Vortalis was present in an unclear role, avoiding answering when Holland asks.
In their Silver Wood encounter (x) years later, Holland doesn't know who he is (and doesn't immediately assume he's an assassin) until Vortalis introduces himself.
Vor states he only sent 'enemies' after Holland, not allies or friends.
The wiggling:
Considering Vor's statement about his choice of assassins, we can safely assume that Talya wasn't his doing, even if the tragic irony is juicy. Holland had a lot of people looking to kill him.
Then there's the Unnamed White London Antari (heretofore called UWLA) and his ambiguous place in the narrative. We have no idea when he died/when Stol reigned. He briefly appears on the last page of the last issue of the Steel Prince comics looking vaguely middle-aged or older, though I can't really tell with the comics style; this is set at a time when Holland is a child (or not even born if we go by the younger timeline) and Vor is presumably a young adult if close in age to Maxim. While my previous assumption was that UWLA was executed when Holland was young (or else you'd have two active adult Antari who didn't cross paths), it is possible it happened later.
It is also notable that Holland doesn't recognize Vor when they first meet, only knowing him by name and reputation. This suggests that Vortalis wasn't sending assassins after him once a month or more, because then Holland would be more than valid in hunting him down to threaten him into backing off (while open hostility isn't Hol's style, I feel like that kind of prolonged stress would push him to that point); I feel like if it was me, I would at least want to know what my harasser looked like to know to avoid him if we happened to cross paths. So while it started as active murder attempts, it could have evolved to occasionally tossing problem-causers at Holland to see what he would do and keep an eye on him.
For clarity, my previous idea regarding UWLA, Stol, and Vor: he supports Stol in some way, helps her kill UWLA (presumably known for violence, if they didn't attempt and fail to recruit him), doesn't fix anything, he leaves to the Shal when her reign starts to fall apart, Vor assumes Holland is going to be the same kind of problem as UWLA (this is also assuming he started when Holland was 18, he knew Vor was after him but I'm not sure if it states how recent), spends the next 10ish years sending assassins on and off, because Holland clearly isn't pro-killing even in self-defense Vor realizes he might be more useful on his side than dead.
New idea: Vortalis was attempting to kill Holland, assassins keep failing, he throws his lot in with Stol, UWLA is executed for blood bath, nothing improves, similar second half with Holland mentioned above, just over a shorter time span.
So, @badassbutterfly1987 's whole meta is amazing! but then! these tags <333333333333333
 I personally prefer Holland age 37 and the 10 year murder attempt # partly because it's really funny imagining Vortalis in the Silver Wood banking on a NAT 20 charisma check and Holland being forgiving enough
something i always found interesting: itâs not stated anywhere in canon how old holland is in the present day! trust me, i looked.
37 comes from a random tumblr post schwab made years ago, but itâs never said anywhere in-textâyou canât even extrapolate his age from flashbacks! read my way-too detailed explanation below at your own peril !!
to start, letâs label/describe the flashbacks first.
Alox flashback
Talya flashback
meeting Vortalis
discuss plans to kill Gorst / killing Gorst
holland and vortalis stand on a balcony waiting to open the gates to the people for the first time to start off their reign + child kell visits the throne room
vortalis dies + danes takeover
And now letâs list the canon info we are given about hollandâs age during said flashbacks.
Holland is 9
Holland is 18
Holland is (?) âyearsâ have passed since #2
Holland is (?) âmonthsâ have passed since #3
Holland is (?) a few days/maybe a week or two have passed since #4. (also child kell is âno more than 12 or 13â y/o)
Holland is (?) â2 yearsâ have passed since #5
if holland is 37 (and Kell is 21) in present-day adsom, then we can assign these ages to Holland in the flashbacks
9 y/o
18 y/o
27/28 y/o
28 y/o
28 y/o (kell always HAS to be 12 here bc he is canonically 21 nine years after this flashback)
30 y/o
which means vortalis hunted holland for basically 10 years! and that holland put up with it for 10 years and did nothing about it despite knowing who was sending all these hitmen after him. imo it was unlikely this went on for a decade. to me itâs way more reasonable if it went on for like 3/4 years max. which means:
9 y/o
18 y/o
21/22 y/o
22 y/o
22 y/o (kell is 12 again)
24 y/o
which makes holland about 31 in present day adsom. my point is that both of these hypothetical age timelines work bc of the ambiguity. just depends on how much time YOU think passed between flashbacks 2 and 3.
interestingly enough, schwab said in a youtube video recap of the series, that during flashback #5 âkell is like 10 and holland is like 20â (said around the 11:35-11:40 time stamp). this is wildly inconsistent with holland being 37 in ADSOM!
Holland being 37 and Kell being 21 hard locks their age difference as 16 years. So if Holland is 37 in ADSOM, and was 20 at the time of flashback #5, that makes Kell 4. Which he very clearly was not.
The math doesnât quite work out though bc if Holland is 20 in flashback #5 it means he is 29 in present day. And bc of the 10 year age gap, Kell is 19. But he is canonically 21. Kell HAS to be 12 in the #5 flashback, but this makes their age gap even smaller at only 8 years! (v different than 16!)
all these inconsistencies lead me to believe that in schwabâs mind, kell and holland are about a decade apart but she never worked out the timeline very intricately. and that my proposed second timeline is very close to correct and reconciles all the conflicting word of god data the best đ
anyway, this post exists bc i thought holland was like 28 the entire time i was reading the trilogy and then i found out he was 37 and was shook. i then went looking for evidence and found a mess đŤ˘
ââ¨â¨â¨â
bonus: hereâs more reasoning on the flashback math written out in words if any of it was confusing đ¤Ż
in his first flashback, holland is 9, in the second flashback, holland is 18. but in the third flashback (silver wood with vor) his age is not mentioned! and because of this, we cannot definitively state his age in the present.
in the third flashback the only clue we get is that vortalis has been âhunting Holland for yearsâ and Holland refers to him as a âlegend.â
contrast this with the second flashback where holland thinks of vortalis as a ânobodyâ and a âthug.â obviously a few years have passed between the second and third flashback, but we are left to speculate how many.
the time between the fourth and fifth flashbacks is a few months. because in the fifth flashback (standing on the balcony, newly crowned) holland mentions meeting vortalis âmonths agoâ.
the sixth and final flashback occurs âtwo yearsâ later. (which also means vortalisâs reign was approximately two years long). the flashback ends with holland being enslaved by the Danes. we know his enslavement was 7 years long which takes us to the present.
the writerâs urge to ask your friends âdo you wanna see a little somethinâ iâve been working on?â when the little somethinâ youâve been working on is 800 words and ends in the middle of a sentence
I see this and raise you: Eight hundred words, ends in the middle of a sentence, and has been sitting on your drive for YEARS as you patiently add five words this month and ten the next.
